Bestview Respite

I am off to the Amazon for a cruise tomorrow and at $0.70 per minute to use the internet on the ship, I doubt I will be offering up this drivel on a regular basis until I return. I might come on to report on my pirhana fishing experience and if I get mobbed by a bevy of scantily clad natives I may let you know about that. Otherwise, you can just assume I am gorging myself on culinary delights and sitting on my veranda watching for monkeys in the trees.

Howard Dean

Am I the only one who is really enjoying the new Howard Dean? He has not been seen or heard from since being named Chairman of the dems.

Tidal Wave picture found on a damaged digital camera. It was taken by a couple who did not survive the tsunami after taking this phot.
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H5N1

We have a big problem in Viet Nam and this one could be even bigger than the one we had before. Bird flu, especially the one caused by strain H5N1, is a disease with a reservoir in birds and especially chickens and ducks which are raised for domestic consumption by humans. The virus causes disease in the chickens, which is of considerable economic consequence, since the animals die and when the disease occurs in a flock, the only real way to contain its spread is to eradicate the rest of the birds. Viet Nam, the country hardest hit, has some 70% of its population raising chickens in the backyard to provide a major source of the family income. Problem no. 1 arises when the family refuses to report the disease in their birds to avoid losing all of their income. So the disease can't be contained. A second problem is the birds are essentially raised in the same space occupied by the humans so close contact with infected birds is inevitable. Problem no. 3 is caused by the fact that the virus is mutating rapidly, like all influenza viruses, and this guarantees that the virus will jump from animals to humans as it adapts to a new host. This has already happened and there has been a 70% mortality in the humans who have contracted the disease.

So, the dire prognosis is for the bird flu virus to establish itself in a greater and greater number of people and spread rapidly from person to person through respiratory droplet transmission. Depending on the extent of transmission, a pandemic could be experienced in which literally millions of people die. A vaccine is being developed, but it will be very difficult to vaccinate the population likely to be affected and if the virus mutates rapidly enough the vaccine being developed could be a poor one. This is really scary.

Global Warming Nonsense

A few years back Michael Mann published a graph of temperatures that resembled a hockey stick laying on its side, with a rapid increase over the last century. His data and methods have been repeatedly challenged and debunked, though true believers refuse to admit what could only have been intentional fraud. Reading the MSM one would think that global warming caused by humans was an accepted fact, yet the facts themselves don't agree. We may be in a warming period (it's too early to tell as temperatures have only risen a little over half a degree over the last hundred years) but that fits a trend that we know has been going on forever. NASA,which is a big man-made global warming proponent, acknowledges that over the past millennium the earth's temperature has risen and fallen several degrees having nothing to do with humans. They note for example that:
Unusually low solar activity between 1645-1715 likely triggered the 'Little Ice Age' in regions like Europe and North America ... During this shift, winter temperatures cooled as much as 2 to 4 degrees F - enough to freeze rivers and alter agriculture, economy, disease, etc. Yet they go on to add that: Changes in the sun's energy was one of the biggest factors influencing climate change during this period, but have since been superseded by greenhouse gases due to the industrial revolution. So a four degree change is natural, but we somehow know that a much smaller one is not? We know that prior to the Little Ice Age things were warmer than they are now. The Vikings settled Greenland and grapes were grown in England. (Note: The Little Ice Age is now thought to have covered the entire earth not just the northern hemisphere. Volcanic activity may have also contributed. Much of the recent cacophony about unnatural disaster centers around computer models and simulations done by global warning alarmists. These predict an increase in temperatures of several degrees in the next hundred years, changes they claim would be catastrophic, caused by human activity. (Some don't think higher temperatures would be so bad). Without even going into the problems with bias in computer models, we can't even build a model that will duplicate past known data. Why then should we have any faith in their predictive abilities?

Military News from Iraq

February 22, 2005: For the last three days, a brigade of coalition troops (U.S. Marines and Iraqis) carried out Operation River Blitz west of Baghdad. Based on information collected last November in Fallujah, and since, roadblocks were set up throughout Anbar province, and raids carried out in Ramadi (the capital of the province) and other largely Sunni Arab cities along the Euphrates river. Anbar province has been the scene of most Sunni Arab violence in the last year, but that began to change after Fallujah was cleared out last November. Since then, anti-government attacks have been fewer, as have coalition casualties. Arrests of terrorists have increased, and more Sunni Arab groups have defied the terrorists and began negotiating with the government. These Sunni groups, led by tribal and religious leaders, are often heavily armed, with informal militias (formal militias are illegal) containing hundreds, or even thousands, of armed men. The Sunni leaders have avoided ordering their followers to not attack the government or coalition forces, lest they have a little civil war on their hands. But that is now changing, as more Sunni Arabs, fed up with the chaos, and seeming futility of fighting the government and coalition forces, try to switch sides. The more deliberate attacks on oil facilities and utilities (like water and power), have only made life more uncomfortable. The battle of Fallujah last November made it clear that anti-government claims to have "liberated" Fallujah were just more empty propaganda. Following that, the widespread arrests of Sunni Arabs involved in the terrorism, added to the feeling among Sunni Arabs that they were backing a losing cause. Despite deliberate attacks on Shia religious festivities in the last week, the Shia dominated government continues to offer deals to Sunni Arab leaders who were willing to stick their necks out, and order their followers to cool it with the violence. These Sunni Arabs do face some real danger, for the Baath Party and al Qaeda leaders are willing to go after prominent Sunni Arabs for "disloyalty." For Sunni Arabs, the battle for Iraq is far from over.

Your humble blogger on left with siblings at Mom's 90th birthday last November.
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Happy Soldier in Iraq
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Social Security Redux

Bush opened the gate to raising taxes as a part of Social Security "reform". He said we can consider increasing the income level from $90,000 that is subject to FICA taxation. That is not only raising taxes, it is not something that will contribute to solving the problem. We have more money coming into the treasury from FICA taxation now than is going out in the form of payments. If you think giving the politicians even more to spend on things other than social security will cure the long term problem brought on by demographic certainty, this pig in a dress may appeal to you.

Hunter Thompson

I must have a big gap in my 60's and 70's literature knowledge that prevents me from getting as excited as I should be about some druggie who shoots himself with a shotgun a la Hemingway.

This makes sense to me.

Terri Schiavo Spared by 'Endangered' Designation

by Scott Ott

(2005-02-19) -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has, at least temporarily, saved the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, the Florida woman whose former husband, Michael, had planned to disconnect her feeding tube on Tuesday.

The 11th-hour reprieve came in response to a plea from the Schindler family to have Terri classified as a silver rice rat (Oryzomys argentatus), considered an endangered species by the state of Florida and the USFWS.

"It was a longshot," said activist Randall Terry, who has recently come to the aid of the Schindler family in their efforts to save Terri from death by starvation. "But if we can prove that Terri is a silver rice rat, her life is protected by the state and the federal government."

Mr. Terry contacted the USFWS after learning that it is illegal to kill dozens of creatures in Florida, including the leatherback seaturtle, the marsh rabbit, the saltmarsh vole, the shortnose sturgeon, the Choctawhatchee beach mouse and the oval pigtoe (a mollusk).

"If we can apply to get Terri classified as a different endangered species each month, we can give her several more years of life," Mr. Terry said. "I know it sounds dehumanizing, but under our laws a rat has more of a right to life than this woman."

My mind can't handle this!

AS you read this, try to comprehend something that is 300,000 trillion miles away. You can start by realizing that a trillion is 1,000,000,000,000. Once you multiply those two numbers, try to get your mind around the fact that this distance is only one half the distance across our Milky Way Galaxy which in turn is only a small fraction of the universe.

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.

No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.

But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light.

The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses -- no larger than a big city -- create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.

Tsunami Connection? Several readers wondered if the magnetar blast could be related to the December tsunami. Scientists have made no such connection. The blast affected Earth's ionosphere, which is routinely affected to a greater extent by changes in solar activity.

"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

There are no magnetars close enough to worry about, however, Gaensler and two other astronomers told SPACE.com. But the strength of the tempest has them marveling over the dying star's capabilities while also wondering if major species die-offs in the past might have been triggered by stellar explosions.

'Once-in-a-lifetime'

The Sun is a middle-aged star about 8 light-minutes from us. It's tantrums, though cosmically pitiful compared to the magnetar explosion, routinely squish Earth's protective magnetic field and alter our atmosphere, lighting up the night sky with colorful lights called aurora.

Solar storms also alter the shape of Earth's ionosphere, a region of the atmosphere 50 miles (80 kilometers) up where gas is so thin that electrons can be stripped from atoms and molecules -- they are ionized -- and roam free for short periods. Fluctuations in solar radiation cause the ionosphere to expand and contract.

"The gamma rays hit the ionosphere and created more ionization, briefly expanding the ionosphere," said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for NASA's gamma-ray watching Swift observatory.

Gehrels said in an email interview that the effect was similar to a solar-induced disruption but that the effect was "much smaller than a big solar flare."

Still, scientists were surprised that a magnetar so far away could alter the ionosphere.

"That it can reach out and tap us on the shoulder like this, reminds us that we really are linked to the cosmos," said Phil Wilkinson of IPS Australia, that country's space weather service.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Rob Fender of Southampton University in the UK. "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

Some researchers have speculated that one or more known mass extinctions hundreds of millions of years ago might have been the result of a similar blast altering Earth's atmosphere. There is no firm data to support the idea, however. But astronomers say the Sun might have been closer to other stars in the past.

A similar blast within 10 light-years of Earth "would destroy the ozone layer," according to a CfA statement, "causing abrupt climate change and mass extinctions due to increased radiation."

The all-clear has been sounded, however.

"None of the known sample [of magnetars] are closer than about 4,000-5,000 light years from us," Gaensler said. "This is a very safe distance."

Cause a mystery

Researchers don't know exactly why the burst was so incredible. The star, named SGR 1806-20, spins once on its axis every 7.5 seconds, and it is surrounded by a magnetic field more powerful than any other object in the universe.

"We may be seeing a massive release of magnetic energy during a 'starquake' on the surface of the object," said Maura McLaughlin of the University of Manchester in the UK.

Another possibility is that the magnetic field more or less snapped in a process scientists call magnetic reconnection.

Gamma rays are the highest form of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes X-rays, visible light and radio waves too.

The eruption was also recorded by the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array of radio telescopes, along with other European satellites and telescopes in Australia.

Explosive details

A neutron star is the remnant of a star that was once several times more massive than the Sun. When their nuclear fuel is depleted, they explode as a supernova. The remaining dense core is slightly more massive than the Sun but has a diameter typically no more than 12 miles (20 kilometers).

Millions of neutron stars fill the Milky Way galaxy. A dozen or so are ultra-magnetic neutron stars -- magnetars. The magnetic field around one is about 1,000 trillion gauss, strong enough to strip information from a credit card at a distance halfway to the Moon, scientists say.

Of the known magnetars, four are called soft gamma repeaters, or SGRs, because they flare up randomly and release gamma rays. The flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashed about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power.

"The next biggest flare ever seen from any soft gamma repeater was peanuts compared to this incredible Dec. 27 event," said Gaensler of the CfA.

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Valuable History Lesson

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the battle at Iwo Jima. 110,000 Americans and 880 ships began their assault on this small volcanic island where the Japanese had put in miles of tunnels and bunkers with 361 artillary pieces, 65 heavy mortars, 33 large naval guns, and 21,000 defenders ready to die. The American defenders were willing to take 40% casualties in the first assault and even before the assault, the Navy's bombardment of Iwo Jima cost more ships and men than we lost on D-Day. At 9 a.m. on the 19th, the marines loaded down with 70 to 100 pounds of equipment hit the beach and immediately sank into the thick volcanic ash. Some 556 feet above this beach stood Mount Suribachi where the Japanese could direct their fire along the entire beach. Some 1800 marines were killed or wounded in the first 18 hours of the invasion. It took 4 days of bloody fighting to capture Mount Suribachi and that was only the beginning of the battle for Iwo Jima which drug on for another month and cost nearly 26,000 men. Forty men were in the platoon which raised the flag on Suribachi and only 4 would survive unhurt. Their company would suffer 75% casualties. Twenty out of 21 Japanese would die where they stood. One in three Marines would be either killed or wounded and 27 Marines and naval medical corpsmen would receive Medals of Honor.

The lesson for today according to Arthur Herman, the author of the article in today's Wall Street Journal recounting these events, is that free societies can afford only one response to totalitarians who confront democratic societies. Who outlasts whom? At Iwo Jima, it was the Americans who prevailed and in Viet Nam and Cambodia, it was the totalitarians with consequences which we are facing today in Iraq. Today, some in this country think the totalitarians may still win in Iraq and a few even hope so. This will not be the case if we remember those who served at Iwo Jima.

A metaphysical question

If the hockey league fell in the forest and nobody heard, would anyone care?

Comcast Gift

My cable TV provider recently decided to move MSNBC from the basic, but very expensive, package to the digital package which requires a set-top box I don't have. A consequence of this is that now there is absolutely no chance that I can inadvertently click onto the new program this loser network created for Ron Reagan.

Military E- mail from Iraq

One of lots of E-mails home from here.

Started going out in the cycle of patrols the last few days. The only one really suffering are the gunners because of the cold. As people have said many times on this site ... if you've got cold weather gear, bring it. Maybe only until the end of March, but you'll need it.

When I origianaly prepared to come here, we joked about making an award for FOBbit of the Month. Now it seems like there are plenty of people in my unit that will be in contention! It's especailly disheartening since we are in an infantry unit and we run so many patrols a day, that there are those people who never will have to leave the FOB. Ever.

Then I look at it the other way. When we all get home, nobodys loved one is going to care if somebody did 365 patrols or none. Loved ones are only going to care that there's came home from Iraq.

It is a lot different than when we were here the first time. Despite the news that you may get in the States, the “insurgents” are loosing. Big time. It is unfortunate that we have to go around wearing “Samarri suits” to keep us alive if we do get attacked. But the fact of the matter is, thier will is broken. They know that every act of aggression against us will be met with crushing force.

Federal Budget Cutting

The Wall Street Journal has an article today which should be avoided by all with blood pressure problems. It describes several programs which Bush has proposed eliminating and then expalins why the cuts will never happen. Senator Stevens of Alaska who chairs the Appropriations Committee protects the $8.5 million budgeted for something called the "Exchanges With Historic Whaling and Trading Partners" program. Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio insists that the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati should get $2.2 million in federal dollars even though they have raised over $100 million from private sources such as Oprah and Muhammed Ali. There are others just as egregious which are supported by various politicians of both parties, but they also point to one program with a $1 million budget which was killed. It forgave student loans for child care providers and its main sponsor was Senator Paul Wellstone who is no longer with us. It is sad to think that plane crashes are the only route to boondoggle programs being discontinued.

Random Thoughts

Television yesterday featured two completely worthless activities. First was the NFL Pro Bowl which is held in Hawaii and none of the players want to participate in the actual game. You simply can't watch it and if you are not careful when clicking to other channels, you might wind up with the Grammy Awards on your screen and the sights and sounds forthcoming from that are potentially lethal.

Internet bloggers have claimed two more victims who lost their jobs (in addition to Dan Rather) because of information diseminated by this medium. Eason Jordan, the head of CNN news, made a stupid claim that our military was targeting reporters for death in Iraq and this came on top of his earlier claim that CNN had suppressed news from Iraq so as not to make Saddam look bad and possibly taking it out on CNN reporters. Good riddance. Then liberal bloggers outted a man who obtained press credentials under a pseudonym, asked easy questions of Bush at press conferences, and may even be gay. The regulars at the White House were just aghast that their environs could be invaded in this manner. Now the big question of the day is just who is a journalist? The problem as I see it is we may broaden the definition in such a way as to include bloggers as part of the journalist community. If that happens, I may have to reconsider this activity.

Howard Dean's first excursion as head of the democrats will be to Mississippi. That should be interesting.

I wonder if the most perfect love song for this Valentine's Day is Charlie Robison's rendition of "You aren't the best but you're the best that I can do?"

Good Law

I just read in our local paper that a Republican lawmaker here in Georgia has proposed a law that would allow a parent can go down to the driver's license office and for $15 suspend the license of their child under the age of 18 for a period up to 90 days. I think that is just great and I would go one step further and suspend the license, for the same 90 days, of any student who is sufficiently disruptive to warrant expulsion from school.

Freedom of Speech

The lefties are coming out strong and loud in support of Ward Churchill's right to say anything he wants in regard to how the victims of 9/11 deserved what they got and the U.S. deserves more of these attacks for its past and current actions. Many conservatives are reluctantly agreeing that his speech is and should be protected, but many are also asking if the same liberals would be so quick to come to his defense if he was shouting the notion that blacks deserved slavery and should be sent back to Africa, etc., etc. Somehow, I don't think so. The President of Harvard couldn't even get by with suggesting that women MAY be less adapt in the sciences than men. The resulting firestorm has Dr. Summers backing down on all fronts and he may lose his job before Ward Churchill. These are similar sides to the same issue.