The Scientific Activist: Reporting from the Crossroads of Science and Politics

The Scientific Activist: Reporting from the Crossroads of Science and Politics

Good grief. If we can't determine that a candidate for an appointment to a government position has false claims on his resume's how can we find terrorists?

Hansen is really on to something here, and instead of the story being about a 24-year-old lying, it should be about this: how did this guy, who already had dubious qualifications, make it into NASA with such an obvious lie on his resume? To work for a federal agency, including NASA, extensive background checks are usually required. If I was able to uncover the truth about Deutsch in one phone call, then he must have been placed in his current position without any investigation, due to his loyal service on the Bush presidential campaign.

Do I feel good about having this administration doing wiretaps on people while telling me to "trust them?" I don't think so. I guess by posting this I will have Men in Black knocking on my door. Well, if they do we will just serve them some fresh banana bread and ice cream.

Remember this?

I know you all remember these famous Terry Tate commercials. Ouch!

Latest News

The grandparent role has been a major focus for us. We also have some work going on revamping our landscaping and irrigation system in our front yard. We have eliminated most of the grass and are creating a tropical look and feel with masses of ferns and other tropical plants. I have, for a long time, realized that I can no longer do major jobs such as digging, moving large plants, etc. due to my arthritis. One of my neighbors runs a landscaping service. I talked to several of my neighbors who use his company and they had high praise for service So we let our old "Mow and Go" service go and hired him. In effect, we now have a gardner and the yard is beginning to show that. Once the major revamping is done, he will go back into maintenance mode and that frees me up for doing special things such as fertilizing, trimming, and planting of detail plants. That is the stuff I enjoy and can do and the new service will take care of the mowing, major edging, and weeding.

I have been working very hard on administering two of my websites, http://fs-freeflow.Com and http://fs-odg.Com . These sites as you can See are techically based flight simulator sites and I am the technical administrator by self assignment. I have been developing automatic database backups for the two sites as none existed until now. They are driven entirely by databases and those databases contain all of the site info.

One of the sites had a major catastrophe in which they lost the entire site and I had to rebuild the database as well as implement the backup routines. I don't enjoy this work as much as other aspects of the effort but it had to be done.

At the same time I have been revamping our personal web site as you know to convert it to a database driven site. The main reason for that is that in the long run it will be easier to manage. In the process of converting it over I am trying to make it more coherent while transferring a lot of the info from the old site to the new. I am using a software package that once fully implemented makes changing the content a breeze.

I have restored about 75 feet of our 175 feet of fencing that got blown down in the hurricane. I feel that I am getting old after wrestling With 8 foot fence sections and fence posts. I was able to use much of the old fencing on the side yard but the back was totally destroyed and must be built back from scratch. Home Depot cannot keep prebuilt fence sections on the shelves because they are in such demand due to the hurricanes.

Google Cube a Rumor or Reality?

This is one of the more interesting rumors floating around about new products. This one is regarding a supposed new product that Google is developiing, the Google Cube. This sounds very much like the Webtv and MSNTV devices that are out there now. Those set top boxes were the result of an interesting concept many years ago to produce an easy to use and inexpensive device that allowed browsing the internet, sending and receiving email, and displaying digital photos and playing music files. The development of this device has been slow. The potential of the concept is great. It sounds as though Google may pursue something that could inject new life into this small niche market. Read the article below from CNN for a very interesting discussion of the rumored, "Google Cube."

Tracking the elusive Google 'cube' | News.blog | CNET News.com

2005 was a full and active year for us. Bob continued flying his radio controlled helicopter through the spring. Bob also became very involved in a flight simulator scenery development project. You can see the results at http://www.fs-freeflow.com. We had the usual hurricanes to run from. One of them, Dennis delayed the big trip we had planned to drive out west and up into Canada. Dennis was a close call for us causing power outages and the usual wind and rain but it passed far enough south of us that we did not evacuate. That trip did take place and if your browse the Blog archives you can find a lot to read about our adventure. We had to cut it short because our new granddaughter, Amanda, was due to arrive and she did on September 29. We went through the eye of Hurricane Wilma, a category 2 storm. There were major power outages and structural damage throughout South Florida. We are thankful that all we lost was our fence. The house came through ok although inspection revealed that we almost lost our screened pool enclosure. Contrary to our storm plan we stayed put and moved the Mothership up close to the house. After the storm we evacuated to Dunedin, Florida for a couple of weeks until power was restored in our home town.

Today, the first one of 2006, we are thankful for good friends and family and all of the adventures that we have been on. We wish all of our readers a Happy New Year!

Tropical Storm Zeta

I nearly fell out of my chair. I just got an email alert regaring a new tropical storm. A new storm at the end of December? What is going on? Anyway, just in case you think I am pulling your leg here is the bulletin:

ZCZC MIATCPAT5 ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM
BULLETIN
TROPICAL STORM ZETA SPECIAL ADVISORY NUMBER 1
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
1 PM AST FRI DEC 30 2005

...LATE SEASON TROPICAL STORM...THE 27TH OF THE YEAR...FORMS IN THE
EASTERN ATLANTIC...

AT 1 PM AST...1700Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM ZETA WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 25.0 NORTH... LONGITUDE 36.9 WEST OR ABOUT 1070
MILES...1720 KM... SOUTHWEST OF THE AZORES.

ZETA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 8 MPH ...13 KM/HR. A TURN
TO THE WEST-NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 50 MPH... 85 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. ALTHOUGH SOME STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE LATER TODAY...A
WEAKENING TREND IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN TOMORROW.

TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 85 MILES
...140 KM FROM THE CENTER.

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 1003 MB...29.62 INCHES.

REPEATING THE 1 PM AST POSITION...25.0 N... 36.9 W. MOVEMENT
TOWARD...NORTHWEST NEAR 8 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED
WINDS... 50 MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1003 MB.

THE NEXT ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL
HURRICANE CENTER AT 5 PM AST.

FORECASTER FRANKLIN

Smart stuff - the world's smartest stuff.

Smart stuff - the world's smartest stuff.

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