New Post??

There was a story today in the news about how over a hundred celebrities had their Apple iCloud accounts hacked.  The hackers proceeded to post nude photos of these stars, found in the cloud, online.  Experts determined that the hackers simply logged in by claiming that they had lost their passwords and answering the celebrities' security questions.  Amazing. 

No - this isn't Bill Hamilton.  I'm his son Derek Hamilton.

My father influenced my thinking on so many things. When I went off to college, I remember calling home and occasionally getting him on the phone in a talkative mood.  We had long conversations on everything from current events, math, politics  -- and his favorite topic -- theories of the origins of the universe.  Every topic was considered - the more arcane the better.

Not long after he died in January of 2012 I went back to his blog bricolagia and read through his entries.  I'm embarrassed to admit, I didn't read his blogs consistently when he was alive.  But after he had passed, it was comforting to read his words again.  I can still hear his voice in his writings.

For a long time after that, I though that it would be fun to try to find login credentials for his BlogSpot account (now Blogger) - and continue the writing.  But I wasn't sure of how to go about this task.  Alas, I was inspired by today's news and decided to try.  Luckily for me, the task was easy.  Dad almost always used the same password - or a variant of it. 

By no means do I consider myself in the same vane that I regard my father.  He was deeply intelligent.  But as I see things in the news that I know he would comment on - I'm going to continue to add to his blog.

In the age of the militant Islamic terrorist group ISIS, Russian aggression into Ukraine, beheadings of American journalists and nude celebrity photo bombs - I know that dad would have something to say. 

Thoughts on Conservative strategy for the 2010 Midterm Elections and beyond

To date the news from the primaries has been mostly good. Conservatives are winning big. That's good, but if we are going to turn this country around we need to be thinking about our message for November. Obviously we want to halt the slide toward socialism, but independents, who may be crucial in this election, will want to know where we are planning to go. For example, we have said we want to repeal and replace Obama Care. Independents legitimately ask, "Replace it with what?" To avoid sounding negative, Conservatives should simply say they want to replace Obama Care with an approach to health care that gives the patient choice and control and won't break his bank account. Some good examples of health care initiatives can be found at the Center for Health Transformation (http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/health_solutions_lab)

Illegal immigration is another hot button issue that needs to be handled carefully. The first issue that needs to be addressed is border enforcement. Illegals who commit crimes (in addition to violating our borders) need to be criminally prosecuted. But what of the 12 million or so illegal immigrants who work, pay taxes and don't cause trouble? Why not offer those who can document that they have been in the US for say 10 years a path to citizenship? And once the borders are secured a guest worker program should be started to enable those who want to work in agriculture, construction or any other field where they are needed to come to the US for a definite period of time. Since they would be required to register with ICE the opportunity for unscrupulous employers to cheat them on salary and benefits would be limited, and terrorists trying to cross th border could be caught.

One thing Conservatives should unequivocally oppose is further deficit spending. No more "stimulus" bills. Conservatives should also advocate making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Thinking beyond the November election, Conservatives need to develop a strategy to avoid mischief by the lame duck Congress between the election recess and January. Filibusters can be mounted in the Senate. In the House no provision for a filibuster exists. However, Congressmen can begin introducing bills that will be part of their legislative agenda for 2011. Each bill will occupy some House time and thereby delay the Democrat majority bills. Discharge petitions can be used to unlock bills tied up in committee.

Keynesian Economics has not been practiced

Frequently you hear that the government is practicing Keynesian economics because it is running a deficit budget.

Named for John Maynard Keynes, a British economist of the mid 20th century, Keynesian economics was popular in the Depression era, when it indeed led to budget deficits.

But that was not the whole of Keynesian economics. Keynes was preoccupied with stabilizing the economy -- keeping the value of money from going up or down excessively. His approach to doing this was to make government spending counter cyclical. When the economy was good the government should run a surplus, and when it was bad the government should run a deficit. In this way, at least in theory, the government would build up a "rainy day" fund during good times to tide it over during bad times.

Unfortunately, our leaders in Washington have almost never practiced Keynesian economics. They have run deficit budgets year in and year out, leading to today's 13 Trillion accumulated debt (and if the off-budget debt due to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements is included it's much larger)

Should the government practice true Keynesian economics? Well, it would be better than the current situation, but the potential for abuse is great. Economic projections are notoriously inaccurate, giving politicians excuses to pour out benefits in the hope that it will lead to more votes for their reelection. Better to have expenditures in line with the budget Congress adopts.

Are the oceans cooling?

A recent discussion among myself and two friends brought up the contention made by a couple of Climatological web sites that the oceans have been cooling recently. The web sites in question are:
here and here.
Another source of ocean temperature data is here.

Plotting the data from the third source (the NOAA data for 180W - 100W, which covers most of the tropical Pacific Ocean) doesn't give much insight into cooling. A linear regression gives a very slight cooling, but that's probably just an artifact of where the regression starts and ends:



One fact that jumps right out is that the ocean temperature fluctuates quite a bit, and this can translate into greater atmospheric temperature fluctuations near the surface because of the higher specific heat of water.

The decline in ocean temperature my friend and the two web sites were referring to is the decline from late 2009 to the present (latest data May 2010):



This represents nearly a 3 degree (C) decline, but it's not all that much compared to earlier fluctuations (see the first figure). A Google Scholar search turned up a number of papers on ocean temperature, mostly showing warming, but all with considerable up and down fluctuations.

Still, it's of interest to assess the causes of ocean temperature fluctuations. It doesn't seem the oceans should be affected as much by the greenhouse effect as the atmosphere, since greenhouse gases trap rising heat. It would seem the ocean temperature would be more directly affected by the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and by cloud cover, which in turn is driven (among other things) by cosmic rays. Sunspots affect the TSI, and sunspots are currently in decline, as shown in the following figure:
When sunspots are low, less energy is released by the sun, contributing to less warming due to TSI. Furthermore, the magnetic field of the sun is at its lowest, letting more cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere. This in turn causes more air to be ionized, which provides nuclei for clouds to condense around, increasing cloud cover and increasing the reflectance of solar radiation back into space. This of course cools the atmosphere. Also, some recent research by Qing-Bin Lu of the University of Waterloo, links the decline of CFC gases (chlorofluorocarbons once used as refrigerants and according to Professor Lu, "well known greenhouse gases") under the influence of cosmic rays to the recent cooling of the atmosphere.

My conclusions:

1. The study of earths temperature cannot be complete with the main emphasis on CO2
2. Although the oceans temperature fluctuates considerably, the higher heat capacity of water argues strongly for including the influence of the oceans on earth's temperature
3. Factors like sunspots and cosmic rays must be taken into account.

References

1. Cosmic-ray-driven electron-induced reactions
   of halogenated molecules adsorbed on ice surfaces:
   Implications for atmospheric ozone depletion
   and global climate change
   Physics Reports, Volume 487, Issue 5,
   February 2010, Pages 141-167,
   ISSN 0370-1573, DOI: 10.1016/j.physrep.2009.12.002.
   (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TVP-4XVC4M5-
   1/2/643db802d858c3d6e2ec9b78627fea24)

2. Galactic Cosmic Rays - Clouds Effect and Bifurcation
   Model of the Earth Global Climate. Part 1. Theory
   Authors: Vitaliy D. Rusov, Alexandr V. Glushkov,
   Vladimir N. Vaschenko, Oksana T. Mykhalus,
   Yuriy A. Bondartchuk, Vladimir P. Smolyar,
   Elena P. Linnik,
   Strachimir Cht. Mavrodiev, Boyko I. Vachev
   The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial
   Physics Vol. 72 (2010) p. 398-408
   arXiv:0803.2765v3 [physics.ao-ph]

3. Galactic Cosmic Rays - Clouds Effect and Bifurcation
   Model of the Earth Global Climate. Part 2.
   Comparison of Theory with Experiment
   Authors: Vitaliy D. Rusov, Vladimir N. Vaschenko,
   Elena P. Linnika, Oksana T. Myhalus,
   Yuriy A. Bondartchuk,
   Vladimir P. Smolyar, Sergey I. Kosenko,
   Strachimir Cht. Mavrodiev,
   Boyko I. Vachev
   Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial
   Physics Vol. 72 (2010) p. 380-497
   arXiv:0803.2766v3 [physics.ao-ph]

4. Testing the proposed link between cosmic rays
   and cloud cover
   Authors: T. Sloan, A.W. Wolfendale
   Lancs-HEP/080309
   arXiv:0803.2298v1 [physics.ao-ph]
   
   

5. 
   

Update -- Myeloma

See my post from Friday May 28.
Linda and I drove to Houston June 2 to see Dr. Orlowski, our oncologist at M. D. Anderson. The results of two cycles of chemo look excellent. Not all results were in yet, but the immunoglobulin IgG went from 6200 March 15 to 2330 June 2 -- a 62% reduction. Dr. Orlowski estimates I will need 4 to 6 cycles before the stem cell transplant.

Meanwhile I started the third cycle of chemo yesterday. Today I feel good, which is a contrast from previous cycles. I have been a little anemic, from prior to being diagnosed, and the nurse practitioner suggested I eat liver, dark, leafy greens, etc. She thought that would be better than the constipation that might result from taking iron pills. Since I've had enough constipation to last me the rest of my life, we stopped at Luby's on the way home and I had liver. Maybe that was a factor.

To anyone out there who is praying for me: Thanks. I know many people are praying for me.

A Tale of Two Registry Cleanup Utilities

My wife has a PC, I use a Macintosh. Several years ago I got a registry cleanup program from Iolo that did a good job of straightening out registry issues. But then Iolo decided to go into the firewall, antivirus, antieverything business and bundled their registry cleanup utility with everything else. However, I was using another firewall/antivirus program and had no desire to switch, After all, I had a license valid for a year, the program worked fine, and I had three total installations, including one under Parallels on the Macintosh and one under VMWare on the PC (the license allows this). Iolo included the ability to detect third party antivirus/firewall programs, but their program failed to detect the antivirus/firewall program I was using. So I got bogus warnings, "No firewall detected. Antivirus not detected."

Meantime my wife's computer ran more and more slowly. Finally I got an email from Smith Micro announcing a registry cleaner called Checkit. I ordered it and installed it last night. I ran it and my wife is happy. The computer runs much faster now. It's a shame Iolo had to take a simple program and tie it together with other layers of code to do much more than I wanted done, but from initial experience, Checkit will do the job.

Some fun questons

Following is a list of short questions I've wondered about for years.

1. Why is Tucson (Arizona) pronounced Tooson? Shouldn't it be Tuckson? Don't tell me it was originally Spanish, because in Spanish it would be Tuckson (or maybe Tookson). Maybe it comes from an Indian word?
2. Why is Boston cream pie pie instead of cake? Pie has a crust, cake doesn't.
3. Similarly, why is cheesecake cake and not pie, since it has a crust?
4. Why do they call movie previews trailers?

Any takers?