The Internet is full, it seems

I said to myself, "Self, you don't ever tweet any more."

I said to myself, "Self, you really should tweet more often."

I said to Twitter, "Twitter, I'm ready to tweet!"

Twitter said to me, "Answer hazy, try again later."

Man, this Intarwebz thingie would totally rock if someone could figure out how to handle monster loads of traffic.

We're not in Kansas Massachusetts anymore, Toto

Boy, there are a lot of anti-Obama billboards here. Plus Gander Mountain. And no snowplows to be seen.

12 hours from Baltimore, via the Shenandoah valley. I'd never gone that way, and all I can say is that it sure is prettier than the spaghetti junction that is the Washington D.C. beltway in Springfield.

#1 Son drove a lot. Getting all growed up, that one is.

From the Department of Bloomin' Obvious

Man, it gets hot down south in the summer. And stays hot. Older Brother and I took his dog out for a walk at 9:30 last night, and the heat and humidity just about wilted me.

Of course, it'll be nice in March, instead of shoveling another six inches of the powdery stuff. But dang.

Restaurant Review: Red, Hot, & Blue, Laurel MD

I'm getting my Bob on with a Barbecue review, but #1 Son suggested it, and it was our favorite BBQ joint when we lived in Maryland. Since we're rolling through on a road trip, we hit it for dinner. The first thing you'll notice is that this violates the First Law of good BBQ: it's not served to you in a building that's already been condemned. Red Hot & Blue is in a nice brick building on Main street in Laurel.


Inside is quite nice, with an enormous amount of Blues paraphernalia taking up pretty much each square inch of wall space. Some of the posters offer up some tasty nostalgia:


But de gustibus, right? I had the pulled pork sandwich, with cole slaw and hush puppies. The sandwich was decent enough, although a bit dry. The squeeze bottle of BBQ sauce was not your run of the mill sauce, and had enough of a spicy bite to stand out from the crowd. The hush puppies seemed entirely uniform, so they were probably not hand made. Oniony and deep fried got the thumbs up from #1 Son, though.

We had a good waitress, attentive but not hovering over us, keeping our iced tea/lemonade drinks topped off. The staff really bustles there, and the food comes quickly.


All in all, a decent dinner, although a bit pricy when compared to BBQ joints outside the Metro area. Using Bob's scale, I'd rate it 3 out of 5:

average; reasonably good food, moderate effort by staff/management. We'll eat there again if we happen to be in the area and craving BBQ, but have no reason to make a special trip for it.

Interestingly, this was our favorite BBQ joint back in the mid-90's. In our wanderings since then, we've run across better BBQ. But if you're in Laurel MD and have the hankering for some Q, this will fill the bill nicely.

Avenged Sevenfold - Dear God

What's the "Real Country Music"? You could focus on the instruments - fiddles, slide guitars, mandolins - but that's looking at the surface, not the depths. You could look at the props - cowboy hats, pickup trucks, belt buckles - but any poser can wear those. A lot do.

Not everyone will agree with me, but a lot of the depth of the "Real Country Music" comes from the sentiment - the fears, aspirations, hopes - of regular working people trying to make their way in a tough world. The road warrior missing their family (think Lonestar and I'm Already There). Worrying about your family, and praying for their safety (think Jason Aldean and "Amarillo Sky" - Let my crops and children grow). About the human condition, and people's struggle to make their peace with it.

#1 Son said he had a band for Saturday Redneck that fit this bill. A screamo/deathmetal band. Avenged Sevenfold.

I see you rolling your eyes, but give it a listen. It's actually entirely lacking in screaming, and isn't what I'd call metal. But it hits all the right feelings that a good country song does.



Dear God (Songwriters: Baker, James, Haner, Elwin, Sanders, Charles, Owen, Sullivan)

A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Purpose hard to find
While I recall all the words you spoke to me
Can't help but wish that I was there
Back where I'd love to be, oh yeah

Dear God the only thing I ask of you
Is to hold her when I'm not around
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
But I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again, oh no
Once again

There's nothing here for me on this barren road
There's no one here while the city sleeps
And all the shops are closed
Can't help but think of the times I've had with you
Pictures and some memories will have to help me through, oh yeah

Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again

Some search, never finding a way
Before long, they waste away
I found you, something told me to stay
I gave in, to selfish ways
And how I miss someone to hold
When hope begins to fade...

A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Hope is hard to find

Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need the person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again

Like I said, not all of you will agree with me. I sometimes look at the world with expansive definitions. But if you're looking for a song about the human condition that would drop seamlessly into a performance - tricked out with steel guitars, boots, and all those trappings - this here's the one.

You may ask yourself: did I really vote for him?

The proper response to arrogance is mockery. Now go away, or we shall mock you a second time.

(via)

UPDATE23 July 2010 23:09: Oh, foo. I wrote this last night, feeling all smug at my ahead-of-the-curve-ness, and scheduled it for today. Little did I know that I'd be scooped by Insty by 12 hours while I was on the road.

From the Department of Righteous Shootings

Reader Don emails to point out this heart warming story (giving me the chance to get my JayG on):

A wanted man is in critical condition in the hospital after he was shot during an alleged armed robbery.

...

The vehicle pulling the trailer started having mechanical trouble, so they pulled off onto the exit ramp at McLeod Road in Colleton County near Walterboro [South Carolina].

...

At that time, a silver-colored sedan pulled up occupied by three individuals and a male subject, later identified as David Jayquon Jakes, 19, exited the back seat and pointed a large caliber handgun at one of the women.

...

Her son-in-law was armed and drew his weapon and ordered them to leave several times. As Jakes turned and pointed his large caliber weapon, the son-in-law fired several rounds striking Jakes who then fell to the ground and dropped his weapon.

[Pauses to let the cheers die down ...]

The hero son-in-law turns out to be an Army specialist recently returned from Afghanistan. With a concealed carry permit and a pistol.

[Pauses again to let patriotic cheers die down ...]

No charges are pending against him at this time and none are anticipated to be filed against him, said officials.

Well, duh. Give him a medal.

Click through to the story, which has a video interview of the County Sheriff advising people to arm themselves for their defense.

[Pauses once again to let cheers die down ...]

Clearly, this didn't happen in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

[Pauses to let boos, catcalls, and shouts of disapprobation die down. I'm guessing we'll be waiting for a bit ...]

How dare you listen in on my unencrypted WiFi!

Seems some State Attorneys General are upset that Google's StreetView™ cars are recording some data from unencrypted WiFi stations. Um, dude, that's only possible because the owner didn't turn encryption on. A Geek With Guns 'splains it so even a State AG can understand:

If you have an unsecured wireless access point and somebody is grabbing your data it’s your fault. Wireless data is broadcast out for all to hear. Treat it like yelling, if you and your significant other get into a yelling argument you can’t blame your neighbors for hearing what you two were screaming at each other. Wireless data is the same way. If your wireless signal enters my property then I have every right to eavesdrop on it.

They're polluting the public radio spectrum, at least where the roadway is. Turn on the crypto, or quit yer bitchin'. And you think it's bad when the Googlemobile drives by, just wait until someone hacks your Access Point.

No Perv-Scanner, please. We'll drive.

#1 Son and I are off to Atlanta. We're driving instead of flying - all 1000 miles - not just to save money but also because it avoids the non-lethal dose of X-Rays that bombard you when you go through the airport PervScan™ Full Body Scanners.

We were told that the scanners couldn't store pictures. Of course, they could, and so then we were told that they wouldn't store your picture. Ooooh kaaaay.

New UK rules have been issued concerning the scanners, and people are not reassured:

Also I think the code is misleading when it tells passengers that they have a choice – they can either “be scanned” or “not fly”. I don’t believe this to be the relevant choice. For instance, suppose an individual tries to get on a plane and is selected for random scanning. Suppose further that the individual refuses to be scanned for whatever reason. Do you think that the refusal to be scanned would be the end of it?

To provide an extreme example: do you really think that someone who might be a terrorist who has opted-out of a scan because he might be discovered will merely be escorted away from the secure passenger side of the airport and let go?

Nope! I think any refusal to be scanned would result in close scrutiny of that individual and anybody remotely “suspicious” would be searched. And if the security people are then going to search “suspects” and find nothing, why can’t the searched individual then go on to fly?

I think the whole proposition in the code is based on a fallacy. The option is not between “be scanned” or “don’t fly” - the only real option is between “be scanned” or “be searched”.

About right. So we'll drive, thankee very much. Even if it is a long way to Richmond ...

Emergency Microsoft security patch

Criminals are exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows .lnk file linking function. This has enough buzz in the Financial community that Microsoft (unusually) created an emergency patch.

It's not known whether this is exploitable via a browser-based attack; it is known that malware is circulating on USB drives.

If you run Windows, my recommendation is to get the patch. You may notice some differences after applying it:

Microsoft security response communications lead Christopher Budd warned that the workaround disables icon icons from being displayed as usual and recommended admins carefully test the fix before deploying it widely. Specifically, the change will cause folder and file icons on the task bar and start menu to be stripped of their graphical representations, making them appear as generic, white boxes. The Fix It will also require machines to be rebooted.

I don't run Windows, but if I did, I'd get this. It's an interesting attack, and while I can't prove it, my gut tells me you could do something interesting with this via Web/Javascript.

In other security news, Mozilla has a security update for Firefox, to fix a nasty problem where malware could infiltrate via a picture (PNG file). Firefox will autoupdate and ask you if it can restart.

And Apple has an update for iTunes, with a vulnerability allowing malware to run. In iTunes, you may need to ask it to check for updates.

The menu is classified

A man boards his flight. He's hungry, and asks the flight attendant if they were serving meals in first class (where he was sitting). Hilarity ensues:

I get to the airport, boarded my plane and I’m sitting in first class. The flight attendant was right in front of me and was curious if they were going to serve meals onboard. So I asked her, “Are you serving any meals during our flight?”

She looked at me kinda funny and said, “I can’t answer that for security reasons.”

A little puzzled, I wondered how it affected security but I let it pass as she went into the cockpit. About three minutes later, two armed Austin police officers boarded the plane, looked at me and said, “Sugarman, follow us.”

And by "hilarity" I mean "he was forceably ejected from the flight. Now that's the Friendly Skies™.

Maybe that's why they call them "Gut Grenades". Just don't ask the flight attendant. The punchline? They rebooked him. He asks:

If I was too dangerous to fly on my original flight why did they book me on the next United flight.

Sir, this kind of attitude will not be tolerated. It may be very well for you to slap a "Question Authority" bumper sticker on your Prius; once in the Airport, you need to mentally switch to "Respect Mah Our Authoritah."

Irony

It looks like #1 Son and I are going to head out. This wasn't planned, and certainly reinforces that not only is the world strange, it's stranger than we can imagine.

I know that some of y'all use the iPhone blogging app. If anyone has any experiences with it - good or bad - I'd appreciate the info.

Your IQ is stupid

There are some smart people here on Al Gore's Intarwebz. Not "Smart", but smart. People like Aretae and Foseti, and while I haven't met them, I'm told that they leave SmartPrints when they walk across your carpet.

But sometimes, they get caught up in Smart, not smart. Like with a discussion about IQ over at Aretae's place. Now I doubt very much that I run in the same league with Aretae and Foseti, smarts-wise (my older brother almost certainly does, so I'm pretty familiar with smart). And you will learn a ton from a daily dose of Aretae, at least if you're like me. He's a bit Aquinas-like - hard going in the important places - but you'll literally add 5 IQ points by reading him for a year.

But. When I read his post about IQ - not stupid, even a little bit - my first thought was this is not right. I even left a comment struggling towards this, although it was pretty weak beer. I needed something stronger.

I needed Country Music, which knows smart when it sees it.

I see you rolling your eyes at me, and just stop it right now. Here's the problem I have with the standard IQ test: it measures a form of intelligence. That form is certainly intelligent.

But that form is not exclusively intelligent. And Country Music can prove it.

Here's the fundamental problem with IQ: you may know the rational thing to do by using traditional high-IQ analysis techniques. That doesn't mean that you know the right thing to do. Your Volgi nailed this in a post that I've quoted 3 or 4 times:

Plus, the kids who come in are often times high on themselves and their SAT scores and have increasingly not been exposed to alternative moral systems, like traditional religion, in which they'd hear, "Yeah, you're smart, but so what? Are you good?" Or have pointed out to them that not a few brilliant men have gone on to do profound evil.

Rousseau was high IQ. Kerrie Pickler is probably not. She didn't know that a piccolo was in the woodwind family, even when the fifth graders did:



Dumb, huh? Must be low IQ, eh? And yet she wrote this song:



She wrote this. Maybe not your cup of tea - it has her thick southern drawl after all. But what's dumb? This may not be high IQ, but that says something's missing from IQ, not from Miss Pickler.

Or how about SheDaisy? Three sisters from Utah who write their own Country songs are not likely to make the Cambridge A-List IQ invitation list. But that doesn't mean that they're not smart. I've posted on them before, but sadly they don't seem to have a video for this astonishing song:

Out Of My Mind (songwriters: Kristyn Osborn, John Shanks)

I live on caffeine, Camus
Eagles and Airplanes
I decorate my lies with butterflies
That glimmer in the shimmering rain
They say you can't lose 'em all
But I'll give it a shot

I want more than enough
Yeah, I want more
I want more than enough
When love is all I got

The truth is so unkind
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm out of my mind
And don't know what you'll find
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm outta my mind

I'm afraid of fallin' upward
I'm afraid of my own age
I'm a paragon with an apron on
And I'm beautiful on an empty page

There layin' in the dresser drawer
Is a rusted ravished heart
And the piercing regrets
Yeah, they pierce me
All the piercing regrets
And false starts

The truth is so unkind
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm out of my mind
And don't know what you'll find
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm out of my mind

I can be as strong as Morphine
I can lay my head down where I kneel
Sometimes I need a broken bone
To remind me how to feel

The truth is so unkind
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm out of my mind
And don't know what you'll find
But I'm good when I'm out of sight
Best when I'm out of my mind

This may not be your cup of tea, but it's another one of those Aquinas-like tough nuts to crack. It may not be high IQ, but that's my point.

IQ identifies intelligence. Some intelligence, not all intelligence. The problem is that a lot of what's not identified is perhaps even more important. Blog friend and shooting buddy Lissa - a smart person, to be sure - gets this:

I’m usually the one to fill awkward silences and invite quiet group members to speak. A lot of folks assume that, therefore, I’m a very intelligent person.

Verbal acuity and actual knowledge/intelligence are NOT the same thing.

Verbal acuity will score high on IQ tests. Is Lissa high IQ? I have no idea (although if I had to guess, I'd put my money down on "yes"). Is she a smart? Damn right. And a good shot - someone I'd want at my back in a TEOTWAWKI situation.

So what does this all mean, other than there are many ways to be human? Spend some time - Aquinas-wise - to understand the difference between "smart" and "Smart", and between "good" and "Good". The Examined Life has many facets, as does the Unexamined Life. What IQ measures, and what it misses.

UPDATE 21 July 2010 17:47: Foseti leaves a comment that is well worth your while. I don't agree with all of it, and will put up a post on this, but it's information-rich and to the point.

UPDATE2 21 July 2010 17:55: Oops, I forgot to point out that Midwest Chick not only left a comment that is very smart indeed, but she elaborated on the subject in a post at her place.

UPDATE3 21 July 2010 18:00: Aretae, as is his wont, brings the smart.

One small step for man ...

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

- Grandma Moses

Nobody I know does memory - and sometimes hope - like ASM826 from Random Acts of Patriotism. I do believe that in some ways, he's my identical twin, separated at birth.

Only better looking, and smarter. And for sure a better writer about today's anniversary of the Moon Landing:

I was twelve. On vacation with my parents, I got to watch the lunar landing and the first walk on the moon on a big RCA console television. The future never seemed brighter than it did that evening.

I was going to to the moon one day, and maybe to Mars. The United States of America was the greatest country on earth and we were capable of amazing scientific and technological accomplishments. Certainly by the time I was thirty, there would be a permanent base on the moon, and regular transports...

Go read it all. Right. Now. Man, I wish I could write like him. A picture is worth a thousand words. I give you a couple thousand words, he give you a mental painting. Oh, foo.

But at least I give you some Redneck country music. This is fun, and it's about old memories (and it has Tim McGraw in a tank top, so you ladies especially want to watch*).



That's he gave you what needed to be said to NASA today. J'accuse.

But I sure wish I could write like that. I'm told that envy is a sin. Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

* Yes, I'm trolling for hits. Why did you have to ask?

Ayuh

Some of y'all know that I grew up in Maine. I'm not sure if this is why my reaction to the sight of a rifle is "Oooh, cool" rather than the typical Massachusetts "Eeek!".

There's a post over at Watts Up With That with a Maine tall tale, rather than the usual Global Warming news. Go read it for a good laugh - and look at the second comment, which will make you laugh even more. And this comment is the Best Comment of All Time. Srlsy. Except maybe for this one. And this one isn't better, but it's obligatory. Well played, sir.

And in the New England tradition, let me offer my favorite "that reminds me of this one" story:

A lady "from away"* went to the Maine coast for a summer vacation. Finding herself in Bass Harbor**, she went down to the docks to take a photo. Well, she was in luck, because a lobsterman had just returned from his day's toils, and was unloading his lobster traps. She asked him if she could take is picture, and he struck a pose for her.


The lady thanked him, and seeing more lobster boats heading back to the dock, remarked "You certainly have a lot of characters here, don't you!"

The lobsterman looked her up and down for a moment and then replied, "Ayuh. But they all leave around labor day."***

* An out-of-state tourist

** A very pretty fishing village on Mount Desert Island; the west side of the island is where the true connoisseur goes.

*** Pronounced "LAY-buh da-yee"

A different take on online banking

Long-time readers will recall that I've pronounced a fatwa against banking from your home computer, because of all the malware targeting financial password capture. Basically, if the malware can get your password, the Bad Guy can clean out your bank account. This is Bad Juju, and since most of the malware targets Windows computers (because most people have Windows computers), I've been quite vocal in saying just don't do it.

Except I did point out - approvingly - how some banks are giving their customers Linux CDs to use when they want to bank online. These are usually "Live CDs", meaning you can boot from them: they have an entire self-contained operating system that will get you Internet with Firefox, straight to your bank, nuthin' but 'Net.

It's cool, and since you're (temporarily) not running Windows, you don't have the malware worry. It got pretty close to getting the coveted Borepatch Seal of Security Approval™.

Well long time commenter and now blogger Ian Argent posts about how this only sounds like a good idea. In reality, he says, it's a Very Bad Idea Indeed:

This is an elegant technical solution to the problem represented by an OS that runs from rewriteable media. ...

However, it's a terrible idea outside of the merely technical. Let's start with why online banking exists.

He then goes on to look at just what it is that's driving online banking, both from the point of view of the bank and the point of view of the bank's customers. He makes some really good points:

I have on my desk a multitasking POWERHOUSE undreamed of, say, 20 years ago. Skipping the rest of the hyperbole, it is vanishingly unlikely that I have to close down my other applications to open up an online banking application. Nor would I want to - I balance my checkbook not by pen and paper, but by database. By doing this I don't have to worry about arithmetic errors, puzzling out handwriting, etc. And to avoid data entry issues, I don't hand-type information into the database, I retrieve it via the internet. Likewise, I schedule outgoing payments in my financial management program. There's a positive benefit to doing so, I don't have to give a third-party permission to debit my account, and the timing of doing so is ENTIRELY under my control, across multiple financial institutions and payees.

Now Ian is different from me here - I don't do any of this, because I'm paranoid (I was, in fact, trained to be paranoid by the Finest Minds in the Free World). But he's right - if you dig this sort of thing, it's simply impossible to do it using the LiveCD approach. Oh, foo.

But Ian's not done. Suppose, he says, that you could tweak the liveCD technology to let you do all this. How about then? Do you have a working, secure system? In a word, no:

But, let's say you've convinced me; your bootable OS CD also has a financial management program that can write to the local storage device, so I can take advantage of the power of my computer while still keeping an unbreachable wall of security around the OS. Let's say you've convinced the bank that the CD will reduce the costs associated with online bank fraud; the OS booted from the CD is immune to trojans and other malware.

It is still not secure.

And he goes on to explain why. If you like the idea of online banking, Ian's post is a must-read.

As for me, I find myself able to resist the siren song of my Bank's web site. Everyone has to do a risk/reward calculation, and for me I find the risk high and the reward low. Actually, for me I don't find the risk high, because I can do everything that Ian describes from Linux, with a much lower risk (and I know how to make my Linux OS even extra super crazy secure, and do). I just don't find the reward compelling.

But I'm an old stick-in-the-mud*. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law. Make up your own mind. But read Ian's post first.

* But you knew that already.

Wikipedia vs. Wikipedia

Wikipedia tells us that on this day in 1927, Felix Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack. What was his claim to fame? It depends on which Wikipedia you ask.

This one tells us that he was a murdering commie bastard:

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Polish: Feliks Dzierżyński [ˈfɛliks dʑerˈʐɨɲski], Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский; 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877–July 20, 1926) was a Communist revolutionary, famous as the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, later known by many names during the history of the Soviet Union. The agency became notorious for large-scale human rights abuses, including torture and mass summary executions, carried out especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.^[1][2]

OK then.

This page tells us something different:

1926 – Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinskiy, Soviet law enforcement official (b. 1877)

A regular Wyatt Earp, I guess.

In other biographical news from Wikipedia, Josef Mengele was an anthropologist, Benedict Arnold was a pharmacist, and Tomás de Torquemada was a Dominican Monk.

Weather vs. Climate

This is Climate:
This is Weather:

According to Dellicarpini, National Weather Service officials will survey affected areas [of Massachusetts] to determine if any tornados landed.

“The reports are still being collaborated,” Strauss said.

Still, communities throughout Central Massachusetts dealt with severe weather after the tornado warning expired at 8:30 p.m.

I'd blame Global Warming, but it looks like that's busted. Still, tornados in Massachusetts? That's like Blizzards in Georgia.

Oh, wait ...

Power grid compromised

I try to not fall into the ZOMG the Sky is falling category of Internet Security, but I've written frequently about the risk to the power grid. Basically, I believe pretty strongly that the following are likely:

1. The Grid is a high-value target to foreign Intelligence Agencies. It's been said - correctly, IMHO - that while there are friendly foreign governments, there are no friendly foreign Intelligence Agencies.

2. The computer systems that run the Grid (called SCADA systems) are based on old technology, and are difficult to patch. This means that it's quite likely that the computers running the grid are riddled with security holes.

3. While these systems are not supposed to be connected to the Internet, the incentive to do so is very, very high. For example, it's a lot easier to reset something by remotely connecting to it from home than getting up, getting dressed, and driving 20 miles in a storm at 3:00 AM.

4. Nobody has accurate maps of precisely what their network looks like. Network aren't so much designed as grow, almost organically. The Power Company networks are no exception.

Taken together, this paints the picture of high-value, low-risk for an adversary. I'm not the only one who thinks this, either. Stewart Baker writes at Volokh of a newly discovered attack targeting SCADA via USB devices, and makes a lot of sense:

As far as I can tell, there’s no reason to compromise a SCADA system other than to take it down. The SCADA system doesn’t contain credit card numbers or other financial data, and I doubt that compromising it is a cost-effective way to steal power for free. The guy who found the SCADA calls, Frank Boldewin, says, “As this Siemens SCADA system is used by many industrial enterprises worldwide, we must assume that the attackers’ intention was industrial espionage or even espionage in the government area”. In fact, though, there are no obvious secrets to steal from a SCADA system – other than the secret of how to bring the system down. So the logical goal of the malware is not so much espionage as sabotage.

Yup. The secrets are on Siemens' corporate network, not on the SCADA systems. If you wanted to reverse-engineer one, you can buy one. The only plausible reason to hack into one is because you want to be able to turn off the USA's power.

My advice is to get a generator with at least a week's worth of gas, and to consider getting off the grid. Bad things happen when the power goes out for an extended period, and if it were a large scale outage, it could take months to restore things.

BTW, this attack is more than plausible: not only do we have confirmed malware samples, but we've seen this sort of thing used against the classified DoD networks in the past.

Dean Drives, Hockey Sticks, and Credibility

June 1960 saw an incredible cover picture on Astounding Science Fiction magazine: a US Navy submarine was shown orbiting Mars. The cover article described a new propulsion system that could be retrofitted to existing technology to make an instant interplanetary spaceship.

Remember, this was eleven months before NASA sent Alan Shepard in a sub-orbital test of the new Mercury-Redstone booster. And yet Astounding editor John W. Campbell showed a nuclear powered sub making a trip to another planet.

The reason was the Dean Drive, a revolutionary proposal from Normal L. Dean. The problem with rocketry was well known even in 1960: to send a rocket to another planet, you had to throw away most of the rocket. More specifically, you have to burn 99% of its mass as fuel, expelling the exhaust out the back in order to drive the rest of the rocket forward.

Newton's Third Law was the problem. To get an action (moving the rocket towards the neighboring planet), you needed an equal and opposite reaction (burn fuel and expel it out the back). The Saturn V monster that took us to the moon had a lift-off weight of 6.7 million pounds, only 100,000 pounds (1.5%) of which was lunar payload. Dean said he'd developed a better way, a reactionless drive.

Rather than using the forward push from rocket exhaust, Dean said he had a machine that would convert rotary energy to linear energy. In fact, he had one that he showed to Campbell, which looked like it generated 0.05g (actually one-eighteenth of the force of gravity at the surface of the Earth). This doesn't sound like much, but is actually huge - this is far more thrust than anything else available today (even ion drives), and running it continuously would allow the spaceship to build up incredible velocities.

Jerry Pournelle was on a team that tried to license the design from Dean, unsuccessfully:

Dean may or may not have been sincere, but he was certainly hard to deal with. He was so afraid -- or purported to be afraid -- that his gadget would be stolen that he wanted lots of money up front before he'd show it to us. Why he showed it to John [Campbell] and Harry [Stine] I don't know; it was from their report that I concluded it was worth going back East and trying to buy the thing, and I convinced the General that we ought to put up the money...

It may be that Dean thought that with at least two potential buyers (there's some evidence of a third but I don't know who it was) he could play tight and up the price. Perhaps he could have -- I'd have recommended far more than half a million if it worked -- but he wasn't going to get any takers until he showed the darn thing, and he wouldn't DO that. Oh. He also wanted a promise of a Nobel Prize. In my case I was perfectly willing to promise it. Of course I had no idea how I'd go about getting it for him, but I suspected that if he really could overcome Newton's third he'd have no trouble on that account.

Anyway, nothing came of it all. If it worked I never saw it work, and neither did the 3M team. The original device as described by Campbell and Stine was never found after Dean died, and the thing described in the patent doesn't work and isn't, according to Stine, what Dean showed as a working device.

Of course, it didn't work. Campbell believed in it right up to his death in 1972, but as nice as a reactionless drive would be (and it would be very nice indeed), there's no There there: we'll have to get to Mars without it. Secrets can get you attention, but not riches, and certainly not a Nobel. Unprecedented claims require unprecedented proof.

We are, in a sense, seeing the same thing going on today in the Climate Change debate. On one side, we have the IPCC, the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (of "ClimateGate" fame), and Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph. The climate is warming dangerously, we are told, and this is sudden and unprecedented.

On the other side of the debate, we have a bunch of people who are basically in the same position that Pournelle was when he was dealing with Norman Dean. They're asking for proof. What they're hearing is pretty much what they heard from Dean: No dice, just give us our money (fabulously expensive Carbon tax/trading schemes). And our Nobel.

Oooooh Kaaaay.

Unprecedented claims require unprecedented proof, and we're simply not seeing it. Mann famously would not release his computer code and data, but was ultimately shown by Steve McIntyre to have fudged his statistics (specifically the R² number that showed whether their results were relevant or not). The story of this, and the incredible contortions that the "Hockey Team" went through to get subsequent, equally flawed papers into the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) is described at length at Bishop Hill in Caspar and the Jesus Paper. Once again, data was withheld when requested:

To have key arguments in the SI [published article's Supplemental information] was most unusual and it quickly became apparent why it had been done: the SI was nowhere to be seen. Even the peer reviewers appear not to have had access, and once again, Amman refused McIntyre's request for the data and code. His reply to this request was startling (and remember that Amman is a public servant):

Under such circumstances, why would I even bother answering your questions, isn’t that just lost time?

As with Mann's original hockey stick, the statistics for this supporting paper were also entirely bollixed up. Statistically, the results were meaningless. That's some impressive "unprecedented proof", right there.

The problem that is emerging for the people claiming catastrophic warming is that the scientific work they are relying on seems very sloppy indeed. When the CRU was asked for their raw data so that their results could be verified, they first refused, then refused a Freedom of Information Act request, and then - when people still wouldn't stop asking - claimed that they'd lost the data. The IPCC AR4 report, supposedly based solely on peer-reviewed science, was found to be one-third based on Press Releases from environmental advocacy groups. The scientist heading up the Working Group 2 portion of upcoming IPCC AR5 is still falsely claiming that the science shows that hurricanes are getting worse due to Climate Change. It's not - or at least, there are no peer-reviewed articles that show this:

I see that four climate scientists, including the incoming head of IPCC WGII, Chris Field, have written up an op-ed for Politico calling for political action on climate change. That they are calling for political action is not problematic, but the following statement in the op-ed is a problem:

Climate change caused by humans is already affecting our lives and livelihoods — with extreme storms, unusual floods and droughts, intense heat waves, rising seas and many changes in biological systems — as climate scientists have projected.

I have sent Chris Field an email as follows:
I read your op-ed in Politico with interest. In it you state:

"Climate change caused by humans is already affecting our lives and livelihoods — with extreme storms, unusual floods and droughts, intense heat waves, rising seas and many changes in biological systems — as climate scientists have projected."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39664.html#ixzz0tbNjwMYY

I am unaware of research that shows either detection or attribution of human-caused changes in extreme storms or floods, much less detection or attribution of such changes "affecting lives and livelihoods". Can you point me to the scientific basis for such claims?

This is Roger Pielke, Jr., no Climate Change Denier like me, but an honest scientist and one of the world's experts on hurricane damage. He didn't hear back from Dr. Field.

Sloppy. Add to this the ClimateGate email exchanges where the principals (Mann, Jones, et al) discuss deleting email messages, refusing to release data, and how to prevent publication of opposing scientific opinions by taking over the peer-review process, and you get the flavor of something very different from the typical view of scientists in white lab coats. A comment to Pielke's post is a must-read for this flavor:

The drugmaker Glaxo, we now learn, has been lying for years about its blockbuster diabetes drug. Turns out this multi-billion dollar drug doesn't perform as well as an older drug (in a test paid for by Glaxo), and it also gives people heart attacks. Glaxo withheld and hid this information for years.

I very much hate to say this, but Glaxo's behavior reminds me not just of Michael Mann and Phil Jones -- all their erasure of emails, hiding of data, marginalizing and blackballing articles not to their liking -- but of much of the climate change establishment.

He has specifics. RTWT.

Dean didn't die rich, and neither Mann nor Jones have gotten rich either (although Al Gore certainly has). Dean didn't get a Nobel, and neither Mann nor Jones have either (although Al Gore did). But Mann and Jones have done something that Dean did.

They've put their credibility in a very shaky position. The fact that there are multiple inquiries into their conduct is all you need to know to realize that even the "consensus view" establishment knows this. The fact that none of the inquiries have issued an indictment is cold comfort to Mann and Jones. They'll have to get to Mars on their own, figuratively speaking. What they're burning to generate political thrust is their credibility. As with Interplanetary travel, it'll all be gone long before they arrive at their destination.