No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for June 2nd, 2008

StatCounter/The Planet problems

by @ 13:11. Filed under The Blog.

Sorry about the slow site access the last couple days. The main Houston data center of The Planet, which hosts StatCounter’s servers, suffered a catastrophic explosion in the electrical equipment room late Saturday. The good news is nobody was hurt, and none of The Planet’s customers’ servers was lost. The bad is the explosion and fire destroyed much of the electrical wiring. While the counter here was not on one of the very-affected partitions (i.e. I believe I only lost a few hours’ worth of stats, which is nothing since it was a Saturday night), the performance is still suffering because of the jury-rigged backup plan that StatCounter had to go to.

There’s more from The Planet here, and more from StatCounter here.

Revisions/extensions (1:29 pm 6/2/2008) – There’s also an unusual server load on the BlueHost box this site’s on. I don’t know if it’s this place or somebody else on the box.

R&E part 2 (3:41 pm 6/3/2008) – Thanks to Jen for pointing me to the wrap from StatCounter.

The Morning Scramble – 6/2/2008

by @ 12:13. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

Sorry I’m late with this; I need to recompress, and I do have a week’s worth of stuff to go through…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6BKklEyKRo[/youtube]

  • Emperor Misha asks, “How does one say ‘Great Britain’ in Arabic?” That’s right, sports fans; the police are now in charge of enforcing no-go zones for Christians in the land of Winston Churchill and William the Conquerer. Sad, really.
  • Michelle Malkin found a Texas school district with mandatory lessons in Islam from CAIR. I guess the “AC” in ACLU is Anti-Christian.
  • John notes that they’re all above average clueless moonbats in Lake Wobegon.
  • Matt is showing the pic of the week. No eagles of that variety where I was last week, but a few baldies here and there.
  • Fred Keller displays Exhibits 342,321,432,975-342,321,432,978 on why it’s so hard to say, “I screwed up.”
  • Dad29 is drooling over Angelina Jolie. Beautiful, armed, willing to use deadly force to protect her brood…excuse me while I get some industrial-strength Kleenex.
  • Ed Morrisey is not drooling over Chelsea Clinton, who let the gun-grabbing plans of her mother (Hillary) out of the bag.
  • Jim Lynch dips into the PhotoShop for Barack Hussein Obama’s crowded-under-the-wheels bus.
  • Jim Hoft notes BHO now holds the record for scrubbed preachers. I have a question for Rev. Wright and Fr. Pfleger; if you hate America so much, why not move to Eurabia?
  • Stephen Green (also fresh from a vacation) has some not-at-all-shallow “undeep thoughts” on BHO.
  • Bill Quick describes the media’s obsession with socialism, and more importantly, claims ownership.
  • Brandon Henak has the next target of the Left – “Big Food”. It’s not a coincidence that record profits in that industry comes as “Big Food” transforms itself to “Big Alternative Fuel”.
  • Headless Blogger laughs at the latest ‘Rat plan on gas prices – price controls at $2.50/gallon. Yeah, that worked so well in the 1970s and in Hawaii today </sarcasm>.
  • Moron Pundit has another reason why I’m glad Wisconsin’s Defense of Marriage Amendment was an amendment to the state constitution and not an addition to the statutes. Surely California can’t be serious when they tell the officiating party to pronounce them “Party A” and “Party B”, can they?
  • Marshall Manson found some evidence of life in the British spirit. I wonder if anybody told them their soon-to-be-official religion bans alcohol altogether and not just on the Tube.
  • Jon Ham cheers the return of the retrosexual.
  • Asian Badger notes hedgehogs can be very dangerous. Perhaps Hiliary wants to ban them too.
  • Blacktygrrrr ran into the Dingy One, Harry Reid.
  • Matt Lewis finds no evidence of a spine or other traces of bone in Scott McClellan.
  • Jeff Wagner brought back a memory of my only dealing with the Franklin Police Department (way back in the day) with the news that Milwaukee is now ticketing and towing vehicles that had their registration stickers stolen. Thankfully, the Franklin PD was much more professional, especially when the computer check revealed the registration on vehicle I was driving was current.

Because the news of Bo Diddley’s passing came in while I was putting this together, I have a bonus song for you….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMzCtNCJgyY[/youtube]

No Value In one Year Forecasts But MGW Is A Lock

by @ 5:00. Filed under Global "Warming".

According to this article from the AP there’s no reason to pay any attention to the hurricane forecast for the coming year:

It’s a lot like Groundhog Day – and the results are worth just about as much.

is the way the AP views the forecasts.

In fact, it’s not just the AP who doesn’t think there’s much value in them:

The AP contacted the emergency management agency in every coastal state from Texas to Maine and asked whether these seasonal forecasts play any role in their preparations for the hurricane season. Their response was unanimous: They’re a great way to get people thinking about the upcoming season, but that’s about it.

The good news is that the forecasters have developed a bit of humility  about their work:

“Honestly, I think people get a lot more excited about it than I do in terms of what its usefulness is,” says CSU scientist Phil Klotzbach, who has largely taken over the hurricane work of Gray, now semiretired.

In fact, the forecasters are starting to use disclaimers and warnings that are longer than the ones on a pack of cigarettes:

NC State’s Lian Xie says in a boldface disclaimer in his 2008 forecast: “Results presented herein are for scientific information exchange only … Users are at their own risk for using the forecasts in any decision making.”

(Emphasis mine.)

The article goes on to describe the process used to develop the forecasts:

Hurricane-prediction researchers are like chefs tinkering with a recipe for the same dish, and working from the same list of ingredients: In this case, decades worth of data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

Studying past seasons, scientists look for patterns that might explain why one year was more active than another. Teams have developed computer models that emphasize different conditions – everything from ocean salinity and rainfall amounts over West Africa to sunspot cycles and the influences of the Pacific warm-water current known as El Nino.

(Again, emphasis mine.)

Huh?   What?   The hurricane forecasters are using “decades worth of data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction!   Isn’t that some of the same data that has been used to develop the “world is coming to an end” predictions resulting from global warming?   And yet, hurricane forecasters say that based on their data “users are at their own risk for using the forecasts for any decision making!”

This week the Senate is debating Warner-Liberman. The bill proposes implementing a cap and trade system to reduce our all but certain planet suicide as a result of global warming. Amongst other things, the Heritage Foundation has determined that this bill will:

  • Increase average family utilities by $467/year
  • Take 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs out of the economy by 2030
  • Reduce GDP by $1.7 to $4.8 trillion by 2030

Hurricane forecasters  admit that  the results of forecasting using  NOAA data should be used  with healthy skeptisim  and not as fact.   Yet  both of our Minnesota Senators along with others, are willing to bet the future economic viability of the country on models and data that should be labeled “For Entertainment Purposes Only!”

 

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