The Old Dog Barks

This radio show from X – 1 is written by Ernest Kinoy. It took a bit of digging to locate this information and when I did the name was not familiar. Kinoy wrote for radio and later movies and television. Yet the story, seemed familiar, like something I had read a long time ago, but still the ending eluded me. Kinoy wrote a few original scripts and adapted others for X – 1, that seems to be the extent of his Science Fictional legacy.

The 1976 Kinoy-scripted television movie Victory at Entebbe, made soon after the hostage-rescue operation at Entebbe Airport was nominated for four Emmys, including a nomination for Kinoy and along with William Blinn, won an Emmy in 1977 for their script for the second episode of the miniseries Roots.

The Old Dog Network brings you Shanghaied.

Last week I posted questions 16 – 30 from the Telegraph. Here are questions 31 – 45.

31 Diamonds are a form of which chemical element?
32 Which paper size measures 297x420mm?
33 What piece of computer equipment was invented by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute in 1963?
34 What is the highest digit that can appear in an Octal number system?
35 Alopecia is a condition causing the loss of what from the body?
36 What colour are most thistle heads?
37 Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange and Charm are the six “flavours” of what elementary particle?
38 What is the device that blends air and fuel for an internal combustion engine called?
39 Which part of a horse’s anatomy is the equivalent of a human ankle?
40 Magnetite, hematite, limonite and siderite are ores of which metal?
41 What name is given to the condition created by too much bile in the bloodstream creating a yellowing of the skin?
42 What acid accumulates in the muscles once the anaerobic threshold is passed when doing exercise?
43 What do 1,000 gigabytes make?
44 Which major spiral galaxy is the closest to the Milky Way and might collide with it in about three billion years?
45 What is the usual colour of copper sulphate?

This time I missed 32, 33, 35, 36, and 39, the same number of misses as last week.

The answers to last weeks questions are: 16) Millibars 17) Sodium 18 ) Epsom salts 19) Warbler 20) Sir Ernest Rutherford 21) Graphite 22) A Screw Propellor 23) The whale shark 24) Semicircles 25) Robert Boyle 26) The femur (or thighbone) 27) Liquid Crystal Display 28 ) Snakes 29) A Fibonacci Series 30) Geyser

Senator John Kerry is once more being attacked by members of the “Radical Right” for nautical maneuvers performed while in his nations service. Won’t they ever learn? Just get over it!!!

After all with a net worth estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars he is only the 5th richest member of congress, not poor mind you and he is not looking for your pity, but small potatoes in the larger scheme of things. And it was not a scheme to dock his newly purchased yacht in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts in order to save $500,000 in taxes, merely an easily correctable oversight. Senator Kerry spends so much of his time looking after the public’s affairs he has little left to handle his own.

This “Swift Boat” thing didn’t work last time and is worse than pathetic now. Why just Tuesday The Massachusetts Department of Revenue said it had not launched an investigation into the matter. If they are so unconcerned and so willing to give Kerry a pass on this shouldn’t the nutters on the “Right”? But then that’s why we call them Nutters.

Why it seems logical to me that no matter what Senator Kerry may or may not of intended, the state of Massachusetts, as shown in the recent U.S. vs Arizona case, has no rights whatsoever to enact taxing policies on the High Seas whether they duplicate or are at variance with established Federal law.

Doesn’t the Constitution give authority for law at sea to the Federal Government? Aren’t you “Right Wing Nutters” supposed to be in favor of the Constitution? Give it a break and crawl back into your holes. You lose again!

Day 555:

The Wall Street Journal reveals “Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) has said the president told him in a closed-door meeting that he would not move to secure the border with Mexico unless and until Congress reached a breakthrough on comprehensive immigration reform. That’s another indication Mr. Obama is willing to continue to play politics with hot-button issues.

Add in the lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law and it’s clear the Obama administration is willing to run the risk of dividing the American people along racial and ethnic lines to mobilize its supporters—particularly Hispanic voters, whose backing it needs in the fall midterm elections and beyond.

As the Washington Post reported last week, two top White House strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, have indicated that “the White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012.”

To the post below: NRO’s Mark Kirkorian reports:

Nice Town You Got There, Shame If Anything Happened to It

The other local immigration law that was set to go into effect tomorrow is in the town of Fremont, Nebraska. The ordinance was approved by voters last month and would have prohibited the hiring of, or renting to, illegal aliens.

But the town council there voted last night to suspend the measure because of the prohibitive costs of fighting the ACLU and MALDEF in court:

Fremont appears to be leaning away from a court fight for cost reasons – officials have estimated that implementing the ordinance, including legal fees, would average $1 million per year.

Legal experts say that sets a bad precedent.

“City Councils should not suspend ordinances just because they might be expensive,” says Jessica Levinson, adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School. “The voters have spoken, and passed this ordinance. Regardless of the merits (or constitutionality) of this particular ordinance, it would set a bad trend if elected bodies start to fail to implement newly passed initiatives,” she says.

Robert Stern, preside of the Center for Governmental studies, agrees. “I have problems with this action by the council since the ordinance was adopted as an initiative measure by the voters,” he says. “The council should have opposed the measure when it was on the ballot,” he says.

So the Liberals or the Lawyers, or both win. Another Win, Win, situation with the rest of us losing. I think the town council is doing a spelunking act by caving too easily. But then again that may have been a part of the plan.

No— Make that America Loses. AZCentral reports:

Key parts of Senate Bill 1070 that will not go into effect Thursday:

• The portion of the law that requires an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there’s reasonable suspicion they’re in the country illegally.

• The portion that creates a crime of failure to apply for or carry “alien-registration papers.”

• The portion that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work. (This does not include the section on day laborers.)

• The portion that allows for a warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

The ruling says that law enforcement still must enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent of the law when SB 1070 goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Individuals will still be able to sue an agency if they adopt a policy that restricts such enforcement.

The full PDF ruling goes on to say:

Applying the proper legal standards based upon well-established precedent, the Court finds that the United States is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that the following Sections of S.B. 1070 are preempted by federal law:

Portion of Section 2 of S.B. 1070
A.R.S. § 11-1051(B): requiring that an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States, and requiring verification of the immigration status of any person arrested prior to releasing that person.

Section 3 of S.B. 1070
A.R.S. § 13-1509: creating a crime for the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers.

Portion of Section 5 of S.B. 1070
A.R.S. § 13-2928(C): creating a crime for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work.

Section 6 of S.B. 1070
A.R.S. § 13-3883(A)(5): authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a
public offense that makes the person removable from the United States. The Court also finds that the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm if the Court does not preliminarily enjoin enforcement of these Sections of S.B. 1070 and that the balance of equities tips in the United States’ favor considering the public interest.

And later on:

If enforcement of the portions of S.B. 1070 for which the Court finds a likelihood of preemption is not enjoined, the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm. This is so because the federal government’s ability to enforce its policies and achieve its objectives will be undermined by the state’s enforcement of statutes that interfere with federal law, even if the Court were to conclude that the state statutes have substantially the same goals as federal law.

The court may find the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm. I find in more likely that the court may find whatever it wishes to find, and does. We call this rule of Law.

The Science Fiction Writers of America voted Nightfall by Isaac Asimov the best science fiction short story written prior to the establishment of the Nebula Awards Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!”

John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fictions’s opinion to the contrary was: “I think men would go mad.”

We at the Old Dog Network think it is time to listen to Nightfall.

I hate to cut into the time anyone might waste reading some other site, but for this I make an exception. “The Diamond Invention” If you have the time it is a fascinating read. I am up to chapter 6 and it is all available for free on your local internet.

Take a look for the Tarzan and Jane photo in the introduction if for nothing else.

When reading Heinlein’s “Citizen of the Galaxy” I always wondered where the family name Rudbeck came from. Rudbeck was the name Thorby, adopted son of Baslim the Cripple, assumed towards the end of the novel. I found a reference, and because at the time I was reading Flint and Weber’s 1934 where it also tied in, I found myself compelled to follow it to this:

Olaus Rudbeck (also known as Olof Rudbeck the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, and occasionally with the surname Latinized as Olaus Rudbeckius) (September 13, 1630 Västerås – December 12, 1702) was a Swedish scientist and writer, professor of medicine at Uppsala University and for several periods rector magnificus of the same university. He was the son of Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius, who was personal chaplain to King Gustavus Adolphus, and the father of botanist Olof Rudbeck the Younger.

It was chasing down links of interest from that Wiki entry that led me to the answer to a question on the Science Quiz (part #1) post about the kind of tree one might find in a churchyard, the yew.

I always think from any Wiki entry you can find a post about radar in 5 or fewer links. So far I have not been proven wrong, Doing it right you can probably find a connection to most anything in 5 or fewer links.

At NRO Online Roger Clegg says:

We Need Only a Short National Dialogue on Race.

Charles Ogletree and Johanna Wald had an oped in the Washington Post yesterday, using the events of last week to call for, you guessed it, a national dialogue on race and blaming continued racial inequality on, you guessed it again, “structural racism and implicit bias.” They are wrong on both counts.

It’s never clear to me what’s supposed to be said in this national dialogue. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that racial discrimination is wrong and that Dr. King was right that we should be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. In all the controversy last week, nobody — not the NAACP, not the tea-partyers, not Shirley Sherrod, not the Justice Department, not Senator Webb — questioned that. This is happy news, and it shows that on the basic principle involved there is not much to talk about.

Now, I suppose that one might think that this conversation would, instead, focus on why we still have the various racial disparities that Ogletree and Wald identify. But I don’t think this is what they envision. I say that because by far the main reason for these disparities is that more than 7 out of 10 African Americans today are born out of wedlock. Yet how many words do Ogletree and Wald devote to this problem in their column? Yes, you guessed right once again: Zero.

Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Movie Captioning and Video Description

The Department of Justice’s Consideration of Regulations Requiring Closed Captioning and Video Description for Movies Shown at Movie Theaters

Since the enactment of the ADA twenty years ago, technologies have been developed to include closed captions and video description in movies being shown at movie theaters. Movie studios have responded by producing and distributing movies with captioning and video description. However, these features are not generally made available at movie theaters. In 2008, the Department of Justice’s published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking comment on whether it should issue regulations requiring captioning and video description. The Department received many comments supporting such regulations. Also, recently a federal appellate court endorsed the position of the Department and determined that the ADA requires movie theaters to show movies with closed captioning and video description unless the theaters can show that it would be a fundamental alteration or undue burden to do so. In light of these developments, this advance notice presents for public review and comment a series of questions seeking additional and updated comments and suggestions regarding what a future rule on this issue should address.

Summary: The Department is providing advance notice that it is considering whether to propose revising the title III regulations to require movie theater owners and operators to show movies with closed captions and video description in their theaters at least fifty percent of the time. The purpose of the notice is to discuss how best to frame such a requirement and to determine the costs and benefits of any such requirement.

You might look at this as I had to in order to understand what was meant by “Video and Audio Description”. — “Audio description refers to an additional narration track for blind and visually impaired consumers of visual media (including television and film, dance, opera, and visual art). It consists of a narrator talking through the presentation, describing what is happening on the screen during the natural pauses in the audio, and sometimes during dialogue if deemed necessary.”

When I think of the blind being forced to sit behind posts and in otherwise visually obscured seats at sporting events, or in the first several rows at movie theaters and elsewhere, I am almost convinced such rules as these with the force of law are necessary. Then I wake up.

I was under the impression that the Earth had about another 4 or 5 billion years to go before the Sun went nova ending all life on the planet. In wandering around the Wikipedia I now learn — “About 2.1 billion years from now, the continual increase of the Sun’s radiation will cause the Earth’s oceans to vaporize . . .”

It looks like Robert Frost gets his wish sooner than I feared:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice

A few days ago when this whole Journolist thing hit the net I immediately wondered one thing, Is the journolist.com domain registered yet? Well it wasn’t. I thought I would let the Old One buy it and then we would watch the money roll in as people flocked to see what we were writing about. Then the bad thing happened, a power failure and the site goes down.

Well for 10 dollars a year I guess I just need to take it upon myself. But then I have another idea. — If any of you want the domain give me a call and I will step aside and not register it first. I am big about things like that.

Time again for another Video Mystery Girl. I am almost ashamed to post this it is so simple but there is nothing so simple that a simple enough person might not get wrong. A video should help —so . . .

Who is Mystery Girl # 9?

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To look again at last week’s Mystery Girl click this link. To find out the answer to last week’s question, and a week from today who this weeks Mystery Girl is/was, — Go Here! You can also click the link on the sidebar and work your way up from the bottom and try to guess the names of all the Mystery Girls.

We have all heard that lead in paint, lead in gasoline, lead in toys, lead in anything will make us stupid and unable to function in a high tech society like we live in today. For that very reason lead was banned years ago in most consumer products and in about everything a child might be tempted to put in his mouth, things like pages from books and go-cart bearings. But we can measure amounts of lead today we could never have measured in the past so the rules have got to be made more stringent.

Now some things are really dangerous, like swimming pools. The Consumer Products Safety Commission in a study from 2005 says that childhood deaths in pools and spas average 385 per year with 4200 children between the ages of 2 and 3, making up 47% of the total, being treated at emergency rooms for submersion incidents. In an eleven year period that comes to 46,200 submersion incidents and 4,235 childhood deaths caused by submersion. In that same 11 year period they list 1 death due to lead poisoning. And that one caused by a child sucking on a piece of jewelry, oh, and there were three injuries.

Books, and especially the types of illustrations in children’s books that may contain minuscule amounts of lead in the colored ink, are the very recent embodiment of the lead problem. So of course older books in resale shops must be banned and kept away from grasping hands lest they tempt the tongue of a toddler tyke.

This article in the Amend the CPSIA blog is where some of the above information comes from. Rick Woldenberg the author of the piece says:

“Remember, according to my analysis, compliance costs for the CPSIA are about $10,000 per dollar of avoided lead injury costs. Each death is valued at $6.1 million using EPA estimates. The projected unaddressed pool drownings have a “cost” of $6.1 million x 4,223 = $25.8 Billion over 11 years. At the same rate of compliance costs incurred by the lucky companies attempting to comply with the lead rules, the pool industry would have to spend $10,000 per dollar of injury cost over 11 years, or a mere $257.6 trillion.”

Yep, that’s right hold pools to the same compliance standards as books and the entire GNP would not be enough to fund the effort. But there is more. Here are two interesting factoids from the Foundation for Aquatic Injury Prevention:

# Male children have a drowning rate two to four times that of female children. However, females have a bathtub drowning rate twice the rate of males.

# Black children ages 14 and under have a drowning death rate that is two times greater than white children, in general and six times greater for drownings involving buckets. However, white children ages 1 to 4 have a drowning death rate that is twice that of black children, primarily from residential swimming pool drownings.

I remember the hue and cry about 12 years ago calling for hazardous warning labels on plastic buckets, labels to warn about the risk of drowning, or as the Center for Disease Control calls it “Unintentional Drowning”. Guess the children could not read them. Or maybe the evil bucket makers lobby stopped the bills. I have not bought a bucket in recent years so I will need to research this.

Now back to the title of this post; who were they, and what did they get wrong? They are the lead banners and what they got wrong was banning lead. If they had only waited a few more years then there would be far fewer children with parents stupid enough to let them drown themselves by the thousands in pools, spas, and buckets. And that is the end of this rant, thank you.