In America we have a tendency to think of weather modification as a lot of hocus pocus. But the Chinese rely on it to feed themselves, and will be manning the artillery to prevent rain from falling on Olympic Stadium this summer.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20463/

See for yourself what he thinks about the Rev. Wright story. I think a lot more of the guy after hearing this. Don’t shoot the Jerry Falwell amigos anymore you raving liberals.

As for the Clinton bashing going on for misunderrepresentifying her memory of events… come on people.

I have no doubt that she’s just merged the memory of her state visit to a military basic training camp with a state visit when she was nervous. People do it all the time and it doesn’t mean they’re deficient.

Can’t the Obama campaign come up with something better to harp on?

For example, look at this gem of a quote by good old Clinton staffer Carville regarding Obama’s earning Richardson’s endorsement, “Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.”

Bam! Oh my foot!

With all these Republicans caucusing for Hillary, who knows where this all is leading. Oh, wait I do. I for one shall welcome our new overlord with a painted smile.

As one of the privileged white guys in this country, I really think there’s a blast of hot air coming out of the media that should be put to good use.

But first let’s dispel some stupidity floating around. Since so many seem to believe the National Enquirer and friends, the folks saying Obama used to be Muslim and converted to Christianity are wrong. He was raised in a secular but spiritual household, just not one tied to any particular church. He was left to choose his own religious path. Hopefully that will make all you scared white guys relax until we get to the angry black guy on the radio problem in a minute.

So now there’s a new smear of guilt by association that’s being levied against Obama because of the fiery and angry sermon of his former pastor in response to the injustices against his people. Frankly I don’t see Wright’s speech as hate, I see it as anger, and anger is not politically correct and it’s not rational. It’s justifiable anger in many ways. But thing that really bothers the white guy about Wright is the schadenfreude about 9-11. He’s saying “you had it coming.” He was packing the pews with this stuff.

But let’s be real here. Anyone who knows anything about our foreign policy in the middle east would probably agree. We did have something coming, we’ve supported injustice on a grand scale in that part of the world to keep the black gold coming in and the overly literalistic religious constituencies at home contributing to campaigns with almost complete disregard for the well being of those who have to live in that disaster zone.

But it is in horrible taste to rub it in our faces. I mean, our people have died for this flag and what it represents. It is a noble dream we fight for. But we don’t get mad at the politicians who run the dream into the ground. We get mad at the messengers who tell us about it. We hold vigils for dead presidents with more wasted blood on their hands than any third world dictator. And we shoot down anyone who denigrates them. Caesar truly can do no wrong in this modern era of blind worship of the cult of presidential personality. Wright may be a Brutus, but he’s only talking, not planning.

Obama by all accounts is a member of the Christian community for the same reason most thinking people are, to belong to something greater than themselves. He’s already shown he is a man who thinks for himself, not a morality-free-zone like G.W. Bush who lets Billy Graham do his moral guiding for him. The idea that a religious leader does anything other than blow hot air to get the crowd fired up and yes, entertained, is silly. Whenever your church is bigger than a dozen, like it or not it’s all about show business baby. And controversy shall fill the pews.

But, with all apologies to those subscribing to the current spin, nothing I heard from this preacher man was racist against whites. You have to stretch it pretty hard to come to that conclusion.

Is Obama an angry black man? No. He has no doubt suffered the stings of the occasional idiot but he’s above it. Don’t believe me? Well, why don’t you look at what he gets fired up about and you figure out where his priorities lie.

Because the white guys and gals are scared stiff of the angry black man, we’re in full smear season folks, so enjoy the show. By the time it’s over, if Obama makes it through we can be pretty sure McCain will not have much mud left to sling.

In fact, I’m really not interested in showing up to the polls if it’s down to Clinton and McCain. I can’t stand the Clinton smear tactics, though I could live with some of her policies, but I like McCain though I couldn’t live with his policies. No-win city one more time.

This code, when embedded in your HTML page, will automatically redirect visitors to the secure version of your page provided that SSL is set up on your server. The code requires no customization. It does not pass along request variables so you should use this on your “secure form” page.

Code:

Of course, ensuring your form data is encrypted on its way to storage or a recipient is another story. I’ll post how to do that if anyone asks.

In my area most of the groundwater comes from aquifers recharged by rivers. That means that during the summer months runoff from farm fields gets into the system on a regular basis, and I have found that ammonia levels are only detectable in the summer and fall.

Considering that ammonia treatment is more costly than simple chlorine treatments for aquariums if you are in an area like mine you may find it worthwhile to test your water once the harvesting season is over.

If you’re like me and change over 5 gallons weekly, this can add up. Spend the difference on some salt to keep your swimmers happy, even the fresh water fish can benefit greatly from a little salt.

Actually this one should go in my wife’s blog but I thought of it first.

Handling an aged fiberglass antenna today I got several splinters of fiberglass in my thumb and forefingers. Since they’re very hard to see I couldn’t tweeze them out. So I washed my hands carefully, rubbing in the opposite direction from which the fibers went in to avoid shoving them in further, and once they were clean and dry I used some tape to remove them.

If you got the fibers by moving your hand across a fiberglass pole, consider the angle that the fibers would have gone into your skin, apply the tape to your dry clean hands and pull it off in the direction from which they went in. It took many applications but I got most of it out.

Even if you’re not sure which way they went in you can still loosen them significantly by lifting the tape off perpendicular to your skin surface.

If that fails I believe that soaking the skin until it’s prune-like and then drying and extracting may be more effective. Scotch tape or duct tape probably will do the best job.

As a concerned citizen of this sacred earth, I have had a calling to speak out about an important new arms race that is scaling up between the US and Iran.

We all fear the power of the nuclear weapon to decimate entire cities in a single strike. And when the decisions to use such weapons are in the hands of those who are under the unknown motivations of their uncertain interpretation of holy books we can never be sure what will happen.

And further, imagine the apocalypse when they hear a vision from their God telling them that now is the time to strike the infidel! And the whole world would wither in the resulting nuclear exchange.

We therefore must absolutely positively shut off George W. Bush’s access to these weapons. We all know he “talks with God” face to face on a regular basis. Stop the arms race and take the weapons out of the hands of the religious fundamentalists at home and abroad. Or the world shall surely perish.

If you would like to eliminate all but one digital signal on your TS2k while operating in sideband mode you will find that it can be done in a round-about way. I discovered this on a TS-2000 forum but I can’t recall where so I’m putting it down here before I forget.

1. Switch the receive to CW mode. This enables the use of the very narrow filters down to 50hz.
2. Tune to your signal into the 300-800hz range on the waterfall. Look for signals about 800hz above where you usually would in USB mode.
3. Turn on XIT (transmit incremental tuning) and adjust it to -800 which is the difference between the CW tuning and the USB tuning
4. Press A=B and turn on split
5. Hold down the TF-SET button (this reverses the split) and hit USB while it’s flipped. Release the TF-SET button and your receive should still say CW while your transmit will be in USB.

Your rig will now transmit on the appropriate USB frequency (use TF-SET to ensure signals come in on the same spot on the waterfall) and receive through the filters only available in CW mode. You can use the filters by adjusting the WIDTH and SHIFT knobs, their functions will quickly be obvious if you’re watching your waterfall.

Of course if you change the radio’s frequency at any point you will have to do steps 4-5 again to ensure your transmit frequency matches the receive.

It would be nice to just have this as a “mode” on the rig but we can’t have everything can we.

UPDATE

There’s a better way to do it. I discovered menu number 37 “SSB-TO-CW CHANGE” which will change the frequency shift automatically for you. This also permits you to store the correct split/mode in memory (memory will not save the XIT status). Set menu 37 to ‘ON’ and then use it as follows:

1) Set the VFO to B (A/B) in USB mode
2) Find the frequency you want and tune in a signal to the lower half of the waterfall.
3) Set A=B
4) Hold down TF-SET and hit CW to set the receive mode to CW. You will see the frequency change and the signals will match the USB on the waterfall again.
5) Set the VFO to A (A/B) and you’re ready to go.

At this point you can store the split in memory to make it easy to come back to these settings without further tweaking.

To change overall frequency, do steps 1-5 again.

We can learn a lot from the Clintons about slick tactics.

For example, the headline today: “Clinton wins big, CNN projects”

Further: In the Texas primary, she won with 51 pecent of the vote compared to 48 percent for Obama.

And finally In Ohio, Clinton received 54 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent [Obama]

So the overall take for the Clintons is somewhere between 2 and 10%.

I think the lesson here is to attack the media for providing skewed coverage to your opponent before an expected win. Get them all ashamed of talking about your opponent so that when you do scrape up a 2-10% advantage they say something really really enthusiastic about you.

Like “Key Wins Secure Clinton Comeback”

Secure? She’s barely moved ahead in the race. But now she’s guilt tripped the media into blowing her marginal lead completely out of proportion.

Hat’s off, that was one smooth move.

Of course, the attack campaign seems to have worked well also in these states. Good lesson for future campaigners in Texas and OhiO.

So what’s round on the sides and high in the middle? A grateful dead fan on a bike of course. A fun joke heard on “As it happens” last night on my drive home.