Occasional thoughts and deeds of an Engineer
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  • Utopia

    Posted on July 31st, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    Growing up I lived in Utopia or at least I thought I did. All that went away with the beginning of the teen years. Now at advanced age, I would like to get that all back again. However, thinking back over my life from my current vantage point I lead a gilded life full of challenges met and a few not.

    I wish I had treated everyone the same way I treated the best of my friends and even better. Interspersed are regrets and things I am so ashamed of I cannot dwell on them and try to forget them quickly – at least until they resurface.

    This subject is a never ending story and I wish I could remember the name of the song from the 60’s I like so much: I found it thanks to search engines – it is “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers. I think I’ll end this post with a success.

  • Lyrebird Mimicker Songs

    Posted on July 31st, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    The video is bad but the songs are nice.

  • Preeclampsia

    Posted on July 30th, 2019 cwmoore No comments
    * More Evidence Ties Preeclampsia to Long-Term Diastolic Dysfunction

    (Reuters Health) – Women who develop preeclampsia may face a wide variety of heart problems long after they give birth, a research review concludes.

    “This review demonstrates that the cardiac dysfunction associated with previous pre-eclampsia is quantifiable and persistent. Progression of heart failure from asymptomatic to symptomatic stages carries a fivefold increase in mortality,” write the authors.

    “The use of echocardiography could detect cardiac dysfunction in the asymptomatic stage and guide more intensive risk factor modification in these women,” they say.

  • US hacking security alert; small planes

    Posted on July 30th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security issued a security alert Tuesday for small planes, warning that modern flight systems are vulnerable to hacking if someone manages to gain physical access to the aircraft.

    An alert from the DHS critical infrastructure computer emergency response tea m recommends that plane owners ensure they restrict unauthorized physical access to their aircraft until the industry develops safeguards to address the issue, which was discovered by a Boston-based cybersecurity company and reported to the federal government. The link to the full article is below.

    The Article

  • IRL: Tech Worker Revolt

    Posted on July 29th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    There’s a movement building within tech. Workers are demanding higher standards from their companies — and because of their unique skills and talent, they have the leverage to get attention. Walkouts and sit-ins. Picket protests and petitions. Shareholder resolutions, and open letters. These are the new tools of tech workers, increasingly emboldened to speak out. And, as they do that, they expose the underbellies of their companies’ ethics and values, or perceived lack of them.

    In this episode of IRL, host Manoush Zomorodi meets with Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an Uber driver fed up with being treated like an extension of the app; Jack Poulson, who left Google over ethical concerns with a secret search engine being built for China; and Rebecca Sheppard, who works at Amazon and pushes for innovation on climate change from within. EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn explains why this movement is happening now, and why it matters for all of us.

    https://irlpodcast.org/season5/episode4/


    Here is Jack Poulson’s resignation letter to Google

  • Mississippi Dance

    Posted on July 29th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    Over the last 3 millennia the Mighty Mississippi has changed course and this is her dance:

    No photo description available.
  • Impeachment Cannot Heal This Divided Nation

    Posted on July 29th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    By Cynthia Tucker (copied from: https://www.troyrecord.com)

    There are two Americas, and they are at war.

    In one, every word uttered by President Donald J. Trump is the golden gospel, swaddled in larger truths if hostile to simple facts. In the other, Trump is a habitual liar — a con man who has run the Oval Office as a criminal enterprise. To one America, Trump is a leader trying to salvage a nation set on a course of moral decay, attempting to turn it back to a time of purer values.

    To the other America, the president is a flagrant reprobate, a lecherous narcissist with no moral fiber.

    To one America, Trump is a strong defender of traditional Western mores, with their emphasis on Euro-centric values, “Father Knows Best” families and Caucasian cultural standards. To the other America, the president is an unrepentant racist, a bigot who vilifies racial and religious minorities, a demagogue who would turn back the progress of the last 50 years.

    How will those diametrically opposed views of the Trump presidency ever be reconciled? Can they be?

    There was nothing in the halting and reluctant testimony of Robert Mueller that could repair the breach, and it was foolish for anyone to expect there to be. Evidence of Trump’s perfidy has long been abundant and public. Any partisans willing to reconsider have had ample opportunity to do so.

    But faith in Trump isn’t a rational exercise. It’s tantamount to a religion — or a cult. Trumpists have an existential fear of a browning America, a primal sense that their hegemony will be lost, and the president gives profane voice to their basest impulses. He is, he tells them, riding to their rescue. Neither rational arguments nor mounds of evidence can overcome that.

    This is the backlash to the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president. For racially resentful white voters, it was a harbinger of things to come, a reminder of inexorable demographic change.

    The fear of a browning America has been brewing for decades. In his 2011 screed, “Suicide of a Superpower,” the ultraconservative politician and commentator Pat Buchanan predicted a swift decline for a nation that, in his view, was being overrun by people of color. Writer Peter Brimelow — an immigrant himself, albeit a white one — penned a similar tract, “Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster,” back in 1995.

    Follow the link at top above for the complete excellent article: Thank you Cynthia Tucker & The Record

  • An Increasing Concern

    Posted on July 27th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    This will not be a great treatise on the subject but as a place holder for new events that I come across. The increasing concern relates to the insecurity of the electronic ballot system. I have two reasons for saying this.

    The Russian hacking event proves that they can interfere, at the very least, the process. Perhaps they can actually change ballot numbers or maybe even individual ballots. TB Continued but in the meantime here is a Senate bipartsian report: http://www.charleswmoore.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Senate-Intel-Report-On-Election-Interference.pdf

    A few years ago, I had a problem with the electronic machine while absentee voting. It was in a very secure courthouse. As I voted the machine came up with an error. So I called the monitor over to look at it: they said “may I view the screen” and I said yes. They fiddled with it and, in the process, viewed my voting. Then they said ” Yes go ahead with process” However, when I reached the end the red error light existed but so did situation to register the ballot. The said register the ballot and I did this. I left the courthouse. Later, concerned, I called the courthouse and told them what happened and they said they would check into it. In a few minutes they called back and told me to come in and vote absentee paper ballot and I did this. I n casual conversation they said they would negate my vote on the electronic machine and my precinct would vote the paper one. Is it so easy they can negate a vote on the electronic machine? This is what concerns me!

    <

    I will probably add to this thread.

  • Good times with relatives and friends

    Posted on July 25th, 2019 cwmoore No comments


    Circa 1959-1964

    Thanks Marc for saving these from oblivion. And thanks to all my relatives and friends that have made my memories. I am old in years now but I was young then and mentally still feel like a Spring chicken.

  • Chickens and Eggs

    Posted on July 24th, 2019 cwmoore No comments

    When I was young my grandpa had a couple thousand chickens. He would get these in the early March and they sell them in November. It was one of our great joys as a kid when he set up a short cylindrical pen about 6′ diameter that had a gas fired heater and go to the hatchery and get the chicks. Soon it was warm and cosy in the multiple hen house(s). The cylinder kept getting bigger until the small birds did not need it anymore. Then came the eggs and de-beaking the chickens. Finally it was off to “somewhere” and that was the end of the season until next year.