Quick Roundup 61

Veterans Take Note

From The New York Times:

Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday.

The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Data of veterans discharged before 1975 who submitted claims to the agency may have been included.

It sounds to me like someone schlepped home with a laptop and then got robbed -- which is exactly the sort of thing policies against taking such things home are designed to prevent. Heads should roll over this.

With this looking like a crime of opportunity rather than an outright attempt at massive identity theft, there's probably not a whole lot to worry about. But I went ahead and made the five-minute call to Equifax to have a fraud alert placed on my credit report. (Call any of the three credit reporting companies and they will forward your request to the other two.)

The Times provides some helpful links within its story and a quick google of "identity theft" will also get you some good information.

An Idea that Deserves to be Deep Sixed

An article at ABC news reports that "scientists" are considering adding a new hurricane category. After grabbing our attention, the piece shows itself to be yet another pro-environmentalist puff piece.

[H]urricanes around the world have sharply worsened over the past 30 years -- and all but a handful of hurricane experts now agree this worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming.

In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.

200 miles per hour! You don't say? What a blood hound! Compare that story to this one, emailed to me by reader Michael Gold, that offers only arguments and boring evidence instead of compelling informal polls of acquaintances and hard-hitting anecdotes.

Over the last few decades, hurricane climate experts have largely eschewed linkages between global warming and increases in the number or strength of hurricanes. That is, until late last summer, when a series of highly publicized papers claimed otherwise. The papers pointed out that sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), the essential fuel of hurricanes, have been increasing in the primary hurricane-development regions pretty much globally since 1970 (the start of global satellite hurricane track and intensity records). Over that time, hurricane intensities have also been on the rise. And since global warming causes SSTs to rise, that must be the cause of the recent spate of strong hurricanes.

The problem with this logic is that hurricanes require a very specific environment to flourish. High SSTs are a necessary but not sufficient condition to spin up strong storms. It is also important that there be very little change in the winds with height; that near surface winds blow in such a manner to cause moist air to gather near the storm's center; and that temperatures decline rapidly with height to promote a very unstable atmosphere, among other factors. One criticism of the studies from last summer is that the focus was almost entirely on SSTs only. In order properly to link hurricane trends to SSTs (and global warming), you need to discount trends in these other, critical variables.

Author Patrick Michaels tosses in a graph or two, as well. Might as well bookmark the article now. Hurricane season is upon us, and that means lots of hot air will be blowing from the environmentalist left.

The whole idea of a "Category Six" hurricane is unnecessary and clearly meant to stir panic about a non-crisis and provide free publicity to the environmentalist movement. This is a blatant call for the politicization of science.

New Orleans Chooses Chocolate

Ever since the tough-on-crime candidate lost out in the primaries, leaving Mitch Landrieu as the last man standing to oppose the inept Ray Nagin in the mayoral election in New Orleans, I have been indifferent to the outcome.

Landrieu, who outspent Nagin by a wide margin, seemed to suffer on at least two fronts, political observers noted. He failed to distinguish himself clearly enough from Nagin on most campaign issues, including education, housing, rebuilding neighborhoods, jobs creation and economic growth. Both men are Democrats, with Nagin occupying the more conservative wing of the party and having many Republican supporters.

Landrieu is often cited as more liberal than Nagin, but the two were basically the same candidate as far as I could tell. With there being no compelling reason to choose one over the other, the election basically came down to race.

[An] unusual coalition of voters ... returned Nagin to office -- conservative whites and progressive African Americans[:] ... about 80 percent of black voters and about 20 percent of white voters....

New Orleans desperately needs to make fundamental changes in how it is run. Unfortunately, this election seems to have been like Seinfeld: a show about nothing.

Blogroll Additions

I have added the blogs of Objectivism Online regular "The Inspector" and of fellow submariner Myron Howard to the blogroll.

Call me crazy, but judging from the frequency with which he posts about automotive performance over at The Intellectual Watchman, I suspect that it might be on the safe side to say that the Inspector might prefer fast cars. I especially enjoyed this post on hybrid backlash. He quotes the Los Angeles Times.

"There's a mentality out there that we're a bunch of liberal hippies or we're trying to make some statement on the environment," said Travis Ruff, a real estate agent from Newbury Park who drives a Toyota Prius. "People are a lot less friendly than when I drove a Mercedes."

Heh! Sounds like Travis Ruff has met the mentality, and it is his....

Not liking to burn money, I value fuel economy, but have long been skeptical about the claims of fuel efficiency -- based solely on emissions -- made on behalf of hybrids by the EPA. I also find the smugness and devotion to pseudoscience of most hybrid drivers very annoying. Otherwise, I'd consider a hybrid if I thought it might actually save me a few bucks.

Of course, my stinginess and the beater I drive -- an old, but reliable Honda Accord -- will probably earn me a fair deal of ribbing from the good Inspector....

And then there's the alliteratively named Myron's Mind Meanderings, which reminds me a little of Bothenook's blog. Myron posts frequently about submarines, and has served on a pair of diesel boats. But it was this post that caught my eye. (Hint: If your cursor lands on top of the picture as mine did the first time around, back off or the title won't make as much sense!)

And if you liked that, you'll love this video clip sent to me by reader Michael Gold.

-- CAV