It's been obvious for quite some time, at least to anyone not marinated in the ideology of climate change alarmism, that the models being used to produce the IPCC's forecasts of doom do not match reality. But now it's become so glaring that even the IPCC itself has admitted it in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) from Working Group I for its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) (hat tip: Watts Up With That ).

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A few weeks ago the Federal Reserve announced that it would continue "quantitative easing" at its current level. The reason, as explained in the press release just linked to (though in rather oblique language, as is the usual practice with such things), was basically that, while the economy appears to be recovering, the Fed isn't sure that it's recovering strongly enough. Which leads to the obvious next question: how much longer will this have to go on?

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A while back, I advised climate change alarmists to get off the soapbox. Now it appears that I have to extend that advice to scientists more generally.

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This news is several years old now, but I just came across the article today and I can't resist a brief comment.

The good news: videos of Richard Feynman giving his famous lectures on physics at Caltech in 1964 are available online, thanks to Bill Gates.

The bad news: if you think this means that a wonderful resource for learning about science is now open and accessible to everyone, think again. From the article:

Note you will need to download Microsoft's Silverlight to get around the site.

You can take the boy out of Microsoft, but you can't take Microsoft out of the boy.

A recent article (via Reuters, via Hacker News) says that the US Congress should spend more time working and less time vacationing. I could go on and on about what Congress actually does when it is working, but that would go in the rants section of this blog. Here I just want to comment on one particular thing that struck me about the article.

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(Note: there is a discussion of this post on Hacker News.)

I posted some time back that one drawback of the "cloud" is that you can't control how data you post to a "cloud" service is used. Facebook has now provided us with an even better example than the case (Instagram) I talked about in that post.

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A while back I blogged about the Linux kernel site (not) being cracked. That is, someone had indeed cracked the server, but had not been able to do any damage because all of the files stored there were cryptographically signed in a way that could not be forged. Strictly speaking, that was not a story about how Linux itself is more secure than other operating systems; but the fact that the Linux kernel developers took such precautions certainly indicates a mindset towards security that is different from that of certain other operating systems.

Yesterday ZDNet reported on some more direct evidence of Linux's security as an operating system, not just the security of its kernel repository.

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This is just a quick link to a hilarious response to a cease and desist letter (hat tip: Hacker News). If you ever need a lawyer, hopefully you will find one with a sense of humor like the one that wrote this response.

Fire Dog Lake is angry about the recent Senate vote that killed the Toomey-Manchin background check amendment to the latest gun control bill. However, the anger is not directed at the Democrats that voted against the amendment, but at those who voted for it.

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Some interesting items have come out of yesterday's oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Defense of Marriage Act case. Since I've blogged about this case before, I wanted to take a look at the Court's handling of it.

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