Well we've reached the end of a long weekend - a great Thanksgiving weekend :) - and now its the start of a really long week for me.  Tonight I'm flying a redeye to Chicago for the annual Radiological Society of North American conference, the biggest medical imaging show in the world, and then on to Houston for a meeting with a customer, then to Vista for a board meeting.  Whew.  Oh yeah and squeezed somewhere in there is my birthday.  Who knows if I'll have time to blog, but in the meantime, it's all happening...

I guess this "climategate" thing really has legs...  I'm not a student of the data in question, or the way it has been manipulated, but clearly the scientists involved where not behaving like scientists.  Eric Raymond has looked at some code and finds the comment: Apply a VERY ARTIFICIAL correction for decline!!.  His observation seems apt: "this, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise."  That's not science; you're supposed to want the truth no matter what, not reason backward from some political point of view. 

Unfortunately I'm sure there are some real scientists who will get tarred with the same brush.  Too bad science has always taken a back seat to politics when it comes to global warming.

Nick Schultz notes that Obama's cabinet is substantially more slanted toward public experience than any which have come before...  not a good sign, considering how much worse government is than private industry at just about anything. 

That same administration is shattering records for spending in its first year.  $3.5T, vs. $1.8T for Bush and $1.6T for Clinton.  This will end badly.

Charles Krauthammer says what I say:  Kill the bills. Do healthcare reform right: "The United States has the best health care in the world - but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive.  The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees, and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions."  Man, seems like there is low hanging fruit, like tort reform and taxing employee benefits; why not just pick that? 

Trizilla's San Diego testing is done!  They have packed up the magnificent flying machine and it is on its way to Valencia, Spain for the American's Cup, for the first trimaran vs catamaran match race in the Cup's history.  (I can't believe I typed that, but it seems to be true.)  I guess that means my chances of riding on the craft have diminished, at least for now, since I have no plans to visit Spain.  Anyway let's say good by and good luck with one more picture...  (as usual please click to enbiggen.) 

The Friday after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because retailers have traditionally sold enough by then to be "in the black"; last Friday was apparently record-breaking for PayPal, as a total of $595M was spent online.  Meanwhile the malls were busy but not overloaded. 

ZooBorn of the day: an Ocelot kitten. 

Don't know when I'll see you next, but please stay tuned...