130 Casualties in Pakistan

Al Quada attacked a school.  My sincerest sympathy for the Pakistani parents who lost children.  There is nothing worse than losing a child.  I hope the Paki's took the gun men alive.  Some rigorous interrogation is in order.   

Turkey Soup

Makes enough to last for weeks.  But heh, what else do you do with that leftover turkey carcass in the fridge?  You can just pitch it, but soup is so easy. 
   Put all the bones, and the rest of the turkey into a big pot filled with water.  Bring to a boil, and let it cook for four hours.  Put in a bit of onion and chopped celery for flavor.  Bell's Poultry seasoning, maybe a tad of pepper, couple of bay leaves.  No salt. 
   After four hours the meat is cooked off the bones.  Let things cool a bit.  Fish out the bones and pitch them.  Cooked bones like these are bad for pets, they splinter into jagged pieces and do bad things to pet's insides when swallowed. 
   Finish the soup off with some veggies, carrots are good for color, peas, celery, baby corn, or real kernel corn or mushrooms.  And some rice.  Let it cook at close to a boil until the veggies are tender and the rice is soft.  Taste.  Salt sparingly if needed.  Add salt last, in case it becomes saltier than expected from adding things like bouillon cubes.  Serve.   Or let it cool and you can reheat it the next day and it will be good.
   All the grownups liked it and even had seconds.  And I still have plenty left.

Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV)

They are just learning about this over in Europe.  The advertised European emissions and fuel economy numbers for automobiles are way way better than what the cars get on the road.  Economist article goes on and on about how the car makers cheat, including programming the automobile microprocessors to recognize the start of an emissions test and switch over to an ultra clean mode for the duration of the test.  The Economist writers seen surprised to find a gap between "objective" testing and real world driving. 
   Over here we figured this out years ago.  Your Mileage May Vary has been a cliche for a long long time.  It seems to take the Euros longer to catch on.

Cromnibus derivative give away.

The $1 trillion Cromnibus bill to fund the federal government for another year contains a juicy handout to banks.  Banks will be allowed to play the derivatives market using FDIC guaranteed money.  Taxpayer money. 
  Derivatives are an undesirable financial deal, basically gambling, and they take money that might be used to grow the economy and use it for pure gambling.  A derivative is not a stock or a bond.  It's bet between two parties on the price of something (commodities, stocks, foreign exchange, bonds, whatever) in the future.  "I bet the price of oil will go to $120 by March 2015".  " I bet it won't".  hands are shaken on the bet, and come March someone pays off.  The money does not go for starting up a company, building a factory, developing a new product, buying inventory, financing new aircraft, or anything that creates jobs and grows the economy.  As such, we ought to do everything we can to prevent gambling on derivatives. There are better things for banks to do with their money.
   Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) is a government guarantee of banks.  Roosevelt set it up in Great Depression 1.0 to convince depositors that they could leave their money in a bank and not worry about the bank failing and taking all their savings with it.  Prior to FDIC, anytime depositors got jittery, they ran to their bank and withdrew all their money.  When everyone did this, the bank withered and died, often within hours.  Now, 80 years later, FDIC is still with us.  FDIC means that no matter how dumbass the bank may be, Uncle will pay off the depositors.  Nobody has to worry about loosing money in a bank. 
   Which means the banks can take some unholy risks, figuring that Uncle will bail them out. 
   Part of Dodd-Frank required that banks no longer gamble in the derivative game using FDIC insured funds.  An excellent idea. 
   Apparently the banks threw bags of money at politicians and the politicians lifted the "no FDIC money for derivatives" ban.  They slipped it into the Cromnibus late at night. 
Money talks.  Politicians walk. 

I hear Sony got hacked...

Couldn't happen to a nicer victim.  Sony, as you might remember, is the company that tried copy protection for its music CDs by loading them with a root kit that infected customer's PC's.   A little shared pain is good for the company soul....

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

We got two, maybe three inches of new snow yesterday and last night.  It's below freezing (just barely) right now.  What with the seven inches we got on Wednesday, the mountain oughta be a great shape for tomorrow.

Torture Report runs interference for Cromnibus?

TV newsies have been totally consumed by the "Torture Report".  The report itself is 6000 pages long, and nobody, but nobody is gonna read thru that.  So partisan pundits have attacked from the left and the right, and the citizen is left with nothing factual, just heated opinions.  The newsies love this story and allow it to drive everything all off the news.
   Meanwhile, lame duck Congress is passing a $1 Trillion dollar appropriation bill, the "Continuing Resolution/Omnibus Spending Bill".  It will fund the entire federal government for a year.  That's a staggering sum of money.  Spread out over 1600 pages to make it difficult-to-impossible to figure out who gets how much.  Enough pork to choke a hog can be hidden in 1600 pages.  Nobody has read this monster flimflam either.  Nobody knows what's in it.  A few staff people know that their bit of pork got stuffed in, or got dropped on the floor, but none of 'em know the whole story.
   There must be some bad stuff in there if they think they need the Torture Report to hide it.
   Not the way to do business.