SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:58 P.M. ET: 

DON'T TELL THE PRESIDENT – From the Christian Science Monitor:  A new NASA study found that Antarctica has been adding more ice than it's been losing, challenging other research, including that of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that concludes that Earth’s southern continent is losing land ice overall.  In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology on Friday, researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the engineering firm Sigma Space Corporation offer a new analysis of satellite data that show a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 in the Antarctic ice sheet.  That gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.  Climate scientists caution that these findings don’t mean it’s time to start celebrating the end of global warming. More than anything, the paper shows how difficult it is to measure ice height in Antarctica and that better tools are needed.  Yeah, better tools are needed.  And maybe a little more modesty on the part of "climate scientists" as well.  We'd better get this right before we send trillions of dollars down the drain.

WHY AM I NOT SHOCKED? – From USA Today:   Even though they haven't been at fault, self-driving test cars are involved in crashes at five times the rate of conventional cars, a new study finds.  Even when the figures are adjusted to take into account that many accidents involving conventional cars go unreported, the study from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that the rate is still twice as high.  Yet it notes that it is making the comparison from a tiny pool of autonomous test cars, about 50 of them in California, versus 269 million conventional cars as of 2013. The self-driving cars have logged about 1.2 million miles in total, while the conventionals cumulatively go trillions of miles a year. As a result, the total number of self-driving car accidents being used for comparison is the study is minuscule, 11. But that's five times the rate of the accident rate in conventional cars, and there's four times the injury rate, the study finds. The injuries, however, have all been minor.  At the same time, I haven't seen any evidence that the self-driving cars go off in a road rage.  I'd rather have a fender-bender with a computer than with a member of the human race.

LOSS – From The Tennessean:   Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, GOP presidential candidate, Watergate attorney and actor who starred on the television drama "Law and Order," died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 73.  Mr. Thompson died after a recurrence of lymphoma, according to a prepared statement issued by the Thompson family. Mr Thompson, who had recently purchased a house in Nashville to return to Tennessee, was first diagnosed with cancer in 2004.  "It is with a heavy heart and a deep sense of grief that we share the passing of our brother, husband, father, and grandfather who died peacefully in Nashville surrounded by his family," the Thompson family's statement reads.  He was a good guy, a good senator, solid actor, capable TV commercial pitchman, and so-so candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.  He was one of those candidates who "looked like a president," but he never seemed to have the fire in the belly.

November 1, 2015