We hear all this that there's a "consensus" that mankind is changing the climate and ZOMG we're all doing to die!!!!1!!one! OK, so just who is in this consensus? Anyone? Bueller?
As a public service, I've created Climate Science Trading Cards, so the layman can become better acquainted with the wicked smart Scientists who are at the center of all this. First, we have the "Hockey Team" of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) advocates (on a hot, fiery background).
Next, there are the Deniers, who are asking all sorts of obnoxious questions about AGW. Their cards have a cold - even icy - background:
Collect them all! Joe Everyman has been left on the sidelines of this debate, without a program to tell the players apart. That's a crying shame, and I'm happy to do my own small part for the Little Guy.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. And then there's the reaction from those on the left, horrified that anyone could even think this. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Here's why. Exhibit A for the prosecution:
Exhibit B:
Mind you, I'm not saying that the Federales are fixin' to shoot up a church, just that's exactly what they're saying. So how can they be so stupid as to actually say it?
The media coverage lets them get away with saying it. That the media are biased is pretty much a given these days - polls a couple years ago showed that the American public thought (by a considerable margin) that the media were trying to get Obama elected. And the media admit that they're further to the left than the public. And this plays out in a way that leads to Democrats acting stupid.
Let's first (briefly) consider Republican stupidity. When it happens, it's quickly put on display for all to see. Case in point, Tom Tancredo's latest stupidity:
And, by the way, I think it was foolish of Tancredo to bring up literacy tests. They were used in some parts of the country in the past to keep black people (and poor white people) from voting. There are better ways to say that people were dumb/uninformed, and that's why they voted for Obama, if that's what Tancredo meant to say. Maybe he did intend to resonate with racism, or he has fond feelings about the bad old days. Who knows? In any case, in complaining about people being dumb, he was dumb.
All over the TV. And frankly, it should be - after all, Tancredo's a presidential hopeful; he may be in (or running) the Fed.Gov.
So where's the press about John Brennan, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism? You know, they guy who said this:
Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.
So, the press jumps over a Republican because he said something dumb. It was dumb because folks on his team used to do stuff that made his statement sound creepy. It seemed like news to them, and got reported. A Democrat says something dumb, because folks on his team used to do stuff that made his statement sound creepy. The press' reaction?
(crickets)
And so Republicans learn to be more circumspect than they would otherwise be, and Democrats learn to be less circumspect than they would be. And so they say stuff that's stupid. Look at Robert Gibbs, for crying out loud - he's the President's Press Secretary. Look at Joe Biden. John Kerry: I was before it before I was against it. These are the leaders of the party, remember. I only say this because I'm a bitter clinger.
This might not make much difference if the media weren't imploding. But the media is imploding. The media can no longer control the discussion in this country; case in point, the Tea Parties. Despite wretched, biased coverage (calling them "tea baggers", racists, crazies, etc), the media can't sell the message:
While people who are official members of Tea Party organizations and those who attend Tea Parties are relatively few, those who are generally sympathetic to their cause are many. In fact, taken together, these three groups comprise 47% of likely voters according to our latest survey. Senator Scott Brown's assertion that he could not win with a mere support of the Tea Party Movement misses this larger point: Tea Party activists can elect few people but Tea Party supporters can elect many more and winning without at least some of the Tea Party sympathetic vote is, at the present moment, a tall order.
And so, back to why Mr. Brennan's comment on political criticism is so incredibly, unbelievably, unforgivably stupid. Zogby again:
The data suggests that terrorism can be used to reinforce unity among Tea Partiers while scoring legitimate points with detractors. And it appears that Republicans are increasingly recognizing this and might have already utilized it in the recent Massachusetts election. Politicoreported that Brown's advisers thought the "terrorism issue actually broke more in Brown's favor than did his opposition to Obama's health care reform plan."
The administration should sack him, because this sort of thing can coalesce the current amorphous factions into a steamroller. The level of distrust this country has against the elites is like nothing I've ever seen, and is like a super saturated solution. All it takes is a single, tiny seed crystal to cause everything to precipitate out of solution, dumping on whatever happens to be underneath. The media, of course, are paid up members of the elite.
Like I said, I don't believe that the Fed.Gov is fixin' to put my name on a bullet. I do think that the Obama administration is filled with an astonishing number of hacks that are itching to flex the muscles of the Organs of the State. And that they're too stupid (yes, that's the right word) to know just what a whirlwind that they're sowing.
Too stupid, all the way to the very top. The media has let them get away with too much, for too long. These old habits have led the Democrats to the very edge of the cliff, and they don't have a clue that it's happened. Grab the popcorn, because it's going to be an interesting year.
Borepatch Operative Rick emails to report that NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) is setting up an office to handle Climate Change:
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
"Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Locke said Monday at a news conference.
Lubchenco added, "Climate change is real, it's happening now." She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.
Now that the Fed.Gov is on it, we don't need to worry about it any more, right?
As a full service climate blog, let me save the taxpayers a boatload of dough, but providing what the new department will take 5 years to produce.
There, all done. No need to thank me, it's all part of the service.
Microsoft is planning a bumper patch Tuesday, with 13 bulletins that collectively fix 26 difference vulnerabilities.
Five of the bulletins are rated critical, seven as important, and one as moderate risk. Eleven of the baker's dozen of notices affect Windows, while two involve Office.
All versions of Windows will need patching, but Win XP and 2000 users (with five critical bulletins to consider) have more to worry them than Vista and Win 7 users (with each OS getting three critical updates).
So that's pretty much everybody*.
As always, you get them here. You'll have to use Internet Explorer.
While you're over at Microsoft's place, you might want to check out the free Malicious Software Removal Tool. Recommended**.
You can also set up Windows to automatically get new security updates:
* Windows 2000? Srlsy - who still uses that?
** A snarky Linux geek might recommend the Ubuntu LiveCD to get rid of malicious software. Snotty brat.
Adoption of the euro, by removing the threat of currency fluctuations, encouraged yield-hungry investors to bid up Greek bonds. Leverage allowed Greece to run big current account deficits, despite low productivity growth. The result, once the credit bubble burst, is today’s crisis. There is no easy European fix.
Greece has two main options to restore competitiveness and narrow its current-account deficit: Withdraw from the euro and devalue, or win large and ongoing transfers from European states with surpluses like Germany.
The choice is destruction slowly or quickly. The slow path is for the EU to let Greece return to the Drachma, devalue, and let their economy recover by low-cost exports. The problem is that Spain and Portugal are in almost as bad shape, and the temptation to join Greece will be high, and Italy and Ireland (almost as bad as Spain and Portugal) would be next. The dream of the European super state would collapse over the course of 2 or 3 years.
Fast is where the healthy EU economies (*cough* Germany *cough*) essentially subsidize Greece's spendthrift ways. Unsurprisingly, this will massively unpopular in Germany, where the population (correctly) believe that they're already subsidizing much of Europe. To mollify German public opinion, the European Central Bank would have to put Greece on some pretty stringent austerity measures; these (unsurprisingly) will be wildly unpopular in Greece, and will accelerate the exit strategy. Nothing like a little resentment to fire the blood of independence.
All in all, the problem is that it's far too easy to free ride in the Eurozone, at least if you're a smaller economy. And maybe even a big economy (*cough* Italy *cough*). Closing this will take more strong central control than it's likely that most of the European governments are willing to cede to the EU - it's one thing to get some free EU loot to kiss up to Brussels, it's quite a different thing to give budgetary authority to them.
Stick a fork in it. The EU core (FIGS - France, Italy, Germany, and Spain) along with BENELUX will keep going for a while, but expect to see the Eurozone shed some peripheral nations over the next 18 months. After the third one leave (say, after 4 or 5 years), expect to see serious action in Spain and Italy. After than, what's really the point, other than the French cat shacking up with the German dog.
And the worst of it for the EU Parliament? Nobody really will care.
Ostia Antica is ancient Rome's old port city. Taken with a Pentax K1000 on Kodachrome slide film. It took some manipulation with The Gimp. Here's the original:
Ah, the days before digital, when you didn't know the image was over exposed. Here's how I fixed it:
Created a new layer to paint on, over the original.
Created a new paintbrush, 500 pixels in diameter, very soft edged, 90% opacity.
"Daubbed" black over the edges of the photo, leaving the statue and skylight exposed, but adding dark to the edges of the picture.
All in all, I quite like the new effect. If you want to muck about with your photos (and why wouldn't you?), The Gimp is pretty awesome.
UPDATE 8 February 2010 07:03: Computerworld waxes nostalgic over great Superbowl tech ads past. This year was a major disappointment in the ad department, not at all living up to the standard we've come to expect:
UPDATE 8 February 2010 07:22: This one was my favorite last night - The Green Police. I love the Styrofoam sniffing anteater.
UPDATE 8 February 2010 13:59: There are a lot of folks that really don't like this ad. Via Soylent Green, a comment:
I don’t get it. It’s supposed to be an advert for cars, but after watching it, I want to buy shotgun shells. What gives? Is there some kind of subliminal message?
Maybe I'm weird, but I interpreted this as poking fun at the enviro-Nazis. Mockery, to appeal to the too-cool-to-be-earnest crowd. Being for the environment while you mock the environmentalists. I actually thought it was quite effective, but seemingly lots of folks don't agree with me.
Such great music. It's clear that they're really trying to give a good performance - they're not phoning it in.
They're just not very good anymore.
Sad.
UPDATE 7 February 2010 10:22:Don Surber has the quote of the day:
Can this please be the last rock oldies band to do the Super Bowl? Here is the new test: If Don Surber has heard of them, don’t let them get on stage unless they Lip sync.
While I've been remiss in my security postings lately, the smörgåsbord format is pretty handy for when there's a lot of news. Since there's a lot of climate science news, I'm starting a new feature here.
"In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature."
Well isn’t that a surprise. NIWA “adjusts” the official temperature record of New Zealand which shows no measureable change in average temperature for the last 150 years and ends up with a graph of “adjusted” temperatures showing a sharp warming trend. In other words the entire warming trend in the NZ record was in the NIWA “adjustments” but they do not have any record of the adjustments (the dog ate my data). NIWA cannot justify the warming trend it built into its published data.
Remember the IPCC reports, and how everything in them is the best-of-the-best, uber-researched and peer-reviewed out the wazoo? Remember how dozens of the "scientific papers" cited in it are press reports from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation? Well, that train is still a-rollin':
Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major “mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.
Similar in effect to the erroneous “2035″ claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.
The press continues to be AWOL on this story, except for the British press
Interestingly, they're all over it like stink on a dog. Everyone else, not so much:
Nothing prevented Ms. O'Neil from taking a firsthand look at the IPCC report herself. She, like me, could have typed "WWF" (which stands for the activist group, the World Wildlife Fund) into a search box and found the 16 distinct WWF citations in the IPCC's 2007 report. Within a few minutes she could also have found the eight Greenpeace papers listed.
In the process she might have noticed that one of her scientific experts - Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (whom she quoted as saying: "I don't think you could have a more rigorous process") - is a co-author of one of those non-peer-reviewedGreenpeace papers.
Hoegh-Guldberg, O., H. Hoegh-Guldberg, H. Cesar and A. Timmerman, 2000: Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs.Greenpeace, 72 pp.
Instead, Ms. O'Neill - who has 25 years experience as a journalist - was utterly bamboozled by the PR machine which is the IPCC. She fell for their slick mirage. And then she passed it along to her viewers and readers.
Other than that, it's rock solid. Denyer.
And there's quite a good Mark Steyn post on this. Insty excerpted a short amount, but you should really RTWT, which is much longer, and spot on.
You can't make this up, you know. We've all heard how the skeptics* are all in the pay of Big Oil, right? Well, soft-core pornographer and IPCC President Rajendra Pachauri's publisher threw a dinner/drinks bash to launch his novel. The bash's sponsor? British Petroleum.
* Note to Big Oil. I'm still waiting for my bushel baskets of Denier cash. Please expedite what needs expediting. kthanxbai.
A referral led me to this astonishing Google search. #3 out of almost a million.
It's actually a good post, covering what is IMHO the most disturbing aspect of the whole warming debate - the way that the raw data has been folded, spindled, and mutilated to such an extent that it's no longer recognizable. If you have to be at the top of Google for something, this at least is doing a public service.
And a shout out to Madd Medic for helping to goose the rankings! Even though he's a Denier.
Counting Cats in Zanzibar lays it out. I hadn't really understood precisely how it works, but he clarifies it. The Cliff Notes' version: air pressure. Srlsy. And he has an update.
He doesn't take either a pro- or anti- AGW stance in this post, but just walks us through the science. But he's a Denier, anyway.
We invented the Maple Bacon Lollipop, and now we’ve improved it: we’ve made it the bacon-y equivalent of an energy drink, adding two cups worth of caffeine to the already time-tested wonder of organic, sustainably farmed bacon and delicious Vermont maple syrup.
we take a big bunch of really really good bacon, and render it down...add a bunch of spices..onions, etc..and let it simmer for about 6 hours…give it a quick puree, and blast chill it…and you have bacon jam
Long ago, when I first took up blogging; there was the Carnival of Cordite. It was something that I looked forward to every week. It started to die down and I started the Ammo Can Carnival which was an offshoot of my blog I had at the time, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I had a blast doing it.
Today, I wonder why there is no active gun blog carnival? I can’t seem to find an answer to it. So, I’m going to give this another shot. The Carnival will cover posts from Saturday to Friday, and will hopefully be posted no later than the following Sunday. If anyone has any submissions they would like to include, the deadline will be Friday nights at 11:59 MST.
Stepping up to fill a void in the Gunblogosphere. Well done, sir. Bookmark him, and send him your entries.
So, as it turns out, Eddie's injuries were not a result of being negligent or careless. They stemmed from imitating the adults in his life, who were completely unaware of the lessons they were teaching him.
Eddie's situation got me to thinking in that deep, reflective way. How many times through the day do I, as a parent, verbalize to my children what I feel are essential life lessons when, in actuality, my witnessed actions carry more weight than any of my words. Actions that can be both good or bad. Conscious or instinctive. Helpful or harmful. Deliberate or unplanned.
Witnessed or unwitnessed by young eyes. Mykids' eyes. Yourkids' eyes.
Eddie ended up recovering quite nicely from his injuries and his family was very appreciative for his treatment and good outcome. They could not, however, have been nearly as appreciative as I was of the important lesson they reminded me.
Thank you, Eddie, the little big man. It's not everyday I get a life-lesson from a seven year-old.
Welcome to the Borepatch blogroll, folks!
As always, let me remind folks of my reciprocal blogroll: if you have me on yours and I haven't added you, please leave a comment or email me. borepatch at gmail dot com.
We forget that storms can kill. Today is seeing record-breaking snow in the eastern USA. While beautiful, we should keep in mind that snowfall - especially heavy snowfall - can be deadly. Fortunately, there's a Country Music song to remind us.
"Gentleman Jim" Reeves was part of the "Nashville Sound", the Country/Pop wave of the 1960s that included Patsy Cline. Reeves was a Texas boy, trying his hand unsuccessfully at shipbuilding and minor league baseball until he got a break in Country radio. His more reflective style of music stood out from the crowd, and found considerable success on both the Country and the Popular charts.
He was almost more of a crooner - perhaps more in the style of a Perry Como or Bing Crosby than your typical cowboy singer of the day. Coming out of nowhere in 1959, he became an overnight sensation world wide (he recorded some songs in Afrikaans for the South African market). Then he flew his airplane into a thunderstorm. Storms can kill, and this one did. Dead at 40, in 1964.
There's a blizzard comin' on how I'm wishin' I was home For my pony's lame and he can't hardly stand Listen to that northern sigh if we don't get home we'll die But it's only seven miles to Mary Anne It's only seven miles to Mary Anne
You can bet we're on her mind for it's nearly suppertime And I'll bet there's hot biscuits in the pan Lord my hands feel like they're froze and there's a numbness in my toes But it's only five more miles to Mary Anne It's only five more miles to Mary Anne
That wind's howlin' and it seems mighty like a woman's screams And we'd best be movin' faster if we can Dan just think about that barn with that hay so soft and warm For it's only three more miles to Mary Anne It's only three more miles to Mary Anne
Dan get up you ornery cuss or you'll be the death of us I'm so weary but I'll help you if I can All right Dan perhaps it's best that we'll just stop awhile and rest For it's still a hundred yards to Mary Anne It's still a hundred yards to Mary Anne
Late that night the storm was gone and they found him there at dawn He had made it but he couldn't leave ol' Dan Yes they found him there on the plains his hands froze to the reins He was just a hundred yards from Mary Anne He was just a hundred yards from Mary Anne
I'm a great admirer of The Gormogons - I mean, who doesn't like a multi-century secret society dedicated to the restoration of the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania (among other things)? One of the things I most admire about their organization is their outstanding use of Operatives.
Man, I need to get me some operatives, I said to myself. And so I did.
Boy, they come in handy. Borepatch Operative Chad reports from Washington DC, where the snow is so think and heavy that it broke through a skylight in the hotel.
It's the middle skylight at the top of the photo that's all done been busted. Washington DC seems to be getting two inches of wet, heavy Global Warming per hour. Yikes.
UPDATE 6 February 2010 12:15: You also have to admire The Gormogon's sang froid:
You have to understand that we live near Chicago, and this sort of crap doesn’t faze any of us. Especially post-Blago. So some roided up guy tried to slice the throat of his hooker wife? That’s a typical afternoon for a Chicago alderman. And he’d still have time to call all of us racists.
I mean, c'mon - who's going to notice something as strange as this?
How about Steven den Beste?
I'd linked to one of his posts that discussed the early Cambrian, and some of you followed the link to his site. He noticed the referrals, and not only came and read, but left a comment:
I just found this in my refers, and I thank you for your kind words.
Just wanted to mention that the original image of Hallucigenia with the spikes on the bottom and the tentacles on top was later realized to be wrong. The tentacles are legs and go on the bottom. The spikes are for defense. Once this was realized, it also turned out that Hallucigenia landed squarely in a known group of creatures.
That happened after "Wonderful Life" was published, but Gould talked about it in one of his articles in Nature, and it ended up in one of his collections.
The wikipedia article you linked to describes that and includes a more modern reproduction of the critter.
In the mean time, there's no doubt that you're right that the "early experimentation, later standardization" happened in automatic weapons just as it did in cars, and airplanes, and computers for that matter.
I usually try to keep my fanboy excitement under wraps, but squeee!! It's not every day that you get a "no doubt you're right" from Steven den Beste!
Pity the lovely and long suffering Mrs. Borepatch - I'm going to be insufferable today
UPDATE 6 February 2010 13:27: Typo fixed. Thanks, Scotaku!
#2 Son and I just got done watching the PBS/Ken Burns DVD set The Civil War. When we first started watching, I told him This is the best thing that's ever been filmed about the Civil War. I remembered it from the early 1990s, when I was a pretty run of the mill, liberal PBS viewer.
He liked it, a lot. I'm torn.
Some criticisms are easy. Ken Burns needs an editor, who can cut the nine episodes down to five. There's a lot of material here, but not only is it the most powerful; there's a lot that's less powerful.
There's a lot of Political Correctness here. Some of it is your expected, utterly lacking in subtlety and nuance, roll-your-eyes sort. But some of it was very different. The last episode is mostly - mostly - magic, describing the aftermath of the war and how the veterans tried (and sometimes succeeded) in getting on with their lives. The old movie-real filmclips of the ancient, battle-scarred veterans from the North and the South embracing each other at the 75th anniversary of Gettysburg is incredibly, astonishingly moving.
And then, it is followed by a modern historian talking about how the Civil War is still unfinished, "... so long as some live in houses and some are homeless."
I was surprised at my feelings at this point. While they did not turn to rage, they turned to something very like it. Turning this great National Trauma into a ventriloquist's dummy for modern political skirmishes seemed like digging up the graves of the old veterans. I guess that this is why I no longer watch PBS.
#2 Son was fascinated to hear that his great, great, great grandfather was in Sherman's army, survived the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh, and went on to burn the mill in Roswell, Georgia. We visited that mill when we lived in Roswell, as well as the monument to the Confederate dead, raised by the Daughters of the Confederacy. We didn't talk much about my great, great grandfather, the one who owned this rifle.
And yet it is a powerful, powerful video. The material is mostly from Shelby Foote's monumental The Civil War: A Narrative. It tells the story of the common soldier, and tells it well: at its best, it brings it to life in a way where the dust of the old books is forgotten, and the men speak in their own voices, for a short time returned as flesh and blood, hopes and dreams.
Perhaps it's that I'm older now, perhaps it's that I've lived in the South, but I believe that I understand this conflict better now than I did twenty years ago. While I still feel some vicarious pride at the exploits of my native state's Twentieth Maine at Little Round Top, I also feel the summer sun on Pickett's men, waiting for that terrible charge on the following day. I can see just how far this country has come, and how the South has not only reentered the Union, but in some significant ways has become the backbone of it.
I no longer feel the need to enlist those old veterans in modern battles, but rather let them remain who they were, in their own words.
But I had to come to this realization on my own. Still, while Ken Burns should have done more of this, the video is worth watching. Especially with your 14 year old son. I'll close with Foote, and while this passage from his master work was not included by Burns, the last episode captures its feel. Foote relates the words of Captain Holmes, from Keene New Hampshire, on one of the myriad of Memorial Day gatherings after the war's end:
But even if I am wrong, even if those who are to come after us are to forget all we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that to us this day is dear and sacred ... For one hour, twice a year at least - at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves - the dead come back and live with us. I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth.
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us at the onset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.
Next, there are the Deniers, who are asking all sorts of obnoxious questions about AGW. Their cards have a cold - even icy - background:
Collect them all! Joe Everyman has been left on the sidelines of this debate, without a program to tell the players apart. That's a crying shame, and I'm happy to do my own small part for the Little Guy.
Posts
I'm trying to think like sullivan here, but a mind is a terrible thing to baste, that's for sure. All I got is this:
Written on her hand:
•"Energy"
•"Budget [crossed out] (Cuts)"
•"Tax"
•"Lift American spirits"
If you take the first two letters from each of the words listed, you get EnBuTaLiAmSp...enbutaliamsp....see? Get it?
Know fear, people. KNOW fear....