Mouse guns

Really:

Flares Into Darkness finds a Russian site that has insanely detailed miniature replicas.

What do Occam's Razor, Sunspots, Climate, and Ernst Mach have in common?

Lots of folks are commenting on the recent blockbuster announcement that solar activity is dropping off a cliff and we may be headed into a little Ice Age.  Basically, some of the most prestigious solar scientists have published a study saying that sunspot activity has dropped so low that the next 11 year solar cycle (Cycle 21) may not even happen.  The last time that this happened was the Dalton Minimum - a period of unprecedentedly cold winters around 1800 AD that included "The Year Without A Summer".

This would be very bad news - many more people die in cold events than in hot ones.  Most of those deaths have historically been from starvation, and there's really nothing to suggest that anything is fundamentally different today.  Sure, world wide transport is easy, but world food stocks are the lowest they've been in decades.  So it is much to be hoped that the American Astronomical Society is wrong.

They're probably not.  William of Occam tells us why.  Occam's Razor tells us that if you have two theories that both explain the same thing, the simpler of the two is almost certainly correct.  The classical lesson in scientific reasoning here involves the Ptolemaic Earth-centered view of the Solar System vs. the Copernican Sun-centered view.  The Ptolemaic theory had to resort to ever more rococo ad hoc tweaks like epicycles to explain the orbits of the planets.  Johann Kepler explained the Copernican system simply and elegantly with his mathematical laws.

Occam's Razor says that simple and elegant beats complicated and crufty 999 times out of 1000.

And so to sun spots and climate.  We have quite good records of sunspot activity going back to 1700 A.D.  We have decent records of the price of wheat going back much further - pretty good ones to 1500 A.D., and sporadic records all the way back to 1250 A.D. (!).  The reason is that bread is the staff of life - no bread, and people starved.

In short, grain prices are a pretty good proxy for climate, in the days before thermometers.  Certainly better than, say, bristle cone pine tree rings.  This is important for two reasons, and the combination is very bad news indeed for people who cling to the "Carbon Dioxide is killing Mother Gaia" theory.

First, the price of grain and the number of sunspots have been known to be very closely correlated for hundreds of years.  William Herschel (who discovered the planet Uranus) first published this, back around 1800.  When there are a lot of sun spots, he said, the price of grain is low - harvests are good.  When there are few sun spots, harvests fail and the price of grain soars.

Remember, we have records on this that are so old that this has been known for literally hundreds of years.  You might say that, err, the Science is Settled.

Second, there's a theoretical foundation that explains why these two are linked.  Henrik Svensmark has proposed that Cosmic Rays are linked to clouds.  Specifically, the very high energy (ionizing radiation) rays generate aerosols when they strike high altitude molecules in the atmosphere, and that these aerosols form the nucleation points for high altitude clouds.  These clouds reflect incoming solar radiation back into space, cooling the earth.

Everybody knows that when the Sun's magnetic field is strong, fewer Cosmic Rays reach Earth.  And when the magnetic field is strong, we see lots of sun spots.

The Svenmark Hypothesis was recently experimentally confirmed at CERN, where artificial Cosmic Rays were crashed into an atmosphere.  And aerosols were born.  Pretty cool when a scientific prediction is confirmed.

To understand why this is so incredibly bad for the warmist crowd, you need to compare and contrast with the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (Carbon Dioxide heating the planet).  The theoretical underpinning of AGW predicts a warm zone in the mid-Troposphere (say, 8 miles up or so) in the tropics.  Essentially, this is a heat pump that cycles captured heat from the increased Greenhouse effect down to lower atmospheric levels (rather than radiating out to space).

The only problem is that with maybe a million weather balloons looking for the hot spot, nobody's found it.  Let's call this Epicycle #1.  But the plot thickens.  We're told that the correlation between CO2 and warming is clear.  It's not:

If I adopt this 10:1 ratio by looking at the last 100 years worth of data I find 1910-1940 temperatures rising while CO2 was not. 1940 to 1975 temperatures falling while CO2 rising, 1975 to 1998 temperatures rising while CO2 rising and 1998 to 2009 temperatures falling while CO2 rising. Three quarters of the period shows no correlation or negative correlation with CO2 and only one quarter shows positive correlation. I do not understand how one can claim a hypothesis proven when ¾ of the data set disagrees with it. To me it is the clearest proof that the hypothesis is wrong.

That's Epicycle #2.  But wait - we're not done yet.  CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas.  There are a lot of GHGs, the most powerful of which is Methane, at 1400 times more powerful than CO2.  But the real action is with water vapor, which makes up 90% of all greenhouse warming.  So what's with all the focus on CO2?

We're told that it's positive forcings, where some CO2 leads to increased temperature, which creates more moisture in the air, which makes more greenhouse warming, which makes more moisture, and so on.

So why didn't we see this out of control increase in past warm periods, like the Medieval Warm Period which was at least as warm as now and likely warmer.  Why didn't it spin out of control into Thermageddon, instead of crashing into the Little Ice Age?

Epicycle #3, right there.  And the temperatures are diverging pretty spectacularly from the Climate Models' predictions:

We'll just call Epicycle #4 the Hide The Decline Memorial Epicycle.

At this point, you should hear William of Occam whispering in the back of your head.  The simpler explanation is better.

Or it could be shouted at you.  The most famous failed scientific experiment of all time was the Michaelson-Morley Experiment, which tried to measure the Luminiferous Aether.  The problem of the day was that light was known to be a wave, but space was known to be a vacuum.  A wave needs a medium to propagate through, like waves through water.  Obviously, there was no water in space (or air, for that matter), and so the Luminiferous Aether was proposed.  It was a mathematical formulation, and its properties were derived from the observed properties of light.  Those properties meant that it had to be an exceptionally rigid vacuum.

Ernst Mach (of supersonic fame) was contemptuous of the whole idea.  The whole edifice was constructed from cardboard and tape (err, or nineteenth century words to that effect), and anyone could see that it was wrong.  Michaelson and Morley set out to directly measure the Aether, and failed.  Completely.

Because Mach was right: there is no Aether.  Looking back, this is obvious, and scientists of the day should have thought that a simpler explanation would be forthcoming, as indeed it was (the photon).

And so back to the matter at hand.  William of Occam politely (as befits a church man) suggests that AGW is overly complex.  Ernst Mach sneers that it's plain as the nose on your face.  CERN shows aerosol formation.

Of course, I'm one of those Deniers (Epicycle #5) who don't recognize that the Science Is Settled® (Epicycle #6), and who should be locked up as an Enemy Of The State™ (Epicycle #7). 

Or perhaps e pur si muove: and yet it moves. Instead of a bunch of epicycles, you can look at an elegant hypothesis backed up by experimental confirmation and 300 years of correlated observations.


The house of cards is only held together with tape after all.

UPDATE 19 December 2017 09:42: Updated model vs. temperature diagram and link due to Internet bit rot devouring the original version.

They told me that if I voted for John McCain ...

... that White Male Patriarchal politicians would threaten to "smack around" "uppity" women.

And they were right!

This is when the idiot media starts hounding Rep. Fred Clark with charges of hypocrisy.  Oh wait, never mind.  He's a Democrat.

Will all Wisconsin "Progressives" please shut up and sit down in the back of the room?  Grown ups are talking.

TheOnesDay® No. 5

It's Wednesday, which means it's time to mock the First Ego, who knows everything you can learn in a book and nothing that you learn outside one.

President Obama was walking along a road in the countryside comes across a shepherd and a huge flock of sheep. He says to the shepherd, "Let me be clear: I will bet you $100 against one of your sheep that I can tell you the exact number in this flock." The shepherd thinks it over; it's a big flock so he takes the bet.

"973," says the President. The shepherd is astonished, because that is exactly right. Says "OK, I'm a man of my word, take an animal." Obama picks one up and begins to walk away.

"Wait," cries the shepherd, "Let me have a chance to get even. Double or nothing that I can guess your exact occupation." Obama smiles condescendingly and says sure. "You are the President of the United States," says the shepherd.

Obama is non-plussed. "You're right! But tell me, how did you figure that out?"

"Well," says the shepherd, "put down my dog and I will tell you."

Remember folks - mockery is Alinsky's most powerful rule.  Now that the Professor has become The Man, show him that The Man is still a ripe target for mockery.

OK, I confess

Holy cow:

We’re one lesbian away from a bona fide Fleet Street “trend”. Further to yesterday’s post, a lesbian blogger who helped unmask the Syrian lesbian blogger as a middle-aged American male has herself been revealed to be a middle-aged American male

And so, to my confession.  I'm not actually lesbian*.  "Borepatch" is actually a middle aged man.  I just can't keep up the pretense anymore.

Or a lesbian, it seems - so long as the story is "too good to check".  And now back to reading through Sarah Palin's emails and trying to find out who's actually Trig's mom ...

* Not, of course, that there would be anything wrong with that.

Dear MSM ...

Will every one of you who ever called Sarah Palin "dumb" please shut up and sit down in the back of the room?  Grownups are talking here.

Do Space Aliens have souls?

Lone Star Parson has an answer.

How I became a gun nut

Jennifer asks how we became gun nuts.  I don't think I am a gun nut.

I'm a freedom nut.

I'm one of those people whose minds changed about a lot of things after 9/11.  That event caused a reappraisal of a lot of old, comfortable ways of thinking: the value of the technocratic elite state, the truthfulness of the media, and the position of the state and its citizens.  In each of these, I abandoned the admiration for the centralized for the admiration of devolved authority.  In this, I was really returning home to the values of the 1960s.

Trust the people.

9/11 showed the bankruptcy of the state, laying bare its incompetence to provide basic security for the people of this land.  This realization cast a cold light on a lot of the old arguments that I had kind of skimmed past before:

"Guns are dangerous."  So are cars.  Lots more people die in car accidents than in shooting accidents.

"You need a car.  You don't need a gun."  You don't need a boat, either.  Boats are dangerous, too.  Per capita accident rates are a lot higher in recreational boating than in recreational shooting.

"This isn't about accidents.  Look at the murder rate."  Yeah, and you think that the State will protect you there?  Fail.

From there, I found myself following some of the gun blogs, most notably Kim du Toit's.  What resonated there was the love of the history of firearms, especially the history of self-reliance empowered by common ownership of firearms.

And so, I see this not as a technical appreciation (although there's certainly some of that), but a moral one.  Owning a gun is a moral statement, that the People have been - and remain - not just trustworthy, but the foundation of the Republic.

I see opposition to private gun ownership as an affront to the People.  What, are they not to be trusted?  Am I not to be trusted?  If so, then the Republic is built upon a foundation of sand.

And if so, who then can we trust with the sole possession of the tools of power?  The same elite that failed so spectacularly in 9/11?  It is to laugh.

None of that requires much in the way of gun nuttery.  Freedom nuttery - yeah, it's full to the brim.

Fly away

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

- Psalm 90:10

It's now been three score and six years since D-Day.  That's a good long season.  Most of the veterans of that maelstrom have flown away, and we wonder how many - even with the miracle of modern medical science - will see four score.

What's astonishing is the number of veterans of Gettysburg who lived to see the 75th anniversary in 1938.  The world then stood on the edge of the precipice, balanced on the knife's edge as it had been in 1860.



75 years is only nine years from now.  I wonder how many won't have flown away by then, to relive that reunion of the Blue and Gray?

Kamelot - Soul Society

Some stories are timeless, and are refreshed each generation as new art forms emerge to renew a story springing deep from the soul.  Goethe's Faust is one such story - the corruption that can result from the very best of intentions.

Kamelot's version of this story, renewed as latter day Rock Opera, inspired #1 Son to go to the library in search of Goethe.  Subversive actually, targeting a new generation with thoughts that all Right Thinking People® recognize as double-plus ungood.

Somehow, I like to think that Goethe looks down on all this, and smiles.




Soul Society (Songwriters: Kamelot)

If my soul could revive
from my carnal remains
what does it matter to me
If it all fades to black
If I’m born once again
then no-one really is free
How could I be condemned
for the things that I've done
If my intentions were good
I guess I'll never know
Some things under the sun
Can never be understood

How can we believe in heaven
Human reason counters all
Ideas of a soul society
my life is just a fragment
Of this universe and all
there must be more than I can see

In the dark we're the same
In the concept of time
We're like a grain in the sand
And we strive for the flame
As if death was our aim
'Cause we cannot understand

How I wish there was heaven
All for one and one for all
a flawless soul society
Our lives are just a fragment
Of the universe and all
there may be more than we can see

How could I be condemned
for the things that I've done
If my intentions were good
I guess I'll never know
Some things under the sun
Can never be understood

How can we believe in heaven
All for one and one for all
Ideas of a soul society
my life is just a fragment
Of this universe and all
there may be more than we can see

Woah

Not only is the world a strange place, it's stranger than we can possibly imagine.  It's a place where people dress squirrels up:

This is Sugar Bush Squirrel, an actual live pet squirrel.  His master dresses him up to celebrate different events.  This was Special Ops Squirrel, hunting for Osama.

Here he is in his Dress Blues.

And here he is wearing more traditional BDUs.  It's not just military stuff, either, although quite frankly this is a little scary:

Enjoy.

Rep. Weiner could not be reached for comment

Shooting buddy Burt left a comment leading me to DamnYouAutocomplete, which had this stunningly appropriate entry:

You see, not only is Burt a fine shot, but he can fix your watches and clocks.  Lol.

I for one would welcome our new Digital Overlords, but am laughing so much that I can't quite catch my breath.

But Rep. Weiner really needs to learn the "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" thing:

Err, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Or something.

You got no stinkin' security

Get over it:

So far the "hacker group" has penetrated systems owned by Sony, PBS, the "FBI affiliate site" Infragard, security company (hah!) Unveillance and Nintendo, among others.

They're bringing back Tupac and Biggie. They're advising Nintendo on more secure httpd configurations. And they're issuing funny press releases via Twitter and Pastebin.

Pwnage.  It's what's for dinner.  And breakfast.

So for the last ten years I've been working in media, trying to raise awareness of the idea that maybe, just maybe, using insecure computers to hold your secrets, conduct your commerce and run your infrastructure is a shitty idea.

No one who mattered listened. Executives think it's FUD. They honestly think that if they keep paying their annual AV subscriptions they'll be shielded by Mr. Norton's magic cloak.

Security types like LulzSec because they're proving what a mess we're in. They're pointing at the elephant in the room and saying "LOOK AT THE GIGANTIC FUCKING ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM ZOMG WHY CAN'T YOU SEE IT??? ITS TRUNK IS IN YR COFFEE FFS!!!"

There is no security, there will be no security.

 At this point, I need to point out that I work in Internet Security, and have done so professionally since 1990 or so.  I can't write something like this, at least not if I don't want people to start looking at me funny.  But this is a very interesting article indeed.  The world has become a very interesting place.

The goal of the techie community in 1990 was to create universal connectivity, where anybody could connect to anybody, all over the world.  The goal of every CEO in the 1990s and the 2000s was to "go 'e'" - get their most strategic business processes Internet enabled.  We succeeded.

Lord, forgive us.

Via an email from reader Derek, who has an eye for this sort of thing.

Steak and biscuits and salad

It's what's for dinner.  With a side of missing the family.

Funny, nothing ever tastes as good when you're eating alone.  Even this steak.

UPDATE 12 June 2011 20:38: Dang, this steak is good. The supermarket had prime steak, and a deal on a rub.  I did a crust and seared it up in an iron skillet.  Man, it's good.

It'd be better with the family, though.

We had to destroy the Environment to save it

The Oz.Gov is fixin' to shoot feral camels.  Is it because they're an imported, invasive fauna (like rabbits)?  Nope.  It's for the carbon offsets.

The methodology involves the removal of feral camels with the emissions reduction benefit based on the difference between the estimated age of the animal at removal and the predicted average age of natural mortality.

Ya see, when they kill the camel, it stops breathing.  No more Carbon Dioxide, err, "venting" into the atmosphere.  The Oz.Gov scores some sweet, sweet carbon offsets.

You can't make this up.  As a suggestion for even more carbon offset opportunity, might I suggest that the Oz.Gov expand it's cull to include Australian MPs who voted for the whole idiotic thing in the first place?  Sadly, there are likely more of them than feral camels.  Add this to the list of idiotic "solutions" to global warming, joining starving children, killing pets, and ripping up grass.

Seriously, can all "Progressives" please just knock it off with the whole "we're so smarter than you lot" nonsense?  Shut up and sit down in the back of the room; grownups are talking.

Antonin Dvořák - Symphony no. 9 "The New World"

One thing about long distance driving is that it reminds you of just how big this country is.  It's a revelation to anyone who's done it - and it's easy to not do it in this day of Jet airliners.  A century ago in Dvořák's day, long distance travel was by train and there was no getting around the vastness of the land.

The Philadelphis Philharmonic Symphony commissioned Dvořák to write this piece.  He said that he was influenced by Native American and African American music, especially in this, the second (Largo) movement.



As for me, I've never picked up on American themes, although some of those from his native Bohemia seem to sneak in.  Still, it's a nice sentiment.

This is by far Dvořák's most famous piece, although this may be more familiar to most people.

What's sad is that it's true

The Czar of Muscovy uncovers the Lamestream Media's Facebook post about Sarah Palin's emails.

Long distance driving

Back in Austin, at Forward Operating Base Borepatch.  14 ½ hours from Atlanta, which is pretty good.  It's also faster than driving with #1 Son, which is strange - after all, you're always fresher when you can trade off drivers.  This, BTW, is why airliners have both pilots and co-pilots.  Well, that and a million governmental regulations, but you know what I mean.

I think what made it faster was that I didn't stop as much - really just for a gas/comfort break ever 3 hours or so.  I didn't drive fast - never more than 10 MPH over the speed limit, so just being disciplined about keeping the wheels turning seems to pay dividends.

But nearly 900 miles in under 15 hours isn't so bad, really.  Especially by yourself.  Over 60 MPH average, including stops.

But oy, what a day.  Posting will be a little delayed today, since I'm pretty wiped out.

Dear iPhone

Please stop autocorrecting all my swear words, you piece of shut.

- Posted from my iPhone

(just kidding, and this is totally stolen from an email from my cousin Mike)

(but srlsy, Apple, you're a piece of shut)

Bobby Bare - 500 Miles Away From Home

I'm heading back to Austin from a couple of weeks back home with the family.  There's always a tug at the heartstrings when you point your wheels towards that distant horizon, and one of Country's greats - someone you may never have heard of - captured that looking back over your shoulder.

After he was discovered by Chet Atkins, Bobby Dare won won two Grammys and had a bunch of top 10 songs in the 1960s.  It's old school: no Patsy Cline "Countrypolitan" sophistication here, just working man's guitar and rhyme scheme.  Growing up, this was the Country music I hated.  Now, I appreciate how it captures a blue note from the days when men were expected to be men - to do what needed to be done, without complaining, or a publicist to get a slot on Oprah.

A lot of men had to travel far from their families to make a living.  Some still do.  Country music has some songs for them.



500 Miles Away From Home (Songwriter: Hedy West)

I'm five hundred miles away from home
Teardrops fell on mama's note,
when I read the things she wrote
She said "We miss you son, we love you, come on home"
Well I didn't have to pack, I had it all right on my back
Now I'm five hundred miles away from home

Away from home, away from home
Cold and tired and all alone
Yes I'm five hundred miles away from home

I know this is the same coat
I took when I left home
But it sure looks different now
And I guess I look different too
But time changes everything
I wonder what they'll say,
When they see their boy lookin' this way
Oh, I wonder what they'll say when I get home

Can't remember when I ate, it's just thumb and walk and wait
And I'm still five hundred miles away from home
If my love had been just right, I'd be with them all tonight
But I'm still five hundred miles away from home

Away from home, away from home
Cold and tired and all alone
Yes I'm five hundred miles away from home
Oh, I'm still five hundred miles away from home

(Photo source)

Pretty in pink

Yeah, I drank it.  Lychee martini.

A real man is confident in his sexuality.  And his booze.

Posted via Blogaway from my Android phone

Quote of the Day

Foseti brings it:

Andrew Sullivan temporarily stops blogging about the real mother of Trig Palin for long enough to blog that people should respect Weiner’s privacy. There really is no dumber species than the mainstream pundit.

But remember, Andy's smarter than you.  Nicer, too.

Firearms and Reloading manuals

Rick emails to point out this guy who has collected an astonishing number of manuals.  Hundreds of them.  He generously is hosting these PDFs for our benefit, but asks that if you have one that he doesn't, to please send it to him.

Firearms manuals and stuff (like Maglite and Surefire)

Reloading stuff (scroll down)

The series of tubes, helping your shoulder thing go up.  Well done.

The formula for "Twilight"

This about sums it up.



This is the female equivalent of "hot twin cheerleaders dig the Community College dropout" thing that men seem find so easy to relate to.  I don't want to go any further into that analysis, because I'm afraid that the analogy wouldn't be close, but precise.

So if this hypothesis is correct (I'm waiting for a big National Academy of Sciences grant to make it all statistically valid and sciency), then men, that's what Twilight is.  You're welcome.

Via #2 Son.

My only comments on Rep. Weiner

Back In The Day, I had to take a polygraph exam before Three Letter Intelligence Agency granted me a security clearance, and had to take another one - this time for Counter-Espionage purposes several years later.  The examiners were extremely interested in my sexual orientation.  That seemed odd, until someone explained that they couldn't care less what I did in my extra-curricular activities.

They wanted to know if I were in the closet, because it would mean that I could be blackmailed.  Transparently gay was no problem getting a Top Secret clearance, because everyone if already knew,  the KGB would have no leverage.

The Czar of Muscovy is absolutely correct that Rep. Weiner should resign, because his wife is Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State, and therefore is a huge blackmail target.  With his clear inability to exercise sober judgement, our foreign policy is at risk.

The only other thing I'll add is that had Rep. Weiner tweeted a pic of his junk while he was driving, that would have been epic.

Online Banking begins to crumble

Oh, dear:

A judge in Maine has ruled that a bank that allowed hackers to steal more than $300,000 from a customer’s online account isn’t responsible for the lost money, saying the customer should have done more to protect the account credentials.

...

Patco Construction Company, a family-owned business in Sanford Maine, sued Ocean Bank, which is owned by People’s United Bank, after discovering in May 2009 that hackers were siphoning about $100,000 per day from its online bank account. The hackers had sent a malicious email to employees that allowed them to surreptitiously install the Zeus password-stealing trojan on an employee computer.

Up until now, banks have covered this sort of loss, as a cost of doing business.  Now, that cost has hit a pain threshold.

From customer's perspective, there's simply no way that the typical customer can protect themselves from this sort of attack.  Zeus was perhaps the biggest trojan targeting online banking.  Millions of computers got infected.  If the established legal doctrine is "you're responsible for protecting yourself" then you can sum online banking up in two words:


Game Over.

I expect that this is far from being over, but this is seriously bad juju.  Anyone who does online banking should think twice.

And I thought that East Cobb was supposed to be snootier than this

There goes the neighborhood:

Barely a month after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued instructions for preparing for a zombie apocalypse, the undead will be shuffling into Cobb County.

On Monday, the AMC series "The Walking Dead" will be filming scenes near the Cobb Galleria Centre for its second season. The Georgia Department of Transportation has approved road closures on Cobb Galleria Parkway from Akers Mill Road to Cumberland Boulevard; on Riverwood Parkway, from Cobb Galleria Parkway to Cobb Parkway; and at Cobb Parkway and Riverwood Parkway.

The closures are scheduled from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The county will set up two message boards, one in each direction, on Cobb Galleria Parkway alerting commuters of the closures and of a detour.

No doubt signs like this:

Via email from Rick.

The most depressing thing I've read is a long time

"I remember that country. I lived there when I was a boy."

Yeah, me too.

Pets need proper weapons, too

About right, that.  There are a bunch more, brought to our attention via #2 Son.

TheOnesDay® No. 4

It's Wednesday, which means it's time for more mockery of the First Ego.

President Obama decided to do one of his public addresses against the backdrop of an American farm, but the ceremony couldn't get started because of all the flies buzzing around his head. He demanded to know why the flies wouldn't leave, so the farmer explained to him, "Well, those are called circle flies. They always circle around the back end of horses."

The President angrily replied, "Hey, are you saying that I'm a horse's ass?" The farmer answered, "No Sir, Mister President. I would never call someone a horse's ass. It's hard to fool them flies though."

The UN and the US Constitution

The short story: the UN doesn't like our Constitution, because it places explicit limits of government power (in theory, at least; it's not clear that the 4th Amendment actually means anything anymore).

The long answer: The UN, like all institutions, is about increasing its power.  It has done this via a combination of third world bloc voting and western progressive SWPL guilt.  Unfortunately for the UN, it hasn't gotten very far.  The Bush 43 administration in particular was a disaster for the UN: Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, a biological weapons treaty that allowed UN inspectors to go anywhere they wanted at any time: all were explicitly rejected as being either undesirable (Kyoto) or unconstitutional.

And now the UN is back again, singing the same old song.  This time, it's about international arms trafficking:

Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.

Of course, it's actually about the international elite's desire to control everything.  No surprise there.

This is pretty interesting, because the actual terms of the treaty are no public.  As a result, all the analysis I've seen to date is essentially nothing but conjecture.  So we'll have to wait and see for the details.

I'm quite skeptical that the Senate (even with a majority of Democrats) would ratify something strongly anti-firearms.  They don't have the guts.  I also expect to see nothing about this treaty until after 2012 - no ratification vote will be scheduled in the run up to the election.

But one thing is not conjecture: this Administration has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to implement by regulatory fiat what it can't get Congress to pass. Cap and Trade, hold up of drilling permits, bombing of Libya - there's quite an impressive list of actions the Imperial Obama Administration has taken without any sort of vote at all.  It would be trivial for them to say that they will honor the terms of the treaty, vote or no vote, and "an expression of American sincerity".  BATFE would begin drafting regulations.

How do we know this?  Obama himself told us.  Back in the 2008 election, he was asked whether he'd try to take away people's guns.  His reply?

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said.

And so the danger is not the UN.  Of course they don't like our Constitution.  They can't do anything about it.  The Obama Administration?  They'll just ignore it.  That's the ball to keep your eye on.

Don't mess with Texas drafthouses

The Alamo Draft House in Austin tells people to please not text during the films (it's a cinema drafthouse).  Some people don't like this.  The Alamo Drafthouse likes that.



Awesome.

So what caused the bubbles?

We're told by a credulous media that it was Cowboy Capitalism that inclated the housing bubble and collapsed the financial markets.  The solution, we're told, is iron regulation.

So what did cause the housing bubble?  The media are an bunch of idiots - biased idiots, at that - and so you have to ignore them.  The Antiplanner has a different take, and you need to read the whole thing:

As the Antiplanner noted in recent posts, a lot of factors contributed to the recent housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. But only two factors were so crucial that, without them, the crisis would not have happened.


The two crucial factors were growth-management planning and inadequate ratings of financial risk. Growth-management planning–urban-growth boundaries, greenbelts, growth limits, and other policies aimed at controlling where or how fast regions grow–had three major effects on the economy.

It was Progressive SWPL policies wot dun it.  Like I said, RTWT, but how can artificially restricting the supply of Real Estate have any other effect than bidding up the price of land?  Supply/demand, anyone?  Only a Harvard Law Review president could be surprised that prices went up like a rocket.

For a while.

Most of the narratives of the financial crisis make it clear that, at many critical points in the growth of the housing bubble, the problems could have been avoided by more accurate ratings. Better ratings would have both reduced the size of the bubble (by forcing tighter credit and reducing speculation) and contained its effects on the rest of the economy (by keeping major banks and other financial institutions from being exposed to declining housing prices).

As the Antiplanner previously noted, the ratings agencies probably would have done a more responsible job if they were working for bond buyers rather than sellers. That was the case before the Securities and Exchange Commission effectively turned the agencies into a legal oligopoly. Introducing more competition into the ratings business is one way to avoid these problems in the future.

Why, in all the millions of column-inches of printer's ink spilled on this crisis, have we not read about incompetence at the SEC?  Oh, I remember - all Bad Things happen because of evil Rethuglicans, and you should never let a crisis go to waste - especially when a bunch of Columbia J-School types can get some swell high paying jobs working as press aides for various Democratic congressional types.  Or the SEC. 

This is a must-read post, and I don't say that very often.

In re: "International Legitimacy"

One last thing to add to yesterday's post about the Right Thinking People® who think that America is so terrible and we should be "more like Europe" and "strive for International Legitimacy", I have one question:

What is this "International Legitimacy" of which you speak?

Do you mean the United Nations and their Human Rights Council that until recently had Syria as a sitting member in good standing?  It brings to mind the (almost certainly apocryphal) story of Gandhi, who was asked what he thought of Western Civilization.  He is said to have replied "That would be very nice indeed."

So what do I think about International Legitimacy?  That would be very nice indeed.

And that's a damned shame.  At this point I put on my old leftie hat and say that the world needs a vigorous sense of International Legitimacy.  Damned lefties have become so tribal that they can't even do what an honest left would do any more.  Stop blaming Sarah Palin for everything, and cut off the UN until they wise up, and you can actually - you know - help some poor people.  Until then, you're just a bunch of third rate intellectual poseurs trying to make yourselves feel better with a bunch of SWPL.

J'accuse, lefties.

A play within a play

One of the laziest tropes among playwrights is the play-within-the-play, where the actors act on putting on a play.  It's cliche, and even The Bard of Stratford himself fell into this, these four centuries ago.




In Shakespeare's defense, he may have been an early practitioner of the art.

We've just seen this play out on the TV News, with Andrew Breitbart's astonishing cooption of Rep. Weiner's presser.  The other newsmen started questioning Breitbart, who took the podium to answer his fellow news hounds:

What was interesting is that Andrew Breitbart, the non-authorized journalist who broke the story about Representative Wiener's wiener, had heard about the press conference, happened to be in New York at the time and decided to drop in and see what the good Representative had to say.

When the authorized journalists realized he was there, they started asking him questions, so he took the stage and began answering them. 

It's a play within a play.  The ostensible story is Rep. Weiner's, err, weiner.  The real story is the collapse of the news media, on camera.  The lack of self-awareness on display is simply mind boggling.  As with the lazy playwright, the MSM is seemingly entirely unaware that they're the one in the spotlight:

The video embedded in the linked story cuts off before this occurred, and I doubt you'll see much about it in the main stream media, but one of the authorized journalists asked Breitbart a question that just blew my doors off.

I may not be remembering it verbatim, but it was something to the effect of:

"What did you hope to accomplish by breaking this story."

Um.

Excuse me?

What does ANY journalist hope to accomplish by breaking ANY news story?

Isn't it supposed to be informing the public about the news?

And so - as with King Claudius - we see the truth revealed from their own reaction. 

The Left likes to pride itself on its intelligence and perception.  They don't get it that they're Claudius and Gertrude.  And yet they keep insisting that they're the smart ones, as they keep stumbling into their enemy's trap.  Fascinating.

Can I please have a higher caliber drivel?  This is drivel of a shockingly low caliber.

Blood for oil

The one thing that nobody's talking about with respect to the Libya fiasco is the French oil contracts.  How is it that you can talk about the situation there without mentioning TotalFinaElf?

And while we're on the subject of NATO French foreign policy, how come nobody talks about the Rwanda genocide without talking about who armed and enabled the genocidaires? *COUGH* Mitterand*COUGH*

Of course, that wasn't for oil concessions, it was for francophone pride.

And while we're talking about our European "betters" (especially those of the francophone type), remember the Belgian Congo and Leopoldville?  What, you never heard about this at University?

The caption reads: A father stares at the hands of his five year-old daughter, which were severed as a punishment for having harvested too little caoutchouc/rubber

Is it OK to say that anyone who says we need to ape the French or the Belgians is (a) ignorant or (b) entirely, thoroughly, hopelessly corrupt.  Don't forget that our Libya intervention is being run from Brussels and Paris.

And can every leftie who ever said no blood for oil just shut up and sit down in the back of the room?  Grownups are talking here.  It's drivel, and drivel of a shockingly low quality.  In the future, please give us a higher caliber drivel.

Canadian government officials violate student's First Amendment rights

Oh, the humanity:

Jack Christie’s videos are the kind of thing you see every day on the Internet. Crudely animated stick figures swear and fire automatic rifles. There are off-colour jokes about everything from race to pedophilia to cocaine. Absurd incidents – such as the assassination of an evil talking mango – seem to happen at random.

But administrators at the Grade 12 student’s Whitby high school were so offended when they found the animations on YouTube last month, they sent him home and called the police. He is being kept out of school during the investigation.

They told me that if I voted for John McCain, government apparatchiks would punish citizens for double-plus ungood thought crime, and they were right!  And they're so tricky about it that it's up in Canada, no less!

And the school seems to take an expansive view of their power over their charges:

A spokeswoman for the Durham District School Board refused to discuss the case, citing confidentiality laws, but obliquely explained the school’s actions: “If something is considered detrimental to the positive moral tone of the school, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen inside the school [for us to get involved],” said Andrea Pidwerbecki.

What could possibly go wrong?

Sample size

A new "scientific" paper is out, hyperventilating that Global Warming
Climate Change Space Aliens whatever today's approved marketing name for ZOMG Thermageddon!!!1!!eleventy! will heat up the oceans and kill all the fish.

There's only one teeny tiny problem with the study: the sample size of the fish that were studied was two.  Yup, two fish.  I guess that's better than one.

Can we please just have every Progressive in the land shut up about the "Republican War On Science"?  This is drivel of a shockingly low caliber.  Please provide us with higher caliber drivel in the future.

UPDATE 6 June 2011 16:30: Weer'd Beard  has a must read follow-up.

Anniversary

Yesterday would have been Mom and Dad's 56th.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world which I find myself walking around in the daytime and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I sure wish I lived closer to Mom.  She had friends to go with her to the cemetery, but it feels like it should have been me.

How can it be ...

... that I'd never taken the kids to a Renaissance Festival?

#1 Son is away visiting friends, but #2 Son was completely taken in by the whole spectacle.  Come for the jousting, stay for the chicks in corsets.  Or something.

What a fun day.  Only way it could have been better is if JayG had come with us, dressed up in Ren Faire finery and carrying his Bat'leth. 

Strange fascination

Sarah Palin's at it again.  Which means making all Right Thinking People® fume.  They hate her with the fire of a thousand suns, but they can't stop looking.

What is it about her?  Is the a genius?  Or not?  Or are these even the right questions?

What a strange attraction she has for some people.  They claim to be repulsed, but can't bring themselves to look away.  Few creatures have captured our imaginations like Sarah Palin ...

Mozart - Queen of the Night

What if you had a voice so outstanding that Mozart wrote an aria that only you could sing?  And what happens when someone else tries to sing it?

Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer had an astonishingly high range and a voice that "agile" in the extreme.  Mozart wrote an aria that sounds nearly impossible to sing.  The fireworks start around 40 seconds in.



This has always been considered an intimidating piece to perform, one that separates the truly great sopranos from the rest of the pack.  Of course, some sopranos rush in where Angels fear to tread.

Florence Jenkins was one of these.  Her self-regard was not matched by her tone, pitch, or range, but because she was independently wealthy she acquired the reputation as the worst soprano in the world.  She wasn't just bad, she was famously bad.  Fortunately, she made a record, which (if you are up to it) you can listen to at Wikipedia.  Don't say you haven't been warned.

The best and the worst, sublime and ridiculous.  There's often just a hair's breadth between them.

Q. What do you do when your Agent tells you to walk away from the other 6 Bond films in your contract?

A. You shoot him with your Walther PPK.

George Lazenby didn't.  Instead, he walked away from his 7 picture deal after filming On Her Majesty's Secret Service, at the advice of his agent who thought that "secret service" flicks would go nowhere in the 1970s.  And so George went from working with Diana Rigg (Best. Bond. Girl. EVAH.) and Telly Savalas to doing Bruce Lee movies after Bruce Lee died and Emmanuelle.

If this isn't the most spectacular FAIL in acting history, I'm not sure what is.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service has developed a cult following.  First of all, you have Diana Rigg (did I mention that she was the Best. Bond. Girl. EVAH?).  Second, you had a Bond that was quite out of the normal Bond mainstream - less suave and sure of himself, and actually more like Ian Flemming's Bond in the books.  Quite frankly, the only other Bond who did that was another short-lived Bond actor, Timothy Dalton.  There was a darkness and vulnerability that was only seen before in Lazenby's.

Interestingly, Dalton had turned down the part when Connery and the Bond franchise parted ways.  Dalton was only 21, and felt that he needed to mature to do the role justice.  He was right.  Two decades later, he got his second chance.

Lazenby never did, but he walked away from a signed contract.  Interestingly, he and Roger Moore seem to be email buddies, but that's likely cold comfort.  That spectacularly bad decision has haunted Lazenby his whole life.  Follow-on decisions have been equally bad, like marrying a woman 25 years his junior (tennis star Pam Shriver) and having kids when he was in his sixties.  Dude, in that situation, she has a license to kill ...

But this is an interesting film.  Bond aficionados already know this.  And did I mention that Diana Rigg was the Best. Bond. Girl. EVAH?

The bare minimum for a barber shop

I know that she wantes me to take #2 Son to the upscale barber shop, and it's nice.  It's also a barber shop, not a salon, so #2 Son won't grow up to be a hairdresser or a fashion designer.  Or something.

And while the magazines are very upscale indeed (Travel & Leisure, Wine Spectator, Scientific American), I just have to say that it's not a proper barber shop without Car & Driver or Guns & Ammo.

Just sayin'.

Posted via Blogaway from my Android phone

UPDATE 4 June 2011 18:30: I spoke too soon.  You can have a cold beer or a passable (Jack Daniel's/Maker's Mark) bourbon and branch while you get shorn.  I may go back for a proper straight-edge razor shave.  With Bourbon chaser ...

All in all, a Man's barber shop, it seems.

Boating safety

Albert Rasch posts a timely reminder that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, particularly when you're out in a boat.  Weather can change suddenly, someone can call overboard, and fire is perhaps the sailor's oldest terror.

The only thing that I'd add to his excellent suggestion is to check in your area to see if the Coast Guard Auxiliary are offering their free Vessel Safety Checks:



The Coast Guard Auxiliary is a volunteer organization that performs safety checks, search and rescue, and harbor security patrols - for example, keeping people from anchoring in the ditch zone at the Quonset Air Show.  It's made up of boating enthusiasts who get quite a lot of training and who volunteer their time.

If you can't find them in your neck of the woods, you can get the Vessel Safety Check PDF checklist here.  It's entirely sensible, and you can check yourself off before casting off.

Full disclosure: I used to be in the CG AUX.  While I'm no longer active in the group, I know a lot more about boats now then when I joined up.

Wynn Stewart - I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You

Country music values a clever turn of phrase, and a thousand songs have been little more than a place to hang a funny or memorable line.  Wynn Stewart was what we'd today consider a second string singer in the  1960s and 70s, but his influence went far beyond the series of clever song he wrote (Another Day, Another Dollar and Love Ain't Worth A Dime Unless It's Free were two of his other memorable hits).

Stewart "found" Merle Haggard, signed him to his band, and wrote his his first few songs that Haggard used to get started.  Buck Owens later said that Stewart was a major influence on his sound, and Owens was a major influence on Ringo Starr. Along the way, he managed to collect most of Lefty Frizzell's band.

That's a portrait of a generous man, one who deserves more fame then he ended with.

I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You (Songwriter: Wynn Stewart)

I keep forgettin' not to remember you
to get you out of my mind
Never more to be swayin' by all of your charms
I keep forgettin' not to remember you
oh so much of the time
How I wish you had stayed here in my arms

There's no sleep for me no more
I stay awake and walk the floor
I keep forgettin' that we're supposed to be true
Loneliness is my downfall
for some time I almost climb the wall
I keep forgettin' that I've forgot about you

I can't get used to it there's no end to it
feeling lonely all day
Some old mem'ry's always coming around
And that old memory comes to torture me
and I know right away
That I'll have to forget all over again

There's no sleep for me no more
I stay awake and walk the floor
I keep forgettin' that we're supposed to be true
Loneliness is my downfall
for some time I almost climb the wall
I keep forgettin' that I've forgot about you

I keep forgettin' that I've forgot about you

Marketing fail

One thing about playing in the startup game is that the companies are all really small (duh!).  And so, they make freshman style mistakes, because (a) they haven't been around the block before, and (b) because of that, they just don' even think that something might be a problem.

Back in the 1990s, I was at a small internet security startup called Internet Security Systems.  ISS was filled with young, hard charging techies that were going to change the world.  In some ways, we did, but we made a bunch of mistakes along the way.

Electra Snoophard was one.

The marketing department was looking to be creative, and to grab some attention from the press - always a difficult task.  They also wanted to highlight the fun, hard charging, "break the rules" company culture.  And so instead of a traditional ad campaign, they made a comic book.  Let me set the Wayback Machine to 1998 so you get the flavor of this from someone on the outside:

We could be heroes

What do these words remind you of - Kapow! Bam! Thwam! Biff! Splat!?

No, it's not the aftermath of a distributor's Christmas party, it's actually a nice little summary of Internet Security Systems' (ISS') latest 'hello, please notice our company' marketing campaign type thing. The idea centres around a cartoon featuring ISS' own superhero, who saves the day. The only problem is that instead of giving its main guy a dynamic name like Batman or Superman, ISS has called its hero RealSecure, which oddly enough is the name of its new product - fancy that.

According to this pile of pulp fiction, RealSecure protects your network from dastardly villains like a nasty cyberpunk bloke and saucy minx Electra Snoophard, who would like to get her hands on your 'illegal lengths'. Imagine, if other techie companies used their products in this way, then maybe slogans like 'keep your hands off my token ring' could one day become a reality.

Yuk, yuk.  Alas, I have no picture of Electra Snoophard (although somewhere I do have a copy of the comic, and so I guess I could scan it).  But it really doesn't matter - picture that description of a comic book "saucy minx", and you have precisely the right idea.

I wish I had a dollar for every female customer who reminded me of Electra Snoophard.  Some were explicitly offended, some pointedly questioned whether ISS was mature enough to do business with, some took a more lighthearted angle - but it was clear that they didn't bring it up because they thought it was nifty neat-o keen.

They remembered, for years.  And the ISS marketing department at the time had no idea that they were about to dig a hole that they'd have to spend years climbing out of.  They just didn't have any idea.

Breda sees something similar in gunnie land:

So, sure...I understand gunbunnies. Or Sniper Babes, or Hot Shots, or Ammo Girls...or whatever you want to call them. Paid to be the pretty giggle and jiggle that will hopefully hypnotize gun nuts into forking over cash. If a little tits and ass makes a guy buy more bang and brass then hooray, capitalism! I get it. Really. But I don't have to like it.

Companies that employ this tactic perpetuate the "guns are a guy thing" myth that for so long has kept women away from the gun culture and, consequently, the most reliable self defense tools available.

There's an old saying that you should never make an enemy by accident.  Marketing, sadly, if filled with examples of companies that haven't learned this.  Like the ISS marketing team, they just don't realize they're doing this.

I think that this was Breda's point.  Not that sex sells (as she repeatedly pointed out in the comments), but that the companies just don't Get It that they're peeing in the cornflakes.  The "empty headed" ones aren't the booth bimbos, but the marketing directors.

Brigid likes to say that confidence is the best cosmetic.  I'd add that confidence sells.  The "Thin is sexy" Kahr ad was a huge miss, because instead of highlighting the model's actual quite compelling marksmanship skills (confidence), it played to cheesecake.  Why not get Electra Snoophard?

One "oops" offsets a dozen "attaboys".  Given how hard it is to get even a single attaboy in marketing, this seems like it would be the easiest thing for the industry to fix.  But what do I know?  The industry seems fine with using murderers as pitch men.

Fail.

Can everyone please just knock it off with the "51% of people don't pay income tax" thing?

Even Scott Adams is getting into the game.

Look, it's not about income taxes.  It's about taxes, and most of the folks who pay no income taxes pay a boatload of other taxes.  The poor get screwed by government - the median family pays essentially no income taxes, but roughly 25% of their income in taxes.  There are essentially no people at all in this country that don't pay taxes (hello? Sales tax?). 

None.  Nada.  Zip.  When you look at the percentage of total income confiscated by taxes from the poor, it's shockingly high.  Nice job, "progressives"!

All this talk about a "tipping point" has it precisely backwards.  Most of the middle class/lower middle class are natural allies with us in the fight for smaller government.  If the GOP weren't the Stupid Party, they'd flog this to victory after victory, harnessing the rage of the poor against the Democrats.  But then again, if I were French, you'd call me Jacques.  They don't particularly want to reduce government receipts much, do they?  Coke party, Pepsi party.

Seriously, all this focus on income tax is like a dieter who only counts the calories at dinner.

Via Fosetti.

The man responsible for James Bond packing a Walther PPK

Don emails to point out this story of a man who didn't like how James Bond originally carried a .25 ACP.  He disapproved so much that he wrote to Ian Flemming:

I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady's gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.

Flemming seems not to have been particularly knowledgeable about firearms, and was delighted with his correspondent's lengthy letter of advice.  So much so, in fact, that he wrote a quite gracious reply:

I really am most grateful for your splendid letter of May 23rd.

You have entirely convinced me and I propose, perhaps not in the next volume of James Bond's memoirs but, in the subsequent one, to change his weapons in accordance with your instructions.

Since I am not in the habit of stealing another man's expertise, I shall ask you in due course to accept remuneration for your most valuable technical aid.

Incidentally, can you suggest where I can see a .38 Airweight in London. Who would have one?

The next novel (Dr. No) found Bond rearmed by a certain Maj. Boothroyd.  The name of Flemming's correspondent?  Geoffrey Boothroyd.



While it's unclear whether Flemming was able to pull strings with the studios to get Boothroyd hired as a technical adviser to the films, Mr. Boothroyd was immortalized by the BBC in this video, shot during the filming of Goldfinger.  Mr. Boothroyd related the story in his own words.



AFAIK, the only Bond film where he packs a revolver is Live And Let Die.  It's a .44 Magnum, which seems a bit bulky for spy work.  But the PPK is a fine pistol.

Via Metafilter, where the comments are pretty interesting.  Boothroyd's Wikipedia entry is pretty interesting, too.  Seems he was quite a prolific firearms writer.  And the comments at Letters of Note are pretty interesting, especially this one:

Greg said...

I wish adults still interacted like this. From here on out, I am going to type all my correspondence on an Underwood 5.

Sing it, brother.  Or Waterman fountain pen ...

The Internet is a dangerous place, mkay?

Let's be safe out there.  Via the indispensable Theo Spark.

Benjamin Franklin wept

Franklin was not just a statesman, but one of the most famous scientists of his day.  His early experiments in electricity were dangerous, but led to not just major advances in the understanding of current flow, but his invention of the Lightning Rod has saved countless lives.

Franklin, of course, was a Pennsylvanian.  How the scientific standards of his beloved state have fallen.

Penn State's Professor Donald Brown has published an astonishing "scientific" paper, saying that despite the lack of statistically significant data linking climate change to increased tornado activity, scientists are nonetheless ethically bound to report that they are:

And so, in summary, when it comes to tornadoes and climate change there is reason to believe that tornado caused destruction will increase due to human induced climate change and also reason for doubt.

Many commenting on the connection between climate change and destructive tornado equate the lack of proof with the lack of any scientific evidence. In so doing they are implicitly claiming only absolute proof counties as evidence. Yet, as we have seen, it would be untruthful to conclude there is no scientific basis for connecting climate change to more damaging tornadoes. Climate change will clearly enhance certain atmospheric conditions that should lead to more intense and frequent tornadoes while possibly diminishing others. Evidence of a connection exists despite lack of conclusive proof.

Then show us your (statistically valid) data.

This is not just nonsense, but quite dangerous nonsense.  The history of science is littered with the carcases of beautiful - even compelling - ideas that simply never had data show them to be likely.  And so, science has quite rightly passed them by, although no doubt sometimes with a longing glance cast over the shoulder.  It is truly said that the scientist proposes, and nature disposes.  If it's true, then the data will support it.  If the data doesn't support it, then you move on.

I left a comment to that effect on the Penn State server.  Comments are moderated there, and so I reproduce the comment here in the event that Dr. Brown finds he can't take the heat, but doesn't want to get out of the Climate Change kitchen.  Sadly, this seems frequent at the pro-AGW sites.

Dr. Brown, the reason that science developed a high reputation in the Western World - as opposed, say, to politics - is because it relied on data.  Hypotheses not supported by data, especially those not supported by statistically significant data have traditionally been rejected by scientists past.  This has, as I'm sure you well know, been the direct cause of scientific advancement and public esteem.

And you refuse to reject your hypothesis, even while freely admitting that you have no statistically significant data to support it.  Indeed, you seem cheerful in making this astonishing (for a scientist) admission.

And so, you are simultaneously attempting to wrap yourself in the hard won prestige of past scientists while engaging is what appears to be politics.  If this is the norm, what is to keep public support in the sciences from falling?

Another question is whether your article here was in fact able to pass peer review.  Even in this degraded age, one hopes not.

My final question is whether your argument could not have been used to defend phlogiston, or phrenology, or eugenics.  Trofim Lysenko could not be reached for comment.

I'm afraid that this is nonsense of the most astonishingly pathetic caliber.  Please give us a higher caliber nonsense in the future.

A bit harsh, I'm afraid.  But quite frankly, it is nonsense, and it is a shockingly pathetic caliber of nonsense.  Until the people who spout this are regularly called out for it, we will continue to see this low-quality drivel.  Franklin would have scoffed.

Data, please.  Or later, please.  Right now, the Null Hypothesis is beating you like a rented mule.

(via)

On this day in history ...

In 455, the Vandals sacked the Eternal City of Rome, pillaging it for two whole weeks, giving rise to a new noun in the vernacular dictionary, and proving that the Roman people's superstitious belief that what had been in the past was the way things would forever be was not such a good idea.

In 1692, Bridget Bishop was convicted by the Salem Court of witchcraft, proving that the Salem people's superstitious belief that what had been in the past was the way things would forever be was not such a good idea.

In 1953, Elizabeth Battenburg was crowned Elizabeth II Regina,  proving that the UK's people's superstitious belief that what had been in the past was the way things would forever be was not such a good idea.

"It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs."

Said His Royal Highness Prince Philip, about Tom Jones.  Proving conclusively that at his age, and in his position, the only further service he can perform for Britannia is to die.

The [UK] Independent has that, and 89 more.

As it has often been said, it's better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Boy, howdy, and the Euros like to call us dumb?

Oh, and best wishes to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, who was crowned 48 years ago today.  You sure picked a winner, Bess.

Welcome to the malware world, Mac users

It's a trifecta, and the only thing surprising is just how fast this is evolving.

First up, Mac malware can now install without prompting you for a password:

Earlier rogue anti-virus strains, such as MacDefender, need permission to run, a hurdle MacGuard neatly sidesteps. MacGuard works on the premise that home users have administrator rights, meaning they don't need to enter the administrator password to install software in the Applications folder.

MacGuard downloads itself into this folder rather than the default download folder. This downloader connects to malicious IP addresses hidden in its own resources folder. The appearance of the malware means that advice to treat all unexpected requests for the administrator password with suspicion becomes moot.

This is exceptionally bad juju - silent "drive by" downloads have been one of the worst aspects of the Windows security environment for years, because even security savvy users are vulnerable.  Welcome to the party, Mac fanboys!

Second, Apple has finally admitted that malware is a big problem, and has released a malware cleaner:

Apple has updated its Mac operating system to protect against a malicious application that has been hoodwinked untold numbers of users by masquerading as legitimate security software that warns they have serious infections on their machines.

Apple issued Security Update 2011-003 on Tuesday to update Mac OS X to detect for MacDefender, one of several trojans that gets installed through an elaborate ruse that's become almost a rite of passage for owners of machines running Microsoft Windows. Those behind the scareware hook their victims by presenting them with web images that depict an antivirus scan taking place on their machines. The images falsely claim users have serious malware infections and urge them to download and install the antivirus package. Those who fall for the scam are then infected.

If you're running OS X run, do not walk to get the update. 

Third, it's not at all clear that this will solve the problem:

Just hours after Apple updated a security update to protect Mac users against a rash of scareware attacks, a new variant began circulating that completely bypasses the malware-blocking measure.

The trojan arrives in a file called mdinstall.pkg and installs MacGuard, a malicious application that masquerades as security software the user needs to clean a Mac of some nasty infections said to be discovered during a recent hard drive scan. As reported repeatedly during recent days, a series of clever social engineering attacks on Google, Facebook and elsewhere have been besieging Mac users and tricking a fair percentage of them into installing the rogue antivirus packages.

 The "security is better on Mac" meme is pretty well dead in the water now.  We see all of the behavior on OS X that we see on Windows - rapidly mutating and evolving malware that bypasses current security controls.

About all I have to add is that if Linux hits 7-8% of the desktop market, it will go through precisely the same thing.

And for a touch of black humor, this has to be shown:



That's OK - I'll be fine.  Oooooh kaaaay, then.

Zombieland top 5 rules

Done in Lego.



Just because I haven't posted much lego stuff lately.

TheOnesDay® No. 3

Barack Obama's ego is so big that it has applied for statehood.  If accepted into the Union, it would be the fifth largest.

Remember Alinsky's Rules, folks.  Mockery.