Offered without comment

Ringo Starr - Act Naturally

The new Country-Rock-Pop sound out of Nashville ("new" in the last 20 years) has a lot of fans.  Sometimes the Country station gets tuned in on the radio.

But not everyone likes that sound. Some people prefer the old school sound that you could only get from Country. Some people, like Ringo Starr.

Usually in these Saturday Redneck posts, I give some background on the artist, by way of introduction. It would be kind of silly to do that for Ringo. It's not for nothing that there's a dismissive saying about over-hyped bands, Bigger than the Beatles.

Ringo likes his Country music, enough so that the Beatles covered Buck Owen's 1960s hit, Act Naturally. When the Beatles came to America in 1965, they famously appeared on Ed Sullivan's wildly popular TV show, where they performed the Country song. In 1989, Ringo teamed up with Buck to release the song again. This was the only time that Ringo made it to the Country Music charts, but managed a very respectable top 30. Paul McCartney and Wings also recorded a Country song.

So what gives with the Beatles - likely the greatest rock band of all time - and Country music? Well, it wasn't Country-Rock-Pop, a sound that was blended to appeal to all sorts of markets. It was the attraction of a sound true to its roots, of a long and honest history of music about a particular state of mind. Good enough for the Beatles.

Ringo made a video of this song with Buck. It's pretty silly.



Act Naturally (Songwriter: Johnny Russell)

They're gonna put me in the movies
They're gonna make a big star out of me
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely
And all I have to do is act naturally

Well, I bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movie's gonna make me a big star,
'Cause I can play the part so well

Well, I hope you come and see me in the movie
Then I'll know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that ever hit the big time
And all I have to do is act naturally

We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely
Begging down upon his bended knee
I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing
All I have to do is act naturally

Three words

Bacon wrapped hotdogs.

Also, they're really good.

"Smart" Power meters - watch your electric bill

Almost a year ago, I warned of the disaster that is "Smart" power meters:

And the Obama administration - no doubt at the behest of the Greens - is paving the way. Billions of dollars in the "stimulus" plan is for purchase and deployment of "smart" power meters, centrally controlled network devices that can let power be remotely turned on or off. The power companies like them because it makes it easy to implement "rolling blackouts" - think California in 1999. The Obama administration and the Greens like them because they now can make you use less power.

The bad guys like them because they can now use automated malware technology to take over the entire power grid at once ...

There's no security in the Smart Meters - by this I mean no security: no encryption, no authentication, no password, nuthin'. Seems some of the companies that make the meters were starting to add security, until the Obama Administration touched off the market-share landgrab. Billions of dollars of meters entirely lacking in security are being deployed.A recent demonstration showed how easy it was to take control of the power meter:

The attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters - which can be situated outside of a home - and reprogramming them. Or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc. The firm was hired by three utilities to study their smart meters' resistance to attack.

Any bets that the power meter network is isolated from the Internet? Heck, we can't even keep classified Defense Department networks from being compromised via the Internet.

The power companies say don't worry, be happy:

California's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., has installed more than 5 million SmartMeters throughout its territory. Company spokesman Jeff Smith said the utility, based in San Francisco, has taken steps to protect the meters from hacking. For security reasons, he declined to describe those steps.

"We've done extensive preparation to ensure the security of the SmartMeter network," Smith said.

Any bets that he's a clueless PR flack, and that their "extensive preparation" is to set the password to "T0pS3kr3T"?

It gets more interesting. Power companies love this program because it makes it easier for them to cut off your power - think of the rolling blackouts in California in the late 1990s - and the Fed.Gov is picking up the tab (OK, we're picking up the tab, but work with me). Anything else?

The Smart Meters raise the monthly bills:

But as Green Inc. has reported, ratepayers from Texas to California have reported disappointing results and even higher electricity bills after converting to smart meters.

In Toronto, the local utility estimated that 92 percent of its customers would see an average 7 percent rate increase because of time-of-use metering, according to The Toronto Star.

...

PG&E is facing consumer lawsuits over inflated energy bills following smart meter installation.

Ah, but there's an explanation, say the Utility Companies:

“Educating users on how to manage their electricity use is under-emphasized, especially with smart grid grants,” Mr. Fromer said, adding that smart meters alone are “insufficient” to change behavior.

Stupid users.

So, we have a poorly conceived government program throwing Billions of dollars into an incompletely designed technological "solution" that screws the public with higher monthly bills on top of higher taxes to pay for the program. Regulatory Capture, anyone?

Can lefties in general and Democrats in particular please just shut up about how they're looking out for the Little Guy?

Save The Earth - Start a Business

It had been a while since I'd dusted off
PhotoshopThe Gimp, and so went in search of interesting fodder. I'm a little stunned at what I found.

The picture isn't what stunned me - it's more or less run-of-the-mill 1930's Heroic Progressivism. What stunned me was Treehugger.com that used it in a post titled 6 Green Lessons We Can Learn From Communism.

What do you think of when someone mentions communism? Stalin, a hammer and sickle, the color red, Russia, Cuba, factories, soldiers marching in unison, and cold, cold oppression? Yeah, me too. But what if I told you that in some ways, communism is green?
Before you call the Dept. of Homeland Security, consider this: The impression of communism I invoked is largely thanks to American cinema, a still paranoid post-McCarthy news media, and Stalin's monstrous reign after WWII. But between the actual doctrines of Marxism and the pre-revolution fervor in Russia and Eastern Europe, there are actually a bunch of lessons we can glean from communists and apply today—to environmentalism.
Yes, even though communism led to corrupt governments responsible for the suffering of millions, communists and communist thinking have nonetheless produced some worthy green ideas.

Wow. The post goes on to describe a bunch of stuff that mostly falls into the wouldn't it be nice if we could force people to stop doing things we don't like (living in McMansions, etc), but all I could think of (other than a hundred million dead) were the ecological catastrophes that came from Communist rule. In the interest of helping out the Greens, here are six green lessons they need to learn from Communism:

1. The Aral Sea

The Aral Sea, which straddles the border between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south, was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, and until the 1980s, Muynak was a busy fishing port.
Now, however, the nearest water is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, and the boats that were the town's economic lifeblood lie abandoned on the dry seabed.
The lake began to shrink in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union embarked on a vast irrigation project, diverting water from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers that fed the Aral Sea to cotton production in the Central Asian deserts.
Since then, the water level has dropped by 18 meters. As the volume of water in the sea has decreased, its salinity has increased, killing off marine life.

2. Chernobyl

The Chernobyl disaster, (Ukrainian: Чорнобильська катастрофа) Čornobyľśka katastrofa, was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (then part of the Soviet Union), now in Ukraine. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It resulted in a severe release of radioactivity due to a power excursion that destroyed one of the site's reactors. Most fatalities from the accident were caused by radiation poisoning.

3. A nation of Chernobyls

The massive civil and military use of nuclear power since the 1950s has also damaged the regional environment. Most of the Soviet Union’s nuclear tests (over a hundred from 1955 to 1990) were carried out on Novaya Zemlya, and large quantities of solid and liquid radioactive waste were dumped in the Barents and Kara Seas. The northern fleet, which includes nuclear-powered icebreakers and nuclear submarines (sometimes without nuclear warheads but still driven by nuclear reactors), is stationed at bases along the northern coast of the Kola Peninsula, near Murmansk. The nuclear power station at Polyarnyy is classified as "dangerous" by the International Atomic Energy Agency. As if this were not enough, the Soviet Union detonated nuclear charges for civil engineering and mining purposes on at least twenty occasions from 1969 to 1988. Few of these activities are mentioned in official reports, and very little is known of the extent of radioactive contamination in the region.

4. China's Three Gorges Dam

It's not that it's flooding a huge area, although that is causing all sorts of problems. The real issue is that the land that's being flooded is contaminated by pollution.

5. De-forestation in China

Each year, China loses an area the size of Oregon to the desert. Poor land management? Boy, howdy.

6. De-forestation, aquifer depletion, and sewage contamination of rivers and bays in Cuba.

Cuban bays are widely recognized as being among the most polluted in the world. (7) The Almendares River, which flows through Havana, carries the untreated sewage of over 42,000 people directly to Havana Harbor and coastal waters. (8) There has been evidence that in Havana, an underground aquifer that provides 36% of the city’s potable water that runs directly beneath the polluted Almendares, represents a very high risk of widespread drinking water contamination for the city. (9)

This is a phenomenon that is being replicated throughout the country: it has been estimated that annually 863.4 billion gallons of contaminated water finds its way into Cuba’s rivers, much of it industrial.

Funny, these are perhaps the six worst ecological catastrophes in history, and they all occurred under Communist regimes. You might almost expect a pattern; indeed, as TJIC once said in a different context:

if when you attempt to implement “wonderful communism” and every single frickin’ time you get mass murder, starvation, and gulags, then that is communism

Can we please add "environmental catastrophe to the list?

And that's your lesson for today: Save The Earth - Start a Business. People take care of what they own.


No need to thank me, it's all part of the service.

It seems I'm just a dumb Joe The Plummer type

The really, really, really, really smart climate change types have it all figured out: you're too stupid to actually understand Global Warming. Probably you're a tea bagger, too. Whatever.

Anyhoo, I left a comment over there, which hasn't been published. Maybe they moderate comments; I don't have any idea, since nothing said the comment was being held for moderation. Maybe they just hate Denier scumbags like me. Since I have my own blog, here's my comment in case they deep-six it:

Unfortunately environmentalists and scientists have been approaching the climate change issue as though it were simply a matter of insufficient knowledge on the part of the general public; what Naomi Oreskes refers to as the “information deficit model.” Since the problem is understood as there not being sufficient information, the ’solution’ is obviously to provide more information.

Yes, please - give us more information. Only this time, please don't give us garbage:

- Himalayan glaciers that actually aren't disappearing.

- We're not losing 40% of the Amazon rain forest, as claimed in the IPCC AR4.

- Hurricanes are not worse than before.

Those are just a sampling of the errors in the IPCC AR4 report on Climate Change. You know, the one that we were assured contained only peer-reviewed science but which in reality consists of 30% or more student papers, Greenpeace press releases, "background" papers from the WWF, newspaper stories, etc.

If you dig deeper, you find the games that Mann played with his R2 value in the statistics behind his MBH98 "Hockey Stick" paper, the Yamal tree rings from ten (!) trees, and the ClimateGate emails, which include this from one of the scientists:

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know f**k-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know f**k-all).

By all means, please give us more information. Actual solid science (instead of stonewalling and "we lost the raw data") would be very refreshing indeed.

But then again, I'm probably one of those Joe The Plummer types who's too dim to understand anything that isn't spoon fed to me in a 20 second sound bite.

Martha in the comments hits on a brilliant suggestion - you're not dumb (well, probably you are, but that's not important), you're a victim!

I think it is unlikely that the average denier is fearful or insecure (beyond the usual). It makes more sense to see deniers as being like most members of society in the sense that they are exploited by the system.

Just remember everyone, these people are really, really, really, really smart. That's why they're in the Elite, and you're not.

UPDATE 16 April 2010 11:56: They didn't publish my comment. What is it with lefties not being able to debate and defend their positions?

Climate Smörgåsbord , vol 1, no 2

What happens when you subsidize solar power?

Spain has a set of policies in place to encourage the spread of solar power generation. The result is that companies selling electricity to the grid get a higher price per kilowatt-hour if the power was generated by solar panels. The result is exactly what you'd expect - people use electric lights to generate "solar" power at night (machine translation from the German):

After press reports, it was established during inspections that several solar power plants were generating current and feeding it into the net at night. To simulate a larger installation capacity, the operators connected diesel generators.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said one industry expert to the newspaper "El Mundo", which brought the scandal to light. If solar systems apparently produce current in the dark, will be noticed sooner or later. However, if electricity generators were connected during daytime, the swindle would hardly be noticed.

The Two Things explains economics (and other fields), in a way that the Spain.Gov hasn't learned:

One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

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Wind power is sinking

Literally:

European wind farms are a sunk cost. Quite literally.

Hundreds of Britain’s offshore wind turbines could be sinking into the sea because of a design flaw. It is believed the concrete used to fix some turbines to their steel foundation can wear away, causing the power generators to drop a few inches. The fault was first discovered at the Egmond aan Zee wind farm in the Netherlands and affects those with single cylinder foundations.

Green power really is renewable, in the sense that it needs renewing when it sinks into the sea.

But I'm sure that the Government will manage our health care better than this.

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Fewer women dieing in childbirth seems to be bad news

The medical journal The Lancet* has a new study out showing that the death rate for Third World women from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes continues to drop. You'd think that this would be good news, but then again, you're probably not a professional advocate for women's health:

But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.

“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.

Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place.

...

“People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about,” Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.”

Never mind the science, we have a World To Save™! The similarities to the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis are purely coincidental.

* Yeah, I know it's The Lancet. Take it all with a grain of salt, although at least this time they look like they resisted political pressure.

--------------------------------------------------

Support the Copenhagen Accords or lose foreign aid

It seems that the west - specifically the Moral Titans running the EU, UK, and US governments - threatened to cut off aid to Third World countries that didn't support last December's Copenhagen Accord climate treaty:

Climate aid threat to countries that refuse to back Copenhagen accord

The pressure on poor countries to support the US, EU and UK-brokered Copenhagen accord came as 190 countries resumed UN climate talks in Bonn in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion.

“The pressure to back the west has been intense,” said a senior African diplomat. “It was done at a very high level and nothing was written down. It was made very clear by the EU, UK, France and the US that if they did not back them then they would suffer.”

...

And the evidence of the threat being carried out is here:

Yesterday it emerged that the US is to cut climate aid to Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries who have refused to sign up to the accord. But the outgoing UN climate change chief, Yvo de Boer, said: “Bolivia is losing $2.5m in climate funds. That’s about what the presidential palace pays for toilet paper a year. Bullying is not an effective instrument.”

But remember, you are the racist hater. And the UN hasn't given up after the disastrous Copenhagen meeting; they're back in Bonn, preparing for the upcoming December re-do in Cancun:



--------------------------------------------------

It's all peer-reviewed science, except for the 30% that isn't

Image credit: Borepatch

Remember the UN's IPCC climate report? Remember that it was the Last Word in our scientific understanding? Remember how it was all rigorously peer-reviewed? Oops:

As usual, it’s honest volunteers who have conscientiously tested the IPCC by going through 18,500 references. And the final total? Fully 5,600, or 30%, of their references are not peer reviewed.

Once again, it's a bunch of Internet amateurs who have had to fact check the Climate Scientists. I guess the UN science budget isn't high enough to pay for quality control.

Snark aside, there's a point to this:

So why bother tallying them up? It’s the IPCC who made this point matter. They are the ones who market themselves as being holier-than-thou, as superior experts who only use peer reviewed evidence. Peer-review has been their gate-keeper: On the one hand they “own” the journals and simply reject contrary viewpoints, and on the other, they’ve convinced much of the less science-savvy world that peer-review matters and is a mark of quality. Their bluster is almost totally based on the fallacious argument from authority, and backed up by a few half-truths.

Every time the IPCC have spat on a scientist with “that’s not peer reviewed”, they have set themselves up to look like duplicitous fools when caught relying on student theses, magazine articles, and boot cleaning guides.

--------------------------------------------------

Hey you Deniers - get off my lawn!

Quick and Painless?

Darryl Durr is challenging Ohio's plan to execute him by lethal injection, claiming that he is allergic to the anesthetic that the state is planning on using. His defense attorney claims that Ohio's constitution entitles him to a "quick and painless" execution. Fortunately, there is a solution which will leave all parties satisfied.


Applied to the forehead, this should be just what Mr. Durr is looking for. I guess that there's a small chance that he might also be allergic to lead, which is admittedly toxic. Fortunately for Mr. Durr, there's a protective copper jacket.

Full disclosure: I'm quite ambivalent about capital punishment, since I think that there are many examples of people who were wrongly convicted. That doesn't seem to be the case here - there doesn't seem to be any question that Mr. Durr did in fact rape and kill 16 year old Angel Vincent in 1988. She would be 38 today. Hasta la vista, dirtbag.

I've fallen and I can't get up

Bob posts to let us know that it's springtime, when young men's thoughts lightly turn to falling off of mountains:

...it's time for the annual hiker-falls-off-Crowder's Mountain-story in the Charlotte Observer.

Insty keeps telling people to carry a flip-corder. It lets you get shots like this:

So much for Obama's appeal

Back at the beginning of October, I said:

I've been seeing these for months, so someone must think that there's some sort of positive in having his name on what they're selling. When they think that it's more of a negative than a positive, you won't see these any more.

I'm sure that these ad campaigns are driven by polling numbers (the President remains personally popular, at least so far). But when people who put their money on the line go elsewhere, that will be the canary in the coal mine.

I don't see them anymore. So it looks like the shelf life of his market appeal was around 15 months. It's too soon to label him "toast" - it's a long time until 2012, and the capacity of the Stupid Republican Party to screw up is legend [(cough) John McCain (cough)].

Still, this can't be good for Obama, the Democrats, or the Media (who refused to actually write honestly about him during the campaign).

How to investigate a Scientific Scandal

Made easier through Microsoft^® Office^® Technology.

In news from the future ...

... expect to see flying cars:

Big news for flying-car lovers today, as US military boffinry chiefs have unveiled full details of their plan to produce an excellent flying Humvee or sky-jeep type vehicle - and have a prototype flying by 2015.

So who are these boffins? The folks who brought you the Internet:

One need hardly add, of course, that the military boffinry shop in question is none other than DARPA: the agency which, just occasionally, produces the technological equivalent of the complete works of Shakespeare - but which also cranks out a hell of a lot of monkey sonnets.

I mean, it is the twenty-first century.

Renewable energy executive: Nothing to see in ClimateGate, move along

Some paid hack from some companies looking to make a killing in alternative energy has just issued a report clearing the ClimateGate scientists of wrongdoing:

[Lord] Oxburgh has paid directorships of two renewable energy companies, and is a paid advisor to Climate Change Capital, the Low Carbon Initiative, Evo-Electric, Fujitsu, and an environmental advisor to Deutsche Bank. Last month we revealed that Oxburgh had failed to declare his directorship of GLOBE, an international network of legislators with ties to the Club of Rome.

Of course, the good Lord was appointed to head up the official investigation into the whole ClimateGate brouhaha. It seems his commission was so short of time that they couldn't invite a single skeptic to testify. Skeptic-in-Chief Steve McIntyre says the whole thing is pathetic:

They did not interview me (nor, to my knowledge, any other CRU critics or targets). The committee was announced on March 22 and their “report” is dated April 12 – three weeks end to end – less time than even the Parliamentary Committee. They took no evidence. Their list of references is 11 CRU papers, five on tree rings, six on CRUTEM. Notably missing from the “sample” are their 1000-year reconstructions: Jones et al 1998, Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, etc.)

They did not discuss specifically discuss or report on any of the incidents of arbitrary adjustment (“bodging”), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data, mentioned in my submissions to the Science and Technology Committee and the Muir Russell Committee.

A cynic would say that the report is cut from the same cloth as peer-reviewed climate science: opposing views are censored, to keep the comfy government grant gravy train rolling.

One objection that could be raised to this post is that I'm being intentionally inflammatory ("Renewable energy executive", "gravy train", "paid hack"). Guilty as charged. It is offered as a mirror to the "you're a paid energy company hack" charge that we skeptics encounter all the time. Unlike that charge, mine has the advantage of being true. Lord Oxburgh is a paid director of multiple companies which stand to make considerable money off of a shift from fossil fuels to alternate sources. Lord Oxburgh is a member, or has ties to a notorious environmental lobby. Lord Oxburgh did not interview witnesses for the prosecution, so to speak. Government is interested in climate research that supports large scale government intervention in the economy. Government does fund this, to the tune of a hundred billion dollars or so.

And Lord Oxburgh isn't the first mainstream climate big shot who's making money off the crisis.

Just like the ClimateGate emails showed how the peer-review process was suborned, this "investigation" (intentional use of scare quotes) follows the only-listed-to-friendly-views so sadly prevalent in climate science today. It's a cryin' shame, really.

So lefties, if you want to be taken seriously, you really need to do a better job policing your own side. Go ahead - dazzle me.

Borepatch: A Work Of Art

Marcus emails this rendering of the Borepatch blog, as done by Tagxedo. It's pretty darn cool, although you'll have to get Microsoft's Silverlight.

Hello Kitty Combat Engineering

So you've gotten your little Princess one of those pink Cricket .22 rifles, and she's outgrown it. You got her one of those pink Kalashnikitty AK-47 thingies, but she's in the rebellious rolling-her-eyes teenage stage. What's a dad to do?

Glam Guns has just the ticket - the EZ-Boom Oven:

It's never to early to learn demolition. Hard targets are no longer a challenge with the Glambo Signature Series EZ-Boom Oven. Locked out of the clubhouse? Fight back! Includes enough of her patented, quick-setting mix to make one pound of plastique and will provide your child with hours of fun. (Safety armor not included.)
A bargain at only $323.95!

Sorry, (sniff) - seems I've gotten something in my eye ...

They also have the Hello Kitty AK-47, My Little Carbine, the Lady "Di" revolver, claymore mines, rocket launchers, and everything that Daddy's Little Angel needs to keep those teenage boys on the straight and narrow.

Sorry we removed your liver. The computer told us to.

Britain's National Health Service is back in the news, this time for incorrectly specifying organ transplants:

The NHS Blood and Transfusion service has apologised for a computer error which meant that some people had organs removed incorrectly, or presumably not removed, because their preferences were wrongly recorded in the database.

But hey, I'm sure that the problem's not wide spread. I mean, the Brit.Gov wouldn't get more than a handful of people wrong. Oh, wait:

The mistake affects 800,000 people who had their transplant wishes wrongly imported from the DVLA.

Well, at least it wasn't a million. There's only one comma in that number, you racist, Palin-loving Teabagging hater!

The NHS Blood and Transfusion service stressed that only 21 people had died with the incorrect details on their records.

Well, that's a relief! With the efficiency we can expect from the Obama Administration, it shouldn't be more than 50,000 over on this side of the pond. Yay, socialized medicine!

Los Angeles class subs vulnerable to iPod Denial-Of-Service attack

At least when the navigator is zoned out listening to tunez when he should be paying attention to nearby ships:

The Los Angeles-class sub [U.S.S. Hartford] collided with New Orleans in the Strait of Hormuz. New Orleans, which was on its maiden deployment, suffered a 16-by-18-foot gash in its hull that ripped open a fuel tank and two ballast tanks and required $2.3 million in repairs.

Cmdr. Ryan Brookhart was relieved of command of Hartford on April 14, 2009, due to loss of confidence. A Judge Advocate General Manual investigation found an informal atmosphere, crew complacency, a “weak” command and inferior submariner skills led to the “avoidable” accident. Specifically, the navigator was listening to his iPod during a critical evolution, watchstanders were known to sleep on the job, and stereo speakers were rigged for music in the radio room. [Emphasis mine - Borepatch]

It's never good for the C.O. when your ship runs into another one. And that $2.3M? Just a down payment: the total cost to repair the two ships is almost $87M. Oops. Maybe we can call it a "stimulus" ...

And no word on which song was playing on the iPod. Maybe this one.

Why we shouldn't support the International Criminal Court, part MCMLVII

Eight years ago, Steven den Beste wrote about the International Criminal Court, and predicted that it would not be an impartial enforcer of International Law, but rather would be used for selective prosecution of political enemies:

And here is the real point: I believe that many (not all, but many) of those who are supporting the ICC are lying when they say it won't be applied to the US and to Israel in this fashion. I think that the reason they are in favor of it is exactly that they hope it can be used to bring the US down a notch. There is, here in the US, a strikingly great correlation between those who are in favor of the ICC and those who otherwise profess that the US is too powerful, too influential, consumes too much, does too much, etc.

To this list we can add those who are insufficiently obedient to the Environmental Lobby:

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace - alongside genocide and crimes against humanity - is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept "ecocide" as a fifth "crime against peace", which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

Any bets as to whether "ecocide" will trump keeping the developing world in poverty? But be reasonable, we're told - after all, it's not like the inmates will be running the asylum or anything. I mean, only serious, far reaching ecological catastrophe will be covered by this, right? Oh, wait:

Controversially, Higgins is suggesting ecocide would include damage done to any species - not just humans. This, she says, would stop prosecutions being tied up in legal wrangling over whether humans were harmed, as many environmental cases currently are.: "If you put in a crime that's absolute you can't spend years arguing: you take a soil sample and if it tests as positive it's bang to rights."

So now insects will have "human rights" under International Law. That sure saves all that tedious proving harm to people bit. Take the soil sample.

Progressives wonder why their agenda is increasingly unpopular. Perhaps it's because that as society has made major gains in quality of life - the air and water is much cleaner (at least in the West) than 30 years ago - the need to even bigger campaigns has led to policies that would keep billions in poverty, cause millions to die early, and force billions to settle for a worse standard of living than their parents had.

Kind of hard to get the masses behind that program, so let's apply the Police State.

Progressives, you need to rein in kooks like this. The rest of us are watching, hoping you'll prove me wrong. Sadly, confidence is not high.

Guns Magazine is now online

Via Every Day, No Days Off* we see that Guns Magazine has put their stuff online, for free.

Via the same blog we see that there is a blog titled Hot Chicks With Stormtroopers.


I do hope that she explained the Four Rules to the Canon Fodder ...

* Pretty clearly, if you're not reading it, err, every day, you're missing something.

Look on my works, ye Deniers, and despair!

And get off of my lawn:

I met a traveller from a distant shire
Who said: A vast and pointless shaft of steel
Stands on a hill top… Near it, in the mire,
Half sunk, a shattered turbine lies, whose wheels
And riven blades and snarls of coloured wire
Tell that its owners well their mission read
Which did not last nor, nowhere to be seen,
The hand that paid them and the empty head.
And scrawled around the base these lines are clear:
‘My name is Millibandias, greenest Green.
Look on my works, ye doubters, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round this display
Of reckless cost and loss, blotless and fair,
The green and pleasant landscape rolls away.

There's a whole bunch more in the comments, and very clever they are.

The parody, of course, is of Ozymandias, seen previously here. The shattered wreckage is from this:



Quality snark, yessiree. Get ye hence, for more snark like this:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host, of turbine windy mills
Beside the lake, but far from trees
Towers stilled by lack of breeze

Heh. Gilbert and Sullivan fans should also look here. Double heh.