Hot air and ice

Steve Goddard over at Whats Up With That has a nice article about how the arctic sea ice has recovered to where it was about 10 years ago. It's well worth a look.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/31/wuwt-arctic-sea-ice-new-7/#more-20063

Halp me the ice is disappearing!

Is not amused!

I really loved Firefly and Serenity

and this looks ok to me too...

Well said sir!

Stuff it Mexico!

The march of technology

RIP Ronnie!

Democrats are scared and when scared they act like scum

Via the blogprof....the Dems in Michigan are trying to register a tea party as an official 3rd party.

This isn't even AstroTurf. It is outright political fraud. Fearful of the tea party movement in Michigan (which Democrats and Republicans alike should be), the Democrats and/or their special interest groups have begun the process of officially hijacking the movement. Like in Nevada, they will likely launch their own 'tea party' candidate that is anything but. Unfortunately for the Democrats, 1) the tea party is more informed than they give us credit for; and 2) this news is breaking at the very conception of this slimy political move. The news was broken last night by Chetley Zarko on his website Outside Lansing: Zarko Research Exclusive: Dem Dirty Trick on Fake Tea Party Petition Revealed

Read it all here.... 

A polite get fucked letter

Pretty damn good!

Dear Prof. Popkin:

A segment on WJLA-TV’s 11:00pm newscast yesterday featured you endorsing a tax on pizza.  You justified such a tax on grounds that Americans today eat too much “junk food.”

Believing Americans to be too dimwitted or lacking in self-control to choose for themselves what to eat, you obviously also believe that college professors possess the moral authority to propose that government dictate the contents of other people’s diets.

So the rules of civil society, as you see them, are apparently these: If Professor divines that Person isn’t acting in Person’s own best interests, government should obstruct Person’s efforts to live as he or she wishes and prod Person to live instead according to how Professor wants Person to live.

I, too, can play by these rules.

I propose that all articles and books advocating that government intrude into people’s private choices be taxed at very high rates.  Socially irresponsible producers of such “junk” scholarship churn out far too much of it.  As a result, unsuspecting Americans consume harmfully large quantities of this scholarship – scholarship made appealing only because its producers cram it with sweet and superficially gratifying expressions of noble goals.  These empty intellectual ‘calories’ trick our brains – which evolved in an environment that lacked today’s superabundant access to junk scholarship – into craving larger and larger, even super-sized, portions of such junk.

The tax I propose would reduce Americans’ consumption of this mentally debilitating, university-processed junk that serves only to inflate its producers’ egos and consulting fees while it makes the rest of us intellectually flabby and clogs our neural pathways with notions that are toxic to each individual who reads it and to the entire body-politic.

As a nation, we have a duty to prevent our fellow citizens from mindlessly ruining their minds – for when any one mind is damaged by the consumption of junk scholarship, the rest of us are harmed by the resulting obesity of the state.

Sincerely, 

Donald J. Boudreaux

Some  of the comments are downright interesting too http://cafehayek.com/2010/05/open-letter-to-prof-barry-popkin.html

It is well past time for this incompetent fool to be fired

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona's new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn't yet read the law and is going by what he's read in newspapers or seen on television.

Time to go you race baiting moron.

 

The banality of evil

There's an interesting read in City magazine about a pair of Russians who stole thousands of documents from the former Soviet Union. These documents give a detailed look into the workings of the totalitarian Communist regime. This stuff would have been hot as hell when I was a kid, today no one will publish it.

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all. 

Then there’s Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who once spent 12 years in the USSR’s prisons, labor camps, and psikhushkas—political psychiatric hospitals—after being convicted of copying anti-Soviet literature. He, too, possesses a massive collection of stolen and smuggled papers from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which, as he writes, “contain the beginnings and the ends of all the tragedies of our bloodstained century.” These documents are available online at bukovsky-archives.net, but most are not translated. They are unorganized; there are no summaries; there is no search or index function. “I offer them free of charge to the most influential newspapers and journals in the world, but nobody wants to print them,” Bukovsky writes. “Editors shrug indifferently: So what? Who cares?”

Who cares?  I wonder how many college professors, how many newsmen, how many 'patriotic' politicians names are contained in those documents in ways that might just undermine their careers? We already know that Ted Kennedy attempted to get the Soviets to undermine Reagan (for which he should have been tried and punished). How many others attempted to undermine our democracy when it didn't work they way they wanted? Will this history never be written?

This is odd

We need more politicians this direct

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Why we could lose

Watch this weasel Holder squirm rather than just speak up.



These hairsplitting dumbasses would rather throw the war than call a spade a spade.

One of those days

Someone cue Art Linkletter!

I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life -- Age 15

Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money -- Age 13

It sure would be nice if we got a day off for the president's birthday, like they do for the queen, Of course, we would have a lot of people voting for a candidate born on July 3 or December 26, just for the long weekends -- Age 8

Democracy is a beautiful thing, except for that part about letting just any old yokel vote -- Age 10

Home is where the house is. --Age 6

I often wonder how come John Tesh isn't as popular a singer as some people think he should be. Then, I remember its because he sucks-- Age 15

For centuries, people thought the moon was made of green cheese. Then the astronauts found that the moon is really a big hard rock. That's what happens to cheese when you leave it out -- Age 6

My young brother asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth--that most of us go to hell and burn eternally--but I didn't want to upset him -- age 10

I gaze at the brilliant full moon. The same one, I think to myself, at which Socrates, Aristotle and Plato gazed. Suddenly, I imagine they appear beside me. I tell Socrates about the national debate over one's right to die and wonder at the constancy of the human condition. I tell Plato that I live in the country that has come the closest to Utopia, and I show him a copy of the Constitution. I tell Aristotle that we have found many more than four basic elements and I show a periodic table. I get a box of kitchen matches and strike one. They gasp with wonder. We spend the rest of the night lighting farts. -- Age 15

When I go to heaven I want to see my grandfather again. But he better have lost the nose hair and the old-man smell -- Age 5

I once heard the voice of God. It said "Vrrrrmmmmm." Unless it was just a lawn mower -- Age 11

I don't know about you, but I enjoy watching paint dry. I imagine that the wet paint is a big freshwater lake that is the only source of water for some tiny cities by the lake. As the lake gets drier, the population gets more desperate, and sometimes there are water riots. Once there was a big fire and everyone died -- Age 13

I like to go down to the dog pound and pretend that I've found my dog. Then I tell them to kill it anyway because I already gave away all of his stuff. Dog people sure don't have a sense of humor -- Age 14

As you make your way through this hectic world of ours, set aside a few minutes each day. At the end of the year, you'll have a couple of days saved up -- Age 7

Often, when I'm reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number -- Age 15

It would be terrible if the Red Cross Bloodmobile got into an accident. No, wait. That would be good because if anyone needed it, the blood would be right there -- Age 5

Think of the biggest number you can. Now add five. Then, imagine if you had that many Twinkies. Wow, that's five more than the biggest number you could come up with -- Age 6

The only stupid question is the one that is never asked, except maybe "Don't you think its about time you audited my return?" or "Isn't it morally wrong to give a warning when, in fact, I was speeding?" --Age 15

Once, I wept for I had no shoes, then I came upon a man who had no feet, so I took his shoes. I mean. it's not like he needed them, right? -- Age 15

If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, just imagine how serene it would be until the looting started -- Age 15


from http://www.misscellania.com/

Science Magazine owned

Tim Blair notes

Science magazine is deeply disturbed: 

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. 

One small problem. As James Delingpole reveals, that poley bear image is fake. It’s been photoshopped. Sciencesubsequently admitted: 

The image associated with this article was selected by the editors. We did not realize that it was not an original photograph but a collage, and it was a mistake to have used it. 

As Science says: “There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions.”

The best lines are in the comments, my favorite "What Science magazine doesn’t realize is that polar bears, unlike liberal twits, run into obstacles and just deal with them."

Is it getting too easy to make fun of the global warming fakers?

you can't measure a live snake

But you can keep an eye on it.

Breitbart has a nice article that attempts to keep track of ACORN's re-branding efforts.

http://bigjournalism.com/mvadum/2010/05/11/tracking-acorns-rebranding-process-a-handy-updated-guide-2/

Is this a joke?

me or the boat?

Alcohol Abuse?

Slam!