Black Hole...

What would it be like to be in the vicinity of a black hole?

ClimateGate: McIntyre is on the Case...

Steve McIntyre is all over the Michael Mann whitewash inquiry, and Nature magazine's call for a better way...

Calvin & Hobbes in the Snow...

Great collection of Calvin and his snowmen...

Newly-Released Photos of 9/11...

From the N.Y. police department.  They're just as shocking now as they were over eight years ago...

ClimateGate: In the News...

The hits just keep on coming – and now, increasingly, they're being published in the U.S. mainstream media.  In just this past week, I've seen “skeptic-friendly” articles in the New York Times (!), the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Washington Post, and on all the major news sites (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc.)...  

Flying Pig Moment...

Steve Clemons, writing at the (notoriously, fatuously liberal) Puffington Host, said this:

If current trends continue, this once mesmerizing Camelot-ish operation will be be seen in the history books as the presidential administration that -- to distort slightly and inversely paraphrase Churchill -- never have so many talented people managed to achieve so little with so much.

And he's talking about the Obama administration!

Technology History: Toilet Paper...

Did you know that toilet paper was invented in 1857 – and initially was plagued with splinters?  Do you know what people did before 1857?  Read all about it in this very humerous – and informative – post...

John Murtha: Best Obituary...

This exactly expresses my sentiments, but with writing skills I can't match...

Abraham Lincoln Said...

Some quotes from Abraham Lincoln, via my mom.  They've not lost a whit of their truth in 150 years...

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

A Climate Skeptic Defends Amateur Science...

Interesting post.  It contains my quote of the day:

Making a distinction between professional and amateur in science is artificial: what matters is the 'what' of science not the 'who'.

Subversive Activities Registration Act...

The state of South Carolina has a new law on the books: the Subversive Activities Registration Act.  Basically it says that if in any way you support the notion of violent overthrow of the government at any level (even dog catcher), you must register with the state.  There's a $5 filing fee.  And the punishment for failure to register is pretty stiff: fines of up to $25,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years.

I hope – really, I hope – that the South Carolina legislature is not so naive as to believe that such a law will coerce hardened terrorists into registering themselves.  I'm guessing that what they were really after was a “hook” to let them file criminal charges against someone that law enforcement discovered who was engaged in such activities.

But here's the problem: the language in the statute is so vague, so open-ended, that almost anybody could be ensnared by it.  Just think: have you ever jokingly said something like this: that we'd be better off if a moderate sized metorite smashed the Capitol while both houses were in session?  That'd do it – you're a criminal under this statute (unless you had actually registered!), and you might be going to jail. 

This just begs for a Constitutional challenge on first amendment grounds...

Rain...

Yesterday afternoon and (especially) last night, we got a total of just under one inch (23 mm) of rain.  That brings the storm total to 2.32 inches (59 mm).  The forecast for today has a 40% chance of rain through noon (though it doesn't look like it outside), so we might even get a little more.

The total rain for the year right now stands at 8.66 inches (220 mm) – just about at the 100 year average.  And we're not quite done with the rainy season yet!

If You Had the Common Sense God Gave a Billy Goat...

Via my mom:



Awesome!

Most Bizarre Chemical Reaction Evah!

Retro-Geek: Acoustic Coupled Modem...

Demonstrating an early 300-baud acoustic-coupled modem.  When I first started messing around with microcomputers in the mid-1970s, one of my first acquisitions was an acoustic-coupled modem (a much later model than this one).  Their 300-baud speed was considered state-of-the-art, and I remember reading predicitions that the top-end theoretical speed was in the neighborhood of 700 baud (which a later direct-coupled modem from a company called PMMI actually acheived).  Here's the demonstration:

Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Soft Drinks?

One good friend and several of my acquaintances have succumbed to pancreatic cancer.  It's one of the nastiest, least survivable types.  This study hints that the incidence of pancreatic cancer is higher for people who regularly drink even moderate amounts of soda – most likely because of its sugar content. 

Given the huge quantities of soda consumed in this country (and, I presume, worldwide), this is not good news...

Less Can Be More...

Paul Buchheit (GMail creator) on product design and geek reaction to the iPad.  Thought-provoking stuff that resonates with me...

Dazzle Camoflauge...

Nice article and photos of WWI-era “Dazzle” naval camoflauge...

Hazel for President!

...even though she's Canadian.

Cartoon of the Day...

You had me at “carcass.” Har!

There's a Lot of BS Out There, Folks...

And American Express is doing their part to maintain the high levels of bullshit in our environment.  Here's an email from American Express explaining why they only allow letters in their passwords (no numbers, punctuation, or other “special characters”).  It's the purest kind of bullshit: information that is the exact inverse of the truth.

Sheesh, Amex, get your freaking act together!

Use ECC RAM!

My colleagues often make fun of me because I shut down and restart my laptop several times a day.  There are several reasons I do this, but one of them is to avoid accumulated memory (RAM) errors due to cosmic rays.  These errors occur more frequently than most people think if your computer doesn't use error correcting (ECC) RAM (and most laptops do not).  Here's an article that explains why this is true, and also gives specific estimates about the frequency of these errors. 

Bottom line: I'm going continue the behavior that I'm mocked for...

New Record for Clock Accuracy...

This new clock is accurate to within one second in 3.7 billion years, or (equivalently) one nanosecond in 3.7 years.  When I first started working in electronics, we thought a clock that was stable to within one millisecond per day was pretty hot stuff.  This new clock is over a billion times more stable...

Rain...

We got 1.42 inches (36 mm) of rain in the Friday/Saturday storm.  More, please!

Special Delivery...

Michael Yon is back in Afghanistan, and has filed his first report of this trip.  It's all about the Air Force crews who resupply the remote outposts in Afghanistan (of which there are many) – and, typical of Yon's work, it's full of evocative photos and detailed information.  He flew with one resupply mission and documents the whole thing...

ClimateGate: New Developments...

The hits just keep on comin':

Yet another egregious error in the IPCC report.  This time it turns out that their claim of AGW-caused 50% reduction in African agricultural production is not based on science at all.

In a good read, Walter Russell Mead discusses why climate science is in trouble.  And of all places, Canada's uber-liberal Globe and Mail publishes a skeptic-friendly piece by Margaret Wente on the great global warming collapse.

Color Photos from 1909 - 1915...

Fascinating collection of early color photography in Russia, by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Click to enlarge the example at right.

The Benefits of Snowstorms...

From TJIC, too short and too monolithic to excerpt:

Apparently the seat of the national government is snowed in and everone is trapped in their houses.

I predict that with government officials unable to govern and convene press conferences, nationwide the economy will be stable and mass layoffs will be put on hold.

…at least until the plows get out there and let the politicians and bureaucrats back into their offices.

As he would say: Har!

Obama Likes Himself Pretty Well, Doesn't He?

NeoNeocon, who has some knowledge in the field, is quite disturbed by Obama's overt narcissism.  Her last paragraph chills me:

I’m not saying it will come to pass in exactly that way, and that Obama will declare himself to be a deity. In fact, I’ll even go on record as saying he won’t. Nevertheless, something is very wrong with this man, and it is growing stronger every day.

Spending $8.57 to save $1...

Gwynnie at Maggie's Farm does the math on the “Cash for Clunkers” program.  It ain't pretty.

Sarah Palin's Speech...

I watched Sarah Palin's Tea Party Convention keynote this morning on YouTube.  Awesome speech, and chock full of points I agree with.  Some nice comedic moments, too, like her one-liner aimed squarely at Obama: “How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out?”  There was relatively little that I flat out disagreed with, or that grated.  In particular, the overt religious ideology that permeated her book was absent.

The woman can sure give a speech.  I'll take her folksy, common-sense style over Obama's supposed oratory magnificence any day of the week. 

Could I support her in a run for President?  Possibly, though I don't think it's likely.  It's impossible to predict now what's going to happen in 2012, though one scenario being frequently batted around is an Obama vs. Palin matchup.  What would I do then?  Most likely I'd be torn between sitting out the election (for lack of a candidate I believed in) or voting for Palin as a way of saying “No more Obama!”

Watching her give this speech gave me another thought, though: it seems at least possible that Sarah Palin will emerge as the leader (or figurehead) of a political movement whose aggregate capability was attractive to me.  It would be, then, more like a team of people running rather than just Sarah Palin.  If that turned out to be the case, I'd find a vote for Palin much less troubling.

One prediction I think is a safe one: Sarah Palin will somehow be involved in the 2012 presidential race (even if not as a candidate), and her presence will make the race much more interesting – and probably more about the issues that I care about than otherwise...

Immortal Human Cells...

The first line of human cells capable of reproducing ad infinitum (hence the label “immortal”) were derived in 1951 from a tumor on the unfortunate Henrietta Lacks.  Her cells have been used in thousands of medical experiments and tests, and they're still in use to this day.  Here's the fascinating story, which is the subject of a new book by Rebecca Skloot.

Do It Yourself: Physics Experiments

Nice collection of do-it-yourself physics experiments...

The Ross Sisters: Hoy, Hoy!

Solid potato salad.  One hardly knows what to say...

Flying Bridge in the Netherlands...

The unique drawbridge pictured at right (click to enlarge) is on the western edge of Leeuwarden, Netherlands.  The locals call it the “Flying Bridge”.  Here it is on Google Maps.

The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana...

Read this and you'll learn something – but probably not what you're thinking...

Weatherman Attacked by Pelican...

And I'm not sure which is funnier – the pelican's attack or the weatherman's reaction.  Pelican and weatherman both survive, though the latter declares himself “permanently scarred”...

How to Fail a Test...

If you don't know the answer to a question on a test, what do you do?  Here's a nice collection of some creative answers to that conundrum (one example at right, click to enlarge)...

Oldest Known Bird Ancestor, Reconstructed (Even Color!)...

Scientists from Yale have reconstructed what Anchiomis huxleyi must have looked like (at right, click to enlarge).  A. huxleyi lived in what is today China some 160 million years ago, and is the oldest known feathered dinosaur (and presumed ancestor of today's birds)...

Free Physics Text...

A free, open source physics text, in eBook form.

Declaration of Independence, Remixed...

Pluto Changes...

The Hubble telescope has captured the most detailed images of Pluto ever taken.  There are plenty of mysteries for the scientists to dig into, and some interesting and heretofore unknwn (apparent) seasonal changes discovered.

This reminds me of an interesting comment I saw in an interview I read the other day.  An unnamed engineer at NASA (one of the “renegades” who's trying to change NASA's course) asserted that for the cost of the manned Hubble repair missions we could have launched 5 more advanced space telescopes.

I have no way to verify that assertion, but it gave me an idea that I'm pretty certain is accurate.  The idea is based on the easily observable fact that most of the cost of a mission like the Hubble telescope is in developement: the design of the instruments and the infrastructure on Earth to support the mission.  Actually constructing and launching the mission isn't free, but it's a much lower cost than the development.

So if we're going to develop the next generation Hubble, why build just one?  Why not build, say, five of the things – and launch them a couple of years apart.  By doing this we'd have a relatively long-lived project, reusing the same development and Earth-bound infrastructure.  The years between launches would provide time to “tweak” the design to handle issues raised by earlier missions.

It strikes me that this is very similar to what the U.S. Navy does with ships and boats.  The first ship or boat of any particular class (such as the Los Angeles class of submarines) is followed by some number of almost-but-not-quite identical sister ships or boats – with the design tweaked to fix issues found in the earlier examples, or to incorporate improved technology.  But basically the design is the same, only the details change.

Why not for our unmanned robot space explorers as well?

Retarded Attorneys?

The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for trial attorneys.  Specifically:

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.

Yes, really.  You just can't make this stuff up...

Ramirez Nails It...

$104.3 Million...

For the statue at right (click to enlarge), by Alberto Giacometti.

I'm just astonished when I see something like this.  I feel like I must be missing the genes that provoke the excitement and passion that someone must feel, given their willingness to part with that much money to own this thing.

Me, I'd pay someone to haul that thing away if it should somehow end up in my yard or my home.  I'd be afraid it would scare my dogs...

This About Sums It Up...

Via my lovely wife:

Remember when Ronald Reagan was president, we also had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash still with us...

Now we have Obama … no Hope and no Cash!

AGW: Himalayan Glaciers Blackening...

One of the IPCC report's more dramatic predictions was that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) would cause the Himalayan glaciers to disappear entirely by 2035.  Recently that date was shown to be entirely based on a mis-reported study by a single scientist who disavows that result (so much for the IPCC's peer-reviewed science!).  But the IPCC stands by their assertion that global warming is responsible for the shrinkage of the Himalayan glaciers.

AGW skeptics have long asserted that there were many other possible reasons why the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking.  One of the more commonly cited reasons was particulates in (mostly Indian) air pollution reducing the albedo of the glaciers.  Now along comes a study, reported by Science Daily, says that's exactly the case.

This is interesting for two reasons: the direct findings of the study, but also the fact that it's being reported in the mainstream science press.  I suspect that had this study published even just 3 months ago, Science Daily wouldn't have reported it at all, as it doesn't fit the AGW narrative. 

But these days, it's cool to be an AGW skeptic...

It's the Time of Year We Think of the IRS...

Passed along by reader Simi L.:

At the end of the tax year, the IRS office sent an inspector to audit the books of a local hospital. While the IRS agent was checking the books he turned to the CFO of the hospital and said, "I notice you buy a lot of bandages. What do you do with the end of the roll when there's too little left to be of any use?"

"Good question," noted the CFO. "We save them up and send them back to the bandage company and every now and then they send us a free box of bandages."

"Oh," replied the auditor, somewhat disappointed that his unusual question had a practical answer. But on he went, in his obnoxious way.

"What about all these plaster purchases? What do you do with what's left over after setting a cast on a patient?"

"Ah, yes," replied the CFO, realizing that the inspector was trying to trap him with an unanswerable question. "We save it and send it back to the manufacturer, and every now and then they send us a free package of plaster."

"I see," replied the auditor, thinking hard about how he could fluster the know-it-all CFO. "Well," he went on, "What do you do with all the leftover foreskins from the circumcisions you perform?"

"Here, too, we do not waste," answered the CFO. "What we do is save all the little foreskins and send them to the IRS Office, and about once a year they send us a complete prick."

Autism and Vaccines...

Twelve years ago, the Lancet (a British medical journal) published a study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that linked autism to measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines.  This has led to legislation to ban the vaccines, civil suits against the vaccine manufacturers, parents refusing to have their kids vaccinated, and a significant uptick in the incidence of these diseases.

For years now, this research paper has been hammered by other scientists as the purest bunk.  The Lancet initially stood by its decision to publish, but now has formally withdrawn the paper.

In a just world, the damaging lawsuits and legislation would immediately stop.  They won't.  I'll bet some of them will still be in court 10 years from now...

The Tunnel...

Via my mom:

Sitting together on a train was Obama, George Bush Jr., a little old lady, and a young blonde girl with large breasts..

The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a loud slap.

When the train emerges from the tunnel, Obama has a bright red hand print on his cheek.

No one speaks.

The old lady thinks:
Obama must have groped the blonde in the dark, and she slapped him.

The blonde girl thinks:
Obama must have tried to grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled the old lady and she slapped him.

Obama thinks:
Bush must have groped the blonde in the dark. She tried to slap him but missed and got me instead.

George Bush thinks:
I can't wait for another tunnel, so I can smack Obama again.

Obscura...

According to this web site, “obscura” are wonders, curiousities, or esoterica (though I couldn't find anyone else defining the word this way).  Whatever the correctness of that definition, the collection certainly is interesting.  The “Take me to a random place” at the top right is quite entertaining...

ClimateGate: Roundup...

Here's what's happened in the past couple of days:

The University of Pennsylvania released their initial report on Michael Mann's behavior in ClimateGate.  Steve McIntyre reacts; as you might have anticipated, he's not impressed.  The probe continues...

Eric Raymond and James Delingpole think the ClimageGate fraudsters need to be named and shamed.  Eric believes it's necessary; James is reveling in vindication.  For the record, I'm with James Delingpole: I'm reveling, too (as if you couldn't tell!)...

Steve McIntyre points out that even a primary schoolboy should be able to get facts right – that is, facts that the IPCC got wrong.

The Real Reason Why the Ten Commandments Can't Be Displayed...

Via my mom:

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse or Congress is this – you cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal', 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery', and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians ... 'cause it creates a hostile work environment. 

Har!

Revenge of the Wife...

Via my mom:

A police officer pulls over a speeding car.

The officer says, ' I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir.'

The driver says, 'Christ, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating.'

Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: 'Now don't be silly dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control.'

As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, 'Can't you keep your mouth shut for once?'

The wife smiles demurely and says, ! 'You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did.'

As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, '**** it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?'

The officer frowns and says, 'And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That's an automatic 75 fine.'

The driver says, 'Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket.'

The wife says, 'Now, dear, you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving.'

And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, 'WHY DON'T You shut the **** up??'

The officer looks over at the woman and asks, 'Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?'

(I love this part....)

'Only when he's drunk.'

ClimateGate: the British Media is on the Case...

The liberal Guardian is all over the CRU's Phil Jones for hiding data not supportive the the AGW hypothesis.  The word is that Phil Jones is toast – his temporary suspension is about to become permanent...

ClimateGate: the Emails Were on a Single Server...

The AGW proponents have been floating the notion that stealing the ClimateGate emails had to be the result of an incredibly sophisticated effort that only a state-sponsored organization could pull off.  In other words, they're saying it had to be spies.  The main reason they say this is because they believe the emails had to have been collected from numerous email servers.

Oops.  The emails were all on one server.  A server that students could easily have hacked into.

Coulda been almost anyone.

Do It Yourself Sous-Vide Cooking...

Sous-vide cooking sure sounds good – hi-tech cooking!  I just might have to try it...

ClimateGate: McIntyre is Amused...

Steve McIntyre is amused because one of the sources for the IPCC's WG2 report was a boot cleaning manual.  Yes, really.

The First Killer Nano-Product?

Liquid glass - put an easy-to-clean, anti-bacterial coating on anything.

A Trillion Dollars...

The Obama administration throws around quantities of trillions of dollars the way LBJ used to do with millions.  But how much money is a trillion dollars?  It's really hard to wrap your brain around it, as a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is not a number we often run into.

So I came up with a couple of mind exercises to more intuitively understand it.

First, imagine you were going to buy some cars for $25,000 each – enough cars to use the entire trillion dollars.  Further suppose that you bought one car every minute (wow!).  How long would it take for you to spend that trillion dollars?  The answer: just over 76 years.

Ok, that's a lot of money.  But how big a pile would it make?  Suppose you got your trillion dollars in $100 bills - in that case the pile, packed as tightly as you could, would occupy just over 450,000 cubic feet.  That would be a pile 100 feet long on each side, and 45 feet high – the size of a block full of large houses.  The pile would weigh a little over 10,000 tons.

That's a lot of money.

When Obama talks about a budget running a $1.8 trillion dollar deficit, that's the kind of debt he's obligating the American people to pay off...

Dishonest Science...

For years now, the AGW skeptics have cited a glaring omission from the models that the AGW proponents rely on: stratospheric water vapor.  Scientists have long known that water vapor is by far the most effective “greenhouse gas” – its effects dwarf those of carbon dioxide.  The AGW models predict a positive feedback runaway based on carbon dioxide, and completely ignore any feedback effects (positive or negative) from the water vapor.  This seems stupid on the face of it, though you'll never get an AGW proponent to agree with that.

So now comes along a study that supports the AGW skeptics position on stratospheric water vapor – and look how the mainstream science media reports it: as if it was a big surprise.

That's just plain dishonest.

Mandates...

Thomas Sowell has an excellent piece on those pernicious mandates that politicians so love...

NASA's New Direction...

Big caveat here: this is all subject to Congressional approval, which is very far from certain – NASA's political entanglements run very deep.

But having said that, while I'm very happy to see the Moon/Mars programs killed (along with their supporting “big booster” technology), I'm very disappointed to see extended support for the worthless International Space Station (ISS), and no expanded support for the unmanned program.  Basically the manned program's funding is simply moving from Moon/Mars to ISS (a no-op), and from government to private lifters (a good thing)...

AGW: the Chinese are Skeptics...

Al Gore needs to make a few trips over to Beijing – the Chinese appear to need some “reeducation”...

World Wildlife Fund is a Government Organization?

Some interesting points about WWF, whose reports were heavily leaned on by the IPCC.  Hmmm...

Global Warming is Dead?

Walter Russell Mead seems to think so...

Maxine Waters: Blithering Idiot...

It never ceases to amaze me that congresscritters like this can get re-elected, over and over again. It's as though her constituents enjoy being the standing joke, or enjoy smashing their face into a wall.

Another take on it might be as a demonstration of the power of incumbency:

Political Ad...

I don't know whether to cheer this newly released political ad (for coroner of New Orleans), or to smash my face with a hammer...



What do you think?  Is this the greatest political development evah, or should we just give up and nuke the place?

Lech Walesa: The US is Moving Toward Socialism...

Lech Walesa has some chops on this subject:

Rarely Seen Photos of Famous People...

Interesting.

That's Pablo Picasso at right...

NASA's Future...

Interesting article about rebellious NASA engineers and alternative paths forward...

ClimateGate: IPCC's Shame...

The British media is taking the IPCC to task.

Optical Illusions...

Nice collection of good optical illusions.

Salute to the Spirit Rover on Mars...

From XKCD.

Special Forces at Work in Afghanistan...

From StrategyPage.

A BlackHawk extracts some of our Special Forces guys from a peak in Afghanistan. 

Sure am glad we have rough men like that...

ClimateGate: It's Mainstream Now...

Steve McIntyre has a post up with comments that list all the recent news coverage (readers can add to the list). It's amazing how much is there now, just two months after ClimateGate broke – especially when you compare this to the dearth of skeptical articles in the lamestream media before then...

Obama Loses CNN...

Get Your Spiffy ClimateGate Poster Here!

The poster (PDF), courtesy of JoNova...

How the Democratic Leadership Perceives Scott Brown...

Har!

Hitler and ClimateGate...

Thanks to reader Mr. Xyz:

The Audacity of Hopelessness...

Mark Steyn.  Obama.  SOTU.  Go read.

Two of my favorite bits:

In Britain, a research team at King's College, London, has declared that the female "G-spot" doesn't exist.

In France, a group of top gynecologists dismissed the findings, asking, "What do you expect if you ask Englishmen to find a woman's erogenous zone?"

Har!  And:

Mr. Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliche, to "double down." What's the endgame here? Mr. Obama gave it away in his student loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college loan debts will be forgiven because public service is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into public service?

Why? In the past 60 years, the size of America's government work force has increased five times faster than the population. Yet the president says it's still not enough: We have to divert more of our human capital into the government machine. He's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swelling bureaucracy.

That's not quite so funny, but it's very well put...

Well, This Was Predictable...

Last year the (formerly great) state of California ran out of money because the freakin' idiots running the place up in Sacremento couldn't pass a budget that spent less the taxes received.  The state started issuing IOUs instead of checks, and apparently even the Democrats got the message that they actually needed to DO something about this.

But what they did was a liberal political masterpiece: they used all sorts of one-time-only accounting tricks to magically plug the holes in the budget.  They did absolutely nothing to address the actual problem (to wit, they're spending more than they're making).

So, completely predictably, we're running out of money again.

It's difficult for me to imagine what sort of tricks they're going to pull out of their butts this year – but I've little doubt that foul-smelling tricks are what we're going to get, and not any kind of the structural reform we so desperately need at the state level.

The Scott Brown phenomenon gives me some hope about politics at the national level.  Unfortunately I don't see any sign of such things at the California level...

Sometimes...

Sometimes (actually, quite often) I question the wisdom of allowing certain members (approximately 93%) of my species to continue living.  This is one of those times.

The story, in a nutshell: two doctors were treating patients in their office a couple weeks ago, when a meteorite crashed through the roof of their building.  Luckily (I think) nobody was injured.  The doctors (the good guys in this story) donated the meteorite to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where it would be put on public display.  The Smithsonian planned to give the good doctors $5,000 in appreciation, and the doctors planned to donate that money to the Haitian relief efforts.

What a great story!  Win - win- win!  What could go wrong?

A lawsuit, of course,  Greed and avarice.  And landlords.  Read it and weep for humanity...

Satirical Must Read...

IowaHawk.  Satire.  Obama's SOTU.

I'm sure I need say no more, but just in case you've somehow been cruelly punished by missing IowaHawk's previous satirical masterpieces, here's a bit out of this one:

Such was his triumph that I and my guests were rendered emotionally spent, the tears cascading down our awestruck cheeks. Nearly overcome, Brooks likened it to the the best works of Rimsky-Korsakov. I objected to this silly assessment, as I have always found the Russian too cloying and self-insistent for an educated musical palate. No, I replied, in this speech Mr. Obama proved himself Mozart incarnate, against which the Republican Salieris could only respond with their same inane repertoire of off-key tax cut polkas.

After regaining our collective composure we found ourselves in unanimous accord that Mr. Obama had finally discovered political oratory's legendary lost chord, satisfying both to the trained ear of the discerning connoisseur and the primal aesthetics of the lower castes. If Congreve was correct that music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, then Mr. Obama's clever paeans to populism will hopefully tranquilize and chastise the savages of the Tea Party, that they can once again be put safely back in their proper pens.

Bonus in this piece: a punny final line...

On That Mental Health Mandate...

Megan McArdle (the world's tallest female economics blogger) does her usual succinct evisceration of a bone-headed politician's attempt to manage health care.  My favorite bit:

On a more serious note, I feel like we could have achieved the laudable goal of ensuring that serious mental illnesses are not left untreated (at least, in cases where the patient wants to get treatment), without guaranteeing cheaper psychotherapy for America's ennui-laden affluent classes.  Of course, then we'd have to recognize the fact htat this stuff has to be paid for, rather than pretending that benefits can somehow be magically generated for free with just a wave of the regulatory pen.

I have this fantasy that Megan (or her identically equipped and informed twin sister) runs for statewide office (governor, preferably) out here in California.  I'd pay good money to watch what happened when her well-informed intelligence and level-headed perspective runs up against the lameness that permeates our state, county, and local governmental institutions.  Heads would explode, and I'm certain none of those heads would belong to Megan...

Global Warming: Record Ice in China...

Juhua Isand in northern China is experiencing the heaviest ice in more than 30 years.  If I was a warmenist, I'm sure I'd see that as proof positive of AGW...

Moon Mission Dead?

It's looking likely that the Obama administration will implement a policy that I support.  This is such a rare event that it calls for special celebration around here.  Woo hoo!

That policy?  Abandoning the “return to the moon” objectives set by President G. W. Bush.  Implicitly this also means abandoning the next step: a manned mission to Mars.  Obama is angling toward commercialization of space, by encouraging NASA to use commercial launchers instead of NASA's (outrageously expensive) launch vehicles.

It sounds wonderful.  It also sounds like something a fiscally conservative Republican or Libertarian might do, and most unlike something a leftie like Obama would do.  I think this might have been slipped into his plans by some jokester.

But there's a big caveat.  Any such proposal would have to pass Congress, and we have a surprising number of congresscritters in thrall to the NASA powers-that-be.  This is because since it's origins in the 1950s, several bureaucratically-savvy NASA administrators have cleverly located NASA facilities supporting the manned space program all over the danged place.  There are darned few states that don't take home some yummy NASA pork.

So don't hold your breath.

But I'm sure keeping my fingers crossed...

State of the Union...

Several readers have written to ask me why I haven't commented on President Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address on Wednesday.

Well, firstly, I didn't listen to it, though I have read the transcript and watched a few of the video clips.  The SOTU has evovled into a choreographed and essentially meaningless platform wherein the President (a) claims credit for everything under the sun, and (b) promises everything else under the sun.  The credit taken is usually false, the promises hardly ever attempted, much less kept.  I fully expected Obama to exceed all of his predecessors in the preceding, and in that I was not disappointed.

What did surprise me was the number and magnitude of the outright fabrications in his address.  Most of these are simple matters of fact, readily checked.  He's already being called on these errors of fact by many observers, including even some of the most liberal commentators around.  There's no doubt that Obama knew these statements were lies, so that means they must be deliberate and – sadly – he must believe that he can get away with them.  In other words, he thinks the American public is so stupid and so ill-informed that they won't realize he's lying to them. 

Based on a small sample of friends and colleagues I've talked with, Obama is badly mistaken on this point.  His SOTU address pissed off a lot of people, and disgusted even more.  You can count me amongst the latter; I was already pissed off before the SOTU...

Possible Origin of the Moon...

If you're at all interested in astronomy and space, you probably already know that the origins of the Earth's moon is one of the more enduring scientific mysteries – and it's right next door!  Here's a new possibility for the origins of our nearest neighbor in space.  It's the first one I've read in many years that actually sounds plausible.  It involves nukes.

Scale of the Universe...

An awesome interactive web page that explores a very wide range of spatial scale in the universe.  Just move the slider back and forth...

Missing in Action: Our Hummingbirds...

For two weeks now, our hummingbird feeders have been completely empty.  Where normally we saw dozens of hummingbirds all day long, we have quite literally not seen a single hummer for two weeks now.  Our neighbors report the same phenomenon.  This has never happened before in the eight years we've been actively feeding the little guys, so we're all quite bewildered.  Also a bit worried.  Where are our hummers?

We've only got two theories:

1. The hummers knew the big rains were coming, and left for Cabo (or some other warm, dry place).  One variant to this theory: they all left to go “down the hill” to El Cajon or some such place, and they'll be back soon.
   
   
2. Something awful happened that killed them all - a disease, perhaps.  

If any of my readers happen to know anything about the great hummingbird departure, we'd sure appreciate your leaving a comment here...

ClimateGate: The Unraveling of AGW...

If you read the news about AGW and “climate change” carefully, as I do, you must be marveling at the change in tone and content over the few weeks since the CRU emails were revealed.  In that short time the skeptics have been transformed from fringe elements ignored by the lamestream media into a group that's regularly reported on – and the AGW crowd has simultaneously transformed from media darlings with vast policy influence into suspected criminals and cheaters and corruptocrats being studiously ignored by the politicos.  Amazing!

Just this past week, more AGW-related news – nearly all of it bad for the AGW folks – came out than in the entire year preceding the CRU email revelations.  An incomplete roundup:

• UK officials decide that the University of East Anglia breached the UK Freedom of Information Act.
• Public concern about global warming is still dropping steeply.
• More and more AGW proponents in the science community are either bailing out of AGW-related roles or are turning into outright skeptics.
• More and more evidence of data manipulation is seeing the light of day.
• The IPCC report is being revealed for the political position piece that it really is, which means that it is fraudulent science.

The general opinion these days seems to be that the IPCC is in for a big shakeup, including the almost certain removal of its controversial head.  It looks quite unlikely that Jones will return as the CRU's head.  The University of Pennsylvania appears to be genuinely upset at the shenanigans of Michael Mann, casting doubt on his reign there.  And last but not least, the NOAA (part of NASA) is actively cleaning up their act on their web site, removing unsupported claims and unreviewed “science”, leading to speculation that the notorious James Hansen may be on the outs there. 

Will these wonders ever cease?  One hopes not!

Political Cartoon of the Day...

Via my plugged-in mom:

I don't much care for my position on this chart.  Do you?

Looking Forward...

According to my mom, this is about what I should expect:

A group of 40 year old former college buddies meets to discuss where they should have dinner. Finally it is agreed that they should dine at the Gausthof zum Lowen restaurant because the waitresses there have low cut blouses and nice breasts.

10 years later, at 50 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should meet. Finally it's agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because the food is very good and the wine selection is good also.

10 years later, at 60 years of age. the group meets again and again they discuss where they should dine. Finally it's agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because they can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free.

10 years later, at 70 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should dine. Finally they once again decide that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because the restaurant is wheel chair accessible and even has an elevator.

10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss for over an hour where they should eat. Finally they decide that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen -- all agree it's an excellent choice because they have never been there before.

Nice, mom...

Move Over Law...

Reader Dick F. passed along an email that talks about a new law coming into effect in California on January 1, 2010.  The law cited is called the “move over” law, and according to the email we Californians became the 48th state to enact this law.  The basic idea behind the law is that if you see any kind of emergency vehicle displaying flashing lights, you're required to move over one lane (if it's possible), leaving an empty lane between you and the emergency vehicle.  The email goes on to cite one man's experience with the law, claiming he got a $754 ticket, 3 points on his license, and had a mandatory court appearance.

With a little research on the web, I was able to sort the reality from the garbage in that email.

First, while there was a revision to the move over law this year, the law has actually been on the books and in effect since 2007.  The revision this year simply removed the “sunset” provision in the original law that would have automatically taken the original law off the books on January 2, 2010.

Second, the fine – both in the original law and in the revision ” is limited to $50.  There are no points on drivers licenses cited, and there is no mandatory court appearance.

You can read for yourself the actual law, a web site supporting the law, and the press release concerning the revised law.

Messianic Pharmaceuticals Presents...

Via my mom.  The accompanying text says that the cartoon is from Scotland and that the whole world is laughing at us.  What I've read in the UK press (which is far less homogenized than ours) is a mixture of poking fun at us (from the conservative-leaning outlets) and disappointment and dismay (from the left-leaning outlets)...

AGW Unvraveling...

ClimateGate seems to have begun the long-overdue process of critically examining the science and the corruption within the AGW community.  The latest revelation is the outright falsehood of IPCC claims about the damage global warming is doing in the Amazon Basin.  As James Delingpole says:

Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.

Read the whole thing.

Best Economics Music Video Evah!

I'm fairly certain I have no other posts with both “Music” and “Economics” tags...

Benford's Law...

Have you ever noticed that a disproportionate amount of numbers start with the digit one?  For instance, if you were to go through a newspaper and tally up the numbers that appear there, you'd find that about 30% of them start with a one.  Why is it 30%? This odd phenomenon continues with the other digits – about 16% of numbers start with a two, and smaller and smaller proportions until you get to nine.  What's going on here?

The first person to study this was a fellow named Frank Benford, and the proportions above are said to follow “Benford's Law”.  If you follow the news carefully, you may recognize Benford's Law, as it was used last year to prove that the election results from Iran were faked – the returns should have followed Benford's law, but they did not.

If you'd like to understand more about both what Benford's Law actually is (it's a bit more complex than the simple version I gave above), and especially why it is, here's an easy-to-understand explanation.

Debbie's Home!

Much happiness in our household. 

She played a trick on the dogs – as we pulled into our driveway, she opened her window and ducked down out of sight.  I let the dogs out to run in the yard, and then she called them.  Oh, we had some very happy dogs – whimpering, leaping and twirling for sheer joy, and nearly knocking her down with their enthusiastic greetings...