Once I removed an old piece of equipment from a circuit board in my house. The heavy piece of electrical equipment had been functioning perfectly all its life, since the 1920s probably. The next moment it was scrap. Who declared it scrap? I did. Another mental event. Useful one moment, scrap the next. 

Global warming of the man-caused variety. When did it move from “useful”or “true” to “scrap” or “false” in your mind?

But this is only one of any number of changes, decisions, evaluations we make in life.  Some of them are far more significant for our self-perception and social status. Grew up Protestant, become a Jew. Grow up Jewish, become a Unitarian. Grow up Unitarian, become a Roman Catholic. Grow up atheist and find yourself thinking a whole lot about Jesus and what He accomplished. Always thought you were gay, marry a woman and live happily. Always thought you were straight, move to Sante Fe with Allan and open a boutique. Eat meat, dyke and, behold! you do, and marry the rancher who tends to the cattle, move to southern Alberta and join the Presbyterians.

Most of our changes are far less dramatic in nature, I grant you, and occur at a slower pace than dropping the old circuit breaker into the garbage.  Most of them, in my case, have involved ceasing to concern oneself with issues that used to fascinate me. Most of them have involved retreating from publicly relevant associations, such as political parties and church, into my own private pleasures and concerns. As I am not the first to have done so, I assume it is a feature of ageing. Many go in the opposite direction.

But the topic  here is evaluation: the mysterious process that says this one, not that one. Which brings me around to us, you and me. Who does the deciding? You and I. So in effect, and in reality, you and I are the source of the value. We make the decisions. We make the evaluations. We say: “this, not that”. So how on earth did we ever get the idea that value comes from somewhere outside of us? We are the value. We are value. Not God, not earth, not Gaia, not dad, not neighbours, nor the wife. Us. You and I.

So value is not extrinsic to us. It is us. It is we who judge a thing or a person by its or their fitness to a purpose, and we judge the purpose.  We are not just making valuations, we are the source of the value by which things and people are evaluated.

Maybe this is just this morning’s approach to the saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. It is amazing sometimes to consider what happens when you decide to throw away the crossword puzzle.

O QanaDa, juHqo’maj je vav saq.
Batlh je rewbe’, qod Hoch roghvaH ra’.
tiDu’ wew Hot’bey, legh HoS je tlhab.
Da ‘u’, O QanaDa, pe’av Hochlogh.

joH’a’ jegh juHqo’ yay je tlhab.
O QanaDa, pe’av Hochlogh.
O QanaDa, pe’av Hochlogh.

And the translation:

O Canada, our home world and fatherland,
Honour and love in all its people command.
Our hearts glowing, we see strength and freedom.
Throughout the universe, O Canada, we will stand guard for all time.

God give our home world victory and freedom.
O Canada, we will stand guard for all time,
O Canada, we will stand guard for all time.

Gore’s lyrical hymn to his wisdom can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?ref=opinion

Full of gnostic hyperbole:

“From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.”

Is there no end to his megalomania? Apparently not.

See the article by Paul Belien in the Brussels Journal.

Will everyone please pay attention to the Wilders phenomenon? It is a huge issue, whether a leading national politician can be thrown in jail for saying that Islam is an enemy to civilization, and there is no defence possible under Dutch law? Except by taking over the government, that is.

Or is this a precursor to the restoration to acceptance of “The Maple Leaf Forever”?

We suspect everything except the government having an outburst of political correctness. Say it isn’t so, Stephen!

I think it is a distraction, but from what?

Note: this is a Minister of the Crown, the Labour Minister for the Environment.

For more on this, read here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7333470/The-infiltration-of-Labour.html

I am NOT making this up!

Also, more interesting is the report of this by Hizb ut-Tahir, the Liberation Party.

In fact, spend some time on http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/

Everything said by Gates of Vienna and like minded anti-Islamic sites seems simply the recitation of facts. They mean to do us in.

UPDATE

“Dispatches” on Britain’s Channel 4 tackles the issue directly in its latest episode, examining how the Islamic Forum of Europe has been infiltrating municipal government in London and redirecting public monies to its jihadist front groups.

Put simply, the situation is as bad as you thought.

A seven-month-old girl survived for three days alone with a bullet in her chest after being shot by her parents as part of a suicide pact over their fears about global warming…

Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.

Update: UK Daily Mail provided the following additional details.

Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.

But their unnamed daughter cheated death after the bullet from her dad’s handgun missed her vital organs.

Paramedics rushed her to hospital covered in blood when police alerted by worried neighbours discovered the massacre three days later.

The youngster is recovering in hospital in the town of Goya in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes, where doctors say she is out of danger.

This is what Lyndon Johnson’s Day-timer looked like in January 1968.

January 17 – Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of the U.S. dollar.
January 21 – Vietnam War – Battle of Khe Sanh: One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8.
January 21 – A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.
January 23 – North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.
January 30 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.

That is enough to make any man drink.

Obama’s first year consisted of others taking measure of the man.  Now things will get interesting.

With Congress in school and Presidency in an on-the-job-training program US is in great hands indeed.

Update: Reason magazine notes that Waters has been a member of the House Committee on Financial Services since 1990!  Twenty years and she is still clueless.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said “outrageous” advice from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped create record U.S. budget deficits that put national security at risk…

“I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn’t really need to pay down the debt — outrageous in my view,” she said…

Clinton’s swipe at Greenspan symbolized the way the former central bank chief’s reputation has fallen since he left the job in 2006.

First named to the office by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Greenspan served throughout the presidency of Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. He was regarded as economic oracle whose cryptic pronouncements were searched for inner meaning and regularly moved financial markets.

Now, he has become a handy whipping boy blamed for helping inflate a housing bubble that eventually burst, setting off a grave financial crisis and plunging the economy into the worst recession in decades.

Very conveniently Hillary, she of the ever shifting last name, did not include the Internet bubble in the list of Greenspan’s “accomplishments”, but then she wouldn’t want to further tarnish the legacy of her husband on whose watch this bubble was inflated and eventually deflated with tech stocks peaking in March 2000.  This was seven months before Bush Jr. was elected and by the time he was sworn in the tech stocks, as measured by NASDAQ index, had already fallen by more than 50%.

In September 2009 NY Gov. Paterson rejected WH entreaties not to run for reelection.  Eventually he learned the hard way not to mess with Chicago political crowd.  Earlier this week NYT dug up dirt and revealed that Paterson and state police officials contacted the woman who had accused David Johnson, an aide to the governor, of attacking her last year.  It finally forced Paterson to announce today that he will not seek reelection.

Obama is still a winner – when he is in his element.

A Liberal activist treats this as the wonderful wedge issue that will separate Tories from the Canadian mainstream. Robert Silver is an energy consultant seeking to develop clean energy for Ontario.

“As a Liberal I obviously think this is a wonderful idea. I have a funny feeling Stephen Harper will think otherwise. He may have a real internal problem on his hands and I would expect this wedge to be exploited mercilessly in the months to come.”

I think this is one of those situations where, once again, it is the Tories who are reading it better than the Liberals. With whom will this issue resonate?

A more substantial and worthwhile discussion ensues at Watt’s Up With That. A debate is taking place between Judith Curry and Willis Eschenbach on the question of trust in science, which is really what is at stake here. Eschenbach insists the issue is not one of communication: the issue is, as he reports tongue in cheek, 73.1% of peer reviewed papers are junk science. Communicating junk better is not the solution.

One area where this has become painfully obvious is the coverage of Climategate.  The European leftist newspapers have been much more “forceful” in their coverage and US leftist newspapers have hardly noticed the kerfuffle.  This article provides a good overview of this disparity.  The European leftist realise that AGW is dead, while the naive US leftist, exemplified by NYT, dream on.