Bayou Renaissance Man

In Memoriam: Captain Carroll LeFon, US Navy (retired), AKA 'Neptunus Lex'

2012-03-07T07:03:00.006-06:00

There's terrible news from Nevada. Fellow blogger 'Neptunus Lex', in real life retired US Navy Captain Carroll LeFon, was killed yesterday when his Kfir fighter crashed (shown below). At the time, he was engaged in an 'adversary' mission to train US military pilots.

(Picture received via e-mail: source and copyright unknown)

Military.com (to which Capt. LeFon contributed several articles) provides the following short biography:

Carroll "Lex" LeFon is an retired US Navy captain, incipient crank, rapidly aging curmudgeon and used-to-be naval aviator with over 4000 hours in fighter aircraft, predominantly the FA-18C Hornet. His operational experience includes seven carrier deployments, including several in support of Operation Southern Watch, enforcing UN Sanctions in the Southern No-Fly Zone over Iraq. After commanding an operational FA-18 squadron he reported to the USS Constellation in 2001, later serving as her Operations Officer in the Arabian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Shore tours include tours as instructor pilot in basic jet training, as an adversary instructor and as the Executive Officer of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN).

He retired from the Navy in 2008, after serving as Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations and Training on two flag staffs. He is a 1982 graduate from the US Naval Academy with a BS in Political Science, with a Master of Science in Systems Engineering Management from the US Naval Postgraduate School.

A condolence thread has been opened at 'Neptunus Lex' for those who wish to leave a comment. The US Naval Institute Blog also has at least two articles about his passing. I recommend all three links to your attention.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
In memoria aeterna erit iustus,
ab auditione mala non timebit.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord :
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
He shall be justified in everlasting memory,
and shall not fear evil reports.

We've lost one of the 'best of the best'. My heartfelt condolences to his loved ones.

Peter

What a performance!

2012-03-06T23:50:00.003-06:00

This clip shows a performance by Alexandre Lane of Canada, using a so-called 'Cyr wheel'. You can learn more about them here. It's worth watching this in full-screen mode.

I can't begin to imagine the fitness, stamina, co-ordination and balance required to pull that off!

Peter

I bet Alaska's longing for some 'global warming'!

2012-03-06T23:41:00.003-06:00

I note with some amusement that Anchorage, Alaska is within a few inches of breaking the all-time record for snowfall in any one winter. The existing record, set in 1954-55, is 132.8 inches. This winter's total stands at 126.7 inches as of this evening, according to station KTUU in Anchorage. Another 6.2" and they'll break the record . . . and given that snow falls in Alaska well into April, I don't doubt they'll pass the old mark by a considerable margin this year.

Right now, I reckon, if you guarantee to cause enough pollution to speed up 'global warming' by a factor of 10, there are people in Alaska who'll pay you to do so - and they wouldn't care a fig for the EPA!

Peter

Amazing paper art!

2012-03-06T23:18:00.003-06:00

I was astonished to come across some lovely examples of the painstaking paper art of Eric Standley. Visual News reports:

Looking like 3D versions of stained glass windows or ancient mandalas, these insanely intricate paper-cut sculptures use hundreds of layers of paper to build up their peacefully meditative forms.

Each piece looks as if it was carved into a single block of multi-colored paper strata, revealing complex repeating geometric patterns buried in its depths.

Even more interesting, not only do these works have depth, but also bands or bridges of paper floating over the carved away sections below.

What results are overlapping, interwoven patterns that draw one in to explore what lies underneath.

There are many more images at the link, and at Mr. Standley's Web site. Amazing craftsmanship!

Peter

The next two weeks are going to be interesting . . .

2012-03-06T22:08:00.015-06:00

. . . because Europe's economic pigeons may be about to come home to roost. If the authorities in the Eurozone, both political and financial, can navigate their way between the fiscal rocks and monetary-policy shoals surrounding them, they may buy a bit more time to solve that continent's almost intractable situation. If they can't, then it's "Katie, bar the door!" - for all of us. Consider the following points:

1. Greece has said it requires the holders of 75% of its outstanding privately-held sovereign debt to 'sign on' to the latest bailout deal, which involves those holders taking a 'haircut' of at least 57% on their investments (which is more likely to end up at around 70%, when all is said and done). However, only 20% have accepted the deal so far. Greece is threatening to enforce participation through new legislation: but it seems that not all outstanding bonds were issued subject to Greek law. At least some (perhaps enough to derail Greece's plans) were issued subject to the laws of other nations, in order to sell them to investors there. If Greece tries to 'railroad' those bondholders under Greek law, it's going to have an international legal fight on its hands. The deadline for all parties to reach agreement is March 8th: and if they don't, the latest bailout deal may fall apart. If that happens, Greece will undoubtedly default on (i.e. be unable to meet) its next payment on its bonds, a sum of about 14.5 billion Euros, which is due on March 20th.

2. Markets around the world are already falling sharply in anticipation that Greece may not be able to make its scheduled payment, and will therefore go into default. That will threaten the status of a minimum of one trillion Euros of debt - bonds issued by Greece and other weak Eurozone economies such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. The total amount of debt at risk may actually be several times larger, given the number of off-balance-sheet transactions that have taken place in those nations (particularly among second-tier regional and third-tier local governments). Nobody knows for sure.

3. If Greece defaults, the 'debt pyramid' built up by the world's major central banks will be exposed for the financial 'house of cards' that it is. In the past 3½ years, central banks in the USA, Britain, Japan and the Eurozone have created no less than $8.8 trillion in 'new money'. That's money created out of nowhere, backed by no assets - it's merely a string of numbers on a computer screen. This has been at the root of the so-called 'quantitative easing' programs of the central banks, but has also created growing instability in the world's money supply. Never in the history of the world have we seen money supply growth of this magnitude. No-one really knows to what it may lead - but I can't believe it will end well.

4. That enormous amount of newly created money has been used to prop up the national finances of some of the world's largest - and weakest - economies. In the case of the USA, our national debt has skyrocketed during the past four years. As a result, the interest payments this country will owe on its public debt are estimated at over $5 trillion during the next decade alone - and that's without repaying a single cent of the principal! As CNN points out:

Over the decade, more than 14% of all revenue the government is projected to collect will be sucked up by interest payments.

That's a lot of money that can't be used on the country's other priorities.

Indeed, between 2013 and 2022, estimated interest costs will be:

higher than Medicaid spending;
equal to half of Social Security spending;
close to what is spent on all of defense.

And here's the thing -- the estimated interest costs assume a fairly steady and moderate increase in rates over the decade.

. . .

If it turns out that rates rise one percentage point higher than CBO projects, that could add roughly $1 trillion to interest costs over the decade.

There's more at the link.

If Greece defaults, and other weak Eurozone economies follow it into the economic desert, look for those interest rates to rise very sharply indeed. That'll make the CBO's projections effectively meaningless. For example, the interest rate may double or triple compared to what the CBO projects. That is entirely possible - it's already happened to Greece, and currently threatens Italy and Spain - and it may develop with frightening speed, in a matter of weeks rather than months (again, that's what happened in Europe). If it happens, that means not $5 trillion, but perhaps as much as $10 trillion out of our economy over the next decade - $1 trillion every year - before we've spent a single cent on any other government programs. It may be even more than that. If that happens, ladies and gentlemen, kiss your entitlement programs goodbye - overnight. There'll be no way to pay for them.

5. David Stockman, former White House budget director under President Reagan, recently answered a series of questions about the economy that are directly relevant to this issue. Here's an excerpt.

Q: What will 10-year Treasurys yield in a year or five years?

A: I have no guess, but I do know where it is now (a yield of about 2 percent) is totally artificial. It's the result of massive purchases by not only the Fed but all of the other central banks of the world.

Q: What's wrong with that?

A: It doesn't come out of savings. It's made up money. It's printing press money. When the Fed buys $5 billion worth of bonds this morning, which it's doing periodically, it simply deposits $5 billion in the bank accounts of the eight dealers they buy the bonds from.

Q: And what are the consequences of that?

A: The consequences are horrendous. If you could make the world rich by having all the central banks print unlimited money, then we have been making a mistake for the last several thousand years of human history.

Q: How does it end?

A: At some point confidence is lost, and people don't want to own the (Treasury) paper. I mean why in the world, when the inflation rate has been 2.5 percent for the last 15 years, would you want to own a five-year note today at 80 basis points (0.8 percent)?

If the central banks ever stop buying, or actually begin to reduce their totally bloated, abnormal, freakishly large balance sheets, all of these speculators are going to sell their bonds in a heartbeat.

That's what happened in Greece.

Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today — utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today.

Q: You sound as if we're facing a financial crisis like the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

A: Oh, far worse than Lehman. When the real margin call in the great beyond arrives, the carnage will be unimaginable.

More at the link. Bold print is my emphasis. Go read it all. You can't afford not to!

6. The inimitable Charles Hugh Smith asked Zeus Yiamouyiannis to comment on the situation. The resulting article is titled simply, "When Greece Comes Crashing Down, Everything Comes Crashing Down". Here's an excerpt.

This is not just about fairness anymore; it is about the exposure of central, global illusions that affect everyone, not just banks. For the last three plus decades, debt-fueled “growth” has instilled a life sense that everyone gets rich, values always go up, and no one has to pay. If those illusions evaporate than those citizens complicit in this failed fantasy may actually join forces with the realists (those who knew it was a scam all along) to produce unified citizen revolt. Hell hath no fury like the people spurned and lied to, even if many had some responsibility in welcoming and fanning those lies.

The implicit deal was this: We will collude so everyone gets rich going forward. We will collude so no one has to pay if there is any unwinding. (But, hey, it’s a new era, and that’s not going to happen!) Open default breaks the illusion, and austerity breaks up the collusion. This is why default has to be hidden, deferred, restructured. It is not just about chaos around party/counterparty risk (in particular, cascading claims that are not backed by anything). It is not even just about finance. It’s about all the other things that will unwind, culturally, politically, and psychologically, if Greece defaults and sets into motion the necessity of someone actually paying up. In short, recognition of reality has disastrous consequences for the status quo and its control myths.

The infinite growth meme unwinds: The cancerous economic obsession with infinite growth in a finite world is already unwinding, but will hit full force with cascading defaults. It is one thing to have a “slowdown,” and another to have your economic brakes lock up on you and your gears slammed into reverse. About the only thing that seems to be growing currently is the number of people partially employed or permanently unemployed.

. . .

Guaranteed entitlements unwind: So now that the illusion of infinite growth is being exposed, the corresponding ballooning entitlements that enticed the larger public to become complicit in the illusion are becoming unglued. It would take almost a decade of gross national product to pay off the U.S. unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which exceed the staggering sum of 100 trillion dollars.

Retirement and health benefits cannot be paid out of fake prosperity and “notional” (i.e. imaginary) values. They require real services and products and an accepted public medium of exchange. (I will leave off the argument as to what constitutes “real” and “accepted” since even fiat currencies are dubious in this regard.) People will be forced to adjust their expectations and adapt their realities. With public and private pension plans also complicit in derivative scams to fund benefits, it will be no surprise if many pensions simply declare themselves bankrupt in the next decade.

Again, more at the link. This is a must read, I say again, a MUST READ for anyone trying to imagine the overall, worldwide economic consequences of the current financial situation. It's that important. Go read it. NOW.

All this comes to a head during the next two weeks, folks: first on March 8th, which is Greece's deadline to finalize investor participation in the bailout deal, then on March 20th, which is when Greece must make a multi-billion-Euro debt payment. If the bailout deal falls through, and if Greece defaults on that payment . . . things are going to get very interesting, very quickly.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD: Karl Denninger weighs in on the subject in his usual right-to-the-point fashion:

Let's assume that Greece fails to get their "PSI" and thus hard-defaults. The correct thing for them to do in this instance is to default all externally-held bonds at minimum (and maybe all of them, external or not.)

Why should Portugal, Ireland or Italy pay if Greece can erect the middle finger?

Oh yeah, we didn't think about that, did we?

. . .

I have held since the beginning of this mess that Greece was going to default -- it was inevitable. I will add that it is inevitable that if The United States does not immediately -- not in five years, not in ten, not in fifteen, but now -- balance its budget and cut the deficit spending to zero we will inevitably default as well.

. . .

We are quickly running out of time in America and Europe appears to be the trigger that will force our hand. This does not surprise me; the only surprise is that we've managed to get away with our obfuscation and lies for as long as we have.

Time's up!

More at the link. Bold and italic print are Mr. Denninger's emphasis. Go read the rest!

Why the Unimog is such a great off-road vehicle

2012-03-06T00:43:00.002-06:00

Last year saw the 60th anniversary of the Unimog (I wrote about it at the time). I've covered many thousands of miles in these astonishing vehicles and their derivatives, and hold them in very high regard indeed. Here's a video clip demonstrating just how well they can cope with obstacles.

Try doing that with your average Jeep!

Peter

When greed overcomes morality and common sense

2012-03-06T00:04:00.005-06:00

Two (partial) quotations serve to frame recent events at the Cato Institute.

Carl Sandburg - "Money is power"

Lord Acton - "Power corrupts"

Let the Washington Post set the scene.

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch filed a lawsuit Wednesday for control of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

The lawsuit exposes a power struggle for one of Washington’s premiere policy centers, which has been funded by millions in contributions from the Koch brothers’ foundations since its founding in 1974.

Cato was divided between four shareholders: the two Koch brothers, Cato president Ed Crane, and former Cato chairman William Niskanen, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in a court in Johnson County, Kansas.

At the heart of the dispute is the fate of the shares owned by Niskanen, who died in October at age 78 of complications from a stroke. The Koch brothers believe that they have the option to buy Niskanen’s shares, while Cato officials believe that the shares belong to Niskanen’s widow, Kathryn Washburn, according to the complaint.

Washburn, who is named in the suit along with Cato and Crane, referred questions to Cato.

There's more at the link.

Courtesy of a link provided by Claire Wolfe, we learn the background to the story from a Cato staffer. Here's an excerpt from his article.

The real work that Cato does, above all of its specific issue advocacy, is to show that the ordinary constellations of opinion, both left and right, aren’t necessarily so good. Many of Cato’s ideas are already out there, on the left or the right. What Cato does is fit them together in a way that we find is much more consistent and principled. We might be wrong, but at the very least we’re a reasonable challenge to the status quo.

What does Cato say that no other think tank says? Militarism is not the foreign policy best suited to the free market. In fact, it’s the worst foreign policy for a free market. The War on Drugs is not only unnecessary in a free market, but ending it would be a straightforward implementation of free market principles. And the freedom to buy and sell is a sick joke without robust civil liberties for all. Conversely, most people want their civil liberties partly so that they can earn a living and enjoy economic opportunities.

That is what Cato is about. That is also apparently why the Kochs are trying to destroy it.

I can’t understand how people who are so smart in business can be so boneheaded when it comes to activism. It’s a painfully stupid decision. Even if it were innocent — which it’s not — it still looks horrible. It’s as if the Kochs set out to prove every last thing that progressives have ever said about them.

To sue William Niskanen’s widow is atrocious all by itself, an act worthy of a cartoon plutocrat. They appear to have been biding their time until he died, which is just ghoulish. Everyone from left to right admired Bill’s honesty, courage, and intellectual rigor, even if they disagreed with him. He was a fine scholar and a true gentleman. I worked with him very closely on his last book, I saw his good qualities and learned a lot from him, and I am appalled that the Kochs would burden his widow in their bid for control.

What we are witnessing here is a very important moment in the history of conservative-libertarian fusionism. Possibly its death knell. To the extent that any of my colleagues have spoken, it’s fair to say that this is what they have said as well.

I don’t fear being fired anymore. They’d have to fire all of us if they wanted Cato to do their bidding. If they did, we’d just reorganize somewhere else. The donors and the audience would follow the productive people who actually did the work, not the people who sat on their shares and waited for Bill Niskanen to meet his maker. The productive folks are the ones who really run things.

Again, more at the link.

All those of us of a libertarian persuasion - whether centrist-liberatarian, as I am, or more extreme in their positions - need to understand the real danger posed by the Koch's move. As Classically Liberal points out:

The end result of Koch's action will be to harm libertarianism in a significant way. I don't give a **** about his motivation, I know what the result will be. And anyone willing to inflict that much damage on libertarians, for any reason, is not an ally, but an enemy, and a very dangerous one at that. So, libertarian friends, if you "liked" Koch Industries on Facebook, you might want to unlike them.

Libertarianism is strong, but endangered. There is a concerted effort to take the libertarian revival and turn it into something other than libertarian. We see it from the so-called paleolibertarians, that gaggle of bigoted, anarcho-fundamentalists who distort and twist the idea of Ludwig von Mises to try and bolster their right-wing agenda. We see it from conservatives who have flooded libertarianism pushing neoconservative foreign policies and social conservatism, while pretending they are actually libertarian. Certainly Koch has done a lot to fund these latter fakes. Now Charles Koch has gone on the offensive, and offensive describes his actions in every sense of the word. He is now actively working to destroy the most effective libertarian organization in the world. As I see it, that makes him the most potent enemy to libertarianism around. He is trying to do what many far left, and far right, groups would love to do—take the Cato Institute out of the game.

More at the link.

I intend to write to the Koch brothers, pointing out that they already have many effective outlets for their political views, and asking them to leave the Cato Institute alone. I hope like-minded readers will do the same. Furthermore, if the Koch lawsuit succeeds and they take control of the Cato Institute, I'll support (financially and otherwise, including publicity on this blog) any effort by the existing Cato staff to form a new institute to take its place. Again, I invite like-minded readers to join me, if it comes to that.

I've never believed the attempts by the Left to demonize the Koch brothers for their conservative political views. If one gives credence to such efforts, one must do the same for efforts by the Right to demonize George Soros for his efforts to support progressive and left-leaning perspectives, policies and politicians. However, to sue the widow of a deceased former colleague in this way appears downright mean-spirited, ungentlemanly, grasping and greedy. I believe it demonstrates that the Koch's great wealth - which equates to power - has corrupted their sense of what is right, and moral, and ethical. I submit that their actions demean the Koch brothers and everything they stand for. I hope they come to their senses before the damage becomes irreversible.

Peter

Black lawmakers, ethics investigations, and reality

2012-03-05T23:19:00.005-06:00

An article in the Atlantic last weekend was headlined, "Disparate Impact: Black Lawmakers and Ethics Investigations". Here's an excerpt.

African-Americans make up 10 percent of the House, but as of the end of February, five of the sitting six named lawmakers under review by the House Ethics Committee are black. The pattern isn't new. At one point in late 2009, seven lawmakers were known to be involved in formal House ethics inquiries; all were members of the Congressional Black Caucus. An eighth caucus member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, had also been under investigation, but his probe was halted temporarily while the Justice Department undertook an inquiry of its own.

All told, about one-third of sitting black lawmakers have been named in an ethics probe during their careers, according to a National Journal review.

Only two members of Congress have been formally charged with ethics violations in recent years and have faced the specter of public trials -- Reps. Charles Rangel of New York (censured) and Maxine Waters of California (investigation ongoing). Both are black. There are no African-Americans in the Senate. Remember the most recent black senator, Roland Burris of Illinois? Reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in 2009.

Those are the facts, as Cleaver said. The question is why so many African-American members have been in the ethics spotlight.

In interviews with more than a dozen members of the CBC, an unsettling thread emerges: They feel targeted. There could be no other explanation, many said, for what they see as disproportionate treatment at the hands of ethics investigators. They describe a disquieting reality of being black in Congress today: a feeling that each move they make is unfairly scrutinized. "We all feel threatened," said Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, as he sat by the fireplace off the House floor. "If the only reason that you would suffer a complaint is because of your skin color, that is a cause for concern."

It is a grave accusation: Could the congressional ethics process, ostensibly safeguarded by professional staff members and by a bipartisan structure that allows nothing to move forward unless Democrats and Republicans agree, be singling out African-Americans?

Other explanations are possible. Perhaps more ethical issues arise within the black caucus than within the House as a whole. Many of its members occupy safe seats, after all, and have been in Washington for decades. Maybe some of them grew too comfortable or insulated, and they failed to track changing ethics standards.

Or maybe they're disproportionately the victims of an investigation process that relies heavily on outside information from watchdog groups with their own agendas, or on big-city media prone to examining politicians in their urban backyards. Or maybe their white counterparts are quicker to retain high-priced counsel to make ethics inquiries disappear before they ever become public or have quickly resigned rather than face a probe.

Whatever the reason, the disparity has had a profound effect on African-American legislators on Capitol Hill.

There's more at the link.

May I suggest what's at the heart of the problem? It's not politically correct to speak of it, but then, I've never been accused of being politically correct. The problem is that the Black community as a whole in the USA has a very serious problem with crime and dishonesty. This becomes clear from an examination of US crime statistics. I've mentioned the subject on five previous occasions, most recently last month. In my 2008 article I cited a superb study by Heather MacDonald for City Journal in which she pointed out:

The favorite culprits for high black prison rates include a biased legal system, draconian drug enforcement, and even prison itself. None of these explanations stands up to scrutiny. The black incarceration rate is overwhelmingly a function of black crime. Insisting otherwise only worsens black alienation and further defers a real solution to the black crime problem.

Racial activists usually remain assiduously silent about that problem. But in 2005, the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests.

There's much more at the link. Highly recommended reading.

Because Black legislators are drawn from, and elected by, and are (literally and figuratively) representative of their community, it's no surprise to me whatsoever to see that community's problems reflected in their (lack of) ethical behavior. The real tragedy, in fact, is that these leaders are setting such an awful example for the rest of their community! How many young Black people are looking at the behavior of their legislators and thinking to themselves, "Well, if that's how they behave, why shouldn't I do the same thing?" When a so-called 'Reverend' commits adultery and fathers a child out of wedlock, and then uses money donated by the public for other purposes to pay child support; when a Congressman is caught red-handed with tens of thousands of dollars in bribe money in his freezer; when one of the most senior Representatives in Congress is censured for numerous ethics violations involving hundreds of thousands of dollars . . . what sort of message does this send to their constituents?

What we need are honest, upright, moral, ethical legislators - people of the caliber of Dr. Bill Cosby, whose 'Pound Cake Speech' is still one of the most profound analyses of the problems of the Black community in the USA. Here's an excerpt.

Why can't the Black community elect more legislators of Dr. Cosby's ilk? That would take care of the ethics situation overnight!

Oh - and if anyone wants to accuse me of being racist for saying this, I'll ram their words right back down their throat, and spit in their eye, and dare them to say it again. I spent almost two decades of my life working very hard to get rid of one of the most pernicious systems of racism of the 20th century. That cost me many friends, and I still bear the scars of those years on my body and in my mind and soul. I learned the hard way that it doesn't matter a damn what color someone's skin may be, or what group they belong to. What matters is the color of their soul . . . and according to the Master in whom I believe, that has to be white. Not Caucasian-skin-white, but white as in cleansed from sin, and kept that way by Divine grace. I'm not yet in that state myself, and I'm sure most of my readers would agree that they're not either. Still, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus might do well to think about that . . .

Peter

A solid smackdown for climate change alarmists

2012-03-05T22:18:00.005-06:00

I was glad to read an editorial in the Independent, a British newspaper, commenting on a presentation last month to Britain's House of Commons by Prof. Richard Lindzen. He's the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, and one of the world's foremost authorities on climate and the factors affecting it. Here's an excerpt from the editorial.

Is catastrophic global warming, like the Millennium Bug, a mistake?

At a public meeting in the Commons, the climate scientist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT made a number of declarations that unsettle the claim that global warming is backed by “settled science”.

. . .

Lindzen says: “Claims that the earth has been warming, that there is a Greenhouse Effect, and that man’s activity have contributed to warming are trivially true but essentially meaningless.”

He said our natural body temperature varies by eight tenths of a degree.

. . .

When you double CO2 there’s a two per cent change in the “radiation budget”. Yet two billion years ago, the sun was 20 to 30 per cent dimmer – and the planet’s temperature was about the same.

The Al Gore graph showing CO2 and temperature rising and falling in tandem showed that the release of CO2 from the oceans was prompted by warming, not vice versa.

He gave us a slide with a series of familiar alarms – melting ice caps, disappearing icebergs, receding glaciers, rising sea levels. It was published by the US Weather Bureau in 1922.

. . .

How to explain the procession of eminent opinion leaders – some even in our own Royal Society – who advance the tenets of catastrophic global warming? “It is science in the service of politics,” he said.

If Lindzen is right, we will never be able to calculate the trillions that have been spent on the advice of “scientists in the service of politics”.

There's more at the link.

I was intrigued to see such a scientific debunking of the 'pseudoscience' behind so many assertions by climate change alarmists. I wanted to learn more, so I did a search, and found a complete copy of Prof. Lindzen's presentation on YouTube, in two parts. It's about an hour long, but if you're interested in the field, it's indispensable.

The slides used by Prof. Lindzen during his presentation have been made available in Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) format by the Telegraph newspaper in London. You can access them here. I recommend doing so while you watch/listen to the two-part talk above, so that you can refer to them as he mentions them.

This is perhaps the best debunking I've yet encountered of the nonsense spouted by so many alarmists about human-caused climate change. Last month's 'Fakegate' scandal is merely the latest disgrace in a long history of their perversion of science and truth in the interests of a politicized (and political) agenda. (That last link, to an article by Warren Meyer in Forbes, is well worth following for a shorter, simplified explanation of the state of the climate change debate.) The problem is, the advocates of anthropocentric climate change keep altering the terms of the debate, to avoid confronting the facts that must inevitably destroy the foundations of their position. The science is indeed 'settled', as they claim - it's just not in their favor. As Warren Meyer concludes in his article:

So let’s come back to our original question — what is it exactly that skeptics “deny.” As we have seen, most don’t deny the greenhouse gas theory, or that the Earth has warmed some amount over the last several year. They don’t even deny that some of that warming has likely been via man-made CO2. What they deny is the catastrophe — they argue that the theory of strong climate positive feedback is flawed, and is greatly exaggerating the amount of warming we will see from man-made CO2. And, they are simultaneously denying that most or all of past warming is man-made, and arguing instead that the amount that is natural and cyclic is being under-estimated.

So how about the “97% of scientists” who purportedly support global warming? What proposition do they support? Let’s forget for a minute a variety of concerns about cherry-picking respondents in studies like this (I am always reminded by such studies of the quote attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Pauline Kael that she couldn’t understand how Nixon had won because no one she knew voted for him). Let’s look at the actual propositions the 97% agreed to in one such study conducted at the University of Illinois. Here they are:

When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The 97% answered “risen” and “yes” to these two questions. But depending on how one defines “significant” (is 20% a significant factor?) I could get 97% of a group of science-based skeptics to agree to the same answers.

So this is the real problem at the heart of the climate debate — the two sides are debating different propositions! In our chart, proponents of global warming action are vigorously defending the propositions on the left side, propositions with which serious skeptics generally already agree. When skeptics raise issues about climate models, natural sources of warming, and climate feedbacks, advocates of global warming action run back to the left side of the chart and respond that the world is warming and greenhouse gas theory is correct. At best, this is a function of the laziness and scientific illiteracy of the media that allows folks to talk past one another; at worst, it is a purposeful bait-and-switch to avoid debate on the tough issues.

Do I expect Prof. Lindzen's exposition to change the debate, and put an end to all the propaganda spewed forth by climate change alarmists? Hardly! Some of the latter are already trying to explain 'Fakegate' as justified, in the light of skeptics' resistance to what they consider to be the truth. Why their efforts to defend the indefensible? Follow the money, my friend. Look at how much is expended on the climate change alarmists' side of the fence by the US government alone, compared to the Heartland Institute. Attacking anthropocentric climate change means that the income of its proponents is threatened. They've built a vast eminence on foundations of sand, and the truth is a flood washing that sand away and threatening to undermine and destroy their entire construction (which is no more than it deserves, of course). Look at how much Al Gore, the 'prophet of global warming', has made out of his climate evangelism. Don't try to tell me he's motivated purely by selfless concern for the environment. Follow the money!

Eventually authorities like Prof. Lindzen will be proved correct. The climate change alarmism edifice will come tumbling down as it becomes clear that the whole thing's been a hoax, a monstrous lie, and a colossal waste of time and money. However, by then, literally trillions of dollars will have been wasted on it. Not a bad return for a few decades' fakery.

Peter

The sound of the sea - as you've never heard it before!

2012-03-04T23:46:00.005-06:00

This video was apparently taken near Odessa in the Ukraine. What you're hearing is the sound of sea ice, grinding against itself as the Black Sea moves beneath it.

I've never heard anything like that! Have US readers - along the coast of Maine, for example, or up in Alaska - heard sea ice make similar sounds?

Peter

Radio waves shaped like PASTA???

2012-03-04T23:35:00.002-06:00

I worked for many years with computer and electronic systems that used radio signals. I thought I understood something about aerials, transmitters, and all that sort of thing (or I used to, until modern digital systems took over and rendered me as obsolete as the dinosaurs!). However, I'd never heard of anything like this.

Radio waves twisted into the shape of fusilli pasta have been beamed across Venice – and researchers discovered that they allow for a potentially infinite number of channels to be broadcast and received.

Fusilli (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The researchers, from the University of Padova, Italy, and the Angstrom Laboratory, Sweden, believe that they have solved the problem of radio congestion.

As the world continues to adapt in the digital age, the introduction of new mobile smartphones, wireless internet and digital TVs means the number of radio frequency bands available to broadcast information gets smaller and smaller.

‘You just have to try sending a text message at midnight on New Year's Eve to realise how congested the bands are,’ said lead author Dr Fabrizio Tamburini.

A wave can twist about its axis a certain number of times in either a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, meaning there are several configurations that it can adopt.

‘In a three-dimensional perspective, this phase twist looks like a fusilli-pasta-shaped beam,' Tamburini continued.

'Each of these twisted beams can be independently generated, propagated and detected even in the very same frequency band, behaving as independent communication channels.'

There's more at the link.

Hmm . . . Speaking as one formerly involved with electronic warfare, this suggests a new approach. If one uses aerials shaped like fusilli to intercept signals, one should be able to tell at once which messages are real, and which are im-pastas!

Peter

The limits of modern medicine

2012-03-04T23:22:00.003-06:00

When I was an active pastor, I attended many patients who were on their way out of this life. For some of them, the end was approaching after many long and fulfilling years, as their bodies simply wore out. Others had contracted serious diseases, or been injured in accidents. The most difficult common denominator among them was how to approach the subject of death. This had to be done from two perspectives, as the person dying was often more willing to accept reality than their family members! One had to first bring what peace one could to the patient, then spend much longer trying to get their loved ones to 'let go' and allow the patient to die in peace. Sometimes I didn't succeed, with the result that (at family members' insistence) the patient was put through days or weeks of very costly, frequently very uncomfortable (or even painful), and ultimately ineffectual treatment. The end result was always the same . . . death.

I was therefore interested to read an article in the Wall Street Journal, 'Why Doctors Die Differently'. Here's a brief excerpt.

Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).

. . .

Unlike previous eras, when doctors simply did what they thought was best, our system is now based on what patients choose. Physicians really try to honor their patients' wishes, but when patients ask "What would you do?," we often avoid answering. We don't want to impose our views on the vulnerable.

The result is that more people receive futile "lifesaving" care, and fewer people die at home than did, say, 60 years ago. Nursing professor Karen Kehl, in an article called "Moving Toward Peace: An Analysis of the Concept of a Good Death," ranked the attributes of a graceful death, among them: being comfortable and in control, having a sense of closure, making the most of relationships and having family involved in care. Hospitals today provide few of these qualities.

Written directives can give patients far more control over how their lives end. But while most of us accept that taxes are inescapable, death is a much harder pill to swallow, which keeps the vast majority of Americans from making proper arrangements.

There's more at the link. Useful, thought-provoking and recommended reading.

Peter

"10 Years Of Gorgeous Images Of Earth From Space"

2012-03-04T23:04:00.003-06:00

That's the title of an article at Wired last weekend.

Ten years ago on March 1, the European Space Agency launched an 8-ton satellite called Envisat that would deliver back to Earth some of the most beautiful images of our planet taken from space.

The Hawaiian Islands

Since then, Envisat has orbited Earth more than 50,000 times and has lived twice as long as planned.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef

The satellite has more than seven instruments on board that can use radar to see through clouds, capture ocean color and land cover, monitor the ozone layer and atmospheric pollutants, measure thermal-infrared radiation, and register surface topography.

There are many more photographs at the link (click 'View All' at the bottom of the linked article to load them all). All images can be downloaded in high-resolution format for use as desktop backgrounds or wallpaper. They make fascinating viewing. Highly recommended.

Peter

Two good articles about the 2012 elections

2012-03-04T22:31:00.003-06:00

Last month I pointed out that for economic reasons, 'the US presidential elections are essentially irrelevant'. I summed up as follows:

All the Presidential campaigning that will plague us over the next year is completely and utterly irrelevant if it doesn't take this economic reality into account . . . but it won't. It can't, because none of the likely candidates, from either party, dares to face up to economic reality. They know they would never be elected if they did. As far as the Presidential election is concerned, we are truly screwed.

Our only recourse is to seek out, nominate and elect Congressional representatives and Senators who understand economic reality, and who will have the courage to work towards policies that acknowledge and address that reality. I don't care what party they're from. If they're honest people, who will do what's right, I'll support them. They'll have to understand that if they do the right thing, they'll see the electorate turn against them: but they have to have the moral courage to do it anyway.

That's our task in the coming year. It may not be enough to get us out of this mess . . . but it's the only hope we have.

Like many others who are negative about the forthcoming elections, I've had e-mails and messages from others claiming that it's essential to elect a Republican president for fear of the Supreme Court justices a Democrat president may appoint, or to prevent further erosion of Second Amendment rights, and so on. I think all such arguments are irrelevant, because there's no guarantee whatsoever that a President who's a career politician, a 'creature of the system', will give any consideration to conservative and/or libertarian interests in his judicial nominations and other policies. He'll be guided by the 'system', by 'crony capitalism' and the many éminences grises who control the levers of power and pull the strings to make their puppet politicians dance to their tune.

Now Borepatch and Frank W. James have both put up blog posts that articulate those concerns very well. Borepatch points out (as he's done before) that all the candidates for the Presidency, and both major parties, are essentially Fascist in their underlying policies and assumptions.

... both of the Tribes on offer are pretty indistinguishable, other than the speed they would have us lurch towards the abyss. There's "Bad" and "Worse" to choose from.

Or you could phrase it as "boil the frog fast" or "boil the frog slow". Obama has done something unique in American history - he's rallied perhaps a million people to take to the streets to protest Big Government overreach. The Stupid Party is stupid of course (this memo brought to you by the Department of Tautology), and so there's reason to think that the "boil the frog fast" option is preferable - because turning up the heat may actually make the frog jump out of the water.

. . .

The arguments to vote Republican have so far been entirely unconvincing. Sure Obama will be a disaster. Mittens will be better? I'm willing to listen, but quite frankly, Romney himself has been very careful indeed to avoid saying anything about what he'd do once in office. So all I can do is look at the record he put together when Governor, and the record of the recent GOP Congress. Those records are "boil the frog slowly".

The others are in the same ballpark, other than the Wookie who doesn't have a chance because he's the only one not a fascist, who explicitly rejects increased Government power, who explicitly says he would devolve power to the States and to the People; stick a fork in him, the GOP will work to elect Obama rather than him.

And so, they're both objectively fascist. Both of them.

There's more at the link.

Frank W. James points out that appeals to vote Republican in order to defend the Second Amendment, or ensure 'better' appointments to the Supreme Court, are equally ridiculous.

If you examine the record, gun owners and the 2nd Amendment do best when at least one house of Congress is controlled by the Repubs and the rest belong to the Democrats, but when the White House has a Repub President, we get the shaft.

. . .

As for the Supremes, by what logic does anyone think that Mittens will do better than President Unicorn when it comes to appointing a Supreme that continues to protect our 2nd Amendment rights?

. . .

Mittens is an East Coast super-rich guy who has no connection whatsoever with the working class or those who pay the taxes that fund this insanity. I don't trust politicians in general, but I trust Rich Republican candidates even less.

My greatest fear, if Mittens does get elected, is he will prove compentent and shove shit through that will be far worse than anything President Unicorn and his crew could even dream about, Holder and his FAST & FURIOUS scandal included . . .

Again, more at the link.

I agree with both of my fellow bloggers, and I reiterate my position as outlined at the beginning of this article. Those of us who care about the Constitution, individual versus collective rights, and the maximum possible degree of freedom in our society, may as well write off this year's Presidential election. There isn't a candidate in the pool who both offers policies that meet our requirements, and sane, sound, realistic methods of implementing them. (Ron Paul has some of the first, but very few of the second.) Instead, let's concentrate on finding and encouraging suitable candidates for Congress and the Senate, and do all we can to get them elected. It matters not whether they're Democrat or Republican, provided that they're honorable, honest and moral according to the light they've been given.

(Let's be honest: right now, even to a centrist libertarian like myself, Ralph Nader looks more honorable and honest than most of our existing Congressional representatives and Senators. He may be far to my left in political terms, but at least he's honest about it! As far as I can tell, he's never made a habit of lying in his teeth to his constituents. Yes, at this point I'm sufficiently fed up with most 'establishment' candidates - of both parties - that I'd probably vote for Mr. Nader in preference to them, given a choice!)

*Sigh*

Peter

A dog's dream comes true!

2012-03-03T23:54:00.002-06:00

Labrador retrievers are famously fond of chasing and catching balls (and returning them to owners to be thrown again). According to the person who put up this video clip:

"Our black lab LOVES tennis balls. His dream came true when a local tennis instructor gave us 300 used balls. Jackpot!"

Now that's a happy dog!

Peter

Attack of the killer pine-cones?

2012-03-03T23:38:00.002-06:00

Courtesy of reader Snoggeramus in Australia, we learn of the hazards of walking near - and particularly under - a native tree at this time of year.

FOR the first time in 15 years, a certain pine tree in the Victorian town of Warragul has begun dropping pine cones.

But apart from the fact it rarely happens, these are no ordinary pine cones.

They're giant, people-killing pine cones.

The Bunya Pine has stood in Smith Street for 120 years, most recently in the grounds of the Courthouse Restaurant.

So if you're tucking in to a medium-rare beef 'n' reef this week, enjoy it - because if one of the pine's watermelon-sized 10kg cones drops on your head, it will be your last.

“These huge pine cones have the capacity to be lethal if they were to fall on someone passing underneath from such a large height,” Mayor of the Baw Baw Shire Council Diane Blackwood said in a media release.

There's more at the link.

I'd never heard of the Bunya Pine, so I looked for more information. Wikipedia has an article about it, including this picture of a particularly large specimen:

It looks like the cones are a hazard in many places in Australia, as evidenced by this warning sign in Brisbane:

A ten-kilogram (22-pound) pine cone the size of a watermelon or a soccer ball? Yeah, that'd put a dent in your noggin all right!

Peter

The taxman cometh!

2012-03-03T23:26:00.003-06:00

It seems that an awful lot of wealthy Italians have been playing fast and loose with that country's tax system over the years, and not paying their dues. The Telegraph reports:

Wealthy but worried Italians are selling off their Porsches, Ferraris and other luxury cars at a record rate to avoid the scrutiny of tax inspectors.

. . .

Owning a high-powered BMW or Audi has become an unwelcome sign of conspicuous wealth ever since a much-publicised crack down by Italy’s tax police, the Guardia di Finanza, on the chic ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo at Christmas.

Tax inspectors traced the owners of 133 Lamborghinis, Ferraris, SUVs and other top-end cars that they found parked in the streets of the resort, a playground for the wealthy in the Dolomites.

They found that 42 of the owners - nearly a third - had declared incomes of less than €22,000 [about US $29,000] a year. A further 16 claimed to be earning less than €50,000 [about US $66,000] a year.

Police in Milan, Rome and other cities have carried out similar checks, taking down drivers’ licenses and number plates and passing them onto tax authorities, who check whether the owners’ declared incomes are sufficient to support their extravagant lifestyles.

In Florence, tax police stopped a brand new Mercedes and found that it was driven by a builder who declared no tax returns at all and whose wife was on welfare payments.

. . .

Some owners are so scared of running into spot checks by the tax police that they are asking dealers to come and collect their cars at home.

“One client was scared of driving 10 kilometres from his house to here,” Lorenzo Schiatti, who owns a Jaguar and Land Rover dealership in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy, told Corriere della Sera newspaper. “He was afraid that he’d be stopped by a Guardia di Finanza checkpoint.”

“We don’t have definitive numbers because it is difficult to quantify but it looks like thousands of cars are leaving Italy each month,” said Sirio Tardella, the director of Unrae, an association of foreign car manufacturers.

. . .

... a recent government study estimated that Italy’s black economy, which includes evasion of income tax and VAT, amounts to €275bn [about US $363 billion] a year, or 17.5pc of GDP.

There's more at the link.

$363 billion a year??? That's a heck of a 'black' or 'shadow' economy! Of course, such reports are nothing new in Europe: we saw a while back how many Greeks have been guilty of similar behavior - including where motor vehicles are concerned!

Peter

Around the blogs

2012-03-03T22:54:00.004-06:00

This week has seen another rich harvest of good reading in the blogosphere. Among the articles that caught my eye:

1. Courtesy of a link at Earthbound Misfit, I came across this scathing denunciation of the TSA by a retired FBI agent. His opening paragraph says it all:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was formed to ensure America’s freedom to travel. Instead, they have made air travel the most difficult means of mass transit in the United States, at the same time failing to make air travel any more secure.

From my own perspective as a former security professional, I completely agree with his assessment.

2. The Tireless Agorist explains how the 'general welfare' provision (Article 1, Section 8) of the US Constitution has been reinterpreted, and its original conception eroded, by the Supreme Court from 1936 onward. He refers to it as 'Hijacking the General Welfare Clause'. Very interesting reading, albeit from a narrow perspective. It's certainly inspired me to undertake further investigation of the subject.

3. Rogue Classicism brings us a very interesting look at how books (or scrolls) were sold in ancient Rome. Even though the printing press would not be invented for centuries yet, many aspects of the Roman 'publishing' scene appear not dissimilar to our own era - complete with the frustrations of contemporary authors!

4. Daddybear has 'A Modest Proposal' about how to make NASCAR racing more interesting. In the light of the past week's ferocious weather, I particularly appreciated his third suggestion:

Race unless there are tornadoes in the area. Rain, shine, snow, whatever. Bootleggers had to get the moonshine to market no matter what, so today's drivers can do it.

5. Warren Meyer, writing at Coyote Blog, points out that "... we have now entered the era of post-modern science, where writers on scientific ethics now conclude that its OK for scientists to lie as long as they are on the right team". Sickeningly, I can't disagree with his assessment of the situation. Whatever happened to integrity, honesty and ethical behavior?

6. The Economic Collapse Blog is more than a little alarmist and Chicken Little-ish in its analysis of economic events; but the author may be more correct, more often, than I'm prepared to concede. Only time will tell. However, I can't argue with one of his latest articles: 'Inflation Is A Tax And The Federal Reserve Is Taxing The Living Daylights Out Of Us'. A brief excerpt:

Inflation is an especially insidious tax because it is not just a tax on your income for one year. It is a continual tax on every single dollar that you own. As your money sits in the bank, it is constantly losing value. Over time, the effects of inflation can be absolutely devastating. For example, if you put 100 dollars in the bank in 1970, those same dollars today would only have about 17 percent of the purchasing power that they did back then. In essence, you were hit by an 83 percent "inflation tax" and all you did was leave your money in the bank. So who is responsible for this? Well, the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy in the United States, and the inflationary monetary policy that the Fed has gotten all of us accustomed to is taxing the living daylights out of us. This is madness, and it needs to stop.

7. Dr. Whitecoat points out that, particularly in the field of emergency medical care, "When governments pay for certain outcomes and not for others, the governments are guaranteed to get the outcomes they pay for". He points out that attempts to reform the system frequently have unexpected consequences, and can in fact make things much worse.

8. James Bloodworth, a British writer blogging at the Independent, claims that 'The prohibition of drugs has been an abject failure with a devastating human cost'. I can't disagree with his well-documented argument . . . but equally, I can't (yet) support the legalization of currently-illegal narcotics, for fear that the cure may be worse than the disease. I don't have an answer, but Mr. Bloodworth provides a useful transatlantic perspective on the issue, and worthwhile food for thought.

9. Finally, Dr. Grumpy describes a particular form of dangerous driver. Even the description might be dangerous, under the right (or wrong) circumstances!

That's all for this week. More soon!

Peter

'The Hobbit' wraps up location shooting

2012-03-02T22:55:00.003-06:00

I'm getting more and more excited about the forthcoming movie adaptation of 'The Hobbit'. Director Peter Jackson has just released the sixth episode of his 'video blog', showing the second period of location shooting in New Zealand. (Northern Hemisphere readers should remember that it's late summer in the Southern Hemisphere at present.)

If you've missed previous episodes of the 'video blog', you'll find links to them all at The Hobbit Official Channel on YouTube, along with the first trailer for the movie. I can't wait for the release of the first half of the film in December! If Peter Jackson does as good a job with 'The Hobbit' as he did with its sequel trilogy 'The Lord Of The Rings', it'll be spectacular cinema.

Peter

A cockroach as a fuel cell???

2012-03-02T22:45:00.002-06:00

A headline over at Discovery News made my mind boggle more than somewhat.

Cyborg Cockroach Turned into a Fuel Cell

A team at Case Western Reserve University led by Michelle Rasmussen and Daniel Scherson has tapped into the metabolic system of a cockroach to produce electricity. This isn't the first time anyone has tried building a cyborg bug of sorts. A University of Michigan team tried it using piezoelectric materials. What's interesting here is that Rasmussen's group used the insect's own body chemistry to produce electricity.

When a cockroach eats, it produces a sugar called trehalose, which is broken down by one set of enzymes in the cockroach's blood, called haemolymph. It takes several steps for different enzymes to finish breaking down and converting sugars for food, but in the last step, electrons are released.

By inserting a wire into the cockroach, the scientists were able to tap into the electrons and harness the electricity. The amount of power isn't huge, only about 50 to 60 microamperes per square centimeter at 0.2 volts. But it's a proof of principle that shows that an insect's own body could be used to power tiny devices, such as sensors and microphones into places that would be otherwise out of reach.

There's more at the link.

My initial reactions:

If you think I'm going to accept cockroaches in my home/vehicle/whatever because they can power my appliances, you'd better think again!
If the authorities try to use cockroaches as fuel cells to power surveillance equipment, it'll begin a whole new chapter in the War On (Some) Drugs, as criminals deploy Raid as a counter-surveillance technology! (Just goes to show - it won't be only police 'raids' you've got to worry about . . .)

Peter

The frightening speed of an avalanche

2012-03-02T22:09:00.003-06:00

I'm sure many readers, like me, have seen video clips of avalanches moving down mountain slopes. From a distance they seem almost leisurely in their progress, even when skiers are swept off their feet.

Last month an avalanche came down the slopes of the mountains above King Cove, Alaska, and hit a warehouse behind the Alaska Commercial store there. Security cameras captured the action, and they show just how fast and how hard even a relatively small avalanche like that can hit, and how much damage it can do. Here are three short videos showing different angles of what happened.

The Alaska Dispatch reports:

The avalanche tore the loading-bay door from its tracks, tipped over shelves and buried a forklift inside the warehouse, but because the store had closed early, the room was empty.

"At the tail end of the day, that’s when we take the trash out, or people are back there putting stock on the shelves," Watt said. "We got lucky."

The snow took three days to clear out, Watt said. They managed to get the bulk of the snow out in the first day with Bobcats and numerous people shoveling, but it took several more days to remove the snow from "all the nooks and crannies," he said.

A month later, the weather in King Cove -- 625 miles from Anchorage, near the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula -- has prevented the door from being properly repaired. It's still sheeted over, Watt said.

There's more at the link.

After seeing those security video recordings, I won't think of avalanches again as slow and leisurely!

Peter

It's simple, really . . .

2012-03-02T21:54:00.004-06:00

I visit the Telegraph's Web site on a regular basis, and I've quoted from many of its articles here. During my reading there today, I came across a link to a 2010 report that a Google Street View camera in Germany had captured a picture of a naked man climbing into the trunk of his car. The Telegraph reported at the time:

The baffling picture shows a nude man in the boot of a Mercedes which is parked on the driveway of a house in Mannheim, south-west Germany.

A dog lies nearby surrounded by the contents of the sports car's boot.

The image has prompted a rash of internet speculation over what activity the man could be involved in.

One Internet user told the CNET website he thought it was just ''an illusion'' with the man wearing tight skin-coloured shorts while fixing his brake light.

There's more at the link.

I was able to figure out what he was doing right away. Being nude like that, and situated where he was, he could only have been inspecting 'the junk in the trunk'!

Peter

Yesterday's Doofus = today's liar and con artist?

2012-03-02T21:33:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I nominated Georgetown 'law student' Sandra Fluke as our Doofus Of The Day #576. Turns out she resembles a Doofus rather less than she does a two-faced political hack, lobbyist, deceiver and liar. Jammie Wearing Fools reports:

For me the interesting part of the story is the ever-evolving “coed”. I put that in quotes because in the beginning she was described as a Georgetown law student. It was then revealed that prior to attending Georgetown she was an active women’s right advocate. In one of her first interviews she is quoted as talking about how she reviewed Georgetown’s insurance policy prior to committing to attend, and seeing that it didn’t cover contraceptive services, she decided to attend with the express purpose of battling this policy. During this time, she was described as a 23-year-old coed. Magically, at the same time Congress is debating the forced coverage of contraception, she appears and is even brought to Capitol Hill to testify. This morning, in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, it was revealed that she is 30 years old, NOT the 23 that had been reported all along.

In other words, folks, you are being played. She has been an activist all along and the Dems were just waiting for the appropriate time to play her.

While she is described as a “third year law student” they always fail to mention that she is also the past president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice.

There's more at the link.

Needless to say, the media are in a feeding frenzy over Ms. Fluke's remarks, and how Rush Limbaugh called her a 'slut', and all the rest of the brouhaha that surrounds this incident. However, none of the mainstream media outlets I follow have yet revealed the truth about her . . . they still continue to refer to her as a 'third-year law student'. Guess who's following the 'party line' about this? It's proof once again (as if further proof were needed!) that you can no longer trust the mainstream media to report fairly or accurately about anything to do with politics. They're peddling an agenda, not the news.

Peter

Another one by popular demand

2012-03-01T23:36:00.002-06:00

After the car chase videos of the past two days, another one frequently mentioned by commenters as being among the 'best of the best' was 'the' car chase from Ronin. Since that movie had more than one car chase, it was difficult to choose between them: but I selected the final one as being, in my humble opinion, the pick of the litter. Here it is.

Wikipedia notes about the film's car chases:

Ronin is notable for a number of car chases, the last being a particularly lengthy one through the streets and tunnels of Paris; some scenes used up to 300 stunt drivers according to the DVD director commentary. Car work has been a specialty of Frankenheimer, a former amateur racing driver, ever since his 1966 film, Grand Prix. Although action sequences are often shot by a second unit director, Frankenheimer did all these himself, and sometimes rode along. While he was aware of the many innovations in digital special effects since then, he elected to film all these sequences live, to obtain the maximum level of authenticity. To further this, many of the high-speed shots have the actual actors in the cars. Skipp Sudduth did nearly all of his own driving, while other cars were right hand drive models with stunt drivers driving - crashes were handled by a stuntman. To lend additional authenticity, the sound recordist re-recorded many of the vehicles in the chases to ensure that during the editing, the right sounds were dubbed in for each vehicle.

There's more at the link.

I can certainly believe that hundreds of stunt drivers were used - and they must have been pretty good ones, too. The scenes where the cars drive into oncoming traffic are about as 'edge-of-your-seat' as anything I've ever seen!

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #576

2012-03-01T23:22:00.003-06:00

Today's award goes to a law student at Georgetown University in Washington DC. CNS News reports:

A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they’re going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control.

Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout Pres. Obama’s mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it’s too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage.

Apparently, four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet if they have to pay for their own contraception, Fluke's research shows.

"Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported.

It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

. . .

At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year.

There's more at the link.

Quite apart from why we taxpayers should be expected to pay for someone else's use of contraception (which is an entirely personal, voluntary decision having nothing to do with health as such), what gets me is that Georgetown is a Catholic university. The moral code of the Catholic Church frowns upon extramarital sexual activities of any kind, and also condemns artificial contraception. Therefore, either Georgetown University isn't particularly rigorous about enforcing its moral code and that of its parent church, or Ms. Fluke isn't a particularly observant Catholic! Either way, can you say 'hypocrisy'? I thought you could . . .

I guess, under the circumstances, I'd have done better to give today's Doofus award to both parties!

*Sigh*

Peter