Month: August 2007

Coyote Blog has a bit up on the latest Climate Change scandal. The error in the data making 1998 the hottest year on record. James Hansen is head of GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) the source of the error. Michael Mann (inventor of the guaranteed hockey stick method – feed any data in, random…

I just suffered a nearly catastrophic hard drive failure, and I will be attempting a very precarious back up. The hard drive that held most of my accumulated longterm “stuff” crashed badly, and was unreadable by one computer, and one OS. The BIOS warned me that it crashed. Somehow, it remains barely readable as a…

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has a front page story about a Chinese store owner who was murdered by neighborhood kids. While this was an otherwise well-researched story, for some reason the Inquirer left Commissioner Sylvester Johnson out, despite the fact that he appears to have been directly in charge the whole time at the crime scene.…

It has come to my attention that there are problems with the the temperature record in Asia. At virtually the same time NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies was correcting historical climate data with the assistance of Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre, a British mathematician discovered serious flaws in papers used and cited by the United…

It appears that China is interested in mining the moon. Chinanews, Guiyang, Aug 10 -China plans to survey every inch of the soil on the moon during the Chang’e project, said Ouyang Ziyuan, China’s chief scientist for the moon exploration project. So why would China be spending money on moon exploration. Do they have something…

Gavin Newsom (who would like to ban dogs based solely on their breed) never seems to run out of crazy ideas. As Clayton Cramer documents in a post titled “San Francisco’s Mayor Newsom Decides To Punish Illegal Acts By Criminalizing Legal Acts,” Newsom wants to ban gun shows at the Cow Palace — not because…

While I don’t think it would be fair to speculate over how he feels about revenuers, Glenn Reynolds linked a particularly amusing post by Don Surber, who notes an ominous new trend — high taxes on beer: ….Reuters Health news service reported earlier this week that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “is…

Here’s an update on the case I posted about over the weekend in which a university dean was charged with something (criminal negligence, I guess), because a student drank himself to death in a hazing ritual. The dean, Anthony Campbell, has pleaded not guilty. What this means is that apparently the DA thinks he has…

It appears that Climate Audit after posting on a NASA error that made 1998 the warmest year on record (it is now second warmest after 1934, Power and Control link) has been hit with a denial of service attack according to a commenter at Watts Up With That? Evidently the news was too much for…

Most readers know that I strongly disagree with the war on drugs, while strongly applauding the war on terror. (While I don’t like or defend drug dealers, I can’t help noting ironically that more people defend terrorists than defend drug dealers.) When I read reports that illegal drugs are being used to fund terrorists, it…

Via Glenn Reynolds, Ed Driscoll quotes an interesting analysis from Howard Husock that rang so true: With Mrs. Clinton now the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, it’s worth reflecting on that formative political experience — and the extent to which it may still influence her campaign approach. In addition to its “bring…

“Socialism in one country!” — Stalin “Socialism in one state!” — Wisconsin legislature. Because of my liberal tendency to assume in good faith that people say what they mean (and mean what they say), I’m often dumbfounded to see so many people seeming to devoutly believe that socialism can be made to work. Whether “this…

An economist I am not. I get all confused by graphs, charts, and numbers. Plus, I hate statistics, as they are so often invoked to justify telling individuals what to do based on group norms. However, when I read The Economist, I expect to see arguments based on economic principles of some sort, and supported…

Despite all the predictable stereotypes, it turns out that Glenn Reynolds’s wife — Dr. Helen the InstaWife — is a feminist! A total feminist! So says an online test she took after self-styled feminists declared she wasn’t. And, notwithstanding my many snide remarks and wisecracks, it turns out that at heart I’m a real, total,…

Michael Turner of the University of Chicago talks about the Big Bang and the Inflationary Universe. A deep subject given a light hearted treatment. You might want to get up to speed on the physics idea of “time horizon” in relation to the speed of light before digging in. Or keep repeating the section from…

As I’ve said too many times, war blogging is not my shtick. That’s because I support the war but don’t have access to facts. In a war, facts are limited, statistics debatable, and stories are often anecdotal, or made up. There are propaganda machines on both sides which attempt to persuade people to support or…

Rather than update my previous post on the Scott Beauchamp affair, I just thought I’d note here that it has been abundantly confirmed that the Beauchamp allegations were utter bunk. Glenn Reynolds has a roundup here. Beauchamp’s tales seem to have been accepted on faith, and I agree with Bill Quick: None of the MSM…

Sacramento California has been reporting record highs this summer. Don’t tell Al Gore, but global warming is taking a holiday in Sacramento this week. The maximum temperatures Sunday and Monday set records each day — as the coolest “highs” for the dates since record-keeping began in 1877. Forecasters credit a deep marine layer and a…

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. — Jesus, from Matthew 19:12,…

In the wake of the murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, there’s been a lot of speculation about the reasons for downplaying the story — particularly after a suspect was arrested and confessed. It strikes me that there’s an unsettlingly urgent desire to have closure, ASAP, with as little fanfare as possible. I speculated that…