Author: Simon

By now you have probably heard of Energy Secretary Chu’s plan to paint the roofs in America white to fight global warming. He should have had a talk with Alice about the big mistake that was made in Wonderland by painting the roses red. So how about some appropriate mood music? Cross Posted at Power…

Will we still have a Constitutional Republic in four years? I have my doubts. A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It’s a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process…

Islamic Crusades: An Introduction Islamic Crusades 1: The Occupation of Constantinople Islamic Crusades 2: Before Islam… Egypt, Iran, Iraq Islamic Crusades 3: The Co-Option of Jerusalem Islamic Crusades 4: Lessons From the Thai Jihad Islamic Crusades 5: Why did they hate us in 1783? Islamic Crusades 6: India’s Millennial Burden Islamic Crusades 7: India’s Modern…

A poster on the Drug Policy Forum of Texas list suggested the above video in the context of a University of California at San Francisco course on cannabis therapeutics that is accredited by the AMA and the ANA (American Nurses Association). Here is what the www site has to say about the accreditation. The University…

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 I have done a number of posts on the subject of how cosmic rays affect clouds and climate including: Magnetized Weather And The Lost Concensus Global Warming Not So Hot Clouds More Clouds Model Prediction Climate Alchemy – Turning Hot Air Into Gold Clouds In Chambers Feedbacks…

For those of you who have noticed the double post of “The Death of Copyright” my apologies. I left the title off the first post and decided to repost it with the title and delete the previous version. A simple matter on blogspot. With the Six Apart software used here it is a total pain…

What the Motion Picture industry has not figured out is that the price of any product will go down to its marginal cost. How do you make a profit in such an environment? Volume. The difficulty of course that the available time for watching movies is limited. So let us look at what my internet…

Nature News is reporting that the ITER fusion experiment is in big trouble. Very big trouble. It is way over budget, way behind time, and the experimental efforts are being scaled back. ITER — a multi-billion-euro international experiment boldly aiming to prove atomic fusion as a power source — will initially be far less ambitious…

Spengler at Asia Times is looking at the portents from Iran and sees a collapse coming. And as per usual he uses his favorite metric. Whores. The man is obsessed. I can, however, appreciate his obsession. Until very recently, an oil-price windfall gave the Iranian state ample resources to pursue its agenda at home and…

The picture (Climate Modelers At Work) is from a Popular Science article discussing an MIT (yeah THAT MIT) paper predicting doomsday if the Chinese and Indians don’t stop improving the lives of their citizens with more and better electrical supplies using their coal resources. Well not really. It is only American policy that is in…

Gates Of Vienna explains how Germans paid for Social Security. How socialist was Hitler? Let us look at the government contributions to social security between 1938 and 1943 (in millions of Reichsmarks) 1938 640 1939 749 +16% 1940 940 +26% 1941 1395 +48% 1942 963 -31% 1943 1119 +16% This is how socialist Hitler was.…

In looking at what the auto bailouts will mean for unions I came across an interesting comment on the current danger in investing in unionized companies. Well, sure. Fewer companies mean fewer companies needing government services. While we are at it, we could also kick some states out of the Union, and maybe revoke a…

Test and Measurement World is looking at the innovators of the world and finds that China is rising. China has a reputation as a production powerhouse but generally doesn’t get much respect as a source of innovation, despite efforts to change that. Now, those efforts may be paying off, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit,…

Roland Burris is not a crook and in so far as we know neither is Mr. Obama. Let me revise that remark. It looks like Burris may be a crook from Crook County. That would be Chicago for you folks not from the area. CHICAGO – Sen. Roland Burris promised to “personally do something” for…

All I can say is that I have done my part. My family includes four children. Yes. It has come with a great economic cost. But what about the future all you hedonists? What kind of world do you want to live in? H/T ravingdave at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control

You ought to watch an interesting video of oil/economic experts James Hamilton and Daniel Yergin giving testimony before Congress. Their testimony begins about 11 minutes into the video. Note at the beginning though where Congress Critter Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) says she wants to avoid drilling new oil supplies. A good text overview can be…

You can read a story that explains the picture at Dallas-Fort Worth NBC. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Pravda has a very strange view of the American economy. For the newspaper of record of a formerly communist country. Or maybe they have learned their lesson. It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of…

Doug Giles reviews a book Speaker Pelosi should read. Giles explains why Pelosi needs it. That’s why parents and grandparents who loathe what the media and various institutions are trying to do to our boys need Miniter’s new book more than Pelosi needs Jesus and a straight jacket. Read the whole review. It has a…

Evidently Mr. Obama can’t get gun regulation/confiscation through the Congress in the normal manner so he is trying an end run by getting the Senate to pass a treaty. You can read more about it at this Department of State site. Here is just one provision: Technical Assistance and Training. Parties agree to cooperate to…