Lots of Election News!

Well, Sean Penn is campaigning for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which is yet another reason that he is an idiot. You decide if Chavez is a good guy or bad guy and make your own decision, ok?

Sandra Fluke is and has always been a tool of the Obama campaign, of course. Duh.

Fishing expeditions can go both directions.

That's all for now.

This is a good story, and not at all political:

Texas Man Finds Stolen Car 42 Years Later 

Now, to find my 73 Bus that I gave away....

I Hate Smoking, but This Is Crap.

"A tiny amendment buried in the federal transportation bill to be signed today by President Barack Obama will put operators of roll-your-own cigarette operations in Las Vegas and nationwide out of business at midnight.
...
But a few paragraphs added to the transportation bill changed the definition of a cigarette manufacturer to cover thousands of roll-your-own operations nationwide. The move, backed by major tobacco companies, is aimed at boosting tax revenues.



Faced with regulation costs that could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, RYO machine owners nationwide are shutting down more than 1,000 of the $36,000 machines.


"I feel it's kind of shaky,'' Wiessen said. "The man who pushed for this bill is Sen. (Max) Baucus from Montana, and he received donations from Altria, a parent company of Philip Morris. Interestingly enough, there are also no RYO machines in the state of Montana. It really makes me question the morals and values of our elected speakers."

It's all about the tax money, and always has been, folks, it has NEVER been about health. If it's legal, it's legal, if it's not, it's not, then completely ban it, right? Nope, gotta get the tax revenue.

BTW, Baucus is a Democrat, so if you are naive enough to think that only one party gets "big tobacco" money, you are a fool.

This is Science

"...as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances."

That, my friends, is the best, most accurate statement you will ever read about Climate Change.

more:

(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”


 
Hubris is not a fault of his, unlike the rest of the Global Warming mob.

So, What You're Saying Is That The Sun IS Important

More for my "denier" attitude:

"The insolation — the solar energy received by the Earth from the sun — varies in cycles, which can impact monsoons," Giosan said. "In the last 10,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere had the highest insolation from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and since then insolation there decreased. All climate on Earth is driven by the sun, and so the monsoons were affected by the lower insolation, decreasing in force. This meant less rain got into continental regions affected by monsoons over time."

The article begins:

Huge Ancient Civilization’s Collapse Explained

"The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say."


I don't really need to comment, do I?


Next, a study was recently published that shows a negative association between science and mathematical knowledge and belief in climate change risks... the more you know, the less you are concerned. The best part is that this is in direct opposition to what the study designers expected.

It's a little dense, so if you want some other commentary, try here, here, or here!

Lastly, someone took the time to examine all kinds of historical weather data, and you know what? It's no wackier or extreme than it has ever been. Duh.

VW Things are on my Mind Again

There are a lot of Things showing up on ebay lately, no doubt because of the warm weather (it happens every year).

You may remember this post from last year.

Some Ayn Rand I've Never Read

a little light reading for a Saturday night...

Note: To All Fifth Columnists is an open letter written by Ayn Rand around the beginning of 1941, when she was encouraging conservative intellectuals to form a national organization advocating individualism. She desired for the letter be issued by such an organization. 

The first paragraph that grabbed me:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it — historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it — history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

and then there's this:

First and above all: what is Totalitarianism? We all hear so much about it, but we don't understand it. What is the most important point, the base, the whole heart of both Communism and Nazism? It is not the "dictatorship of the proletariat," nor the nationalization of private property, nor the supremacy of the "Aryan" race, nor anti-Semitism. These things are secondary symptoms, surface details, the effects and not the cause. What is the primary cause, common to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and all other dictators, past, present, and future? One idea — and one only: That the State is superior to the individual. That the Collective holds all rights and the individual has none.  

Sound familiar? 

More on the fallacy that is "Man-Caused Global Warming"

See, friends, this is how science works: you observe,you hypothesize, you experiment, you observe, you draw conclusions. As new data is uncovered, you adjust your conclusions based on the data, not the other way around.

From the Daily Mail:

Global warming: Earth heated up in medieval times without human C02 emission.

‘We showed that the Northern European climate events influenced climate conditions in Antarctica,’ Lu says. ‘More importantly, we are extremely happy to figure out how to get a climate signal out of this peculiar mineral. A new proxy is always welcome when studying past climate changes.’ (my emphasis)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2120512/Global-warming-Earth-heated-medieval-times-human-CO2-emissions.html#ixzz1qLSzf7a2

I repeat my assertions: if you don't know the correct temperature of the Earth, you can't get me upset over fluctuations in temperature; you cannot prove humans have anything to do with the fluctuations in global temperature.