It is time for Mr. Tapping to reassess his concerns.The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.
Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun”. In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.
This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.
Tapping, who was originally from Kent, says that “Typically as you go through the ten or eleven year solar activity cycle you see the numbers go up or down. The lowest number is 64 or 68. The numbers 71 or 72 are very low, but they usually start to go up. We are at the end of a cycle, but the numbers still haven’t gone up. We have been joking around coffee that we may be seeing the Sun about to shut down.” (To date Tapping has been far more concerned about global warming.)
BREVARD, Jan. 19, 2008 Retired Army Green Beret Smokey Taylor got his court martial this weekend and came away feeling good about it.My favorite part:
Taylor, at age 80 the oldest member of Chapter XXXIII of the Special Forces Association, was on trial by his peers under the charge of failing to use a weapon of sufficient caliber in the shooting of an intruder at his home in Knoxville, TN, in December.
The entire affair, of course, was very much tongue in cheek. Taylor had been awakened in the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 2007, when an intruder broke into his home. He investigated the noises with one of his many weapons in hand. When the intruder threatened him with a knife, Taylor warned him, then brought his .22 caliber pistol to bear and shot him right between the eyes.
That boy had the hardest head Ive ever seen, Taylor said after his trial. The bullet bounced right off.
The impact knocked the would-be thief down momentarily. He crawled out of the room then got up and ran out the door and down the street. Knoxville police apprehended him a few blocks away and he now awaits trial in the Knox County jail.
The charges against Taylor were considered to be serious. He is a retired Special Forces Weapons Sergeant with extensive combat experience during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Charges were brought against him under the premise that he should have saved the county and taxpayers the expense of a trial, said Chapter XXXIII President Bill Long of Asheville. He could have used a .45 or .38. The .22 just wasnt big enough to get the job done.
After the trial he said the ammunition was indeed old and added the new information that the perp had soiled his pants as he crawled out of the house.
I would have had an even worse mess to clean up if it had gone through his forehead, Taylor said. It was good for both of us that it didn't.
H/T: Blackfive
I hadn't thought about the closed system before. It makes perfect sense that levels during the Carboniferous Period (hence the name) were much, much higher than now. Plant and animal life thrived during that period to give us the coal and petroleum deposits we are mining now.Don't believe the eco-alarmists, atmospheric carbon is at historically low levels.
If the planet wasn't self-regulating, the climate would be in a runaway, positive feedback loop and we wouldn't be here to discuss it. Fortunately for us, water vapor provides the negative feedback to offset both natural and man-made emissions. NOAA freely admits on their website that water vapor is the predominate "greenhouse gas" by far, much more so than CO2 or any other gas. And the human contribution of CO2 is less than the natural contribution, again by far. Of course, none of this squares with the eco-alarmists, who need to generate public hysteria to get their funding and adulation.Motives
Cloud formation regulates the planet's temperature. As the earth warms and cloud cover increases, more light is reflected to space than reaches the surface. As the earth cools, cloud cover decreases, allowing more energy to reach the surface to warm things up. There's evidence that cloud formation is also strongly influenced by the solar cycles (11 year and long term over centuries). If a designer came up with this system, they were very intelligent.
In my opinion, it is the height of human arrogance to presume that man can override the planet's natural thermostat.
Unfortunately for Packer fans, winter temperatures are on the rise at Lambeau and in other cold weather teams’ cities across the country, potentially threatening the home field advantage that these teams have historically enjoyed.Just how dumb is this report? Let me count the ways.
Nota bene - The members of Wisconsin Environment are definitely members of the Lambert Field crowd. They have no interest in sports in general or the Packers in particular. Otherwise they wouldn't have rubbed my nose in this steaming football non sequitur just 10 days after a heart breaking loss. These people think that if they invoke the Packers name, it will cause all us redneck rubes to join their misguided cause.3. Does the 5 degree Fahrenheit temperature rise that is projected for the next century really matter? A 5 degree temperature is not noticeably different from a 0 degree temperature on a football field. They are both freaking cold.
20 immigration fugitives arrested Green BayI saw this story reported on Green Bay's WBAY-2 News on Wednesday.
A three-day sweep by federal immigration agents resulted in the arrest of 20 immigrants who have ignored orders for their deportation.
Officials said Wednesday the arrests were made in Brown, Door, Kenosha, Outagamie, Sheboygan and Winnebago counties, and they involved fugitives from El Salvador, Honduras, Jordan, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua and Yugoslavia.
The 12 agents from the Milwaukee office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department worked in three-man teams to apprehend those being sought over a three-day period starting last Friday. Some had criminal records.
Brown County Sheriff Dennis Kocken called the arrests "a positive step."
Acknowledging that temperatures in the past decade have not reached, let alone surpassed, their 60-year high reached in 1998 (which still lags behind 1934), “Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century,” from Reuters.Pachauri goes on to say.
Shut up already, you a-hole. This winter's weather reminds me of walking to class in the 1970's, it is brutally cold. I am getting damn tired of these so-called scientists who are manipulating data and ignoring reality. Digging into the the Reuters link, I find another clown using common statistical manipulations."One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
He added that skeptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash," he said.
Underscoring an underlying rise in temperatures, British forecaster Phil Jones said 2001-07, with an average of 0.44 Celsius above the 1961-90 world average of 14 degrees, was 0.21 degree warmer than the corresponding values for 1991-2000.Mr. Jones is cherry picking data and using a very limited data set. To make a fair comparison, he needs to: 1) compare similar time periods, the 7-years from 2001 to 2007 to all other rolling 7-year periods; 2) look at the entire historic meteorological record, including the record high 1930's; and 3) provide the uncertainty associated with these world averages, there are too many measurement differences for there to not be huge margins of error with these values - you'll end up with a statistical tie.
A 42-year-old man was shot and killed early today after being robbed outside of a bar, Milwaukee police said. According to Capt. Michael Young: The man and two or three women were walking from a bar to the man's car in the 200 block of W. Walker St. about 1:10 a.m. today. As they reached the car, they were approached by two men, one of whom was carrying a handgun. The victim handed over his wallet and was shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police would not reveal the victim's identity, where he was wounded or how many times he was shot. The suspects were described as Hispanic males, in their mid-20s to early 30s, both about 5-feet-4-inches to 5-feet-7-inches tall and 140 to 160 pounds.I wonder if Tom Kerschner still has a job. At the very least, I know there will be a letter in his personnel file and an extended session in the Diversity Reeducation Gulag.
From that moment in the seventies ... until my fight was finally successful, Wisconsin was a corrupted state, governed not by the people but by a group of private and corporate interests. They secured control of the old Republican party organization - the party with the splendid history - and while its orators outwardly dwelt upon the glories of the past and inspired the people with the fervor of patriotic loyalty, these corporation interests were bribing, bossing and thieving within. The machine organization of the Democratic party was as subservient to the railroads and other corporations as the Republican machine, and mastery of legislation was thus rendered complete through all these years.Government corruption, a Wisconsin tradition.
Robert M. La Follette, 1911
"There are no doubt countless times when Belling exposes himself as a loud-mouth buffoon, a bully, and this is just another one of those times. His venom spews forth, whether he's denigrating Hispanics, African-Americans, women or anyone who dares to disagree with him."
The dialogue on the pros and cons of holding Hawaii’s first Constitutional Convention in 30 years has not yet mentioned one critical reason for having a convention: The need to repeal the prohibition on nuclear power in Hawaii that the 1978 Con-Con established. We need to do this before spiralling oil prices devastate Hawaii‘s economy.Oh yeah!The 1978 Convention added Article XI, Section 8 to the State Constitution: “No nuclear fission power plant shall be constructed or radioactive material disposed of in the State without the prior approval by a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature.”
I'll be listening carefully on Monday for Belling to correct himself. After all, he often claims that he is the only individual in the local or national media to publicly correct his mistakes.But the sound of soft crying did sometimes drift from the exhibit's prenatal development section, which is curtained off from the rest of "Body Worlds." The section displays, among other exhibits, dead fetuses and a woman, eight months pregnant, with her belly cut away.
Jan Krueger of Mequon, who brought family members from as far away as Indiana with her to the show, stood in front of a case showing a fetus about the same age as a baby she had once lost, and she began to cry. But family hugs soon ended the tears and replaced them with a smile.
"I'm an old-time Catholic, and this is very emotional for me. But this is wonderful to see. Living beings are such a special thing," Krueger said.
Charles Van Hise, Roosevelt’s close adviser, was more emphatic. “He who thinks not of himself primarily, but of his race, and of its future, is the new patriot,” explained Van Hise, the founder of the American conservation movement and president of the University of Wisconsin during its glory days as the premier training ground for American progressives. Van Hise summarized the American Progressive attitude toward eugenics well when he explained: “We know enough about agriculture so that the agricultural production of the country could be doubled if the knowledge were applies; we know enough about disease so that if the knowledge were utilized, infectious and contagious diseases would be substantially destroyed in the United States within a score of years; we know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation.”Leave it to Jonah Goldberg, a conservative author, to give Madison's present day progressives a reason to demand the renaming of this building. We'd all still be oblivious to the racism of Van Hise without Goldberg's research.
In 2008, the Democrats were splitI am looking forward to hearing Weird Al's performance of my lyrics for this TMBG hit.
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Hillary Clinton, an Ex co-president and a pro-abortionist
John Edwards, a Socialist
Obama, a black man with no experience
From Nashville in a Gulfstream flying up
He was Al A. Gore, Eco-Savior of the Earth
Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory bored most folks to tears
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our carbon-free destiny
And give back the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister Al A. Gore, Eco-Savior of the Earth
In four short years he met his every goal
He ceded the whole southwest to Mexico
Made sure the smokestacks fell
And made the English health plan a U.S. priority
He nationalized our economy
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister Al A. Gore, our 44th president
Green Hickory, Eco-Savior of the Earth
I know that a lot of people — anti-Romneyites — are fired up by that line of Huckabee’s: “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off.” Apparently, he was alluding to Romney. And I find Huckabee’s one of the most depressing lines I have heard in ages — depressing from every point of view.Huckabee is even using the line in a political ad.
First, grammatical: They say Bush can’t talk? I thought Huckabee was supposed to be silver-tongued.
Second, philosophical, or political, if you like: Huckabee expressed low populism, or “sheer demagoguery,” as Ronald Reagan used to say. Huckabee’s line could have come out of the mouth of John Edwards, or John Sweeney, or David Bonior. Is this what we want in the Republican party now? Why not have just one big Democratic party?
And third — oh, call it moral: It seems we’re now campaigning on the basis of what the other guy looks like. What do we say about how Huckabee looks? Frankly, I think I would have liked him better when he was fat — he might have been humbler.
I understand that Daphne, WiN's muscovy duck, is available on February 2, if someone wants to start their own new tradition.Huckabee | 1 (14%) |
Obama | 4 (57%) |
Bloomberg | 0 (0%) |
Paul | 1 (14%) |
Stay home | 1 (14%) |
Despite their widespread carping about global warming, Smithsonian is one of my favorite magazines. In the November 2007 issue, Richard Conniff took a critical look at biofuels. Conniff makes a damning case against ethanol production in the US, but it is the abuse of the earth in pursuit of "clean energy" outside of the US that is astounding.
Other countries are also rapidly surrendering habitat to biofuel. In Indonesia and Malaysia, companies are bulldozing millions of acres of rain forest to produce biodiesel from oil palm, an imported species. The United Nations recently predicted that 98 percent of Indonesia's forests will be destroyed within the next 15 years, partly to grow palm oil. Many of the new plantations will be on the island of Borneo, a mother lode of biological diversity.
Apart from the effect on wildlife, critics say Indonesia's forests are one of the worst places to grow biofuels, because they stand on the world's richest concentration of peat, another nonrenewable fuel. When peat dries out or is burned to make way for a plantation, it releases huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Indonesia, despite its undeveloped economy, already ranks as the world's third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, after China and the United States. When you add the peat effect into the equation, according to the conservation group Wetlands International, Indonesian palm oil biodiesel is up to eight times worse for the environment than gasoline.
Oh, and one final irony. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that because of the way U.S. biofuel laws are written, foreign tankers loaded with Indonesian biodiesel can stop briefly at an American port, blend in a splash of regular petroleum diesel and qualify for a U.S. subsidy on every gallon. It's called "splash and dash," because the tankers generally push on to Europe to collect additional subsidies there. All in the name of greener fuels.
Wow, you cannot make this stuff up.
In order to "save the planet" from global warming, use of a fuel is promoted that results in clear cutting rain forests, wiping out rare plant and animal species, and release of more carbon to the atmosphere than conventional fuels. And this biofuel is subsidized by US taxpayers, but is never even used here.His campaign pitch is a well-polished mailed fist aimed at the gut of the establishment, defined by Edwards as heartless, money-grubbing corporations.This is scary stuff. We actually have a major party candidate openly touting Socialism on a National scale as his answer for the United States (a topic that is addressed in Jonah's new book).
“This corporate greed is killing the middle class, killing American jobs and it is stealing your children’s future,” Edwards tells a rapt crowd of a couple hundred people in the lobby of a high school here.
The reason we don’t have universal health coverage, according to Edwards, is “very simple” — the drug companies and insurance companies oppose it. In fact, everything is “very simple” to him. In his down-home Manichaean vision, dark corporate forces are responsible for everything he doesn’t like.
This is a worldview that doesn’t allow for legitimate differences of opinion. On the one side is “the glorification of corporate greed,” and on the other are the people willing to fight it — everyone in between is either a tool or a coward. Battle lines drawn, Edwards’s vision bristles with evocations of power. The people will have to wield the “sovereign power” of the country against corporations that will only “give their power away when we take their power away from them.”
WASHINGTON (AP) - When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder.
January was the warmest first month on record worldwide—1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.
And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.
U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
[...]
Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.
More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken—regardless of the date—either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.
For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.
That is just freakin' scary. How warm was January 2007 in the U.S.? It was the warmest January on record since January 2006. Dang, it was even one of the three warmest January's in the last 10 years.
Degree Days: A measurement that reflects the effect of weather on your heating and cooling needs. Daily degree days are calculated by comparing the average daily temperature to 65°F.I'm dealing with global warming or cooling by air conditioning and heating my house. I really don't care how the Third World'ers of the EU do it (Hint - Join the 20th Century, Pierre. Install an air conditioner).
The cute cuddly white cat from Japan's Sanrio Co., usually seen on toys and jewelry for girls and young women, will soon don T-shirts, bags, watches and other products targeting young men, company spokesman Kazuo Tohmatsu said Friday.
"We think Hello Kitty is accepted by young men as a design statement in fashion," he said.
The feline for-men products will go on sale in Japan next month, and will be sold soon in the U.S. and other Asian nations, according to Sanrio.
"Two point six billion," says Hendricks, shaking his head. Then he chuckles. "It's not even real," continues the CEO, chairman, and sole owner of ABC Supply. "The money doesn't mean a damn thing."Following up on a tip from Belling caller "Brian in New Berlin" I searched out the Inc.com article that accompanied the naming of Mr. Hendricks as Inc.'s 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year. What a contrast to this story.
Bonuses on Wall Street surge 14 percentIt is clear from the Inc.com article that Mr. Hendricks was from the old school of business, the one where people worked for the love of accomplishment, that being reward enough. He was certainly wealthy, but he was not about huge bonuses or selling out for that big payday. He created his wealth as a byproduct of creating jobs for the people he could see that needed them. He didn't pinch pennies to put in his pocket, but to keep his many businesses running to pay his employees.NEW YORK (AP) -- This might have been one of Wall Street's most dismal years in a decade, but that hasn't stopped bonus checks from rising an average of 14 percent.
Four of the biggest U.S. investment banks - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. - will pay out about $49.6 billion in compensation this year. Of that, bonuses are traditionally estimated to represent 60 percent, or almost $30 billion.
But that might not sit well with investors who held on to investment bank stocks this year - and watched them plunge by up to 45 percent. Investment houses have been slammed by the credit crisis, and top executives this past week said they've yet to see a bottom.
In Hendricks's worldview there are two unalloyed blessings: family and a good day's work for a good day's pay. "My whole life is about trying to treat the working man fairly and give him a good opportunity," he had said the day before while driving me past the packed parking lot at one of his plants. "If you've got a job you have pride. You can dream. You can go home and talk about your kids going to college."What a difference from those in the Wall Street bonus article. People who have never put anyone to work, but skim billions off the top of our economy.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.Adding some context to the "cruel and unusual" clause of our Constitution.
All right, a little more of Alistair Horne on life in old France. Though you might want to save this one for after dinner. The subject here is François Ravaillac, who on May 14, 1610 assassinated Henri IV while the monarch was stuck in a traffic jam.Euro-envy - I don't get it.On 27 May, still protesting that he had acted as a free agent on a divinely inspired mission, Ravaillac was put to death. Before being drawn and quartered, the lot of the regicide, on the Place de Grève scaffold he was scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin, his flesh then torn by pincers. Then his arms and legs were attached to horses which pulled in opposite directions. One of the horses "foundered," so a zealous chevalier offered his mount; "the animal was full of vigour and pulled away a thigh." After an hour and a half of this horrendous cruelty, Ravaillac died, as the mob tried to prevent him receiving last rites. When he finally expired,the entire populace, no matter what their rank, hurled themselves on the body with their swords, knives, sticks or anything else to hand and began beating, hacking and tearing at it. They snatched the limbs from the executioner, savagely chopping them up and dragging the pieces through the streets.Children made a bonfire and flung remains of Ravaillac's body on it. According to one witness, Nicholas Pasquier, one woman actually ate some of the flesh. The executioner, supposed to have the body of the regicide reduced to ashes to complete the ritual demanded by the law, could find nothing but his shirt.Phew! Still, at least he wasn't subjected to water-boarding.
There are two types of people in this world:
A. People who use GPS navigation and/or stop for directions
B. Straight men*
*Unless he is visiting Pittsburgh.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.I have never seen a more cynical political advertisement.
