Climate models go cold

by David Evans

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let's set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

In the meantime, back in Pakistan, loonies kill each other like crazy

Terror attacks and politically motivated executions have been on the rise in Pakistan.

In January, Punjab governor Salman Taseer was shot by his own bodyguard for opposing Pakistan's blasphemy law.

The assassination of Pakistan's minority affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti in March, was "justified" for the same reason.

In the past seven days, 96 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in attacks across Pakistan's North-West Frontier province and Balochistan.

·         March 30, 2011 - Suspected Taliban militants targeted the convoy of Maulana Fazl ur Rehman of the hard-line group Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F). The attack which killed 10 took place on the Peshawar-Islamabad motorway in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

·         March 31, 2011 - Suspected Taliban militants targeted Maulana Fazl ur Rehman's convoy again. This attack in Charsadda, a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan killed 12 people and injured 32 others.

·         March 31, 2011 - 10 people were killed in Pakistan's Balochistan province in three separate attacks. A tribal elder, his son and three guards were killed in a bomb attack by the Baloch Liberation Front. A landmine killed three people and militants gunned down two tribal elders in the town of Kalat.

·         April 1, 2011 - A 12-year-old boy was killed when a suicide bomber detonated his bomb at a weapons market in Dara Adam Khel, a town in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

·         April 3, 2011 - Two suicide bombers killed 50 people and injured about 100 when they struck outside the Sakhi Sarwar shrine in Punjab. The Tehreek-e-Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack and said it was in response to the government attacks on militants in north-west Pakistan. A third suspected bomber was shot and injured by the police.

·         April 4, 2011 - A teenage suicide bomber killed 8 people at a car showroom, near a bus terminal in the Lower Dir district of Pakistan on Monday. Pro-government tribal leader Muhammad Akbar Sufi, 55, was the target of the attack.

·         April 5, 2011 - A blast in Tirah Valley, a tribal area located in Pakistan's Khyber Agency, killed 5 and injured 8 others. The death toll is expected to rise as the injured are in critical condition.

Brass Balls

Part 1



Part 2


This is a response to this jackass

Keep in mind that this guy might have ended up as Attorney General under President McCain. A few minutes earlier, Harry Reid told Schieffer that Congress will “take a look” at Jones’s act and the ensuing “protests” in Afghanistan, so at a minimum there’ll probably be some sort of congressional resolution of disapproval. Maybe hearings too: Reid wouldn’t commit to that, but he didn’t rule it out. As for Graham, “I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable,” he laments, clearly deflated by the thought that the First Amendment applies even while we’re “at war.” And if you’re not sure what he means by “at war” — well, I’m not either. Are we “at war” only if troops are in the field? No Koran-burning, in other words, until the last U.S. serviceman has left Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya)? Or are we “at war” as long as Al Qaeda and other anti-American jihadist movements exist, ready and willing to demagogue acts like Jones’s for their own uses? Even if all Islamist outfits in the world were eliminated, wouldn’t Graham want to continue the ban on Koran-burning lest it inspire new jihadist outfits to spring up? There’s no limiting principle to this idea, realistically. It’d end up being his own version of an “emergency law.”

Ironically, though, the more attention Congress devotes to this, the worse they’ll make it. If Reid and Graham were stupid enough to hold hearings (which they almost certainly aren’t), it’d be a galactic clusterfark — a spotlight for Jones, a red alert for civil libertarians, and an offense to a public that’s tired of double standards for religious insults. If nothing else good comes from this incident, though, it’s at least been useful as a window into the mindset of our trusted “ally” Hamid Karzai, who did his level best to earn brownie points with the fanatics among his constituents by demagoging this to the hilt. As voters get set for another debate this summer about whether we should draw down in Afghanistan, make sure that isn’t forgotten.

Historical Myths

One of the most powerful influences on human affairs is historical myth—beliefs about the past that are simply wrong. Some historical myths have far-reaching and baleful effects because they shape the way people understand not only the past but also the present, leading them to make harmful or even dangerous decisions. This seems to be especially so with economic history. Take the standard account of the Great Depression and the New Deal. In many ways the New Deal itself was one result of another historical myth: the widely received account of what had happened to the German economy in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly during World War I and the Third Reich.

That myth probably did more harm than almost any other in that century. In the case of the Third Reich, the widely held perception even now is that whatever else may be said about his regime, Hitler managed to bring about a dramatic revival of the German economy. After 1933 Hitler and his finance minister Hjalmar Schacht stabilized the economy and managed to solve the huge unemployment crisis that had destroyed the Weimar Republic’s legitimacy. This was partly due to Schacht’s imaginative monetary policy and partly to massive public works programs, such as the autobahnen. There was a sharp move away from free markets to a much more interventionist economy that worked better than what had gone before. During World War II this economy was able to achieve great success in terms of war production, notably under Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer. Obviously there is some truth in this account, or else it would not be credible. There was indeed a sharp move in the direction of a more state-controlled economy. In fact few people realize just how interventionist—even socialist—the policies of the Nazi state were (although the full name of the party should give some indication of this).

I’ll stick with “savages” and “barbarians.”

"To those in the media who are suggesting, apparently in all seriousness, that Terry Jones caused the deaths of seven UN employees in Afghanistan by burning a copy of the Koran, I’ll just note that the only way that argument works is by means of a suppressed premise. The premise is that the killers had no moral agency–in other words, that they were, literally, animals."

Me, I’ll stick with “savages” and “barbarians.”

Government run amock

''... St. Louis is not the problem; government is. Many people go into it because they enjoy bossing people around. Surely this is why a court had to overturn a decision by the government of Glendale, Ohio, when it threatened a man with fines and jail because he put a “for sale” sign in his car parked in front of his house. The city said that people might be distracted by the sign and walk into traffic....''

read the whole thing at:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-st-louis-a-protest-sign-meets-government-arrogance/2011/04/01/AFvR4wJC_print.html

Liberty

''The distinction between an economic sphere of human life

and activity and a noneconomic sphere is the worst of their fallacies.

If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to

every individual the tasks he has to perform, nothing that can

be called freedom and autonomy is left to him. He has only the

choice between strict obedience and death by starvation.''

by Ludwig von Mises

Theory and History, pp. 376–77

Nudgers vs. Nannies

The civil war between British busybodies

by Brendan O'Neill 

There is a new divide within Britain’s political classes. It’s not the old conflict of left vs. right, or a return of the 17th-century clash of Roundheads and Cavaliers. The new split divides those who believe the fat, feckless masses should be nudged toward better behavior and those who believe the fat, feckless masses should be nannied toward better behavior.

Prime Minister David Cameron leads the nudgers. He has established a Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) to furnish him with ideas for how to nudge the “illogical” masses (its word) toward the lifestyle approved by Cameron’s government: nonsmoking, alcohol-free, slim, no fun.
Public health officials and their cheerleaders in the media lead the nannies. They believe nudging isn’t enough and that, in the words of Catherine Bennett of The Observer, there will be“a surge in obesity and mass poisoning” by booze and junk food unless the government adopts rules forcing people to become more health-conscious.

'The Tyrannies Are Doomed'

By BARI WEISS

That was the explosive title of a December 2001 book by historian Bernard Lewis about the decline of the Muslim world. Already at the printer when 9/11 struck, the book rocketed the professor to widespread public attention, and its central question gripped Americans for a decade.
Now, all of a sudden, there's a new question on American minds: What Might Go Right?
To find out, I made a pilgrimage to the professor's bungalow in Princeton, N.J., where he's lived since 1974 when he joined Princeton's faculty from London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
Two months shy of his 95th birthday, Mr. Lewis has been writing history books since before World War II. By 1950, he was already a leading scholar of the Arab world, and after 9/11, the vice president and the Pentagon's top brass summoned him to Washington for his wisdom.
"I think that the tyrannies are doomed," Mr. Lewis says as we sit by the windows in his library, teeming with thousands of books in the dozen or so languages he's mastered. "The real question is what will come instead."
For Americans who have watched protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Bahrain and now Syria stand up against their regimes, it has been difficult not to be intoxicated by this revolutionary moment. Mr. Lewis is "delighted" by the popular movements and believes that the U.S. should do all it can to bolster them. But he cautions strongly against insisting on Western-style elections in Muslim lands.

My dog is more rational than these beasts (2)

Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death

Darbesh Khan and his wife, Aklima Begum, had to watch their youngest daughter being whipped until she dropped.

Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.
Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.
Hena dropped after 70.
Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena's family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.
Sharia: illegal but still practiced

My dog is more rational than these beasts (1)

Eight killed in worst-ever attack on UN workers in Afghanistan

Eight United Nations workers have been executed in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, two of them by beheading, by demonstrators protesting the burning of a Koran at a church in Florida.

The victims of the worst-ever attack on UN personnel in Afghanistan included five guards from Nepal, and civilian staff from Norway, Sweden and Romania. Four local residents were also killed.

UN officials told The Daily Telegraph the final toll could rise as high as 20, and there were unconfirmed reports that the head of the United Nations Military Assistance Mission (Unama) in Mazar-e-Sharif had also been seriously injured

Local residents said about 2,000 demonstrators attacked UN guards stationed outside Unama compound, seized their weapons and began firing at police.

Bourbon for breakfast

Most people say that a job is good for making money. So, if you don't need money, what's the point? The fabled English aristocratic class of the late 19th and early 20th century apparently thought that way, if the caricatures painted by Jeeves and Wooster, Brideshead, and the like have any truth to them. Their main job was getting dressed and undressed. It seems like young Americans are thinking the same way.

Doug French drew my attention to some statistics from the Wall Street Journal on teenage employment that knocked me out. In 2000, slightly more than a third of 16- and 17-year-olds had jobs. Today, in 2011, it is 14 and 15 percent. These are shocking numbers. But in retrospect, I've seen enough anecdotal evidence to back them up.

I was speaking to a group of 200-plus high-school students (location I will not disclose) and I casually asked how many of them have worked in a retail environment, working directly with customers. Not a single hand went up. Shocked, I asked the question more broadly: how many have had a job that yielded a paycheck? Not a hand went up.

How to make yourself poor (2)

Public Enemy and Criminal Barber Dale Smith

An 82-year old Oregon barber (pictured above) with more than half a century of experience cutting hair (he was first licensed in 1957) is accused by government authorities in Oregon of "criminal barbering" because his government license to cut hair inadvertently expired in 2006.  Now state regulators want him to go back to barber school and pass a series of exams before he will be allowed to cut hair again legally. His barber shop is currently shut down to protect the public from getting their hair cut by this unlicensed, criminal barber.  
See related CD post here of armed government SWAT team raids on Florida barber shops last November.  

How to make yourself poor (1)

License now required for this Cuban guy.

"Cubans can now seek licenses 178 private-sector jobs, under economic reforms announced last year by President Raul Castro," see the full list here from the Associate Press, including:

6. Door-to-door knife and scissors sharpener

8. Mule Driver

14. Wagon or Pushcart Operator (to help move things)

17. Wheelbarrow Operator 

29. Public Bathroom Attendant 

62. Spark Plug Cleaner and Tester 

111. Automobile Battery Repair

116. Mattress Repair 

124. Umbrella and Parasol Repair

127. Doll and Toy Repair 

158. Fresh Fruit Peeler

My personal favorite is the license for a wheelbarrow operator (see photo above). 

Sounds Good ...

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

~Thomas Sowell 

The Ladies in White

   

The Strangest Secret

.

Amazing

Who is Veena Malik? 

She is a Pakistani entertainer, apparently very famous in that part of the world. She has been threatened with death by the Taliban. In this clip from Pakistani television, Malik mounts a fiery self-defense against a bullying Muslim cleric.

In the mean time somewhere in the West... 
Green vibrators promise truly sustainable pleasure

''Every day is Earth Day in North Korea''