Blue moon

Still trying on this lens. But here's the moon:

MLA unable to muster quorum in defense of Wart

People wandering around going duh. Inside Higher Ed:

PHILADELPHIA – In the midst of a prolonged economic downturn, the Modern Language Association’s governing body took steps to ensure its own financial stability and (it hopes) that of its members at its annual meeting here Tuesday.

But, as the MLA Delegate Assembly’s session stretched into its sixth hour, drawn-out debate and vote on the most controversial issue on the agenda -- a resolution condemning the University of Colorado for firing tenured professor Ward Churchill, whose research came under scrutiny after furor over controversial statements he made about the 9/11 attacks -- was elbowed out by the rules of parliamentary procedure, as the crowd of delegates in attendance dwindled to well below the 80 required to reach quorum. Lining up behind Churchill's First Amendment rights has been a major goal of the MLA's Radical Caucus, which believes that the research misconduct findings were a pretense to get rid of Churchill because of his views. But many other association members, while not necessarily comfortable with the way the university investigated him, have been reluctant to focus on the issue.

Amazingly, even MLA members aren't that stupid.

While the assembly didn't vote on Churchill, it did vote to raise its membership dues for the first time in close to two decades, and to voice support for low-paid and untenured faculty members.

Take heart, Benjie!

(via commenter Orson Buggeigh at PB)

Update: Noj adds this at PB:

The meeting was five hours old by the time they got to Chutchology, so yeah, sorebuttitis was probably a factor. They considered a non-binding vote in the absence of the quorum, but they couldn't even raise a pro-Chutch consensus from the sixty-odd Iron Tushes left in the hall.

Can't understand it.

New twist

On the same ol' scam:

Hello My Good Friend,

My name is Sgt Ahmed Abdul .I am an American soldier serving with the 3rd infantry division in Iraq.I have summed up courage to contact you to seek your co-operation in moving some funds from here.

The said fund in US currency was discovered in barrels at a farmhouse during a rescue operation in one of the former military dictator's top men who died while trying to escape.I managed to conceal some of this fund with the help of a colleague.

It's a remake of Three Kings! (Or The Dirty Dozen or . . .)

Now that we are out of town and restricted to our camp till we pull-out finally,I have been able to get the money, which runs close to six million dollars,carefully packaged and moved safely out of troubled spot and spotlight to a British security courier company office which enjoys diplomatic immunity here.THEY DON'T KNOW THE REAL CONTENTS OF THE PACKAGE BUT BELIEVE THAT IT CONTAINS PERSONAL EFFECTS WHICH BELONG TO AN AMERICAN MEDICAL DOCTOR SOLDIER WHO DIED IN A RAID HERE IN IRAQ WHO BEFORE GIVING UP, URGED ME TO DELIVER THE LUGGAGE TO HIS FAMILY IN UNITED STATES.

With our impending return to America,I have decided to move the package (fund) out now.And this is where I need you : to act as the supposed relation of the deceased and thereby receive the package.

I have found a very safe way of getting this package to you at home and will discuss it upon your response provided I can be assured it will be safe till I return.I want you to indicate YOUR INTEREST to go on with me,and how much percentage you want for your co-operation.

Above all,I cannot over-emphasize the importance of confidentiality due to the sensitive nature of this mail.Whether or not you are interested,do not discuss this with anybody as it will spell doom to us here.

Do respond promptly so I can furnish you with more details.

Will do!

And not a word about Climategate

A completely credulous review of James Hansen's "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity" in the LAT concludes:

What we need, [Hansen] suggests, is a "linear phaseout of coal emissions by 2030 (emissions reduced to half by 2020)." But he has no faith that governments, driven by special interests, will manage that. "Quite the contrary," he argues, "they are pursuing policies to get every last drop of fossil fuel, including coal, by whatever means necessary, regardless of environmental damage."

The scientist catches himself, but it is too late: "Whoops. As an objective scientist I should delete such personal opinions, or at least flag them. But I am sixty-eight years old," he writes, drawing himself up on the page, "and I am fed up with the way things are working in Washington."

Yeah, whoops.

End: Wart

Our favorite fake Injun appears today with Derrick Jensen and some lesser (sic) lights at the Muddy Waters Collective Cafe in Portland (left coast) to try to raise funds to finish Derrick's laughable "documentary," End: Civ. The hoedown's sponsored by B.U.R.N (Bottom Up Radio Network--like I always say, if nothing else, rads have a way with the acronym.)

More: A couple of weeks ago the Daily Gamera named the Wart trial as number 7 on its top ten stories of the decade list. Now the brouhaha as a whole has been named number 5--just above "JonBenet unsolved."

The visual display of quantitative and qualitative fraud

Check out this pdf (it's big) tracing thirty years of AGW malarkey. Much of it will be familiar to those who've followed the story, but to have it all in one place redoubles the impact.



Being reasonably familiar with the scandal, what struck me was how often Keith Briffa expressed discontent with the actions of his alarmist colleagues. I wonder if he really was the leaker.

(via WUWT and their via, JoNova)

Apologies, by the way, to Edward R. Tufte

Update: Oops, got the Tufte link wrong. Fexed.

Truthforce set the high price

A recording of Ward Churchill's lecture at the University of Winnipeg in 2000, "Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment," costs from $6.05 to $999 at Amazon.

Westword gets it right about Ward

For once. But it's not Michael Roberts, the Wart-lovin', media-coverin' guy who does so, but Alan Prendergast. In a piece titled "The top ten Colorado feuds of the decade" (I know, stupid), Prendergast has "Ward Churchill versus reality" at number two:

One can argue, as his attorney David Lane did, that the charges of plagiarism and research misconduct would never have been formally raised (or resulted in his termination) if Churchill hadn't chosen to exercise his right to inane speech by calling World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns." But that doesn't make Churchill the anarchist martyr he wants to be. His entire delusional career has been built on excursions down the rabbit hole, whether he's denouncing CIA-infused conspiracies or claiming to be an ex-paratrooper or three-sixteenths Cherokee or an original thinker. In this world, a jury valued Churchill's damages at exactly one dollar -- and last summer a judge ruled that even that assessment was too generous.

And CU wants $52,000 back. In a generally dismal year, Wart getting whacked was the high point.

Confidential to Dougie Houser

If you like, come back and start commenting again. I'd like others to see (and critique) the arguments for global war--er--climate instability that you keep sending me. If you make a personal comment about me, of course, you will instantly be rebanned. I figure it's better for you to make your views known to (slightly) more than one person so that they can be debunked for the watermelon drivel they are.

Hope all's well with you and fambly, and Merry X-mas.

MLA to vote on condemning CU for firing Wart

Like the Palestinians, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In this case, to just shut up.

Actually the proposed condemnation is for violating Wart's "free speech rights." Same diff. They actually did condemn CU back in 2007 for investigating Churchill in the first place.

New visions of hell

Wart at "Gelndale" Community College on November 19. Somebody throws something at him (about 2:09). That's all that's new. Everybody is yacking while he bores:



Part 2. He's making no sense at all. All over the place.

And part 3. What a wanker.

Update (re part 3): Reverse the polarity!

Past His bedtime, too

The Guardian is angry, my friends. On the front page, it calls the climate deal "feeble." It also quotes Obama:

10:22pm . . . . "I believe what we have achieved in Copenhagen will not be the end but the beginning."

Or the beginning of the end.

He said the most significant thing to come out of the conference was a "shift in orientation" in which developing countries that had never even voluntarily offered emissions cuts before had made offers. "That's what I think will end up being most significant about this accord," he said.

And the best line:

"Because of weather constraints in Washington I am leaving before a final vote."

Nightie-night. Let's hope Wee-Wee One (stolen from somebody somewhere) makes a safe landing in that snowstorm (for which I blame Gor-Al, wherever he is). Enviros are pissed off, of course:

10.04pm: Tim Jones, climate policy officer at the World Development Movement said:

"This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, culminating in a shameful and monumental failure that has condemned millions of people around the world to untold suffering. The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead. They have failed the poorest people in the world and history will judge them harshly because rich countries are trying to blind us to the fact that they have not offered the emissions cuts that science and justice requires. To say that this deal is in any way historic or meaningful is to completely misrepresent the fact that this deal is devoid of real content.

"These talks have been darkened by rich countries trying to save face, but not the climate. Rich countries have caused this problem and now they are trying to blame developing countries for stalling the talks because they are standing up to these insulting[ly tiny] and outrageous[ly small] bribes. The very survival of some of these countries depends on the outcomes of these talks but rich countries cannot see beyond the survival of business as usual."

Absolutely nuts

The Grauniad, of course:

The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian. . . .

And it was a super, super secret analysis. How'd the Grauniad get it? Whatever, all is not lost.

Tonight hopes of the summit producing a deal were rising after the US, the world's biggest historical polluter, moved to save the talks from collapse.

The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, committed the US to backing a $100bn-a-year global climate fund from 2020 to shield poor countries from the ravages of global warming. Barack Obama is expected to offer even more cash when he flies
in tomorrow. . . .

I'm gonna cry like a little baby . . .

The document was drafted by the UN secretariat running the Copenhagen summit and is dated 11pm on Tuesday night. It is marked "do not distribute" and "initial draft". It shows a gap of up to 4.2 gigatonnes of carbon emissions between the present pledges and the required 2020 level of 44Gt, which is required to stay below a 2C rise. No higher offers have since been made.

God, God, God.

"Unless the remaining gap of around 1.9-4.2Gt is closed and Annexe 1 parties [rich countries] commit themselves to strong action before and after 2020, global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 parts per million, with the related temperature rise around 3C," it says. It does not specify a time when 3C would be reached but it is likely to be 2050.

Cry, cry, cry . . .

Greenpeace campaigner Joss Garman said: "This is an explosive document that shows the numbers on the table at the moment would lead to nothing less than climate breakdown and an extraordinarily dangerous situation for humanity.

Absolutely nuts.

Bill McKibben, founder of the campaign 350.org, said: "In one sense [sniffle] this is no secret – we've been saying it for months [badly stifled sob]. But it is powerful to have the UN confirming its own insincerity [wiping nose on sleeve]." He did not know why his name was written on the top of the document.

Huh? No other mention of that in the story. Call in CSI and do a DNA test of the tears on the document!

Amazingly, the piece gets even sillier.

Wart beats out serial killer

The Camera is counting down its top stories of 2009, and Ward's trial comes in at number 7. Whoo. Number 8 is "Boulder County's serial killer goes to prison." Kind of odd wording there, isn't it? In the "related stories" box it's "Boulder County's worst serial killer . . . ." which makes sense.

Hold me

Delingpole on the "litigation hold" on climate data issued by the DOE:

God bless America and – can I really be saying this? – God bless the legal profession! Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, most of the world’s other governments (save the plucky Canucks), the United Nations and the Mainstream Media (MSM) to sweep Climategate under the carpet, the lawyers are putting this shoddy scandal where it belongs: in the dock. (Hat tip: Platosays)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) – under pressure, most likely, from Senator Inhofe – has issued a “Litigation Hold Notice” to its various sub-departments asking them to retain any documents pertaining to the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Below – reports Watts Up With That - is a copy of the notice sent to the DOE’s Savannah office in South Carolina . . . .

Noot graph:

What we see encapsulated here is the corruption at the heart not just of Climategate but the whole IPCC process. Here we have the former head of one of the world’s leading climate research bodies apparently brainstorming with a colleague implicated in a fraud scandal on how best to conceal that fraud from outside investigation. . . .

It is all falling apart.

Hi-Blairity

Blair:

Climate talks in Copenhagen still have several days to run, but I’m calling it early.

Australia wins. No other nation can possibly match the level of comedy that we’ve brought to this international save-the-planet chucklefest.

Chucklefest? He means, "chuckleheadfest." Pretty funny, tho.

Glassy eyed

So bummed. Tenants were moving crap out through one of the big windows of this jolly shithole and (inadvertently, of course) busted out the nearly 100-year-old glass. Goddamnit. I love that old stuff. You look at a window in this place and you can see how it gets thicker towards the bottom because even in the early 20th century they had no QC. Now I've got to replace it with an absolutely uniform window. Crap.

Would you be so kind as to pull this fork out of my eye?

Thank you. AP:

Dozens of Colorado businesses are turning off their lights from noon to 1 p.m. Friday as part of an initiative to conserve energy.

It’s called Lights Out Lunch. Residents who pledge to turn off their lights too can get discounts from participating restaurants and a chance to win prizes.

The initiative is by Xcel Energy, the Governor’s Energy Office and the city and county of Denver.

Colorado Restaurant Association President and CEO Pete Meersman says research shows restaurants use more than five times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings. . . .

Update: A quite long (by internet standards) piece putting the case against AGW hysteria by Martin Cohen in, of all places, Times Higher Education. He's good.

Quote of the day!

Well, actually yesterday, from one "Mohan K" in response to this WSJ article on the bogosity of "climate change":

Of course, let us wait. Let us form a committee to look into the facts behind global warming and climate change. And another committee to investigate the intentions behind denying McIntyre information. And lets campaign for yet another committee to investigate the personal lives of the scientists - to verify their reliability... And let each of these committees be constituted of several sub-committees and sub-sub-committees, which function through international multilateral processes... Sounds good.. Sounds very good to the average self-blindfolded American, debating the conspiracies behind climate change, munching on a Mc Burger and sipping coke.

Lets do that... And lets keep talking, while the world changes. While the world falls into catastrophy. While people start dying in the so called 3rd worlds. While islands start disappearing. While hospitals start filling up. While wars start for food and water. While suddenly, one day, salt water floods your office... Yes, you will still be debating, discussing, analysing, as the water level rises, and slowly drowns you.

People, it takes not science or technology or statistics or advanced calculations to know that our world is being raped by humans, and its taking its toll. You just need to get out of your billion layers of superficiality and artificial life, love yourself, and the Earth, and listen to Her... Feel with her... Try to be one with her. And you can feel her diseased pulse. You can feel her wheezing.

Damn, I'm gettin' a little wood (certain people will know I'm lying there).

I have gas

Can't tell you how many times a tenant has called and screamed, "I smell gas!" One time, a tenant was having a party and shepherded all her guests out into the cold because of the danger of explosion and burning bodies and death and glavin!

Every time, it's been a pilot light on the gas stove.

This, in case you didn't know, is not dangerous. Anyway, it just happened again. I went over with my trustee (yes, it was just put on work-release) lighter, pulled the hood of the stove up, and relit a pilot light.

Reactions: Wow! That's all? Are you sure?

Well, I won't be absolutely sure unless I find you all dead in your beds, but yeah, I'm fairly sure.

Update: OTOH.

(via Insty)

They're back, and they're pissed off

Space aliens, that is. First, a piece in the Telegraph from July, 2008 on the "flood" of UFO sightings in Britain:

Plotted on a map of Britain, the sightings can be seen to stretch from Liverpool to Dover and from Llanelli to Derby. . . .

The founder member of Strange Phenomena Investigations, added: "There has been an unusual number of sightings recently.

"Some experts believe it could be linked to global warming and craft from outer space are appearing because they are concerned about what man is doing to this planet."

They must have figured out that it's too late to save the earth (sorry, "Earth") and started mutilating Colorado cows in disgust. Front page of the Post today:

Four calves, all killed overnight. Their innards gone. Tongues sliced out. Udders carefully removed. Facial skin sliced and gone. Eyes cored away. Not a single track surrounding the carcasses, which were found in pastures locked behind two gates and a mile from any road. Not a drop of blood on the ground or even on the remaining skin. . . .

Chuck Zukowski of Colorado Springs investigated three of the eight mutilated cows in southern Colorado this year. The amateur UFO investigator and reserve deputy in El Paso County documents each scene, testing for radiation and scanning carcasses with ultraviolet light.

Despite his extraterrestrial inclinations, Zukowski's studies — found on his ufonut.com website — fall short of concluding anything paranormal [sic]. He seems certain all the animals he studied were killed and drained before they were sliced, which explains the lack of blood found near the animals.

The way the tongues were sliced off in straight lines back behind the teeth indicates it is not a predator kill, he says.

"I'm looking for obvious things," Zukowski says. "I don't like to say aliens did it. There are just too many unknowns. I like to lean on human intervention until I actually see a UFO come down and take a cow."

Well, he's more of a scientist than many climatologists, anyway.

Update: Speaking of which: "The world has just ten years to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control before the damage they cause become [sic] irreversible, the Met Office has warned."

So cold

Nine degrees below zippo, according to one measure. But, as we all know, who knows. It's very cold. Billy Bob has decided to never go out again. And only ten days till winter. GWMA.

Update: "Typical" links to a blog with a screencap of 9News.com's weather report. That's cold.

More Dickie

Sick of Climategate? I am, for the moment, so just go to WUWT, which is full of AGW goodness. Instead, I'll post some Richard (and the first with Linda) Thompson. Way back again: "A Heart Needs a Home":

I still wear velour.

From 1981. "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight." If only the guy could play guitar:


Not live, "End of the Rainbow." Dickie at his most amusingly misanthropic:


And here's an Elvis C. cover of the same tune. Not as good, but nice backing vocals:


Dickie in his mid-80s incarnation, sans Linda. This is the tour I first saw him on, at the long-gone Blue Note in Boulder. Wall of Death (sound's not the greatest):

Start this tune about a minute in to the famous scene of the kid riding the Wall of Death in "400 Blows" and blow your mind, maaaan.

From the same tour. "When the Spell is Broken." This smokes. Bonnie Raitt covered it sometime or other and did a pretty good job.


"1952 Vincent Black Lightning":


And finally, since I couldn't find a good Dickie version, Bonnie Raitt covering "Dimming of the Day":

Mass delusion

Led by the Grauniad:

Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages

Many, including the Guardian, on the front page.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted. . . .

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based. . . .

The Miami Herald was the only American paper to sign on. Tim Blair (via whom, by the way) notes the response (quoted in this self-congratulatory Guardian piece) of one American editor: “This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell.”

Sanity: such a rare commodity these days.

Update: Meanwhile, we've been in the deep-freeze in Colorado for several days. It's seven degrees now in Denver and we're supposed to get another seven or eight inches of snow on top of the seven or eight we got over the weekend. And winter is only two weeks away.

Update II: Ha-Ha! Antonia Senior at TimesOnline (which is going aardvark-shit crazy over Copenhagen): "Take climate seriously. Make a joke of it." Subhead: "For many of us global warming is worthy but dull. We need to find a new way of talking about it":

Climate change is a bit dull. A bit of a turn-off. Important? Yes. The biggest challenge mankind has faced? Possibly. But exciting? Admit it. How many times have your eyes glazed past the latest slice of gloom and doom, in search of something a bit more fruity? Tiger Woods’ apparent taste in plastic waitresses with weirdly plump lips; or bankers’ bonuses.

I know it’s not really funny that polar bears are drowning and sea levels rising; but death isn’t innately hilarious and neither is paedophilia, yet jokes on both abound. If a celebrity dies or is caught with dodgy images, the web resounds with comedy e-mails. When the latest statistics on melting ice sheets come out, the e-mail ping falls silent. We briefly feel the guilt, shrug and return to our messy, polluting lives. . . .

Well, that's kind of funny, isn't it? Concluding graf:

We [media and science types] get more pompous, you get more bored, the world keeps getting hotter and the climate change chat is dominated by what should be fringe movements. We need a new vocabulary; a new irreverence. We need leaders, yes, but also comics. Someone to lead the fight, with a jester to relieve the tension and unremitting gloom. Have you heard the one about the drowning polar bear? No, neither have I.

A polar bear, a baby seal and Phil Jones walk into a bar . . .

Nope, she's right: not funny.

Split personality

The Telegraph betrays its own with this ludicrous headline over a rather cynical live-blog (by Geoffrey Lean) of the first day of Copenhagen: "The world has just 11 days to save the planet from global warming. Read the latest updates from the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen here." From the post:

9am: Day one of the conference and already the rumours are flying. I have heard that Al Gore, the high priest of climate change, may not be coming to Copenhagen afterall. Perhaps he is leaving the limelight to President Barack Obama?

But don't worry. David Beckham could save the planet. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are in discussion with football teams coming to the World Cup about offsetting their carbon emissions. So, we could see a wind farm sponsored by Wayne Rooney or solar panels courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo. We'll find out later today which teams are signing up and what kind of projects they will be paying for to make up for their business class flights.

11am: Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernnental Committee on Climate Change, delivers an impassioned defence of the science behind global warming following 'climategate'.

“The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC," he said. "But the panel has a record of transparent and objective assessment stretching over 21 years performed by tens of thousands of dedicated scientists from all corners of the globe."

Dr Pachauri said even a rise in temperatures of 2C (3.6) will lead to sea level rise that could make millions of people homeless. He called for “urgent action” and said those questioning the science were just unwilling to make the changes necessary to cut carbon emissions. . . .

1.45pm: Delegates are outraged. Not only are they in a souless conference centre miles from anywhere on the borders of Denmark and Sweden, not only were hundreds kept waiting in the rain on the first day because of a bomb scare but there is no goodie bag.

Lars Ramussen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, said it was all about saving the plaent. "Looking in your conference kit, you were perhaps disappointed – or perhaps relieved - not to find a figurine of the Little Mermaid or other conference souvenirs,” he said. “We have chosen to cut back on gifts and instead invest in 11 scholarships for students from around the world who are attending a fully financed two year MA programme in
Denmark.”. . .

Vote love!

The Gamera has a list of its nominees for the top ten local stories of the year. Among them:

Ward Churchill wins $1: After a protracted legal battle that spurred national headlines, former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill won a civil suit against CU. Churchill was awarded $1 from a jury in the suit, which alleged that CU wrongfully fired him in 2007. He did not get his job back.

Don't know that I'd vote for it for biggest story, but it sure was the most fun.

The title of this post refers, of course, to this post.

Billy bails on Barry

Another non-surprise. Ayers, almost a year ago:

And in that bright transcendent morning, the once unthinkable was, suddenly and inevitably, done. Who could resist the embracing magic of that moment?

The poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked the common people “repairing the things in need of repair.” In a bleeding world marked by so much unnecessary pain, a world so precariously out of balance, we must find ways to come together in vast missions of repair. “A teacher says, ‘Take out your pencils. Begin.”’

And so it begins.

Ayers, a couple of days ago:



(via Clarence "the" Page, who, rare among columnists, actually defends himself in the comments to his post. Of course he maintains, ridiculously, that Ayers and Obama hardly knew each other)

Update: Funny how Billy hasn't updated his bog since the inauguration.

Rats

Mail:

The scientist at the heart of the climate change email scandal was today interviewed by police about the scandal. . . .

Don't get your hopes up:

Sources said the interview concerned the theft of emails from the university and alleged death threats since the contents of the emails were released, adding he was being treated as a 'victim of crime' rather than a suspect in any criminal investigation.

So far, anyway.

More: More insanity, that is, from TimesOnline. Ted Hughes, prophet of climate change:

While some mocked him for accepting the poet laureateship, feminists attacked him over the suicide of Sylvia Plath and people with no interest in poetry picked lubriciously over the tragedies of his life, Hughes himself was firing off letters to the Thatcher Government, demanding that the country be put on a “war footing” to combat environmental degradation. . . .

Poetry makes nothing happen,” wrote W. H. Auden. He was wrong. Higher literature should be used not to preach or hector [bwahahahahahahahaha!], but to describe, alarm and warn. In 1936 the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova met a starving women outside a Russian jail. The woman, “her lips blue with cold”, whispered: “Could anyone ever describe this?” Akhmatova replied: “I can.” And she did, in Requiem, her masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her poem did not save the dying woman, nor did it stop Stalin, yet it changed the world.

Exactly analogous to AGW. Amazing.

As world leaders head to Copenhagen to confer on climate change, there has never been a greater need for poets — the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” — to put pressure on the acknowledged legislators by translating this crisis, and the moral imperative it demands, into words.

"Life is hard and life is earnest. If you're cold, turn up the furnace"--Herman Munster.

Update: Okay, I take it all back. I'm convinced:



(via a commenter at WUWT. Why don't they have permalinks on comments?)

Central Climategate figure Jones 'steps down'

To hell, one hopes. WUWT has the UEA press release. Classic:

Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.

Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”

No Doubt (to employ equally peculiar capitalization).

Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.

Better and better.

More: Australian senate defeats ETS (via Tim Blair)

And more. An AFP piece in the SMH: "Cold comfort: The psychology of climate denial":

If the evidence is overwhelming that man-made climate change is already upon us and set to wreak planetary havoc, why do so many people refuse to believe it?

The UN's panel of climate scientists, in a landmark report, described the proof of global warming as "unequivocal".

That was two years ago, and since then hundreds of other studies have pointed to an ever-bleaker future, with a potential loss of life numbering in the tens of millions, if not more.

Yet survey after survey from around world reveals deep-seated doubt among the public. . . .

Read whole thing for the surprising (yuh-huh) explanations of this denialist mentality.

(via commenter "Puzzled" in the Tim Blair thread)

Update: William T. Sherman links to Lindzen in the WSJ. I saw it but forgot.

And Monckton writes a little book (pdf).

Not that we didn't know it was coming

Charles Johnson breaks with "the Right."

By "the Right," of course, he means:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

And so on. Heck, I'm against the Right too, as Chuckles defines it. Anybody recognize themselves in his list, though?

Last time I link to him, by the way. Or read him.

Abbott ousts Turnbull in Oz

Anti-ETS (Emission Trading System) Lib Tony Abbot has won the leadership of his party by one vote over LINO (Liberal in Name Only) and AGW-believer Malcolm Turnbull. All is not good news, though, as Tim Blair explains. Still, the repercussions of Climategate roll on.

Update: Caz! Comment!

Update II: Forgot the magic word: Please?

My statement on Tiger

by John G. Martin, non-Esq.

He's an idiot like everyone. Here he is on Obama, pre-election:

I've seen him speak. He's extremely articulate [black people are allowed to call each other "articulate"], very thoughtful, I'm just impressed at how well, basically all politicians really do, how well they think on their feet. Especially those debates. It's pretty phenomenal to see them get their point across. But I just think that he's really inspired a bunch of people in our country and we'll see what happens down the road.

Little did Tiger know that it would be an angry wife, a golf club, a fire hydrant, and a tree down that road.

Hey, if Buick's looking for new idiots to promote their products, I'm available.

Yeah, sure

Quote of the Day, from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, in the Grauniad, natch:

"The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said.

More craziness from Pachauri in a Guardian piece just before Climategate broke.

Update: Pravda brings its formidable integrity (what?) to bear on Climategate:

‘Climategate’ is not an ordinary case of falsifying data by a few rogue scientists. The fraudulent theory of Global Warming has provided the basis for an international political movement which has the stated goal of completely restructuring the entire global economy based on that fraudulent theory. ‘Global Warming’ is a con game perpetrated by dishonest scientists and the government and corporate leaders who provide the corrupt scientists with opportunities for advancement.

If we fail to stop the further politicization and institutionalization of the fraudulent theory of Global Warming, we will most certainly experience a future of ‘science’ controlled by government decree and of a world government that facilitates the operations of corporate industries while imposing severe restrictions and arbitrary taxes on the general public.

Thanks, P. We'll call if we need you.

(via "JonesII" in this thread at WUWT)

Booker: 'Greatest scientific scandal of our age'

Christopher Booker in the Telegraph:

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). . . .

Update: Not that this will surprise anyone who reads the thing, but the Denver Post has said not a word about C-gate except for a typically clueless Eugene Robinson syndicated column today ("The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud.").

Where's Vinnie?

Update II: Look upon this blog; and, upon this. One has had three (count 'em) posts on Climategate; the other (by rough count) almost 60. Strange.

Laziest scam-mail ever

From one "Jimi Sanchez." In full:

Beloved,

I am Elizabeth Etters, a Christian.I picked your email randomly for an inheritance of $18M. Please contact me for more details via [redacted].

Beloved, huh? Well, who's Jimi, Liz? Always screwing around on me, then coming back and offering me $18 million. It's not enough, Lizzie. In fact, you have many who outdo you in wanting to give me money. And they love me much more than you do.

Update: Okay, this one beats all. It's from FedEx:

FedEx provides access to a growing global market place through a network of supply chain, transportation, and business and related information services.

Yes yes?

The FedEx courier Service Company is hereby passing an essential message to all our valuable customers to be very careful while presenting their Receivers/Residential Address to avoid wrong delivery. Authoritatively, this is the FedEx courier service company mailing you in respect of your parcel that was brought to this company to be delivered to you by one JOHN PETER. Before the delivery protocols commenced, there was a misunderstanding between you and the National Insurance Corporation of Nigeria (NICON) over the Insurance Certificate which caused the delay of you receiving your parcel for the past one year.

Now that you mention it, I do have some vague recollection . . .

Meanwhile we are happy to inform you that the FedEx has finalized everything with the (NICON) and subsequently approved yours among the 24 valuable parcels' to be couriered after the released of the parcels from the (NICON)We are happy to inform you once again that your parcel that contains a cheque worth $3 Million is among the 24 parcel's listed which is now in our office and also with your name as the receiver despise that we lost your private residential address which is an indication that you can now re-send your residential address back to the FedEx company where your parcel can be delivered to you without hesitation.

Yes yes?

Meanwhile remember that the sender of this parcel JOHN PETER. still owes this company the sum of $105 before the incident occued. Know you that we have spent some money in the process by recovering back your parcel. We once again appreciate your patronage.

Check's in the mail!

Without hesitation you are to pay for just the balance [I said, check's in the mail!]left by your sender via western union money transfer so that your parcel can be delivered to your residential address before it attracts demurrage.

Demmurage, eh?

Your parcel is not just an ordinary parcel but with a huge amount and I think you understand what I mean by accumulating a demurrage? [Now I do!] Which you will not allow to happen to the recovered parcel that almost gone if not for the love that the good God has for you and I. I urge you to make hay while the sun shines. We assure you that your parcel will arrive your country within 3 days as soon as this company receive your full residential address and the balance left by you and the tracking number of your parcel will be sent to you via e-mail immediately so that you can track it yourself to see whether we are competent in the discharge of our duties.

FedEx loves me!

FedEx courier Service Company do hereby inform all their customers to be at alert especially with allsorts of scam mails that might be coming to you Globally. Be careful with their e-mails so that your parcel will not be in danger with their evil.

And they're looking out for me!

Update II: I spent at least two minutes diligently looking for the Three Stooges doing the "Yes yes?" routine. No luck.

So 80s

Be afwaid. AP:

A creepy string of calf mutilations in southern Colorado has a rancher and sheriff's officials mystified.

Four calves were found dead in a pasture just north of the New Mexico state line in recent weeks. The dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage. One calf had its tongue removed.

But rancher Manuel Sanchez has found no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks. And there are no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion. Usually predators leave pools of blood or drag marks from carrying away the livestock.

Wait, you didn't use the phrase, "surgical precision."

Two officers from the Costilla County Sheriff's Office have investigated the mutilations but say they don't know what's killing the calves.

"There's nothing really to go by," said Sanchez, who's ranched for nearly 50 years. "I can't figure it out." . . .

Some in the area believe the mutilations are the work of aliens. An area UFO chaser, Chuck Zukowski of Colorado Springs, has been to the Costilla County pasture to investigate.

I'm betting it's the joooooos.

Just a pic . . .

Of Smelly Slob at the Pa-in-Law's today.


He had fowl, he had potatoes, he had green bean casserole, he had pie (apple), and he had Frisbee.

First pic with the 70-300 lens the enigmatically generous "Mr. B" gave me, free, gratis, and, uh, I forget. He said he never used it. You don't use that Lexis of yours much, either, Mr. B!

In any case, I need to learn how to use the damn thing.

Thought for Tomorrow

Today!

About three-quarters of all adult Indians suffer alcoholism and/or other forms of substance abuse. This is not a ‘genetic condition.’ It is a desperate, collective attempt to escape our horrible reality since ‘America’s Triumph.’ It’s no mystery why Indians don’t observe Thanksgiving. The real question is why do you feast rather than fast on what should be a national day of mourning and atonement. Before digging into your turkey and dressing on Nov. 23, you might wish to glance in a mirror and see if you can come up with an answer.--Guess who

Too lazy to find out which book it came from; found it quoted today at Dissident Voice.

Record?

Huffpo's piece on Sarah Palin being booed by disappointed autograph seekers in Indiana has amassed almost 15,000 comments. You have to look at the front-page right sidebar for that number, but there are 285 pages of them (mostly supportive of Palin, natch). I'll leave it to others to assess the possible political implications. Fifteen thousand. Don't believe I've ever seen even 2,000 anywhere else, including LGF back in the day.

Update: Oops, I see that Huffpo itself apparently routinely gets several thousand comments on individual posts. But still.

Climategate?

Andrew Bolt has it:

Hackers have broken into the data base of the Hadley GRU unit - one of the world’s leading [climate] alarmist centres - and put the files they stole on the Internet, on the grounds that the science is too important to be kept under wraps.

The ethics of this are dubious, to say the least. But the files suggest, on a very preliminary glance, some other very dubious practices, too, and a lot of collusion - sometimes called “peer review”. Or even conspiracy.

A warning, of course. We can only say with a 90 per cent confidence interval that these emails are real.

And his latest update:

8.15 PM UPDATE: The Hadley CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine:

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight ..."It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."…

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

This is clearly not the work of some hacker, but of an insider who’s now blown the whistle.

I left out Bolt's links. Read the whole thing. And they're going nuts over at WattsUpWithThat.

Update: RealClimate, the leading pro-AGW blog, finally responds, and doesn't deny that the e-mails and data are genuine. Lots of mealy-mouthedness, of course. "This is the way scientists talk to each other in private," etc.

Update II (11/22/09): I love this. The Grauniad, after posting one weak and biased "news" story and one even more biased thumbsucker on Friday, has this on its front page today: "Climate change sceptics and lobbyists put world at risk, says top adviser"

Chance to limit warming squandered, says scientist

Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.

Aw, rats. Guess we can pack it in then.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.

Wiki on Watson. A bigwig, no? Notice though that the Guardian doesn't mention his affiliation with the University of East Anglia, home of the Climate Research Unit.

In an interview with the Guardian, Watson said: "Those that have opposed a deal on climate, which would include elements of the fossil fuel industry, have clearly made making a 2C target much, much harder, if not impossible. They've clearly put the world at risk of far more adverse effects of climate change.". . .

The British government last month published a map that laid out the stark details of a world warmer by 4C. It showed that the rise would not be evenly spread across the globe, with temperature rises much larger than 4C in high latitudes such as the Arctic. Because the sea warms more slowly, average land temperature will increase by 5.5C, which scientists said would shrink yields for all major cereal crops on all regions of production. A 4C rise would also have a major impact on water availability, with supplies limited to an extra billion people by 2080.

Watson backed controversial calls for research into geoengineering techniques, such as blocking the sun [excellent!], as a way to head off dangerous temperature rise – one of the most senior figures so far to do so. "We should at least be looking at it. I would see what the theoretical models say, and ask ourselves the question: how can we do medium-sized experiments in the field?"

Such an effort could divert attention and funds from efforts to cut carbon and switch to cleaner technology, he said. "I think it should be a real international effort, so it isn't just the UK funding it."

Yeah, just the UK.

Update III: The Harry_Read_Me.txt file examined at Devil's Kitchen (the word "clusterfuck" is used repeatedly by the blogger, though with asterisks. We don't need no stinkin' asterisks here).

Update IV: Via Tim Blair:


Available here.

Update V: OMFG. Bolta on George Monbiot, the biggest GW idiot in the MSM (non-US division), finally having his eyes pried open: "Even Monbiot says the science now needs 'reanalyising'" No quotes, just read. This keeps getting better and better.

Update VI: BTW, information wants to be free. Anybody got an idea why?

Update VII: Good God almighty, is everybody fucking insane? TimesOnline:

At least half the years in the next decade will be warmer than the previous record year for global temperatures and next year could be the warmest to date, according to the Met Office. . . .

The Met Office’s Hadley Centre announced its predictions as a separate scientific analysis showed that previous estimates about the rate of temperature rise had been too low. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said the planet could warm by 7C (10.8F). The increase would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable. . . .

Update VIII: It just keeps getting better and better (read comments, too, then go back to the home page and scroll for more hijinks!)

Wart speaks for Mutulu Shakur!

In Denver November 28. "'Til It Breaks--Denver Anarchist News":

Presented by Denver and Aurora CopWatch, Sisters of Color United for Education, and Denver ABCF

when: Saturday, November 28th. 7:30-12ish

Wart's found another murderer to defend! Four-and-a-half hours worth.

where: Sisters of Color 2895 8th Ave, Denver, CO (8th and federal across the street from the bus yard)

how much: Sliding Scale 1-5$ (if you ain’t got it don’t let it stop you from coming) Please join us on Saturday, November 28th to stand in solidarity with Dr Mutulu Shakur before his appeals hearing on Monday, November 30th at the super-maximum Federal prison in Florence, CO.

Doctor?

Dr. Shakur is a New Afrikan (Black) man whose primary work has been in the area of health. He is a doctor of acupuncture and one of the most prolific, committed and conscious freedom fighters and political prisoners to whom the Black liberation struggle has given birth.

Oh. Doctor of acupuncture. So am I. Well, when I lived near New York I liked to stick pins in women on the subway. Doctor Drunkablog.

Since the age 16, Dr. Shakur has been a part of the New Afrikan Independence Movement. As a part of this movement Dr. Shakur has been a target of the illegal Counterintelligence Program carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (COINTELPRO). This was a secret police strategy used in the U.S. starting in the 1960’s to destroy and neutralize progressive and revolutionary organizations. It is believed that Dr. Shakur’s resistance to this program led to his arrest and trial.

“Straight ahead, stiff resistance”

Here's an episode of "American Gangster" on Shakur. Billy Ayers, where are you?

More: An account of Wart's appearance in AZ the other day.

Update: Weirdities: Watching American Gangsters being interrupted by Wal-Mart commercials and trying to watch tonight's episode of WWIIinHD at the same time. I'm trippin', man.

You all watching . . .

WWIIinHD on the History Channel? Wow. And told, amazingly, in a pro-American style. And IN COLOR! (Mostly.)

Actually I hate the History Channel, but this is something else. My first dose of color WWII footage--the theatrical release of famed H-wood director George Stevens' footage, "D-Day to Berlin"--was back in the late 80s. This is much better.

Update: The next program illustrates why I hate the History Channel: Hitler and the prognostications of Nostradamus. God help us all.

Update II: Though I still love this.

Serial liar to appear in Denver for PeaceJam!

And it's not Ward Churchill! No, it's Rigoberta Menchu Tum, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for her book about growing up in war-torn Guatemala, I, Rigoberto Menchu, which was shown to contain many fabrications, but is still taught in the kind of college courses we all know and love. The Post interviews Dawn Engle,

co-founder of PeaceJam, an international education program based in Arvada that brings young people into contact with Nobel Peace Prize winners to work for change. . . .

I wrote about PeaceJam's gathering of Nobels and yoot in Denver back in 2006.

[Menchu] will introduce a screening of the 1983 documentary "When the Mountains Tremble" at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the auditorium of the Denver Post building, 101 W. Colfax Ave.

You'll note if you look at the links just above that the Post's writers were unbelievably smarmy and supportive of PeaceJam back then; today, the tradition continues.

We asked Engle about PeaceJam and the documentary featuring Menchú Tum, who is longtime friends with Engle and her husband, PeaceJam co-founder Ivan Suvanjieff.

Q: What do you hope filmgoers take away from seeing "When the Mountains Tremble"?

A: I think the film will hopefully inspire people to feel that when all the odds are against you and it feels like the whole world is turning against you, that you can prevail. I think a lot of people now are feeling hopeless and even beaten down. I think this film will really help lift them up.

Just tell a few lies about your beaten-down-ness and you too can win a Nobel Peace Prize and make lots of money!

I cried when I saw it. And I really felt involved with this brave young girl, Rigoberta. You kind of fall in love with her during this film.

Maybe there'll be Nobel-winner-on-Nobel-nominee action! (third bullet-point).

Q: What is the significance of Menchú Tum's visit?

Who cares! Here's the PeaceJam "package" for the flick:

PeaceJam is selling a $175 ticket package [gack!]called "A Day With a Nobel Peace Prize Winner." The package includes a ticket to PeaceJam's Inaugural Hero Awards Luncheon on Wednesday at the Seawell Ballroom, a reception where participants can meet Menchu Tum, and a ticket to the screening. Tickets for just the film go on sale Wednesday for $12 at the Starz box office.

Drone

JWP links to bad video of Wart's appearance in Arizona last week. Again, I cannot understand why anyone has ever referred to him as a "firebrand," etc. He's a disorganized liar and a bore, and tells the same shit over and over. Hey Wart, when did Germany attack Russia again?

There was a time when I might have cared. But Wart's done.

Update: "I'm getting back in my professorial role here." Sorry, Wart, but, no.

Update II: "Polarity"!

Update III: "Polarity"!

Update IV: When I say I don't care anymore, that doesn't mean I don't want to mock. I always want to mock Wart.

Update V: "Bill O'Reilly." Drink!

Update VI: Much better if you want to get drunk: "Okay?" Oh, God, there's over an hour to go. Maybe tomorrow.

Update VII: Called Wart a "fake fat Indian" a couple posts down, but, though it's hard to tell, it looks as though he may have lost some weight. Hot, hot, hot.

Mmmmmm . . .

TimesOnline:

The Frankenfood that improves you

The future of food includes baby purée to improve brain
power . . .

Sorry, that's all I read.

Jail time for another Wart-pal

The fat fake Indian is the kiss of death to his fellow rads. The (NY) Post:

A federal appeals court today ordered a convicted terror-coddling civil rights lawyer to begin serving her prison sentence.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld Lynne Stewart's conviction upon announcing its ruling.

Stewart, 69, was convicted in February 2005 of conspiracy and providing and concealing material support of terrorism for her actions in smuggling messages from "blind sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman to his followers in the Islamic terror group Gama'a al-Islamiyya.

You'll remember Wart has spoken at various rallies in her defense over the years, and she, repaying the favor, came to his trial last spring. They also joined forces recently to defend the no doubt soon-to-be-convicted "San Francisco 8," Black Panthers charged with the murder of a police officer 38 years ago. Others Wart has helped keep in jail are Mumia Abu-Jamal and Lenny "Still in a Cage" Peltier. LoveStruggle!

Update: Yes, she was sentenced to only two years, which I suppose means one actually served. Oh well.

Update II: According to Wikipedia, charges against four of the Frisco (as natives call it) 8 were dropped in July.

Update III: Natsui?

Hyper-something, anyway

Ran across this rather OCD-ish list of 100-odd tips for "hypermiling" and was surprised at how many of them I instinctively followed. My faves:

6) Join a fuel economy forum

Join an outstanding forum to learn ways to increase your fuel economy by talking to others who share your enthusiasm and goals.

God, you mean I can make my life even more boring?

14) The 'corridor effect'

All else being equal, traveling at a constant speed on a freeway within a flow of traffic (in the same direction) is more efficient than going the same speed in isolation. The reason is aerodynamic: a flow of traffic generates a localized wind current in the direction of travel. You will benefit from this artificial breeze.

Actually I don't like this one, because in my decades of x-country driving I've learned that it's best to keep away from crowds.

Here's the first really obsessive one:

25) Pick up cargo "high", deliver "low"

If possible, shop at stores that are higher in elevation than your home. That way the extra weight you pick up (shopping items) is on board for the descending return leg where it's less of a penalty than it would be on an ascending return leg.

I do this one:

26) Conserve momentum: stop sign 'stop and crawl'

When multiple vehicles ahead of you are progressing through a stop sign (or a right turn at a red light), this represents a mini 'stop and crawl' situation normally found in a bumper to bumper traffic jam. Time your approach, to arrive at the stop sign as the last car ahead is departing.

And this:

30) Traffic light timing - stale 'green', no pedestrian signal

In the absense of any other indication about how stale the light is (eg. if there's no pedestrian signal or waiting cross traffic), assume that the green light ahead is about to change. Adjust your approach speed accordingly (IF traffic permits - ie. you don't hold anyone up) to avoid a full-on brake application should the light change.

And this:

45) Conserve momentum: avoid stopping

Avoid coming to a complete stop whenever possible (and when safe and legal of course). It takes much less energy to accelerate a vehicle when it's already traveling just a few kilometers per hour than it does from a complete stop.

Uh, no:

47) "Drive without brakes" (DWB)

Although the Drunkawife tried to help me out with this one, IYKWIMAIKYD.

This one is really scary:

55) Engine off coasting

Engine-off coasting (EOC) is one of the largest contributors to increased efficiency of hybrid vehicles, many of which automatically shut down the engine when the accelerator is released and the vehicle is coasting.

EOC can be accomplished in non-hybrids as well simply by shifting to neutral and switching the key from "Run" to "Acc" (being careful not to switch to "Off" and cause the steering to lock). As soon as the engine stops, return the key to the "Run" position or else you will be in danger of locking out your steering and crashing. Also be careful to not steer at all while the key is off to prevent a lock up.

Another one I do:

73) Manual transmission: cruise in high gear

When cruising at a constant speed, shift to the highest gear you can use without lugging the engine.

Bummer:

107) Listen to slower music

Leave the speed metal at home. Fast paced music can make a driver more impatient, more agressive and likely to speed. At the same time, slower paced music is more relaxing and tends to promote a more sensible driving style while also reducing stress.

No Golden Earring? Surely you jest.

There are many, many more. See which ones you do. YMMV.

Update: Should note that I don't do any of this stuff out of concern for, like, Gaia or anything. I'm poor, and, as one of the hypermiler points encourages, I treat getting good mileage like a game. The 93 Ford Escort wagon I drive is rated 28 mpg combined city/highway; believe it or not, I've gotten 40 mpg combined (rarely), but routinely get 42-43 mpg on over-the-road distances, driving just under 80 (where the limit is generally 75). I enjoy that.

Balloon head gets plea bargain for Balloon Boy parents

Yes, BB's parents pled guilty, Dad to a felony. Another win for Clarence Darrowish Wart-lawyer David Lane, who said an incredibly stupid thing after the plea:

After the hearing, Richard Heene's attorney David Lane said that the seriousness of the charges reflects the anger Americans felt after learning they had been duped by the parents into fearing for Falcon's safety.

"Don't mess with America's emotions," Lane said. "America has the emotional instability of a hormonal teenager."

That includes, of course, the judge in the case, right, Dave? Very smart. Further quotage:

Richard and Mayumi Heene quietly answered a handful of questions from a judge as she pled guilty to a misdemeanor and he to a felony. They made no other statement during the short hearing.

Larimer District Judge Stephen J. Schapanski allowed them to remain free on bond until sentencing on Dec. 23, and did not discuss the possible sentences they face. Each could be eligible for brief jail terms. . . .

Schapanski said restitution for the search will be part of any sentence they face.

"The financial consequences will be significant," Schapanski said.

The arrest affidavit for Richard Heene was unsealed after the hearing. It charges that deputies found evidence in the home that the Heenes were having financial trouble, and had been working with a company called RDF Media Group to pitch a reality show about the family to networks.

The affidavit says the balloon was manufactured specifically for the hoax, and that the release, the fake 911 call and the parents claim to deputies that Falcon was aboard were all intended to "influence" deputies into conducting a search and "in turn, attract media attention."

Well, duh.

Update: Caplis and Silverman have Lane on. Silverman: Did he (Heene) do anything wrong?

Lane: As a matter of law, yes.

Lane says that Heene pled guilty to a class-four felony because otherwise prosecutors would have charged his wife, a Japanese national, with a felony, which would have left her open to deportation.

Caplis mocks Lane's claim that Heene loves his children. Lane: there are many forms of love. Caplis goes mental, pointing out that anyone who would try a hoax like this with his six-year-old child is messed up.

Lane: Beating your children, raping your children . . . this doesn't even make it on that scale (I'm paraphrasing).

Lane: The only reason (Heene) was charged with a felony was media hysteria . . .

Silverman: Who created the hysteria . . .

Will they get jailtime? The wife may get one day . . . No followup on Heene pere.

At the end Caplis attacks Lane for the "Ward Churchill-type garbage you keep throwing out." to "a tiny bunch." Lane asks, "you mean, the jury?" Caplis says he means the assholes (my term) around Wart. Lane again defends his characterization of Americans in general as "hormonal teenagers."

Not yet, anyway

The alluring Chuck Plunkett in a Post blog:

Tomorrow we’ll weigh-in with an editorial on coming Congressional hearings regarding Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

It’s made me interested in considering what we might learn from the hearings in terms of our nation’s laudable obsession with diversity.

Laudable obsession.

Though I’m a big fan of diversity and tolerance, I’m not a fan of weak-minded acceptance of folks who go on to commit kill-crazy rampages.

Racist.

Because it could very well be that Army officials were way too tolerant with Maj. Hasan and now will forever regret the result.

(Like the good folks at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who got suckered into quickly handing tenure to that hack Ward Churchill, whom they thought was an American Indian, in order to increase diversity among its faculty. And no, Churchill’s academic crimes don’t include kill-crazy rampages, but the debacle we had to endure for so many years helps make the point.)

Wart, of course, has claimed repeatedly that he took up arms against the U.S. Total lie, but who knows what his atherosclerotic brain might come up with next? Keep watching the skies!

Did anybody else around here see

Fox NFL Sunday from Afghanistan today? Brilliant. Corny. All-American. Sweeps. I don't know if they advertised that the crew would be there, but I don't think so.

Said it before, but these young(ish) folks in our military today are unbelievably smart, handsome (both men and women) and honorable.

What made me tear up at the end was Terry Bradshaw leading everyone in "God Bless America," and all the niggers, spics, crackers and indeterminate mongrels were belting it out bigtime. Then they broke, spontaneously, into the time-honored chant, "USA! USA! USA!"

We bring freedom. Sorry about that. Happy Veterans Day.

Update: You are all communists.--Howie Long.

Bullies

In comments some posts down the subject of bullies came up, and it's come up again (at least from me) in relation to the filthy assholes around Wart. So, I want to hear readers' stories about their childhood (or adult) confrontations with bullies.

Several of us in that down-post thread mentioned running from them when we were kids (jwp, I believe, said he wore a superhero cape when he did). I mentioned "The Fat Kid," who once chased me off the end of a boat in drydock, resulting in the oddly shaped skull people often comment on, even today.

But I do have a hero story, as well:

Seventh grade, Junior High (as it was called then). There was a ninth grader who hated me, for no reason that I could ever discern. I never even knew his name. But he tormented me. In study hall, for example, he'd sit opposite me and try to crush my feet with his size 12s. He was a good six inches taller and outweighed me by maybe 70 pounds (I probably weighed about 100 pounds then).

Worse, his locker was right next to mine.

One day, we met up at the lockers at the same time--something I always tried to avoid. He started the usual shit, crowding me, shoving me against my locker, etc.

This time, though, was different. No idea why. I reached back with my tiny right fist of fury and smacked him in the mouth so hard it echoed down the halls. This is not an exaggeration. My friend since first grade John Fable (where are you John?) was 20 feet down the hall and around the corner, and he heard it.

Prick never bothered me again.

Your turn.

"I'd defend Osama, I'd defend Hitler . . ."

Wart-lawyer David Lane just now on C & S about whether Ft. Hood terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan should face the death penalty.

He's agin it. I'll post the audio when it shows up.

Update, a long time after: What bugs me is not that Lane would defend Hitler, etc., but that he would be able to fool himself enough to believe, just as he did with Wart, that his client was actually innocent of any wrongdoing.

Give the devil his due

Front-page profile of Wart-lawyer David Lane in the Post today. Fave quote:

One thing that hasn't changed is the way Lane has been attacked for representing Churchill. Like the day he sat with a client, in prison for second-degree murder and facing a first-degree murder charge for a slaying behind bars.

"This guy's doing second-degree murder time, facing the death penalty, and he says, 'Can I ask you a personal question?' " Lane recalled. "I said, 'Sure.' He said, 'No offense, but how do you represent a scumbag like Ward Churchill?' "

The rest is about what you'd expect. Wart has a brief quote. I suppose the Post did this now because Lane is representing the Balloon Boy family.

Update: Benjie over at his moribund blog:

Missed this ’cause I’m out of town, but there was a great writeup of Denver civil rights attorney David Lane on the front page of yesterday’s Denver Post. I get accused of being everything from an anarchist to a militia member, and though I kind of like both of those tags, David Lane probably sums up my political beliefs better than anyone when he says that “the most dangerous entity on earth is a government that has the ability to do whatever it wants whenever it wants without control.”

Never seen Benjie accused of being either. Liar, sure. Sociopath, absolutely. Bully--well, isn't everyone in his circle? What Benjie and his stinking ilk want is for the gubmint to do what they
want, whatever that happens to be. U.S. off the planet!

Update II: So who among us will buy a copy of Pike and pass it around so we can all mock it? (It will surely be mockworthy.) We certainly don't want to inflate his sales figures beyond five.

Halloween stories from JWP!

Actually they're just horror stories; nothing particularly to do with Halloween. But the pirate with the zombie parrot ("Braiiinnnnns, matey") links to several short-shorts he wrote for various pubs in the 90s. NSFK (Not Safe For Kiddies).

Can't decide my fave between the pitiful descent of the Norse gods to our (D-blog readers') level or "Colorado Gothic," a story which again validates my move to the big city.

Anybody doing anything interesting for Halloween? I see that Balloon Boy costumes are big this year.

There's a big bowl of candy downstairs by the front door, and more in reserve, but for some reason we never get many kids here.

Update: JWP has a Facebook page. Now that's scary.

A laptop? A tire iron?

More on the Beason, Illinois murder of a family of five. Caution, morons ahead:

A Beason family found slain in their home Sept. 21 may have died during an armed robbery in which a laptop computer was taken by two Armington brothers -- one of them a former son-in-law of one of the victims -- according to indictments filed Wednesday.

Rick and Ruth Gee and three of their children died of blunt force trauma, likely caused by a tire iron, prosecutors disclosed in newly filed charges.

Christopher J. Harris, 30, and his brother, Jason L. Harris, 22, each were arraigned on more than 50 first-degree murder counts and additional charges of armed robbery, home invasion, residential burglary and the attempted criminal sexual assault of 16-year-old victim Justina Constant. Chris Harris, who was once married to Rick Gee's older daughter, Nicole, faces a total of 68 charges. . . .

Why so many charges?

Authorities said there is an unusually high number of counts in the indictment because the charge allege crimes being committed during other alleged criminal acts, all involving multiple victims.

After the hearing, Skelton addressed the large number of charges. "It's a record, across the board," he said.

Well, this mess has got that going for it, at least.

He said he expects the state to seek the death penalty against the pair.

These guys are so dumb they won't even know they're dead.

Earlier Beasonoia here, here und here

(h/t Sabes)

"A creature living in the thrashing endgame of civilization"

One can only hope. A new doco in the works starring that pussy terrorist we've grown to know and love, Derrick ("gee, if only I knew how to make bombs") Jensen, with supporting roles by fellow zero-summers (not to be confused with Suzanne Sommers), hypocrites, crypto-ecofascists and disgraced liars like Ward Churchill. It's based on Jensen's Endgame, and has to be seen to be believed (or rather, not believed):



What struck me immediately is how the film looks like something from the fifties, and it's not even made yet. Crappy stock footage will do that. Here's another hunk:



Again, the project has yet to become reality (or certain people's version of same). Contribute, or else!

Update: Derrick's lookin' a little jowly, ain't he?

Update II: Commenter "44" links to a Counterhunch interview with Derrick today. Of many, many idiotic things he says, here are a couple:

[Interviewer] Has science provided the world with anything good?

DJ: That’s a very common question that is asked: Hasn’t science done a lot of good for the world? For the world? No. Show me how the world—the real, physical world, once filled with passenger pigeons, great auks, cod, tuna, salmon, sea mink, lions, great apes, migratory songbirds, forests—is a better place because of science. Science has done far more than facilitate the destruction of the natural world: it has increased this culture’s ability to destroy by many orders of magnitude. We can talk all we want about conservation biology and about the use of science to measure biodiversity, but in the real, physical world the real, physical effects of science on real, living nonhumans has been nothing short of atrocious. Science has been given three hundred years or so to prove itself. And of course three hundred years ago great auks (and fish, and whales) filled the seas, and passenger pigeons and Eskimo curlews filled the skies, and soil was deeper, and native forests still stood. If three hundred years of chainsaws, CFCs, depleted uranium, automobiles, genetic engineering, airplanes, routine international trade, computers, plastics, endocrine disrupters, pesticides, vivisection, internal combustion engines, fellerbunchers, dragline excavators, televisions, cellphones, and nuclear (and conventional) bombs are not enough to convey the picture, then that picture will never be conveyed.

Ted Kaczynski without the courage of his convictions. This one is just funny:

[I]f someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit since you were a child, you’ll grow to believe them. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to other foods, you might discover that eating dog shit doesn’t taste too great. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories of eating dog shit – that is if your enculturation is so strong that it actually does taste good to you, the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example less silly, substitute pesticides for dog shit, or for that matter, substitute Big Mac™, Whopper™, or Coke™. Eventually physical reality trumps narrative. It can just take a long time.

Maybe for you, Derrick. Maybe for you. And notice how Derrick has Noam's Disease: Great leaden blocks of drivel, vomited onto the page.

Let's ride!

Over a foot in my (red)neck of the woods so far. I love it. Supposed to keep up through tomorrow, but I doubt it.

Update: Oh, I'm going x-country somewhere tomorrow over lunchtime.

Update II: Just finished shoveling. I hate it.

Update III: Get much up there near heaven, jwp?

Update IV: What weird formations on my bike. The snow on the rack is totally conformist, a risen loaf of bread, while somehow that on the seat forms a nearly perfect cone (sit on it). And look at the
handlebars--rabbit ears. Intelligent design?

Inevitable

Wart is quoted, approvingly, on a Holocaust-denial site, "The Rebel": "The 'Holocaust' is a typical zionist myth":

Incidentally, while there is a Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US for the presumed “six million gassed" Jews by Nazi Germany, there are nowhere in the US any holocaust memorial museums, reparations, or even words of apology for either Native Americans or Black Americans [my links] who were slaughtered like animals by the tens of millions at the hands of Euro-Americans during the largest real holocaust the world has ever seen. In the words of the American professor Ward Churchill, "All told, it is probable that more than one hundred million native people were 'eliminated' in the course of Europe's ongoing 'civilization' of the Western Hemisphere”. [5]

Good going, Wart! Another citation. With footnotes. You love footnotes. Was it peer-reviewed, too?