Category Archives: Blogosphere

Unsettling “science”

Add the American Association for the Advancement of, ahem, Science to the global warming/climate change cult.

Crank up the NPR propaganda machine, boys.

Anthony Watts, whose Watts Up With That blog consistently wins awards for analysis of the climate hoax’s prevarications and outright falsehoods, has a devastating critique of their latest shuck, which carries the AAAS stamp of approval:

“To ‘inform the public’ about their fearful conclusions, [the AAAS] cited 2 outdated peer-reviewed articles, written by [University of Texas biologist] Camille Parmesan, who not surprisingly was one of the 13 scientists writing the AAAS’ media release…If we peruse those papers, we find that one of those 2 cites 11 other Parmesan papers, creating a consensus where Parmesan agrees with Parmesan. Not only are the AAAS’s argument[s] very inbred, they are outdated and contradicted by more recent peer-reviewed studies.”

Back when I did science writing I was initially impressed with the triple-A S and its members, though I soon recognized that most of them were kneejerk leftist Democrats. They routinely sneered at any colleague who did research with corporate money and insisted that only the feds, who fund most of American science research, were pure and objective. As if.

I also interviewed Parmesan on her initial butterflies-moving-north-to-beat-the-heat studies which Anthony shows have been long since superceded by the work of others finding the opposite. UT nevertheless touts Parmesan as a global warming “expert.” Her principal expertise seems to be impressing the Democrat news media.

Cue the NYTimes and Wapo. Bring up the BBC’s spotlight. We’re all gonna dieeeeee.

UPDATE:  The dictator’s club’s cult agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apparently didn’t get the AAAS memo. They’re softening their drumbeat of disaster:

“The 2007 [IPCC] report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm….According to leaks, this time the full report is much more cautious and vague about worsening cyclones, changes in rainfall, climate-change refugees, and the overall cost of global warming.”

MORE: Well, they weren’t all that “cautious and vague” even in the face of declining temperatures. Don’t trouble them with facts.

Crony capitalism

TechDirt has a notion that an honest journalist (there are some) could use to start investigating public-employee corruption: Cities that ban ride-sharing to protect their licensed taxi companies. Such as lefty Seattle.

Crony capitalism (as opposed to free-market capitalism) is about bribing pols to get them to outlaw competition—or favor one group over another. Much like Worm’s handouts to those wind and solar companies which promptly went belly-up. It’s fair to assume some of their money went back to him and his cronies or was so explicit in the deal that the money never left their pockets.

Not that we’ll likely ever know. There’s a limit even to “honest” journalism. Fear of being labeled “racist,” for instance. And worse, when their fellow Democrats are involved.

Via Instapundit.

The latest racism hoax

At, where else, another university, this time in Michigan.

By, apparently, a black female student. Can’t say for sure as the U.’s always claim privacy in giving cover to the perps. But the hoax itself (see photo at the link) indicates as much.

Don’t these kids have anything better to do than beg for sympathy (and notoriety) by inventing persecution? Especially with a black president in D.C.?

Or, maybe, it has something to do with Wormtongue’s approval being at 40 percent and that he is generally rated below most other presidents since Truman.

UPDATE:  As commenter Jemarti at Instapundit says: “These ‘racism hoaxes’ are nothing less than racist attacks against whites. The entire purpose of each and every one of these acts is to bring opprobrium on whites and to characterize whites as dangerous, sometimes violent, racists.”

What would some minorities do without their persecution complex?

Crimea river

I still say the whole Crimea thingie is a bore. It mainly gives the snooze media something to do that doesn’t involve working. And, as Spengler details below, the American response thus far will hurt us (and Israel) far more than it will the Russians.

“Granted that hypocrisy is the mother’s milk of both domestic and international politics, but the outcry from Europe and the United States over the Russian seizure of Crimea really is beyond the pale….

“As to forceful detachment of territory from a sovereign state, Kosovo was separated from Serbia through the U.S. and European bombing of Serbia until the Serbs agreed…

“If Russia were to place an embargo on oil and particularly gas exports to Europe, the Europeans would run out of reserves in two months and then the European economy would shut down.  Russia, in contrast, would merely lose $7.5 billion of revenues.  U.S.-Russian trade is tiny so that trade sanctions by the U.S. would be meaningless…

“The elder statesmen who won the Cold War…are trying in vain to inject a note of sanity into the clown show that passes for American foreign policy on both sides of the aisle…Putin won’t take over…He doesn’t have to. He’ll wait for the West to make an unspeakable mess of Ukraine and then do whatever he wants.”

As Instapundit often says: Our country is in the very best of hands. Not.

Rule 5: Ruth Angell

ruthie

This lovely English fiddler/singer has a toddler to cope with but she’s busy with music, too: “…the…16 piece Jazz ensemble SURGE, my own solo projects and many other artists from time to time. Sid Peacock and myself have recently started our own record company Peacock Angell Records.

Big hats

Andy at MyOldRv works in the South Texas sun, so he needs a big hat to keep his nose, ears and neck from getting blistered. Doesn’t look pretentious on him. Not like the guys you see hereabouts playing Cowboys without the Indians.

“I prefer a Resistol 8 or 10X shantung panama hat from the George Strait collection in 7 3/8 long oval size.  Sounds muy complicated but it really ain’t. Once you settle up on the right size, you just gotta get up off that pocket book and decide how many X’s of quality suit you.  That is why I tell ya to buy a feed store hat for starters.  Most of ‘em are going to be less than $30 bucks and you get to test drive it right on your head.”

He prefers to buy used straws now, off Ebay, if you can imagine it. His wife says they probably sell them mostly to Yankees who use them for decor.

Last straw I bought was back in the ’80s when I traveled around Texas a lot. I went out to the garage, where it now hangs, decor-like, to see what it was. A 7 5/8 long-oval Bangora, made in Conroe, sold at Allen’s Boots on South Congress.

Allen’s is way too expensive now, catering as it does to the tourists. I moved to ball caps long ago anyhow. But if I did spend a lot of time in the Texas sun I’d be buying feed-store straws for sure. Maybe even used ones off Ebay!

Three-crew flight decks, please

“There was a time when big jets had Flight Engineers and when two (2) crew members would ALWAYS be in the cockpit when another visited the Lav or galley. Maybe it’s time to have a 3RD pilot in the cockpit, not just for safety, but for sanity.”  —GlueBall at Professional Pilots Rumor Network PPRN).

The PPRN has become one of the go-to sites in following the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner, though it’s gained a lot of no-pilot commenters this month. GlueBall, however, has been a member since 2001 so we can assume he’s legit.

And he makes a good point, if, as seems to be the case, at least one of the two line pilots in this mystery turned rogue. Or, if there were two hijackers with sufficient weaponry to keep the two line pilots cooperating. A third guy up front would make either scenario more difficult.

Not impossible, but more problematic. It would give passengers more confidence, in this age of terrorism, which events like MH370 are seriously eroding.