Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Climate change is normal

Indeed, the only constant in climate is change, trending one way for a while and then another—generally depending on solar and ocean temperature cycles, such as El Nino and La Nina.

The melting of the northern ice cap, for instance, comes and goes, while the southern ice cap (known as Antarctica) isn’t melting at all. Look at this photo of the American and British submarines surfaced at the North Pole in 1987.

If that situation was definitive, 24 years later there would be no ice there. Instead, we’re being warned again, by the usual government-funded climate “experts”, the tax-hungry pols and their media cronies, that the northern ice is melting. Sure is a slow melt.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, the continental USA has not warmed in a decade, summers (despite this past one in Texas) are getting cooler and winter is getting colder. And that is  according to the feds.

Radiation burns, chemo poisons

And both play hell with your taste buds, your throat tissues, and your digestive system.

It’s not a pretty subject—modern cancer “therapy”—but Scott at the Fat Guy is being a blog trouper about bringing us all the gory details of his radiation-and-chemotherapy-driven dietary struggle.

It’s news you probably will be able to use someday. Like it or not.

Gas pumps germiest

Still recovering this afternoon at the rancho from presumed food poisoning picked up last Friday at a chain restaurant on the River Walk in San Antone. Or, that was the presumption, a tea glass that smelled like sour milk. But now I wonder if it was the Valero gas pump I used earlier that day. Don’t think I put my fingers in my mouth afterward, but who remembers things like that?

Leadership we can use

Via Instapundit and Sense of Events.

Conserve Earth, Colonize Space

 

Had a bumper sticker by that title, years ago. Back in the 80s, I believe it was, when talk of O’Neil’s orbiting colony at L-5 (left) was rather more popular than now.

But it should be, again, in some form, avers aerospace guy Rand Simberg. Exploration, per se, makes no sense. Unless we go to stay.

And if we don’t do it, others will.

More ideas, here.

Pelephone’s delightful ad

Pelephone, an Israeli mobile phone company, has produced one very imaginative, quite funny, advertising video. Enjoy.

Via Dustbury (where the link offers a library of similar Pelephone video ads).

Madison Avenue, meanwhile, prefers little playlets featuring “emasculated men…unbearable women [and] know-it-all children.”

Texas student to be tried in Iran

“Some reports have said he is accused of leaking Iranian nuclear secrets to the U.S. But John Keto, chairman of the graduate studies program for UT’s physics department, told the American-Statesman that Iran’s accusations against [Omid] Kokabee were ludicrous because he never studied nuclear science. Keto described Kokabee as quiet and apolitical.”

Good luck, Omid. With the mad mullahs of Iran, you’re going to need it.