What? Me blog?

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I like Vox Day. When he's on, no-one, including Ann Coulter, turns out a better insult:

...most people would rather vote for a retarded Dachshund of questionable moral character and only three legs for President of the United States than a "generally well-qualified" atheist...

The rest of the post is a hoot. Check it out.

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From sepp.org -

The Week That Was

Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview (Feb. 8. 2007) with "Hospodrsk noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions (translation courtesy of Lubos Motl, Harvard)

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?
A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the UN panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people must wait for the full report till May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the Summary for Policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.

This is clearly an incredible failure of many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...
A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global-warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have sufficient knowledge and enough information?
A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable, and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrically opposite.

Indeed, I never measured the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me -- which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about climate change.

Environmentalism and green ideology are something very different from climate science. Various findings of scientists are abused by this ideology.

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view global warming as a done deal?
A: It is not quite exactly divided into left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless, it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...
A: ...I am right...

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?
A: It's such nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?
A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media, so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one hand and the wealth and technological prowess on the other. It's clear that the poorer society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.

It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected incomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago -- or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.

That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers. It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

Labels: global warming

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OTOH, I wouldn't expect any better behavior from students at other schools either, based on reports.

Purdue junior Omkar Borkar was shocked when sledders continued to sled into an injured man on Slayter Hill. Police reported multiple injuries on the popular sledding spot following the 5" snowfall Tuesday.

Capt. John Cox of the Purdue University Police Department said police were called to the popular sledding hill near Stadium Avenue about 10:30 p.m. because snowballs were being thrown at emergency workers who were trying to help the injured.

Labels: Colts

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There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and turns them into gibbering idiots. - George Monbiot

The so-called right really does have its share of whackjobs - surprisingly, most of the "gibbering idiots" infected with the 9/11 conspiracy virus I've encountered are from somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. There are no end of conspiracy theorists, of course. See my entry on Freedom to Fascism.

(from the comments) I think conspiracy theories about 9/11 are believed because not only they offer a coherent closed world in an ocean of nonsense but they answer, albeit erroneously and manipulatively, questions that have never been answered... - Les Politiques

If you think about it the handwringing over anthropogenic global warming is much the same. The theory is offered and believed because it "offers a coherent closed world" in an ocean of otherwise impersonal - and uncontrollable - forces and answers, "albeit erroneously and maniputively," that we can somehow have control over the climate.

The one fatal flaw of humans is the belief in magic, that if we somehow get the incantation just right and work the spell just so we can manipulate anything.

Good luck with that. Of course, that doesn't mean the Bill Starbucks* of the world won't bilk us out of our last dollars trying and - romantic fantasies notwithstanding - they aren't going to make it rain, no matter how much we believe.

*The Rainmaker (1956) Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn

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Quote of the day (from the film) "There's no such thing as a plain woman. Every real woman is pretty. They're all pretty in a different way, but they're all pretty." - Bill Starbuck

I have found this to be true. And I've NEVER met an ugly child.

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Colts 29 - Bears 17

The city of Indianapolis - the state of Indiana - now has a champion in a major sport in a league that still exists. I love(d) the Pacers, but the ABA is long gone and those banners are a little threadbare.

Peyton Manning has won the big one and is the Super Bowl 41 MVP.

A team that has a domed stadium for a home has won the Super Bowl.

In crappy weather.

Haters can put a sock in it.

And Mike Royko, wherever he is, can kiss my Hoosier ass.

Labels: Colts

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The similarity shared by outwardly diverse autocephalous churchlets can serve as a warning to disaffected Catholics of all stripes. There must be some deep spiritual law involved: whenever schismatics set out to reject the husk of Christianity and save the kernel, the kernel they display exactly mirrors the tastes and prejudices of their own age; it might be a self-parody of what is most superficial and transient in their own experience. Even when their initial complaints are just, in the act of separation some kind of blindness supervenes. A mystery, but an eerily consistent one. Come to think of it, the Gadarene demon pleaded to be cast into pigs -- and when the wish was granted? Self-destruction. - Diogenes