Parodies Everywhere

At Iowahawk, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab describes his recent air travel experience:

When I came to, I was handcuffed, surrounded by cops and bomb sniffing dogs. Amid all the hysterical hippies I felt a strange sensation and heard a soft klink. -Yep, you guessed it. My freeze dried bar-b-cued junk had just fallen off. Before I could locate it, one of the bomb sniffing dog snarfed it up like a frozen snausage.

In other parodies, the Obama administration tries to protect America. Thank goodness for pushy Eurotrash.

A Few Random Statements

It's nice to the sun again.

The Wii is cool, but my shoulder hurts like a mofo.

The Hangover is as funny a movie as I have seen in quite some time.

A Christmas Feast T-Style

I started on the rum and cokes about 3:30 today and this post is the natural result.

A feast fit for planet haters on a holiday celebrating American greed! Behold the giant piece of cow in its "before" pose:


And...after four hours; cooked to perfection by Yours Truly. Nine pounds of prime rib roasted to a perfect medium rare:


And, because no celebration of American greed would be complete without complete and total over-indulgence, home-made pies in cherry and pumpkin:


Louie made a French silk too, but it had to stay in a place of shame (the fridge) because we hate fureners so much.

Naah. Just kidding. We love our European brethren.

Merry Christmas all! I hope yours is as great as ours has been. The first for GD - grandchild edition (GD^GE).

Blog for Climate Action!

I hope everyone has a great Christmas, it looks like it will be a snowy one around here. In fact, according to this study, this may be just the beginning:

Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth's ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper...In his research, Lu discovers that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002. The cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years, according to his new research observations.

Perhaps it would be best to "assume the worst, and proceed accordingly." A good start would be to make pollution cool again. Dirtying up our act with irresponsible, non-innovative, unsustainable action; an approach that intrinsically addresses the long-term consequences of inaction.

Or we could do nothing.

This is Cool

An international team of physicists working in the bottom of an old iron mine in Minnesota said Thursday that they might have registered the first faint hints of a ghostly sea of subatomic particles known as dark matter long thought to permeate the cosmos.

The discovery occurred at the Soudan mine, which we visited just a few years ago. The only dark matter we saw was when they shut out the lights on us.

Here's more on the enormity of the discovery:

Confirmation of the particles would also constitute the first evidence for a new feature of nature, called supersymmetry, that physicists have been seeking as avidly as the astronomers have been seeking dark matter. It is central to theoretical efforts like string theory, which unify all of the forces of nature into one mathematical expression.

Super cool.

Fear Not Selling Anymore

We've grown used to these kind of scare tactics from Al Gore over the years:

"Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

Unfortunately for Al, these kind of statements no longer get the free pass they once enjoyed:

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

It would be interesting to know how many years "several" is. Could it be 5 to 7 years?

Over the last "several" years it has become much more common for the warmenists to talk of impending disaster in terms of "within the decade" rather than "within the century." We are rapidly coming up on a time when we can look at those predictions in a comparison to the reality. At that time, what were likely scare tactics in a gamble to create urgency could be the final nail in the pseudo-religio-science of global warming.

When you bluff, sooner or later you get burned. Al Gore does not seem to have realized yet that the tide has turned against the fear mongerers. That's fine with me, as it will only "hasten the decline."

Rest in Peace Foge

A little Vikings tidbit: Foge Fazio, defensive coordinator for the Vikings (1996-1998) has died of leukemia. The most significant thing I remember about coach Fazio was his unusual name, which is why the story caught my eye. It turns out he had a long, successful career in the thankless world of assistant coaching:

Fazio was Minnesota's defensive coordinator from 1996 to 1998, and was also the defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns in 2001 and 2002. Prior to that, he held numerous other coaching jobs, including the head coaching position at the University of Pittsburgh from 1982 to 1984. He also served as the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz, and was also an assistant coach for the Washington Redskins, Atlanta Falcons, and New York Jets.

I read a story once about being an assistant coach in the NFL; it was almost exclusively downside. Unbelievably long hours, no job security, and first to take the blame for everything. To me, the more significant career is the one that never resulted in a head coaching position in the NFL. More significant because you would have to be really dedicated to continue in it knowing your prospects for a head coach job are non-existent.

Foge, passed on, is likely getting the much-deserved rest he hadn't had since the '70s. And hats off to him.

It's Real Now

Stiffed by Obama, "Save the Children" concert organizers came up with a solution:

...organizers replaced him with an Obama cardboard cutout.

And thus, six years after the myth was born, the fake turkey finally makes an appearance.

I wonder if Tim Blair will hold some kind of ceremony marking this auspicious occasion.

Ward's karma is bad

Roughly a week ago, Steelers receiver Hines Ward pounded his two-time Super Bowl champ in the media for not playing with a concussion:

"This game is almost like a playoff game," Ward said. "It's almost a 'must' win. So, I can see some players or some teammates kind of questioning like, 'Well, it's just a concussion. I've played with concussions before. I would go out there and play.

Fast forward a week:

Wide receiver Hines Ward strained a hamstring near the end of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 27-24 loss to the Oakland Raiders and is expected to miss Thursday night's game in Cleveland.

If anything, the Cleveland game is more "must win" given the Steelers lost to the Raiders. If Ward doesn't play, will he question his own toughness?

Karma is a beautiful thing.

Treat Us as Monkeys

The problem isn't that we, as humans, have a natural and healthy skepticism or that we have the capacity to recognize bullshit when we see it. The problem, according to Karen Fish, is that we are too narrow-minded:

The root problem with the names Climate Change, Global Warming and Environmental is that these words are too narrow for the problems they describe and more importantly, people do not understand these words. “Environmental” sounds like a mental enviro. This is why the climategate people are so ready to pillory us over the climategate scandal. They think that we are mentally ill.

Well, she's got me there. I do tend to think that members of the warming cult are a bit "off." I mean, when the warmenists are demanding show trials and intentionally scaring small children, it makes you wonder if there is anyone at the controls. But I digress.

Karen has a solution; appeal to our monkey DNA:

In our primitive reptilian brain stems we have an instinctive gut wrenching fear of poison. People fear and understand the word poison in their guts.

The first step that we need to take to heal our home Planet Earth is to change the words we use and replace them with new words. We must change the word “environmentalist” to “antipoisoner.” Instead of the “Copenhagen Climate Conference” we must pass a resolution renaming it the “Copenhagen Antipoisoner Convention.”

Until now, apparently, the warmenists have shunned fear as a tactic.

In other news, antipoisoners in Copenhagen spew poison into the air equal that of 60 small countries. Don't they realize they are hastening the time when a "black purple cloud of nuclear winter encircles the tiny ball called Earth?"

Ideology is settled

My hat is off today for Barack Obama, who has the courage to come forward and demonstrate a dedication to science over politics in the face of overwhelming pressure:

...we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions.

***

Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's also about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda -- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

Oh, wait. He wasn't talking about climate science; he was talking about stem cell research. Despite an emerging pile of evidence to the contrary, Obama continues to insist global warming is "settled science."

Game, set, match: ideology. Hat back on.