Reader Tips

Ms Kate can add another item to the Amazongate file.
"UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009705.ece

I'm about halfway through Superfreakonomics (bought it for a 4 hour flight a while ago but decided to read a book about Feynman on the plane instead) and it has some sensible things to say about global warming.

Hmm, that's not much of a reader tip, Paul. Could you perhaps
search for a link for us, or give us a clue about what was sensible
about what Superfreakonomics said about global warming?

Vitruvius, I looked for a GoogleBooks excerpt but that book can't be previewed there.

Try this, maybe: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/global-warming-in-superfreakonomics-the-anatomy-of-a-smear/

This came up as one result of a Google search for "superfreakonomics excerpt global warming".

This book might be one reason that the whole thing is falling apart.

Supposedly Tim Ball will be on Coren next Tuesday, that should be interesting.

Paul

A book with script apparently of European origin still a undeciphered mystery, this is for some seriously inquiring minds.
It was probably devised much like Michelangelo’s backward mirror writing, only this makes no sense any which way, so far.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"The Voynich Manuscript"
http://www.crystalinks.com/voynich.html

Thanks, PiperPaul.

Havenot read superfreak, but I have read freak and it was lame and used very shoddy analysis of data - much like the ipcc. I would however the rebuttal to freak - freedomnomics.

Gord, I read the one before it and thought it was interesting (but in a pop culture way). This next one is also interesting, but it at least proposed some questioning of the whole global warming thing.

I'll feel much more comfortable when we right-leaning radicals can get back to ruining everything that's good in society, including the environment.

Cheers in advance.

Paul

After years of having the power to help reform the senate and not saying a damn thing about it, Iggy, not that he has lost that power not wants to talk.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100131/ignatieff_senate_100131/20100131?hub=TopStoriesV2

not that he would ELECT them, nor does the author of the article above make any note of the above observation (one that is repeatedly made in the comments BTW).

Administration officials said over the weekend that the U.S. was speeding up arms sales to a number of Gulf Arab states and that it had also deployed warships capable of knocking down hostile missiles in flight to the region.

The moves, which include the sales of anti-missile systems to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, are designed to deter Iran from launching attacks against its Sunni Muslim neighbors and to send a message to Israel that a preemptive strike against Iran is unnecessary.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/01/missile-shield-gulf-ups-ante-iran/

In light of the fact that during the invasion of Iraq that British strike jets were downed by American anti-missile bateries, Israel was unavailable for comment about this latest development by the Obama administration.

Following the "friendly fire" incident on 23 March 2003, the American military suggested that a problem with the Tornado GR4's own "friend or foe" identification transponder may have been to blame.

But the BBC said it had uncovered evidence indicating that a Patriot missile system wrongly identified the aircraft as an enemy rocket.
The attack, near the Iraq-Kuwait border, killed the Tornado pilot Flight Lieutenant Kevin Main and the navigator Flight Lieutenant Dave Williams.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/patriot-missile-fault-blamed-for-raf-tragedy-559417.html

An old article regarding Al Gore's Mentor: **http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes%3Bread=112258** Guess who?

National Post. Saturday, Jan. 30.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers has issued a report that says B. C.'s Trinity Western University falls below the proper standard of academic freedom because it requires faculty to sign a statement of Christian faith before being hired. The CAUT is also investigating three other Christian universities for the same reason.

"A school that requires its faculty to subscribe to a particular religious belief or ideology cannot be practising academic freedom", says CAUT executive director Jim Turk.

In the 1990s, the BC College of Teachers claimed the school wasn't fit to train teachers because grads would bring an anti-gay agenda to the classroom. But the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2001 by an 8-1 margin (Claire L'Heureux-Dube dissenting) that the students should be judged by their behaviour in the workplace and not by their school.

Given the pervasive influence of Marxism in mainstream universities (not to mention broader society, through political correctness), I'd say this is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Universities and educational institutions in general should not need to be licensed or otherwise approved by state authorities, which by definition is an infringement on academic freedom. There is no central authority that can enforce academic freedom, somewhat analogously to the lack of central authority in religions like Judaism or Islam.

Perpetual adolescence
It really wouldn't do, in light of his death this week at age 91, for me to share what I truly think about J.D. Salinger; especially after mentioning in this column only five years ago that his most famous work, Catcher in the Rye, was "a book I believe to have been written ... under direct demonic possession." So let me go about this as gently as I can.

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/

Globe and Mail, Saturday, Jan. 30.

Interview with an author named Rebecca Solnit, of San Francisco, regarding the Haiti earthquake.

In a column for TomDispatch.com, Solnit objects to the use of the word "looting" to describe the actions of certain people following the disaster, one of whom (having apparently purloined a bag of evaporated milk) was featured in a photograph that ran extensively. She wrote that "the man might well have been taking that milk to starving children and babies ...".

Maybe. But he also might have taken it from someone else who was going to do the same thing, and who was the rightful owner.

Solnit: "The media are obsessed with property relations at a time when human life is at stake. Are property relations really more valuable than human life?"

Property rights are essential to the preservation of human life. Without property rights, one might never be allowed to take one's milk to one's own kids, and the family could starve. Look at Stalin's attempt to wipe out the Ukrainians through socialist-induced famine in the '30s for example.

In response to a question about whether it's a matter of restoring order, she says, "whose sense of order is being protected? The business community's, the people in power for whom property is more valuable than human life ... the idea that taking water isn't a crime when people are dying of thirst - that doesn't get addressed either".

Again, what's not getting addressed is that the victims of the looting might be even more desperate than the criminals. Plus note the usual tedious anti-business bias of the shallow, cynical leftist.

"I really think the word looting should be eliminated from the disaster coverage ... I like to say that people are requisitioning material, or even better, foraging."

Thus completely denying the existence of ethics, which is a crucial guide to man's actions on Earth. This is the same attitude as those vile people who tried to liken 9/11 to an earthquake or other natural disaster, taking the terrorism aspect out of it.

Responding to a question about her book on various disasters that claimed they often brought out the best in human goodness: "I don't use the word 'good' because I think that's an ethical value judgment. I think you can better describe people as resourceful, creative and altruistic."

As Ayn Rand pointed out, there's nothing more un-good than altruism. Solnit points out that people share what they have in times of post-disaster crisis, which is probably a fairly rational strategy. But if it's true that people do this - which is correctly called benevolence, not altruism - why the objection to pointing out the looters who take what they are not entitled to?

Globe, Saturday, January 30.

Former U. S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson says Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in order to force a bailout of the largest U. S. mortgage finance companies.

No one should be surprised if this were true; neither country can be trusted to any great extent. But if the U. S. economy were to tank because of it, you have to blame first and foremost the U. S. Congress for intervention in the free market via state-supported mortgage companies or state-enforced loan regulations - the ones that senator Barack Obama was complicit in legislating.

Globe, Saturday, Jan. 30. Kevin Lynch, former clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to cabinet. Topic: economic productivity.

He lists Canada's annual economic growth rates post-war:
1947-73: 4%
1973-2000: 1.6%
2000-08: 0.8%

He repeats the usual guff about education and innovation. For example: "What is needed is a behavioural change by Canadian businesses in their long-term strategies, and a shared sense of purpose by business, governments and the research community. A concerted productivity strategy should encompass innovation, the labour force, markets and attitudes, bearing in mind that there is no single or simple or immediate fix to this structural problem."

There's no immediate fix, certainly, but the proper focus should not be on education or innovation but on profit. It's the taxes and regulations that distort economic decision-making and trade, that eat away at business profits (and the other side of the trade equation, the standard of living), that are the major reasons for economic slowdown. The only concerted joint effort needed is between Ottawa and the provinces to streamline the tax system and to overhaul regulations. A business is not supposed to have a "shared purpose" with anyone or anything - its job is to produce goods and services that consumers want.

And note that the productivity figures correlate very well with the vast increase in the number of unproductive bureaucrats since the Pierre Trudeau years.

O'bOw-wOw grovels.

Arf Alert. (pic included)
...-

"More Groveling By Obama (more bowing,this time it's a mayor)

The mayor of Tampa isn’t a Third World potentate, totalitarian dictator, or terrorist leader so I can’t understand why Obama would be in full-bow mode. Is bowing now the standard way the President greets people these days? Is he misoriented, for some reason, and thinks Tampa is a terrorist stronghold or an enemy of the United States? Does the US owe Tampa a boatload of money and the bow just good business practice?

(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2441747/posts

As usual, the evil Americans are responsible for the "theft" of the East Anglia emails.

This via Foxnews.com
LONDON -- Britain's former chief science adviser says the theft of climate e-mails from the University of East Anglia in southern England may have been the work of spies.
David King says the theft of the e-mails last year was "an extraordinarily sophisticated operation."
In an interview with The Independent newspaper published Monday, King says the timing of the e-mails' publication online suggested the hack was intended to destabilize the U.N. talks on tackling climate change held last year.
King told the paper he had no inside knowledge of the investigation into the hacking but was basing his comments on his past work with U.S. and British intelligence agencies.
He also speculated that the hacking may have been the work of U.S.-based lobbyists.

Spell whO?

"A historical hallmark of "isms" and charismatic movements is to dig deeper when they falter—to insist that the "thing" itself, whether it be Peronism, or socialism, etc., had not been tried but that the leader had been undone by forces that hemmed him in."

"The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding."

This was foreseen here*.

"*This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder."
...-

"The Obama Spell Is Broken

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation's faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029110104772360.html

"*Barack Obama - Narcissist or Merely Narcissistic?"

"The "small people", the "rank and file", the "loyal soldiers" of the narcissist - his flock, his nation, his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder."
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

nv53 - CAUT is a far-left body and as such, is against academic freedom for it promotes one and only one ideology: postmodern relativism.

A good example of such a subjective perspective is your outline of the definition of 'looting'. Person A says that the taking of the milk was an act of 'saving the children', which ignores both 'whose children - the looter's or the owner's - and ignores the substance of property rights.

However, I do quibble with your suggestion that universities and educational institutions should not be regulated by govt/the people. How does one deal with a situation where a 'school' with no classes is set up but provides instead a cover for people to come into the country on a student visa?

Just take them down, what are you waiting for - a catastrophe?

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2507099

John Izzard, Discovering Maurice Strong

Like Dorothy, Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, we’ve all been dancing down the Yellow Brick Road of “settled science” in search of answers from the Emerald City, only to find that what we suspected all along — the Wizard has been telling us fibs.

But who exactly is the Wizard? And where did this seeming-madness all begin?

Undoubtedly there are many “wizards”, but the man behind the green curtain, the man who managed to get the climate industry to where it is today is a mild mannered character by the name of Maurice Strong. The whole climate change business, and it is a business, started with Mr Strong...

More fun with giant fans.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1390565.shtml

Minnesota wind turbines stop working in the cold. Special hydraulic fluid for the cold needs to be heated........

Irony don't even begin to cover it.

700 years later, the invasion comes from within

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Europe

What?

islam

What about it?

danny whine for wine william winds his way to the usa. too much jigs dinner and fish and brews and not enough red wine. just like PMPM the system isnt good enough for the top end.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/02/01/nl-williams-heart-201.html

meanwhile back to normal for the irresponsible

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100201/boy_death_100201/20100201?hub=TopStoriesV2

notice its the feds problem
not that there arent unregistered guns already available.

ET @ 11:31 a.m.: The scenario you describe in your last paragraph sounds like fraud to me, so it's proper for the government to step in. But it's a matter for the police, not an educational licensing agency.