Hear my prayer. (h/t jerry)
Blognotes: The Year In Review
The Unique Visits represent a 6% increase over 2013, and a 13% increase over 2011 – despite a decided lack of backscratching linkage from high traffic American blogs. Thank you, all!
This Is Awkward
[American publisher HarperCollins] released an atlas of the Middle East for English-speaking students in the Persian Gulf region, and Israel isn’t on it. The West Bank and Gaza are on it, which is entirely appropriate since they exist and are not part of Israel, but Israel itself is just…absent.
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
Let them eat steak: New Regulations May Drive California Egg Prices Up 40%
Y2Kyoto: Planetary Fever Update
Record low temps but little media coverage of this. @Ginger_Zee: LAX had a record low of 36, snow in @GrandCanyonNPS: pic.twitter.com/ibIxdkapxh
— Vivian Krause (@FairQuestions) January 3, 2015
Reader Tips
During the recording of San Quentin (Live from Prison) in 1969, Johnny Cash was backstage taking a short break while Carl Perkins entertained the inmates. He pulled out a piece of paper with the words to a new song, one unfamiliar to his backing musicians, written by Playboy cartoonist Shel Silverstein. When he took to the stage again he put the lyrics on a music stand, spent a minute or so teaching the band the chord sequence, and then launched into a largely extemporaneous performance of what would nonetheless become the definitive version of A Boy Named Sue.
How do you do! The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Receiving reports tonight of a large wind turbine collapsing near Fintona, Co Tyrone. Part of a windfarm on Fivemiletown mountain.
— Ryan McAleer (@RyanMcAleerUH) January 2, 2015
Link is here, but it’s currently reluctant to load.
Local people living close by reported hearing the turbine produce increasingly loud noise from 4.30pm on Friday, culminating in a huge bang heard right across the area.
One local person described the noise as ‘frightening at the end’, while another man compared the sound to a bomb exploding.
Update:
The Sound Of Settled Science
… plays a major role in determining who gets cancer and who does not, according to researchers who found that two-thirds of cancer incidence of various types can be blamed on random mutations and not heredity or risky habits like smoking.
The researchers said on Thursday random DNA mutations accumulating in various parts of the body during ordinary cell division are the prime culprits behind many cancer types.
Or good luck. It depends upon your point of view.
Research Corruption Disorder
Juxtapose time!
Bjorn Lomberg, Dec.2014 – “Shameful. Scientists decided beforehand that they wanted to blame neonicotinoid pesticides on bee deaths and then made the research to fit.”
Saskatchewan Ag Minister Lyle Stewart, Jan.2015 – “Saskatchewan does not currently plan to follow Ontario in implementing restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides. The government respects Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency’s (PMRA) scientific system to evaluate, register and monitor pest control products and sees PMRA’s continuing evaluation of neonicotinoid insecticides as important. Decisions must be based on sound science.”
Keep the pressure on your MLA’s and MP’s not to surrender Canadian agriculture to these corrupt activists.
“When the Nazca lines fiasco broke”
“Greenpeace’s response was to assure the world it worked with an archaeologist, taking every possible precaution…“
Oh, Shiny Pony!
Wherin Chrystia Freeland argues that Americans should be more open to immigration 'cause she's taking a French lesson http://t.co/Fnrcx9ailO
— Tom Kott (@TomK0tt) January 2, 2015
YNoKyoto
We Don’t Need No Stinking Smart Meters
Scathing: Ottawa-based economist Robert Lyman, who specializes in energy issues, has provided us with a summary of the highlights of the recently released Auditor General report…
Abandoned America
50 states, 50 photos. (h/t Dave S.)
Reader Tips
Roy Orbison wasn’t a technically great singer — he was “pitchy”, and his signature sound formed in his throat and head as much as in his chest – but like Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday he was profoundly musical in a way that could elevate his songs into a magical realm nearer to dreams than reality. In tonight’s entertainment en route to the tips, we listen to his 1963 release Blue Bayou.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Bill’s Wife
It is not hyperbolic to declare Hillary Clinton the most paranoid presidential candidate since Richard Nixon…
The Sound Of Settled Science
Long-term oscillations in rainfall extremes in a 268 year daily time series
These results suggest that, because long-term periodicities may likely be present elsewhere, in the absence of observational time series with length comparable to such periodicities (possibly exceeding one century), past observations cannot be considered to be representative of future extremes.
Oh, Shiny Pony!
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Bill de Blasio has had three different legal names, court records show. (From 2013)
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
And here we go with yet another viral story that virtually every media outlet drooled over, and none of them cared to fact check it. As it turns out, that viral story about an Australian woman offering to ride the train with a Muslim woman who was self-conscious about wearing her hijab after the Sydney Siege never happened.
The story is a complete fantasy, so admits Rachael Jacobs, the woman who started the whole thing.
h/t nv53