No, not that green revolution … this, green revolution:

Last year when the Green Movement started, many looked at it with doubt. We, who have fought for freedom allour lives look at it as a revolution. Most scholars and so-called Iran experts and Islamic Republic lobbyists insisted that it was a civil rights movement. There were those exceptional few among scholars and policy makers in Washington who understood that this movement was much more profound than what the IR lobbyists portrayed it to be. I am very proud to be sitting next to one of these insightful and brilliant individuals, Ken Katzman.
I would like to state my opinion clearly here. The Green Movement is unquestionably a revolution and the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic. I know that Americans are not strangers to revolution. One can say that they have experienced the most successful revolution in history and they succeeded to feel their revolution, and pass on its values from generation to generation. Iranians too are not unfamiliar with revolution. 104 years ago, Iranians were the first nation in the East to establish a parliamentary system during the Constitutional Revolution. Thirty one years ago, Iranians formed another revolution that was a new phenomenon in the modern world. We Iranians are very capable of surprising the world.

Documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer has a few questions for the people in involved in Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid.

h/t Black Mamba

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We first mentioned Erle Stanley Gardner‘s classic Perry Mason detective fiction over at The Sagacious Iconoclast in reference to our collection of forty novels thereto in our essay on Pulp Fiction. There is now, for your delectation, a new Perry Mason page over there that contains a table showing links to the currently available Perry Mason videos at YouTube. These shows are from the 1957 through 1966 television series that was based on those novels and starred Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, Barbara Hale as Della Street, and William Hopper as Paul Drake.

10/10:

And thus I think we can better understand how a group of probably well-meaning activists and film-makers could create such crazy, totalitarian vision. In many ways, the film reminds me of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds,” which is a fantasy film about a group of jewish soldiers killing Hitler and his high command. Viewers are not offended by the bloodshed and brutality, because the fantasy is so delicious. The same must have been true for those who created and screened the 10:10 video prior to its release.
Rather than an isolated aberration, then, the 10:10 video can be seen as the end result of years of ad hominem attacks meant to marginalize skeptics and make it unnecessary to actually address their concerns about the science.

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now.

… the rest of the scathing letter.
via

In this article in the NP, Kevin Libin notes the uncivil and unproductive nature of Question Period, where “the men and women who represent us hoot noisily a their parliamentary rivals, loudly spit impromptu comments like delusional street preachers, and phonily guffaw at corny one-liners.”
It is an embarrassing and childish spectacle, largely because virtually every question is an insult, and not an actual question. This yes-or-no “question” from Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez is exemplary:

“Will the Prime Minister keep on acting like a tin-pot dictator who ignores democracy?”

Obviously, opposition MPs weren’t looking for answers per se. When Ignatieff opened the fall session with the question “When will the government start listening to the real priorities of Canadians?” and, later, “When will the Prime Minister put an end to the politics of division and fear…” he wasn’t asking for a date and a time, and neither were opposition MPs like the NDP’s Glen Thibeault, who asked “When will the Conservatives stop playing wedge politics…”, or Lib Maria Minna, who demanded to know “When will the Conservatives stop making poor decisions with taxpayers’ money….”, or NDP MP Megan Leslie, who asked “When is the government going to put aside partisan games and shameless vanity…”
NDP leader Jack Layton, too, had a pressing and highly specific question about the government’s time frame:

“When will the Prime Minister realize that he is making bad decisions for ordinary people?”

Um, next Thursday, at 3:36 pm?
The opposition wasn’t just interested in knowing when, they also demanded to know why: “Why does the government choose to listen to the NRA and not to Quebeckers?” “Why is the Prime Minister so indifferent and incompetent…” “Why is the government determined to divide Canadians on this issue…” Ralph Goodale: “Why so out of touch with ordinary Canadians?” Bob Rae: “Why are the Conservatives prejudiced against democracy in Canada?” Liberal MP Geoff Regan: “Why can those characters not behave responsibly?” Ignatieff, again: “Why is the government so insensitive to the needs of these families…”
The prize for the most disingenuously, entirely rhetorical question has to go to Michael Ignatieff, who asked a question that began –

Is it any wonder, with that record…”

Is this the final act before we put the financial crisis behind us?

This is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. And it’s not something that happened last week. It happened when these loans were originated, in some cases years ago. Loans have representations and warranties that have to be met. In the past, you had a certain period of time, 60 to 90 days, where you sort through these loans and, if they’re bad, you kick them back. If the documentation wasn’t correct, you’d kick it back. If you found the incomes of the buyers had been overstated, or the houses had been appraised at twice their worth, you’d kick it back. But that didn’t happen here. And it turned out there were loan files that were missing required documentation. Part of putting the deal together is that the securitization professional, and in this case that’s banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, has to watch for this stuff. It’s called perfecting the security, and it’s not optional.

You just can’t make it up.

Worthless, non-Ivy-League loser economic analysis here.
I’m going to go drink heavily now.

The Swedish retail giant IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, giving IKEA the electric-power-producing capacity of 960,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. According to IKEA, that’s enough electricity to power 100 homes. Amazing development. Even more amazing is the economics of this project. Under the Ontario government’s feed-in-tariff solar power scheme, IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. Since the average Toronto home currently pays about $1,200 for the same quantity of electricity, that implies that IKEA is being overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.

… but it feels so good.
Update: Ontario Proles Grow Restless over Green

ht: John

More please:

But the real basis for supporting Mr. Chong’s admirable initiative is near-universal agreement that Question Period desperately needs fixing. Question Period — the daily 45-minute forum in which opposition members get to put questions to the government — has become a national disgrace. Decorum is abandoned as MPs shower ritual abuse on one another, posing questions designed solely to embarrass and receiving responses intended to insult or obfuscate. All in an atmosphere so toxic it’s a wonder MPs don’t emerge gagging and coughing every afternoon.

… the usually resultant compound when one combines green with science:

California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state’s clean-air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.

On Tuesday Sun TV News withdrew its application for the Category 1 license that would have required satellite and cable companies to carry the channel.
Here’s what one member of the “I get to decide what views are acceptable in this country” crowd had to say:

It is a huge victory for every Canadian who took time to write, email, phone or other wise (sic) protest this grotesque plan to move Canadian political culture to the far right.

That is one powerful TV station.

Perhaps I am spoiled being an American being accustomed to my freedom of speech, but it angers me (whether you agree with Geert Wilders or not) is the fact he’s being persecuted for voicing his opinion.
Last I recall my grandfather fought in the Netherlands to free them from the nazi’s and I if I remember history correctly as well, the Canadians also helped in the liberation of the Netherlands from tyranny (not to mention they keep fielding excellent snipers).
I doubt I would do the same today.
Regardless, today in the blogosphere there is a movement to make posts, articles, etc. about Geert Wilders. The problem is they’re just posts that voice support for him or at least his right to speak his mind. That achieves nothing. I find it much easier to just contact the people prosecuting him and remind them we may not send waves of our boys over next time.

American conservatives are discovering that by confronting the left directly, in open intellectual warfare, they can win. The day of the appeasing, cowed, double-talking conservative “may” be coming to an end, at least in America:

Let this episode be instructive to all who witness it. The noise and bluster we see from these pre-fab sign-holding, flag-waving malcontents is the beginning and end of their argument. As soon as any intrepid citizen-journalist engages these pre-programmed agitators with a question or two, they reveal emptiness and contradictions as quickly as Sky did.
I’ll give this polite yet confused Obama supporter credit where credit is due: At least he didn’t call me a homosexual like his peers in Chicago did.