USHCN Station Healdsburg, CA – aerial view.
Chinese to buy Seagate?
This is a potentially worrying development. With all the espionage China engages in in the West it is very disturbing indeed to think that they could control something as sensitive as widely used disk storage.
I certainly hope this deal doesn’t go through. It would be very difficult to detect all the ways such products could be compromised if used in highly sensitive applications.
“When Detroiters began to die on the first day…”
Support for Afghan Mission Falls
Canadian support for the military mission in Afghanistan remains surprisingly stable, including in Quebec, despite the loss of three soldiers from that province in the past week, a new CanWest News Service/Global National poll suggests.
Conducted by Ipsos Reid, the poll found 51 per cent of respondents across the country said they support the mission, while 45 per cent oppose it. The numbers remained virtually unchanged from a month ago.
I know that many of you disagree with me when I say that DND and the PMO have done a horrible job of explaining the mission to Canadians; but imagine the support, were our government to regularly inform us of the tremendous progress being made.
Real men would use their bare hands
But killing a charging grizzly bear with a knife isn’t bad.
Baby Boomers
Or in this case, cannon fodder for media consumption;
This is a win-win strategy for Hamas and IJ. If Israeli soldiers are able to recognize that children are on the battlefield and refrain from firing, terrorists are able to retrieve their equipment and use it to kill Israelis another day. If the IDF destroys the launchers, Israel suffers the public relations fallout from being accused of killing children. I’m not sure, in the minds of the members of Hamas, which is better: retrieving the rocket launchers, or seeing Israel globally condemned for child-murder. I’m going to guess the latter.
Kyoto backlash in New Europe
While Europe constantly lectures the rest of the world about greenhouse gas reductions their own situation is a horrible mess. Eight nations sue carbon regulators.
Rethinking Sex Assignment
Margaret Wente risks the ire of the identity politics commissars and dares to question the wisdom of sex change operations:
Partly at the urging of Dr. McHugh, Johns Hopkins no longer performs sex reassignment surgery. “I concluded,” he wrote, “that to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Concerned about global warming? There are worse things…
The Past And Future Of Climate (PDF)
The satellite record is the highest quality temperature data series in the climate record. It shows that the temperature of the Southern Hemisphere has been flat, with a slight increase in the Northern Hemisphere. Note the El Niño peak in 1998.
If it doesn’t feel hotter than it was in 1980, it is because it isn’t hotter than it was in 1980.
Read the whole thing, because that’s just the beginning. This is one to share and recommend to others. (As is this – The Great Divide.)
Related: I’ve had the furnace running since yesterday.
Yet They Join
With the endless clamor coming from the anti-Afghanistan faction, coupled with the Harper government’s no-show in explaining “the mission”, it’s amazing that young people are still lining up to join the Canadian Forces … especially the army, which is enduring the brunt of casualties. Yet they join.
Canadians join for any number and combination of reasons as varied as adventure seeking to a genuine desire to serve and make a positive difference in the world. They come from all provinces with several contributing an unusually large share despite their small populations:
Nfld. and Labrador 1.4%
PEI 0.3%
Nova Scotia 11.8%
New Brunswick 6.4%
Quebec 20.3%
Ontario 33.6%
Manitoba 4.4%
Saskatchewan 1.3%
Alberta 10.2%
British Columbia 8.3%
Yukon Territory N/A
Northwest Territories 0.2%
Nunavut N/A
Outside Canada 1.8%
From Cjunk:
All of this raises the question; what are you willing to give for the cause? Is the cause worth it? Is any cause worth it? Hell, do you even believe in “the cause?” Are you in the 18-30 bracket and have you ever honestly considered joining the military? Would that be too much sacrifice for you? Try this then; what government handouts or percent of your paycheck are you willing to part with in order to ensure that those who fight in your name do so with the deadliest and best possible weapons and equipment in hand? These questions may seem obvious, but I can’t help but feel that few have taken the time to seriously ponder them.
The Sound Of Settled Science
[A] new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature suggests that the absence of technology, not its reckless use, may be a major factor in raising the Earth’s global temperature.
The haze of pollution called the “Asian Brown Cloud,” caused by wood and dung burned for fuel, may be doing more harm than the tailpipes of our SUVs.
Researchers led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, launched three unmanned aircraft last March from the Maldives island of Hanimadhoo to fly through the Brown Cloud at various altitudes.
A total of 18 missions were flown to explore the blanket of soot, dust and smoke that at times is two miles thick and covers an area about the size of the U.S.
They found that the cloud of soot and particulate matter boosted the effect of solar heating on the surrounding air by as much as 50%.
“These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particulates as cooling agents in the global climate system . . . .” concluded the Nature article summing up the study. Dang. Just when we thought the science of global warming was settled.
These findings also may help to explain the rapid melting among the 46,000 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and why the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since at least 1780.
(h/t Joe B.)
Related? Early morning photo of a high altitude black cloud formation I took out the window on my flight to Australia in 2002.
Forced Conversion
Andrew Anthony – The Day Reality Hit Home
What all these reactions had in common, I realised, was not complexity but simplicity. For all of them this was an issue of the powerless striking back at the powerful, the oppressed against the oppressor, the rebels against the imperialists. It was Han Solo and Luke Skywalker taking on the Death Star. There was no serious attempt to examine what kind of power the powerless wanted to assume, or over whom they wanted to exercise it, and no one thought to ask by what authority these suicidal killers had been designated the voice of the oppressed. It was enough that Palestinians had danced in the West Bank. The scale of the suffering, the innocence of the victims and the aims of the perpetrators barely seemed to register in many of the comments. Was this a sign of shock or complacency? Or was it something else, a kind of atrophying of moral faculties, brought on by prolonged use of fixed ideas, that prevented the sufferer from recognising a new paradigm when it arrived, no matter how spectacular its announcement?
In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true?
Nearer the end, observations on the real world societal consequences of multi-cult;
We may hear a great deal about ’empowering communities’ but few self-respecting liberals would want to spell out what that power should actually mean. Even a scheme as tame as Neighbourhood Watch, in which residents report suspicious activity to the police, runs counter to progressive thought.
[…]
Evidence both statistical and anecdotal suggests that in a ‘community of communities’ there is not enough social glue to create a sense of shared responsibility. Studies show that bystanders are less likely to come to the aid of someone of a different ethnicity from their own. The girl I saw stabbed was of Asian appearance. Her attackers were Afro-Caribbean. And nearly all the onlookers were, for want of a better phrase, white. Difference is all very well but it is with sameness, a common humanity, that we most pressingly need to reconnect.
It will be a tough read for our friends on the left here.
h/t
“I’ve had enough”
A must-read, experience-based rant on the appalling ignorance of Canadians regarding the Afghan mission, by someone who’s been there:
I’ve had enough. Consider this my rant against ignorance; my protest against agendas, half-truths, and lies. For almost two years I have been closely following the news from and about Afghanistan and it has been demoralizing to say the least. I spent a year in Kabul with the Strategic Advisory Team and watched the media only report the deaths our Forces suffered rather than the successes we (not just the SAT) achieved. I have watched “experts”, editorialists, politicians, protesters, activists and pundits mangle facts, misread situations and push agendas. Most of what I have read and seen has been flawed to one degree or another. As a result many Canadians I have spoken to are wholly unaware of what we are doing there and why we are doing it. The debate has been so muddied by poor reporting and incomplete information that most people are stunned when they hear of our successes.
At the same time I have heard only reactive, ineffective whimpers from our establishment. Our government and DND in particular has done a poor job of getting the message out. Granted things are improving but you only have to look at the News Room on the DND website to see that the majority of news releases concerning Afghanistan concern the deaths and injuries we have suffered in Kandahar. In other words we are playing into the media’s “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to coverage.
You really do need to read the whole thing.
Reader Tips
I’m offline for the weekend, so expect things to slow down. Guest bloggers are invited, as always, to pop by if they wish.
I’ve saved a few posts for auto-publishing while I’m gone.
NOTE: For some reason, these posts sometimes generate error messages when you try to comment. If that happens, you’ll have to content yourself with waiting until someone pops in to “fix” it. I’ve arranged for that, but it may take a few hours.
In the meanwhile, enjoy your weekend, and push away from the computer for a while. I have.
Lessons Whispered
The Sound Of Settled Science
Science writers at The Economist explore one of the known problems with climate modeling:
Psychologically, people tend to be Bayesian—to the extent of often making false connections. And that risk of false connection is why scientists like Pascal’s version of the world. It appears to be objective. But when models are built, it is almost impossible to avoid including Bayesian-style prior assumptions in them. By failing to acknowledge that, model builders risk making serious mistakes.
The layman-level example they provide shows just how fundamental an issue this is.
Marvin? Is That You?
Via Drudge.
Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.
Hopefully, they choose kinder names for their little peroxide children than “Joop”.
Melbourne Herald Sun has more.
Sask Tops All Regions In Substance Abuse: Experts Puzzled
101 People Who Are Screwing Up Canada
Let the debate begin. (Not here, but there, please).
Baa, Baa
A key organizer with the NDP’s upcoming Saskatchewan election campaign has resigned, CBC News has learned.
Dale Schmeichel, who was co-chair of the NDP’s election planning committee, resigned on Aug. 15.
The resignation comes as signs of an election are springing up around the province.
Schmeichel is a longtime NDP insider. Four years ago, when the last general provincial election was held, Schmeichel was the party’s provincial secretary, chief executive officer and campaign manager.
He was also a key planner in Saskatchewan during federal election campaigns.
Schmeichel, who is a vice-president with the Crown Investments Corporation, was at his day job Wednesday but didn’t return calls from the CBC.
Sources say that rumours that the falling-out stemmed from a proposed “sheep with a Nazi armband” campaign are unfounded.
Related (in all probability).