Egypt 2011

Are we on the right side of what's going on in Egypt?  I see VP Biden is supporting President Mubarak by saying Mubarak's not a dictator... but the guy's been running Egypt since Sadat was assassinated in 1981... he routinely arrests his political opposition and now he's pulled the plug on the Internet in Egypt.  If Mubarak crushes this uprising... how are all those protesting going to feel about America, which not only didn't speak out for them (just like we didn't speak out for the protesters in Iran), but we spoke out for the anti-democratic ruler.

We seem to seek stability more than democracy.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

I like Rand Paul's plan a lot... it's about time, after decades of failure, to get rid of the department's of Energy and Education and Housing and Urban Development and the Commission of Fine Arts and support for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities.  America didn't always have these departments... how long must they fail before we finally eliminate them?

Rest in Peace Jack LaLanne

I remember Jack LaLanne's TV show well.  His exercise equipment on his show was a chair and a towel.  In his own workouts, though, it was weights -- weights until he couldn't do them anymore.

Rest well, Jack LaLanne... at 96, you deserve it.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer painted "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" (above) in 1665. Dorothee Golz created the modern day version (below) digitally.

Golz is experimenting by putting portraits from hundreds of years ago into modern settings and modern body language... of her various attempts with this and other photoshops, this is one that seems to work... I suppose that says a lot about the original.

Ex-NY Mayor Ed Koch stands up for Civility

Mayor Koch has always been one to speak his mind. His comments regarding that recent attacks on Sarah Palin are no exception:

The fools in politics today in both parties are those who think she is dumb. I've never met her, but I've always thought that she is highly intelligent but not knowledgeable in many areas and politically uninformed. I don't believe she will run for president in 2012 or that she would be elected if she did. But I do believe she is equal in ability to many of those in the Republican Party seeking that office.

Many women understand what she has done for their cause. She will not be silenced nor will she leave the heavy lifts to the men in her Party. She will not be falsely charged, remain silent, and look for others - men - to defend her. She is plucky and unafraid.

Well said. I tire of listening to Newt Gingrich and Charles Krauthammer complain that Palin should remain silent... they join the Democrat comics and commentators who just want Palin to shut up. Apparently, this was the one thing they all liked about President Bush, that he will not defend himself. It makes it so much easier if those you slander and libel just take it in silence.

Climate Bunco

Dr. Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist at MIT,  writes A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action over at Watt's Up With That:

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope...

[ Climate change disasters ] depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero....

 

Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data.

It's hard to pick out the most interesting part of the article, so be sure to read the whole thing.  Lindzen is one of the premier scientists in the bunco squad fighting against global warming/climate change scams and hysterics.

Norwell Girls 14-1

The Lady Knights move to 14-1 on the season, defeating Bellmont by a cool 20 points.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Got Ethanol?

Food supplies are tightening across the world

As supplies tighten, prices surge. Earlier this month, the FAO said its food price index jumped 32 percent in the second half of 2010, soaring past the previous record set in 2008.

Prices rose again this week after the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut back its already-tight estimate of grain inventories. Estimated reserves of corn were cut to about half the level in storage at the start of the 2010 harvest; soybean reserves are at the lowest levels in three decades, the USDA estimates, in part because of heavy buying by China. The ratio of stocks to demand is expected to fall later this year to "levels unseen since the mid-1970s," the agency said.

and Congress wants to save money... simple arithmatic: Stop pushing our food into our fuel supply!

Higher oil prices are also pushing up the cost of food — in two ways. First, the added shipping cost raises the delivered price of agricultural products. Higher oil prices also divert more crops like corn and soybeans to biofuel production, further tightening supplies for livestock feed and human consumption. Conley estimates that more than a third of the corn produced in the U.S is now used to make ethanol.

Let's all hope there actually is such a thing as global warming so we can have extended growing seasons and spend less money on heating and snow removal. Before climate scientists existed, geologists understood the Earth was trapped in a cycle of repeated ice ages. Warming is our best scenario, plants love carbon dioxide... what do you think trees are made of?

More: Experts warn of fuel and food shortages

NASA - The Frontier Is Everywhere

A Thin, Red Line

Click on the above to make it bigger, but you still won't be able to see wind, solar and geothermal power as anything but a thin, red line.

The above and many more charts can be see at The Oil Drum.