A Mammoth? Really?

A government employed engineer working in Siberia claims to have shot this video purportedly of a mammoth crossing a river. I make no claims as to the veracity of the video. Would it be cool though if they did locate an isolated vestigial population of wooly mammoths?

News Round Up 02/08/2012

Article: Hidden Secrets of Majestic Nebula Revealed in New Photo

Isn't that a beautiful picture?

---

Article: After Rick Santorum's Sweep, How Worried Should Mitt Romney Be?

We conservatives just need to say no to Romney. Every time we fall into this trap where we think we need to run moderates to make independents vote for our candidate and it just isn't true. The last time we ran a true conservative, he won every state except one and the District of Columbia. He was so popular that democrats left their party in droves to vote for him... Those democrats were such a thorn in the side of the left that they are still reviled today. If a liberal wants to call you something nasty, they'll call you what those folks were called... "Neo-Cons". Let's not fall into that trap this year. Santorum is the most consistently conservative candidate that we have in the pack that's running. Let's send him and not the guy who falls DIRECTLY into 99% vs 1% trap that Obama has been building since he believed that we would send Romney out to play. Let's make Obama scramble to find a new tactic. Let's reignite America like we did when we chose Ronald Reagan to be our candidate.

---

Article: AP Interview: Homecoming inspires wounded Marine

Just the other day we had a huge ticker tape parade for a sports team... How have our priorities become so perverted?

---

Article: Pregnant Teen Shoots Intruder Through Doggie Door

Score another point for the second amendment. You know all those statistics that liberals like to toss around about the number of gun related deaths actually contain these sort of people; criminals breaking into people's homes who deserve to be shot. There's no way to prove how many lives are saved each year by these sorts of self-defense actions. Well heck, if the liberals can claim jobs "created or saved"... why can't we use that same sort of "logic" when discussing gun violence?

News Round Up 1/23/2011

Article: Russian scientist claims signs of life spotted on Venus

Well life does exist under crushing pressures and high temperatures at black smokers. That has proven that life is a bit more tenacious than we had previously thought... -BUT- There has been a long history of hucksters seeing things in the pixelization of probe images... Does anyone remember that lunatic Richard Hoagland and the whole "face on Mars" debacle? That whack-job is still seeing things in NASA pictures.

---

Article: Romney defeat exposes significant weaknesses for potential battle with Obama

Look, Romney is from the "I'll say anything you want to hear to get your vote" wing of the Republican party. That in and of itself makes his candidacy dubious in my eyes. Beyond that, he's been the presumptive nominee ever since McCain's pathetic attempt to get into office (That was another one I tried to warn you all about!). The Obama reelection team has been honing their message with Mitt as their hand selected intended target... You don't think it's just happenstance that liberal operatives are invading our parks and caterwauling about the 99% versus the 1% do you? If ever-a-wever a 1%er there was, the Mitt is one because because! This is the guy they've pre-built their strategy to take down. Now all that remains is for us to send that sheep to the slaughter.

---

Article: Rand Paul in Pat-Down Standoff With TSA in Nashville

Now comes the interesting part... per the Constitution, a US Congressman can not legally be detained or prevented from travelling to fulfill their responsibility to vote. How does this play out now? TSA versus the Constitution. This is a duel that has been a LONG time in coming! I'd like to see it taken up by the SCOTUS!

---

Article: Report: Russia to deliver combat jets to Syria

Well those should come in handy to gun down protesters in the streets... I wonder why Libyan protesters were worthy of NATO intervention, but Syrian protesters are not. The reason it really bugs me is because removing the Assad dynasty should have been a priority ever since they bombed the Marine barracks in Lebanon.

---

Article: The Broken Dreams of Obama's First Term

This reads as a veritable list of horrors that our Tea Party representatives have protected us from. Who say it's a do-little Congress?

---

Article: Police need warrant for GPS tracking: court

This was a correct decision. Our fourth amendment rights (like all of them) have been under serious assault lately. It is time that we start reining things in. Is it really that big of a hindrance to stop for a moment and ask a judge for a warrant? I don't think so. Now they need to correct that travesty of a decision on eminent domain... right after tossing Obamacare in the dung heap.

---

Article: Marine pleads guilty, ending final Haditha trial

Here we see the end of the whole "Haditha Affair". Remember that? John Murtha, (a supposed marine himself) claiming that our marines were running a-muck in Iraq "murdering women and children in cold blood"... What was the end effect of all of this? Well charges were dismissed against ALL of the marines involved, save one. No the libs needed a scapegoat, a sacrificial cow, one Staff Sergeant Wutterich. The best they could do against him was saddle him with a charge of "dereliction of duty". This was a case where our marines were hit with an IED and in the process of reacting to that attack, a large number of civilians, even some women and children were killed in collateral damage. (and of course our enemies never set things up that way on purpose right?) This again was a situation where smarmy armchair general liberals sitting safe, fat and cowardly in their arm chairs were trying to dictate how men under fire should react in the heat of battle. Oh the much ballyhooed liberal "moral high ground"... Makes you want to puke doesn't it? As if the "party of perversity" has a clue what morals are! Listen if you haven't been there, in the combat boots, don't open that ill-informed stinking hole under your nose.

If you want a real education in the liberal version of support for our troops... Scroll down to the bottom of the linked article and read some of the comments left by our liberal fellow Americans.

News Round Up 1/20/2011

Article: Santorum may have won Iowa; Romney calls results ‘a virtual tie’

I'll bet the establishment intentionally rigged it that way to blunt any momentum that Santorum would have gleaned from a victory that was announced in a timely fashion.

---

Article: Helix Nebula Gleams Like a Golden Eye in New Photo

---

Article: Letting White Voters Choose the Nominee

The order primaries are held in has been set for quite some time now... I seriously doubt that the racial make up of the constituencies is what decided it. But nice attempt at race baiting anyways! Personally I think the order ought to be changed each go-round. I'm tired of carefully seeking out a candidate only to have them removed from the running before I have a say in who should get the nod, let's face it political campaigns are a game of momentum and usually by the time the ability to vote comes around to me it's just a proforma vote.

---

Article: 3 Numbers That Will Determine the Next President

"President Obama and his Democratic backers insist he's the one to bring fairness back to an economy..." Fairness? Who ever said life was fair? If you think life is fair, or even that it ever could be fair then you are a deluded child. Every kid learns from mommy and daddy that life isn't fair so you need to just get used to it. You can't legislate fairness, because "fair" is very much like "perfect"... unattainable! Some liberals might reply, "Tell that to people who pay 25% tax rate while people that are 1000 times richer than them pay a 15% tax rate." Well, that lower tax rate serves a large number of purposes. The two main ones being 1. It spurs investment into companies that provide employment... employment for those who don't qualify for that rate and who otherwise would have no income. -AND- 2. It provides an incentive for people who don't receive it, to want to receive it and to do what is necessary to arrive at that place where they can receive it. Success is hard work and if there's no incentive to succeed people will simply languish in mediocrity forever.

---

Article: U.S. and Iran on Collision Course

Where's all the Paulbots and Obamaniacs to tell us that if we just talk nicely to Iran, they'll stop wanting to nuke us and our allies out of existence... That it has nothing to do with the fact that they are fanatical elevener-shia who believe in Armageddon and that they can hasten the coming of the Mahdi by starting Armageddon.

---

Article: Romney nosediving in South Carolina as Gingrich surges

Wait. I though Mitt was the inevitable winner...

---

Article: The real reason no one impersonates dead voters: high risk, little benefit

Let's assume for a moment the premise that there is virtually no voter fraud... (not that I do, but let's do so for the purpose of a mental exercise). It is conceivable that there *could be* voter fraud. This conceivability of an offense is enough in many cases to enact laws that liberals support. Let's take gun control laws for example. To be more specific, let's take the "cool down" period that many anti-gun people advocate. The sole reason for this law to exist is based on the premise that a gun buyer may be purchasing a weapon to use in a crime of passion. If you look at the entirety of gun purchasers, what percentage of them might fit that description? The percentiles are certainly absolutely, infinitesimally small and yet this is a gun control law that many liberals favor and is in fact espoused very heavily by the Brady gang (it's one factor from their grading system for state's gun control laws). So certainly the conceivability that an offense could occur is a good enough premise upon which to base a law for liberals. That leads one to question why they are against its employment in the case of voter fraud prevention laws. Since there are, as we speak a number of Democrat politicians freshly convicted of voter fraud in New York state, I can only assume that they are concerned about closing this "gun show loophole" in their ability to steal elections.

---

Article: Army reports suicides down, but violent crimes up

You'll notice how they intentionally fail to mention how these numbers compare to the population at large! They do this to reinforce the liberal caricature that they are perpetuating against our veterans. Just FYI and since they fail to mention it... Criminality rates among active duty service members and veterans is LOWER than the population at large. Suicide rates are also lower. Stop slandering our heroes!

---

Article: Pentagon report: Sexual assault in the military up dramatically

Here is yet another article employing the same underhanded tactic where the statistics are not compared to the population at large. If you read the article you'll see: "Mr. Panetta emphasized that 'we assume this is a very underreported crime'". Why would we "assume" that? Further what is the point of this unending bombardment of the character of our troops? Last year according to this article, there were 3,191 "reports" of sexual assault (a very broad category). Not convictions mind you, just accusations. There are 1,466,545 Active duty personnel and 1,458,500 reserve personnel yielding a total of 2,925,045. So that means there are 109 reports (not convictions) per 100,000. Per the government crime statistics the nationwide average per 100,000 for convictions of "forcible rape" (the most serious of sexual assault offenses) in 2009 (the latest available statistics) stand at 158. The rate of this happening is therefore LOWER in the military than in the population at large. I wonder how the number of rapes in the military compares to the rate per 100,000 at Occupy encampments. Stop the assault on the honor of our heroes!

---

Article: World not quite as hot in 2011; ranks 11th warmest

So wait... "Not quite as hot"... That means it's cooler then right? Look, this global warming scam is not science. If our greenhouse gas contributions contributed to atmospheric warming it would have to exhibit a never ending trend of increases in temperature. That is because our output of those gases has not decreased, nor has the atmospheric concentrations of those gases. You see a key factor in determining whether a theory is scientifically valid is that a hypothesis must be "predictive". (for those who don't know what I'm talking about, look up "the scientific method".) That means if you can make a prediction based upon the premise of your hypothesis that is then found to be true based upon the objective measurement of the results of experimentation, then your hypothesis can be assumed to be scientifically valid. The global warming hypothesis however offers no such predictive quality and therefore, despite being quite a popular hypothesis (because we all know science is based on popularity contests right?), must be found to be flawed. Once you can show me an undeniable predictive quality to your hypotheses, then I'll join the band wagon, but not before.

This article then goes on to attempt to blame the unforeseen decline in temperature on the La Niña/El Niño cycle... If greenhouse gas concentrations were truly the cause it should be a simple matter of certain concentrations equating to a certain number of degrees increase averaged across the globe. The La Niña/El Niño cycle has nothing to do with it since the sun presumably delivers a fixed amount of energy to be trapped by those gasses.

News Round up 1/13/12

Here are my reactions to a few news articles that caught my eye:

---

Article: Outrage at Video of Marines Urinating on Taliban Corpses: A Veteran's View

I always hear about the so called "moral high ground"... I can understand behaving better than our enemies... My question is, why it is always some self-righteous prick (usually some brain-dead libtard who is far too effete to ever serve themselves) dictating (usually with that signature annoying liberal nasal whine) how much higher our moral high ground has to be? (It looks like Yahoo found the rare libtard veteran for this so called "article").

Isn't it good enough to be on slightly higher moral high ground or significantly higher moral high ground? Why does it always have to be nothing less than the very pinnacle of virtue that is expected from our troops?

Taking a leak on a corpse is a FAR milder offense than what the enemy does to our dead; FAR MILDER! ( Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4, etc...)

Put yourself in these guys' combat boots for a change... How would you react if you finally killed some prick that has been trying to kill you; someone who more than likely has taken the life of or maimed a comrade or comrades?

As far as I'm concerned, unless you've served, you have no right WHAT-SO-EVER to pass ANY judgment. It is high time to bring back the draft. I'm tired of all these stupid, effete liberals who are far too fine to ever serve themselves pontificating on what the moral high ground is for our troops. If more of them bird wits served there would be FAR LESS uninformed talking out of their asses (at least on this topic)!!.

---

Article: Court martial sought for suspected WikiLeaks leaker

Let's hope for a quick court martial followed just as quickly with a date with a firing squad. There can be no mercy for endangering the lives of your brothers in arms by leaking intelligence to the enemy.

---

Article: Obama wants export agency, closing of Commerce Department

After usurping the constitutional powers of the congress, why should they work with this bozo on ANYTHING at all in the remaining few months of his presidency? As far as I'm concerned, they should already be impeaching this clown for his actions. There has been no more corrupt administration in the history of the union and no administration with a greater disregard for the constitution either!

Beyond that, we ALL know that Obama's type of "consolidation" will mean that this move will no doubt yield no true savings. There'll of course need to be a new multi-billion dollar website, new uniforms, new letterhead and add in a few thousand new federal employees to manage the integration. Then they'll fire up Carney to spin the facts that "no, this is indeed a more efficient structure that prevented projected spending" (kind of like jobs created or "saved"). Air Force 1 will be spooled up for countless costly trips around the country for even more countless telepromptered speeches about how wonderful Obama is for doing this and how terrible those Republicans are for resisting it.

Give me a break! No additional power for Obama of any kind!

---

Article: Confederate submarine revealed and here is a slideshow

I found these images of the now fully revealed Hunley really interesting.

---

Article: Taunted Girl Dies From Fatal Disease

What a pretty little sweetie pie, such a pity... and what an utterly despicable excuse for a human being Jennifer and Scott Petkov are! Just remember, karma is a bitch and I hope its sweet justice comes to visit you two VERY soon!

---

Here are a series of articles and a single comment:

Article: Ogden Utah Police Shooting: Suspect Matthew Stewart Is War Veteran

Article: Iraq war veteran suspected of killing Mount Rainier park ranger found dead

Article: Ex-military man who killed mom, pets in shooting rampage charged

Article: Ex-soldier from Telford jailed over sex attacks on children

Article: Ex-soldier named in wrongful death suit

The has been an abundance of stories for some time now where the media has felt strangely compelled to trumpet a criminal's veteran status in the headlines. For example there was a shooting in Washington state of a park ranger, then there was a shooting in Utah revolving around a botched SWAT home invasion. In both cases, the suspect happened to be a veteran and in both cases that fact found its way into the headlines about the story. Just a cursory look at the news found many more instances as well. It is interesting that the media does not feel a need to publish the fact that a criminal is an illegal immigrant or even a welfare recipient in their headlines but veteran status is somehow extremely compelling.

It is my belief that this is a concerted effort by the liberal media to discredit our veterans. The problem is, even Fox News has fallen into this trap. Study after study has concluded that our veterans are far less likely than the population at large to engage in criminal behavior, yet the media is trying to build this false impression that every veteran is a ticking time bomb. This is further evidenced by Janet Napolitano's assertion that veterans are potential domestic terrorists. The funny thing is I'd probably bet you everything I own, that those who are illegal immigrants or welfare recipients are far more likely to engage in criminal behavior than our veterans.

I ask all of you to help bring attention to this topic. Send letters to the editors of news organizations that participate in this injustice to our veterans and demand that they stop!

---

And Lastly...
Article: Michelle Obama Dismisses 'Angry Black Woman' Image

Oh come on now Michelle, why are you so angry about being called angry?

The Surrender Monkies Strike Again

We all know that president Obama's favorite hobby is surrendering the hard-won victories of others.

He was all set to sacrifice the hard won victory in Iraq, but our brave troops have done so well that that would be extremely hard for the public to swallow. He'd have to actually march troops in to un-do that which has been achieved.

So that surrender was thwarted. He must have called Pelosi & Ried into the Oval Office to have a serious pity party and tie one on over that one.

The spin doctors decided they could recycle this defeat into a victory for him by instead stealing the credit for delivering victory. Quite telling that they like to blame everything bad on Bush and steal the credit for the good. These are truly not honorable men.

Well then the next opportunity to surrender raised its head... Afghanistan.

That however was one of the first true but unrecognized victories for the resurgent conservative majority. Sure, around that time we were fully engaged in the fray against the health care take-over, but the pollsters certainly warned him of the grave consequences that laid in wait if he surrendered Afghanistan.

I'm certain that he wouldn't have allowed any of his many campaign promises regarding Afghanistan to dissuade him from tasting the sweet taste of surrender there. I mean I firmly believe this president has abandoned more campaign promises (a.k.a. "LIED") than any other president before him. The litany of broken promises is long and sordid.

Instead, he was forced to do a stealth surrender in Afghanistan and just announced that we will flee victory with our tails tucked on some future specified date.

This had to have been very difficult for him to bear. Certainly experiencing all of this surrender monkey impotence must have been quite exasperating. I can imagine him retiring to the first family's quarters to have Michelle don her hulking dominatrix garb then bind and flog him to hamburger while belittling him for being such a dismal impotent little failure.

He had to find somewhere where he could experience the joy of an outright surrender of a hard won victory. It was then that he found one. He decided to hand off our preeminence in manned space travel.

If he truly believes all of the "global climate change" hokum, he must see the necessity for manned space missions. He must understand the need for mankind to expand our environment beyond this little ball of mud. Surely, we must have a lifeboat population on some other world to survive the doomsday climate apocalypse (oh god please let there be zombies!). I mean the whole "It's too late to change our inevitable demise" nature of this premise necessitates such a safety mechanism.

Personally I don't believe in global warming but I do believe in the very real possibility of a devastating extraterrestrial object impact.

In Obama's mind, the survival of mankind is obviously going to have to take a back seat to turtle tunnels in Florida and studying why gay men in Latin America tend to have unsafe sex when they are drunk. His "logic" (and I use that term loosely in his case) behind this decision was based strictly on finances. We need more money for liberal clap trap pork and less for REAL science. See that's why I use the term "logic" loosely.

It is one of the favorite progressive past-times, making valiant deaths of others all for naught...

Theodore Freeman, Charles Bassett, Elliott See, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Edward White, Edward Givens, Clifton Williams, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Stephen Thorne, S. David Griggs, Sonny Carter, Patricia Robertson, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon all have now given their lives in pursuit of absolutely nothing.

Oh, and President Kennedy's vision - scrap that too!

Another Clearinghouse Post

There are a number of articles that gained my attention lately that I thought I would post on,

First there's this one:

The liberals in congress aren't just content to impede the CIA's ability to collect intelligence by properly interrogating terrorists. Now they are going after the FBI for listening in to terrorists' conversations. I mean god forbid that we infringe on terrorists' expectation of privacy while they're plotting the murder of American citizens.

Somehow I think if the target were conservative American patriots the libs would have no problem with how intelligence was collected. Harsh interrogation and warrant-less wiretaps would suddenly be back on the table.

Finally, I have a series of two articles (here's the first and second article) regarding the shoddy job the UN is doing attempting to prove the effects of the supposed "global warming" crisis. Turns out that the retreat of the glaciers isn't happening like they say it is. I have already pointed out that there is NO science behind the global warming contentions. This continues to prove that fact How much longer will our tax money be spent to further this fraud?

Oh and in closing, here's a graphic political equation for you that has finally been proven true without a shadow of a doubt (don't make me say I told you so!):

"Human Destruction"

The headline read, "Earth bears scars of human destruction: astronaut". Click the title of this post to see the Reuters news article that was splashed across Yahoo's main page. Seeing a headline such as this drums up dire images in the imagination of the reader. Clearly our Earth is in dire peril! So I took the bait and clicked the link.

In the article Canadian astronaut, Dr. Bob Thirsk is quoted as the authoritative source. Bob is two months into a planned six month stay on the International Space Station. This is his second trip into space. His first was as payload specialist aboard space shuttle mission STS-78 in June and July of 1996. Wow, I would not want to detract from Bob's obvious experience but I wondered how qualified Bob was to speak out on matters revolving around the environment of the Earth. Was he some sort of climate scientist or even a scientist at all?

A little research yielded that Bob had received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Calgary, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Doctorate of Medicine from McGill University and a Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Bob was in the family medicine residency program at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Montréal when he was selected to join Canada's space program. Now I ask you, how is a medical doctor with degrees in mechanical engineering and business administration qualified to speak out on matters of the environment?

Reading the article to find its basis yielded this juicy quote from Dr. Thirsk, "This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the mountains is less than it was 12 years ago when I saw it last time". (Emphasis is entirely mine).

So that is what serves as the impetus for a doom and gloom article title like, "Earth bears scars of human destruction"? Beyond that, one questions the validity of the whole premise. Environmentalists have been telling for years now about how "Global Warming" was going to destroy the planet. We've been told that the science is solid and that the consensus has been struck. The dies are cast and we are all going to hell in a hand basket woven of carbon dioxide gases humans have released into the atmosphere.

The problem is, science isn't done by consensus. All due respect to Bob, but science isn't done by mere perceptions or feelings either. The scientific method has been established for damned long time. It is how science is done! There are four basic steps:

1.) Observe the phenomenon in question.

2.) Form a hypothesis that describes the mechanism behind the observations.

3.) Using your hypothesis as the basis, form a prediction.

4.) Perform tests designed to disprove your prediction and thereby your hypothesis.

This is how science is done. Any hypothesis that can withstand these rigors is considered truth any that can not, is discarded. There is no room for feelings, beliefs or voting a consensus. If Bob were a scientist he'd know this. If Reuters were a real "news" agency and not a propaganda arm for the DNC, they'd know this as well. You see the science of "Global Warming" is flawed right at step one. You see the observations of the phenomenon are broken. The temperature is not rising. While it did show a rising trend for a while, that trend reversed 11 years ago according to the NOAA. It's a little hard to observe a trend of rising temperatures when the temperatures are not rising. (Note the flames as this lead balloon descends to Earth with a resounding thud.) That is why the liberals are now calling it "global climate change". It polls better.

Utter Fallacy

The House of Representatives has pushed through a bill that hands Barrack his much desired "cap and trade". All of us will suffer if this should make its way through the Senate. Obama of course claims that the measure is needed to prevent "global climate change".

You'll notice that the wording on that claim has changed. They used to call it "global warming". Surreptitiously they've smuggled in a change in terms. Now they call it "global climate change". Do you know why? Because the planet isn't warming. In fact, it has been cooling for the last 11 years. We are in the midst of the coldest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in 50 years.

In a previous post I related an article that showed that the EPA was using September temperature figures for October temperature reports for large portions of the globe in order to artificially increase the mean temperature.

Science has a central tenant, that being "predictable and repeatable". If your hypothesis can not be verified by actually predicting the future repeatedly, then you have to assume that your premise is flawed. In other words. If you postulate that increasing the CO2 content in the atmosphere will increase temperatures, then the observations do not pan out, your premise is incorrect. In other words mankind is not changing the environment. It is troublesome for the liberals when the pesky environment doesn't cooperate.

Well you see their pet projects are depending on us believing that the sky is falling. I mean they are at the forefront of creating "green" technology. Do you know how one creates green technology? You take a simple straight forward technology. You make a Rube Goldberg version of it that is less efficient, more costly and less dependable. Then you slap a "green/eco-friendly" label on it and ridicule the public into buying it. When ridicule alone doesn't work, then you invent a bogus theory and call it science. Using that "science" as an excuse, you disadvantage the "non-green" technology via legislation.

So it would be problematic of course if one of your top climate scientists suspended his faith and actually looked at the conflicting scientific evidence. Well that has happened. Alan Carlin, the primary author of a 98 page EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) report that questions the soundness of "global warming" science has reported that his findings are being quashed by the EPA. In an e-mail exchange released to CBS news, Carlin's boss, Al McGartland is quoted as saying:

"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

In other words, "shut up! Don't confuse the public with facts. Just write propaganda to scare them into supporting our stance".

So there you have it. Many of us have known that the science behind global warming is specious at best. I mean when announcements are made about the scientific world arriving at a "consensus". That says it all right there. Science isn't driven by consensus. It's science not American Idol. Science is driven by the ability of a theory to reliably and repeatedly account for and predict the observed facts.

So, if the Senate also passes "cap and trade" they are in effect simply creating a system by which they are leveling the playing field. They are slanting the odds so that their uneconomical, ungainly, ineffective, Rube Goldberg-esque "green" technologies can compete. They do it by raising the cost of conventional technology by means of a tax. This eco-fad will spell ruination for our economy. American family budgets; already struggling with the cost of energy, will be stretched even thinner just to service a lie.

Quick Round Up

There are several things quick things I'd like to cover quickly:

1.) NASA is launching a mission to the moon. They intend to crash an impactor into the south polar region of the moon some time in October. The impact should be large enough that amateurs should be able to witness the event live in a moderate power telescope. Here is the mission home page.

To this I say, "Cool!"

2.) It seems that Obama is replacing hundreds of dollars per month in food stamps for some laid off workers' families with a single $25 check. Here is an article about it.

To this I say, "How ironic."

3.) Some people have been giving me crap for calling Carlos Bledsoe's (aka. Abdulhakim Muhammad) attack on the recruiting station in Arkansas a terrorist attack. Well it seems I'm not the only one raising this concern. According to this article, there are quite a few folks thinking that same thing.

To this I say, "I told you so!"

Beyond that let me do a little prognostication. Be prepared for a wave of similar attacks. Our muslim foes want to convert this country to an islamic nation and they are making in-roads in that effort. Already many are leaving prison inducted into the religion and radicalized as well. Al Quaeda has been attempting to specifically recruit terrorists that do not fit the young muslim male mold. They are looking for people that do not automatically raise suspicion.

4.) Obama has been calling for "fiscal restraint" and abiding by "pay go" rules. This is simply amazing. After signing a huge $800 billion laundry list of unfunded liberal pork under the guise of providing economic stimulus, he suddenly wants budget discipline?

To this I can say nothing because I am laughing too hard to speak!

Oh and that "stimulus" package... Where's the stimulative effect?

Per Dr. Tim Ball

A renowned Canadian climatologist has taken on the question of "global warming". Click the title of this post to read the entire article. Here are a few quotes of interest:

"Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology..."

"Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars..."

You see that is the truth of the matter. There is power in money and beliefs in global warming cause people to spend inordinate amounts of money. This money then lands in the hands of people who support the politicians who support the notions that caused the money to be spent. It is a downward spiraling, self fulfilling prophecy.

The liberal politicians know that the global warming issue is nothing but a spoof. It has however been swallowed hook line and sinker by their electorate. This means that they can fear monger their way into office so they perpetuate the farce.

They like to call the Republicans' warnings about islamo-facism fear mongering when they themselves tout a far less substantiated fear club. We have frequently seen the acts of radical islam. What we haven't ever seen is any verifiable effect of global warming.

It is interesting that the ones who denigrate others' belief in deities would so hardily espouse a belief in such an equally unfounded, unscientific ruse.

Does this count as an Oops?

Click the title of this post to see the article that prompted it to be written.

It would appear that NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has had a small "oops!". This installation, run by Dr. James Hansen is the chief of only four data sets that the UN uses as definitive proof of global warming.

The "oops" occurred when they declared last month the hottest October on record...

To quote the source article:

"This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years."

So leave it to bloggers to set things straight. Two of the leading anti-global warming blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit took the claim to task. It was found upon further investigation that there was an anomalous hot spot in Russia... For some reason Russia was 10 degrees hotter. This hot spot, it was found was due to the fact that data for Russia had not been received, so the GISS simply used September's figures. What is the all too often heard Mythbusters' quote? "Well here's your problem right here!" It's no wonder that the world is getting hotter if you are using September's data for October!

Well the GISS quickly released revised but largely unchanged figures (thanks to a newly found anomalous hot spot in the Arctic and this in spite of the fact that there's 30% more sea ice there than there was at this time last year).

The GISS was quick to push blame off with a lame excuse. They claimed that they had received the data "from another source". This is a utterly flabbergasting admission. The principle source of information for the UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has such poor quality control on their data that month-old temperature readings can sneak into the figures unchallenged...

This hardly lends the global warming theory's incontrovertability. Many follow this fad like a religion. A religion that has as heresy the act of questioning its validity.

An interesting thing happens when you begin to penetrate that barrier of incontrovertability with a believer in global warming. It is the same thing that happens when you start penetrating a Christian's religious beliefs. They both will claim, "well it's safer to simply believe than it is to take a chance and be proven wrong in the end". Hallelujah brother and pass the Koolaid.

On the Trail of Homo Floresiensis

Some time ago fossils of an early hominid were discovered on the South Pacific Island of Flores. Because of the individual's small size they were dubbed "hobbits" by the news media and given the scientific designation Homo Floresiensis, which indicates the discovers' belief that they represented a new species.

Almost immediately there were detractors who claimed that these diminuitive people were not a new species and that they simply were ordinary homo sapiens that suffered from microcephaly.

That contention however was itself disproved by the fact that microcephalic individuals are profoundly metally retarded... To the point of being incapable of caring for themselves. These individuals however were found with appropriately sized stone tools, clearly not something that could have been accomplished by someone suffering from microcephaly.

Well now added to this debate is the fact that American and South African acheaological teams have discovered fossilized remains of these short-statured humans on another island in the area. The fact that these individuals also existed on Palau is interesting and indicates that they were more wide spread than initially thought.

Almost at the same time as the announcement of this discovery, another group of anthropologists have fired another round into the fray claiming that these individuals were suffering from dwarf cretinism. This disorder is brought about by a severe iodine deficiency during pregnancy. While dwarf cretinism also involves mental imparement, it is not usually quite as profound as those suffering from microcephaly.

Wrapping up a few loose ends

There have been a number of articles that have caught my attention of the past several days that I've been intending to blog about. Well you know how life ends up keeping you from doing everything you intend... So I've resolved to deal with all of them here and clear them from my plate.

First there's this article. German scientists employing a sophisticated computer model have shown that the temperature at the bottom of cracks in the ice on the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus would be at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit. This explains the image above where plumes of liquid water are seen sublimating into space in the back-lit image of Enceladus. It also goes a long way to proving that liquid water does indeed exist on the tiny world's surface. Scientists believe that the existence of liquid water is a necessary precursor for the development of life. At any rate, the article was pretty interesting....


Second there's this article. On January 14th NASA's MESSENGER probe shot past Mercury, collecting data as it flew by. It imaged a previously spotted surface feature, "The Spider" in greater detail than it's ever been seen, raising some new questions about the feature's formation. Mercury is one of the least known planets of our solar system. the MESSENGER space craft will make the next of several scheduled visits the relatively unknown planet next in October.



Finally, there's this article. The image above is a newly discovered, never before published image of Ernie Pyle's body. Ernie Pyle was the most celebrated war correspondent of the second world war. This man placed his life on the line in order to create news stories that did justice to the life and death struggles of the rank and file grunt. Ernie Pyle died in that pursuit on the morning of April 18th 1945 when a round from a Japanese machinegun pierced his right temple killing him instantly.

Compare the gallant actions of this man, a noble reporter that valued telling the story more than his own personal safety with the "correspondents" cowering in Green Zone hotels in Baghdad pumping out nothing but doom and gloom, if it bleeds it leads enemy propaganda.

Ernie Pyle was a man whose noble pursuit of his ideals superseded his own personal safety. I can assure you that this man did not have a death wish, but he did value the integrity of pure journalism. Our news persons today could learn a few things from this man's life and death.

Monkey See, Monkey Do...

I've always contended that a wise manager should rush to hire new college graduates while they still know everything. It appears I may have to revise that as scientists have found that chimps are better at head math than know-it-all college students.

Geminid Meteor Showers

The Geminid meteor showers will peak on the evening of December 13th and 14th. This promises to be the best meteor shower this year. This meteor shower gets its name from the fact that the meteors appear to emanate out of the constellation Gemini. Also in Gemini this month is the planet Mars. That should make finding Gemini quite easy. In the early evening simply look for the bright orange object in the eastern sky, that'll be Mars.

The Geminid meteor showers are known to produce a wide variety of meteors from faint streaks to impressive fire balls.. The meteors are different from other meteor showers in that they are encountering Earth's atmosphere at a medium speed (22 miles per second) and in the fact that they are the result of a near encounter with a ferrous asteroid (3200 Phaethon) and not the icy remnants of a cometary encounter.

It is interesting to note that 3200 Phaethon will be a mere 11 million miles from Earth on the evening of December 10th. This is the closest it's been to Earth since its discovery in 1983.

The very best meteor viewing will be on December 14th at 4:45PM GMT (8:00AM Pacific Standard Time) So that means locations in the far East will be the best place to view the shower. However, since the peak stretches from about 6 hours before the actual peak until about 6 hours after, you still should be able to see a wonderful show the morning of December 14th.

Don't forget to step outside and look up every once in a while. Look at the wonders that hover there in the night sky and remember just how truly minuscule you really are. There's nothing like the vastness of space to adjust your perspective.

A Little Science to Disperse the Levity

Are you aware that currently there is an object in the solar system larger than the sun... and no it isn't the Algore's Tennessee mansion (although it does come close). The comet Holmes ' coma has now officially been measured and determined to be larger than the diameter of the sun. This little comet has been full of surprises. First it suddenly ramps up its brightness one-million fold overnight, then its coma bloats to these herculean proportions. The image below compares the size of Holmes' coma, the Sun and Saturn (the little blob in the lower right corner).


Now, I know the sudden appearance of such vexing object in the sky may be troubling to you Ron Paul supporters out there, but you can trust me there is no space ship hiding in the tail of this comet that'll whisk you away to paradise... So back away from the rat poison laced KoolAid otherwise the evil Zionists will win this upcoming election...



I mean give me a break if Ron Paul isn't Applewhite reincarnated, then that similarity in appearance has to at the very least be due to some familial relationship.

For everyone else, if you wish to find this thing in the sky to take a look, check out this sky chart courtesy of Space.Com:

I spent a little time out looking at it the other night. If I can get a nice patch of clear sky I may make a point to drag one of the scopes out and snap this guy's picture.

Science Catch Ups

There were a few articles that caught my eye prior to moving that I wanted to comment on after I finally got settled in... Some are probably old hat to some of you...

First off Mars... We are moving into prime Mars viewing territory once again. The very best view of Mars will be available on the 18th of December when we move into direct alignment with Mars. In other words, our position in orbit around the sun will coincide with that of Mars. A straight line drawn from Mars to the Sun would intersect the Earth. The orbits of the Earth and Mars are not perfectly circular. Sometimes those small differences add up to a spectacular view of Mars. The most favorable alignment with Mars recently was back in 2003 where the two planets were closer than they had been in 60,000 years. This alignment with Mars will not be that near, but it will be the best time to see Mars for the next seven years. I plan to haul my scope out and snap some pictures... If the skies ever clear here that is. Our new home has fantastically dark skies. It's far out in the country and situated on top of a hill. Odd how that works... When I'm living in Texas, it has the wettest year on record... Oregon on the other hand was suffering a drought. When I move to Oregon however, the weather turns wet and Texas dries up... Typical.

So at any rate, moving on...

Perhaps you've heard that a meteor slammed into Peru near lake Titicaca. Beyond the oddity of a meteor impact is the fact that the impact vaporized arsenic dissolved in the ground water of the impact site causing illness among the local inhabitants. To me however this cloud of arsenic fumes is secondary to the 20 meter wide crater that this impact created. Estimates suggest that this massive hole was excavated by a roughly basketball sized hunk of space debris slamming into the surface at supersonic speeds. Imagine such an impact in a far more populated location. The center of a large metropolitan area for example. We really need to invest in space research and particularly into defensive measures against a far larger and more devastating impactor.

Lastly I'd like to leave you with a beautiful image of the Jewel box cluster snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Time for Another Science Round-up

I've been doing a lot of heavy duty posting lately and decided it was time to post some of stuff that I think is fun... science. So sit back and prepare to endure my pet inner geek...

So first things first... Check out this article. Perhaps some of my long-time readers will remember when I posted about the Mars rovers facing a major test to their survival from a Martian sand storm. Well, it would appear that those two little troopers have survived yet again! In fact, NASA recently snapped this picture of one of them:

All joking aside, The next task for the Rover Opportunity it to tip-toe down the steep side of Victoria crater so that it can check out the inside. Victoria crater is a half mile wide depression carved when a piece of space debris slammed into the surface of Mars. Opportunity started its mission on Mars by fortuitously landing directly in a small crater that provided the first proof of a watery history on Mars. NASA scientists are interested in checking out ancient layers of rock in Victoria crater that were excavated during the impact. Investigating these deep layers of rock will allow scientists to investigate an older period in Mars' development than they've investigated before.

Keeping up with these little guys' odyssey across the Martian surface has brought me a lot enjoyment. The JPL site even features all of the raw images and data that is downloaded from the rovers.

So moving right along...

Go ahead and click on here to read the article. It would appear that a guy was messing around with a radio frequency emitter that was developed to treat cancer. He focused the emitter on some salt water and found out that the salt water would burn. That's right, burning water. So, I know what you're thinking... Great, a science parlor trick. Actually you could not be further from the truth. Exposing the salt water to these specific radio frequencies causes the molecular bonds in the salt water to loosen, allowing the hydrogen to be burnt. Burning the hydrogen causes it to combine with oxygen creating ... water. This process also gives off heat. This heat can be tapped as an energy source. The test setup mentioned in the article was able to generate temperatures of about 3000°F. The only question that I have, that the article does not cover is how does the energy output compare to the amount of energy used to operate the RF emitter. If the consumed energy is less than the emitted energy then this may well be a source of energy to help us get off of Middle Eastern oil. I will be watching for detail on this technology as time goes by.

Last one for today. Check out this article. Scientists believe that they've determined the culprit that created the hunk of rock that created Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago. Chicxulub is the huge crater down in the area of the Yucatan peninsula that scientists believe is the culprit that can be blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Way out in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars two asteroid slammed together; one about 105 miles in size the other around 40. Some of the debris from this colossal train wreck made a bee line for the inner solar system, pelting Mar, Earth, the Moon and Venus. The rest is still out in space. The pieces that remain in the asteroid belt are related to an asteroid that scientists named Baptistina. Around this asteroid is a cloud of debris from that collision many millions of years ago. Other chunks from that collision account for a large number of the near Earth asteroids that orbit the sun inside the orbit of Mars. They are also about 70% sure that another chuck of debris from this collision created Tycho crater on the Moon.


Debris from this collision still accounts for a goodly number of the shooting stars we see at night. Now this is interesting because these calculations show that the mechanism that propelled that killer rock toward our world that wiped out the dinosaurs still exists. You may doubt the whole global warming thing... but this is a risk that certainly without any doubt exists. Just imagine what would have happened if something like the Tunguska impact would have happened over an inhabited area.

Early Morning Posting

My youngest son decided that this morning would be a good time to wander into our bedroom at some ungodly early hour this morning. We tried sending him back to bed... Well, that idea failed miserably. So then I plopped him in the middle of our bed. After an hour or so of squirming and squidging, I gave in. Then I remembered that there was going to be a lunar eclipse this morning. So I snagged my camera and tripod and set it up for a quick couple of photos. Here's what I got:


I managed to catch it in nearly full totality. A lunar eclipse is caused when the moon moves through the shadow that the Earth throws. They are not common occurrences, but far more common than the other type of eclipse where the moon moves between the sun and the Earth. Then before I packed the camera back up I noticed that to the southeast over the house, my old friend Orion was making an appearance. So I decided to snap his picture as well:

Orion is my favorite constellation. It has so much going on. It was this one constellation that inspired me as a child to take up astronomy as a hobby. Looking through a beat up old pair of hunting binoculars I could easily spy the odd glow around the Orion's sword stars and wondered what the glow was. Eventually I learned that it was the Great Orion Nebula, a pool of gas some 1500 light years away that spans an area hundreds of light years across. If you look at the photograph you can just see that there is an odd luminosity in the area of the sword stars. It is absolutely gorgeous to view in a moderate sized telescope. Here's a labeled version for you:

Orion is the most recognized constellation in the sky. More people can pick out Orion than can pick out the Big Dipper. The one shoulder star Betelgeuse is very interesting. If you look at the image,you will clearly see that it is a different color from the others. Betelgeuse is a red giant. If you were to place Betelgeuse at the center of our solar system, its surface would extend all the way out to the orbit of Mars. Betelgeuse is so large in fact that it is one of only a dozen or so stars that have been imaged as an actual disc. Further the disc has been imaged so well that Betelgeuse was the first star that has been imaged with "star spots" (structures like sun spots on our sun). Despite the fact that Betelgeuse is a whopping 310 light years away, when this star finally does go supernova (possibly leaving a rare oxygen/neon white dwarf), the light from the event will possibly be as bright as the full moon viewed here on Earth. There is another interesting note about Betelgeuse. Chinese records hailing from the 1st Century BC note the star as being white to yellow. Ptolemy however notes the star as being red in 150 AD. As a star uses up the hydrogen fuel in its core its color will change from white to yellow and finally to red. So that means that this star may well have entered its carbon burning phase in the frame of that time period.

Rigel on the other hand is a blue super giant with 17 times the mass of our sun. Rigel isn't anywhere near as large as Betelgeuse however. While Betelgeuse is 630 times as large as the sun, Rigel is only about 70 times larger than the sun. Rigel is about 913 light years way. Its light illuminates another nebula in Orion's area of the sky, the Witch Head Nebula. Rigel has a stellar partner, Rigel B which orbits Rigel (Rigel A) at a distance of 2200 AU (1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun or about 93,000,000 miles). Rigel B itself is a binary star. Its partner, Rigel V orbits Rigel B once every 9.8 days.

The main difference between the two stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel is the fuel that they are burning. Rigel is still burning hydrogen, the primary fuel for stars. Betelgeuse is burning carbon. The idea that a star burns fuel is a mistake. Stars do not burn anything. In fact they fuse atoms together to form other heavier elements. As a star ages it fuses more and more of its hydrogen into helium. If the star is large enough, there will be enough energy from gravity to fuse helium into carbon. Again if the star is sufficiently large, it will fuse the carbon in to oxygen. This pattern continues through neon then silicon and then finally with the largest of all stars, through sulfur. When I mentioned earlier that Betelgeuse may leave a oxygen/neon white dwarf that alludes to the fact that Betelgeuse is massive enough that it should be able to fuse all of its carbon into oxygen and then some of its oxygen into neon before it finally burns out... Reaches a point of stasis where very little further fusion is possible.

Welp I guess I've covered this well enough for a blog post... Oh, one more thing. Today is the 28th of August... Remember, buy some ammo!

UPDATE: Here's a really bitchin' picture that another amateur astronomer took of the recent lunar eclipse.