DUFF & NONSENSE!

The Guardian gets it right - blimey! did I just write that?

Yes, I did and no-one is more surprised than me!  To be strictly accurate, always a high priority here at D&N, of course, it was not actually The Guardian but a guest column by the impeccably high Tory, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, to which I am referring.  He begins by quoting the novelist, Robert Harris, who was one of those Leftie sympathisers, like Oliver Kamm, who swallowed whole the buckets of syrup that 'Tony' Blair and the New Labour agit-prop organisation ladled out to the unwary but who had the perspicacity (unlike, alas, the usually highly intelligent Oliver Kamm who still worships at the shrine) to see through the collection of mendacious ratbags who constituted the court of King 'Tone' and made clear in his writings what a malignant growth they were on the body-politic of our country.

That, of course, is now history, and soon, with a bit of luck and a following wind, will it be for the Labour party, new or old.  So Wheatcroft turns his attention to the court of the 'king in waiting', 'Dave' Cameron.  What does he find?   An almost exact replica of Blair's comfy, cosy, sinister central committee filled with second-rate greasers and morally corrupt parliamentarians.  Sitting at the right hand of 'King' Cameron we find the odious figure of 'Andy' "I have no recollection" Coulson, the former editor, not of The Times, or even The Guardian, either of which are newspapers of political weight and repute, but the News of the World whose main purpose in life is not to search in gutters for stories but to go even lower in order to sniff and snuffle in the sewers!  I have nothing against them doing that, I'm all for it, but as I have remarked before, the man who clears a blockage in your toilet might be essential but you wouldn't necessarily want him as your constant companion.  However, this is the man whom 'Dave' reckons to be essential for his future administration and for that reason alone I am fearful of the outcome.  Will he out-Campbell Campbell?  Probably because Campbell is, as we all know from his frequent demonstrations of it, stupid beyond words.

In addition, 'King' Cameron needs must surround himself with some of the biggest boot-fillers and trough-swillers to be exposed in the recent parliamentary expenses scandal, the likes of Gove, Duncan and Maude.  Then there is his Chancellor, a man who has already demonstrated a massive lack of judgment by smarming round a dodgy Russian billionaire, and even worse, doing so in company with, pause as I shake my little bag of garlic, Peter Mandelson!  Anyway, read Wheatcroft's essay, he says it all much better than me.

I will add one caveat.  I have said before in reference to 'Oprah' Obama that you can never tell with certainty what sort of a fist any politician will make of the top job until they are in it.  I hoped for the best when 'Tony' Blair came to power but within months, following the Ecclestone affair, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was a born-again liar.  Similarly with Obama, I now know that he is a deeply resentful racist with a grudge against whites.  So we will have to wait to see how Cameron turns out even if the omens are not propitious.  At the moment I am reading the book I referred to in an earlier post which tells the story of the 'friendship' between Lloyd George and Churchill, two of the greatest prime ministers of the 20th century.  Reading about their behaviour and character before they reached the pinnacle would have led a sensible man to shudder at the thought of either of them being in charge of anything more than a parish council - and how wrong that 'sensible' man would have been.

I am away until Sunday.

Chicago rocks - to the sound of gunfire!

Never mind Afghanistan, or the Texas/Mexico border, or even, bless it's wimpish little socks, the Moss Side area of Manchester, if it's real action you're looking for - go to Chicago!  A few posts ago I drew attention to what I thought, in my olde worlde English way, was an extraordinary night in Chicago.  Such an innocent I am because it looks as though nights of non-stop gun battles are simply shrugged off as more of the 'same old, same old'.  This, from CBS2 with hat tip to Drudge:

More Than A Dozen Shot In Chicago Overnight

7 Victims In One Attack; Total Of 15 Hurt Over Four Hours

One person was found shot inside a grocery store and the six others were found within a half-block radius of the store, Langford said.

All victims were male, Langford said. They ranged in age from 15 to 28, and were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, St. Anthony Hospital and Stroger Hospital of Cook County for treatment of their wounds.

I can only assume that there was a squabble over the use of a trolley, or perhaps a dispute over who gets the last bagel escalated.  However, before all that:

About an hour earlier, three people -- including a woman standing with her baby in a stroller -- were shot within 20 minutes in separate incidents on the South and West sides.

By now things were warming up:

At 11:02 p.m., two men were shot as they sat on a porch at 3037 S. Springfield Ave. in the Little Village neighborhood. They were shot by members of a rival gang who came by on foot, police said.

And just to finish the night the way it began:

In another incident, a man was shot and critically wounded at 7211 S. Cornell Ave. in the South Shore neighborhood. He was shot and wounded in the chest and upper shoulder at 1:19 a.m., police said.

The man had been sitting inside his car -- where investigators found blood -- but he was found shot on the street about four doors down, according to police. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

It's called the 'windy city' because, by God, it'll put the wind up you in no time!

The red president

In a post down below I offered an observation on one part of Obama's political psyche, that is, his inherent and re-active 'racism', using that much maligned word in the sense that he is a man who not only thinks that blacks should be favoured over whites but is prepared to act on that precept.  Now I would like to consider his instinctive political motivation which is now appearing in his presidential programme writ large in red letters!

Happily, by co-incidence my e-pal, Alan Sullivan (who is direly sick and I wish him well), pointed me to this excellent summary by Pete du Pont in the WSJ of the Waxman-Markey bill which is grinding its way through the American Congress.  The potential of this huge piece of outright socialism is monstrous to contemplate.  Truly, America will no longer be "the land of the free" to stand proud as an example against the repellent, un-democratic, state bureaucracies that profliferate everywhere else but especially here in Europe.  If it passes, this bill

would regulate many things--energy, wages, imported goods, corporations, states, cities, buildings and houses, snowmobiles, lawn mowers, light fixtures, candelabra base lamps and many others--while containing broad exemptions for regulation of agribusiness, ethanol and biofuels. The Waxman-Markey bill would be without question the biggest expansion of federal government control over our economy since the 1930s.

The costs inflicted on an average American family will be immense:

The Heritage Foundation concludes it would reduce America’s real gross domestic product by $400 billion each year--a cumulative loss of $9.4 trillion by 2035--leading to almost 2.5 million job losses, and raise inflation-adjusted electricity rates by 90%. For a household of four, it would cost on average $2,979 annually and in 2035 the total family cost would be over $4,600 for everything, including power, food, supplies, gasoline and transportation.

However, the cost to us, here in the UK, will be equally eye-watering:

Next would come the expansion of American protectionism. China and India have declined to participate in global-warming control, so under Waxman-Markey we would be able to impose tariffs on their goods coming into America, something India’s environmental minister pointed out to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a few days ago. The other side of that coin is of course that they could impose tariffs on our exports too. That would hurt American businesses and expand government control of our economy, products and businesses, all in the name of fighting global warming.

As I never tire of pointing out the words "socialist" and "nationalist" are never far apart.  Socialists preach the International Brotherhood of Man but when it comes to it they slap on the tariffs to please their own domestic supporters, especially the big unions and Big Business, and the rest of the world can go hang.  Needless to say, the end result will be that the American people will pay more for their goods than they need to.  Of course, American Big Business will go along because they like nothing better than a captive market, especially a captive market being led by an economic dummy - here is the so-called "intelligent" (my former word I'm ashamed to say) President on the subject of the Health bill:

Having a public plan out there that also shows that maybe if you take some of the profit motive out, maybe if you are reducing some of the administrative costs, that you can get an even better deal, that’s going to incentivize the private sector to do even better.

So you take the profit away from the profiteers in order to, er, "incentivize" the profiteers.  What an idiot!  or to be precise, what an economic idiot, but from a socialist politician's point of view it makes sense because you and Big Business know that they will ramp up their prices everytime you ramp up their taxes but you, the politician, will have the central control over what goes where and who gets what.  Du Pont sums it up better than I can:

The real purpose of Waxman-Markey is to vastly expand the scope, power and authority of the federal government. Washington would permanently regulate and dictate the performance of the U.S. economy, reward constituencies it favors and punish those it doesn’t, and make more and more Americans dependant upon federal largesse.

I never once felt nervous during the Cold War but for the first time in my 70 years I feel a tremor of real fear.  The prospect of a USSA (United Socialist States of America) gives me palpitations because it will inevitably lead to an enfeebled America in a century that is going to see the rise and rise of the east.  I'm not the praying type but if I were I would be on my knees begging Americans to use their votes next year and take back the Congress from these lunatics.

A £30m bit of of seaweed - and you paid for it, sucker!

The earth shifted perceptibly on its axis this morning.  The 'Baghdad Broadcasting Company', renowned the world over for its faddish, Leftish, slavish follower-of-fashion, editorial policy came out this morning with an attack on the HAFs in the Met Office.  There must be something exceedingly rotten in the Met Office if one of its most loyal supporters turns against it but, as the BBC's 'environment analyst' (Trans: Hack) puts it:

You will need a brolly on holiday in the UK in August - the Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month. It is a far cry from the "barbecue summer" it predicted back in April.  The news will raise questions about the Met Office's ability to make reliable seasonal forecasts.

You will need more than just a brolly, you may well need a roll-neck sweater underneath a woolly jumper and anorak like the ones I wore last night when I went out - in July!

The real problem for the Met Office is that this is the third summer in a row where its forecast has failed. In 2007, the Met Office chirped: "The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer."  We got downpours and floods in the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.

In April 2008, the Met Office forecast: "Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average."  That did not prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record with high winds and low sunshine.

In April they told us to expect "a barbecue summer" but if I had actually fetched mine out then it would have rusted away by now:

Chief meteorologist Ewan McCallum said in April: "We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30C - something we hardly saw last year." On that particular detail he was right (just) - and might yet be right again before summer turns to autumn.

Mr McCallum admitted in a news conference in April that seasonal forecasting was still in its infancy - a cross between climate change prediction and tomorrow's weather forecast.

I mention all this only because these are the same people who have the brass nerve to tell me they know what global temperatures are going to be in 10, 20 or even 30 year's time.  They are also the profligate big spenders who just blew £30m of my money on what is obviously a totally useless new computer when they could have simply changed the bit of seaweed hanging outside the Met Office window and provided a slightly more accurate forecast - well, anything would have been more accurate than their efforts over the last 3 years.  I expect the reason they failed to change the seaweed was because none of them wanted to leave their nice, cosy, warm offices and go down to the coast in the rain and the perishing cold!

"I am a mole and I live in a hole" - in the Met Office!

Amusing shenanigans over at Steve McIntyre's site.  For what seems like for ever, McIntyre has been trying to prize out of the Met Office/CRU the, er, "value added" weather station data provided by Prof. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia.  This data is the basis upon which the Met Office, being on the whole a bunch of government-employed second-raters, has swallowed whole the silliness that is anthropological global warming.  Jones has resolutely refused to part with the information for various spurious reasons.  Finally, McIntyre has resorted to the (so-called) Freedom of Information Act (FoI).  My interpolation will be explained by the remainder of the story.

After due consideration the Met Office, for which you and I pay, refused McIntyre's request on the grounds that the information requested was subject to a confidentiality agreement.  Apparently Prof. Jones has a veto on material that he provides, at a price, I assume, to our government and that under no circumstances may the data he produces be passed to non-academics - that's you and me who pay for it as well as Steve McIntyre.  However, as McIntyre points out "I've published relevant articles in peer reviewed literature, acted as an IPCC reviewer, been cited in IPCC AR4, been invited to present to a NAS panel - my use of data is "academic" by any legal standard."   Well, 'on yer bike, McIntyre', you obviously do not know the correct handshake used by the 'Wizards of East Anglia'.  Anyway, the Met Office claims that "strong public interest" demands that this embargo be kept intact.

Happily, in this age of information free flow, Jones and the Met Office are left looking like total prats, as they attempt to staunch the dam holding back data that should be released and examined by anyone and everyone, because out pops a little 'mole' and sends the 'secret' information to McIntyre - oh, happy days!   The Met Office and CRU (and Jones) know that McIntyre is in possession and, as he puts it: "Given their stated position that it would be wrongful for me to be in possession of the data (a position with which I do not agree, by the way), now that they are aware that I am in possession of the data (and they are aware, don't kid yourselves), they are legally obligated to notify me that I am in wrongful possession of the data and to ask/instruct me to destroy the data that I have in my possession and not to further disseminate the sensitive data. Surprisingly, they have not done so."

Outside of his own HAF (Hot Air Fanatic) coterie, Jones's 'scientific' reputation has been dropping like global temperatures over the last 10 years.  His association with Prof. Wei-Chyung Wang, with whom he was a co-author of an influential global warming paper in 1990, has not added 'lustre to his scientific cluster' because Prof. Wang is currently under investigation for scientific fraud, although it is thought unlikely that Jones knew of it at the time the paper was written.  However, according to Douglas J. Keenan:

How much did Jones know about Wang’s fabrications? As discussed in my Report on Wang’s claims, it appears very likely that Jones knew nothing at the time (1990). In 2001, however, Jones co-authored a study, by Yan et al., which considered two meteorological stations in China (at Beijing and at Shanghai). This study correctly describes how the stations had undergone relocations, and it concludes that those relocations substantially affected the measured temperatures—in direct contradiction to the claims of Wang. Thus, by 2001, Jones must have known that the claims of Wang were not wholly true.

 

On 19 June 2007, I e-mailed Jones about this, saying “this proves that you knew there were serious problems with Wang’s claims back in 2001; yet some of your work since then has continued to rely on those claims, most notably in the latest report from the IPCC”. I politely requested an explanation. I have not received a reply.

I wonder why?  Perhaps it's "not in the public interest"!

A melancholy co-incidence

On Friday the 'Memsahib and I paid a visit to Wells Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace.  We took a guided tour of the latter which was sensible because you do learn that much more.  In the last room we entered, in amongst the portraits of sundry Bishops of yester-year, there was a large and rather handsome portrait of Harry Patch who was born locally and who lived in a near-by nursing home.  The guide knew him and spoke well of him.  Alas, the very next day he died at the age of 111 and 38 days, the last surviving 'Tommy' from the trenches of the Western Front.  He was, by all accounts, a modest man who for the vast majority of his life refused to talk of his war although he had earned the right having fought in the mud and blood of Passchendaele.  Not for him the braggadocio of Shakespeare's Henry V:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a-tiptoe when this day in named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and live old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say, 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispian'.

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's Day.

No, that was definitely not Harry Patch's way and only his incredible longevity and increasing (if unsought) fame gradually caused him to open up.  The most searing memory he had was being in a group of five mates crossing no man's land when they were hit by a shell and three of the group were killed instantly.  Apparently he relived that incident every day there-after and took the memory of those three friends to the grave with him. 

From everything I have read of him, Harry Patch, plumber by trade and reluctant soldier, was an English gentleman and a brave man.  May he finally rest in peace.

Vive la difference!

An e-pal, Malcolm Pollack, has the final and definitive proof that not only are men and women different but they are different from the very word go.  I am technically retarded and therefore incapable of copying the proof over here, so go over there and look for yourselves.

It's always the little things give them away!

Yes, I know, I've said that before but old men are prone to repeating themselves and anyway it's the little things that give them away!  During last year's presidential campaign I resolutely refused to voice the doubts I had concerning Obama because what politicians say during an election and what they actually do in office are often (usually?) very different but in the end, truth will out.  The inescapable conclusion is that President Obama is both a racist and a rabid socialist - and even worse than that, he's just not very bright.

Regular readers will know that in my opinion virtually everyone is 'racist', if by that is meant that most people have a preference for people similar in culture and background to themselves.  Nothing wrong in that, it's what you do about it that matters.  Obama was asked about the Gates imbroglio and in an instantaneous, reflexive answer he admitted that he did not know the details but immediately sided with the black man and called the policeman stupid and by inference a racist.  Now any half-intelligent politician, let alone the leader of a racially divided nation with in-built racial tensions, would have side-stepped the issue and taken a lofty stance above the fray and spoken judicious words to calm the situation; that would have been leadership by, for and on behalf of, all the people.  Not President Obama, however, who has spent the first six months of his presidency creeping and crawling and apologising to every despot in the world; oh dear me, no, given what he thought (in so far as he actually thought at all) was a cut and dried case of stupid, white, racist policeman beating up on Harvard-educated, black man, he opened his mouth and let his own racism pour out.

I have said before (yes, yes, more repetition!) that in my view from 'over here', I think that 'over there' the black and white scars of the past were beginning to heal.  The new tension was likely to arise from the huge influx of Latinos who, for the moment, are prepared to side with the black agitators in their racial dislike of the whites.  However, anyone who thinks that Latinos therefore love their black neighbours needs their bumps felt!  In this volatile and potentially dangerous situation it is essential that the President be seen to be a president of all the people.  He has, for the moment, assuaged the resentments of the Latinos by appointing Sotomayor to the Supreme Court but having revealed his black bias they will be watching his every future move very carefully.  The whites, of course, will, and are, I suspect, already drawing their own conclusions and can be expected to re-act.  I only hope they confine their re-action to the ballot box in the next Congressional election and overturn the Democrat majority.  If ever a president needed a hostile Congress it's this one.  If the whites fail to achieve their aims by fair means, in their fear and loathing there will be a temptation to try others.

There is another aspect of Obama's true political persona which I will discuss in a further post.

The 'Goat' and the 'Bulldog'

This is something of a premature ejaculation!  You see, I wish to offer you all a rave review for a book despite the fact that so far I have only read the Introduction.  I did so this morning whilst eating a cooked beakfast in Dorchester consisting of 98% saturated fat and 2% fried bread, bacon, eggs and tomatoes - scrummy - the only problem being the distracting noise of my arteries slamming shut one by one.  As I ate, Mercedes-Benz were busy working out how to extort £250 from me for changing a nut, bolt and washer on my car!  Anyway, this book . . . as you might have guessed from the heading to this post is called Lloyd George & Churchill: Rivals for Greatness by Richard Toye.  I was half in love with it when I bought it from one of those 'remainder' book shops ('The Works') for £3.99 and saw inside that the r.r.p. was £25.00 - a very tiny mitigation for the whopping bill I picked up later from M-B.  Just from the Intro I can tell that Mr. Toye (he's probably a 'prof' but you have to be careful with these academic titles) is an exceedingly shrewd and judicious guide to the inter-twined lives of those two political giants.  More later . . .

Dread thought: Was the 'Shrub' more competent than 'The One'?

I tend to see most things "through a glass darkly" especially, given the distance and the peculiarity of their habits, the current affairs of 'the cousins'.  Seen from 'over here', 'over there' gives every appearnace of a total shambles.  Hitherto, I had striven to give Obama the benefit of assuming he had a basic and well-grounded intelligence but I'm beginning to think that 'Dubya' was an intellectual icon compared to him.  The entire country seems to be run by a combination of Nancy Pelosi, a half-mad, old rich-witch, and Barney Frank who makes Dennis Skinner sound sensible!  Well, you are thinking, Duff would say that coming from his political neck of the woods, and you may be right but I would draw your attention to David Brooks from the impeccably liberal, Obama congregation at the New York Times.

The title of his Op-Ed essay says it all: "Liberal Suicide March"!  And here he spells it out:

The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.

He continues, with my added emphasis:

Nancy Pelosi has lower approval ratings than Dick Cheney and far lower approval ratings than Sarah Palin. And yet Democrats have allowed her policy values to carry the day — this in an era in which independents dominate the electoral landscape.

And this neatly and succinctly sums up the whole dog's dinner: 

Machiavelli said a leader should be feared as well as loved. Obama is loved by the Democratic chairmen, but he is not feared. On health care, Obama has emphasized cost control. The chairmen flouted his priorities because they don’t fear him. On cap and trade, Obama campaigned against giving away pollution offsets. The chairmen wrote their bill to do precisely that because they don’t fear him. On taxes, Obama promised that top tax rates would not go above Clinton-era levels. The chairmen flouted that promise because they don’t fear him.

If his own party leaders treat him with contempt, how will he fare against the Putins of this world?  Cheney for President, I say!

"Lone Star" = five star!

Sometimes my ignorance pierces even my elephantine thick skin of complacency.  I only buy the Daily Mail once a week, on Saturday, because that edition contains their TV guide for the week ahead.  It is without doubt the very best TV guide you can buy and so, even if you're a hopeless old Leftie who wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of the Mail, buy it and hide it inside The Guardian so your friends don't see. (Don't worry, I'll get to the point shortly, you must allow me my usual little perambulation first!)  So last night I sat down and skimmed through the movies available and as usual I didn't fancy any of them - until I read a brief synopsis of a particular film of which hitherto I had never heard despite it being made back in 1996.  That is part of the excellence of the Mail's TV guide, they do highlight certain films and give you a brief resume.  Anyway, I gave it a try - and it was simply excellent!

"Lone Star" was directed by John Sayles and again, in my appalling ignorance, I have never heard of him. It is played by an ensemble cast of whites, blacks and Latinos all of whom, without exception, are superb.  The story is complex both in plot lines and in the themes it wishes to investigate.  The ending is shocking but deeply satisfying.  I saw it coming a few minutes ahead and thought to myself, no, no, it's not going there, surely!  But it did and it was right to do so.  I put this film up there with "No Country for Old Men", than which, I can praise no higher. 

It was on TCM last night and so it might be repeated.  Do yourselves a favour, look out for it and set your recorders.  Either that, or go out and buy the DVD if it exists.  I was so impressed I intend to buy the DVDs of Sayles's other films - even if it means attending night school in order to learn how to work my DVD-thingie!

Pure, unadulterated Tom Wolfe!

One of the things I like most about 'Blogdom' is 'meeting' people, like for example, "Angry Black Bitch" - her title, thank God, or I'd really be in trouble! - who is definitely black but not that angry and certainly not a bitch and I'd be happy to spend an evening having a drink with her.  She writes under the name of Shark-fu which probably means something 'over there' but nothing to an old British gent like me. We are both poles apart politically, socially and just about every which way, but I rather like her and she has a literary style all of her own.  She it was who brought this story to my attention and it is straight out of a Tom Wolfe novel.

In effect: dim, resentful, working-class, white cop comes across educated (but equally dim), resentful, middle-class black and shit hits fan!  The black man happens to be a professor at Harvard and he returned to his house after a trip to find the front door had been interfered with so he went round the back and using his key entered his own house.  Cue nosey/observent/caring/mischievous (delete to taste) neighbour who 'phones the police - maybe he or she simply had a sense of humour!  Enter cop who demands that the Prof prove he is entitled to be in the house.  Tempers rise, the cop leaves, the Prof follows loudly extemporising on the police in general (got to feel for him there) and this cop in particular, unfortunately in front of an audience of more cops who had turned up as a result of the call.  First cop promptly arrests black Prof - and enter a chorus of media witches!

My guess is that Tom Wolfe, if he has read about it, is rolling around his mansion in his nice white suit crying with laughter.  Everyone concerned has reached automatically for their in-built prejudices and begun to beat everyone else with them. Too, too delicious!

The, um, uncertainty principle at, er, work, I think!

In the comments to a post recently I was taken to task (again!) by Dr. 'Teabag', the distinguished 'Professor of Sums', for severe scepticism in the face of settled science, or something like that!  To be fair, my scepticism is easily applied to scientific causes I already doubt, like for example, the notion of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).  I will not bore you, yet again, with a rehearsal of my reasons for doubting, suffice that they exist and my scepticism feeds on them.  However, it is definitely very much harder to acknowledge doubts over a scientific activity in which you have invested your approval.

There is, has been, and will continue to be, I guess, huge controversy over the two methods of producing that mythical figure - the average global temperature.  Basically, you either measure ground temperatures, or you measure atmospheric temperatures via satellite.  The ground temperature method is followed by GISS, part of NASA, and by our very own Hadley Centre which is allied to the Met Office.  Both are more or less totally discredited, not least because the ground stations they use for taking their measurements are almost entirely situated on airports which over the last 50 years have become covered in asphalt and concrete causing a terrific increase in retained and reflected heat, in other words, were you to compare the historic record with another site situated 10 miles away in the country you would get very different readings.  Of course, the 'scientists' engaged in this activity assure us all that they take such things into consideration by adjusting the parameters of their models in the computer.  Alas and alack, the likes of Dr. Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre refuse to disclose the codes that guide these, er, adjustments!

The measurements taken by satellite are obviously, or apparently obviously, much 'cleaner' with none of the localised statistical 'noise' that bedevils ground stations.  Consequently I have put much of my faith in their results which show little or no global warming for the past 11 years.  My use of the word 'faith' was deliberate.  The more inclined one is to favour a particular scientific theory over another for reasons other than scientific facts, the more imperative it is to maintain one's scepticism.  There are problems with the satellite methadology.  For a start, the two organisations who use them, use different satellites flying on different courses, and one of the satellites is on a gradually falling orbit.  There are differences between the results of both satellites depending on whether they are over the sea or the land.  Finally, there are differences in the statistical methods adopted by both organisations, although happily, there appears to be none of the secrecy with which the land-based faculties surround themselves.

So, although the notion of an "average global temperature" is by definition entirely theoretical, I still believe that satellites are a better way to gain the fundamental measurements, and the practice of open science in which results can be inspected and corrected, if need be, will lead to information upon which we and our governments can rely.

I am, again, grateful to be educated in this tricky subject by Steve McIntyre, here.

NB: Thanks to commenter 'Dom' the link has been corrected. See, even more uncertainty, I'm surrounded by the bloody stuff!

Allow me to introduce you . . . John Stossel

He works for ABC, er, that's the American one not the Aussie!  I met him via the always excellent 'I Hate the Media' site which really should be on your 'Favourites' list.  This excerpt from one of his posts made me smile:

"[D]uring his [Obama's] trip to Africa, he said: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top". 

But of course the American government skims off much more than 20%.  Federal taxes alone are roughly that, and when you add in state and local levies, plus the burden of regulation, government in America eats at least 40% of GDP. 

If African governments’ skimming off 20% is a bad thing, why is America’s 40% okay, and why is the President trying to make government bigger?"

On another post, he reproduced this graph which 'Oprah' and his gang (I use the word 'gang' deliberately) to persuade people on the desirability of a stimulus package if they wanted to keep job losses to a minimum.  In case it is diffucult to see, the light blue line shows what they expected the unemployment rate to be without stimulous, and the dark blue is what it would be with the stimulous.  The red plots are, er, the actualite, as they say.  Of course, as one of the commenters remarked, this only proves that their estimating ability is useless and that possibly the rate might have been even higher without the stimulous.  All I can say is that if it climbed any steeper it would be vertical!  You can find John Stossel here and you will, of course, add him to your 'Favourites', won't you?

 

 

The cell sell!

The other day I returned to an old e-pal from way back when I used to subscribe to The American Spectator.  He was, and still is, a typical Right-wing, hard-punching polemicist, a type of whom I am somewhat wary, but who redeemed himself in my eyes (for what that's worth!) by backing his arguments with facts and figures and references.  He first came to my attention when he attacked head-on the prevailing hysterical nonsense over AIDs and pointed out that provided you avoided a certain esoteric sexual habit, and the re-use of needles for injecting drugs, you were extremely unlikely ever to catch the disease.  Needles to say, the homosexual lobby which had high-jacked the AIDs bandwagon flounced about in high outrage at his ideas which are now accepted orthodoxy.  His name is Michael Fumento.  I should add that I still retain some doubts because I once asked him if he had ever changed his mind on any of the things he had written about and he replied in the negative.  Such constancy is indicative, shall we say, and on one particular subject I disagreed with him completely.  Anyway, returning to his site I was pleased to see that he was still banging on about a favourite subject of his with which I totally agree, that is, the difference between Adult Stem Cell (ASC) research and Embryonic Stem Cell (ESC) research.

Happily for those of you reaching for the 'Off' switch the debate does not concern Christian morality but just good, old-fashioned economics.  The debate can be easily described thus:

ASC has been going for decades and has been wonderfully successful, by which I mean that in over 70 different medical conditions they have passed clinical trials and have been used on a constant basis on sick people with excellent results.  ASC has now been joined by a 'new kid on the block' called Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSC) which are crafted from human skin and altered so that they resemble some of the characteristics of embryonic cells - but with one huge difference - they lack the ultra-sensitivity of embryonic cells which has stalled so many attempts to make them work and, of course, they avoid any moral aversion people might have.

On the other hand, we have the record of ESC which has so far produced in the way of ready-to-go treatments, er, nil, zilch, none!  In fact absolutely no ESC research has even reached clinical trials standards - ever.  Back in 1998 some researchers, eager for governmental cash, promised that cripples would walk again (who managed that 'miracle' last?) in the next decade.  In 2007 the very same researcher described the day of success as "decades away" - and note the plural.  Even our very own, much loved TV scientific pundit, Lord Robert Winston, said in 2005, "I am not entirely convinced that embryonic stem cells will, in my lifetime, and possibly anybody's lifetime for that matter, be holding quite the promise that we desperately hope they will."

And yet, and yet . . . with all the ignorant, crass, fashionable stupidity that politicians find so easy to assume, both British and American governments are preparing to splurge your money on chasing this chimera when already tried, tested and proven treatments exist and new adaptations of those treatments need finance to expand their possibilities.  Why?  Look no further than the anti-Christian 'liberati' and the 'Feministas' who are determined to impose their view that an embryo is simply a globule of cells and that if Christians are against interfering with it, they are for it!  They dominate the media and know all the tricks of the agit-prop trade.  The universities are right behind them eager for your money to keep their labs in the style to which they aspire.  If you're not sure where your money should go, then just remember this, 'It's economics, stupid!' and shrewd investors put there money into proven projects. 

 

"My kind of town, Chicago is" - not!

Sometimes as I slump in my armchair down here in deepest darkest Dorset (actually, it's Somerset by half a mile but I need the alliteration) and glare balefully at what's left of my country, it comes as a relief to read of somewhere worse.  So, somewhat in the manner of "The Archers", this is 'a story of everyday Chicago folk':

"At 10:08 p.m. Wednesday, a gunman on a bicycle approached Loreto and shot him in the head, according to police, who said the shooting is possibly gang-related.

Terrance Hollins, 17, of the 7300 block of south Dorchester Avenue, was shot at 6422 S. Eggleston Ave. and was dead on the scene, the medical examiner's office said.

At 11:58 p.m. Wednesday, Hollins was shot during a "gun fight" that also left another man hospitalized, police said.

About 2:30 a.m. Thursday, a man and woman were shot while inside a vehicle and crashed into a building near South LaSalle and West 59th streets, according to police News Affairs Officer Laura Kubiak."

[...]

" At 4:08 a.m. Thursday, a man was stabbed at 1431 N. Rockwell St. during a fight, police said. The man was pronounced dead at 4:45 a.m. at Stroger Hospital, according to the medical examiner's office, which was not releasing the man's name pending family notification. A man suspected in the slaying was in custody Thursday as of 7:30 a.m. 

At 11:22 p.m. Wednesday, an 8-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom in the 6500 block of south Green Street was struck by bullets that came through the window, police said. "

[...]

"At 11:46 p.m. Wednesday, Calumet Area Gun Team officers shot a man near South Yale Avenue and West 116th Street after he and another man refused to drop their weapons after a report of shots fired, according to a police News Affairs statement."

[...]

"At 12:37 a.m., a 24-year-old man was shot at 7935 S. Cottage Grove Ave, according to police, who said the shooting appears to have been over a $15 debt.

About 12:50 a.m. Thursday, a male was shot in the leg during an argument with a person he knew in the 3500 block of South Western Avenue, police said.

About 1:45 a.m., an 18-year-old man was shot outside at 4433 S. Mozart St. and was taken in "stable" condition to Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg, police said."

All of these exciting events took place on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.  Now remind me, who was it who worked so manfully at being a 'community organiser' in Chicago?  And what, exactly, was he organising?

Additional:  I have just found out that the Sun Times of Chicago has linked to this post.  The least I can do is provide you with a link back to them.  Toujours la politesse, is the unwritten motto of Duff & Nonsense (unless your name's 'Teabag', of course!

The Lear Adventure: #1

I may have mentioned before that I have agreed to direct King Lear for my local 'AmDramSoc'.  This will, indeed, be an adventure in all sorts of ways, and for all sorts of people.  Anyway, I thought I would keep an occasional diary of events.

The production will not play until next March but I am already at work on it.  The first thing, of course, is to get a script; easy enough, I hear you mutter, just go and buy one from Waterstones! If only (Shakespearean) life was that easy!  You see, the finiky fiddler from Stratford wrote the play in or around 1604/5 but then, for reasons which have keep the experts surmising - and guessing - ever since, he returned to it later and made some considerable alterations, taking out some 300 lines but adding in  a 100 new lines.  So we have two versions, the early Quarto and the later Folio.  Most editions print an amalgam of both and so the director, having decided which version to favour, needs must scour through the notes (always printed in tiny print!) in order to pick out which bits to keep or delete.  Happily, in this computer age, one can download a text from the net and use 'cut and paste' to alter it in seconds whilst smiling in sympathy at the memory of poor old Will who had to scratch things out with his quill pen.  I decided very quickly to rely mainly on the Folio version.  Shakespeare's first thoughts are usually brilliant but his second are likely to add an extra gloss.

The next thing to do is to cut it!  This is a bit like rubbing out one of van Gogh's sun flowers!  Even so, I am fairly robust in my approach to this delicate job.  Shakespeare was a practical man of the theatre, to say he was only in it for the money is only a slight exageration, and he would, I think, approve, more or less reluctantly, to whatever it takes to keep an audience happy.  Today, a provincial audience needs to be on their way home by 10.30 at the latest.  And, also, whisper who dares, Will does have a tendency not to say something once if he can say it thrice or more in better and better poetry.  It is this poetry that causes the 'cutter' most of his problems.  Shakespeare's verse was written (mainly) in iambic pentameters, a poetic rhythm of 5 double beats in the form of an un-stressed syllable followed by a stressed: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more".  Quite often, if you need to cut a phrase it means taking a bit out of one line and a bit more out of the next, but when you join the two remaining part-lines together, it is vital that the rhythm is not disturbed.  And every time you reach for the scissors you have to hesitate and re-read the doomed words one more time just in case you have inflicted "the unkindest cut of all"!

Even more delicacy is required when one has to insert some words, or replace existing ones.  For example, in joining together two short lines which have resulted from one's cuts, it might be necessary to add in a "my Lord" or a  "Madam", or some such, to keep the requisite number of iambs to the line.  Then there are the odd words here and there whose meanings have changed over time.  To leave them in will only serve to confuse a listener so, with some trepidation, one has to find a suitable modern word which will express the meaning to an audience.  As I do it, I glance upwards and hope to see the shade of the author smiling and nodding - although I haven't spotted him yet!

So this is clerk's work but very important and it does serve as a means to get to know the text.  Of course, I do not do this alone.  As always I reach to my book shelves for the works of the great critics, Wilson Knight, Granville Barker, and their ilk, whose insights and scholorship are of the very first rank and indispensable to a third-rate amateur like me.  Anyway, the first faltering steps on a great adventure.

"Now gods, stand up for bastards!" (*)

I have mentioned before the fact that for reasons which were never vouchsafed to me, my father never entered my life at any time other than conception, and he never married my mother.  So I am literally, as well, perhaps, as metaphorically, a bastard.  Who cares?  Well, I do a bit because my mum had a tough life one way and another but she stuck by me through thick and thin, and mostly it was thin!  Other than that, I repeat, who cares?

However, there is another bastard, or to be strictly accurate, a potential bastard, around today and enormous numbers of people will care very much whether or not the suspicion? allegation? smear? is confirmed.  I refer to the President of the United States.  Let me tell you a story.  Apparently, a US army reserve major has refused call-up to Afghanistan on the basis that Obama's birth certificate has never, despite promises to the contrary, been produced for examination.  The major's lawyer (lawyers, don'cha lurve 'em?) has pointed out that if the President is not actually an American citizen, and that all that baloney about him being born in Hawaii is, well, baloney, and that actually he was born out of wedlock in Kenya, and thus cannot serve as president of the USA, his orders as C in C would be void, and any soldier who carried them out would fall foul of international law as a potential war criminal.

Never happen, I hear you shrug, and I confess that was my re-action - until, that is, it was reported that the major's call-up papers had suddenly and without warning been cancelled - no reason given, just gone away, disappeared, by orders of 'higher command'.  And still no sign of that missing birth certificate!  The MSM have not yet picked up on the story but I notice that Drudge has highlighted it so it can only be a matter of time - I hope!

Once again the eagle-eyed Alan Sullivan spotted this story  and high-lighted it on his excellent blog.

(*) Edmund, one of the villains in King Lear - I.ii. l22

Economics (or human nature) 101

This came to me via the network of my friends who swap silly jokes and anecdotes from around the web.  I thought it was rather amusing and contained a truth:

 An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. 

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. 

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.  

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. 

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. 

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.  

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail, because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 

Ricci sticky, maybe! (*)

There's always some wry amusement to be had at the regular politico-legal wranglings that take place when the 'cousins' set about choosing a new Supreme Court justice.  Everyone concerned adopts a lofty, principled, non-partisan stance as they proceed to kick the shit out of any nominee who is not of their party.  So it is with 'Oprah's' latest offering, the very second-rate, Ms. Sotomayor.  It is a delicious irony of the sort that has us whinnying with pleasure, here at Duff & Nonsense, that only last week one of Ms. Sotomayor's major decisions in a lower court has just been overturned by the Supreme Court.

The 'Ricci' in my title is one, Frank Ricci, a fireman in New Haven, Connecticut who took a written exam set for firemen seeking promotion by their local authority.  Ricci, along with some other white candidates and one Latino, passed but the remaining Latinos and all the blacks failed.  However, the authority refused to promote any of the whites so Ricci sued.  Eventually it came up before Ms. Sotomayor's court and she ruled, in effect, that if an exam failed to produce what she (and others) considered to be the (politically) correct outcome then there was obviously something amiss with the exam or its procedures and so Frank Ricci's action was thrown out.  Being, apparently, a man of great determination, he took it all the way to the Supreme Court who ruled in his favour 5 -4 and thus provided a nice hefty stick for Republicans to beat Ms. Sotomayor with this week as she faces her Senate grilling.

This somewhat dim woman has also had several of her previous pontifications wrenched from the oblivion into which they had rightly sunk, for example, her conviction that her Latino background would help her come to correct judicial decisions, and her expectation that men and women will always come to differnt decisions.  Of course, she's not a bad woman, just not of the first rank.  She is a typical product of the positive discrimination which infests the American judicial and academic systems.  If you fix promotion standards to favour the second-rate, you get second-rate judges - along with second-rate firemen.

Incidentally, according to the McClatchy Newsletter, supporters of Sotomayor have decided to 'Palinate'(**) Frank Ricci and have urged sympathetic reporters to dig for any dirt they can find to smear his name and record.  That'll teach him to stick to fighting fires and leave the politics to his superiors.  My thanks, again, to Alan Sullivan for the steer.

(*)    Apologies to the great Rudyard Kipling

(**)  To Palinate:  verb; to search diligently for any half-truths, quarter truths or just 0.01% truths in the past history of a person standing for public office, or, the family of a person standing for public office, and twist them into a means of attacking them.

It simply isn't cricket

It's not often that you will read about sports, here at Duff & Nonsense.  If ever the urge to partake in sport arises in my brain I simply take to my bed until the feeling goes away.  That doesn't preclude me from watching sport on an occasional basis.  Cricket is not top of my list and I certainly wouldn't watch those bastardised 'crash-bang-wallop' versions of the game that appear to attract footie fans during their off-season, but I still have fond childhood memories of the great English cricket teams of times past when the ashes test series was the very highest expression of the game.  For the benefit of my American readers, a test match, which is played over 5 days, is an apparently terminally tedious  exercise in futility but once you get the hang of the intricacies you realise that it is the most subtle game ever invented by man.

Alas, these days the English(?) cricket team is useless - the question mark, again for the benefit of American visitors, is to indicate that several of our players are about as English as Barack Obama!  However, on the last afternoon of the last test, our main batsmen having been whistled out one after the other as though they were indeed the pub team amateurs they resemble, it was the tail-enders who came in and held the rampant Aussies at bay for hour after hour in order to force a draw instead of what should have been a crushing defeat.  Well, that was the quintessence of test match cricket but then the oafs, thickoes and ratbags who run the English team, and I include the captain, decided to cheat their way to a dishonourable draw instead of an honourable one by using every trick (not) in the book to waste time.  Thus, the genuine 'heroes' of the day are now forever sullied in our memory through no fault of their own.  The people concerned should be sacked from the England team.  Some of them are our so-called leading players but since they all failed miserably last week no-one, least of all me, will miss them.

Cornwall, Cornwall, here I come . . .

I'm off to Cornwall for the weekend to visit the 'Memsahib's' family.  Back on Sunday.

"Bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space"

A few posts back I became over-excited by the creation of the universe!  I can't help it, the subject fascinates and enthrals me.  I'm sure many of you have had similar re-actions on a cold, clear night when you gaze at the galaxy and realise that everything you see is but a speck in the great order of the cosmos.  If you go further and take advantage of the many excellent writers who translate the mysteries of cosmologists, physicists and mathematicians into (relatively) plain English, you, too, will be gripped by the mind-boggling story (or, to be acurate, the stories) that unfolds.  It is intensely exciting, and was, until a dozen years ago, the most exciting thing I had ever discovered, er, that is, the most exciting thing after I had stumbled across the other end of the scale, quantum physics, which blew my little mind quite away!  That was about fifteen years ago, but twelve years ago I discovered the living cell - well, I didn't exactly discover it, you understand, but I read a book that told me about it and I wished I had the remnants of my mind back again so that it could be blown away yet again.

Before all of that, had you asked me what a living cell was I would have answered in a sort of paraphrase of the great German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, who described it as a "homogenous globule of protoplasm", or, a blob, as I would have put it! Well, here is a description of just one 'simple' action that takes place in a cell.  Do not try to follow the process in detail, it will make your brain ache, just skim read it and you will get the drift:

An RNA copy (called messenger RNA, or just mRNA) is made of the DNA gene coding for a protein that works in the cell's garbage disposal - the lysome.  We'll call the protein "garbagease".  The mRNA is made in the nucleus, then floats over to a nuclear pore.  Proteins in the pore recognise a signal on the mRNA, the pore opens, and the mRNA floats into the cytoplasm.  In the cytoplasm the cell's "master machines" - ribosomes - begin making garbagease using the information in the mRNA.  The first part of the growing protein chain contains a signal sequence made of amino acids.  As soon as the signal sequence forms, a signal recognition particle (SRP) grabs onto the signal and causes the ribosome to pause.  The SRP and associated molecules then float over to an SRP receptor in the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and stick there.  This simultaneously causes the ribosome to resume synthesis and a protein channel to open in the membrane.  As the protein passes through the channel and into the ER, an enzyme clips off the signal sequence.  Once in the ER, garbagease has a large, complex carbohydrate placed on it.  Coatomer proteins cause a drop of the ER, containing some garbagease plus other proteins, to pinch off, cross over to the Golgi apparatus, and fuse with it.  Some of the proteins are returned to the ER if they contain the proper signal.  This happens two more times as the protein progresses through the several compartments of the Golgi.  Within the Golgi an enzyme recognises the signal patch on the garbagease and places another carbohydrate group on it.  A second enzyme trims the freshly attached carbohydrate, leaving behind mannose-6-phosphate (M6P).  In the final compartment of the Golgi, clathrin proteins gather in a patch and begin to bud.  Within the clathrin  vesicle is a receptor protein that binds to M6P.  The M6P receptor grabs on to the M6P of the Garbagease and pulls it on board before the vesicle buds off.  On the outside of the vesicle is a v-SNARE protein that specifically recognises a t-SNARE on the lysome.  Once  docked, NSF and SNAP proteins fuse the vesicle to the lysome.  Garbagease has now arrived at its destination and can begin the job for which it was made.

Go that?  No, of course, you haven't unless you are a biochemist.  Suffice to say:

Garbagease travels a distance of about one ten-thousandth of an inch on its journey from the cytoplasm to the lysome, yet it requires the services of dozens of different proteins to ensure its safe arrival.

Tricky, or what?  Well, you may mutter to yourself, good job that doesn't have to happen to0 often:

The authentic cellular system is already in place, and every second of every day, this process happens uncounted billions of times in your body.

All of the above quotes are from Michael Behe's controversial book Darwin's Black Box [1] which I cannot recommend highly enough, particularly if you are a total layman like me.  Michael Behe is the man who invented the term irreducible complexity and drove several 'Darwinistas' quite mad, well, 'Archbishop' Dawkins hasn't beeen the same since!  In essence he provides a reductionist argument that certain utterly crucial processes in living things could not have arisen by tiny incremental changes over time because in their early stages none of the required bits offered, in Darwinian terms, any advantage to the creature concerned.  He put forward the hypothesis of an 'Intelligent Designer' and Dr. Dawkins fainted!

I think Behe is on to something with his notion of irreducible complexity which I think points not to an 'Intelligent Designer' but to a process of evolution very different from that which Darwin proposed.  I hardly need point out - again - that all pronouncements here at Duff & Nonsense are made on vestigial particles of knowledge and expertise!  Even so, I tell you one thing, there is not a more exciting, mind-blowing subject than cellular chemistry, er, except quantum physics, of course - oh, and not forgetting cosmology.  What a wondeful world!

[1]  You do not need to accept any of Behe's theories to enjoy and learn from his book.  He is a distinguished biochemist, himself, and he explains the processes in very clear layman's terms but then, in specially marked paragraphs (like the one I quoted above), he does become slightly more technical.  However, having marked these paragraphs he makes it clear that the layman can quite easily skip over them.  I cannot stress how fascinating he is on the micro-processes of the human body - for example, the means by which your finger stops bleeding when you cut it will leave you open-mouthed!

The Cheshire black cat in the White House will soon have nothing left but his smile!

A not very surprising result from the latest Rasmussen poll in the States shows 'Oprah's'  dis-approval rating exceeding his approval rating.  Here comes a crashing generalisation but I think that most Americans have little or no interest in foreign policy but they care quite a lot about domestic affairs.  It is beginning to dawn on more and more of them that this administration has lost control of the domestic agenda with Democrat Congressmen piling in on the greatest bandwagon in the history of America.  The tottering pile of pork barrels stuffed full with tax-pater's dollars is now so enormous that the inevitable crash is going to hurt a lot of people - but not the trough-feeders in Congress, it's the president who takes the blame.  An indication of the loss of control by the White House was the embarrasing episode when John Boehner, the Republican House leader, insisted on reading aloud a 300-page addition to the energy bill smuggled into the House at 3.00 am by Nancy Pelosi and which no Congressman had chance to read before the vote.  I don't care what your politics are, that is no way to run a government.  Clive Crook, the American correspondent of the FT, reckons that 'Oprah' knows the big Bills being pushed through on energy and health care have so many loop-holes in them that they will prove as ineffective as they will be ruinously expensive but he doesn't care so long as he has been 'seen' to command the Congress (which he he doesn't) and to pass the legislation that he promised the people in his election campaign, even if the devil in the detail means they are not worth the paper they are printed on at 3.00 am in the morning.  It is Obama's version of Tony Blair promising that his absolute number 1 policy would be "education, education, education"!

In his foreign policy, Crook points out, correctly in my view, that Obama is trying to be tough where he can, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no other choice but to play weak everywhere else - because the USA is weak, or at least, it's huge strength is disabled by its own public opinion.  It will need the equivalent of another 9/11 to jar American's back into a pro-active stance rather than a re-active one.  This domestic hobbling of the American war machine will have been noted in various capitals around the world and human nature being what it is, some of them will misinterpret it with potentiall y disasterous consequences.  Israel, and its Arab allies (oh yes, they have them when it comes to a nuclear Iran), have understood that the Iranian problem is now their problem.  Just a few days ago the Egyptians allowed an Israeli nuclear-attack submarine through the Suez canal for "exercises in the Red Sea" and I read somewhere, I forget where, that Saudi Arabia had indicated to the Israelis that they would not object to Israeli aircraft overflying their territory - in certain circumstances!  Perhaps Obama is wise to recognise his limitations and try and see what a smile and a handshake will get him.  Not much, is my guess, and soon all he will have left is the smile!

Hurrah! I've got spots in front of my eyes!

After my gloomy prognostications in the previous post, here's some good news courtesy of that well-known spelling mistake, Leif Svalgaard - well, I always spell his name wrong!  He is a distinguished solar scientist who comments frequently and usefully at Anthony Watt's indispensable site.  If you look carefully at the picture below do not attempt to flick those little specks off in the mistaken belief that it's some fag ash carelessly dropped by myself or Dr? Prof? (not sure which) Svalgaard.  They are in fact sun spots and there is enough energy in those little specks to light several trillion billion fags!  They are important because, at long last, they indicate, I put it no higher, that the next solar cycle, #24, is possibly beginning.  I incline to the view that the earth's climate is hugely effected by the sun.  I do this, in the finest traditions of Duff and Nonsense, on the basis of absolutely nil knowledge - so no change there, then!  However, having read proponents of various  theories on this tricky subject I trust the likes of Svalgaard who is always cautious and careful in his remarks.  As far as you and I are concerned it's important because if the lack of activity in the sun had continued (and it still might) there is a goodly chance that we would have entered a cool, or even a cold, period.  On the whole global warming is "A Good Thing"; global cooling, on the other hand, is a disaster!

 

 

If you're old, be afraid, be very afraid!

An alternative title to this post might be What Goes Around Comes Around! During the '70s when I was trying to build my life Britain was sucked into a maelstrom of inflation fueled by borrowing and spending and the wholesale printing of money indulged in by stupid and venal politicians who put their party interests before that of the nation.  One of the immediate effects was an upsurge in union militancy which plumbed such depths of depravity that even the dead were not buried.

As it happens, I did quite well out of it!  As house prices shot up, I kept changing houses and ramping up my mortgage in order to 'buy' bigger and better properties, confident that no matter how much I borrowed the value of the house would leap ahead - and so it proved.  Eventually I was able to sell the penultimate house, clear the mortgage and buy another one for cash. Now the wheel has turned full circle and is about to run over my foot - or even, perhaps, my neck.  Over the next few years the government, irrespective of party, will make feeble efforts to impose the required but tough measures needed to reduce our national debt (which is a mere bagatelle by comparison to the 1970s) by cutting government budgets which will entail lay-offs and wage freezes (or even cuts) for public service employees.  If you're thinking of dying, do it quick, is my advice!  So you can expect the next few years to be dominated by strikes and go-slows for which the government will be blamed.

Politicians being what they are, they will look for an easier route out of this difficulty, and indeed, they have already found it.  If you need more money to keep things going then print the bloody stuff!  As "the pound in your pocket", to quote an infamous Wilsonian phrase of the '70s, reduces in value so does the government's debt.  In the long run, of course, it will end in disaster, but then when did you last hear of a politician who could think beyond the next election?  For those like me, elderly and dependent on a fixed income from modest savings and a pension plan, the outlook is grim.  We will see a drop in our already modest life-styles and a return to a strike-ridden life in which, say, trains and 'planes will cease to operate, energy and water cease to flow and hospitals will cease to operate.  The only very slight and ironic humour to be derived from the situation is that when the teachers refuse to teach it will not make an iota of difference to the 'edukashanal' quality of our children!

Have a nice day!

An inconvenient truth

I am obliged to Bryan (not a blogger with whom I am usually in agreement!) for directing a shaft of truthful light into the murky world of South American politics, specifically with regard to the recent law enforcement action in Honduras.  You will note that I deliberately failed to use the word 'coup' because, as Bryan shows via a link to The Christian Science Moniter, the action of the army was not only proper but undertaken in defence of a democratic constitution.  In effect, the former president was attempting a 'Chavez', that is, a manipulation designed to keep him in office for life.  According to Octavia Sanchez, a lawyer and former minister:

"Don't believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.

I am extremely proud of my compatriots. Finally, we have decided to stand up and become a country of laws, not men. From now on, here in Honduras, no one will be above the law."

The fact that 'Oprah' Obama rushed to condemn this defence of freedom and the rule of law tells you all you need to know about his political instincts.  The further fact that virtually every other government joined in the chorus of disapproval is yet another demonstration of the age-old fact that crooks, when faced with a threat to their bailiwicks, immediately join together irrespective of their politics.

"Seven Days in May" 1964

In a fit of nostalgia I have just watched that old black and white movie, and yes, the plot is a little contrived, and yes again, the liberals are the 'good guys' - what else do you expect from Hollywood? - and true, one or two bits of the script are sanctimonious, but even so - what a cracking movie!  I do not write that only because Ava Gardner was in it but I must confess that she still remains, for me, the most attractive and alluring woman that was ever on screen.

Of course, being a liberal film there was a semi cop-out in that the hero, Kirk Douglas, does sully his impeccable democratic character by taking the incriminating but personal letters which he has obtained by the seduction of the lady concerned, Ava Gardner; but the straight-backed, honourable president, Frederic March, after a brief struggle with his conscience, refuses to use them.  When I think back to our most recent Democratic presidents, of course, they in a similar position would not have hesitated for a second, indeed, a conflict with their consciences would not even have occurred to them.

So, yes, alright, it was a load of piffle, really, but damn I enjoyed it!

More Balls - a must read!

This post by Fraser Nelson is a must read!  It tells you everything you ever needed to know, or more likely, have confirmed, concerning the psychotic liars and hallucinators who run our country.  Please read it.  I will only add these two observations: the fact that Balls picked up the 'phone and rang Nelson personally is indicative of an exposed nerve having been prodded by Nelson's scalpel; and it is a confirmation of the power of political blogs, particularly those written by informed insiders who reach a huge audience directly but whose writings are then picked up and amplified by the broader media.  It was Nelson who first highlighted the IFS study which provided the ammo for what turned out to be a massive broadside into 'Battleship Brown' which had hitherto sailed along laying down thick smoke.  (Enough with the naval metaphors - Ed!)  Even Cameron has now realised that the government's agit-prop must be met head on - with truth.  Let us hope he also realises that under the relentless eyes of blogdom he must ensure that he and his team stick as close to the truth as they can lest they, too, sink without trace.

Now, altogether, three cheers for Fraser Nelson - and three more for 'The Speccie' - hip, hip, hip . . .