Skinny

My daughter was asking my grandmother some questions for some sort of school project, and my grandmother wound up sending my daughter a bunch of pictures that were somehow related.

Sorry for the dusty scan, but I can’t be bothered to do it again.

Unfortunately, we don’t have indigenous pheasant around here — maybe a few quail — so it was all “put-and-take” at both public and private preserves. I didn’t get to take a shotgun into the field until I was 16 or so. Up till then, I carried a BB gun to shoot the occasional bird that got scared into sitting in a tree and not budging, and “played dog.”

This time, I got to go with my nephew and my son. My nephew was allowed to shoot birds, and did quite well. Amazingly, in fact, considering that his first time shooting a shotgun was 2 days prior, practicing with hand-thrown clays. He got his share. However, he is only 14, and I have to admit that I’m a little bitter about not getting to do that two years before I was allowed.

My son didn’t like playing dog.

Speaking of dogs, dad had a dog he thought might hunt. It didn’t. It ran off after the third time we shot, and we didn’t see it again until my nephew went to get it on a Gator with the owner of the preserve. Dad would have left it. It’s a good thing dad brought along his former neighbor’s brother, who has a great dog.

I wonder if this is all by design. Google — who started out with a mantra of “don’t be evil” — has now been caught red-handed bypassing every browser’s built-in privacy protections, in direct opposition to their stated policy. (Yes, I’m quite sure they’ve done the same thing with Firefox that they’ve done with Safari and IE; it just hasn’t come to light yet. Maybe they’ll fix it before it does.) People who access their products from outside of a web browser are customers they don’t really want. That would take privacy-nullifying actions off the table, and truly avoid giving them your precious browsing data, which is what they actually sell to make all that money they’re so famous for, and for which they’ve proven they will do anything to get.

The older I get, the more I despair for people who don’t understand computers as well as I do. If I have a hard time with it, how do people whose daily jobs aren’t intimately entwined with “computers” even stand a chance?

I think I’m going to fire up my local instance of Zimbra and Funambol again.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

via Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) | Mail Online.

What’s even more interesting is to compare this with the recent explosion in the emissions of “global warming” gases.

Much of the 5.9% global increase from 2009 to 2010 is due to increased emissions from the world’s largest fossil-fuel emitter, the People’s Republic of China, where emissions rose 10% to 2.247 Tg-C.

Emissions from the United States were 1,498 Tg-C, up by almost 60 Tg-C, or 4%, of the 2009 estimates of 1,438 Tg-C. The record year for the United States was 2007, with estimated emissions of 1,589 Tg-C. The 2010 total is about 94% of that value, reflecting economic conditions.

via Record High 2010 Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Combustion and Cement Manufacture Posted on CDIAC Site.

So the data shows that we’ve dropped in global temperature averages over the past 10 years, while, at the same time, our levels of global CO2 emissions has risen dramatically. This is as clear as it can get that the two phenomenon are not as closely linked as the “scientists” would have us believe, if they are related at all. Yet, all the lunatics who profess AGW-as-religion can ask is:

The question now among scientists is whether the future is the IPCC’s worst case scenario or something more extreme.

via World Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Outpace Worst-Case Scenario – Slashdot.

Without any correlation between output of CO2 and temperatures, these self-professed smartest-people-in-the-room take causation as a uncontested fact. So certain, that it goes without saying. Literally. In all of the comments on the Slashdot article, I can find nothing that would tie actual measured warming to rising CO2 levels, nor show their correlations, let alone even suggest that causation has been proven. In fact, out of 600 comments not marked -1, the two 5-rated comments are:

Thank goodness that “global warming” is bullshit.

and

Is that scientists, on average, are not crazed alarmists. They work in a field full of cut-throat peer review where the one who truly, verifiably disproves the most long-standing stuff gets the recognition and the spoils. Their language is conservative, a wide range of speculation must be admitted for consideration but they’re going to err on the side of caution.

There’s nothing in nature short of a major mass extinction event to match what we’re creating. I can’t fathom why anyone’s having kids. The kids we have already are truly screwed.

Aaaaand so much for not being “alarmist.” I guess the “scientists” leave their alarm-raising to their unpaid apologists. It’s a perfect example of the liberal hypocrisy that caused me to stop reading the site many years ago. I keep pointing this out, but the “global warmers” just stick their fingers in their ears — notably — exactly the way they claim their opponents do.

The science is not settled.

Until it really and truly is, I agree with what Eric Raymond said:

But at least, since we don’t live in that fantasy world, we can tell the political class to stuff its coercive utopianism up its own ass and demand our liberty back.

via Junk science double fail.

Despite explaining they meant no ill will either toward the United States or to its deceased starlets, the Daily Mail reports that Bryan and Bunting were held for another 12 hours in separate cells alongside suspected drug traffickers.

“But… but… but… I have nothing to hide,” I can hear you say. Fine: don’t complain about the government tracking everything about everybody, via their own homegrown solutions, and via outsourcing to Twitter, Facebook, Google, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. And, for certain, don’t let that affect your voting in primaries and elections. Keep blindly voting for the same sort of Democrats and Republicans that have given us this situation. But then don’t complain if you wind up spending 12 hours in a cell with drug smuggling foreign nationals, just because you made an offhand comment in slang on Twitter.

There’s a hypothesis that the ability to believe in God has a genetic basis. That hypothesis is far from proven, but the smart money says there is some truth to it because most mental capacities have a genetic component.

via Scott Adams Blog: Non-Believerdar 01/23/2012.

That’s cool, Scott. Make yourself feel better about the “inexplicable” number of people who believe in God by implying that they are all stupid.

Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met are better Christians than I am.

Whatever you feel about Christianity, it doesn’t correlate with intelligence, and you cannot simply dismiss it by claiming that adherents are stupid. Now, I can hear you say, “But they’ve done studies!” Yes, they have. I’m sure he’s talking about this research on Religiosity and Intelligence, which made major waves when it was released. The problem is that the graph doesn’t show correlation! I’m not an expert on statistics, but I know that correlation looks like a straight line, and that graph looks nothing like one. There’s a statistical-significance-shattering horizontal spread of people at the top of the range, and an equally hypothesis-destroying vertical spread at the left. Just look at the article on Correlation and Dependence from the same place, and you can see that the results cannot mean what they say it means! There must be another factor (or several) involved, but that’s all the “proof” the typical liberal needs to justify his confirmation bias.

And this sort of supposedly-erudite-discussions-but-which-are-actually-laced-with-logical-fallacies that passes for “enlightenment” at his blog is why I’m finally just de-listing him.

Coolest SHIP evar: The LEGO USS Reliant 1b!

These “SOPA protests” are as narcissistic as they are futile.

As I’ve told others: I hope this legislation passes and that people get first-hand experience with how badly our federal Congress is incompetent, misguided, and corrupt. If people could really see just how bad SOPA and PIPA are, then maybe they can start to wrap their heads around how bad something as byzantine as “Obamacare” must be, and maybe — just maybe — they could start to glimpse just how disastrous it’s unintended consequences will be when it starts commanding one-sixth of the world’s largest enconomy.

Identi.ca’s actions don’t represent me. It’s all just a giant, internet circlejerk that means, and will accomplish, nothing, in the long run. I resent that they’ve taken down a service I was relying on. I guess it’s time to find a competitor or build microblogging into my own site.