Canada: A Nation Of Bigots - National Post

I'm not sure I agree entirely with Robert Fulford's headline in today's National Post, but the story certainly resonates with those of us who have encountered first hand shocking anti-American hostility from fellow-Canadians for simply stating the opinion that America is a great and productive society.

Global Warming: White Man's Problem

It should be no surprise that developing countries such as India and China are flatly rejecting the global warming alarms of the do-as-we-say West. Given the choice between growth or starvation, who can blame them?

In fact Western warmists are despairing that they will ever get anybody to "save the planet" now. They used to have the village idiot Bush to blame, but now that they have elected one of their own, nothing is changing. And the rest of the world is just ignoring them.

Shikha Dalmia writes at Reason Online:

So what should climate warriors do? Right now the only certain way to save lives is by calling off this misguided war on climate change. If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding their calls. If, however, these climate-change casualties don't materialize, there would have been no need to act in the first place. Either way, the world has far more immediate and scarier problems than climate change to address right now.

Amen.

Amazon, Orwell And The Memory Hole

Want to be gobsmacked by a wicked irony? Open up your US-spec Amazon Kindle and look for your copies of George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 that you paid Amazon for and downloaded to your fancy little e-reader gizmo.

Whoops! Can't find 'em. Nope. That's because Amazon has electronically entered your home via your Kindle and deleted the books that you bought and paid for. Yup. Down Orwell's memory hole. Amazon had some snafu with their electronic book supplier - who apparently did not have the rights to Orwell's stuff in the US.

I'd bet that most people who own an Amazon Kindle do not know that Amazon can do this. And without a warrant no less. While Amazon has credited its customers' accounts, it all just seems so - dare I say it - Orwellian. What's next? The RIAA entering people's home to search for MP3s?

By the way, presumably from a different publisher, Amazon still carries 1984 for the Kindle here. But Animal Farm is "Not Yet Available".

In St. John's Harbour Friday Evening

Two Canadian Kingston-class coastal defense vessels HMCS Glace Bay with HMCS Moncton.


And this behemoth - the offshore oil support vessel Boa Deep C:

Walter Cronkite Has Died

The man who defined what it meant to be a television anchorman died Friday evening. He was 92.

Walter Cronkite - the most trusted man in America - saw and reported on it all: from the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, to the Viet Nam War to the lunar landings, Cronkite calmly but not unemotionally delivered the news in a way that defined avuncular.

It's fitting that CBS does the obit.

More here from Commentary Magazine.

Update: From The Wall Street Journal. With a video tribute.

As anchorman of "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite elevated the role of television news presenter from a script reader to that arbiter of truth called an anchorman.

Ultimate Off-Roading Challenge - Free Spirit!

What do you do when the nearest Jeep with a winch is 384,467 kilometers away?

When the Martian rover Spirit and its twin Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 they were expected to operate for 90 days. Totally unexpected was that five years on both rovers would still be operational and sending back data.

Now, Spirit is in trouble.

Since May it has been stuck in powdery soil on a hillside. NASA's attempts to extricate it are complicated by the fact that Spirit has lost power to one of its six wheels.

Using a test rover in a sandbox at JPL with special soil simulating Spirit's predicament on Mars, engineers are assessing possible maneuvers for getting Spirit out and onto firmer ground.

Speaking of space buggies, here is an excerpt from the DVD Eyes On Mars. Great video of the evolution of wheeled space explorers including the NASA Moon Buggies. I had completely forgotten about the Soviet Lunokhods.

Tata Nano Passes Euro Crash Test

Autoblog reports the tiny Indian people's car the Tata Nano has passed an important European crash test.

We Choose The Moon

On the 40th anniversary of the liftoff to the first lunar landing We Choose The Moon is running a real-time recreation of the mission of Apollo 11 using original recordings. The recreation will continue in real-time through the lunar landing and the return of Apollo 11 to Earth.

Be patient, the site takes a bit of time to load up. There will be times when all you hear is static. That's when you can imagine CBS cutting away from Mission Control to have Walter Cronkite interview Werner Von Braun.

Liftoff On Apollo 11

This is the liftoff of Apollo 11 as you would have seen it on July 16, 1969, at 9:32 AM EDT. Four days later, Neil Armstong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on the Moon.

V-22 Ospreys In St. John's NL

What on earth they were doing here I do not know, but I saw two V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft climbing out over the east end of St. John's just now. They were heading roughly south-west. Er, that would be towards America.

I would not have noticed them at all except I heard what sounded like WW2 vintage aircraft engines. The last time I heard that kind of sound was in 2005 when I was unexpectedly overflown by a vintage B-17.

Except for the huge propellers, the Ospreys reminded me of the Grumman S2 Tracker anti-submarine aircraft that were stationed here in St. John's throughout the 50s and 60s.

Something Drives Global Warming - But It's Not Carbon

I've always wondered about using computer models to predict the future because when models are run in reverse, they are unable predict what has already happened.

And today we have proof of that in a new report published in the journal Nature Geoscience:

About 55 million years ago global surface temperatures increased by 5 to 9 °C within a few thousand years, following a pulse of carbon released to the atmosphere. Analysis of existing data with a carbon cycle model indicates that this carbon pulse was too small to cause the full amount of warming at accepted values for climate sensitivity.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

So, in other words, using modern modeling techniques and current assumptions about the role of carbon in global warming, scientists are unable to model the warming that we know has already happened.

The report concludes something besides carbon drove the temperature up 55 million years ago and that that something needs to be discovered and its potential to drive climate change has to be accounted for in any future models.

We might therefore conclude that the computer models which support the theory of human-induced global warming via carbon emissions are unreliable. Yet rely on them we will.

The Joy Of Speed

If speed kills, then no one in these videos should have got out alive. But they did.

From Claude Lelouch's famous romp through Paris to Top Gear's James May in the Bugatti Veyron uber-auto to a skydiver's not-quite-terminal velocity, these videos at kottke.org are fun to watch.

Don't miss the wing-suited basejumpers.

Remembering Apollo 11 - 40 Years Later

Tomorrow, July 16, marks the 40th anniversary of the lift-off of Apollo 11, humanity's audacious leap to The Moon.

Reminisce and learn from Popular Mechanics' complete oral history with photographs, video, exclusive audio and more.

POTUS and TOTUS

Without warning yesterday President Obama's port teleprompter departed it's mounting and crashed to the floor. Somewhat abashed, Obama managed to limp the speech home on the starboard wing. Curiously it was the left wing that lay smashed. The right stood fast. But I digress.

POTUS is the Secret Service acronym for President Of The United States. TOTUS is the tounge-in-cheek acronym for Teleprompter Of The United States. TOTUS has his own blog.

As a former TV presenter myself and close observer of Ronald Reagan's commanding - nay Presidential - TV skills, I can say this with great certainty:

Barack Obama, as much as he is addicted to it, does not know diddly about how to use a Teleprompter.

For all the blather about Obama's oratorical skills, he lacks the ability to get his words up off the printed page or the prompter screen and into the camera lens. Obama whipsaws his head left then right then left again but he never looks at "you".

His prompter screens are arrayed on either side, so to gaze into the camera lens and therefore into the viewer's eyes he would have to unglue himself from the prompter screens. And that would mean he could no longer see his script. Can he not at least memorize one full important sentence per page and deliver that straight to camera?

Does he not know that the camera with the red light on it allows him to look people right in the eye - and hold their gaze? I truly believe he does not.

I "trained-in" others on the correct use of the Teleprompter. I always warned them that the prompter could fail any time and at that never-appropriate time their best friends would be the paper script on the desk (don't lose your place) and the camera lens in front of them. Love the lens. It will love you back. Ronnie knew that.

I suppose I could be convinced to go to Washington and teach him how to do it. I would have to get some kind of waiver to smuggle in my Ronald Reagan tapes though. And a lot, a big lot, of money. My email address is at the top of the blog guys.

31-Thousand Scientists Disagree

Despite what we've been told by Al Gore and the other leaders of the climate-industrial complex, the science is not settled. Tens of thousands of independent scientists do not support the view that human-generated CO2 is warming the planet.

The Global Warming Petition Project set out to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists.

31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs.
These scientists are convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.

That's powerful. And stirs rebuttal from the other side. The Sierra Club says the petition is a hoax and quotes the Union Of Concerned Scientists. But 31-thousand scientists is not a hoax. And there appears to be no reference to the petition on the Union Of Concerned Scientists' website. Could that be because the number of signatures has been climbing?

Attention Environmental Boneheads!

In a commentary about the remake of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, novelist Andrew Klavan provides the best argument I have ever heard for refuting the greenish tendency to claim to love "The Planet" while hating humanity:

What’s so great about the earth? It’s just a rock floating in space, after all. The only really interesting thing about it is that it happens to support life - and the only thing that makes life itself interesting is the consciousness capable of perceiving it.

That’s us, you environmental boneheads!

The majesty of the whale, the grace of the leopard, the beauty of the sunset, even the blue of the sky - none of these even exists outside the imagination of man. And it’s that imagination that expresses itself, not just in the concertos of Bach and the plays of Shakespeare, but in our cities and factories and machines and systems of trade - in civilization itself.

Let’s conserve and replenish our natural resources for sure so we can keep building what we build. But it profits us nothing to save the world if we lose the achievements of humanity.

The comments are also well worth plowing through although some get side-tracked by whether DDT was ever really banned or not.

Many times I have wished I had this argument in my arsenal when dealing with well-meaning, intelligent people who have been green-washed into believing that humanity is a pox on the planet. I have always maintained that as much as the rocks and the trees and the birds, we have the right to be here.

Still need some convincing? Listen to some Bach played by Sarah Chang and try to imagine no humanity.

Remember WAIS, Gopher, and Archie?

Don't forget Veronica and Jughead too. Those were early Internet protocols, precursors to what we know today as the World Wide Web:

Twenty years ago, in a research establishment in the Swiss Alps, a British-born computer scientist dreamt up a new way for academics to share information around the globe.

Two decades on, there are over 200 million websites and over one trillion unique URLs. An astounding 1.6 billion people use the web worldwide, and...in the UK the figure stands at over 70 per cent of the population.

I can't believe the WWW is 20 years old.

Sometime around late 1992 or early 1993 I innocently posted a question on an Ottawa Usenet group asking when we might see a graphical user interface (GUI) for this "Web" thing.

Well I was totally not prepared for the yelling match that broke out, nor the ad hominem attacks on my personal intelligence. What kind of moron asks that? Who needs a (expletive deleted) gooey? Only noobs need GUIs. The Internet on training wheels... gimme UNIX anyday... ad nauseam.

But as is often the case, I've noticed, as soon as I think stuff up, it happens. Not much later after this flaming by the "cogniscenti" Mosaic appeared. There it was. The GUI I asked for, the very first Web browser and the great-grand-daddy of the Firefox browser I'm writing this blog post with. But it was surprising how much animosity there was in those days to the notion of a graphical Web browser.

I guess to those heavily invested in UNIX, DOS and command line interfaces, the invasion of their private little text-only internet by the mouse clickers was horrifying.

Gibson Awarded Electric Guitar Patent - 72 Years Ago Today

From Wired's This Day in Tech:

July 13, 1937: Guy Hart, general manager of the Gibson guitar company, is awarded the first patent for an electric guitar pickup. The instrument that defines popular music in the second half of the 20th century is born.

The most influential of the early jazz guitarists, [Charlie] Christian made the electric guitar famous, and, as a result, Gibson became the brand of choice among serious players. Hart’s pickup design even took the jazz guitarist’s name and is now widely known as the “Charlie Christian pickup.”

Here's a 1941 recording "Swing To Bop" played by Charlie Christian on a Gibson electric:

Bang. "OW! $#!+, $#!+!!!"

Ever bang your thumb with a hammer? Bash your toe on the foot board? Would you really want anyone to hear the very first words out of your mouth? Probably not. Swearing is just what we have to do at such moments of intense pain.

Now new research is showing why we don't talk rainbows and unicorns when we drop a bowling ball on the toe we stubbed last night because our thumb was too sore to hold on to it. The new study published in the journal NeuroReport concludes swearing may actually decrease our pain.

What is clear is that swearing triggers not only an emotional response, but a physical one too, which may explain why the centuries-old practice of cursing developed and still persists today.

Should Invertebrates Have Rights?

A provocative article in New Scientist asks "Do crabs have rights?"

"Invertebrate rights" has become a campaigning issue. Advocates for Animals recently produced a report which concludes that there is "potential for experiencing pain and suffering" in crustaceans. The group is particularly concerned about boiling lobsters alive. The wider public is also showing interest. Research supposedly demonstrating that hermit crabs feel and remember pain received worldwide news coverage (Animal Behaviour, vol 77, p 1243).

The long discussion that follows in the comments is worth scanning too. I have always wondered the same thing about fish. But it has always been kind of hard to talk too much out loud about that in Newfoundland where even in my lifetime the economy once centered on fish.

And if you grant certain rights to lobsters and crabs, can spiders, ants and other insects be not far behind? What about that mosquito I squished last night as it was sucking my blood?

Should we grant rights to organisms that have no concept of the notion and who would just as quickly eat us if given half a chance? Food for thought... as long as I am not the food.

Even Better Hi-Res Polar Ice Animation

Earlier this month I blogged about some compelling animations of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice made by Jeff Id at The Air Vent using polar satellite data generated by the NASA funded National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.

Now Jeff points us to an even higher resolution animation from the University of Bremen. This video runs from January 1, 2003 up to June 29, 2009. You can watch a low-res version on YouTube here, or you can download a much nicer looking high-res avi file here.

Use these videos to refute anyone who tells you the Arctic ice cap has melted or that polar bears no longer have Arctic habitat. And while it appears that Arctic ice is in slow decline year over year, Antarctic ice is expanding.

Shooting Down the BMI

BMI, or Body Mass Index is a ratio familiar to dieters and exercisers world wide. If your BMI is 25.0 to 29.9, you are overweight. A BMI of 30.0 and above means you are obese. But a recent report from NPR in the US calls the BMI an unscientific embarrassment and gives ten reasons why we should abandon it.

St. Petersburg Now And Then

Here is a set of eerie composite photographs of St. Petersburg in Russia. Artist Sergei Larenkov skillfully melds photos taken during the seige in World War II with recent photographs taken in the exact same spots. Also see his similar Siege of Leningrad.

By the way, these photo sets come from the website English Russia. Be prepared to waste, er, enjoy a lot of time here. You have been warned!

Rex Murphy On Obama

"The greatest trapeze act in the history of North American politics."