Must Credit ACME

James Lileks has found some black and white ACME photographs of New York City street scenes from the mid nineteen thirties through the early fiftes.

As he says in one caption, "Low tech as it all looks, remember: they had computers and nukes too."

Pick Up Trucks And Obama's Tin Ear

Rex Murphy, writing nowadays for the National Post, takes the measure of Barack Obama one year in.

Obama is a parochial politician. He emerged from the small pool of the university environment and Chicago politics — the former, I think, more significant than the latter. Take his jibes at Scott Brown’s pickup, which he delivered repeatedly in Boston two days before the vote. Only the thickest of tin ears could imagine that slurs and put-downs about driving a pickup have any appeal beyond arugula snobs trading nose-in-the-air witticisms about rednecks.

Does Barack Obama not know that the best selling vehicle in America is, um, a pickup truck? And not, by the way a Government Motors GMC Canyon. No, the best selling vehicle in America is the no-bailout-needed Ford F-150 pickup truck.

Stewart Mocks Olbermann

Someone had to do it. I am so glad it was Stewart. That's gonna leave a mark. Video at RealClearPolitics.

How To Prove Global Warming: Ignore Cold Temperatures

If you wanted to make a case for human caused global warming you might decide to look at temperature records where the humans are. That would mean in the cities, of course. And you would see a clear trend: as the numbers of humans in a place rises, the temperature tends to rise too. It is called the urban heat island effect.

But what about temperatures in the outlying hinterlands? Say, the Canadian Arctic. Or the high Bolivian mountains. Since very few people live there, the urban heat island effect doesn't exist. But wouldn't these temperatures tend to bring the global average temperature down? Indeed they would. And that is why these outlying temperatures are being ignored in climate models or not even measured at all.

And that's the gist of revealing new research:

"NOAA . . . systematically eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler," the authors say. "The thermometers in a sense, marched towards the tropics, the sea, and to airport tarmacs."

The NOAA database forms the basis of the influential climate modelling work, and the dire, periodic warnings on climate change, issued by James Hanson, the director of the GISS in New York.

That's one way of pinning global temperature rise on the humans - don't measure the places where they don't live. Because it's, you know, cold there.

Meanwhile, the Copenhagen Agreement is falling apart. Quelle surprise.

New Video Song From Pomplamoose

New original stuff posted by Nataly and Jack...

If You Think You Need Some Lovin



Check out Pomplamoose's YouTube Channel.

Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won

Brown Wins In Massachusetts

The Associated Press reported a few minutes ago that Republican Scott Brown has been elected as the new senator from Massachusetts and the news is spreading across the internet as I type.

Brown's election to Teddy Kennedy's old seat is a stunning turnaround for Republicans in the Democratic bastion of Massachusetts and a repudiation of Democrat leadership and policies. It is certainly one for the books. 

Some were already calling this one of the most significant elections in American history.

"This is going to be the most significant special election in modern American history if Scott Brown wins," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He predicted a Brown win would buoy every other "long-shot" Republican candidate in the country and add fuel to the party's momentum going into the midterms this fall.

More immediately, a Brown win would pose big problems for Obama's agenda items, not the least of which is health care reform. Brown, should he win, would break the Democrats' 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority, sending Democrats into a scramble to pass the health care bill before he arrives.

Though Republicans have occasionally been a political force in state politics, Massachusetts voters have not sent a Republican to represent them in the U.S. Senate since 1972. Every member of the state delegation currently in Washington is a Democrat.

UPDATE: Hard nosed analysis from Tom Blumer at Pajamas Media.

In electing Scott Brown to what the elites believed was Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat one day shy of the anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Massachusetts voters have delivered an irrefutable repudiation of the president, his agenda, and the people in Congress who support him.

The Massachusetts Senate Election

Exciting politics in America tonight. The polls are now closed in Massachusetts. At Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com

...elections officials today reported high voter turnouts across the state in the 11th-hour nailbiter to choose a successor for the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Steady streams of voters have been heading into the polls to have their say in the bitter contest between GOP state Sen. Scott Brown and Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley – a fight to determine the fate of the controversial health care bill, President Obama’s agenda, and one-party dominance in Washington, D.C.

Independent and party-sponsored polling show Republican Scott Brown likely to win in what many are calling a referendum on the policies of Barack Obama.

Mini Mouse Motor - Actually Runs. The Mouse That Roared?

If you know this blog, then you know what a Rat Motor is. But did you know there was also a Mouse Motor? Yep. While the Rat Motor was the big block Chevy V8 - really a truck engine - the Mouse Motor was - what else - the famous small block Chevy V8.

Here's a video of a 1/6th scale mini Mouse Motor machined from scratch by Jim Moyer. It's a replica of a Chevrolet 327 cu in V8 Mouse Motor that starts and runs.



Moyer took machinist and engineering measurements from an actual 1964 365 hp Corvette engine. The head and block were painstakingly machined from billet aluminum on a Bridgeport-style mill. The 5-main crank has real babbit bearings, while the cam is a scale 30-30 Duntov.The model is dead accurate.

I don't know what the horsepower and torque curves would be like for an engine this size, but it sounds like it would make a heck of a chainsaw engine. Loads of photos and specifications at Jim Moyer's website.

UPDATE: OK, the V8 chainsaw has already been done. Full size. And the V6. And the Harley V-Twin.Yikes.

Time To Kill Off Internet Explorer?

Should you ditch your Internet Explorer Web Browser because of the Google China hacking vulnerability?

Microsoft says you should. The French and Germans  too. If, after all that, you actually still use IE, here's how to limit your exposure.

Better yet, download Firefox. Or Opera.

Background on the story here.

Scientific Blunders By The IPCC?

Put this in the category: Let's throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.

In this case, let's tell everyone the glaciers in the Himalayas will be totally melted in 25 years by global warming.

Let's just put this "fact" into our Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change benchmark report and claim that it incorporates the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming.

Let's not tell anyone that this is total, er, "speculation" based on a phone call in 1999 and is not supported by any formal research, whatsoever.

Yeah, let's do that.

And, you know what? That's just what they did.

Driving In New York Circa 1928

Here's some amazing old film of silent star Harold Lloyd and others speeding, swerving and generally hooning around in New York traffic around 1928.

Someone has cleaned it up and put some appropriate music behind. It must be from some larger production, but the YouTube poster is mute on the provenance.

Watch for cabbie Harold Lloyd giving Babe Ruth a hair-raising cab ride to Yankee Stadium.The special effects are really great for their day.



The runaway horses are scary, though.

Obama Can't Fill A Hall In Boston?

The race to fill Teddy Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts - held by Kennedy for 47 years - is down to the last two days. Republican Scott Brown appears to have a good chance of defeating Democrat candidate, and Massachusetts attorney general, Martha Coakley.

The two camps held competing rallies today. In Worcester, Brown filled a three-thousand seat house with another thousand out in the street. In Boston, Barack Obama flew in to boost Coakley. They could not fill their three-thousand seat venue.

Brahms Hungarian Dances

What I am listening to this minute:

Brahms Hungarian Dances performed by the Berliner Philharmonikar conducted by Herbert Von Karajan and recorded in 1960 by Deutsche Grammophon. The German vinyl holds up brilliantly.

This is Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 1 recorded a year or so ago by Hungarian Békés County Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Dániel Somogyi-Tóth.





Lots more here.

LA Gang Tour

Chicago has a prohibition-era gangster tour, and a Los Angeles group buses people to infamous crime scenes, heck, even St. John's has its world-famous Haunted Hike. But this is definitely new:

An unmarked tour bus is rolling through the dark side of the L.A.'s gang turf. More than 50 tourists paying $65 a head signed waivers acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of tattooed ex-gang members who say they have negotiated a cease-fire among rivals in the most violent gangland in America.

Ghettotainment?