How To Grade Exams

Law professor Glenn Reynolds links to law professor Daniel Solove's pictorial essay A Guide to Grading Exams. Isn't this the way they all do it?

Ring The Old Year Out - Ring The New Year In

Bring us all good luck. Let the good guys win.

It's the 20th anniversary of a song I heard for the first time on New Year's Eve 1989. This is Murray McLaughlin's prayer for a happy new year with Tom Cochrane and Paul Hyde.

Let The Good Guys Win.

“And Then Tragically Obama Got Elected”

Victor Davis Hanson writes a year-ender about Barack Obama's Humpty-Dumpty view of the world and the dilemmas and paradoxes he is facing - or not:

And then tragically Obama got elected and discovered that the real world had no relationship whatsoever to his fantasy impressions of it. In a cosmos of radical Islam, Chinese bankers, Japanese exporters, and Arab oil producers, there were no more law school profs, Rev. Wrights, or Chris Matthews and Newsweek editors to wink and nod and reassure Obama that his mellifluous but empty rhetoric allusions were at all reality-based.

As always, Hanson's commentors add invaluable insights. Like this:

Seems to me Mr. Obama is much more interested in the interests of the mandarin class and the destruction of liberty around the world. He and his ilk are far more interested in taking away my rights and my liberty than in defending or expanding them. Go to Honduras, to Iran, to Georgia and Israel and see thou what interests Barack Obama. If I were Taiwanese, I would be dreading now what mean price we will sell them to pay for the financing of bureaucracy and union jobs.

Once In A New Year's Eve Blue Moon

In honour of tonight's very rare New Year's Eve blue moon (the last time was in 1990, the next one 's in 2028), here's Blue Moon performed by genius violinist Stephan Grappelli and the awesomely-named guitarist Martin Taylor in Australia in 1990. Jon Burr on bass:




More about the "blue moon" at National Geographic. And there will be a partial eclipse of the moon, for sky watchers in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia tonight.

Happy New Year to all my faithful readers!

New Chart From Chart Of The Day

As the zeros decade concludes, today's chart presents the price performance of the Dow for each decade since 1900. So how do the 10 years just passed rank? As today's chart illustrates, the performance of the Dow from the close of 1999 through 2009 was the second worst performance on record. Only the Great Depression decade of the 1930s was worse. The current zeros decade also shares an unfortunate outcome with the 1930s in being a decade during which the Dow actually ended lower than where it started. Happy new decade.

Why Is Printer Ink So Expensive?

I've thought about this every time the dang printer runs out of ink. Why is it the ink ends up costing waaaaay more than the printer? It really bugs the heck out of me that I had to hack my Brother 240C printer to print black just because one of the colour cartridges dried out.

From Boing Boing, a graph that compares the price of inkjet ink to other liquids. Hint: Ink costs more than human blood. Way more.

From the comments, one possible explanation:

Genuine HP Black Ink #45 is made by washing Karl Rove's soul in the tears of unicorns, for maximum opacity and colorfastness. Cheap 3rd party cartridges just aren't the same.

Pomplamoose - Always In The Season

Another great original from Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte, this time accompanied by Zoe Keating on cello, Anton Patzner on violin, Matt Payne on trombone and Andy Wilke on trumpet. I thought I saw Jack Conte on trombone for a second.


As always, brilliant mastering and editing give Pomplamoose a surprisingly big sound. Turn it up and wait for the good mic to kick in!

The Iranian Revolution?

The Times asks if the current uprising in Iran constitutes a revolution.

The Known Universe

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

For more information visit http://www.amnh.org

Be sure to watch full screen.

YouTube Christmas Extravaganza

Wade Johnston's Christmas video collection from 2008. Includes this Christmas ditty from Pomplamoose:

The Muppets - Bohemian Rhapsody

This video peaked when it debuted about a month ago. Then yesterday, it shot up again. Going on 12-million views...

The 100 Best Innovations of 2009

Via KurzweilAI.net:

A robot that uses whiskers instead of cameras to see in the dark, a personal video network that lets users place cordless cameras virtually anywhere and view video in real time on the Web, and an electronic stethoscope that beams sounds to a doctor's PC by Bluetooth and renders a near-real-time graphical representation of the sounds onscreen are among Popular Science's Best of What's New list gallery of 100 innovations of 2009.

Neda Soltan Is The Times Person Of The Year

I've blogged before about the brutal murder of Neda Soltan in Tehran during the anti-government protests last June. The Iranian opposition has not forgotten her despite thuggish actions by the government against her family and friends to suppress her legacy.

Now The Times of London has named her Person of the Year for 2009.

Christmas Around The World

Enjoy this slideshow of Christmas displays from around the world from Examiner.com.

Merry Christmas!

The Meaning Of Christmas

As told by Linus.

The End Of An Era - GM Cuts The Rat Motor

When the clock on the office wall reads 4:54, gearheads never think "quitting time", gearheads always think "Rat Motor". And if you happen to have one sitting in the parking lot under your office window, patiently waiting your lead foot, then you are very lucky.

That's because the 454 Rat Motor was one of Chevy 's biggest engines. These were "big block" monsters, ranging from 396 to a massive 496 cubic inch displacement.

They were meant for trucks, motor homes and even boats, but they quickly found their way into blisteringly fast street cars of every type.

They've been known since hot-rodding time immemorial as "Rat Motors".

Now the Rats are no more. GM has stopped production.

From Global Warming Believer To Skeptic

Bradley Fikes writes for the North County Times and The Californian. I think he speaks for many of us who used to think humans were responsible for global warming (back in the 90s I certainly did) but who have come to realize the truth. I don't usually quote entire articles here, but I'm making an exception. Please read it all.

A few years ago, I accepted global warming theory with few doubts. I wrote several columns for this paper condemning what I thought were unfair attacks by skeptics and defending the climate scientists.

Boy, was I naive.

Since the Climategate emails and documents revealed active collusion to thwart skeptics and even outright fraud, I’ve been trying to correct the record of my earlier foolishness. In one of those columns, I even wrote: “And see Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) for global warming science without the political spin.”

In fact, Real Climate was and is nothing more than the house organ of global warming activists, concerned more with politics than with science.

My mistake was assuming only the purest of motives of the global warming alarmists, while assuming the worst of the skeptics. In fact, the soi-disant moralists of the global warming movement can also exploit their agenda for profit.
Climategate jolted me into confronting the massive fraud and deception by top global warming scientists, who were in a position to twist the peer-review process in their favor, and did so shamelessly.

Yet still most media reports desperately minimize Climategate, saying that it doesn’t taint the massive research supporting global warming theory. To them I say, how do you know that? Have you investigated how much of that research was published due to the manipulation of these unethical and fraudulent scientists? Do you know how much research that goes against the global warming activist claims was unfairly suppressed?

Until all this is known, it’s not possible to say with any confidence how much of global warming theory will remain after all the fraud and deceit has been removed. And until climate science is cleaned up, it doesn’t deserve the worship so many in the media unthinkingly give its tainted practitioners.

 See Fike's comments for excellent discussions.

Jingle Bells - In Chinese

The Wizards Behind The Screen

This is perhaps the best description I've ever seen as to why climate cannot be modelled by computer programs. Via Glenn Reynolds from Pajamas Media's John Droz, Jr.

For instance, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we aren’t really being run by pandering politicians, self-serving lobbyists, fanatical environmentalists, and greedy Wall Street manipulators. They are the illusion.

There is another even more powerful (but much less visible) agent behind all of these puppets.

The person behind the screen is the computer programmer. And, just like in the Wizard of OZ, they do not want you to look at this real controller.

Please read the whole thing.

Trust Wikipedia? Not For Climate Science!

Wikipedia is one of the greatest general research tools ever invented. But because anybody can edit it, Wikipedia is wide open to abuse. And that is just what happened when the warmists took over editing the entries on climate change.

Lawrence Solomon of The Financial Post tells the disturbing story of a powerful Wikipedia bully and how he managed to censor Wikipedia and suppress all dissent to warmist orthodoxy.

Today Is The Winter Solstice

It's the shortest day of the year. And you could believe that it is really the first day of winter. Except for the record winter that's already started for most of us on the top half of the planet. Here's a bunch of facts from National Geographic.

Hockey And Head Trauma

From The NYT, via Canadian Press, via TSN.

Former NHL player Reggie Fleming, who died in July, had brain damage due to repeated head trauma, linking hockey for the first time to a condition usually found in boxers.

The Role Of Beer In Science

Apparently, geologists believe that beer is essential to their science. So much so that, unlike other disciplines, they serve great quantities at their professional conventions and meetings.

“Science doesn’t work when people keep secrets and don’t share their data,” said Daniel Jaffe of the University of Washington. ”And what could be better [than beer] to help with the free flow of information?”

Perhaps the global warming guys could learn a thing or two from the geologists.

From Wired Science:

Rick Saltus of the U.S. Geological Survey explained that because geologists often don’t have enough data to say definitively what went on millions of years ago, creativity is needed to fill in the gaps.

“You have to think outside the box, you’ve got to release your inhibitions, and beer is one way to do that,” Saltus said. ”Anything that helps you get to that epiphany, that realization of what’s there in the rocks and not easy to see but there to spin a story from.”

The Copenhagen Failure

The science is not settled. Neither, apparently, is the politics. The Guardian calls the Copenhagen global warming conference a failure. When the greens at the Guardian say it's a failure, you know, it's really a failure. And that's a good thing. I love this:

Obama with Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, by his side walked quickly past the row of waiting television cameras. "Do we have a deal?" a cameraman shouted. Obama did not answer, but Hillary Clinton bared her teeth in a grin.

Bared her teeth indeed.

Jeep Techno Music

I love music and I love old cars (old Jeeps are special), so this performance, er, resonates.

It took these folks weeks of rehearsal and seven hours to record this - will the poor old Jeep-repurposed-as-musical-instrument ever be the same again?

"What A Bunch Of Buffoons"

Gerald Warner editorializes in The Telegraph:

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man [Rajendra Pachauri] is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption [citation?], wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

If there were not $45 trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons.

Obama In Copenhagen

From today's National Post:
"Obama has said nothing to save the Copenhagen conference from failure."

Well, good.

Also good: Stephen Harper keeps his head down.

The Prime Minister once called Kyoto "a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations." Copenhagen may yield an improved agreement, if non-Kyoto signatories like China, India, Brazil and the United States are included. But it remains a giant wealth transfer mechanism.

Anyone who doubts this should read yesterday's editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which details how Corus, Europe's second-largest steel-maker, has shut a giant plant at Redcar in England, cutting 1,700 jobs.

Corus, owned by Tata of India, will now be able to sell its excess of carbon allowances, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, because it will produce six million fewer tons of CO2.

Hope. And change.

Dipping Into TED

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."

Hoist By Their Own Petard

In Copenhagen, a propaganda coup by CFACT against the enviro-industrial complex.

“Greenpeace has been using these kinds of tactics for decades, and now they can find out what it’s like to have a little taste of their own medicine, “ said CFACT executive director Craig Rucker who masterminded the operation.

CFACT unfurled the banners for two reasons, CFACT president David Rothbard explained. “Greenpeace ships, like the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, have become global symbols for radical environmentalism, and we wanted to call attention to the harm these groups are causing. And second, it seemed appropriate to use one of Greenpeace’s favorite tactics to make this point.”

Greenpeace is one of the “most unethical and irresponsible corporations on Earth,” said Christina Wilson, a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. “It’s time to expose it for what it is, and help promote real environmental justice. So I was really excited to participate in this human rights effort.”

Sweet. Video of CFACT dropping the banner on the Arctic Sunrise HERE.

Global Warming Fraud - "Our Side Is Winning This Argument, Big Time"

Lord Christopher Monckton is one of the leading heroes of the snowballing pro-science, anti-AGW movement (he has famously called out the "traffic light environmentalists" - they are green because they are too yellow to admit that they are red).

In this video from a few days ago, Monckton names eight of the Climategate scientists from the leaked CRU emails.

What makes the video so powerful is not just Monckton's compelling take on the science of global temperature. It is that Monckton calls the Climategate scientists liars and criminals and anyone who still follows their fraudulent prophecies dupes and fools.



Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference from CFACT on Vimeo.

Brian Micklethwait of Samizdata says:

You can feel that most crucial of propaganda processes happening with Climategate: the reversing of the burden of proof. Unfair to all the fraud detectives (Watts, McIntyre, and the rest of them, including Monckton himself) though it undoubtedly was, those noble toilers, until the Climategate revelations erupted, had to prove everything, in defiance of the default position. Their every tiny blemish was jumped upon. Their major claims were ignored. Now the default position is slowly mutating into: It's all made-up nonsense. And the burden of proof is shifting onto the shoulders of all those who want to go on believing in such ever more discredited alarmism. In short, our side is winning this argument, big time.

From the Samizdata comments:

I would think that if they don't sue him for this, and win, it's pretty much game over.

Climategate Summary

If you are new to the subject or need more analysis, the Daily Mail's David Rose writes a top notch summary of the vexing issues surrounding Climategate.

Editorial note: The lede makes it seem as if this story is about the involvement of the Russians. While a Russian web server was used to spread the CRU files, to say the "Russians" were behind any of this is purely a warmist red herring.

Read the whole thing. And spread it around. You owe it to yourself in the interest of being informed.

Follow The Money

We all know now that Al Gore is on track (he hopes) to become a carbon billionaire, but did you know who else has the inside track on big global warming bucks? Check out the startling - and extensive - carbon-based big-business interests of millionaire global warmist Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.

Pachauri is the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the head global warmist.

Check out Pachauri's CV at one of his companies, Pegasus Capital Advisors. Among many other industrial interests, he also sits on the boards of several oil companies.

Over at EUReferendum, Richard North writes that Pachauri is A Busy Man.

And James Delingpole of the Telegraph writes:

...with business interests like these are we really sure Dr Rajendra Pachauri is fit to head the IPCC?

Messiah On Crack

Here's some more beloved music of the season from The Rambler via The New Yorker.

It's the last few bars of a community choir's finale to Handel's Messiah. As the choir sings its guts soul out in the final Hallelujah, the organist drives it all off a cliff.

Best laugh I had all day.

You can listen to the MP3 here - be sure to turn up your speakers to fully appreciate this shrieking, cacaphonous train wreck of a finale.

Or you can do as this lad did and made it into a YouTube comedy video.

Santa Baby

This is Eartha Kitt's version. I always ask Santa for a '54 convertible too! Not bright blue though.

Macleans On Canada's Climate Heroes

Last Sunday, the Ottawa Citizen ran a profile of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. They are the two Canadian researchers whose doggedness and scientific ethics revealed the whole Climategate scam to the light of day.

Now, here's another profile. Macleans Magazine writes about Stephen McIntyre's work in demolishing modern "theories" of global warming.

UPDATE: And another McIntyre profile at the Toronto Star. (The Star!)

The "Hockey Stick" In Perspective

Here is a simple but brilliant exposition of the "hockey stick" global warming graph. It uses Greenland and Antarctic ice core data to show that there was indeed a significant uptick in temperatures after 1850. No argument there.

What is educational about this though is not the blade of the hockey stick, which indicates the modern warming, but the shape and length of the handle of the stick.

Suddenly we have modern global warming in the context of geological time. This is what the warmists ignore and what they do not want you to know. Watch the whole thing (it's only 2:53), then make you own conclusions.

Record Lows

It was exceptionally cold in Edmonton today:

Environment Canada recorded a frigid -46.1 C, or -58.4 C with wind chill, at the Edmonton International Airport at 5 a.m. The old record of -36.1 C was set last year, Lessard said. “To break a temperature by 10 degrees is very exceptional.”

 Cold in Copengagen too, -8.5 C, breaking the record for this date by 7 degrees.

Here in St. John's we have -8, also well below normal. And the snow on the ground seems to be settling in. I would expect it to be milder and wetter than it is right now. If the cool pattern maintains we'll have a fairly unusual white Christmas in St. John's.

UPDATE: Across the US, 815 new snowfall records, 304 low temperature, and 403 lowest max temperature records were set this past week.

It's A Climategate Christmas

My all time favorite global warming satirists Minnesotans For Global Warming have a new Christmas song out.



You also need to see If We Had Some Global Warming and Three Below Honey.

And here's last year's Christmas song, The 12 Days of Global Warming.

Armed Response

At a UN press conference in Copenhagen, journalist Phelim McAleer ('Mine Your Own Business', 'Not Evil Just Wrong') asks IPCC Coordinating Lead Author Stephen Schneider a pointed question about the 'Climategate' scandal. McAleer is interrupted twice by Prof Schneider's assistant and then an armed UN security guard is ordered to stop McAleer' camera. At a UN press conference. Watch it here.


 


Back in October, the same sort of thing happened to McAleer at a meeting of the  Society of Environmental Journalists in Wisconsin when he tried to ask Al Gore about proven falsehoods in his global warming movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Journalists protected Gore by turning off McAleer 's microphone.

Presidential. At Last.

Barack Obama went to Norway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and made a very good speech.

First, he rightly admits he didn't deserve the big prize:

...I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.  Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight.

Then, acknowledging the irony of being awarded a peace prize when he is a war-time president, Obama stands on the shoulders of John F. Kennedy and even Ronald Reagan and reaffirms the historic role of the United States as the most powerful force for peace in the world.

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause.  And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world.  Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this:  The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.  The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.  We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.  We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.  

Presidential. At Last. If he believes what he says and can keep it up.  Read the whole speech. It is longish but well worth your while.

UPDATE: Or not. David Frum trashes the speech in today's National Post.

Vernon's Antique Toy Shop

It's been a few years since I drove down Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula, so as I passed through Swift Current yesterday on the way to Harbour Mille, Vernon's Antique Toy Shop came as quite a surprise to this life-long car fan.

Vernon Smith owns the shop, a 12,000 square foot museum to his eclectic tastes in two-dozen very expensive vintage automobiles.

This car, for example, is considered by many Pontiac fans to be the Holy Grail of all Pontiacs, the extremely rare 1957 Bonneville fuel injection convertible. And here it sits in Swift Current, Newfoundland.

The Globe and Mail did a profile on the shop and it's creator back in November.

He's one of the wealthiest men in Atlantic Canada. Newfoundland's Vernon Smith made his money in the power-line construction industry, but it's his passion for cars that attracts attention these days.

He has a jaw-dropping collection of classic cars worth millions of dollars. It took him more than two decades to build, but his 12,000-square-foot showroom dubbed “Vernon's Antique Toy Shop” is a hidden gem.

Visit Vernon's Antique Toy Shop's website here. More local persective here at The Packet.

10 Brands That Will Disappear In 2010

In 2009, famous brands like Pontiac and Saturn cars and Gourmet Magazine disappeared. This list compiled by 24/7 Wall Street for 2010 cuts even deeper.

Among the big names to go next year will be Newsweek, Motorola and Kodak. And that is just the short list. Here are the rest.

The Obama Coup D'État And The Protocols Of The Elders Of Norwich

On Monday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) incredibly declared carbon dioxide - a gas necessary for life - a pollutant, thus opening up a whole slew of regulatory and taxation opportunities for the federal government.

British writer and broadcaster Gerald Warner writes in the Telegraph about how the Obama Whitehouse is using global warming and the EPA to rule by decree.

Who needs tanks on the lawn when you have the Environmental Protection Agency? Barack Obama’s use of the EPA to pressurise the Senate to pass his climate change Nuremberg Decrees shows his dictatorial mentality. He wants to override Congress, which is hostile to his climate gobbledegook because it is representative of the American electorate, and sideline the nation’s elected Senators by ruling by decree, courtesy of the EPA. This is a coup d’état.

And what is the justification for this undemocratic action? The allegedly imminent threat from “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. There is always a supposed threat, when tyrants take the stage. The President of the United States has just reduced his moral authority to the level of any Third World dictator heading a “Government of National Emergency”.

The decision to declare CO2 a "pollutant" was based on the now-discredited work at the University of East Anglia.

Those jokers are the main authority for the extravagant claims in the IPCC report and, by extension, for the EPA’s “Endangerment Finding”. That is the authority that is being invoked to overturn the principles of 1776 in the United States.

The Protocols of the Elders of Norwich are the justification for EPA tyranny.

Secret Copenhagen Agreement Leaked

The Guardian says the leak of a confidential agreement between the US, the UK and Denmark to sideline the UN in any climate change role has caused an uproar at the global warming summit.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

"It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Warmists Not Walking The Walk

About global warming, Glenn Reynolds has always said: "I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis."

In Copenhagen, 34,000 delegates, 5,000 journalists, 98 world leaders and tens of thousands of demonstrators are arriving for the global warming conference on 140 private jets and countless commercial flights and riding in over 1200 limousines.  Copenhagen airport will be so over capacity the private jets will drop off their passengers then fly off somewhere else to park and then fly back later. The limos have to be driven to Denmark from all over Europe. France alone needs 42. And the hotels. And the food. And the hookers.

From Examiner.com:

So, how much carbon dioxide will this grandiose event produce during the 11 day event? About 41,000 tons. That's roughly equivalent to the same amount produced by a city of about 500,000 people over the same time period.

And what do the Copenhagen summit organizers hope to accomplish? Nothing really. It will produce no binding agreement. No Kyoto-type treaty. Merely a "statement of intent" that holds no one accountable.

And we're supposed to take the global warming alarmists seriously? Please.

 At Deceiver.com they're calling it Carbonhagen:

These guys don’t really believe what they’re saying — that we’re on the verge of a global apocalypse because of anthropogenic global warming, or man-made climate change, or whatever they’re calling it this week — or else they’d never burn another ounce of fuel in their lives. They’d never go anywhere that can’t be reached on foot, and even then, they’d try to find a way to lower their CO2 emissions.

These global warmists are simply not acting like it's a crisis.

Enduring The Bullies And Criminals Of Science

Last Friday I linked to an article by Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page called Science Is Dying.

The article was harshly critical of scientists who allowed the culture of Climategate to develop in their professions.

Christopher Essex, a leading Canadian applied mathematician and award-winning author, has written to Henninger:

Governments leaders wanted something where they could absolve themselves of the responsibility for making informed decisions. They would have to read science stuff otherwise. They ordered up a kind of unnatural scientist that would tell them precisely what they wanted to hear.

But they gave the puppeteers clubs to deal with those of us who remained true. And the perps of Climategate are what they got. All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.

You should understand that (real) scientists have had to pay the heaviest price for the creation of these monsters for decades. And they were not created by us.

The Stink Of Intellectual Corruption

Because Rex Murphy requires careful attention, I re-watched his December 3rd  Climategate editorial for CBC's The National. I was rewarded yet again. He mentioned the name of Clive Crook, a writer for Atlantic Magazine. On Climategate, Murphy quoted Crook: "The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering."

This quote came from an article by Crook in the Atlantic a week ago. The substance of the article stands. Read the whole thing.

Better Late Than Never

The Globe and Mail finally ran a front page story on Climategate in yesterday's edition. Only three weeks late there, guys. Oh well, after your own columnist Rex Murphy's blistering editorial on CBC the other night, perhaps you had no choice. But it turns out to be a fairly well researched and balanced piece.

Even better than the article though, are the comments. Here's one that made me laugh out loud:

The deniers of AGW/Manmade Climate Change have been slagged and slandered for a very long time. We tried to tell you Gore was not a scientist but a lawyer and a politician with skin in the carbon credit game. We tried to tell you $$ and power were behind this. But oh what did we know, the knuckle dragging, tar sand loving red necks. Well lefty's (sic) your church and priest just got busted for diddling the whole world.

McIntyre And McKitrick - The Canadian Heroes Of Climategate

Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are the two Canadian researchers whose doggedness and scientific ethics revealed the whole Climategate scam to the light of day. The Ottawa Citizen profiles these two unlikely heroes who have utterly changed the global warming debate.

Although little-known in Canada, McIntyre and McKitrick -- or M and M as they're called in climate change circles -- have since 2003 put forward evidence of faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies behind the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Their work has drawn attention from the U.S. Congress, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Wall Street Journal, which last month called them "the climate change gang's most dangerous apostates."

It's these guys who should get the Nobel Prize.

What Is In The Copenhagen Agreement?

From the Wall Street Journal, here is an overview of the draft Copenhagen Agreement on global warming and the redistribution of global wealth.

If world leaders actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises.

Such as: a trans-national "government"; international taxation on industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada; massive economic damage, loss of constitutional sovereignty, and on it goes.

The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

Hack Or Leak?

If you are on the side of the believers in AGW you will also likely believe that the Climategate emails (and the far more important computer data files) were "stolen" or "hacked" by criminals, possibly professional Russian hackers, possibly hired by some combination of Big Oil conspirators.

But over at Watts Up With That there is a likely much simpler explanation:

First, few people know that there was already a previous leak last July. It turned out the "leaked" data was actually left on an open FTP server by none other than CRU Head Phil Jones himself.

Second, CRU had pending Freedom of Information requests for the very data that was leaked. It makes sense that the data for this request would be placed in one file pending the FOI approval process. It would take far too long, far too much insider knowledge and way too much access for hackers to assemble over 3,000 emails and 20,000 lines of computer code. Far more likely is that these data were assembled "in-house" at CRU and were awaiting a decision on the FOI request.

A few people inside CRU possessed the archive of documents being held in reserve in case the FOI appeal decision was made in favor of Steve McIntyre. They shared it with others by putting it in an FTP directory which was on the same CPU as the external webserver, or even worse, was an on a shared drive somewhere to which the webserver had permissions to access. In other words, if you knew where to look, it was publicly available. Then, along comes our “hackers” who happened to find it, download it, and the rest is history unfolding before our eyes. So much for the cries of sophisticated hacking and victimization noted above.

There’s an old adage: never attribute to malice that which may be explained by stupidity or incompetence.

If You Read Nothing Else About Global Warming, Read This

Scientists, politicians and the media are jetting into Copenhagen for tomorrow's opening of the UN Climate Change Conference. Those who believe in anthropogenic global warming are hoping for a major international treaty that will transfer literally trillions of dollars out of developed western economies via the UN.

Christopher Booker writes in the Telegraph that the AGW faithful will tell you that thousands of climate scientists have reached a consensus that the planet is warming dangerously, carbon must be controlled, humans are to blame and we must pay a heavy price for our sins against the planet.

Coming to light in recent days has been one of the most extraordinary scientific detective stories of our time, bizarrely centred on a single tree in Siberia dubbed "the most influential tree in the world". On this astonishing tale, it is no exaggeration to say, could hang in considerable part the future shape of our civilisation. Right at the heart of the sound and fury of "Climategate" – the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia – is one story of scientific chicanery, overlooked by the media, whose implications dwarf all the rest. If all those thousands of emails and other documents were leaked by an angry whistle-blower, as now seems likely, it was this story more than any other that he or she wanted the world to see.

The truth is that the grand theory of AGW, the "consensus" of thousands of climatologists, all comes down to British scientist Keith Briffa and his data from one tree in Yamal, Siberia. Yes, one scientist, one tree.

Be sure to read the whole thing, and the comments are worth your while too.

How Blue Box Recycling Hurts The Environment

The National Post takes a break from the enviropolitical fiasco that is Climategate to remind us of another green boondoggle - the myth that curbside recycling has any benefit. They must just love hearing hippies howl.

While a blue bin out front makes us feel we're helping the planet, recycling most household materials has either minimal environmental impact, or even a negative one.

Nopenhagen

Barack Obama has postponed his speech at Copenhagen to the very last day of the conference. He believes his presence will convince everyone to come on board at the last minute.

By switching his visit from Dec. 9 to Dec. 18 [he picks up the Nobel on Dec. 10], Obama appears to be betting that his presence can - as he has expressed hope for several times in the past - push the negotiations "over the top" toward an agreement.

Hmm. Bogus Nobel, no Chicago Olympics and now the Copenhagen house of cards... it's really just about him, eh?

Exploding cigars anyone?

WSJ: Science Is Dying

Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, writes that Climategate is killing science.

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

Rex Murphy On Climategate

This is Rex's take on Climategate on CBC's The National last night.



UPDATE: Extensive commentary and heartfelt praise for my fellow Newfoundlander Rex Murphy at Andrew Watts' climate news emporium Watts Up With That.

21st Century Propaganda

If you have not seen the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, you need to see it now.

All the more so if you have already seen An Inconvenient Truth. Watch both and make your own decision. But know that what you are seeing in both of these films is state-of-the-art 21st century propaganda.

If you've spent any time here at all you probably know which movie I'd stand with.

UPDATE: The CBC is going to re-run An Inconvenient Truth again this Sunday night. If you feel, as I do, that Canada's state-run broadcaster has no business broadcasting Al Gore's discredited propaganda, write to them here. I did.

Gore's "Great Annoyance"

Al Gore has canceled a speaking engagement at the coming Copenhagen global warming convention. From the Washington Times:

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

Ticket holders who paid $1200 a pop for a speech, a lunch and a photo op with the Goracle himself.

The Copenhagen anthropogenic global warming festival is - how shall we say it - hosed. Sinking ship anyone?

This Is Me On Google Street View

This is one of the snaps the Google Street View car took of me driving eastbound on Portugal Cove Road out by Windsor Lake, St. John's, on August 31 this year. The Nissan seems to be split between two of the camera lenses.

Google Street View Newfoundland Update

Google Street View went online as of last night in the northeast Avalon Newfoundland communities of St. John's, Mount Pearl and Conception Bay South.

You can now view almost every street in the rectangle bounded by Torbay to Portugal Cove to Upper Gullies to Petty Harbour.

Lots of new 3D Buildings have been added to the St. John's images in the latest update too.

Google has more info:

Google launched Street View imagery for nine additional cities in Canada, bringing the number of Canadian cities available in the service to more than 20. The new cities are: Victoria, Nanaimo, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Sudbury, London, Sherbrooke, and St. John's.

Street View imagery has also launched today for Singapore, more cities in France and Japan, and special sites including Stonehenge, Pompei, the Palace of Versailles, and SeaWorld San Diego and Orlando.

Canada's Hockey Team

Canadiens? Nope. Canucks even? Nuh uh. Flames? Wrong again. Senators? You're kidding, right?

Canada's hockey team is the Toronto Maple Leafs, of course. Duh! How foolish of me not to know. They even have a song out.



From the National Post comments:

To be considered "Canada's Team", wouldn't the aforementioned team have had to actually won something in the past...oh...um, say, HALF CENTURY? Just sayin'.......

Who Peer-Reviewed The Climate Models? Nobody.

There have been plenty of attempts to explain away Climategate by calling for the arrest of those who "hacked" the CRU emails, or by excusing the intemperate language in the emails as a kind of collegiality, but always concentrating on the emails.

Almost no one on the warmist side is talking about the software and data files that also leaked. But as Shannon Love writes at Chicago Boyz, that is changing.

Now, Programmers all over the world have begun wading through the code and they have been stunned by how bad it is. It’s quite clearly amateurish and nothing but an accumulation of seat-of-the-pants hacks and patches. 

And it is this amateur code that the UN IPCC is basing it's call for trillions of dollars in taxes on western economies.

Shannon Love:

As far as I can tell, none of the software on which the entire concept of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is based has been examined, reviewed or tested by anyone save the people who wrote the code in the first place. This is a staggering omission of scientific oversight and correction. Nothing like it has happened in the history of science.

For now, we can safely say all the data produced by this CRU code is highly suspect. By the ancient and proven rule in computing of “Garbage in, Garbage Out” this means that all the climate simulations by other teams that make predictions using this dubious data are likewise corrupted.

Given that literally hundreds of millions of lives over the next century will depend on getting the climate models correct, we have to start all our climate modeling over from scratch.

Democracy Wins In Honduras

Following yesterday's successful elections in Honduras, Latin American specialist Mary O'Grady writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Unless something monumental happens in the Western Hemisphere in the next 31 days, the big regional story for 2009 will be how tiny Honduras managed to beat back the colonial aspirations of its most powerful neighbors and preserve its constitution. Yesterday's elections for president and Congress, held as scheduled and without incident, were the crowning achievement of that struggle.

Ahem. Ha ha ha! Point point point!

Jim Treacher has a friendly chat with the global warming evangelist who lives in his head:

Hello, hyperventilating zealot.

Greetings, denialist scum.

Now that we've dispensed with the formalities, please allow me to point and laugh at you. Ahem. Ha ha ha! Point point point!

Shut up.

The, er, conversation continues here.

Another Climategate Bombshell

In the Times Online this morning the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in Norwich admits it has destroyed all the original data upon which its scientists had based their theories of global warming.

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible. 

Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

In one of the published emails, Phil Jones, the Director of the CRU states

[They] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

UPDATE: Drudge is quoting a Telegraph report that CRU will release all of its data. This is old news that came out before the Telegraph's subsequent story quoted above that all the original data has been destroyed. Note the time stamps on each Telegraph article.

The Worst Scientific Scandal Of Our Generation

Christopher Booker, author of The Real Global Warming Disaster writes in today's Telegraph:

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age. 

The hacked (or leaked) emails that point to collusion, suppression of contrary evidence and subversion of scientific peer review are the more obvious issues of Climategate.

The deeper scandal shows up in the computer data files that were also released. This is where we see that the data has been fraudulently manipulated to reflect the warming trends these scientists wanted to see.

And why is any of this important? Because it is this bogus computer data that has been fed into the global warming reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the data that will be presented in Copenhagen as the rationale for punitive carbon taxes and penalties on the western economies and for restrictions on carbon emissions that will ruin western economies while contributing next to nothing in terms of temperature reduction.

So these scientists, greedy for their tenure and millions in grant money, cooked up this latest global warming scheme. Venal politicians like Al Gore conflated it for their own purposes and a lazy and unquestioning media fed it wholesale to a gullible public.

We can't know whether these scientists ever realized that their phony work would be co-opted this way, but they should be reminded that scientific, political and journalistic corruption need to be exposed. And punished.  

More likely what we can expect in the days to come leading up to Copenhagen are tediously endless lists of red herrings and straw men trotted out by the warmist faithful and their media enablers in defiance of real science. That's because this whole fiasco is not really about science at all. It's about co-opting science to promote a far-left anti-humanity political agenda.

Climategate? Quel Climategate?

The CBC is steadfastly ignoring the Climategate science scandal. A search of CBC.CA on the word Climategate reveals two links - not to CBC news stories, but to literally hundreds of comments on the CBC website put there by individuals that refer to Climategate.

A Google search just now shows 10,800,000 references to Climategate.

UPDATE: The CBC's wilfull ignorance of this scandal is disgraceful. They appear to have taken their cue from the equally guilty BBC, "cranking up their AGW reporting to fever pitch."

Meanwhile, Reuters has uncritically reprinted an editorial by the global warming activist website SolveClimate as a news story, calling the revelations a "smear campaign."

And here is more on the shameful complicity of the media from Mark Steyn.

A Female Hockey Announcer?

With all the attention on hockey sticks this week how on earth did I miss this?

On Wednesday night, New Jersey Devils broadcaster Sherry Ross made history when she became the first female broadcaster to provide play-by-play in English for an entire NHL game.

WW II Aerial Photographs Released

Long before Google Earth, pilots risked their lives and died in unarmed photo reconnaissance aircraft to bring back astonishingly detailed images of enemy facilities and bomb damage. Now a new collection of vintage recon photos has been launched on the Web in England. From the Daily Mail via Instapundit.

Alan Williams, manager of the National Collection of Aerial Photography which houses the photos, said: 'The archive literally shows the world at war.'

Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part VI

The science is settled. The debate is over. It is time to act. Global warming is caused by humans. There can be no argument.

So lets assemble the torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers, and lets go after the humans who caused global warming - that cabal of greedy "scientists", venal politicians and their media cheerleaders, aided and abetted by the captains of "green" industry and everyone else who can smell a gravy train.

They are the humans that have scared the planet witless with their bogus global warming. And they should be held accountable. There now. That's settled.

Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part V 
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part IV
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part III
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part II
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part I

Climategate And The Silence Of The Media

A week into Climategate, one of the greatest scientific scandals of our time, most Canadian media - CBC, CTV, Globe & Mail, Global News - are averting their gaze. But there is a good summary of the scandal in today's National Post. Be sure to read the comments too for some excellent contributions.

And David Warren at the Ottawa Citizen writes The Skeptics are Vindicated.

Other media -- which have played a leading part for years in giving credibility to "global warming" claims -- are now maintaining the silence of Iago on the revelations. We will see how long this can be sustained.

UPDATE: Climaquiddick - this isn’t just a science scandal, but a journalistic one.

Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate

Read this and then you decide if the world should still plow ahead with massively disruptive  political and economic interventions to stop global warming.    

From Iain Murray writing at Pajamas Media:

First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results.

Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication.

Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

At long last the theocrats of global warming are being exposed. But don't expect to see much of this in mainstream media.

Back From The Dead?

Here's one for the medical books - or maybe House MD:

56-Year-Old Man Brought Back To Life After 47 Minutes, 4,500 Chest Compressions And 8 Zaps With Defibrillator

Harry_Read_Me

Over the weekend everyone was poring through the CRU emails looking for, well, everything. But emails were only part of what was released into the wild.

Also out there is a file called HARRY_READ_ME.txt. Computer programmers usually include a comments file (aka a readme) with their software and data to explain decisions they make, anomalies they discover and so on. This file contains 15,000 lines of comments from the programmers as they try to fit the results of their programs and data to PREVIOUS results. In other words, they are retroactively massaging their computer models to account for current results.

I am looking forward to someone taking this dataset and code, cleaning it up and running it. Then we will see what it actually represents.

Summaries Of Leaked CRU Files

From Bishop Hill, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. The numbers link directly to the emails quoted. Some examples:

Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published skeptic papers.(1047388489)

Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here.

Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to Freedom of Information request.(1212063122)

Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with skeptics.(1107454306)

UPDATE: Three scandals in one:

• Suppression of dissenting voices; 
• Manipulation of data to make a political case; 
• Conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts.

A Very Sad Day For Climate Science?

Dr. Tim Ball is a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg and outspoken critic of theories of anthropogenic global warming. This article by Dr. Ball appeared yesterday at Canada Free Press in reaction to the release of hacked/leaked data from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia.

The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.

Of course the IPCC Reports and especially the SPM Reports are the basis for Kyoto and the Copenhagen Accord, but now we know they are based on completely falsified and manipulated data and science. It is no longer a suspicion. Surely this is the death knell for the CRU, the IPCC, Kyoto and Copenhagen and the Carbon Credits shell game.

CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. 

I would respectfully disagree with Dr. Ball that it is a sad day for science. Although what happened is a scandal and a disgrace, the truth is now coming out. This should make for much better climate science.

The Global Warming Bombshell

Or is it the 'smoking gun'? How about Warmingate?

John Hinderaker at Powerline with analysis of the incredible Hadley CRU hack/leak of emails from the top global warmist scientists:

This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction. Left-wing politics is a common theme of the emails.

They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for.

Fudging data to yield results predetermined by political conviction. Wow. Who would have predicted that?

UPDATE: From The Telegraph: The final nail in the anthropogenic global warming coffin?

Manipulation of evidence, private doubts about whether the world really is heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists, attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period, how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.

And on it goes through hundreds of emails. This may well be one of the greatest scandals in the history of science. How many billions of dollars have been wasted on this so far?

The Evolving Truth Of Climate Change

Whether hacked or leaked, the story is out: Scientists at CRU were working to hide the decline. That would be the decline that corresponds to something that is not global warming. Gee, I wonder what that could be?

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

More from the New York Times.

The Evolving Science Of Climate Change

A well-reasoned article on climate change in Germany's Der Spiegel. Finally scientists are looking past their obsession with CO2 and anthropogenic causes of climate change and are trying to understand the bigger picture.

Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

...it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Mojib Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

There can be no argument? Tell that to the politicians. They are dangerously behind the temperature curve here.

Remembering The Chevy Nova

With options for everyone from little old ladies to drag racers, the 1968 to 1974 Chevy Novas were cheap, plentiful and possibly the best cars GM ever built.

I drove several of these and if I were to add to my collection I'd look for one like this. If I, you know, actually had a collection.

Newfoundland Wiped Off The Map. Again!

Sheesh. What's up with all this wiping Newfoundland off the map? First it was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They at least had the decency to fix their map (well sort of). You can email your thanks here.

But here, via Watts Up With That, is a map eliminating Newfoundland that won't be fixed. Why? Because it's in Al Gore's new global warmist screed "Our Choice".

Compare and contrast the two photographs shown from Gore's book. According to this, once the ice caps melt, Newfoundland will be under water. That means the ocean will, rise , oh, 2,673 feet, to cover the Island's Lewis Hills in the Long Range Mountains. 

Does Al Gore really believe the oceans will rise half a mile? Oh well, the photos also show imaginary hurricanes too. Especially note the clockwise rotating southern hemisphere cyclone just off the east coast of what's left of Florida. That would be in, you know, the northern hemisphere. According to Al Gore, global warming doesn't just mean more hurricanes, it means hurricanes that defy all known physics of climatology. 

Er, wait. Doesn't that sum up anthropogenic global warming right there?

Curing Congenital Blindness

Researchers in Philadelphia have developed a successful gene therapy that has drastically improved vision in a group of young and middle aged people legally blind from birth.

...after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball.

His treatment represents the next step toward medical science's goal of using gene therapy to cure disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness.

Pomplamoose Just Gets Better And Better

Great new stuff from "video song" collaborators Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte of Pomplamoose:

Pigeon Impossible

Pigeon: Impossible is the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.

This six minute animation by Lucas Martel has won all kinds of awards and now it's viral on the Internet. Watch it full screen and turn up your speakers to get the best of the the fabulous big-band sound track. And then go here to see videos on how Pigeon: Impossible was made.

Putting Newfoundland Back On The Map

I've posted before about the Island of Newfoundland not appearing on a map of the world published by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Well, less than a week later, the big map now includes Newfoundland. It's a bit of a copy and paste job and the orientation of Newfoundland with the compass is, er, mysterious, but it's there, proving that emails and blog posts actually can work. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Gates.