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Clayton Cramer's BLOG
Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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Friday, April 06, 2007
A Pretty Damning Report on the Missouri State University's Social Work Program
What happened was that students were required as part of coursework to write letters to the legislature in support of changing the law to allow gay foster parents. One student objected to this as violating her conscience--and since liberals run the Social Work program, she was punished:
Emily Brooker sued the university because she said faculty members punished her for failing to take part in a class assignment that went against her Christian beliefs. Brooker said the project asked students to draft and sign a letter to state legislators in support of gay people being allowed to be foster parents.
The university quickly settled the lawsuit. It said it would "clear Brooker's official record" and pay damages of $9,000. It also agreed to "waive academic fees at Missouri State University, or in lieu thereof, reimburse an amount equal to two years of degree work toward a Master of Social Work degree" at costs estimated at $12,000, "plus Brooker will receive $3,000 per year in living expense for two years of graduate education."
In addition, the University also reassigned Professor Frank Kauffman to non-classroom duties for the rest of the fall semester and required him to begin weekly consultations with Associate Provost Chris Craig at least until May 2007. Kauffman also gave up his administrative duties as director of the Master of Social Work Program.
Nietzel also ordered a study of MSU’s policy on freedom of expression by a campus committee and a comprehensive study by an outside group of the School of Social Work. On Thursday, in his weekly e-mail message to the campus, Nietzel released the reports from the two groups and added his own comments.
The MSU president requested reviews of the social work program and the university's general approach to freedom of conscience--and the reports that came back were very disappointing to him:
I regret to report what will be obvious to you as you read the evaluation by the external reviewers: Their evaluation of our Social Work program is extraordinarily negative. In fact, it is as negative a review of an academic program as I have ever seen, and I have been involved in University accreditation activities for more than 20 years as a site visitor for the American Psychological Association, an accreditation consultant, a commissioner of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and a reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission.
As much as I am embarrassed by the report, I have decided it must be made public. The perceived problems in Social Work are too numerous and too serious to hide or diminish. I believe we owe it to ourselves and to our students to let the sun shine on what is very tempting to keep under the rug.
I am so surprised! Just think: a discipline that leans left even in a leftist structure like a university operates like Stalinists (except without the authority to torture or execute).
I was watching a documentary on History International channel and they made a rather astonishing claim, which this seems to confirm: Lenin was from a noble Russian family. They also interviewed Robert Conquest, who mentioned that before Lenin and the Communist Party started raising their money by bank robbery, much of the money to operate the Russian Communist Party came from wealthy leftists and by having their members marry wealthy heiresses.
Some things never change: a movement built on hatred of the wealthy and opposition to privilege is largely funded by the wealthy and privileges.
Part of Why Gay Marriage Will Be Accepted in Fifty Years
Corporate America, because of its strong leftist leanings, is buying into it. Disney, for example:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy to allow same-sex couples to participate in a popular Fairy Tale Wedding program it runs mainly at its two U.S. resorts and cruise line, a Disney spokesman said on Thursday.
Disney previously had allowed gay couples to organize their own weddings or commitment ceremonies at rented meeting rooms at the resorts, but had barred them from purchasing its Fairy Tale Wedding package and holding the event at locations at Disneyland and Walt Disney World that are set aside specifically for weddings.
"We are updating our Fairy Tale Wedding guidelines to include commitment ceremonies," Disney Parks and Resorts spokesman Donn Walker said. "This is consistent with our policy of creating a welcoming, respectful and inclusive environment for all of our guests."
Walker said the change was prompted by "an inquiry from a guest that asked about this service."
Disney had allowed gay couples to take part in its vow renewals program but excluded them from buying wedding packages by requiring a valid marriage license from California or Florida, which do not permit or recognize gay marriages.
As Blankenhorn correctly puts it, we really do “operate[] from a very important shared intellectual and moral framework,” which is what makes the SSM [same-sex marriage] debate among conservatives so much more interesting than the tired debates between the pro-SSM marriage radicals and anti-SSM marriage traditionalists. They really have nothing useful to say to each other. By contrast, I've suggested ten principles upon which conservatives, both pro- and anti-SSM, can agree.
Conservative: someone who believes in keeping things pretty much the same, or making changes to the social order and structure only when the evidence is overwhelmingly supportive of such a change. Calling someone who is in favor of same-sex marriage "conservative" makes about as much sense as talking about "conservatives, both pro- and anti-governmental ownership of the means of production."
Gun Control: Democrats are noticeably silent as freshman Sen. James Webb packs heat and leaves an aide literally holding the bag. So why should their constituents not have the same right to self-defense?
Webb was selected to run against Republican George Allen last year in part because of his support of the Second Amendment. Webb sees the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. It was part of the Democrats' plan not only to recapture the Senate but to make inroads into red-state America.
Webb represents Virginia, a right-to-carry (RTC) state that lets residents carry concealed weapons. The District of Columbia doesn't allow even the private ownership of guns, much less their concealment. And Capitol grounds are certainly off-limits.
Reports of the incident involving Webb's aide are sketchy and conflicting. But we know that Phillip Thompson was arrested and spent his birthday in custody for trying to enter the Russell Senate Office Building, where Webb's office is located, with a bag carrying Webb's loaded gun and two fully loaded magazines.
We can't imagine the uproar if he had been an aide to a GOP senator. No doubt we'd have been bombarded with file footage of Columbine and every other mass shooting in memory. Instead we have stony silence from those who were happy to exploit Webb's position on the Second Amendment to get him elected.
Either they support his position or they don't. If not, where's the condemnation?
One aspect of Investor's Business Daily that I like is a conservative/libertarian edge to them that many business publications don't have. Business Week, for example, perhaps because it represents the interests of the multimillionaire class, is very supportive of government regulation of the economy and the general leftist bent of the wealthy.
There's a nice map in the article as well, pointing out just how few states remain that either prohibit concealed carry or more commonly, allow the police unlimited discretion in deciding who can get a permit, and who can't.
I wish that I had a picture of the meadowlark that my wife saw through the big binoculars yesterday--an amazing yellow! But this is today's wildlife. This little family appeared about fifteen feet from the back door.
To my wife, Tater Tot is a sweet, adorable kitty cat. Tater Tot seems himself as the mighty hunter--and anything with fur on it is a creature to torment and torture before eating. Here's a field mouse Tater Tot caught in the garage, but that my wife managed to rescue before Tater Tot had done anything more than scare it witless.
Hikers who veered off a trail near the Soquel Demonstration Forest more than a year ago had little idea they'd stumble upon what the Sheriff's Office on Wednesday called the largest cache of child pornography ever in the county.
The 11/2-year investigation into the discovery, possibly the largest child pornography bust in the Bay Area's history, culminated last Thursday when the property owner, Los Gatos resident Michael F. Palmer, 53, turned himself in to a federal magistrate.
Palmer is accused of having upward of 750,000 images of young boys engaging in sex acts stored in ammunition canisters buried in holes on his 30-acre Highland Way property, where he lived in a ramshackle cabin a quarter-mile up a rough dirt driveway. Palmer had a loaded shotgun on the property and maintained a small marijuana garden, according to the Sheriff's Office.
The video and still images found buried on Palmer's rural land include shots of young boys performing sexual acts with other children and men, according to the Sheriff's Office.
There's no evidence that Palmer knew the boys in the images or that they are from the area, and he is not accused of making child pornography, investigators said.
Palmer, a high-tech engineer, pleaded innocent during a two-minute arraignment last month to a charge of possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexual activity — a crime that carries a stiffer sentence than possessing child pornography. He has been released on $50,000 bail and will be back in federal court April 16.
...
The case started in the Santa Cruz Mountains in August 2005 when a group of people walking along a creek with their off-leash dog ran after their pet that had strayed from the group. The group ended up on Palmer's property, a rural unfenced area, according to sheriff's Sgt. Robin Mitchell, head of sex crimes investigations. Advertisement Apple iTunes
"They literally stumbled into one of the holes," Mitchell said.
The hole, covered with plywood and vegetation, contained several ammo canisters. The hikers found child pornography and documents with Palmer's name on them inside the canisters, according to the Sheriff's Office.
Mitchell said Palmer had stashed the images in holes to hide them from law enforcement.
After the hikers anonymously alerted the Sheriff's Office, sheriff's detectives called federal investigators due to the volume of material involved. Also, at the time, the penalty for possessing child pornography was tougher at the federal level than in the state of California, Mitchell said.
Sheriff's detectives and federal investigators got a state search warrant and scoured Palmer's property. Using a metal detector, they found 15 locked ammo boxes in seven holes, deputies reported. The canisters were stuffed with videos, floppy disks, VHS tapes, magazines and CDs full of child pornography, Mitchell said. There also was evidence that Palmer belongs to the North American Man Boy Love Association, according to the Sheriff's Office. NAMBLA advocates legalizing sex between adults and children.
I'm not sure how they are counting the 750,000 images. I hope that they aren't multiplying 30 frames per second of film (each frame is an "image") to get to that count. Still, the volume involved suggests that someone has a pretty serious problem, doesn't it?
Top-secret data on an advanced US military system was leaked because Japanese officers were swapping porn files at work, a newspaper said Thursday.
Japan is questioning a naval officer on charges he obtained confidential data on the US-developed Aegis combat system, the defence ministry said Wednesday.
But the Yomiuri Shimbun said the data was leaked when the petty officer second class had copied pornographic images -- accompanied by the sensitive files -- from a colleague's computer and circulated them to a third officer.
Police suspect senior officials might have been involved in the porn swapping as the 33-year-old officer being questioned would not have had access to the classified data, the newspaper said.
The petty officer said he did not know that the pornographic images were accompanied by sensitive information, the Japanese daily said, quoting Kanagawa prefectural police.
A police spokesman declined comment, saying the investigation was ongoing.
The Aegis system has a cutting-edge radar and can launch missiles at more than 10 targets at one time. The Japanese naval force has five Aegis-equipped vessels.
The data found on the officer's computer included formulas for the Aegis interceptor system and data on its radar's capacity to track several targets at once, the Yomiuri said.
Other news reports said the issue came to light after the officer's Chinese wife was arrested in late January for a visa violation, alarming the US military.
The petty officer, whose name has not been disclosed, is a crew member of a destroyer based in Yokosuka at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.
Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her "nobody there" conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman's discomfort, and explains, "Don't mind me, I'm dead. It's okay. I've been dead for some time now." She pauses, then adds reassuringly, "It's not so bad. You get used to it." Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that's hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, "don't know the rules."
Margi is not so mellow. The "[_____] Jews" have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. "Communist!" she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will "sue the boss." Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff's efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to "make things right."
Mick is having a bad day, too. He hasn't misbehaved but sits and stares, glassy-eyed. This is usually the prelude to a seizure. His seizures are easier to deal with than Bob's, for instance, because he usually has them while seated and so rarely hits his head and bleeds, nor does he ever soil his pants. Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike. The last time he went down, he cut his head. The staff has learned to turn him over quickly after he hits the floor , so that his urine does not stain the carpet.
John is trying hard not to be noticed. He has been in trouble lately for the scabs and raw, wet spots that are spreading across his hands and face. Staff members have wondered aloud if he is contagious and asked him to get himself checked-out, but he refuses treatment. He knows he is still being tracked, thanks to the implants the nurse slipped under his skin the last time he surrendered to the clinic and its prescriptions. There are frequencies we don't hear -- but he does. Thin whistles and a subtle beeping indicate he is being followed, his eye movements tracked and recorded. He claims he falls asleep in his chair by the stairway because "the little ones" poke him in the legs with sharp objects that inject sleep-inducing potions.
Franklin sits quietly by the fireplace and reads a magazine about celebrities. He is fastidiously dressed and might be mistaken for a businessman or a professional. His demeanor is confident and normal. If you watch him closely, though, you will see him slowly slip his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and furtively pull out a long, shiny carpenter's nail. With it, he carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo. Then the nail is returned to his pocket, a faint smirk crossing his face as he turns the page to pursue his next photo victim.
Scenes from a psych ward? Not at all. Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city's "homeless."
We've been living here almost a year now, and my wife has noticed a bit of a decline in water pressure. The good assumption, since the pressure valve coming out of the pressurization pump is still showing 65 psi, is that the filters are getting clogged. Since we removed the big monstrous stainless steel housing with the one micron lead removal filters, all that was left was a 25 micron filter (5" x 10" cylinder), a 5 micron filter (a 5" x 20" cylinder), and a 1 micron filter (another 5" x 20" cylinder).
So, how hard can they be to change? I couldn't turn the filter housings by hand, so I bought a filter wrench--which still wasn't easy! Whoever put these in place probably has fur on his knuckles.
Here you can see what the new filter looks like, and the old filters.
The shade is sort of an iron mineral color. The 25 micron filter had more crud in it than the others, but the 5 micron and 1 micron filters were indistinguishable in shade and amount of junk contained in them.
When one of the housings came off, I couldn't figure out if the O-ring that seals it went in the little notch at the top, or around the top of the housing. By putting it in the wrong place, I stretched the O-ring to a point where it would not go back in position. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find 5 1/2" O-rings in Boise? Fortunately, it is the same size as the GE Whole House water filtration system. Lowe's did not have O-rings for sale--but the guy there took pity on me, and gave me the O-ring off their display unit.
Anyway, all is back together again, and we have full flow once more.
Chance to Save Mother Earth, Slow Global Warming, and Make Money
I've got a clever idea. What I need: an engineer familiar with small scale power generation (like hundreds of kilowatts to megawatt range); geologist familiar with Pennsylvania mountain geology; someone with access to deep pocket investors suffering from guilt about not being green enough; someone with access to deep pocket investors who want to stop global warming nonsense from destroying the economy.
If you can help me pull all these together, I think I have a scheme that will make at least a decent living, and perhaps even a respectable amount of money.
I don't know if this guy was crazy or stupid (or more likely, enough alcohol caused both), but there's a lesson here:
HAMILTON -- A Butler County grand jury has declined to indict a Hamilton man who fatally shot a sledgehammer-wielding intruder.
A report filed this morning by Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth says the grand jury declined to indict anyone in the death of Millard Brandenburg, 31. He was fatally shot March 23 inside the rented Bishop Avenue home of Jamie Buck, 33.
Buck told police a sledgehammer shattered his side door's window and a stranger burst into his rented home, demanding money or jewelry.
Authorities identified the intruder as Brandenburg, who had just been released from a low-security jail seven weeks earlier.
Buck, who told police he was hit in the head with the sledgehammer, was treated at Fort Hamilton Hospital.
Brandenburg suffered a fatal gunshot to the head, three shots in the chest and a fifth shot in the left side, Butler County Coroner Richard Burkhardt said.
If you think I am being too harsh in calling them liberals: sorry, but I talked to the ignorant neighbors at the Planning Commission hearing. Some were torn between going to see Al Gore that night, and trying to get the Planning Commission to shut down the family homeless shelter. Mayor Bieter, who is a Democrat, managed to get himself elected with the rich liberals of the North End--and he needs their votes to get re-elected. Not surprisingly, he sided with the privileged North End liberals against property rights and the homeless.
The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.
This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.
A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”
The “global war on terror,” a phrase first used by President Bush shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., should not be used, according to the memo. Also banned is the phrase the “long war,” which military officials began using last year as a way of acknowledging that military operations against terrorist states and organizations would not be wrapped up in a few years.
Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”
“There was no political intent in doing this,” said a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified. “We were just trying to avoid catch phrases.”
Josh Holly, a spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the committee’s former chairman and now its senior Republican, said Republicans “were not consulted” about the change.
Yes, this is just a symbolic action, but the Democrats are bigger on symbols than reality--hence the importance of calling someone "differently abled" rather than "disabled," "gay" or "lesbian," not "homosexual," the huge fight over "Negro" vs. "black," and all the other bizarre attempts that the left has made over the decades to change severe social problems by changing a word. posted by Clayton at 7:58 AM permalink
Brussels lambasted the US and Australia yesterday for their inaction in cutting carbon dioxide emissions and stressed Europe's leading role in the battle against global warming. "Only EU leadership can break this impasse on a global agreement [post-Kyoto] to overcome climate change," Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, told scientists from the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change. The body is due to publish a report this week in Brussels on the impact of global warming.
What Mr Dimas knew - but did not tell the scientists, apparently - is that the EU's programme for cutting carbon, its two-year-old emissions trading scheme (ETS), remains in disarray.
The Democrats, who are now the majority party in the US Congress, and California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, are drafting plans for an American version of the carbon "cap-and-trade" scheme.
However, preliminary data on the scheme's performance last year - its second year of operation - showed that 93%, or about 9,000 of the 10,000 heavy industrial plants covered by the EU's trading scheme, emitted less carbon than their quota of free permits. The resulting 1%-1.5% rise in emissions was not as great as in 2005 but the spot price of a tonne of carbon fell by about a quarter to €1 (68p), at one point collapsing to just 92 cents.
Only a handful of countries shored up the market by issuing fewer emissions quotas than industry wanted. These included: Britain - where Drax, Europe's biggest coal-fired power plant, emitted 5m tonnes more than its 15.5m tonnes permit - Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. The trading mechanism is designed to create scarcity, forcing up the price of carbon and prompting industries such as steel and power generation to invest in cleaner, greener technologies, such as renewable, carbon-free energy and, eventually, carbon capture and storage. So far, it is manifestly not working as planned.
...
The 2005 data showed that industry emitted 66m tonnes less carbon than allowed, prompting allegations that, in Germany alone, the four big power producers had enjoyed windfall profits of up to €8bn by cashing in their excess free carbon permits. In Britain, despite the tighter cap, generators are estimated to have made £1bn.
In 2006, industry emitted about 30m tonnes less than permitted. German emissions rose 0.6% while overall EU emissions went up by 1%-1.5% because of resumed growth in the eurozone.
Mr Dimas's officials readily admit that the first phase of the scheme has been a botched experiment because of the generous over-allocation of permits. But they now insist that the second phase will be much more successful because of tighter controls on quotas. Many EU governments have significantly reduced the number of carbon permits they will grant to polluters. Poland has cut its permit total by 26% and Latvia and Lithuania by half.
Who are the big winners on this? Lawyers, of course:
Cemex, the Mexican cement producer which owns the UK's RMC, is suing the European commission over the British permit plan while US Steel is similarly taking legal action over the Slovakian allocation plan. Three German companies have also launched legal action in the European court of justice.
Mahi Sideridou, EU climate policy director at Greenpeace, said yesterday's data strengthened Mr Dimas's hand in ruling on the second phase of the trading scheme. "In the first phase the commission didn't have any data and governments could freely submit; now it can compare reality to how many permits are given out," she said, suggesting that the commissioner would be emboldened to revise the scheme in time for the second phase.
Mr Dimas wants to include civil aviation in the ETS by 2011 despite the threat of legal action from the US and others. He insisted that the original EU-15 countries were still on course to meet their Kyoto target of an 8% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, despite mounting signs that Europe is still falling woefully short of this goal on its policies. California, which said last week it planned to link its own ETS to the EU's with four other western US states, and Washington will undoubtedly need more persuasive evidence.
No DSL For Me! I mentioned a few days ago that (for the third time) Frontier Telephone had called up and offered me DSL service here in the boonies--and for the third time I said, "Are you sure?" then "Yes!" Today they called me to arrange an appointment to come out and set it up--and part way through doing so, they suddenly announced, "Oh! You're 27,000 feet from the office. We can't do it."
What drives me crazy about this is that the phone company has a database that tells them how far I am from their office. They used that to tell me, "Never mind." So why did they keep offering DSL to me?
Oh yes--last night, Frontier Telephone called me a fourth time to try and sign me up for DSL. I'm not impressed with their competence.
In case you wonder why I want DSL, when I have 800 kilobit/second service:
1. Frontier was promising me 3 megabit/second service.
2. Wireless service drops a lot more packets than a wired service. The various protocols (which I used to understand reasonably well a few years ago) figure out that packets were dropped, and resend them just fine for most data uses. If you are trying to use a Voice Over IP service, however (where the little packets of sound are converted into Internet Protocol packets of several hundred bytes each), by the time those packets have been resent, they are out of sequence, and just get dropped--producing popping and cutouts.
3. Under the best of conditions, a solid transport mechanism seems to be more reliable than something that passes through the air, clouds, rain, snow, and the occasional bird. posted by Clayton at 10:24 PM permalink
Many people who think that they know what homosexuals do will be surprised by some of the places that this flyer from "gay health advocates" suggests putting your tongue. Someone hasn't learned--or doesn't care--about the diseases that get spread through the gastro-intestinal tract. Nothing surprises me. After you've lived in the Bay Area for a few years, it is difficult to be shocked or disgusted anymore.
A Major Carbon Dioxide Producer That Isn't Getting Much Attention
Underground coal fires. In 1993, this report indicated that China was losing 100 to 200 million tons of coal a year--and this isn't even something that is producing any economic benefit--it is just waste, going into the atmosphere as 2-3% of total CO2 production. This newspaper article from today just flabbergasts me at the scale of these fires:
"A global environmental catastrophe" is how geologist Glenn B. Stracher described the situation.
Stracher, of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, organized an international symposium on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"This symposium is dedicated to disclosing the severity of the coal fires problem," Stracher said, noting that some of the fires have been burning for centuries with few people aware of the problem.
Concern and action is needed, he said, because of the environmental impact -- especially of mega-fires burning in India, China and elsewhere in Asia. One coal fire in northern China, for instance, is burning over an area more than 3,000 miles wide and almost 450 miles long.
...
The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.
Soot from the fires in China, India and other Asian countries are a source of the "Asian Brown Haze." It's a 2-mile thick cloud of soot, acid droplets and other material that sometimes stretches across South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.
The cloud causes acid rain that damages crops, cuts sunlight reaching the ground by 10 to 15 percent, and has been implicated in thousands of annual lung disease deaths.
On the principle that you should concentrate your energies on the biggest problems, why is that Al Gore is concentrating on the actions that will cause enormous losses in industrial production--while this major source of carbon dioxide that is completely wasteful gets ignored? I assure that every government that has these underground coal fires would be overjoyed to get them put out--and it wouldn't damage any economies to do so. It would actually be a long-term benefit, as it would make the coal that is now burning to no good purpose available for future use, and reduce air pollution.
Now, the problem isn't trivial. In the Alleghenies, Americans have been trying for a long time to find a solution. But maybe the money that will be spent trying to come up hydrogen powered cars in the name of global warming would be better spent coming up with a technology for putting out those fires. Has anyone tried pumping liquid nitrogen down into them? I know that water doesn't work very well, because in some places, the water is hitting coal that is hot enough to disassociate and burn. Liquid nitrogen doesn't have that problem--and it makes water seem like an incendiary by comparison.
Maybe the reason that Al Gore isn't interested in trying to stop these underground coal fires is that they don't involve raising anyone's taxes, or selling carbon indulgences, or trading carbon production rights.
Made A Hartman Mask To Improve Astrophotography Focus
It looks like it should work. It is certainly the case that two holes in the mask at the front of the telescope produces two separate images out of focus--and one image when precisely at focus.
Okay, the sky is clear (or clear enough), the telescope is reasonably well polar aligned--and then I discover that I left the Pentax on while downloading pictures, and apparently it doesn't power itself off in that mode, so I was already to go, but with no ability to take pictures. Groan.
Recovered records a 'treasure-trove' By Valerie Schremp Hahn ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 04/03/2007
Nik Henle looks over old court documents from the 1830's in the basement of the St. Charles County Courthouse. (Sam Leone/P-D)
ST. CHARLES COUNTY — More than 200 years ago, a soldier in Napoleon's army helping to build a fort in Egypt turned over some rocks and discovered a treasure-trove of history known as the Rosetta Stone.
About four years ago, St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, then a judge, was poking through the county courthouse basement when he discovered a stash of court documents from the early 1800s.
"I'm kind of like that soldier," Ehlmann jokes. "I found it, and I was smart enough to not throw it on the pile of rocks, but I didn't really know exactly what I had found."
Now, after two years of preserving and indexing by the Missouri State Archives, historians are ready to tell the public exactly what they've found.
Ehlmann discovered a stash that spans 40 years of records. The first batch historians analyzed included about 7,000 pages of documents representing about 1,650 court cases and administrative actions from the years 1805 to 1835. The papers include signatures by Daniel Boone, court documents about the Spanish Southwest, and the only publicly owned biography of William Clark, which was written for his 1820 run for governor.
State archivists Bill Glankler and Nik Henle have spent countless hours in a room in the courthouse basement sorting through and indexing the records from that period. Along with documents gathered from the St. Charles County Historical Society and elsewhere, the records total about 2,800 court cases of at least 10,000 pages and fill 25 cubic-foot storage boxes.
When two policemen turned up unannounced at Alan Rawlinson's home asking to speak to his young son, the company director feared something serious had happened.
So he was astounded when the officers detailed 11-year-old George's apparent crime - calling one of his schoolfriends 'gay'.
They said primary school pupil, George, was being investigated for a 'very serious' homophobic crime after using the comment in an e-mail to a 10-year-old classmate.
But now his parents have hit out at the police, who they accused of being heavy-handed and pandering to political correctness.
"It is completely ridiculous," Mr Rawlinson said.
"I thought the officers were joking at first, but they told me they considered it a very serious offence.
"The politically correct brigade are taking over. This seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial as a playground spat."
Cheshire police launched the investigation last month after a complaint from the parents of the 10-year-old younger boy who received George's e-mail.
They said their son had been called a 'gay boy' and were concerned that there was more to the comment than playground banter and that their child was being bullied.
As a consequence, two officers were sent to the boys' school, Farnworth Primary, in Widnes, Cheshire, to speak to the headteacher who directed them to the Rawlinsons' home in nearby St Helens, Merseyside.
George told his parents that the comment was in no way meant to be homophobic and that he had simply been using the word gay instead of 'stupid'.
Mr Rawlinson, 41, who runs his own business, and whose wife, Gaynor, also 41, is a magistrate, said his son was terrified when the police arrived at their home.
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.
It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.
The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.
The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.
It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.
The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.
It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.
"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."
Think about this for a second, and imagine what sort of "balanced treatment" of the Crusades is being taught in the schools where the left is far more in control than in the United States--and this might offend Muslims?
Can you imagine schools in the United States stopping the teaching of evolution because it "challenged what was taught" in some local churches?
In another fifty years, Britain will be part of the caliphate--unless Britons finally say, "Enough! Truth doesn't get adjusted to make you happy! If you want to live in an Islamic nation, go live in one!"
It Reminds of When Iraq Went to War With Iran Some Years Back
You felt sorry for the poor people in the middle, but watching two of your enemies go at each other reminds me of the famous saying by Clarence Darrow, "I have never killed anyone, but I have read many obituaries with pleasure." The Unequivocal Notion blog, being out on the left, unsurprisingly has a link to the website of Modern Drunkard magazine--which is not a satire. Just for amusement, I thought I would see what Modern Drunkard's editorial page had to say:
As an alcohol enthusiast, you’re probably aware that the PC nannies on the Left and the Bible thumpers on the Right are aligned against us. And fanatical Muslims, of course.
What you might not know is an even more virulently anti-alcohol group has sprung to life right in our midst. How virulent, you ask?
Their propaganda campaign would make the Anti-Saloon League blush. Their billboards announce that alcohol is the culprit behind incest and child molestation. They’ve put out wanted posters for brewer Pete Coors and Denver mayor (and bar owner) John Hinkenlooper, accusing them of “dealing a deadly drug.” They say anyone selling alcohol, bartenders included, is a murderous pusher.
Go to their website and the first thing you’ll notice is a graphic blaming alcohol for domestic violence, rape, and murder. They lay Mark Foley’s perversity, Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism and even Dick Cheney’s shotgun incident squarely at alcohol’s feet. Their logic seems to be: Have you done anything wrong? Do you drink? Then it’s alcohol's fault!
So who is this diabolical organization? Who could have so much hate in their heart for the thing we love so much?
You’ll never guess.
It’s SAFER (Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation.) A marijuana legalization group.
Et tu, Bongus?
Who would have guessed? We’ve always considered them allies, haven’t we? There’s a helluva lot of crossover between pot smokers and boozeheads, and I think it safe to say drinkers are many times more likely to support the legalization of marijuana than teetotalers.
So what would compel SAFER to so vehemently attack sweet Mother Booze?
Sheer crassness. The organization’s founder, Mason Tvert, is known as the Karl Rove of the stoner set, and no wonder. SAFER has embarked on a win-at-any-cost campaign, displaying the callousness of a swimmer willing to climb on top of anyone’s head, so long as he saves himself from drowning. He figures if SAFER can demonize alcohol enough, marijuana will seem angelic in comparison.
What makes this somewhat amusing is that indeed, alcohol is a very serious social problem. Most Americans drink alcohol responsibly--but the minority that doesn't is pretty darn large. And yes, as much as Modern Drunkard might like to think otherwise, intoxication does cause people to do stupid things that they probably would not do while sober. Unfortunately, it isn't just alcohol intoxication. Some schoolmates of my wife were beaten to death with hammers by a couple of burglars while on heroin.
There is an overpowering body of evidence of the causal connection between intoxication (usually, but not always, with alcohol) and rape, murder, child molestation, drunk driving, industrial accidents, and even economic crimes, such as robbery and burglary. For some people, alcohol and other intoxicants take away the top 40,000 years of civilized behavior--and that's the best reason why governments for centuries have made some attempt to control intoxicants.
Watching potheads and a group that would call itself Modern Drunkard get into a bar fight--ah, I can just applaud both sides.
Global warming is caused by carbon dioxide emissions; carbon dioxide is an air pollutant; EPA needs to start regulating CO2 emissions from cars.
The EPA's argument was:
The connection is not proven; it is not an air pollutant in any conventional sense; Congressional authorization is not clearly in favor of this rather dramatic regulatory change (since the Clean Air Act was aimed at local pollutants); Massachusetts lacks standing to claim that it is being particularly injured.
The net effect is that the environmentalists have won the day, and Congress either needs to explicitly state that CO2 is not an air pollutant (which few Democrats will have the courage to say, and even lots of Republicans, like Larry Craig, seem to be unwilling to say), or EPA will be required to create CO2 emission limits on automobiles.
Carbon dioxide is not an air pollutant. It is a naturally occurring gas, produced by every animal on this planet, by bacteria, and some inorganic processes (CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + H20).
How far does EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act go? Will they be limiting the raising of cattle next, because they produce methane, an even more serious greenhouse gas than C02? Do they have authority to regulate the amount of CO2 that people produce? I see an opportunity for the ecofascists to use regulatory measures to limit the number of children you can have, the number of pets, and the amount of beef you can eat. With most causes, we can say that such extreme and bizarre applications of that power wouldn't happen--but environmentalism is awash in people that think of human beings as a disease that needs to be wiped out.
My wife and I went on a little train ride for dinner last night on the Thunder Mountain Line. It is the only real tourist attraction in Horseshoe Bend, but certainly worth making a 30 minute detour from Boise to do. The rails date from 1913, when the railroad provided transportation of livestock and crops out, and supplies and people into the area north of Boise.
Here's a couple of pictures of the train and the station:
It was a far better dinner than I was expecting. It was served on plastic throwaway plates and you had to walk to the end of the car to get your food, but the turkey was moist yet tender, the mashed potatoes were tasty, the green beans looked very good (although I didn't have any), the gravy was flavorful--all in all, a better meal, under the circumstances, than I would have expected.
I don't know exactly what I said to get this picture of my wife, but the expression is priceless:
As we climbed up the Payette River Valley, we had plenty of white water splashing along the rocks--although the combination of low cloud cover and motion ruined a number of the pictures that I took. Remember that the art to being a great photographer is to take thousands of pictures, and throw most of them away:
My wife wasn't sure if this was an eagle (which we have seen in this area) or an osprey. This picture is a reminder that if you are moving fast enough, and it is dark enough, a 200mm telephoto just isn't enough!
The staff on board were tremendously friendly and helpful. posted by Clayton at 4:34 PM permalink
Whose Car Do You Think It Is, Anyway?
The cat has discovered the joys of hunting mice in the garage. The claim in Jaws that the shark is the perfect killing machine may be correct, but a cat, in its weight classification on land, is certainly among the more formidable predators. The first mouse he merely threw into shock; the second one he killed and was about ready to eat, except my wife took the mouse away. But now that he has discovered the joy of hunting and killing small mammals, he always wants out in the garage.
I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the `climate wars' because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess. In the long run, our credibility as scientists rests on being very careful of, and protective of, our authority and expertise.
The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are so firmly based on well-understood principles, or for which the observational record is so clear, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise,...). Other elements remain more uncertain, but we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be deeply concerned about their possibility: failure of US midwestern precipitation in 100 years in a mega-drought; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many other examples.
I am on record in a number of places complaining about the over-dramatization and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could "shut off" or that with global warming Britain would go into a "new ice age" are either scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality [i.e. see this previous RC post]. They also are huge distractions from more immediate and realistic threats. I've paid more attention to the extreme claims in the literature warning of coming catastrophe, both because I regard the scientists there as more serious, and because I am very sympathetic to the goals of my colleagues who sometimes seem, however, to be confusing their specific scientific knowledge with their worries about the future.
...
In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making --- which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.
Still, the point that the filmmakers were making was that if global temperatures are rising for some external reason (such as changes in solar activity), a warming ocean might well increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so that atmospheric carbon dioxide could be a product of global warming, not a cause.
