First, an update on the fiasco with NASA/NOAA's temperature monitoring stations. Anthony Watts has surveyed about one third of the 1221 climate monitoring stations, and of those he's taken a look at, about 70% have "severely compromised" placing vs. the guidelines.
The implications are stark; it means that about 70% of the data received will tend to overestimate temperature. Given that the "heat island" effects tend to increase as you build an area, it would suggest that the "trend" of global warming is more than a wee bit dubious, to put it mildly.
Next, a school district in Maryland is threatening jail time for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children for chicken pox and hepatitis B. While I can understand requirements for, say, smallpox, diptheria, tetanus, and polio, these puzzle me. Chicken pox simply isn't life threatening (as a rule) in the way that diptheria and other diseases are, and if any of our elementary and junior high schools are hotspots for the transmission of hepatitis B, they should be shut down immediately.
You see, getting "Hep B" requires getting someone else's blood into your system, or having sex with them. If kids are getting this at school, close the school and put the teachers in jail, stat.
And a quick reminder; it's just this sort of "genius" that Hillary Clinton and advocates of universal, single payer healthcare want to give a new job; telling your doctor how to treat you.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
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12 hours ago
6 comments:
re: global warming... My ex-boss at NOAA, upon being told of such things just claimed: that it's just as likely that a building or tree would shade the site and lead to a cooling effect in the data. BS
And... I didn't think that schools had the power of imprisonment. It often felt like it, but I thought that was purely coincidental. ;^)
Oh. I'm reading the article... They'd expel my child from school and then jail me for the child's "truancy"?!?!! Neat trick. Government... Subtle.
Neat trick, but hardly new. It happens for all kinds of reasons -- the kid gets expelled from school, and somehow or other the parent is still responsible for the kid's education regardless. Now this wouldn't be so hard to swallow, if it weren't for the fact that public schools allegedly exist to provide a free education to all kids in order to fulfill the government mandate of compulsory education.
It would seem to me that if the very institution designed to fulfill the mandate comes to the conclusion that the kid is ineducable for one reason or another, the mandate ought to be voided in that case. But no, the kid is ineducable for whatever reason, according to the schools, but the parents are still responsible for educating him. It's a huge stupidity in the system.
A case in point was the delinquent brother of a friend of mine. The school decided he was too bad an apple to be allowed to remain in school, but then tried to block efforts to homeschool him. They actually didn't have a leg to stand on, and they allowed the homeschooling to occur until he reached minimum dropout age, but they made it difficult. It's pretty sad when you have an institution trying to maintain a monopoly on something they don't even want to do -- educating problem kids -- just so that there's no danger of losing control over the kids they do want control over.
Well said on both parts; and Mark, it always stuns me how an awful lot of guys with Ph.Ds somehow will not recognize the fact that their data is not taken properly, and that for that reason, it's inexcusable to be drawing conclusions from it.
It really doesn't matter whether the station is on a heat island or in an ice island; the simple fact is that it doesn't represent what's really going on.
Maybe schools in your neck of the woods are different, but down here, underage vampire sex is quite the norm.
In all seriousness, I agree with you. Who is getting hepatitis b at age 7? Worrisome...
As a rule chicken pox is nearly always fatal to unborn children if a mother gets infected in the early stages of pregnancy.
We lost 2 children to chicken pox in this way and would certainly support programs encouraging vaccinations.
Two? After the first loss, your wife should have been immune. My condolences about losing twins, apparently, but don't you think there is a reality that putting parents in jail for failing to vaccinate their children goes a wee bit beyond "encouragement"?
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