A truly awful "environmental" project

Comparing to this, buying a Prius actually seems like a fairly smart idea. No kidding; we have an effort at generating power from waves, funded by your tax dollars, spending sixty million dollars to generate about 400kW peak power, or enough to power 400 homes.

Calculating things at a 25% duty cycle with a wholesale electricity cost of a nickel per kW-H, and you've got an ROI of about .1-.2%--and that before capital depreciation is accounted for. Typical ROIs in the private sector are literally a hundred to two hundred times higher, and one would do better, literally, to put the money in your savings account.

However, it gets worse. It makes whole sectors of the ocean floor off limits to fishermen (who understandably don't want to have a few kV come up through their lines), and it actually may make pollution worse. No, I am not making this up; making 2000 tons of steel and other materials and hooking it to the bottom of the ocean will require the burning of 5000 to 10000 tons of coal--more when you count the energy required to build, site, and maintain them. Given a 10-20 year life cycle for these things, they will probably NEVER produce enough energy to compensate for the coal burned to build them.

As my brother notes, "environmentalist" too often means "people who cannot do math," and this is a textbook example of this principle. It would literally be better to pay utilities to replace older power plants with new coal fired units, environmentally speaking.

Paging the EEOC.....

.....apparently, Abercrombie and Fitch, infamous/notorious for clothing catalogs in which the models aren't wearing any clothing to speak of, has fired a Muslim worker for refusing to remove her head covering. I'm not a fan of Abersmutty, but you've got to wonder what the woman was thinking--was it somehow OK for her to work in a store with pictures of mostly naked people all over the walls just because she was wearing her mini-burqa?

Now what does this "predator" word mean?

Sad news from Orlando; evidently Shamu has remembered he's a predator, and that was not good news for his trainer. Mental note to self; don't dress up like a seal and play around with killer whales. They might have that name for a reason.

Mental note #2; maybe predators are, you know, predators. Nah.....

Update: this is apparently the third human death linked to this particular animal, including the second death of a trainer. There are also, apparently, a number of other incidents related to this particular exhibit. I do not envy the lawyers for Sea World at this particular moment, to put it gently.

A study in motivation

I know a couple of vice presidents where I work. One will yell at you, and the other has the habit of walking around the facility, watching until he's more or less invisible to everyone working in the area, and then quietly walk to the office of the nearest decision-maker and tell that person what he's seen.

Guess which one gets people to jump more quickly when he speaks.

Want to have great hair?

You might do well to skip shampooing, according to one writer. H/T Lew Rockwell.

Lest anyone think....

.....that I have nothing kind whatsoever to say about things people do in government, let it be known that I am all in favor of this. Python; it's what's for dinner.

I bet it goes great with a loaf of good crusty bread and pinto beans. :^)

This scares me

Yes, first of all, the fact that this recession is slated to be rather jobless for a while. Of course, the fact that previous predictions have pretty much been flat out wrong might actually give those without work some hope. :^) (having personally taken part in the Reid/Pelosi/Obama economy, that is my prayer for those who are currently doing so)

What really scares me is on the fourth page of the link, where one woman admits that she has ten bags of pinto beans and no idea how to cook them. More or less, she's admitting that....

...she doesn't know how to boil water. Now I'm not arguing that the person in question is stupid; just the opposite. Her quotes show good intelligence. What I'd suggest, however, is that our culture--schools, jobs, government, etc.--has apparently so inculcated a culture of dependence that this poor woman is freezing at the thought of cooking dried beans.

To continue a "mantra" that readers of this humble site have seen "a few" times, yet another reason to educate your children at home, teaching them to soak, drain, boil, and then salt and spice the beans with other vegetables, meats, and such per one's taste. Unfortunately, a four hour soak of dry beans doesn't fit well in a one hour home economics class in the goverment schools.

Another reason to homeschool

So that when your kids see asinine articles arguing that Chinese occupation has been good for Tibet because of highways and railroads being built there, they'll have the knowledge of western civilization to understand that the argument is simply "Bread and Circuses! What a wonderful emperor!"--and remember what the downside was of living in that time.

One would figure as well that someone in the business of publishing a magazine would take a very dim view of nations that strictly limit freedom of speech, but apparently not. Maybe the Chinese are buying Newsweak's bonds as well as U.S. government securities?

A radical change in dietetic advise?

Apparently, 38 years after Dr. Atkins shocked the nutritional world with the claim that a diet high in protein and fat leads to weight loss and better health, the world of diet, nutrition, and such is getting around to testing the hypotheses, and it does not appear that the standard hypothesis--that the way to lose weight and stay healthy is a high carbohydrate diet--is going to stand the test.

The new hypothesis; that carbohydrates and sugar tend to cause the body to store fat by disrupting the blod sugar and insulin balance. Now there may be any number of ways to do this--I would guess that fats and protein would have a part, as would fiber intake (fiber slows digestion, too) and probably other factors--numerous small meals wouldn't be a bad way evening out blood sugar and insulin production, as well.

If the hypothesis holds, we might find that (along with chocolate, coffee, blueberries, and other wonderful foods) the best way to control weight, heart disease, diabetes, and possibly even some kinds of cancer could be to start each day with a breakfast of steak and eggs.

Now this is interesting

Apparently, we're importing bricks from Germany, or at least our government is. Somehow it's cheaper to mine clay over in Deutschland, bake the bricks there, and ship them 3000+ miles across the sea than to make them here.

I understand electronics and such where labor costs are an issue. I understand shipping crude oil, natural gas, and food. Bricks, on the other hand, when all of the South is built on red clay, and anthracite and bituminous coal veins stretch from the Appalachians past the Rockies? I reckon some of the reason for our manufacturers' difficulty might have something to do with "unions" or "government."

Never mind the little fact that brick buildings can last centuries, while few government schools are in use even 50 years after they are built. Methinks it's about time to consider building schools out of materials more suited to a 50 year building life cycle.

A thought on global climate change theory

If, indeed, the Medieval Climate Optimum, a period of above average temperatures from the year 800 to 1300, is real, that would mean that most, if not all, of the other methods used to estimate historic temperatures prior to the establishment of accurate temperature records (and those in contention as well) simply don't work--as these methods do not show a global rise in temperatures in this period.

The "consensus," and the credibility of those who have hitched their names to it, seems to be in deep, deep, trouble. Many thanks to the medieval scribes once again helping us moderns find a way out of our folly.

On a related note, if the world has indeed warmed a touch, that might help violinmakers of the future finally create instruments to rival those of Stradivari, who worked predominantly on woods grown during the Medieval period.

Dennis Kucinich channels FDR....

....and not in a good way. Believing, apparently, that the reason some people don't have a job is because other people do, Dennis Kucinich is apparently pushing a plan to allow 60 year olds obtain retirement benefits as if they were 62. Now as tempting as that might be (especially on a rough work day) to friends of mine like Jim, Kucinich is unfortunately pursuing the same methods that Hoover and FDR used to create and sustain the Depression.

Specifically, as he encourages people to drop out of the work force, he's pushing the nation towards higher debt (they won't be paying income tax on income not earned) and lower productivity--in other words, greater real poverty.

Yet another example of how Democrats (and politicians in general) need to come up to speed on Bastiat and "that which is not seen." People aren't out of work because their neighbor is working, but rather working because their neighbor has earned something he can spend.

Missing the point

Yesterday, the paper had an article about food companies working to put the flavenoid goodness of dark chocolate into a pill, evidently so people could get the health benefits of chocolate without actually needing to taste it.

Now I can understand why you would want to do this with cod liver oil in fish oil tablets, but chocolate? Do we really want to have people in positions of power, prestige, and authority who think that chocolate is best ingested in tasteless pill form? Shouldn't such people be kept away from polite society for their, and our, own good--together with the lunatics that gave us carob, TAB cola, pleather, light beer, oleomargarine, decaffeinated coffee, and soy "meat"?

I'm praying for a cure for the disorder that leads to people making these things, and claiming they're somehow equivalent to the real thing. Maybe someday, a cure will be found for an especially extreme version; the kind that argues that spouses fulfilling 1 Corinthians 7 responsibilities ought to involve latex.

Making Mark and Garfield jealous

With lunch, my past four non-breakfast meals will have been nature's most perfect food. I cooked four pans of lasagna for my daughters' birthday party (#2 and #3 are two years and two weeks apart), and the guests only ate one and a half.

Life is good. Did I mention there was a lot of chocolate involved, too?

Something not to do for Valentine's Day

Camo lingerie. Why so?

If you're a guy, and your wife doesn't hunt like Mrs. K-Rod, you're simply buying your wife something for YOUR hobby. Tacky. Why don't you get her something more romantic, like a cordless drill or a sump pump, instead? (yes, all lingerie is really for the husband, not the wife, but please.....)

If you're a gal, it's still a bad idea. Well done lingerie works by accentuating the pattern (the woman's body), while camoflage works by breaking up the pattern. Instead of driving your husband to fulfill is 1 Corinthians 7 responsibilities to you, he might never know you're there.

That noted, if you're living in sin or fornicating, I highly recommend camo lingerie for you for exactly the same reasons. :^)

Get grumpy, old man.

The happiness and very life of your daughters, or sons, probably depends on it, according to Charlotte Allen. NB; language, cartoon of people in singles bar.

Now she doesn't come out and say it--her 12 page piece more or less only documents how many promiscuous (and predatory) men use social darwinism to justify their behavior--but the reality is that our children's defense against the "meat market" mentality appears, if the testimony of the "male sluts" quoted in the article is indicative, to be the willingness of parents to actually raise their children. Overwhelmingly, the "pick up artist" is one who didn't have a decent relationship with his dad. His victim--the same.

So polish and clean the old shotgun, and get ready to tell the kid with the jeans hanging halfway off his rear end to get off your porch until he's wearing something that fits and has his shirt tucked in. Be a grumpy old man, and your kids will be the better for it.

Proof that homosexuality results from nurture.

Ironically, courtesy of the government schools of San Francisco, which have recently decided (despite a $113 million budget shortfall already) to spend $120,000 on a program for homosexual students.

Now how do we know this demonstrates nurture resulting in homosexuality? Simple; over 11% of San Francisco students identify as homosexual, bisexual, and so on, while only about 1-3% of the population as a whole does. This is a statistically significant anomaly that can only really be explained by the fact that.....

....San Francisco is probably the most friendly city in the nation, if not the world, to these "alternative lifestyles." Thank you, San Francisco, for demonstrating that nurture, not nature, leads to homosexuality.

More asbestos on my face....

John Lott reports a curious drop in the number of weather stations in cold climates, leading to a completely artificial measurement of the "rise" in global temperatures. Dr. Pachauri, maybe writing bodice ripper paperbacks is your calling after all.

A real healthcare cost reform plan

End the special rules for deductibility of employer paid health insurance vs. self-paid medical care costs, add $3000 to the deduction for each dependent, and allow 100% of medical care costs over $3000/dependent to be deducted from income. Optional; require employers who do pay health insurance to provide 50% of what they'd pay if the employee wants to get their own coverage.

Fair? Check.

Simple? Check.

Creates an incentive for people to control their own healthcare costs? Check.

Government control? Nope.

Well, I guess I know why my plan doesn't have a snowball's chance....

I dare suggest....

....that the evident and obvious failure of the mainstream media to follow up on apparently obvious signs of John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter ought to blow a permanent hole in any pretense that the mainstream media are not materially changing their reporting to support their bias. One would think that basic sympathy with Mrs. Edwards would have compelled them to blow the story open and torpedo any chances Edwards had of remaining in politics, but evidently liberal politics overcomes principles of basic decency--at least at the AP, CBS, NBC, and elsewhere.

Plan accordingly, and (I shudder to type this) thank you, National Enquirer, for keeping this man accountable when "real journalists" would not.

This might explain....

IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri's outburst against global warming deniers; evidently he's finagled a way to get petroleum and natural gas companies to bankroll a bodice ripper he's written. Now apart from the hilarity of a trained engineer/(posing as an) economist/(posing as a) climatologist apparently thinking he's Danielle Steele, he's also expecting us, apparently, to believe that there is no conflict of interest when the head of the IPCC is taking money from the companies he proposes to regulate.

Well, as honest men everywhere know, when men spend too much time thinking of (or writing about) feminine charms, the quality of their thinking tends to go down, and his recent outbursts are an excellent example of this principle. So are, for that matter, the last few IPCC reports.

Every Godly wife is buxom

No matter what the numbers assigned by Playtex, Bali, and Hanes may try to say about the matter. How so?

Look it up in Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary, where the word is defined as "obedient." Further support is given in the etamology, where the word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "bog" and "bugan" meaning "bow", as well as "sum," or some.

In other words, a "buxom" woman is one who bows to rightful authority--and we might describe a man as the same when he also bows to God-given authority.

Absent-mindedly conceding the point...

...of climate change critics is United Nations IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri. How so?

Easy. Instead of responding to legitimate criticism about the tendency of IPCC contributors to indimidate the process of peer review, fudge data, and use poor statistical methods, he resorts to personal attacks and reference to a nonexistent conspiracy to silence the IPCC.

In other words, the economist (not trained as one, but rather as an engineer) who heads the IPCC reveals that he is not only incompetent in the area of climatology, but also in basic informal logic. If only logic were taught at the schools he attended, he might not have made himself look incredibly stupid in the eyes of all those who understand it.

And, of course, the world wouldn't be looking down the two barrels of trillion-dollar carbon taxes the IPCC has been pushing for a decade. This would indicate that he may be competent in hockey, however.

Yes, hockey. A huge carbon tax and global governance demonstrates also his ignorance of sound economics, which combined with his incompetence in logic and climatology amounts to a hat trick!

Hat trick of incompetence, at least.

The sad results of government education

Apparently, Carly Fiorina, who went to the government schools in Durham, North Carolina, has produced a campaign commercial which mutiliates both Aesop's fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing, as well as Matthew 7:15-20. If only she'd had the opportunity to actually read Aesop and the Scriptures in school, she might not have humiliated herself before the whole nation like this. Sadly, she went to a sub-par school for college as well and was not able to improve her literary and cultural knowledge.

Carly, if you or one of your campaign staffers are reading, here's a little help from Veritas Press. You can find Matthew 7:15-20 in the Bible in your hotel room, if they still do that in California.

More on "Already Gone"

A while back, I posted on the book "Already Gone" by Ken Ham and Britt Beamer, which claimed that one big reason children leave the church is that they are not taught the Bible from its first verse. Agreed that this is prominent on the Pareto, if you will, but something else occurred to me.

We shuffle children off to their own Sunday School classes, children's church, teen events, youth events......anything but letting them settle into a pew with their parents. In effect, we are teaching them that....

....their place in church is anywhere but in one of the pews, and then we wonder why they take the hint when they're adults--never, ever settling into a pew. Did He not tell us to let the little children come to Him? If we effectively lock children out of adult worship, we should not be surprised when they don't show up when they grow up. Maybe it's time we put fidget dolls back in the pews and remind the adults that if they want young ones to come to and stay with Him, they'll do well to tolerate a little bit more noise from the shorter members of the congregation.

Memo to the National Association of Gals

If you want to be taken seriously, maybe it's best not to make personal attacks on young men who have become famous in part for treating young women with respect. It's especially telling--and hilarious--how Mr. Tebow seems to be a lot more comfortable with his "lack of experience" than most reporters, and especially the NOW crowd, are.

Again, one would think that NOW would overcome differences over the issue of prenatal infanticide at least enough to commend a young man who has overcome the temptations of division 1 football stardom to treat women with respect and spend his off the field time helping others. I had thought that such issues were central to feminism.

Maybe not, eh? What is certain, however, is that these fish are intent on telling the world that they do, in fact, need a bicycle--apparently a steady stream of them, judging from their endorsement of prenatal infanticide. Hopefully some of them will listen to Florida's best quarterback on the best way to ride.

More proof from Scott Brown that..

.....we are not going to win the culture wars through partisan politics. How so? Well, the new Senator gave the world an "eww" moment when he commented that he wouldn't mind if his daughters chose to pose au naturel for a skin magazine as he did as a young man, even saying that "who he is" was inextricably linked with that pictorial.

There simply isn't enough space in a typical encyclopaedia, let alone this humble blog, to discuss what's wrong with this. Suffice it to say that this humble blogger is cringing mightily at the reality that a father of daughters does not desire to protect them from this kind of thing, and apparently also has the idea that handsome, intelligent young men have no other way of making a life than to pose in Cosmo.

How not to show love to your children

Announce on national media that their doctor thinks they're putting on a few too many extra pounds. Tip of the scale to Michelle Malkin.

A great line from Jeff Jacoby

If corporate advertising was irresistible, after all, we'd all be drinking New Coke.

Think about it. It's not Skinnerian psychology, nor is it "he who has the gold makes the rules." Every once in a while, poor people wearing black pajamas overcome the patience of the world's greatest superpower. Every once in a while, the people reject the anointed follower of the Kennedy clan.

And even more inspiring, every once in a while, the people realize that a 100 year old recipe is around for a reason, and the opinion of a few focus groups doesn't change that. Life is good; God created us as sentient beings.

Attaboy, almost

This weekend, Mrs. Bubba (who is not Pentamom, a mother of five from Pennsylvania) regaled me with this story from my two year old son.

Son: I go hunting with Daddy.

attaboy

I bring my gun, and he'll bring his.

alright

And he'll carry me.

that'll be fun when we bag a big buck!