gregladen | November 13, 2010I am speaking of Representative John Shimkus, R-Ill, and the truly astonishing words he uttered before Congress demonstrated in a video that is constnatly being trolled off Google and YouTube by those who don't want you to see it:
Source and more information here.
If God's Word is infallible, unchanging, and perfect, then dinosaurs did not live in a different era than humans, and not in great antiquity, and what geologists and paleontologists say about the "age of dinosaurs" must be the word of Satan designed by the dark lord of the underworld to confuse us.
If God's Word is infallible,…
gregladen | November 13, 2010Maybe.
Just the other day I was thinking that I'd love pop mail access to my facebook "email" account. Facebook "email" is annoying and broken as an email service, but then again, it is not supposed to be an email service, is it?
Untill it is. Facebook will probably, according to rumors on the intertubes, roll out a revamp of its "inbox" which will make facebook email work with something like yourusername@facebook.com and generally behave like a mail server. Then, I will be able to access my facebook mail with alpine! Monday. It's all going to happen on Monday.
gregladen | November 13, 2010It is funny to see this headline on our local news (CBS) web site:
"Some Prep for Snow, Other Think Flakes Won't Fly Yet"
Then I look outside the window and see accumulations nearing a half foot of snow, then I look at the weather maps and realize that the local CBS affiliate is probably buried, so no one could update the story about how it might not snow and stuff.
Speaking of WCCO, the local CBS affiliate, yesterday Tim Pawlenty, our lame Governor (insert the word "duck" in there if you want, though I'm not sure why you would), did his last weekly radio address. I never did listen to one…
gregladen | November 12, 2010Louisiana is one of those states where really stupid stuff tends to happen, especially when it comes to evolution in the school curriculum. Recently, a state panel was in a position to chose either creationist textbooks with which to abuse the children for whom they are responsible, or good biology textbooks to educate the children for whom they are responsible. Under considerable pressure to not become the next national laughing stock, the advisory council voted 8-4 to use the correct books.
That's good news, but it ain't not over yet. This was only a preliminary vote, and the final…
gregladen | November 12, 2010Observe the current Atlantic Wide satellite image from the National Weather Service:*
Look in the lower third, left side of this image, north of the South American continent, south of Haiti. You can see a blob of clouds that, especially when you look at this animation, is building in strength and organizing, and has a reasonable chance of some day becoming a tropical cyclone (this is discussed briefly here) .
But while everybody is looking at that, what about this? Specifically, that giant rotating low pressure system off the Carolinas. Isn't that impressive? It is, of course, acting…
gregladen | November 12, 2010Over eleven thousand Haitians have been infected with cholera, and over 700 have died. The epidemic is worsening very quickly. Over 80 of the dead have died within the last 24 hours as of this writing. The resources needed to deal with this are not available, apparently because cholera in Haiti is not as interesting or sympathy garnering as an earthquake in Haiti.
From Medecines Sans Frontiers:
Over the past three days, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams supporting Haitian Ministry of Public Health facilities and working in their own independent medical structures in Haiti's…
gregladen | November 12, 2010As I watched this, I decided to post it on my blog, and then my mind went through a series of possible titles for the post, but there were so many yet so few that would be appropriate.
This lady is obviously crazy. Frankly, perhaps the mail carrier is crazy for not driving off with her arm in the door, but I wasn't there so it's hard to say.
I should say, for context, that Hingham Massachusetts is a relatively affluent but typically fairly mighty white somewhat liberal region along the "South Shore" of Massachusetts, south of Boston and adjoining Boston Harbor. It dates back to 1635, and…
gregladen | November 12, 2010Probably. Or, to be more exact, the seasons seem to end later these days than they did in those days, if "those days" is defined as the first decade or so during which reasonably good (though not perfect) data were collected compared to now. A more immediate question may be: When will this year's hurricane season end?
Officially, the Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1st through November 30th.1
I am not certain, but it is probably the case that those dates were picked some time ago in order to include all of the days during which we were likely to have Atlantic storm activity of…
gregladen | November 12, 2010
"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." (The swine-flu outbreak of 1976 occured when Gerald Ford -- a Republican -- was president.)
gregladen | November 12, 2010Overall, my opinion of New Yorkers just went down three notches.
At 3 minutes: Why we feel good hating Bush, but bad hating Obama.
gregladen | November 11, 2010
Wow. Just wow. It just keeps going and going. And going.
Hat tip: wfr
RT America broadcasts from studios in Washington, DC. We report on the other side of the story, not making any conclusions, but raising the unanswered questions.
Tune in to watch news reports, features and talk shows with a totally different perspective from mainstream American television.
Like I said. Irresponsible.
The woman speaking is a scientoligist. So are these people, according to one source on the internet (which may or may not be accurate*):
John Travolta - actor
Chick Corea - influential American…
gregladen | November 10, 2010
click image to make it gigantic
This false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows Saturn's rings and southern hemisphere. The composite image was made from 65 individual observations by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer in the near-infrared portion of the light spectrum on Nov. 1, 2008. The observations were each six minutes long.
In this image constructed from data collected in the near-infrared wavelengths of light, scientists designated blue to indicate sunlight reflected at a wavelength of 2 microns, green to indicate…
gregladen | November 10, 2010"The brown dwarfs jump out at you like big, fat, green emeralds," said Amy Mainzer, the deputy project scientist of WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer, who makes jewelry in her spare time, explained that the brown dwarfs appear like green gems in WISE images because the methane in their atmospheres absorbs the infrared light that has been coded blue, and because they are too faint to give off the infrared light that is color-coded red. The only color left is green.
Like Jupiter, brown dwarfs are made up of gas -- a lot of it in the form of methane, hydrogen…
gregladen | November 10, 2010
"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?"
gregladen | November 10, 2010You've heard that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk, and that there are sea lanes open in the northern summer that had not been open previously, and on and so forth.
Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older "multiyear" sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season. Some scientists suspected that this loss was due entirely to wind pushing the ice out of the Arctic Basin -- a process that scientists refer to as "export." In this study, Ron Kwok and Glenn Cunningham at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif…
gregladen | November 10, 2010Two weeks ago Julia and I took the road from the cabin to Longville and back and noticed that they had put up a new sign at each end of the curvy, hilly treacherous part, where you drive dangerously high above bogs and wooded kettles with no guard rail and there is one blind curve after another. Of treacherous roads I've been on, I'd say this bit of rural highway ranks about ... 10 thousandth, but I've driven thousands of kilometers in the Congo, so the comparison is not really fair. Anyway, the signs are large like the kind that might announce the entrance to a national forest or the…
gregladen | November 10, 2010The evidence is starting to add up. First, we have the absence of evidence, which is always tricky but sometimes relevant: Nobody picked up a rocket on radar, aircraft pilots did not see a vertical high speed accelerating object, etc. etc. Then we have the alternative explanations, including the shape and nature of the contrail, curves in the contrail unlikely from a ballistic missile, and so on.
I'm betting on routine aircraft contrail. This will be an interesting one to pick apart later when all the conjectures are in.