Major U-verse update

A couple of weeks ago, Total Home DVR just became much closer to truly Total. It's now possible to start a recording from any set-top box, stop it, erase it, or schedule it in advance. Also: the Search feature, System Information, and probably other things I have not discovered yet, are available now from the secondary STB's. Whoopee! The main STB with the DVR in it is still the only one that can rewind live TV, but who knows how much longer that restriction will apply. Also new is a screen saver, and automatic repeat, after about 3 minutes, of a recording.

We went to the Moon

Forty years ago.

Will we ever go back?

Where is our Delos D. Harriman?

In India or China, perhaps. Human beings will return to space. There is no law of physics that says that they will be American.

We Americans could at least try.

"Three libertarians — on television — at once!"

How often does that happen?

Talking about health care.

There's a little 2-out-of-3 giggle fit about 30 seconds in that seems refreshingly different from the usual punditry. Do Democrats ever laugh like that?

I haven't said much about the Obama health care initiative here, mostly because it came on so sudden. But it's another one of these bills that are too big to read, and yet must be passed in a huge hurry, because there's a crisis going on, don't you understand that, you dimbulb conservative obstructionist?

TigerHawk has something to say about bills that are too big to read. If they are too big to read, maybe, just maybe, they are too big to pass. Oh never mind, there's no maybe about it.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the video.

Where in the world is Sarah Palin?

Or, Photo caption writer didn't read the article.


It's actually a pretty decent article. But that was too funny to let go by.

Who is Van Jones?

He is the "Green Jobs Czar." We did not use to have czars in the US. I wonder what happened that we now have so many of them.

He's a self-admitted Communist.

Update: Jones elevates the level of discourse. Republicans are assholes, "some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start gettin' a little bit uppity." Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Another update: Jones signed a 9/11 Truther petition, and is now scrambling to deny that he knew what he was doing at the time. Most charitable interpretation to put on this: high as a kite.

Much, much more on Jones at Gateway Pundit.

Update: Jones has resigned, at midnight Saturday night or Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. The entire controversy has existed only on Fox News and the Internet, so NY Times readers will be baffled.

Will another "green jobs czar" be appointed? "Green jobs czar" is not a position like postmaster general or secretary of state. It may have been, I suspect it was, created ad hoc to provide a way to get Van Jones into the government. Obama still has not filled many of the structural positions that need appointments, but he is creating new positions outside the structure.

San Diego squid attack!

I'd like to do that headline UK Sun style, really big, in red:

Squid Attack!

Like that.

Jumbo squid spook divers off San Diego

Jumbo Squid Menace San Diego Shores

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The squids are coming, the squids are coming!

Eine kleine Gitarre-Musik

From Theo Boehm's place, the baroque lute:



And from Violins and Starships, this:



The seemingly effortless way that Desiderio plays the ascending scale segments in the second piece in the second video pleases me enormously. That's real virtuosity: making something difficult look easy. Those quick passages sound like raindrops falling on chimes.

In the first video, that appears to be a 25-string lute, with 3 single strings and 11 double courses, and 9, possibly 10, full-width frets. The full-width frets on a lute are short lengths of the same gut (might be nylon, in this era) that the strings are made of, tied on to the neck. This means that it's possible to tune the lute's frets, as well as its strings, so that if the piece you are going to play is in one key, without a lot of accidentals, you can play it in something close to just temperament. It also means that it's possible for the frets to need tuning, just like the strings; and the thought of having to tune both frets and strings is the stuff of nightmares.

The modern guitar, with its fixed frets, must use equal temperament, like Bach's well-tempered clavier, in which some notes are always a little out of tune. The only modern type of music I can think of that uses just temperament is Cajun, which would include zydeco. Cajun accordion players customarily have their reeds reground to just temperament, which works for them as the Cajun button accordion is made to play in only a couple of keys.

Towards the end of the Baroque, the guitar supplanted the lute as the instrument of choice for young men serenading their sweethearts. I wish I could remember the source of this (paraphrased): "When the guitar came into fashion, the lute went out. The guitarists were serenading the girls while the lute players were still tuning up."

I'm sure I've botched the German in the headline. Tell me how to fix it.

Palin in WaPo: "The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End"

Sarah Palin lays out familiar objections to cap-and-trade.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

A little of that good Sarah snark there. And to conclude:

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.

Nice. In this written piece, she is able to throttle the speed of her thinking, simplify her sentence structures, and supply her own punctuation, so that the usual media tricks of inaccurate transcription can't be applied. The WaPo comments are, for the most part, about what one would expect, mostly accusations that she did not write it herself. Here's a NY Times op-ed from last year, for comparison. No, I did not read all 3000+ comments, but 10 pages or so seems like a fair sample.

It's awfully good to see these sensible arguments presented in a major publication, from someone whose ability to command attention is so great.

Let's take a closer look at that book …

… that Obama's science advisor John Holdren wrote with Paul Ehrlich. Zombie has the story: John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet. Good grief.

This stuff about the Planetary Regime fits nicely with Al Gore's recent call for "global governance," and what that regime would do sounds a lot like the prescriptions of Herman Daly in Steady-State Economics, cited here earlier in Obama's chief energy regulator tells us to prepare to freeze in the dark.

Anyone for a New World Order?

Thanks to Blake for the Zombietime link.

Update: David Harsanyi should have linked to Zombie.

Another update: Follow-up post at Zomblog, as Holdren and and the White House attempt to deny that what was written was what was meant, or something like that.

What happened in Honduras

Told by a Honduran. "Octavio Sánchez, a lawyer, is a former presidential adviser (2002-05) and minister of culture (2005-06) of the Republic of Honduras." In the Christian Science Monitor:

Sometimes, the whole world prefers a lie to the truth. The White House, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and much of the media have condemned the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya this past weekend as a coup d'état.

That is nonsense.

In fact, what happened here is nothing short of the triumph of the rule of law.

The OAS, in suspending Honduras, shows that it is another dictators' club. The Obama administration, in supporting Zelaya, shows that it does not support the rule of law. Now Zelaya is making threats and rallying support.

And then there's this, from Neo-neocon:

End22: is this why Obama supports Zelaya?

This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen online—a movement to repeal the 22nd amendment. You know, the one that limits a president to two terms.

Think it can’t happen here? Think again. These people set up this group on Obama’s inauguration day. I’m fairly certain it’s a very small movement now. But this can grow, depending on how much money they get to spread their message. It’s a move for Zelaya-style “democracy” in this country.

Gerard Van der Leun, commenting on that thread, notes that Barack3rdterm dot com, net and org also point to end22 dot com. I think the favicon of a squared-off blue O followed by an exclamation point is evidence that it's not a general opposition to term limits that fuels these people.

And an update: Why Honduras matters.

Thanks to Althouse commenter elHombre for the Sánchez article.

Skeptical scientists are speaking up

Starting from a thread at Althouse about the current G8 summit …

It seems that William Happer, Princeton physicist, who used to work for the government but was fired by Al Gore back in 1993, has joined with fifty-three other physicists, including a Nobel Prize winner (in physics, not peace), to write a letter to the Council of the American Physical Society asking for a reconsideration of the Council's November 2007 Statement on Climate Change.

Brian Karpuk writes about this at Newsburglar. The WSJ article he mentions is this one: The Climate Change Climate Change: The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere. 575 comments at last count, some of them substantial.

Happer's testimony before the Senate in February is here, and some other places as well.

Some of those physicists more recently wrote an open letter to Congress.

An interview with Happer:

Evil mutant targets homeowners in addition to industry

Deep within the Waxman-Markey bill are some provisions relating to energy efficiency of private dwellings, which … well, let Jimmie Bise explain it. Part 1. Part 2.

Krugman out of his mind and over the line

Another link to Neo-neocon. Good bunch of comments over there, too.

"Traitors to the planet?" Good grief. Put down that Kool-Aid, Dr. Krugman. You're way outside your academic field here. Let no one say after this that warming is a scientific issue any more. The politicians have got their teeth into it now.

I'd be more inclined to call people voting for Waxman-Markey traitors, in the old fashioned sense of working for the destruction of their country, if I were going to sling that word around, which, of course, I'm not.

I wouldn't use apophasis on those guys. No I wouldn't.

---------------------
More from Tom Maguire.

Update: Lomborg on Krugman, et Al.: Al Gore and friends create climate of McCarthyism. Via Planet Gore.

Science news

In a piece of original research which took place on the evening of June 29, 2009, a serving of ice cream (mixed chocolate and vanilla) was eaten by your correspondent. Following this, a puppy was allowed to lick the cup. This step shows that when a larger creature is done with some food, a smaller one may still be able to get some good out of what is left. (A more commonly encountered proof is provided by ants at picnics, ubique.) When the puppy was done, the cup appeared to be pretty well cleaned up. It then was replaced on the patio table, and ignored for a while. When next it was looked into, a lightning bug had continued the scavenging of leftovers. This demonstrates that the principle of leftovers, above, can apply more than once to the same dessert. (Leftovers are recursive.) It also demonstrates that at least one lightning bug likes ice cream. Your correspondent suggests that lightning bugs are not commonly thought of as being fond of ice cream because they rarely have the opportunity to feast on a very thin film of it which in turn is on a hard surface, which saves their tiny feet from the possibility or indeed likelihood of sinking into the ice cream substrate.

Preliminary conclusion: Multi-specific mutualism. Humans benefit from puppies; puppies benefit from humans; lightning bugs benefit from puppies; humans benefit from lightning bugs. Ice cream is a constant, or fudge factor, in the system of relations. Did someone say fudge?

Thus it is shown that some of the best things in the world, to wit, puppies, lightning bugs and ice cream, have a closer, one might say more intimate relationship, than previously believed. And now, when I think of ice cream, I will think of lightning bugs, and vice versa. Not forgetting the puppy. Who could forget the puppy? Not I.



The ice cream gets melty, in between the human and puppy. That makes this observation a demonstration of trickle-down economics, and how, in practice, it benefits bipeds, quadrupeds, and hexapodia. In the next installment, the relationship between ice cream and fireworks. The lightning bug may have something to say about nocturnal illuminations.

(The second picture, on the right, gets a great deal bigger if clicked.)

Deep Greens in high places

In the London Times:

UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.

“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”

… However, Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

“We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder,” he said.

These recommendations are a lot more radical than what we have heard publicly from, say, John Holdren, Obama's science advisor, but stem from the same kind of Deep Green, Ehrlichite doom-saying mindset.

Porritt has a blog, which reveals that he is strongly opposed to nuclear power. Expanded use of nuclear power is the most readily available way to produce energy without emitting carbon. So cutting carbon emissions without using non-carbon-emitting power sources, yes, that does seem to require population cuts. To cut population by only 50%, but cut carbon emissions by 80%, would also require severe poverty for most of the remainder. Burying all the (30,000,000!) corpses would provide "shovel-ready" work for those remaining, and sequester the carbon in the bodies. Incineration would be counter-productive.

I feel like I need a shower, from thinking about this stuff. This is supposed to be responsible policy debate? Why isn't this kind of thing consigned immediately to the lunatic-rants bin?

There's more on this at Belmont Club, with a goodly number of comments.

This story is a few months old; I missed the Belmont Club post, and just came across it at Dr. Weevil.

"There Is No Evidence"

That's what Australian former warmingist David Evans says about AGW. There's a quick summary at There Is No Evidence dot com, with a link to a much fuller discussion (PDF).

Last sentence from the PDF: "It appears at this point that the CO2 theory is doomed, and it is only a matter of time before its bubble bursts." A matter of time? How much time do we have before the Senate vote on their version of Waxman-Markey? Bursting before then, please.

Evans runs Science Speak, "a scientific modeling and mathematical research company." From their homepage I learned that his colleague there, Joanne Nova, has written a guide for the climate skeptic, called, appropriately enough, The Skeptics' Handbook, and has an informative blog.

When you list them all in one place ...

… it seems like there are an awful lot of female teachers getting in trouble for sexual contact with students.

I wonder how long a similar list of offending male teachers would be?

Since it's Politically Correct now to treat any man who comes near a child as a potential sex offender, a comparison of the lists could be instructive. Maybe it's the women who need watching.

The article was linked in a comment at Belmont Club, on a thread which will inspire another post, in a few minutes.

Obama's Chavismo revealed by reaction to events in Honduras

Read Neo-neocon on this. Compare with Obama's unwillingness to speak for freedom in Iran.

More: Ramirez in IBD:



And an editorial there.

Pournelle: "Authority to accomplish the impossible implies absolute power."

An aphorism is born. I hope Dr. Pournelle won't mind if I quote this whole passage.

That is a world-level statement

Mr. Pournelle,

"Authority to accomplish the impossible implies absolute power" is an eye-opening statement. It is very good. You might want to spread it around. Much like that "power corrupts" statement.

Nathan Okun

Thank you. On reflection, perhaps the principle deserves some kind of title analogous to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, but I haven't thought of a suitable name yet. It does hold up to inspection. The statement was that just as in logic a false statement implies the universe class, in human affairs authority to accomplish the impossible implies absolute power, and that does seem true enough.

And now the House has passed perhaps the worst bill in its history, 1,000 pages that no one had read giving enormous regulatory power in pursuit of the impossible. The actual effect of US adoption of cap and trade on climate is essentially nil. China and India will continue to burn coal and oil as they industrialize. CO2 levels will continue to rise. Global temperatures will continue to rise. US self destruction may affect the global temperature in the year 2100, but I know of no theory that can show the effect will be greater than 1 degree C (that is, global temperature would be 1 degree C less without US contribution to CO2) and that is a very extreme limit; few of the theories show our contribution to be large enough to have that much effect. The most likely outcome is an enormous hamper to US economic recovery and no effect whatever on global temperature.

The President speaks of this as a jobs bill. The cost of each job created by this is enormous. Economic growth and energy cost have a high negative correlation and always have, and this is an energy tax; it will raise the price of energy, whatever else it does. Nearly all "green" energy produces energy at a cost great than the equivalent of $150/bbl oil.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Indeed. Dr. P. understates the number of pages in the bill, but that number was changing so fast, it's a trivial error.

Elsewhere, tangentially to a note about the unwillingness of alarmist modelers to share their source code, Dr. Pournelle notes a distressing possibility:

[T]he charges of "Climate Change Deniers" continue to circulate, while the number of falsifiable hypotheses from the consensus group does not increase. The very nature of science may be at stake: consensus as more important than falsifiability.

Though of course science has always suffered from the problem of consensus. Cases in point, Semmelweis, Wegener.

Your lyin' eyes - 2

The blue and the green. Take a look at this optical illusion, which proves that the images we perceive are not direct input from the eyes, but considerably processed by the brain before reaching the conscious mind. In other words, what you see is not necessarily what you are looking at.

And do take a look at the site whence it came, that of Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Much more of this there. There is a warning on the front page: "Warning: This page contains some works of 'anomalous motion illusion', which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick. Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately." So be warned. I will not be responsible for your keyboard if you toss your cookies. By way of Rand Simberg.

Evil mutant succeeds in first battle!

Forces of Truth, Justice, and The American Way have not prevailed.

Waxman-Markey passed in the House, 219 to 212.

Watts Up With That has the vote, and a video from the ridiculously brief debate.

More at Ace of Spades.

Michelle Malkin liveblogged the debate, Part 1, Part 1.1 (looking forward), Part 1.2 (sidelight on the relative importance of Michael Jackson's death), Part 2, Part 2.1 (sidelight on Barney Frank, and the bill's implications for financial regulation), and Part 3, the vote.

It's not a bill, it's a concept! I mean, it really is not a bill. Details will be filled in later. So they didn't know what they passed because they had not read it, and because it was not there to read. Both at once! There is some serious dereliction of duty going on here.

EPA suppressed a skeptical climate study

CEI has a draft copy. More at Watts Up With That. Part 1, Part 2, with a link to the study.

More at The Corner.

And more from Michelle Malkin: EPA plays hide and seek; suppressed report revealed.

More yet at Cnet News.

Update, June 28: Watts Up With That now has the final version of the report. Unfortunately, it lacks Section 5, "Conclusions," for which space was left in the draft. It still lacks the polish of a proper final report, but the rushed circumstances of its preparation, and the suppression, explain that. Too bad the Conclusions section was never written. There is, however, an Executive Summary, which states, among other things, "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until about 2030 given the 60 year cycle described in Section 2) there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain much of the available data."

Evil mutant continues to grow!

Mutation rate update! The Waxman-Markey bill gained another 300 pages overnight! This alone should be reason to postpone the vote.

The debate is live on C-Span. At this moment, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) is griping about how little the bill contains on the subject of flex-fuel cars. How does he know what's in it? Did he read all 1500 pages since this morning?

Club for Growth lists 15 Reasons to Oppose Climate Bill.

Even Greenpeace opposes Waxman-Markey.

Earlier post: Waxman-Markey, evil mutant — can it be stopped?

"Iraq is like a baby right now"

In the London Times:

Iraqis have second thoughts over June 30 date for US troops to leave

For six years Iraqis in this restless provincial capital have been waiting for US forces to withdraw, in the hope that the area will return to being Iraq’s sleepy rural backwater.

However, with only days to go before the last American soldiers are due to pull out of Baquba and other Iraqi cities, the residentshaving doubts.

There are fears that a premature departure will lead to a return of sectarian violence or allow al-Qaeda to re-establish itself. Many would like the Americans to remain until security is restored permanently.

“After you guys pull out from the city I don’t know what our enemies are going to do,Thaban Hassan said. The head of an Iraqi Army battalion in Baquba, he told the American soldiers gathered in his office that “safety is not 100 per cent . . . why are the Americans leaving?”

Remembering what happened after our abandonment of Vietnam … It would be a shame to see Iraq's new democracy torn to pieces by a power struggle among terrorists and despots, leading to another dictatorship or mullahcracy. Democracy is a thing previously unknown to the region.

In the past few days a bomb hit a mayor’s convoy, another hit an Iraqi army patrol and there was a revenge killing of an al-Qaeda militant.

In line with the status of forces agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, all US troops will cease patrolling Iraqi cities from June 30.

Despite the spike in violence Mr al-Maliki has insisted that the withdrawal will go ahead as planned.

Colonel Thompson called this insistence political and said that he would prefer to keep US soldiers in Diyala province, which remains a hub for insurgents coming into the country, until after elections next January.

That view is shared by residents. Dhea Taha, 32, who lives with her children near Baquba, said: “The security situation is not stable in the first place ... there is an increase in terrorist activity.”

Mohammad al-Obeidi, the chairman of the Security Council of Qais and Khalis, areas of Baquba which still have sectarian tensions, said that Mr al-Maliki’s reassurances did not ease concerns.

“Iraq is like a baby right now," he said. "It needs people to look after it.”

Update: Jay Nordlinger on Iraq:

There are many, many Americans — including most of official Washington — who are heavily invested in opposition to the Iraq War. They think it was a mistake, even a crime. They think the war was an impossible task. They think that no good can come of it. So, if good — much, much good — does come of it: Who will be around — who will be willing — to say, “Hurray! Well done! This was a fine American hour, a boon to ourselves and others”?

Do you know what I mean? An astounding victory, an astounding achievement, could be swept under the rug, because of the bitterness, inflexibility, and embarrassment of countless American elites.

Last fall, Ryan Crocker, then our ambassador in Baghdad, told a group of us the following — this was at the end of our discussion, when I asked whether there was anything else he wanted to say:

“Iraq is really, really important. How things go here will transform the region and America’s role in the region, one way or the other. If Iraq is successful in establishing itself as a democracy, where the rule of law is paramount, that will be something remarkable for the region. . . .

“People are tired of Iraq. They say, ‘Let’s get it over and done with. We don’t want to watch the Iraq movie anymore.’ But the Iraq movie will go on for many more reels, with or without us. And it will have a big effect on us, whether we like it or not.”

Funny, but we don’t seem to be watching the Iraq movie much at the moment, do we? Is it because George W. Bush is in Texas?

Another story: As U.S. troops move on, Iraqis fear the coming turmoil.

Palin on women in politics

A campaign speech, from October 21, 2008 (it says here). And a good one. She speaks so well. I was struck, listening to her in debates and interviews, by how she never, well hardly ever, used fillers like well, um, ah, to gain time; and by her ability to construct complex sentences on the fly. Her interviews with Greta Van Susteren were particularly good. For instance. I think a lot of the criticism of her speaking was from people who simply didn't have the grasp of the language to understand her. Obama, by contrast, always talks down to his audience, using simple grammar and simple vocabulary.

John Ziegler recently interviewed her on the radio. About 20 minutes.

The speech was mentioned in a comment at Reclusive Leftist. The main post deals with internal politics of NOW and their connection with generational changes in approaches to feminism. Linked by Reynolds.