Friday, December 31, 2010

9,099


2010 – where does it fit in the warmest year list? | Watts Up With That?: "So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010.  Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list."

Radical-in-Chief Update

Weigel on Marxism - By Stanley Kurtz - The Corner - National Review Online: "Also, the Marxist undercurrent that has always infused “democratic socialism” in America has never entirely disappeared.  That is a revealing fact as well.  A significant threat to liberty that inheres in even the most reconstructed socialism.  This comes out in various ways in Radical-in-Chief.  The Marxism question is complicated.  Marxism gets transformed and downplayed in modern democratic socialism, but it never goes away.  That is the reality of Obama’s socialist community organizing world.       

It would be a mistake to make too much of that fact, but also a mistake to deny it.  The book does not score cheap points but lays out the reality of modern socialism in all its complexity.  The result is scary, but it’s a legitimate concern, based on a fair and nuanced portrait of modern democratic socialism and its place in community organizing, not a bogus invocation of the Gulag."
What? You haven't read "Radical-in-Chief" yet?

Or Maybe Not

Moonbattery: Affirmative Action Explained: "Affirmative Action is so obviously unjust, unconstitutional, counterproductive, and morally wrong, our liberal rulers must have some really good reasons for continuing to impose it decade after decade. Or maybe not:"



And in case you want some data to support his comments about Asians, see here. Luckily, FDR's concentration camps for the Japanese during WWII have been written out of the history books to avoid total liberal brain lock. So voila, no conflict to resolve!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Not To Mention China...


K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD | Mercatus: "This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.
 
That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing."

Union State

We have gone far beyond even FDR's dreams:
FDR's warning: Public employee unions a no-no: "President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of the American labor movement, was a man of strong character. One has to look no further than the heroic way he coped with his crippling polio. This dreadful disease undoubtedly made him the consummate realist.

For example, although he had a lock on labor's vote, he expressed caution about public sector unions. In a little-known letter he wrote to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees in 1937, Roosevelt reasoned:

'... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Featherweight Translations

RTWT:
Simple Physics – In reality my feather blew up into a tree | Watts Up With That?: "The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).

IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”"

Monday, December 27, 2010

priOrities

Obama calls Pakistani Prez to appeal for clemency for Asia Bibi -- no, wait... - Jihad Watch: "Actually, Obama has done nothing whatsoever about Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who faces judicial murder for blasphemy in Pakistan. But he did find the time to call the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles to congratulate him for giving Michael Vick a second chance."
We have a whack job for a President. But he is tall, nice looking and has a soothing voice. In short, our stupefied "voters" have elected an American Idol.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

A Tiny Place

Belmont Club » On A Darkling Plain: "“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
– Albert Einstein"