MaxRedline

Global Warming

The recent findings from NASA's long-lived rover missions on Mars have been really cool.  They've found unmistakable signs of life on the planet, in the form of sulfides that are only created by biological activity.  Okay, they haven't found bones or skulls or anything - just some residue created by what we on Earth would refer to as pond scum.  But it's a start.

The ionosphere is growing in size, and will eventually warm the planet (even as it toasts ours).  This means that molecules in the Martian pond scum will become more active, as increased energy is delivered to them.  And thus starts the chain of evolution again on the Red Planet.  Given a few million years, that pond scum may well evolve into lawyers.  Or politicians.

What's Really Going On?

Obama has ordered SWAT teams to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Why would that be done?  Could it be that the explosion which took out a state-of-the-art oil rig wasn't accidental?

According to reports emanating from Russia, a North Korean cargo vessel left port from Cuba on 18 April and significantly deviated from course; bringing the vessel within a short distance of the rig. It is believed to have deployed an SSC Sang-O Class mini-submarine at this time.  This sub, with a range of less than 200 miles, would have been unable to visit the platform and return to the Dai Hong Dan mothership, and so it is speculated that the seventeen-man crew were suicide-mission volunteers.

Thus far, information has been extremely disjointed.  However, enough is available to suggest that this environmental disaster is a direct result of an attack by North Korea, with whom we are technically still at war.

The Right To Privacy

There are so many new "rights" being alleged these days that it's hard to keep up.  One of the latest is the "right" of animals to have privacy.  One Dr. Brett Mills, at the University of East Anglia (darn, that place sounds so familiar) claims that while wildlife documentaries can be important in educating people, they inevitably deny many species the right to privacy.

Obviously, the right to privacy is incredibly important for most species of animals, and is something that for decades, people have fought for and died to preserve.

Yet, questions do remain.  It seems odd that a professor at an organization that has been shown to be corrupt in regard to the AGW controversy would choose to declare that documentary filming in some way violates the "rights" of animals to "privacy".  It is even more interesting when considered in light of the fact that the U.K. ranks slightly behind Russia and China in terms of governmental intrusion and citizen surveillance.  Humans in the U.K. should have no expectation of privacy, yet it is apparently a "right" that should be accorded to animals. 

If the animals being filmed do not give their consent, is the filming ethical?

Only a university professor could come up with something like this, when caught on camera perhaps fifty times while walking to get a cup of tea from a vendor.

Voting Time

For the seat on Metro for east Multnomah county and beyond, the choice boils down to Jeff Reynolds, a conservative Republican, or the Duke.  Shepard was given a lot of play in the recent Willy Week endorsements, while Reynolds was blown off in one line.  There's a reason for that - Reynolds holds to conservative values and (double sin) has been active in the Tea Party movement.

If you want to continue the "Metro as royalty" meme, then you'll want to go with the Duke.  If you want somebody to push for accountability, you have to go with Reynolds.

Ward, What Are We Going To Do About The Beaver?

Oregon hires some really stupid people, and we pay them a whole lot for being stupid.  They can't handle even basic stuff.  That's because they're stupid.

Over in the little town of Newberg, they think they have a problem with beavers.  Of course, since the story comes from KATU, it's fairly suspect - KATU rarely seems to get any story right.  But for the moment, let's assume that they're dealing accurately with the issue.

According to the KATU brain-trust, beavers have been busily damming up a creek that runs through town, with the result that erosion may threaten a road, which may cause the road to collapse, and which will break a water line that services a large part of the town.  According to the KATU story, Newberg had the state trapper come out and kill some of the beavers, which caused some sort of kerfluffel among residents.  And of course, the state trapper approach didn't actually work.

What a surprise.

At my last place, with a big yard sloping down to a creek, beavers moved in, and built a dam.  No problem for me.  But as the pond backed up, I got a visit from a neighbor a couple of doors upstream, who was very upset about "my beavers".  It seemed that the pond had flooded his garden, and they were taking down some of his trees.  I advised the neighbor on how to protect his trees, and then looked into the pond issue.

Portland didn't want to do anything about them, nor did the county, nor the state.  Interesting.

Nobody wanted to relocate the beavers, so I was on my own.  This is one of many reasons that underly my fundamental distrust of government and their myriad agencies.  They really aren't there to help you.

But I'm okay with that; I'm fairly self-sufficient.

The first thing of actual importance, when it comes to dealing with beavers, is that you have to be a little bit smarter than they are. This is why government cannot effectively deal with beavers, or with many other issues, for that matter.

Beavers respond to the sound of running water, which is why their dams get higher and longer over time.  

So here is the issue: I don't mind having beavers in the back yard, but I have a neighbor who is royally upset because the pond drowns his garden (my suggestion for saving the remaining trees worked). 

Obviously, the solution is to maintain their pond at a level that will stop short of the neighbor's garden plot.  How do you do that?  Can you come up with a solution that works, or should you be working for a government agency?  Here's a hint:  if you chop through the dam, beavers will repair the damage overnight.  So that won't work.

Don't you think that highly-paid government workers could figure this out?  If they can't, then maybe we don't need them.

Hide The Decline

Hockey-puck Michael Mann is starting to feel the heat - and it has nothing to do (yet much to do) with Man-Made Global Warming:  the creator of the hockey-stick graph, who's been threatening folks with legal action for daring to post funny videos about him, is now on the other side of the stick.  Virginia's Attorney General is going after him.

Crank Up, Cue The Leftists

Arizona's legislature has done it again; they've forwarded a bill to the governor for signature which would outlaw "ethnic studies". This is guaranteed to cause Leftists everywhere in the USA to have a shit hemorrhage and fall over in it.

The bill bans the teaching of any courses that promote the overthrow of the US government, or which promote resentment of any particular race or class of people, or which are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group, or which advocate ethnic solidarity rather than treatment of students as individuals.

You can see why Leftists would have a problem with this: it makes sense.  It's designed specifically to promote the American goal of a colorblind society, which is in diametric opposition to the Left's desire to have us notice differences, "celebrate diversity", and become politically-correct little serfs. 

Russia, China...The Data Wake

Quick - what country is in the top three in the world in terms of surveillance of their citizens?

Within 100 yards of a man's home, he found 200 cameras.

Before going on the run, he made 80 formal requests to government and commercial organisations for the information they held on him. He piled the replies on his floor, appalled by the level of detail. The owners of the databases knew who his friends were, which websites he’d been looking at, and where he had driven his car. One commercial organisation was even able to inform him that, on a particular day in November 2006, he had “sounded angry”. It was more than he knew himself.

In the days that followed his disappearance, Katie heard from him occasionally, using pay-as-you-go phones he’d bought specially. But he didn’t tell her where he was, because he was being followed by detectives.

What he didn’t know was that Katie was being watched, too. Hoping to use her to find him, the detectives had leapt over the garden wall one night to fit a tracking device to her car.

They also worked out where she was due to give birth and phoned the hospital, pretending to be Bond, to get details of her appointments.

Big Trouble For Solar Energy

Rarely mentioned in discussion of the economic meltdown in Spain is the fact that they have been a world leader in "green" technology; installing tons of solar arrays and fueling the demand required in order to ramp up production.  Now, they're pulling the plug on all that.  They've recognized that they can't keep spending $750,000 per "green job created" when they're going broke.  "Going green" has put them deeply into the red, and so they're dropping out of the game. This will have a significant impact upon the solar cell and wind power industries, as they've relied upon Spain to boost investment.

Next One Under The Bus

Democrat Senatorial candidate for Illinois Alexi Giannoulias is poised to become the next one Obama tosses under the bus.  Although a long-time "friend" of Obama, Alexi's bank collapsed amid rumors of fraud, and he's lagging behind a Republican in the polls and in fund-raising.  BO plans to force Alexi out of the race and replace him with none other than Rahm, who BO figures can pull out a victory for Democrats.