Stones Cry Out

Good morning. Interrogative day at link central. 😀

1. Money lost, is that stimulatory?
2. Liberation or conquest?
3. Zoom or huff-puff?
4. How to control costs in healthcare?
5. Who didn’t expect this? After all while there is consensus that spending should be cut there hasn’t been any consensus on what to cut. It’s why the Left’s “plan”, raising taxes is more feasible (even though raising taxes as a method of addressing deficits doesn’t actually work) is what will likely win. There’s no consensus required to just tax more. To bad the easy solution is the one that doesn’t work in this case.
6. Why oh why will the anthropogenic climate people not read stuff like this? I would call attention to the study of weather data for the last 140 years … noting “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.” You know the recent (Krugman!) notes about increased storms and droughts. All confirmation bias. Ooops.
7. Is this a statement that the Palin haters would get on board with?
8. Is this not exactly to the point?
9. So what eactly is solertia and eustochia?
10. Is this a sign of our decline?
11. How to find a path between progress and history?
12. Abortion is here. How about that back alley?
13. Speaking of abortion, is this useful? At least he’s not bringing up the regrettable Violinist thang.

This is what Republicans do, unlike Democrats who, allegedly, came in to Washington promising to go after the "culture of corruption".

Rep. Chris Lee of New York abruptly resigned Wednesday evening, hours after a gossip Web site reported that the married Republican had allegedly sent flirtatious e-mail messages and a shirtless photo of himself to a woman he met online.

A flirtatious e-mail is all that it took. Meanwhile, Charlie Rangel is still firmly ensconced in his seat. Yes, both sides have their corruption issues, but one clearly knows the meaning of "accountability".

From way back in the year 2000 CE (which, by the way, converts to AD 2000), the Independent ran the following story, Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

…

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Now? From last December, on FoxNews, Anger Rises as Snow, Ice Snarls Britain,

Winter storms forced British government ministers and bank executives to postpone their meeting Monday on the politically touchy issue of bank bonuses. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills did not announce a new date but said it hoped the meeting could be rescheduled later this week.

Forecasters have said Britain is experiencing some of the most severe winter weather in a century, with continued freezing temperatures and snowfall accumulations expected Monday afternoon and evening.

I recall a co-worker telling me a story of when he went on a school fieldtrip, in the late 1960s / early 1970s, to a nature preserve. This time was the genesis of the Earth Day movement, and at this particular preserve the school kids were told of the impending doom that awaited mankind. One statement that remained with him was the admonition / prediction that, if they didn’t take care of the earth, then their grandchildren wouldn’t know what a tree was.

As Christians we should be all about cherishing and managing the environment God has not only created, but given to us to take care of. Yet we should never fall into the trap of thinking we have the power or ability to save that environment – the laws of physics simply prove us wrong. Worse still, we should be wary of ever slipping into a modern-day worship of Mother Earth.

The book of Genesis has made clear where and from whom our environment has come.

Good morning.

1. More grist for the sociology departments lacking conservatives conversation. 
2. 27% … that’s basically almost all the Democrats … Seems to me you could argue he’s back ot the base and that’s the extent of it.
3. What passes for “not depraved.”
4. Well, that’s one asthetic, there are others. It is my understanding that an asthetic is a method by which you judge art … and after choosing your asthetic criticism is the application of the asthetic to artworks. If you want to use an asthetic that is sympathetic to ethics, then juding art on how it mananges to expose beauty would be in line with a view that ethics is also an enterprise trying to uncover beauty (or the good). 
5. What truth to power really looks like, the left’s preconceptions notwithstanding.
6. Getting it upside down. Parents not the government are responsible for the well being of their children, regulation of governmen schools is done to try to accomplish that. 
7. Iago and Rummy.
8. Booom. A less violent event here.
9. Talking cosmology.
10. Accuracy.
11. What Nicene Christians can learn from the LDS (Mormon).
12. Democrat misstep noted. Here too.
13. And some thoughts (and links) on Darwin.

James Taranto gives us a good history of the term "judicial activism" and its varied uses over the decades, especially with regards to the latest charges of "judicial activism" against judges who consider ObamaCare unconstitutional. Worth a read.

Patterico highlights one woman’s success story for her child because of school vouchers. However, he notes that, far from being just one bit of anecdotal evidence, this is a trend. He points to a CATO article that highlights a new federal study.

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

But frankly, it’s all about the unions, not about education, for Democratic politicians.

Good morning. 0 (F) this morning … expecting -10 or less tomorrow. Cool, eh? (heh)

1. Regulation.
2. Mr Krugman talks more on climate. Oops.
3. High in the Coptic government. Some more here from Japan.
4. A book noted.
5. How to jump to a really bad example to (not?) demonstrate a point. The question is asked, in sports, does firing the coach help win championships. If it didn’t why do they keep doing it over and over and over?
6. Speaking of sports, a good example.
7. More sports talk here.
8. Liberals sounding like “right wingers”.
9. How that budget neutrality works, by moving it to kill state budgets … oh, and your budget too.
10. All the hypocrisy that’s fit to print.
11. You can choose your ideology … or not. Perhaps by choose he meant change.
12. Of Cairo and Chicago.

Good morning.

1. Inability to express something in words, alas, doesn’t mean it’s incoherent. You can’t, for example, use words to describe how you even ride a bike.
2. Talking about the Coptic situation.
3. Mr Wilders.
4. Stupid economics tricks … a prime example to counter the notion that skepticism and IQ don’t go hand in hand.
5. Stealth drone. More fun tech toys here.
6. And it won’t be sold in the US.
7. 2/14 geek giftery.
8. On Mr Christie and the trains and that tunnel thing.
9. Some suggestions on how to find happiness.
10. Religious freedom and blasphemy laws.
11. One “shocking” ad banned from the Superbowl in most markets.
12. Heh.
13. A long piece on suggesting anti-semitism and (some) new atheists.
14. A “cool” contest noted.
15. Hmm. My first impulse is not to side with the injured party. 
16. Maths and the world.

Hmmmm…
Dance the night away, I guess.

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$4.65B profit? Corporate greed!
Yet, no outrage? Oh, right – they aren’t “Big Oil”.

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College = Time to party?
Despite what some of my acquaintances think, I still posit that this is a relatively new phenomenon (i.e., within the last 30 years). When I attended university, in the late 70s, we knew where the party schools were and which majors were party majors. And “Spring Break” was not the orgy it is now. However, the party / socialize mentality seems to be quite ubiquitous nowadays.

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Do you really have 1,538 friends?
Facebook may ask you to identify your friends, via FB photos, for security access to your account. Better check the mug of the friend of your cousin’s kid that you met last summer while on vacation. I’m just sayin’.

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Kids and technology
Yes, preschoolers are more adept at using technology than tying their shoes (unless their shoes lace with velcro). Homeschoolers have long known that kids are capable of learning at a very young age (though they may not be ready).

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Ink from the Cloud
Cool!

Good morning.

1. Abstinence and condom vouchers? Apparently the left things those things are really really expensive.
2. Freedom and the Middle East (and North Africa).
3. The PC movement and consequence.
4. An administration like no other … or not.
5. Breaking new ground on the “Open” front too.
6. Heh.
7. Of economics and regulation.
8. A book recommended.
9. Regime change, here and here.
10. Three Presidents.
11. Beltway spending practices and a comparison noted.
12. The regrettable SEC.

In more Civil Discourse Watch, here’s folks on the Left calling for riots, or at least pointing to rioting as a good example.

The failure of the repeal of ObamaCare can be laid at Democrats feet. We’ll see how well that works for them in 2012. (Didn’t work so well in 2010.)

In which country in the Middle East do Arabs have the greatest civil liberties? Click here to find out.

We keep hearing this refrain.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world – saying there was "no straight line" to building democratic societies in the Middle East.

The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era "freedom agenda" of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that world view as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to make immediate changes.

Regarding national defense and now foreign policy, Dubya had it right. Slowly, but too slowly, Obama is realizing this.

Law enforcement could have stopped the Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan if political correctness hadn’t prevented them.

And finally, some bad investments. Click for a larger version.

Good morning.

1. Two links on the PP sting, here and here.
2. The (do you believe in) the sanity clause returns.
3. The individual mandate.
4. The crux of why power to tax isn’t used as a defense of the mandate but the commerce clause is.
5. An Orthodox man and the Super Bowl.
6. Speaking of Orthodoxy … some notes regarding the East and evolution.
7. Kodachrome no more.
8. Someone is forgetting that the left prefers social entitlements to science programs.
9. Some notes on the Coptic situation.

The discussion of whether or not Mr Obama is “smart” came up again in a conversation. I thought I’d lay out a few thoughts on that. Before I begin I want to emphasize that I don’t know whether or not he is smart or not. People say he is … and I think they have no real good way of knowing that. The reason I say I don’t know is that I don’t have the background or experience to judge whether or not largely because I really have no instincts or experience of lawyers who are or are not considered, in their field, smart.  Read the rest of this entry

The eeevil rich, aren’t just rich; they’re Nazis.

Showing no concern for the new civility push that followed the Arizona massacre, a group of leftist activists from groups including Code Pink, Common Cause and jewel of liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress, turned into a loud mob complete with Nazi imagery outside a conservative gathering in Rancho Mirage, California.

But the media only ever really complain about it from the Right.

If this is okay
then,

this should be as well…

and this too…

and, lastly, this also.

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Be careful how you hold your cellphone when you’re in public
It just might be considered a weapon.

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One soldier, with a knife, against 40 armed thieves
Result: Thieves – 3 dead, 8 injured. Soldier – a serious wound on his hand. This is one reason why the notion that banning objects, such as 30 round magazines, with the intention of curbing acts of evil, is flawed. Humans have the uncanny ability to utilize available tools, combine them with courageous virtue – or evil desire – and act.

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Why you should be concerned about something like Pod Slurping.

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Abortion and the Argument from Inhuman Sociopathy
Joe Carter pulls no punches in this critique.

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Geek News: 25 years since Voyager 2 passed by Uranus
From JPL,

“The Uranus encounter was one of a kind,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at JPL. “Voyager 2 was healthy and durable enough to make it to Uranus and then to Neptune. Currently both Voyager spacecraft are on the cusp of leaving the sun’s sphere of influence and once again blazing a trail of scientific discovery.”

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ID Theft not all it’s cracked up to be?
From Consumer Reports,

You have a low likelihood of becoming a victim of true identity theft, and even if you are unlucky, your finances will probably not suffer. Don’t waste money on expensive services offered by credit-reporting bureaus and other ID theft protection companies. Most of their products are unnecessary or ineffective, or they duplicate things you can do yourself, for free.