Stones Cry Out

An interesting observation from Jack Dunphy (not his real name), a police officer in Los Angeles:

Cops tend to be conservatives, perhaps because they spend the bulk of their day dealing with the consequences of failed liberal policies.  Whatever liberals you might find in the department can mostly be found, like the absent cubicle dweller discussed above, in bureaucratic assignments that keep them safely shielded from the hazards of actual police work, and from those pesky consequences.

Indeed.

There are all sorts of ways to measure the impact of natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes but I had never heard of the Waffle House Index:

When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power.

First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the “Waffle House Index.”

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. “That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”

As the article explains, Waffle House goes to great lengths to remain open all the time. They have what is arguably one of the best disaster plans I have ever seen.

Hats off to the folks at Waffle House for going to such tremendous lengths to make life a little more normal for those affected by disaster.

Here’s a reminder of why I started this semi-irregularly scheduled feature. When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, liberals fell all over themselves blaming conservative rhetoric, graphics with targets, and of course talk radio for supposedly creating the environment for such an assassination attempt. It was clear that they had contributed just as much, if not more, themselves prior to the shooting. "Civility Watch" came about to show how little they really would even take their own medicine. It’s been made clear, since then, that uncivil discourse is really only uncivil if it’s a Republican saying it.

The most recent cases in point: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) told Tea Partiers that they can go "straight to hell". Now you know what they think of responsible spending. And liberal columnists, even those that have other issues with Waters, praise that outburst and wish for more, and excuse that incivility by saying, "They started it!" Yeah, right.

Also, Rep. Andre Carson (D-MI), a leader in the Congressional Black Caucus, claimed that Tea Partiers would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.” This is not only incredibly over the top, but also has the added benefit (to him) of being believed simply because he said it, lacking a shred of proof or naming names. He can say it with impunity, and the audience just accepts it as The Truth.

The Left simply cannot sell themselves as the ones who are for civil discourse, at least to those who are truly paying attention.

Good morning.

1. American muslims and a cricket race.
2. Tawian and the F-16 sales.
3. Gut magic and the great panda.
4. Meeting with a Bishop.
5. ‘Tis for the kiddies remember?
6. Lesson number one, if you want to comment on a book, read it!
7. Let’s see, socialist is probably the wrong tag … help me here. What is someone who thinks regulation of salary by the state is necessary? Is that communism?
8. On the cloud formation and climate discussion, I got this from Mr Darrel and this is likely more useful (as is text not a video clip).
9. More on climate here.
10. History and the person with respect to time.
11. Affirmative action viewed by Mr Thomas and Mr Obama.
12. A reaction to Mr Groseclose’s book and liberal bias in the media.
13. Car doors and bike lanes.
14. A movie noted.
15. That’s not very charitable.
16. Flat pop psych as a term coined … the term coined by our office bunch … I’ll promote again here. “Hot” when refered to food is ambiguous, it can mean either spicy or temperature. To disambiguate we suggest using the term “thermy” to refer to food that is hot by temperature and use “hot” w.r.t to food to only means spicy. 

Commenter JA (Jewish Atheist is his pseudonym … at my home/personal blog) continues to hold the notion that “low atheists” don’t exist in his continued (no true Scottsman) argument as a basis for the higher intelligence/education feature of the set of atheists compared to those who do believe in God. There is a problem with this position which might be best expressed by considering a particular individual from another planet entirely. Read the rest of this entry

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg had this to say about who will be allowed to be in the official memorial of the 10th anniversary of 9/11: "Everybody would like to participate, but the fact is that everyone cannot participate." An understandable position to take, except that, for they type of "everybody" he was referring to, he’s excluding over 80% of the country.

At a time when family and friends will gather at Ground Zero to commemorate the loss of thousands murdered in the nation’s worst terrorist attack, the remembrance likely will be even more painful for many.

Why?

Mayor Bloomberg says the city will not permit clergy – any clergy – to participate at the 10th anniversary of 9/11. No public prayer. Period. From the Mayor: "Everybody would like to participate, but the fact is that everyone cannot participate."

The fact is that the vast majority of the country is religious. By excluding any form of religion from the memorial is to be completely tone-deaf to the people of his own city and what their religion means to them, never mind the rest of the country. This is political correctness gone way too far, to where it becomes the tyranny of the minority. The even this memorializes touched people of all different faiths, and no faith at all. The memorial should be more representative of that, rather than just a "least common denominator" event.

Quick, hide those beams that were in the shape of a cross.

Submitted for your amusement, from a friend’s Facebook status.

I do not like this, Uncle Sam, I do not like this health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like ex-speaker Nan, I do not like this ‘YES WE CAN’.
I do not like this spending spree, I’m smart, I know that nothing’s free.
I do not like their smug replies when I complain about their lies.
I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it. Nope, Nope, Nope!

Well, this was just a matter of time. "New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry, too, leaving it unable to pay full benefits as well."

A Jewish friend of mine give a report on Glenn Beck’s "Restoring Courage" rally in Caesarea, Israel.

"A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them." Yes, you read that right. Read the rest of it.

Good news on the abortion front. Defenders of human life are advancing in the war of ideas.

If unions can get their gravy train, they’ll just take their ball and go home.

The long obsolete Fairness Doctrine finally, officially, dies.

When Bush’s approval ratings were low, hardly a day went by when the media made note of it. Now that Obama is in the same territory, all of a sudden approval ratings don’t seem to be news. (Just like involvement in foreign wars and casualties from the same.)

The media will ask conservatives "Yes or no, do you believe in evolution?", but they’ll never ask a liberal "Yes or no, do you believe in the Bible?"

Could you escape a terrorist attack in 15 seconds? In southern Israel, where rockets from Gaza are a nearly-daily occurrence, they have to.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (no, really, "CERN") published a report in the magazine "Nature" that shows the Sun really does have more influence over our weather, clouds specifically, and thus current climate models will need to be (and I quote) "substantially revised".

Sorry, no cartoon this week. Nothing really stuck out.

Three minutes, two teleprompters.

The photo tells the whole story.

If President Bush had done something like this, well…..you know the rest.

Yes, my web hosting account was suspended for a few days while I got a bill cleared up. They say they sent an e-mail reminder, but I don’t see it.

Anyway, we’re back. Sorry for the outage.

Good morning.

1. Well, that’s not very nice.
2. The upcoming genocide/murders in Libya may have a mass effect.
3. Collective malaise.
4. Twitter and an epicenter.
5. I’m unconvinced in policy argument, but geesh what people will do to themselves is incredible.
6. 2011, not a good crop year for jokes, eh?
7. Religion and education.
8. Standing faithful.
9. Some science questions for Rick Perry. Heh.
10. OOOkkay, if you make the claim that’s a hate issue then what about things like “Piss Christ?” Hmm?
11. A primary opponent for Mr Obama.
12. So, US sports have nominal drug testing, when will that move to the other highly paid entertainers? Question, what percentage of actors do you think would pass the drug test a pro cyclist has to pass to race? Do you think it’s more than 10%?
13. An obit. Raise your girls to be like that, eh?
14. Race and perception.

Yeah, it seems a little late to be discussing this, but a new podcast that I’ve been listening to, "The Sci-Fi Christian", which covers all sorts of topics, decided to tackle this one this past episode. I highly recommend this to sci-fi fans, Christian or otherwise.

My family didn’t do Harry Potter, at least in its heyday, and I explained why to Matt Anderson and Ben DeBono in an audio feedback I sent to them for this episode. It turned out that this feedback and their responses to it became a large part of the show. So I thought I’d toss it on the blog for your consideration as well.

The show is long, about 92 minutes, and the first third of it is news from the sci-fi and comics worlds. If you play it on the site, you can skip to 31 in and the main topic starts up. I wrote up what I was going to say before I recorded it, so below is the text of my audio feedback.

Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Unthinkable, means the opposite of what you expect. For example, borrowing from Hofstadter, it doesn’t typically mean for example, “How would that (scene/play/argument/event) have looked if 13 wasn’t a prime number?” Or “How would have been if instead of people in Nations on Earth, but instead we were tri-sexual liquid hydrogen breathing cephalopodoid creatures swiming in the seas of a gas giant?” That’s a little more unthinkable.
2. Jesus and the bomb.
3. Read. The. Book. More here. That media bias thing. Settled, with some surprises, like that the WSJ is more liberal (in the news sections) than the NYTimes.
4. Libya and a bounce? On paper the Libyan exercise was done for humanitarian reasons, to prevent Quaddafyi from retaliating and killiing hundreds or thousands. We shall see how the reprisals go in the upcoming months … and whether the rebels, once victorious are kinder and gentler. If not, what impact on the humanitarian argument might that have?
5. A question that makes little sense. The priest is the ikon/icon of Christ. Jesus was, you know, male. Would you complain about watching King Lear, where the King was a gal and not complain about having a woman doctor? Almost unthinkable, eh?
6. Poking at print journalism.
7. So, if you see the term “Dominionism” used, it’s basically used by liberals in the same way that “Sharia” is used in the context of US political dialog.
8. In which the term “Lost”, alas, doesn’t mean unable to find its way home because of unfamiliar landmarks.
9. Apparently Mr Biden is a consequentialist. That is, if it didn’t have unfortunate unintended consequences then coerced sterilization and abortions would just fine. What a fine set of gentlemen we have in the White House.
10. Grrr.
11. Good idea or not?
12. On dealing with slander.
13. Not proto-Krugman, pseudo-Krugman.
14. Two men, at age 22.
15. A serious scientific problem for AGW/climate models.

Adult stem cells, that is.

While highly potent embryonic stem cells are often the subject of ethical and safety controversy, adult-derived stem cells have other problems. As we age, our stem cells are less pliant and less able to transform into the stem cells that science needs to find breakthrough treatments for disease.

An exception to this can be found in the stem cells of oral mucosa, the membrane that lines the inside of our mouths. These cells do not seem to age along with the rest of our bodies. In his lab at Tel Aviv University’s Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Prof. Sandu Pitaru and his graduate students Keren Marinka-Kalmany, Sandra Treves, Miri Yafee and Yossi Gafni, have successfully collected cells from oral mucosa and manipulated them into stem cells.

Wounds in the mouth don’t scar; they heal by regeneration. The reasons for using embryonic stem cells keep dwindling.

Good morning.

1. Don’t just stop at considering lines and planes. Consider pi. Irrational although no measurement can test that. Yet … we find pi in lots of physical situations …. Is Pi real?
2. Libertarians and taxes here and here.
3. Perry and the Cowboy image (or reality). Speaking of cowboys, reading books like those by Louis L’Amour are a lot of fine fun (ask in the co-box if you want some title recommendations).’
4. Speaking of cowboys.
5. And romance, don’t forget the romance!
6. Remember Bastiat. And some didn’t ever get point of the lesson.
7. Ok. I got the book and read about 2/5ths of it last night. That kinda settles the media bias question. Now, what to do about it?
8. Inferior in what sense? Inferior! Grrr. Them’s fighting words.
9. Inferior scholarship noted.
10. Looking back at welfare reform.
11. Economics and alcholism.
12. 2nd Amendment worries.
13. This is not unrelated to #11.