Month: January 2012

Let’s drill into an buried Antarctic lake? What could go wrong?

Fark Geek implicitly raises an interesting point: has this scenario ever ended well in any form of popular modern entertainment?

An ambitious plan to explore a vast lake trapped beneath the Antarctic ice is a step closer to becoming reality.

An advance party has braved freezing temperatures to set up vital equipment and supplies at Lake Ellsworth.

The project by UK engineers to drill through the two-mile-thick ice-sheet is scheduled for the end of the year.

I mean, in terms of cinema alone a heck of a lot of films about Antarctica seem to have as their plot the old “We wake up something under the ice and it starts eating people.”  Admittedly, the quality of such films is, ah, uneven…

Moe Lane Continue reading Let’s drill into an buried Antarctic lake? What could go wrong?

RS Interview: Mia Love (R CAND, UT-04 PRI).

You may remember her from last week: Mia is the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, and is now running for the new district created for Utah as a result of the last census.  We had the opportunity to talk about the details of the district, plus her thoughts about the best way to represent it:

Mia’s  site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Nonexistent fuel causes real fines for oil companies.

Ah, the federal government.  More specifically… ah, the liberal alternate energy-supporting faction of the federal government, which has just demonstrated that they are as innocent of the ways of industrial production as they are of basic science.  The short version: fuel refiners were mandated, on penalty of fines, to use a certain percentage of an alternate fuel called “cellulosic biofuel”… which does not actually really exist.  Oh, samples of the stuff exist, which is why a Democratic-controlled Congress put the requirements into the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007*; but oddly enough it turns out that four years weren’t quite enough time to ensure that the fuel would be available in the qualities needed!

Go figure, huh?  I mean, it’s almost as if a bunch of lobbyists told a bunch of friendly politicians a bunch of optimistic twaddle that both groups wanted to hear.  I know, I know; that this sort of thing could happen in Washington DC  is downright shocking…

Via the NCPA, via @jeffemanuel.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Hey, how did that work out for us, anyway? …Oh, right, it didn’t at all.

#rsrh Jon Huntsman out?

It certainly looks like it. I’d normally go into the details Of What It All Means in mind-numbing detail, but I have a doctor’s checkup this morning and I’m away from my stuff, so let me summarize: DO NOT HIRE JOHN WEAVER TO RUN YOUR CAMPAIGN.

Hey, I’m not saying that you should hire me to run your campaign, either. But at least I know my limitations.

#rsrh The Pre-Lost City of Detroit.

I mean that literally, by the way: some time in the next twenty years we’re going to see the inhabitants of Detroit simply give up and move en masse in a folk-migration; the city will become unincorporated; and then the forces of Nature will swarm in and quickly reduce the whole place to a set of ruins that will make the career of some lucky Fortieth Century archeologist when he or she stumbles across the proof that the mythical Mo-town of First American Republic legend actually existed.  With any luck, the Robocop statue will likewise survive and make ’em think that this was the Mo-towner’s titular god.

If only.

Via AoSHQ. Continue reading #rsrh The Pre-Lost City of Detroit.

If Romney becomes the candidate, Obamacare is off the table.

Deal with it.

Andrew McCarthy of NRO puts his thumb squarely on one of the two central problems that I have with a Romney candidacy:

In 2008, Obamacare did not exist. In 2012, it vies with our astronomical national debt — to which it will prodigiously contribute — as the most crucial issue in the campaign. It is Obamacare’s trespass against the private economy and individual liberty that transformed the Tea Party into a mass movement, perhaps the most dynamic one electoral politics has seen in decades. And of all the Republican candidates, Romney is the weakest, the most compromised, when it comes to taking that fight to the president.

Continue reading If Romney becomes the candidate, Obamacare is off the table.

Jerry McNerney (D, CA) can’t find an in-district place to live?

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: the Ricky Gill campaign is busily bringing up the odd detail that his likely opponent for CA-09 – Rep. Jerry McNerney, who was essentially accused by ProPublica last month of having that district redrawn for his benefit – has not yet moved into CA-09.  Given that McNerney’s been putting this move off since at least last July, I think that this is a perfectly reasonable observation of the Ricky Gill campaign to make.  I understand that redistricting can make for temporary confusion and delay until things straighten out again, but at this point failing to find a new place to live in the district that you want to represents a certain lack of, ah, drive*.

As you probably recall, we interviewed Ricky last month at RedState.  Check out the interview.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*We will now pause while Democrats search frantically for any Republican legislator from the last thirty years who did not instantly relocate his or her primary residence because of redistricting.  Alas for them, it’s not really unlikely that any hypothetical GOP legislator had gone through the trouble of (allegedly) designing their district first.  In other words: shenanigans are one thing, but sloppy, ill-planned shenanigans?  That’s kind of… embarrassing, no?

#rsrh Have we found an #occupy movement *too* stupid…

…to be allowed to auto-Darwinate?  You make the call:

Saturday marks the two-month anniversary for the Occupy Fairbanks movement. Instead of the police crackdowns seen elsewhere around the country, the Interior Alaska protesters are contending with punishing cold and local grumbling about the legality of warm-up tents.

Brent Baccala, a 41-year-old self-described preacher and software designer from Maryland, continued his vigil at Veterans Memorial Park sporting a donated Northern Outfitters blue suit and matching boots Friday. He slept in the nearby tent as overnight temperature dropped to minus 36, Thursday, three degrees cooler than the record low for that date, set in 1969.

(Via @SonnyBunch) Minus 36.  As I understand it, winter in Fairbanks, Alaska lasts seven months.  I gather that the local Occupiers are somehow impressed with a mental group hallucination that thinks that screaming about imaginary corporate conspiracies is a viable way to spend one’s life, but I’m more curious about whether this qualifies for what the local equivalent is to a 72-hour psychological observation. Continue reading #rsrh Have we found an #occupy movement *too* stupid…