Month: June 2013

QotD, The Economist Puts Its Finger On The Current Climate Crisis edition.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/climate-change

Well, crisis for somebody.

As a rule, climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now, and no one knows for sure why it isn’t. This isn’t a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus.

Via Hot Air

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/21/question-what-happens-when-settled-science-isnt/

…and I do not know what is wrong with this netbook that the formatting and keyboard commands are so insanely messed up.

Still without primary computer…

…I should be getting a replacement today, which will hopefully mean everything will be back to normal tomorrow.

In the meantime, you might find the link below amusing: it links to the last bit of creative tomfoolery that I was engaged in prior to the computer blowing up. Worse ways to pause than on a Gilbert and Sullivan filk comment in a webcomic thread:

http://skin-horse.com/2013/and-eat/#comment-23987

And note *one* somewhat off-aim, would-be snark response. *Some* of Them REALLY don’t know us very well, do they?

I went through some trouble to tell you that I was wrong about the farm bill.

It took me forever to get this emergency netbook to function long enough to let me post that, hey, turns out that the House CAN set a big heap of pig sh*t on fire when it wants to. But it’s IMPORTANT, dagnabbit.

Now cut more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/house-votes-to-cut-food-stamps-by-2-billion-a-year-as-part-of-wide-ranging-farm-bill/2013/06/19/e1ed997c-d93e-11e2-b418-9dfa095e125d_story.html

Only DC would find the #snapchallenge to be anything BUT a snap.

I happen to do the grocery shopping for my family of four; and I would not find a weekly food budget of $126 to be impossibly challenging… if I did the following things*:

  • No name brands.
  • No sugary carbonated drinks.
  • No treats.
  • DO NOT LET A CHILD HAVE A VOTE IN THE GROCERY LIST DECISION.
  • Only buy vegetables in unprocessed form.
  • Cheap cuts of meats and lots of stews.  As in, “brown the meat, and simmer it in the broth for a few hours, and add the cut up vegetables.”
  • Plan for considerable leftovers. Which have to be eaten, not stored in the fridge and then thrown out.
  • Generally accept the fact that you will be cooking, not warming up and defrosting and microwaving things.
  • Generally accept the fact that you have to pay attention to your food situation, and not shrug it off.

We used to teach this sort of thing in school: it was called ‘home economics,’ and while it was already heavily watered down by the time I was in grammar school you could still see the echoes of what it must have once been. Continue reading Only DC would find the #snapchallenge to be anything BUT a snap.

I am expecting volatile Senate results for a while.

Just a link-free, quick observation: while I expect the House to not shift too much over the next few cycles (we will pick up some seats in 2014, probably, and lose some seats in 2016, probably*), I AM expecting a fairly large shakeup in the Senate in 2014, 2016, and 2018.  Why? Simple: in 2008 and 2010 we had somewhat drastic swings in Senate representation, and a slightly drastic one in 2006.  That means that 2014 and 2016 will have a good number of freshmen Senators being checked for the first time; and while the 2018 election will have less freshmen to be tested, some of the Democrats that did survive last cycle shouldn’t have.

So it should be brisk business for the the NRSC and DSCC for the next six years or so.

[pause]

That’s it.  And that’s a guess, honestly.

Moe Lane

*And that will have no link whatsoever to whoever wins the Presidential election.

Counting down to the slow-motion crash of the Obamacare exchanges.

Do you know what a big problem is going to be in orbital construction, once we get serious about doing it in bulk?  Inertia, in free-fall situations.  You see, while an object’s effective weight in free-fall may become nil, its inertia remains unchanged.  This means that once an object starts moving, it keeps moving – and it can only be made to stop moving by the application of sufficient force; you can’t count on gravitational pull to help do the work for you.  The end result is that you can easily be in a situation where you’ve got something with ten tons’ worth of mass moving in one direction… and eventually impacting something that can’t shrug off an impact with ten tons’ worth of mass, and will thus crumple or shatter under the strain slowly, but inexorably.  Nothing you can’t work around, but it’s something that you have to plan for.

And why am I telling you this?

Oh, no reason: Continue reading Counting down to the slow-motion crash of the Obamacare exchanges.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns supporters mourn death of… Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

…Wait. What?

The event had people supporting the Mayors Against Illegal Guns movement, founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reading the names of those “killed with guns” since the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary outside their “No More Names” bus.

[snip]

Some of the loudest shouts came when a reader spoke the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects who was killed by police during a gunfight.

There are people who are UPSET that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got shot? And not because we can’t read information off of a corpse’s brain*? God, but Mike Bloomberg’s got some seriously freaky supporters. Continue reading Mayors Against Illegal Guns supporters mourn death of… Tamerlan Tsarnaev.