WUI (Writing under the influence)

Somebody once said we are all Americans, sometimes born in the wrong places.
On a warm autumn day in 1986, while enjoying beer with my college buddies,
I decided to join my new homeland.

I've come to appreciate the ideals that helped create this great country.
Liberalism, political-correctness, multiculturalism and moral equivalence
are destroying it.

This old house Grovenet Wal*Mart Visiting Poland American wine better than French.

Monday, December 31, 2007

 

2007: This old house



Not much has happened these last two months. The shed is almost done. The doors still need glass but I want to recycle (how can that be? I'm a conservative after all) the glass from the garage doors.

But the garage work is progressing rather slowly. The only thing I've done so far is the new wall where the folding doors used to be. I've also started raising the ceiling because the floor will be raised as well and I want to have at least 8' above my head.

 

Vive Sarkozy!

After boycotting France for several years, not being able to easily find Italian spumante of good quality, and having to celebrate New Year's with subpar Oregon sparkling wine, I'm back to Moet and Chandon.

Vive Sarkozy!

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

 

Quote of the day

"Liberals inhabit their own universe in which reality is optional." -- John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog
The quote was prompted by the following paragraph from the latest cover story in the New York Times Magazine:
"In many more areas, though, the progress that was made under Clinton — almost 23 million new jobs, reductions in poverty, lower crime and higher wages — had been reversed or wiped away entirely in a remarkably short time."
I thought liberals lived in a different reality. It is clear now that they live in a world with no reality at all.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

 

As East-Germany was being liberated...

...some on the other side were mourning.
A clearly embarrassed Wagenknecht - who was brought up on the works of Marx and Engels, joined the East German communists in 1989, and allegedly mourned the fall of the Berlin Wall - has admitted both to eating the lobster, and erasing the pictures.
I often think that many in the US want us to fail for the same reason. What I don't understand is why they don't move to Cuba.

BTW, the story in Guardian is also interesting because it shows liberals' hypocrisy (but I repeat myself.)

 

Is Bush smarter than even I think he is?

He just signed that disastrous energy bill. He knows exactly what will happen as a consequence because it's happening all over the world.

Energy prices for end-users could rise by some 12% in 2008 as a result of rising coal prices, CO2 emission limits and "green" energy quotas, industry leaders said Tuesday in Katowice.

Coal mines are seeking a roughly 15% price increase for 2008, according to the president of the PKE energy group Jan Kurp, who also leads the energy producer lobby TGPE.

"We need to remember that the cost of fuel is about half of the energy price from producers," Kurp said Tuesday.

"A rise in fuel prices by 15% would mean a rise in energy prices from producers of about 8 to 10% and this is not the only factor that could drive a price increase next year," he said.

Kurp would not give any indication of what sort of price increase for coal might result from current negotiations.

Amongst the top secondary factors driving 2008 energy prices, CO2 emissions could bring costs.

Emission rights for the industry will allow for 17.6 TW of production versus 2007 production at about 22 TW.

Producers have calculated that were all generators to increase production by 3% in 2008 end-user prices would rise by some 2.5 to 3.0%.

Green energy quotas and costs tied to the elimination of long-term energy contracts also made the list of 2008 price drivers.
But because the bill requires some of these changes to take place before 2012, maybe he's hoping that by then everybody (except for some dead-enders, the same ones who still think we are losing in Iraq) will know that AGW is a hoax. So he was not afraid to sign it knowing that it will be overridden by a new one 3-4 form now.

 

I didn't say it; NYT did


Monday, December 17, 2007

 

Quote of the day

"It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages." -- Over 100 prominent scientists who don't think there is any consensus as far as AGW is concerned.

 

Global whining

I wondered why the pontiff would stick out his neck like he did the other day when he said AGW may be a hoax.
"Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

"The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering."
My wife said that he probably had researched the field and couldn't have arrived to any other conclusion. But now I wonder if he didn't just read a draft of this letter.
Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Dec. 13, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon

Secretary-General, United Nations

New York, N.Y.


Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line

by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

z Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

z The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

z Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the "precautionary principle" because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

 

So you still think government-run public schools are good?

F in science, A in self-esteem

American 15-year-olds go up against teens from around the world.


We could focus on the latest worrisome news in education: the results of an international test released last week that show American 15-year-olds don't know much about science and are falling behind their peers in other industrialized nations. But why get depressed?

There is an aluminum foil lining: The test also found that our teens don't let their ignorance bother them. They may not know as much as students in Finland, Canada or New Zealand, but they think they do. When asked to rate their own scientific abilities, they put themselves at the top with their better-educated peers.

This is the real trend in American education. No one can match us when it comes to self-esteem. So what if American students ranked 21st out of 30 industrialized nations? So what if we're even worse in math -- 25th? We know what you're thinking: "Well, we're more ethnically diverse than those countries. We have more poverty. More immigrants." Sorry, the poor and immigrants and the ethnically diverse in other countries scored higher than ours.

Still, our students are blissful in their ignorance. Test analysts found that the less students knew about science, the more optimistic they were that the challenges of global warming can be overcome. Given the burden of their superior education, it's no wonder the French are so grumpy.


 

Would you be my neighbor?

Jeanne Assam is hailed for saving countless lives in shooting a gunman outside her church, but the volunteer security guard insisted that her steady hand was a matter of divine guidance.
How about you?
A man from Pasadena, Texas, who shot and killed two illegal aliens after they burglarized a neighbor's house remains under investigation by the local police over the incident, which has divided the community between people who consider the shooter a "good neighbor" and others who think he is a murderer.

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