9 X 9 = Hossa?

3rd-Grade Hockey Fan’s Hilarious Test Answer Stumps Teacher

She should have gotten extra credit.

Beyond parody

Headline: "Swedish capital hit by fifth night of riots"

(CNN) -- Police in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, have called in reinforcements after the city's suburbs were hit by a fifth night of riots. 

Gangs set fire to two schools and a police station in the city on Thursday, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren told CNN. 

About 30 cars were also torched, with the blaze from one vehicle spreading to a nearby shop.

And a news item:

This the administrative-bureaucratic state in full maturity.

HT: American Digest

2016 Dream Ticket Formed!

It is inevitable!

FOFB

Beyond satire

"I try to get more cynical every day, but I just can't keep up."

The "mythical" Jesus rebutted

Bart Ehrman Creates Stir in Atheist Community Over The Existence of Jesus

Bart Ehrman is one of the world's leading scholars on the history of ancient Judea during the time of Jesus, with a focus on the development of the early Christian community. He is by his own account not a Christian. Yet is his refutation of persons who contend that the Christian proclamation is fictional or analogical to other ancient myths is just devastating.

For example, the charge that Jesus is himself a fictional figure:

“Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.”

Read the whole thing.

Obama Fails to Salute Marine! Weekly Standard continues to be stupid

Obama Fails to Salute Marine | The Weekly Standard

To attempt to be fair to TWS, they are only reporting what CBS's Mark Knoller tweeted, but TWS obviously thinks it is newsworthy, too (no wonder you can't leave a comment there):

This stupidity has come up before.

In fact, there is no tradition of the commander in chief saluting uniformed armed forces personnel of any rank. As commander in chief, he doesn't have to, anyway (what part of "commander in chief" seems unclear?). Not even retired five-star general DD Eisenhower saluted military members when he was president, explaining on one occasion that saluting was a privilege of uniformed members only. President Truman, a combat veteran of World War One, did not salute for the same reason (and it's really quite impossible to imagine the patrician-minded FDR doing so).

The "tradition," such as it is, was started by Ronald Reagan.

John Kline, then Reagan’s military aide and now a Minnesota congressman, advised him that it went against military protocol for presidents to return salutes.

Kline said in a 2004 op-ed piece in The Hill that Reagan ultimately took up the issue with Gen. Robert Barrow, then commandant of the Marine Corps.

Barrow told Reagan that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he was entitled to offer a salute — or any sign of respect he wished — to anyone he wished, Kline wrote, adding he was glad for the change. 

If I were president I would not salute for the same reason as Eisenhower explained.

Update: Now even CNN and Politico have bandwagoned this non-event, but are reporting it as if it was meaningful. This says less about the president's courtesy than it does about another reason to believe that the Obama bubble is popping.

Identical twin studies prove homosexuality is not genetic

Identical twin studies prove homosexuality is not genetic

Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way.

“At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. Whitehead worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years, then spent four years working for the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency. Most recently, he serves as a consultant to Japanese universities about the effects of radiation exposure. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.

Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions.  If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay.

“Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”

Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”

More at the link. Thus study will be suppressed.

Global warming falls 8 inches deep on Scotland

Global warming: Scotland hit by blizzards, road closures and 8 inches of snow:

The Scotsman reports:

The summer solstice is only 28 days away, but in parts of Scotland yesterday, it was like winter had never left, as people awoke to a blanket of snow.

At a time of year when thoughts should be turning to sunscreen and barbeques, a blast of wintry weather swept in from the Arctic, bringing blizzards and icy temperatures to the North-east. Drifting snow closed two roads, and many more were only passable with care.

Obama: Fewer speeches or fewer air strikes?

That Drudge, what a card!

You have to admit that the meaning is (deliberately) ambiguous.

The link, though, reveals:

Obama reframes counterterrorism policy with new rules on dronesBy Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News 

In a major address Thursday President Barack Obama sought to reframe his counterterrorism strategy saying that “America is at a crossroads.”

So remember, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!"

Time mag zeroes like a laser!

Time magazine really knows how to zero in on the really important questions:

Time's piece is here.

The Left is so utterly predictable

It's so easy to be correct when predicting what the Left will do or say. Earlier this week I left a comment at American Digest on the topic of the slaughter of the young British soldier on a London street, done by two Muslims who openly boasted to a passerby's running smartphone video that "you will never be safe" from future attacks. The post with video is here.

In my comment there, I wrote,

The attackers' motives are unclear. They are clearly disillusioned youth who are the victims of a racist British social structure. They have been marginalized from decent jobs. While none of us can condone or excuse this terrible killing, we must not fall into Islamophobic, simplistic explanations that merely serve to further oppress the people who are also at-risk immigrant community members. 

... Just thought I'd save you the trouble of reading the Leftwing commentary that will be coming soon.

It did not take long for London's mayor to utter the utterly predictable:

On his Twitter account, London Mayor Boris Johnson called the murder of a British soldier by two Muslims, “a sickening, deluded and unforgivable act of violence.”

Boris Johnson has said the blame for the brutal murder of a soldier in Woolwich lies with the ‘warped mind-set’ of his killers. ‘One obvious point, it is completely wrong to blame this killing on Islam.’

So Boris, why don't you drop by and ask the killers whether they think they acted in the name of Islam?

This is just nuts

I gotta get me one of these!



Full screen is best

How to give to Tornado Relief

The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is one of the only relief organizations that guarantees that 100 percent of your donation goes directly and exclusively to relief, none to expenses or overhead.

The link directly to the tornado response donation page is here.

BBC News - Climate slowdown!

BBC News - Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming 'not as likely':

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere. Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. 

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

Of course not! Because climate scientists have faith!

And I love this part: "there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere."

It's not "unexplained." The scientists were wrong, pure and simple. It's like me predicting that the Braves will defeat the Twins today based on batting averages, RBIs and so forth, then if the Braves lose, I say their loss is "unexplained."

What climate "scientists" are saying is that the climate did not conform to their models. But the models are sound, it's the climate that is wrong. But since, "the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly," the climate will finally see the light and come around to doing what the scientists say it must.

But remember, climate science has no product to sell, it's just one fundraising routine after another.

Birth of a monster - this video is as close as I ever want to be

Birth of the Moore, Okla. F4 twister - stunning, go full screen for full effect:



"Charles Cook captured the six minutes of the 5-20-13 tornado's chilling beginnings from a mall parking lot on his cell phone camera."

Source.

"Told you so"

On the news that Fox News reporter Jay Rosen and others were under FBI investigation for doing nothing except what reporters have been doing for a couple hundred years (asking questions):

Were Oklahoma tornadoes caused by global cooling?

Back in 1975, scientists blamed the previous year's huge tornado outbreak on global cooling.

The entire scanned article is at the link, but here is the key part:

Fortunately, in our more enlightened age, we know that the problem today is neither global cooling nor global warming, but the fact the the climate is not granite stable. Yes, "climate change" is what messes up our world. 

As I posted in 2007, 

I've always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis. For the earth will either get warmer or cooler, but it definitely won't stay the same. 

A commenter on the FB page where I found the scans, above, said,

It's interesting that "Climate Change" has become for the left just what the "enlightened" use to accuse theists for having - a "God of the gaps" ... no matter the empirical data, it is caused by "climate change".

Which caused me to comment there a link to my 2008 post, "Environmentalist religion explained," in which I picked up and ran with renowned physicist Freeman Dyson's observation:

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."] ...

My pickup theme was this:

The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: "fall from grace,"), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.

Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism. I'll examine these religious elements in turn. 

Read the whole thing!

Why do most mutual funds trail the market?

Interesting insights from a retiring Morgan-Stanley investment strategist. In any given year, 60 percent of managed funds underperform their market segment (I have read other sources that say it is 70 percent).

But in fact, raw numberS reveal that half perform higher, half lower - before management fees are deducted.

It's the fees that drag many funds' overall performance below their index.

Long piece, worth the read:

Dick Tracy, call your office

Introducing the iWatch.

Still only experimental at this stage.

George Washington! Say it ain't so!

Will the madness never stop?

Yahoo goes into internet porn business

The big technology-company news today is that Yahoo.com announced it will buy Tumblr.com for $1.1 billion. 

Apparently this is getting a lot of attention because:

1. Tumblr is a blog platform, which means that Yahoo is now (potentially) able to go head to head against Google, which own Blogspot (the platform for this blog),

2. "Tumblr gets a bunch of traffic from porn and copyright-violating content. And that doesn't jibe well with any sensible advertiser" (from http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-porn-problem-2013-5).



I have a Tumblr blog that I used mainly to park links to read later, but I haven't used it in a long time.

I have always wondered

Someone posted this well-known photo on FB, obviously to make a point (a good point, too), but I have always wondered two things:

1. How did they build the lighthouse to begin with?

2. Did the keeper get swept away as the enormous wave washed around?

Update: Thanks to Gerard Vanderleun for the history here (via email):

The lighthouse became well known in 1989, through a series of photographs taken by Jean Guichard during a storm and while the lighthouse keepers were stranded. The lighthouse keepers had been waiting for a rescue helicopter; upon hearing the sound of Guichard's own helicopter, one of them came out to investigate. As the enormous wave broke over the lighthouse, he was able to hastily retreat back inside (source).

He also provided the link to the YouTube video:

And Reader Hal. D, emails, "I found this link which briefly talks about both the lighthouse and the famous photograph. http://celticcountries.com/magazine/culture/la-jument-brittany-most-famous-lighthouse/. No actual construction details though."

Thanks, Hal!

And this video's description says the lighthouse took 14 years to build and was automated in 1990.