Switchfuels

Instapundit.com -

But, actually, as some critics are trying to tar all biofuels as if they are made from corn, this is a point worth stressing. Crop-based biofuels are just votebuying from farmers, but others are worth pursuing.

Cooling climate claims enrage Australian scientists

PM - Cooling climate claims enrage Australian scientists: "The idea that it's the sun's activity, not carbon, that regulates earth's temperature, has never entirely gone away. It figured heavily in the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, debated on ABC TV last year.

Now an Australian-born former NASA astronaut is claiming that the recent lack of sunspot activity could actually portend a new ice age. Dr Phil Chapman - a geophysicist who lives in California - makes the prediction in an opinion piece in today's Australian newspaper.

But climate experts here are incensed. They say the evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming is irrefutable.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: It might be an unpopular view but Dr Phil Chapman is sticking to it. The geophysicist and former NASA astronaut says figures from four separate agencies show the global temperature dropped noticeably during 2007 and that the globe could now be returning to an ice age.

PHIL CHAPMAN: All the people who monitor the world's global temperature say that the temperature fell by something like 0.7 degrees Centigrade. We're talking about a very large drop that cancels out all the increase since 1930.

If this continues, then global warming will have to be, we'll have to admit that it's over.

EMILY BOURKE: He says the sun and sunspot changes have a bigger influence on the climate compared to carbon dioxide.

PHIL CHAPMAN: The variations in the number of sunspots and the time when they occur, how rapidly they build up, has a close correlation with previous changes in climate, in particularly back in the, around 1700 and again around 1790 when the sunspot cycle was delayed and those were two times it was extremely cold."

I credit my use of public transportation. I don't care what anybody says.

Rick Warren | The Colbert Interview

Interview - Rick Warren | The Colbert Report | Comedy Central:

A Taxonomy of Energy Alternatives

Instapundit.com -

Coal is better than oil from dictators who hate us. Nuclear is better than coal. Nano-solar is better than either, of course, once it's feasible.

Time for Fighting

Time Fights Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil::By Dennis Prager: "It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas."

...or called stupid.

Culture of Life

I guess the PA State police have been influenced by the anti-choice crowd by referring to the "unborn baby". I learned in school that its not a baby until it's born!

THE STATE

HOLLIDAYSBURG — State police are helping Williamsburg, Blair County, authorities find whomever spiked a pregnant teenage girl’s drink with a drug used to abort pregnancies in cows, a drug they think was stolen from a Williamsburg farm, according to a release.

The pregnant girl’s beverage was tainted with Prostamate sometime between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. March 31 at Williamsburg High School, police said. Troopers are considering the act an aggravated assault upon the girl and her unborn baby, police said.

State police think whoever was responsible was trying to abort the girl’s unborn child, the release indicates.

Violent Femmes

Suspects in video beating could get life in prison - CNN.com: "Eight Florida teenagers -- six of them girls -- will be tried as adults and could be sentenced to life in prison for their alleged roles in the videotaped beating of another teen, the state attorney's office said Thursday."

This case is horrific. It illustrates that you don't need violent video games to have violence. I'll bet money that these girls have never played an hour of violent video games.

One other thing: Many people I talk to on college campuses say that "an eye for an eye" is a barbaric doctrine. This case illustrates that barbarism is the natural bent of humanity. Escalation is the fruit of barbarism: eye for a bruise, life for an eye, etc. This cycle of violence dates back to Lamech in Genesis chapter 4.

An Eye for an Eye is a progressive moral development in history. It ends the cycle of violence by ending escalation and demanding justice. A rich mans eye is worth the same as a poor mans eye. The eye of a nobleman is worth as much as a commoner.

One wonders what motivated these girls to beat their friend unrecognizable. Whatever it was, it was not a gang beating.

Global Warming (Boston Edition)

Boston.com

Until today, it had been 165 consecutive days since the temperature last hit 70 degrees in Boston.

New and Improved

Google Docs:
"Offline access: You can now edit your documents and view your presentations and spreadsheets without an internet connection. Changes are saved to your browser while you are offline and automatically saved when Google Docs detects an internet connection. Learn more."

You talk about your campus crusades...

Pajamas Media:

This “Residence Life,” so-called “citizenship” program would have remained under wraps except for whistle-blowing by indignant students and their parents, as well as groundbreaking efforts by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to investigate and expose the character of what the university, in its own Orwellian materials, called “the treatment.”

The program’s stated intent was for the approximately 7,000 students in U.D.’s residence halls to espouse, in FIRE’s words, “highly specific university-approved views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.”

Program materials for this ideological reeducation, which have been removed from the U.D. Website, included race/gender/class/sexual orientation “trainer” Shakti Butler’s definition of a racist as “all white people living in the United States” and her edict that “people of color cannot be racists.” An intrusive rating instrument, “Discovery Wheel,” was used to prompt students to admit to their putative racism, and they were instructed that the U.S. is as “an oppressive society” whose “structures of oppression” it is their “duty” to eliminate.

“The treatment” was also mandatory and punitive. Students were required to attend training sessions, group floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Advisers (RAs), who, having been coached in interrogating vulnerable freshmen, plied them with invasive questions.

Good thing they don't have religion on campus. ;-)

Closing the Campus

Greg Lukianoff: 'What Can The Virginia Tech Tragedy Do For Me?' - Politics on The Huffington Post

the simple fact is that some administrators have been using the campus shootings of the past two years as an excuse to justify cracking down on speech they don't like.

The most dramatic recent example of college administrators using the specter of campus shootings to silence speech occurred last month at Colorado College, where students have been found guilty of "violence" for publishing a satirical flyer.

Will I be able to still watch Oprah?

Coming soon: superfast internet - Times Online

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

A Bird in my front yard...

And a nest in the backyard.

The more things change...

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global warming 'dips this year' The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

...prompting others to question some who don't question climate change theory.

Anti-Aging Medication

Instapundit.com -

First rate coffee, red wine, Guinness -- you won't live forever, but you may live longer. And more enjoyably!

Maybe God is trying to tell us something.

This is where I work...

Summer is coming...

Ethical Standards Erode at Nonprofit Groups, Study Finds - Philanthropy.com

Ethical Standards Erode at Nonprofit Groups, Study Finds - Philanthropy.com: "Nonprofit organizations have long held a reputation for having significantly higher ethical standards than businesses and government.

But a report released today by the Ethics Resource Center, in Washington, shows that gap is closing quickly — as standards at charities are declining at what the study’s authors say is a disturbing rate.

Rates of observed misconduct at nonprofit organizations are at the highest level since the Ethics Resource Center began measuring in 2000. In 2007, more than half — 55 percent — of nonprofit employees observed one or more acts of misconduct in the previous year.

Twenty-four percent of nonprofit employees observed their co-workers putting their own interests above those of the organization. Twenty-one percent observed managers or executives lying to employees. Nearly one in five employees — 19 percent — reported that they had seen abusive behavior or that they had seen co-workers misreporting the number of hours they had worked.

The frequency of these behaviors mirrors the frequency reported in the for-profit and government arenas, the study found.

“One would think that freed from the pressure to generate and distribute profits to shareholders, nonprofit organizations would rise high above the myriad ethics and compliance issues that have plagued..."

As it turns out, economics doesn't determine behavior contra Marx. As C.S. Lewis observed in Men Without Chests, "We laugh at honor, and we are shocked to find traitors in our midst." Why be good? Why believe anything at all that can't be proven in a laboratory? Such is the plight of pure secularism.

The Greatest

Red Sox beat Dodgers 7-4 before 115,300 fans at Los Angeles Coliseum - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Longtime announcer Vin Scully, who moved with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, was honored before the game. He referred to himself as “an ordinary man who was given an extraordinary opportunity.”

After being given a long ovation, Scully told the fans: “Aw c’mon. It’s only me.”

A fitting monument to Reading, MA

Groovy

News - - Gainesville.com

The Grooveshark system works on the basis of a peer-to-peer music sharing system, Greenberg said. Users can upload their personal music library to the Web site.

To legalize the process, the user must buy a song if they want to add it to their collection, he said. Part of the profit is then deposited into the account of the person who uploaded the song to Grooveshark.

In this way, the sharing of an illegal music system is paired with the legalized purchase with the added benefit of compensation, Greenberg said.