As I've been saying for years....

Climate cycles are driven by that big ball of fire in the sky, not farting cows and long-haul trucking.

The first results from the lab's CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets") experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth's clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.

This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.

Unsurprisingly, it's a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a "heliocentric" rather than "anthropogenic" approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.

Well, DUH! (H/T)

First Egypt...

Then Libya.

"Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)"

Funny, how those "moderate" Muslim peoples, if left to their own devices, turn to radical sharia each and every time the ruthless strong man of the region is removed.

So long, Jack

I oppose practically every policy statement of the NDP. But Jack Layton took the party to new heights and served his party and constituents well. For that, he is to be commended. He will be missed.

May he rest in peace.

Supersize Me

It's hard to know what's worse: a woman who thinks morbid obesity is generally attractive to men, or a single mother whose myopic and ironically dwarfed goal will soon render her unable to move and thus participate fully in the lives of her teenage sons, or an unemployed person living on disability income and/or public dole (I presume) who can purposely buy and eat so much food as to reach 1500lbs and beyond. Where else but in the West?

What I do know is the combination of all three is appalling.

Obese model Susanne Eman is saying 'Supersize Me' for real - in her bid to become the fattest woman ever.

The 52-stone bombshell aims to reach a whopping 115 stone, or 1,600lb, by guzzling at least 20,000 calories a day.

Susanne, 32, from Arizona, USA, hopes to pass the half-way milestone of 57 stones by the end of the year.

The libertarian in me wants to say "go ahead, lady, eat what you want, check out of your sons' lives, and die before your time. It's your call. Just do it on your own dime, not mine." (Yes, I know she lives in Arizona, so it's not really my dime. But it is somebody's.)

But then the Dad in me screams in disgust at the selfishness of this single mother, blithely squandering the opportunity to push her sons higher, farther, upward. The picture of the boys on the couch next to their engorged mother is shocking. She's smiling. They aren't. Gee, I wonder why?

Could it be THEY aren't as excited about their mother purposely getting incredibly fat? Could it be that they know perfectly well what their mother's dream means for them through their teen years -- tending on her hand and foot as she becomes immobile, arranging for her cleanings, looking out to themselves for meals, laundry, house cleaning, etc. not to mention watching their mother slowly eat herself to death? Could it be they aren't entirely thrilled with their mother literally eating their college education funds? Could it be they are exhausted from the mercilessly precise taunts of other youths who know their mom is enormous and trying to become gargantuan? Could it be they don't subscribe to the abnormal perspectives of her 'Super Size Big Beautiful Women' fan base and support group?

I suspect it is all these and more. It could very well be they are just numb to the inanity of it all.

What an absolute human tragedy on every angle, or, should I say, curve.

Police can't stop flash mobs

CNN reports:

This week in Germantown, Maryland, it took less than a minute for a flash mob of teenagers to descend on a 7-Eleven, ransack shelves and make off with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.

It's going to take much longer for police in Montgomery County to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

They'll be figuring for a long time. Why? Because police cannot prevent flash mobs of the 7-Eleven type. 

Flash mobs exploit the two fundamental weaknesses of reliance on "police protection" -- a) presence and b) response time. The police cannot be everywhere at the same time, and when seconds count they are only minutes away.

The primary reason why flash mobs continue to occur is that the risk is much less than the reward. None of the mob are getting smacked down. None of the mob are being killed. They are virtually unopposed. The critical question is how to change the risk-reward ratio so that the risk outweighs any perceived benefit to the antisocial flash mob types.

The answer is to encourage and promote and support store owners and other private citizens to take enforcement of the law into their own hands, to protect their private property from theft and vandalism. This is the ONLY way to solve the presence and response problem.

The group of teens that attempts to rob a 7-Eleven and is set upon by the owners and law-abiding citizens before being handed over to police will no longer engage in the behaviour. The group of teens that are held at gunpoint and/or shot and wounded or killed for daring to ransack a shop will not engage in the behaviour again. What is more, even the most thick-headed miscreant will begin to understand that the risk is too great to continue such mindless crime.

Flash mobs cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be argued with. Their force must be met with equal or (preferably) overwhelming force. Or, as Ann Coulter succinctly says, flash mobs must be crushed.

The trouble is, police cannot crush flash mobs of the 7-Eleven type. Were they able to organize quickly enough and really put power to the pavement, they might manage to put down a multi-street Philly type of flash mob. But not the individual store type of flash mob. For that to be stopped, the citizens must be empowered, supported and encouraged to defend themselves and their property.

If police are not prepared to do that then all bets are off and we can expect flash mobs to become more numerous, more bold and more sophisticated.

On England

Well, England exploded during my holidays, to the surprise of nobody familiar with the end state of a multiculturalism enabled through lax immigration and financed by socialism. It's a little too late to say that Enoch Powell had it right, but he nonetheless deserves honourable mention in these times, a mere generation after he predicted the hollowing of British identity would lead to catastrophe.

Much has been said and will be said about the rioting, looting, burning, pillaging and murdering that have gripped London and other British cities, but in all the coverage - both official (news) and unofficial (blogs, mainly) - that I have surveyed thus far, nothing compares to Rex Murphy's succinct condemnation, snipped here for brevity. Do read the whole thing.

These vicious riots were a parody in another sense, too: a savage parody when you consider real misery, the absolute darkness of hunger and fear facing people in Somalia right now. And a parody, too, of some of those demonstrations in Egypt, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere — where brutal governments set tanks upon their citizens, and gun down those who are only asking for something as simple as a vote, or as innocent as democracy. Let us hear less and less of the “dispossessed” and “disenfranchised” of first-world countries. As I gather from footage of the riots, being “dispossessed” seems to be a condition curable by waltzing off with some store’s Plasma TV and a couple of iPhones.

Some exceptions there were: the Turkish shopkeepers lining up to protect themselves and their work — a great display. The Muslim father in Birmingham, who lost his son to the hooligans, himself imploring for respect and order — he was a monument of virtue and great-heartedness. (“I lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home.”)

But these are ordinary citizens. Not one politician stands out.

One message I take from this week: England has no leaders. And in that, she is much like the rest of the western democracies. David Cameron wears a good suit, and speaks ever so carefully. It’s not enough. There is nothing about him (or Nick Clegg or George Brown or Harriet Harman or Ed Bland — that last name is talismanic) to suggest he or they have anything to say in this time that will not be a fudge and an evasion. They are no better on the riots than they are on the financial crisis. They are all temporizers as are the majority of politicians of the Western world.

This goes double for the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who came back from a continental holiday three days late to his burning city and then whizzed clumsily about to various locations like some puppet getting tangled up in its own strings.

There is no one in England fit to lace Churchill’s boots. But even to bring up that hallowed name is far too much. His name summons to mind another order of being, alien to the England of our time.

Canadians would do well to survey the savagery that has overtaken England and how and why it came into being, for the political and sociological mechanisms behind the British experience are for all intents and purposes identical to Canada's.

Britain's descend into madness did not "just happen;" it is the logical outcome of decades of adherence to neo-liberal leftist nonsensical ideals. Canada had best wake up to the fact that unless we address these issues at home, it isn't long before Toronto, Montreal or any other large Canadian city will also burn.