Global Warming

On Reuters yesterday:

KATHMANDU - Snow fell on Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, for the first time in 63 years on Wednesday, stirring excitement and curiosity among residents and their children.

"I have never seen it snow in Kathmandu in all my life,” said 45-year-old housewife Manju Shrestha, playing in the snow with her young children.

Also in the news yesterday: temperatures in Antarctica are not increasing, as the climate models have predicted. Let me translate: the “evidence” for the notion of future global warming caused by human activity consists almost entirely of the predictions of computerized “models” of the Earth’s climate. For the most part, the changes predicted by these models are small and slow, and therefore very difficult to verify over the course of even several years. However, there are several changes the models predict that are larger and faster. One of those happens to be in an area where there is lots of scientific activity, and good climate records over the past few years: Antarctica. The models predicted easily measurable temperature increases over the past 10 years.

Those increases didn’t happen.

The models are demonstrably wrong.

But I don’t suppose the Al Gorians will temper their rhetoric in the slightest. After all, they’re not the type to let a little thing like some pesky data upset their gravy train certainty…

Quote of the Day

From Iraqi Konfused Kid:

I’m gonna tell you something that all the Iraqis who pretend they’re full of pride and shit don’t tell you, every Iraqi who knows what’s good for him wants the US military plan to happen - it’s a known fact today that while US soldiers do occasionally rape 15-year-olds and add naked photos of our hairy butts to their family albums, they are still infinitely more trustworthy than any Iraqi soldier from anywhere. When an American soldier knocks on your door for a search, you go 'oh thank god' but when Iraqis do the same, you are instantly on your toes.

Read the whole thing, please.

There’s a wide variety of commentary coming from Iraq these days, on blogs — military blogs, diplomatic blogs, propaganda blogs, and Iraqi citizen blogs. What’s most striking to me about all of these sources of information is this: while they all have different perspectives and different kinds of information … I haven’t found a single one that even comes close matching the awful picture painted by the lamestream media. If you read these sources, as I do regularly, you’ll discover a different Iraq. A much more plausible Iraq than the one you see on CNN, and also a much more complex Iraq. There’s good news and there’s bad news, and plenty of both. And contrary to what you’d believe if your only source was the talking network heads, there’s plenty of those most precious human commodities: hope and inspiration…

Wake Up!

Last night Debbie attempted to use our microwave oven, and discovered that it didn’t work. Oh, the lights came on, and the turntable turned, but the stuff inside stayed ice cold. Thinking that it might have gotten itself into some software failure mode, or perhaps that some electronics got overheated, I pulled the plug and told her we’d try it again in the morning. It’s amazing how often a little “rest” cures whatever ails an appliance.

So this morning I plugged it back in to try it out. Of course it won’t do anything until you set the clock, so I had to figure that out again. Thank goodness for Google’s ability to find a manual on the web — because there’s very little chance we’d ever find the manual for this 8 or 9 year old device in our house! So, with multi-page clock-setting directions in hand, I managed to get the clock set. Now we’re ready to test it, and hopefully we’ll be cooking with hard radiation!

But such was not to be…

I put my test container of water in the microwave, and pressed the two buttons that would make it heat for one minute on 'high'. For the first couple of seconds, everything acted perfectly normal. Then there was a very loud kra-a-a-ck!!! and a jet of blue flame shot out the right side of the microwave. Our microwave is sitting in a recessed cabinet, so the blue flame quickly filled the small space between the microwave and the cabinet, and then changed direction to the only escape it had: straight out the front. This flame jumped out perhaps 18 inches, right past my right hand (which was still up at the control panel) and just a few inches from my eyeballs.

I don’t think my heart rate has ever jumped quite so much, quite so quickly.

The microwave is now sitting ignominiously out by our trash cans. I will buy us a nice, shining, new, non-exploding microwave this afternoon.

And I will never, ever have an unguarded microwave moment again!