I've been in this meeting!

I've been in this meeting!  Friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S. passed this little gem along.  It's a perfect characterization of innumerable meetings I've participated in, wherein I was the only person present with any technical expertise, and all the other participants were trying to design a product.  It's entirely typical of these meetings that an apparently endless of unutterably stupid ideas are proposed.  They only stop when the engineer agrees to anything in order to make the pain of the meeting stop, or until the engineer runs screaming for the room to look for some alcohol or psychological therapy.

Whoever made this captured the essence of those meetings from the engineer's perspective absolutely perfectly.  Awesome!

A clever ad for Taco Bell...

A clever ad for Taco Bell...  It contains a cultural reference so pervasive that even I understood it :)

So God made a ... lawyer?

So God made a ... lawyer?  Great ad!

I've known some lawyers I thought were good people.  Both of them are retired now.  The other bazillion lawyers I met in my career were putzes, suited-up criminals, or worse.  Most non-lawyers have a similar experience.  And yet the majority of our elected officials are lawyers.  What's wrong with this picture?

Old age is hell!

Old age is hell!  Via my mom...

The doctor gave the man a jar and said, “Take this jar home and bring back a semen sample tomorrow.”

The next day the 85-year-old man reappeared at the doctor's office and gave him the jar, which was as clean and empty as on the previous day.

The doctor asked what happened and the man explained, “Well, doc, it's like this – first I tried with my right hand, but nothing. Then I tried with my left hand, but still nothing.”

“Then I asked my wife for help. She tried with her right hand, then with her left, still nothing. She tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with her teeth out, still nothing.”

“We even called up Arleen, the lady next door, and she tried too, first with both hands, then an armpit, and she even tried squeezin' it between her knees, but still nothing...”

The doctor was shocked! “You asked your neighbor?”

The old man replied, “Yep, and none of us could get that damned jar open.”

How to get along well with your neighbors...

How to get along well with your neighbors...  From a collection of such gems, via my lovely bride.  Click to embiggen...

The stuff of Cold War nightmares...

The stuff of Cold War nightmares...  Russian fighter jets at the January 2014 air show in Paris.  Impressive, they are...

I have vomited three times in protest...

I have vomited three times in protest...  Sad cat diary, via my mom...

What would light do?

What would light do?  That's the question you need to ask yourself when you're trying to save a drowning person.  Because, Feynman.  And ants on green felt...

Beautiful photos of an older America...

Beautiful photos of an older America...  Except that this town never existed.  It's an amazing story...

Next IPCC report to be much less alarmist...

Next IPCC report to be much less alarmist...  Matt Ridley, in the Wall Street Journal, notes that the next IPCC report has drastically toned down it's alarmist rhetoric.  His conclusion:

Indeed, a small amount of warming spread over a long period will, most experts think, bring net improvements to human welfare. Studies such as by the IPCC author and economist Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University in Britain show that global warming has probably done so already. People can adapt to such change—which essentially means capture the benefits but minimize the harm. Satellites have recorded a roughly 14% increase in greenery on the planet over the past 30 years, in all types of ecosystems, partly as a result of man-made CO2 emissions, which enable plants to grow faster and use less water.

There remains a risk that the latest science is wrong and rapid warming will occur with disastrous consequences. And if renewable energy had proved by now to be cheap, clean and thrifty in its use of land, then we would be right to address that small risk of a large catastrophe by rushing to replace fossil fuels with first-generation wind, solar and bioenergy. But since these forms of energy have proved expensive, environmentally damaging and land-hungry, it appears that in our efforts to combat warming we may have been taking the economic equivalent of chemotherapy for a cold.

Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.

The warmists are being beaten down!

Putin's world view...

Putin's world view...  Peggy Noonan dissects his recent speech.  It's not comforting.  Her conclusion:

What does this remarkable speech tell us? It presents a rationale for moving further. Ukraine, for instance, is a government full of schemers controlled by others—it may require further attention. It expresses a stark sense of historical grievance and assumes it is shared by its immediate audience. It makes clear a formal animus toward the U.S. It shows he has grown comfortable in confrontation. It posits the presence of a new Russia, one that is "an independent, active participant in international affairs." It suggests a new era, one that doesn't have a name yet. But the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union were one thing, and this is something else—something rougher, darker and more aggressive.

It tells us this isn't about Crimea.

It tells us this isn't over.

Rat invade Swedish home...

Rat invade Swedish home ... and one of the kids names him “Putin Rat” because it invaded their home.

Awesome.  That kid has a future in politics!