Israel no longer has a water shortage...

Israel no longer has a water shortage...  You'd think their Arab neighbors would wake up some day, and realize that if the Israelis can do it, so could they – if they would just stop with the jihad crapola...

U.S. Marine: 1, Robber: 0...

U.S. Marine: 1, Robber: 0...  Gives you a nice, warm feeling, doesn't it?

The War on Drugs just claimed another victim...

The War on Drugs just claimed another victim...  This time, a 19 month old baby.

Depending on who's doing the counting, the war on drugs kills or injures between 1,000 and 5,000 Americans every year.  More than half of our incarcerated citizens were convicted only of drug-related infractions.  More than half of all robberies are motivated by drugs.  What have we accomplished for all this?  There is no evidence that the “War on Drugs” has decreased drug use at all.  Instead, drug use appears to shift up and down with cultural trends that are wholly unrelated to the War on Drugs – and also unrelated to the legality of the drugs.

Isn't it way past time to shift from this costly (in both blood and treasure) failed “war” to something more akin to how we deal with alcohol and tobacco?

I certainly think so.  If that burned baby survives, I'll bet he'll feel the same way...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From Joe the Plumber:

Guns are mostly for hunting down politicians who would actively seek to take your freedoms and liberty away from you.

Varmint hunting...

Where on earth...

Where on earth ... is the government smart enough to upload a copy of its data to the cloud, in case the country gets overrun by the big, bad Putin?  In Estonia, that's where!

The determined fellow at right will hold off the Russians long enough for the backup to be completed...

Where on earth...

Where on earth ... do more than 200 volunteers annually help almost 16,000 frogs cross the road in springtime?  In Estonia, that's where!

In the spring of 1994, I happened to be driving from Tallinn to the ferry for Hiiumaa, taking a route across the northern coast.  I saw hundreds of these frogs crossing the road – and dozens of them squashed on the roadway.  In other years, I saw hundreds of storks stalking these same frogs in the (abundant) swamps of Estonia.  Nothing makes a stork happier than catching one of these for lunch!

Inferring age from first names...

Inferring age from first names...  This is a fascinating exercise in statistical analysis of abnormally distributed data.  The bottom line seems nonsensical at first: for people with certain first names (examples: Gertrude, Thomas, Mary), one can infer their age with a reasonable degree of certainty.  Really!

Yikes!

Yikes!  POV of an urban downhill mountain bike racer's run...

The clock-maker...

The clock-maker...  I've read brief mentions of this failed attempt on Hitler's life, but nothing like the detail assembled here...

Might this be even a teensy little bit relevant?

Might this be even a teensy little bit relevant?  Most likely you've seen the news reports talking about the “collapse” of the Antarctic ice sheets.  There are several aspects of this, however, that are not so widely reported.  Why?  Well, one suspects its because they don't actually support the global warmist narrative:

• Only a relatively small part of the Antarctic ice sheet is “collapsing”  – in the western Antarctic, where about 15% of all the ice in Antarctica is.  The rest of Antarctica's ice sheets are growing at the highest rate ever recorded.
• The word choice (“collapse”) implies something happening swiftly.  In fact, the ice sheet's reduction will occur over a 200 to 1,000 year period – if it continues at all.
• The area where the “collapse” is occurring just happens to be an area full of active volcanoes – some of which are known to be erupting (see map at upper right).  The known effect of such an under-ice eruption is to melt the water underneath the glacier, leading to lower friction, higher glacial movement rates, and (wait for it!) – glacial collapse.

Jo Nova is all over the last bullet, which I haven't been able to find in any recent report about the collapsing glaciers – not even in the science rags I read.  However, it was present in several science articles over the past couple of years (Jo links to several such references)