If your data doesn't support your hypothesis...

If your data doesn't support your hypothesis ... in most of science, you change your hypothesis.  Not the global warmists, though!  Steve McIntyre explains, with yet another example of the warmists blatantly cherry-picking the data that supports their preconceived notions.

It would be amusing to see real scientist – say, a physicist – closely examine the way the global warmists use their data...

The Canary Islands...

The Canary Islands...  I flew through there once, on a business trip, but it sure didn't look like this!  More info on the photo...

Our sun...

Our sun ... as you've never seen it before!  You'll want to full-screen this one.  From the video comments:

It’s always shining, always ablaze with light and energy that drive weather, biology and more. In addition to keeping life alive on Earth, the sun also sends out a constant flow of particles called the solar wind, and it occasionally erupts with giant clouds of solar material, called coronal mass ejections, or explosions of X-rays called solar flares. These events can rattle our space environment out to the very edges of our solar system. In space, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, keeps an eye on our nearest star 24/7. SDO captures images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. In this video, we experience SDO images of the sun in unprecedented detail. Presented in ultra-high definition, the video presents the dance of the ultra-hot material on our life-giving star in extraordinary detail, offering an intimate view of the grand forces of the solar system.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A planetarium on your computer screen...

A planetarium on your computer screen...  Free, too.  The Celestia program is pretty cool, even after just a few minutes of playing with it.  It's sort of a Google Earth for the rest of the universe...

Squirrels vs. houses of worship...

Squirrels vs. houses of worship...  One team clearly has a superior strategy:

There were four churches and a synagogue in a small town: a Presbyterian church, a Baptist church, a Methodist church, a Roman Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue. Each church and the synagogue had a problem with squirrels.

The Presbyterians called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrels. After much prayer and consideration they determined the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn’t interfere with God’s divine will.

At the Baptist church, the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a water slide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide, but, unfortunately, they knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.

The Methodists decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God’s creatures. So, they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist church. Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the water slide.

But the Roman Catholics came up with a very creative strategy. They baptized all the squirrels and consecrated them as members of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter.

Not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue, however. They took one squirrel and circumcised him; they haven’t seen another squirrel since…

Via my pistol-packing mama and my cousin Mike...

All those billions of dollars...

All those billions of dollars ... and disastrous incompetence.  Can you imagine any private company surviving with similarly bad performance?  The TSA costs us over $7 billion a year – every year since 2002 – and it accomplishes ... utterly nothing.  Zero terrorists captured or identified.  Zero terrorists stopped.  Zero terrorist weapons captured.  But millions upon millions of travelers inconvenienced and delayed.

From a political perspective, the TSA accomplishes two things:

1.  It pacifies low-information voters, making them believe they're being protected.  The vast majority, unfortunately, do not understand the TSA's profound uselessness.

2.  It employs hundreds of thousands of people on the government payroll – and they can be counted on to vote for Big Government, just as other large groups of public sector union members do.  Also, their union can be counted on to contribute major sums to the Democratic Party and its candidates, thus guaranteeing continued support from them.

Sheesh.  If the voters won't stop nonsense like this, what hope is there?  The doom, I feel it approaching...

Ceres...

Ceres...  As photographed by the Dawn robotic space explorer.  Via APOD, of course!

Old computers...

Old computers...  I mean really old computers, before electronics.  As many of my readers know, I collect old computing instruments – slide rules (especially), sector rules, Gunter's rules, and abaci.  But there's one old computing instrument that I don't have even a single example of, and I'd sure love to: Napier's bones.  I'm not interested in any of the modern replicas; I would like to get one of the real deals, in any of its many variants, made (most likely) in the 1600s.  I've never seen one for sale, dang it.  Anybody got a set lying about?