Say Anything Blog

Jerome J. Schmitt

‘Won’t we eventually stop the Earth from rotating?’

Imagine a concept for the perfect “green”, safe, sustainable, zero-emissions, invisible (literally) energy technology with potential for limitless power.  Radical environmentalists will still object!

This is what I learned when I perused the website of Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Center of Excellence for Ocean Energy Technology, which is pursuing R&D on innovative technology to anchor buoy’s 500 meters deep in the gulf stream equipped with turbines to harness the slow but powerful, steady, ocean-current for generation of electricity. At the depth proposed, the turbines will be insulated from damaging surface waves and storms; they will also be deeper than almost all marine life, except whales.  As a practicing engineer, I personally think that the idea has tremendous potential. My own assessment is that the most difficult problem to overcome will be protection of the moving parts and high-voltage power transmission cables from the notoriously corrosive effects of salt-water.  Nonetheless, here are the practical and green attributes of this proposed concept:

1. Sustainable—no fuel whatsoever
2. Zero emissions
3. Invisible (literally submerged far off-shore) so it overcomes “not in my back yard” ((NIMBY)
4. Safe - no radiation or spent fuel rods to store for millennia

An environmentalists dream right?  Wrong!  Check out the comments from this environmental website in an article that reports on FAU’s project, where they compete with each other to devise objections, such as:

[...]

- In my humble opinion it looks like that the installation of these underwater turbine will create an ecological disaster! Based on the 3D rendering above it looks like one would have to destroy the ocean floor to build and erect these
monstrosities.

- Actually, the Army Corp of Engineers studied this in the 50s and 60s and found that if you slow down the gulf stream, you not only disturb marine life but the entire climate! The gulf stream brings warmer weather all the way to Europe. Sorry guys, this is not our solution for energy

And my favorite:

- If we adopt too many of these systems to supply our electricity, won’t we eventually stop the Earth from rotating?

How about the “NIMBY” benefit?  Wrong again:

- One final point, when we hide the means of production of energy, we allow ourselves the luxury of ignoring its impact. Since we cannot, as a species, trust ourselves to act in the best interests of the planet upon which we depend, we should be designing systems that are absolutely “in our faces”, NOT hidden away. Perhaps, then, we would resort to the ultimate (albeit non-"design") solution: drastically reducing consumption of power, and limiting our own numbers.

Now it may be unfair to judge a website by its commenters—and in truth there were also many very positive comments, as well as corrections to the inanities in the comments reproduced above—but I believe that the sheer ignorance revealed about the enormous expanse of the ocean, the miniscule affect that any man-made activity can have on the gulf-stream—never mind the earth’s rotation—is very indicative of eco-activists in general.  They betray their radical urban roots in this regard with little knowledge of the outdoors, the ocean, the atmosphere, the solar system and science in general.  Yet they have no fear of pronouncing on and denouncing subjects that are beyond their ken.  Rather than seek meaningful solutions, they always resort to “object! object! object!” to whatever is proposed even on the flimsiest of grounds, even if it contradicts their previous objections. Keep this in mind the next time radical environmentalists protest an industrial project in your region.

Res ipsa loquitur.

According to a bumper sticker at Suitably Flip! Heh.
Cross posted at Proof Positive

To all the mothers out there. Have a Great Day.
For those that have sons and daughters overseas serving, this Old Retired Petty Officer sends his prayers.
Fair Winds and Following Seas.

I’m pretty humble when it comes to the love and abilities of all Mom’s. I’ve got nothing compared to the love, patience, kindness, tenderness and understanding… And I’m partial to my own Mom and wife...I’ve been blessed…

Happy Mothers Day

1 Corinthians 13 provides many active definitions as to what love is.
...love is patient, love is kind…

For some reason when I think of this scriptural reference to what love is, I often associate it on earth with my mom and the love of a mother for a son, which I see daily in the eyes of my wife and our children. As much as I love my children I’m resolved to how the connection between a child and the giver of life is. And maybe that’s an intentional connection? I don’t know for certain, but it’s very obvious in my daily observation between mothers and their children.

I could write an endless and unintentionally omissive account of my mom’s love for me but for Mothers Day of 2008 as I look back over three and half decades of love from my mother I cherish some of the little things much more than I’d have ever imagined at the time. And I venture to say when I’ve brought some of these little memories of love up with my mom, she’s a bit surprised as to what sticks out in the relationship between a mother and now grown son.

As a school aged kid in LaMoure I fondly recall the first and last day of school each year and Mom treating me to a special snack at the Omega Cafe. In fact I really can’t even relate exactly what or when it occurred, except that it was a special time of just me and Mom. We’d sit at the round table in the corner and maybe visit with some friends passing by and the smile on my face was only half was wide as the smile in my heart of spending a special, precious break with Mom. It wasn’t a steak dinner, or double fudge ice cream sundae, most often it was a cookie or pastry of some sort, but that was simply just on the plate to eat, not what was feeding the heart.

As I grew older and I picked up my first job delivering newspapers and our home was on top of a hill with the route down below. For a teen age kid lugging papers in the wee morning hours it may as well have been Mt Everest not to mention winters and bulky Sunday and Wednesday papers loaded with extra advertisement and sections. Sunday papers were especially intimidating, inserting the comics and flyer’s into the body of the paper took extra time and of returning multiple times to the house as I could only carry about ten of the bulk Sunday edition papers each trip. Again, I know it didn’t happen each and every week, but more often than not, my loving mom would arise with me and help--inserting, delivering, and some special occasions such as blizzard or rain, Mom would drive me. And other times when I returned home, the smell of fried sausage and my favorite scrambled eggs and hash browns would fill the morning as my work day was ending at 6:30AM. Indeed, these are very special memories for me.My parents took us on trips to the Rocky Mountains, Disneyworld, Viking and Twin games and more. But this old kids memory is peppered with more of those little things even though I vividly recall many other family excursions.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The love patience, kindness and tenderness my mom has shown to me was evident throughout life. As with any of us there were plenty of opportunities for my actions to cause shame to my mom or make her wonder “just what was he thinking” But what she may have thought on the inside was overcome by the love of a mother on the outside.  I’m sure there were a few (many) times then and even now my actions probably (did?) give my mother pause to wonder, but the pause was always blanketed by the love of mom, looking past the mistakes and giving me a bug hug as if to squeeze the trouble right on out of me.

As life changed and I moved onto college the week of finals was always greeted with a special set of ‘gifts’ and even more special were the notes of encouragement and love with which each gift was wrapped. No they weren’t worldy gifts such as CD’s, or money. They were better, much better and as the years pass on I think even more highly of how wrapping her love was the best gift of all. Love in a few baked cookies, a box of my favorite cheese crackers or a candy bar. Sure they were perfect finals, cram session, brain food, but more than any food or gift it was another little sign of how big the love of my mom was for me. It was her thinking, praying and hoping for the best for her son that was more than any material gift.

And don’t think as this kid grows with his own family the love of his mother is any less visible. When a fall hunting trip or weekday business trip provides an opportunity to stop and visit Mom, I’m often greeted by a pot of my favorite porcupine meatballs or sausage and eggs. But beyond filling the tummy of this old kid, indeed the love of Mom is served up and even more enjoyable.

... it does not seek it’s own interest....

I can’t help but be reminded on this Mothers Day the unselfish love God has for us and is shown from Mothers to son’s and daughters.

Have you heard about this?

On May 12 the Postal Service will adjust prices for its services. ...the most visible change is the 1-cent increase for First-Class Mail® letters

A First-Class Mail stamp will be 42¢.

Rising fuel costs to blame.


Hat tips to Jessica Logan, LGF

Cross Posted at Proof Positive

Chet Atkins plays Don McLean’s “Vincent”

I’m not sure what other logical conclusion can be reached considering how the liberal Democrats have block every energy development that would alleviate our need for foreign oil.
From Gateway Pundit

Over the past 30 years:

Which party blocked the development of new sources of petroleum?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling in ANWR?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the coast of Florida?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the east coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off of the west coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast?-- Democrat
Which party blocked building oil refineries?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean nuclear energy production?-- Democrat
Which party blocked clean coal production?-- Democrat

That’s about the complete list.  Oh, liberals do like wind power but not if it’s in a liberal state like California. i.e. wind turbines obstruct their scenic views.  Interestingly the state of Texas who has perhaps the least environmental restrictions has the most wind turbines.

Heh.
Hat tip to Hot Air : Katherine Jean Lopez at The Corner
Credit where credit is due: KJ got the picture at Suitably Flip
Cross posted at Proof Positive

I mean, really…

Heh.

Like John McCain, Col. George E. “Bud” Day spent over 5 yrs in Vietnamese POW camps. Day and John McCain were cell-mates for about 2 and a half years. Day is a legendary military hero with more medals and ribbons than anyone since General Douglas MacArthur.

Unlike our treatment of POWs at Gitmo, where copies of the Koran are readily available, there were no Bibles at the Hanoi Hilton. The only Scripture brought in was in the minds of the POWs themselves. McCain, apparently, had quite a bit of Scripture memorized.

Day said he asked McCain if he would be one of his preachers.

“He said sure. He had a great handle on the Episcopalian liturgy, he could just repeat it verbatim,” he said.

But repeating what he went through during his incarceration is something McCain almost never does as a presidential candidate. Day said he thinks he should.

So, just for comparison, we have a candidate who paid attention to what was said in his church, to the point that he could repeat its liturgy verbatim, versus a guy who couldn’t remember when his pastor said “God Damn America”? Yeah. Right!

Cross posted at Proof Positive

I recently attempted to highlight some of the problems in the front page argumentation here at sayanything. Apparently, my presentation asked for too much attention or acumen on the part of the reader for my point to have been conveyed succinctly and clearly, despite my efforts. I recieved such responses as:

I guess I just don’t speak moron.

Let’s pause here for a second and meditate on this comment from Pilgrim. Anyone who frequents this site knows that a popular thing for the Republican commentators at sayanything to bash on is the dailykos and their lack of rationality and overabundance of emotional appeals and contradictory, self-serving ‘puff’. Given this is such a popular theme for these commentators to rail on, one would think that my effort to help them iron out their inconsistencies and outright contradictions would have been welcomed. After all, these commentators purport to uphold rationality in the face of emotional appeals, do they not?

Since my efforts were perhaps a bit too succinct and demanded a bit to much rationality from this rational crowd (c.f. Pilgrim’s above comment for example), I will make an effort to recast the entire argument so that I can make it clearer and get my point across. I will make a better effort at communication, for the future interests of Pilgrim, so he might save himself from looking like a dailykos commentator; an irrational, emotional, flip-flopper.

Let me try to recast my recent post in a slightly less ‘moron’ manner.

---------------------------------------------

Rational people often employ something called logic when they make arguments. A typical argument has premises and a conclusion, which, hopefully, is entailed in the premises. If the conclusion is correctly entailed by the premises, we call that a valid argument. Formal logic is the study of inference in a purely formal or symbolized manner. An example of this would be a ‘modus tollens’ argument which runs as follows:

Premise 1: P→Q.

Premise 2: ~Q

Conclusion: ~P.

We can flesh this out with a real life example. One might argue that:

Premise 1: If Islam is a religion of peace, then pious Muslims are peaceful.

Premise 2: Its not the case that pious Muslims are peaceful.

Conclusion: Its not the case that Islam is a religion of peace.

I choose this argument because it is often made here on sayanything and, moreover, it is a valid argument form. Unfortunately, that’s not all that’s needed. In addition to a valid form, the argument must relate to the world in a certain way. The premises must be true. IF (A) the argument is valid & (B) the premises are true, THEN (C) the argument is sound. (If we formalize the sentence in bold, we get the following conditional where the antecedent is a conjunct: (A & B) → C). If its obvious that the above argument is valid, but if someone wishes to deny that it is sound, the burden is on them to pick the premise which they believe does not relate to the world in the appropriate manner, namely their burden is to choose a premise they believe to be false. What one needs is a counterexample to render the premise false. In the case of the above argument, one may choose premise 2 as being false, on real world evidence such as this. So, even though the argument form is valid, we find problems in the way in which it is related to the world. In short, we find counterexamples to premise 2, thereby rendering premise 2 false - the argument might be valid, but it is unsound.

In my recent post on Pilgrim’s lack of rationality, I exploited a modus tollens argument:

Premise 1: P→(R&~R)

Premise 2: ~(R&~R)

Conclusion: ~P

Where P = Pilgrim is correct and R = its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech. So, making the appropriate replacements and boldfacing the operators, we have:

Premise 1: If Pilgrim is correct then (its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech and its not the case that its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech.)

Premise 2: Its not the case that (its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech and its not the case that its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech.)

Conclusion: Its not the case that Pilgrim is correct.

Now, we have seen above that this form of argumentation is valid, but we need to go a bit further. We need to prove that the premises are true if we want the argument to be sound.

(1)Premise one rests on competing claims that Pilgrim has made in two of his recent posts. To be charitable, we will assume that Pilgrim is correct - that gives us P (Which I am making an effort to disprove here). He has made two claims. The first one I have formalized as R. This is the claim that its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech. We have evidence for attributing this claim to Pilgrim here. In the post, Pilgrim refers to the suppression of the Phelps’ right to free speech the “feel good moment of the day” and also closes with ”Good for the students at UW.” Thus, we can see that the attribution of R to Pilgrim is supported. We have also attributed ~R to Pilgrim. ~R amounts to the claim that its not the case that its good when UW students suppress others’ freedom of speech. We attribute that to Pilgrim on the basis of another recent post. In that post, Pilgrim is complaining that a UW student suppressed the free speech of another and claiming, moreover, that its bad. He says, “Their tolerance extends only to themselves and their politcal point of view.” He effectively condemns the suppression of a student who had placed 4,000 crosses on the green in an act of free speech. (And he spells political wrong.) On this basis, we find premise 1 to be sound.

(2) Premise two is what is referred to as an analytic truth or a tautology. We need not look for examples in the world to know that R=R. Furthermore, we need not look for examples in the world to know that ~(R&~R). A&~A, for example, would amount to the claim that ‘I am a human and I am not a human’. Because A and ~A are ‘mutually exclusive’, we know that any conjunction of them will be false. Hence the contents of premise 2: Its not the case that R and ~R. Premise 2 is a tautology - its as true as saying R=R, its effing obvious.

(Conclusion) Remember in the beginning when we said that we will assume that Pilgrim is correct to be charitable? Well, the introduction of that assumption has led is to a contradiction which allows us to negate that assumption. Thus we have ‘Its not the case that Pilgrim is correct’ or ‘~P’.

Now we have seen that the premises of my argument entail the conclusion in a valid manner and, moreover, we have seen that they are true premises. I hope that this extended effort to communicate the nuances of YOUR OWN arguments has been of aid to you Pilgrim. Hopefully, if you keep stuff like this in mind, you will be able to better deflect accusations such as, “You blog like the emo cream puffs over at dailykos.” It seems to me that someone who has ‘front page privileges’ over here would make an effort to steer clear of vulnerability to such accusations. After all, this isn’t the dailykos is it?

From our friends at Gateway Pundit.

Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted “God Talk,” a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station’s charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved “exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity” in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

...Ward initially pleaded not guilty and said he had downloaded a few pornographic images over several weeks as research for a book on hypocrisy among Americans who preach morality in public.

I wonder how you-know-who missed this one.  You think it’s because Ward is a liberal??

Saturday on AM 790 KFGO weekend edition of Outdoors Live from 2-3PM.

This week we’ll talk about the Minnesota fishing opener and early season tips and tactics with Jason Durham and take you through the planning for your summer outdoors destinations in North Dakota with Kim Schmidt from ND Tourism.
podcast available and online streaming at http://www.kfgo.com

That’s right! 57! Like Heinz varieties! (Maybe he’s been hanging out with the French looking John F. Kerry too much!

If this turkey wants to chide McCain for senior moments, he ought to be able to master the facts that any third grader could!

Hat tip to Hot Air, via The Jawa Report

Cross posted at Proof Positive (more...)

I failed to heed the 24 hour rule.

No Cigar
By Wretcherd
The Belmont Club

The US military has denied that al-Masri is in custody. Bill Roggio reports:

Less than 24 hours after a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced the capture of Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, the US military denied al Masri has been captured. “Neither coalition forces nor Iraqi security forces detained or killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri,” Major Peggy Kageleiry, spokeswoman for Multinational Division North, told The Associated Press. “This guy had a similar name.” Al Masri was reported to have been captured in Mosul.

Too bad, but facts are facts.

Too bad indeed.  Can someone pass that facts are facts observation on to “blackwater"boob?  He could benefit from it…