Say Anything Blog

BBC

This has got to be your worst nightmare.

A pair of twins who were separated at birth, adopted into different families and never told of the existence of their sibling met years later, fell in love and got married.
They only discovered they were related after they were married. The marriage has now been annulled. The couple’s identities have been kept anonymous.

The case was brought before the British House of Lords during a debate on the new Human Fertility and Embryology Bill.

Instapundit has a link to an interesting article on the “is happening” transformation of some agriculture to growing switchgrass for ethanol production. Here’s the key portion:

But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. “It’s a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material” like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. “We’re pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close.” This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.

People have been saying for a while that switchgrass is a much better biosource than corn is.  Corn is very hard on the land (sucks out nutrients and nitrogen like crazy), and probably isn’t a good choice for a sustainable energy alternative.

If the energy efficiency of switchgrass is anywhere near what is claimed, then this probably foretells the end of the “growing corn for ethanol” experiment.  Reality has a way of separating out the good ideas from the bad ones.

Here's an angle you won't get from the ND media. I'm not talking about the combover, but I do recall the local media stays clear of that too, in order to preserve their access to the Senator.


I saw this article yesterday talking about how Kildeer Mountain Manufacturing ("Manufactuing" according to KX News) is looking forward to “sharing the award” of a big defense contract with U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan.

According to this press release, KMM’s “director of business development” is one Kristin Hedger, who tried a horribly misleading campaign against Secretary of State Al Jaeger last election cycle.

According to this post on the official ND Dem-NPL blog, Kristin Hedger offered as proof of her ND citizenship: “a letter from the North Dakota Tax Department and also the form that shows she lists North Dakota for tax withholding during her time working in Senator Byron Dorgan’s office, starting in May 2001.”

Is there something the Hedger family and Dorgan should be disclosing?

As I write this I just heard Ron Paul talk about the encounter in the Straits of Hormuz on the Fox South Carolina Debate.

What an Idiot. Not that I’m prejudiced.  He will be pilloried for this.  And should be.

Romney looks pretty good on this.  Rudy is lame. Fred, I’ll not offend.  Huck is Huck, funny, clever and popular.  McCain is good, I just don’t trust him.

Can we not hear anymore tinfoil hatism from Paul.  He is not worthy to be on the same stage of these other men.

John Tierney

[Follow link for chart]

Last week I asked if there were any good weather omens to look for. I raised a question originally posed by Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado: Are there any indicators in the next 1, 5 or 10 years that would be inconsistent with the consensus view on climate change?

Lab readers contributed some ideas (and much invective), but I think the most useful one came from a climate scientist who wrote directly to Dr. Pielke and suggested comparing what has happened since 2000 with the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Pielke took up the suggestion and looked at the increase in global average temperature projected by the IPCC from 2000 to 2007. (The IPCC projected various scenarios, depending on the rate of greenhouse emissions; Dr. Pielke chose the scenario that most closely matches the actual emissions since 2000.)

The hard part was figuring out what has actually happened the past seven years, because it all depends on who’s doing the measuring, and whether it’s being done on the surface or by satellite. As you can see from the blue line in the graph above, the recent surface measurements by NASA (the blue line) are warmer than those by the United Kingdom Met Office (the green line), and there are different satellite measurements from Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Dr. Pielke calls it “a feast for cherrypickers.” In the Prometheus blog, where you can read the details of his computations, he writes: “One can arrive at whatever conclusion one wants with respect to the IPCC predictions. Want the temperature record to be consistent with IPCC? OK, then you like NASA. How about inconsistent? Well, then you are a fan of RSS. On the fence? Well, UAH and UKMET serve that purpose pretty well.”

No matter which line you prefer on the graph, you can’t draw any firm conclusions about the IPCC’s projections — a few years does not a trend make, and the global temperature is just one of the indicators to look at. But the different lines on the graph are certainly evidence of how complicated the climate debate is. If scientists can’t even agree on what has happened in the past, imagine how much more difficult it is to figure out the future. I’m not suggesting that the global warming isn’t real, or that the uncertainties justify inaction — we take out insurance all the time against risks that are uncertain. I’d like to see a carbon tax. But I’d also like to see fewer dogmatists claiming that the scientific debate is over.

Dr. Pielke suggests that more scientists do reality checks on other predictions by the IPCC, and that the IPCC make it easier for its predictions to be tested by specifying in detail what the variables are, who is measuring them, and what to look for in the future. “If weather forecasters, stock brokers, and gamblers can do it, then you can too,” he urges the IPCC in his blog post. Dr. Pielke told me that scientists have been focusing on the predictions for the summer ice melt in the Arctic — which called for less dramatic change than what has actually occurred — but not paying enough attention to other indicators.

[...]

What I find most curious is this: If we can’t be sure what the real temp is now, how can we rely on temp data from 50-100 years ago to tell us anything at all about how global temp has fluctuated(or not)?

...is that Bill Mitchell claims that Romney won, no matter what happened!
Update: (more...)

“Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace.”

bush

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducts undercover
activities as part of its mission to detect and deter terrorist attacks and
foreign intelligence threats and to enforce the laws of the United States. The
FBI uses confidential funds to support its undercover activities. By using
these funds, the FBI is able to conceal its role and identity from criminals,
vendors, or the public. However, the way FBI field divisions currently handle
confidential funds presents special challenges and creates potential
vulnerabilities for theft.
The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
recently concluded a criminal investigation into allegations that an FBI
employee stole FBI confidential case funds. As a result of this investigation,
in June 2006 a telecommunication specialist at an FBI field division pled
guilty to stealing over $25,000 in confidential case funds intended for
undercover telecommunication services. The investigation showed that the
employee took advantage of weak controls over field division confidential
funds to convert FBI monies for her own use.
… As part of our audit, we analyzed 990 telecommunication surveillance
payments made by 5 field divisions and found that over half of these
payments were not made on time. We also found that late payments have
resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines
established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost
evidence including an instance where delivery of intercept information
required by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order was halted
due to untimely payment.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0803/final.pdf

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

bush

WASHINGTON - Republican Rep. John Doolittle of California, who is under investigation in a congressional lobbying scandal, said Thursday that he’ll retire from Congress at the end of his current term.

I am pretty sure I could beat the crap out of Rob Port. I met him once. Yea, he’s half my age, in better shape than I am and all that. I’m a big guy. If I got in early and took a good shot maybe I could whip his ass. Just not today, and not till I meet him where and when I think I have a chance to whoop his rear end. Not that I’m a coward or anything. You understand.

You know I’m joking. I like Rob.

But this is exactly what Romney is doing. I’m even surprised he is campaigning in Michigan, never mind hiding from the back alleys of South Carolina and Florida. He knows full well his butt is about to be handed to him.

Meanwhile, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucus, hastily scheduled a Michigan appearance Friday following a debate in South Carolina the night before.

While he has not campaigned extensively in the state, he is nonetheless leading in the latest poll of Michigan voters, which was taken shortly after his Iowa win.

A poll released Wednesday by the Lansing-based Rossman Group has Huckabee at 23 percent, Romney at 22 percent and McCain at 18 percent among 300 likely Republican voters surveyed January 6 and 7.

The poll has a margin of error of 5.8 percent.

I get the idea, but let’s not let the retreat of the Lite Brigade fool us. Huck will prevail in MI, SC, and FLA. I hope Romney has lots and lots of money left to overcome the big MO coming on with big Huck on super Tuesday.

Romney never learned not to step on superman’s cape or pee into the wind. He’s browning up in the old sunbeam along with Fred.

OH,Rats, now Rob really will want to kick my ass.

For you Biblical Scholars, ass is a good word.

I see that John Kerry has endorsed Barak Obama.  I think that must be the worst endorsement anyone could ever get.

So, I’m thinking, How much did Hillary pay Mr Kerry to Endorse Obama.

That couldn’t have been cheap.

South Africa, meet your next president.

By Allison Barrie FOX News
Jacob Zuma, the 65-year-old “100 Percent Zulu Boy” and new leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), has garnered the popular support of communists and young people, some of whom publicly display anti-gay and anti-feminist views.
South African presidents are chosen by the 400 members of the directly-elected National Assembly, one of the two houses of parliament.
Women’s groups may be sounding off over the values of the polygamist president-to-be, but Zuma is no stranger to controversy.
n the most recent installment on his path to the South African presidency, one that could be mistaken for an episode of HBO’s “Big Love,” Zuma took his fourth wife over the weekend.
Zuma has an estimated 20 children by six different women. His eldest wife, Sizakele Khumao, has renounced her “first lady” status in favor of his new 33-year-old wife.
A former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is South Africa’s foreign minister and a potential political rival. Another wife killed herself in 2000.
Despite Zuma’s removal as deputy president of South Africa after fraud charges two years ago, and subsequent corruption and rape charges, the ANC announced this week that the party will support his candidacy for the national presidency.
During his rape trial, Zuma took a “short skirt” excuse, claiming it was his duty as a Zulu warrior to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga (an African wrap), and that he could not leave her “unfulfilled.”
Zuma told the court that he knew the woman was “clearly aroused” by the fact that her kanga was “quite short” — meaning knee-length.
“In the Zulu culture, you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready,” he explained.
According to his defense team, Zulu men have sexual primacy over women. Therefore, he could not be guilty.
“To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape,” Zuma claimed.
The accusing woman, who was 31 and HIV-positive at the time of the incident, is the daughter of one of Zuma’s now-dead liberation-war comrades.
She alleged that when she went for advice in late 2005 to the home of the man she had known since childhood and had always called “uncle,” Zuma forced his 250-pound frame upon her.
During the subsequent trial, thousands of Zuma’s supporters congregated outside the courthouse, chanting “kill the bitch” and pelting the accuser with rocks as she arrived each morning.
At one point, Zuma was caught attempting to bribe the victim’s aunt with an offer of two cows and a new garden fence in exchange for persuading the victim to withdraw the allegations.
But was Zuma, the former head of the National AIDS Council in a country where one in seven citizens are HIV-positive, and aware of the woman’s HIV-positive status, concerned about unprotected sex?
“I had a shower afterwards,” Zuma explained after announcing that he had chosen not to use a condom.

UNBELIEVABLE!

The former president has some interesting things to say in the Onion.

I’m still laughing.

by Cory Doctorow

A five-year-old boy was taken into custody and thoroughly searched at Sea-Tac because his name is similar to a possible terrorist alias. As the Consumerist reports, “When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn’t passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him.”

It’s a case of a mistaken identity for a 5-year-old boy from Normandy Park. He had trouble boarding a plane because someone with the same name is wanted by the federal government. Mimi Jung reports from Sea-Tac Airport.

You know, if you wanted to systematically discredit the idea of a Department of Homeland Security, if you wanted to make an utter mockery of aviation safety, you could not do a better job than this.

H/T boingboing

Some students who attend the Eden Prairie School in a suburb of Minneapolis have been disciplined after photos surfaced on Facebook, a social networking site.  A total of 42 students were questioned, with 13 students disciplined.  Students were suspended from sports and other school related activities.

AP- Some Eden Prairie students have been suspended from sports and extracurricular activities after school officials saw Facebook photos of students who appeared to be partying, several students said.

Danny O’Leary, a senior lacrosse player, said Tuesday that his dean obtained four Facebook photos of O’Leary holding drinks and said he was in “a bit of trouble.” One photo shows him holding a can of beer, another a shot of rum, and another showed him holding his friend’s 40-ounce container of beer.

“I wasn’t drinking that night,” O’Leary said. “I was told each picture was equal to a two-game suspension.”

The students have also planned to walk out of school today after first hour classes.  A small, but very vocal group left the school at 9:22 a.m. today, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Some of the students are upset with the school administration’s handling of the situation, claiming their rights have been violated.

Students need to make better choices when posting things online and putting it out there for anyone with internet access to see.

Pat Sajak

There are apparently tens of millions of people around the world who are convinced global warming is real, and mankind (particularly American mankind) is responsible. Further, they believe utterly catastrophic results are imminent unless we drastically alter our lifestyles—and soon. These alterations include the things we eat, our transportation, our daily work and leisure habits, and even the number of children we should have. The problem is there are also tens of millions of people around the world who are skeptical of this theory, and, despite one side’s claims the debate is settled, a significant and growing number of climate experts keep challenging their conclusions.

So, those who believe disaster is around the corner face a dilemma: while they’re educating their fellow citizens and demanding governments regulate believers and non-believers alike, the problem continues, and the date of the world’s doom draws ever closer. But there is a solution. It’s relatively simple, can begin immediately, and will change the dynamics of global warming overnight. Instead of continuing to preach to the rest of us, the true believers need to step forward and set an example. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles; I’m talking about giving up cars and moving into smaller houses or apartments, or even forming communes where people can live simpler, more Earth-friendly lives. Yes, I’m talking about living the kinds of lives they want all of us to live.

Such a movement could literally start tomorrow. It would need a leader, of course; someone who could inspire others to choose a more spartan lifestyle. The obvious choice would be Al Gore, who already has a loyal following. If he would eschew large homes, gas-guzzling cars, private jets and the consumption of meat, millions more would likely do the same. If enough people joined the cause, Mr. Gore and his followers would be able to demonstrate the results of this new way of living in very short order. They could lead by example. They could create a movement. They could have uniforms and badges and secret handshakes. The could have their own reality TV show. In short, they could become a major force for change. Carmakers would be driven out of business or forced to dramatically alter their products to meet the demands of this eco-friendly Gorian tsunami. Companies of all stripes would, similarly, have to adapt or perish.

[...]

And so, I urge the advocates for change to embark on this important mission. Do it for the children. Godspeed.

Pat Sajak; who knew?  Read the whole thing; Pat makes a very good point.  Action speaks louder than words, especially when the words are propaganda.