“Dick Rowland Image”
”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”
Out of Sight is Safer
From: Perry de Havilland (London)
The real message https://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/out_of_sight_01_sml.jpg
This poster can be seen all over London. In it a young man standing at a bus stop chats on his mobile phone, a sight one sees all the time on London’s busy streets.
What the Metropolitan Police are saying is that doing this, talking on a mobile phone in London, in public, is unwise behaviour. Okay, fair enough, London is a big city and all big cities have their fair share of street crime, so what is the problem with this message from the boys in blue?
The problem I have is that this poster is not warning criminals who
might attack us and steal our phones of the sure vengeance of the law. Not it is calling on us all to refuse to tolerate thieves in our midst and to resist to the best of our ability. Hell, how about suggesting “if you have a mobile phone in your hand and you either witness a mugging in progress or think you are in danger, dial 999 and the Police, whose paychecks and cars with flashing lights come from your taxes, will come rushing to the rescue.”
No, it does not say that at all. The real message here from our
appointed protectors is not “we will protect you from crime” and
certainly not “protect yourself from street crime,” but rather ”’hide”’ from street crime.
The state cannot protect you, it will not permit you to protect yourself effectively, so all it can do is offer advice … and the advice is hide. Do not show anyone you have something worth stealing. I expect we will soon see posters across London saying “it is safer not to wear Armani suits, you might get mugged” and then “don’t wear short skirts, you might get raped” and finally “don’t go out at all, the streets are not safe.”
Perhaps when the state has taxed everything and we no longer have
anything left to hide, we will indeed have “safer streets.”
The state is not your friend.
And, in response to a comment on the above: Yes, I have all sorts of
ideas about crime. I do not want the police on every street corner but as I cannot carry a weapon to defend myself in Britain, I expect the people who have disarmed me to bloody well do it … which of course they cannot.
Above articles is from https://www.samizdatat.net.blog.archives/002560.html
”Roots (Food for Thought)”
Hard Evidence of Global Warming – in Caddyshack?
Author: James M. Taylor, Managing Editor
Published: The Heartland Institute 01/01/2002
If you believe the latest round of pop-science reports in the mainstream media, you can only conclude that the comedy movie classic Caddyshack provides the answer to two of the most important scientific questions of the day: Is the Earth warming, and is mankind responsible?
The much-sought-after answers to those questions can be discovered in Caddyshack by applying the same highly scientific reasoning the
mainstream media recently used to analyze one of Alaska’s kill-the-winter-boredom comedic classics.
Guessing Game
In 1917, engineers were building a railroad bridge over the Tanana River near Fairbanks, Alaska. Because the presence of ice on the river halted bridge construction, the engineers were forced to amuse themselves in whatever way possible while they fought boredom and awaited the spring thaw.
One of many such methods of amusement (we’re talking he-man Alaskans at the turn of the last century here, so you can use your imagination as to what else occurred, all in the name of boredom-fighting) was to place bets on when the ice would break up on the river, allowing construction to continue.
From such humble beginnings emerged the “Nenana Ice Classic,” an annual guessing game in which thousands of people now participate. For a $2 bet, participants earn a chance to win the grand jackpot by guessing the exact time and date the ice will break up on the river.
Because early contests were prone to subjective, financially
self-serving pronouncements of just what constituted the official ice
breakup on the river, a large, immaculately crafted wooden tripod is now placed on the ice, and the official breakup time occurs when the tripod falls through the ice into the river, much like Al Gore’s political aspirations.
This passes for science?
Raphael Sagarin, a “marine biologist” at Stanford University (Managing Editor’s note: The somewhat goofy, pimply faced kid who comes to my house once a month to clean my saltwater aquarium also calls himself a “marine biologist,” for what that’s worth), apparently learned of the contest while visiting Alaska last year. He was struck by what USA Today, MSNBC, and Science magazine apparently believe is the scientific insight of the century. “I immediately thought this might be a great record of climate change.”
Sagarin surmised that he could study the record as to the date each
year’s Nenana Ice King received his frozen and technically illegal
annual payoff to reconstruct a record of when the ice thawed on the
Tanana River. “It turns out to be really good, accurate data,” Sagarin scientifically explained.
Sagarin studied the records and reported (surprise!) the ice is breaking up 5.5 days earlier in recent years than it did in 1917. Sagarin then declared global warming is clearly upon us. Science magazine published his findings, and the mainstream media has been gushing about them ever since.
Duty to science requires a few observations here.
Remember that big, immaculately constructed wooden tripod erected to provide a definitive ice-out date? That didn’t exist in 1917. And even when it first did come into existence, was anybody checking to make sure the tripod carried the same specifications in terms of size and weight from year to year? What about the tripod’s placement? Anybody who was ever a child in New England can tell you that every year, some places on a pond thaw out much earlier than others, and the early thaw doesn’t hit the same place year after year.
John Daly, author of The Greenhouse Trap and master of the fantastic Web site “Still Waiting for the Greenhouse” at https://www.john-daly.com notes the city of Fairbanks is directly upstream from the Nenana Ice Classic. Fairbanks, he points out, almost certainly discharges much more warm-water sewage (including water changes performed on salt-water aquariums by “marine biologists”) into the river than it did in 1917.
Daly also points out the Fairbanks area has recently been receiving more seasonal snowfall than it did in 1917. More snowfall means more spring runoff, increasing the springtime flow of the river, resulting in an earlier breakup in the ice. Daly presents several other local factors, wholly unrelated to marine biology, that further skew the reported findings.
It should also be noted that, irrespective of the above-described flaws in the “Nenana Ice Classic as oracle of global warming” theory, any alleged warming near Fairbanks, Alaska would hardly prove warming on a global scale.
Numerous recent studies (some of which are reported in the October and December issues of Environment & Climate News) have found that both the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps are growing, not shrinking. Twice a month for the past three years, CO2 Science Magazine https://www.co2science.org has identified and documented a cooling trend in several cities and towns across North America, including many in Alaska.
Don’t Confuse Them With Facts
This, of course, has not stopped the pop-media/pop-science culture from anointing the Nenana Ice Classic betting slips as irrefutable evidence of global warming. USA Today, MSNBC, and Science could hardly restrain themselves in praise of the newly discovered “proof.”
On Oct. 25, USA Today reported that “Hard evidence of global warming is showing up not in climate scientists’ charts and figures but in nature …” And we all know how unreliable scientific charts and figures are, as compared to gambling records.
Gushed MSNBC on the same date, “For centuries, hobbyists have collected data on the world around them–from the arrival of the first bird in spring to the first frost in autumn. The branch of science that looks at the annual timing of natural events is known as phenology. Until recent years, scientists have dismissed such nontraditional data gathered by amateurs. (Managing Editor’s note: Gee, I wonder why?) ‘Now scientists are taking a second look at phenology and giving it some respect,’ Sagarin said.”
A Logical Conclusion
One cannot help but be tempted to apply such “scientific” methods to
other scenarios. In fact, replication is quite necessary to prove the
theory. That’s essential to sound science: The results of an experiment must be independently verifiable.
Accordingly, I popped a Caddyshack videotape into my VCR and
fast-forwarded to the second-most-famous (next to the Nenana Ice
Classic) betting contest in history. And there I found my proof that
global warming, just as predicted by the Nenana Ice Classic, is indeed occurring.
“Ten bucks says the Smails kid picks his nose!” calls out the
locker-room attendant. The tension mounts … and the Smails kid picks his nose. A loud cheer erupts as the winners get paid.
I look at the calendar hanging on the wall in my kitchen. It is Jan. 1, several months earlier in the year than the mid-summer date 20-odd years ago when I first watched Caddyshack and betting on the Smails kid first paid off at two-to-one odds. Global warming is indeed here, I realized. The Nenana Ice Classic is scientifically validated.
John Daly’s The Greenhouse Trap–Why the Greenhouse Effect will not end Life on Earth, was published in 1989 by Bantam Books. It is out of print, but used copies are available through Amazon.com at
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0947189777/theheartlandinst.
”Evergreen (Today’s Quote)”
Mental Laws: There are few laws that govern all thinking, just as there are a few fundamental laws in chemistry. In order to learn control of our thoughts, we have to know and understand these laws.
Law of Thought: Every thought is made up ot two factors, knowledge and feeling. A thought consists of a piece of knowledge with a charge of feeling, and it is the feeling alone that give power to the thought.
It makes no difference whether the knowledge content is correct or not as long as you believe it to be correct. Remember that it is what we really believe that matters. A report about something may be quite untrue, but if you believe it, it has the same effect on you as if it were true; and that effect again will depend upon the quantity of
feeling attached to it.
No matter how important or magnificent the knowledge content may be, if there is no feeling attached to it nothing will happen. On the other hand, no matter how unimportant or insignificant the knowledge content may be, if there is a large charge of feeling something will happen.
GRIH comment: We don’t know who penned that but it sure might explain why “feel good” actions by politicians are so popular despite sometimes all too obvious long range harm. But why are such actions supported by so much of the news media who are, supposedly, the “elite” thinkers? Go figga. Then send a letter to the editor. Yes, that includes you. And “left rudder” Bud too!
”’See Web site”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org ”’for further information. Join its efforts at “Nurturing the rights and responsibilities of the individual in a civil society. …” or email or call Grassroot of Hawaii Institute President Richard O. Rowland at mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com or (808) 487-4959.”’