OK, lately I’ve been listening to NPR radio on the way to work. I want to throw out two items that caught my interest.

First is an item about a meat packer in the midwest who wants all his cattle tested for mad cow disease. The rational is that he can sell his cattle to Japan since they require complete testing. The USDA is preventing them from doing the testing. The story covers many angles, however they miss the most important point that left me very puzzled.

Who pays and who performs the testing? If the USDA pays and performs the testing, then the story makes sense. The rancher is trying to get more from the government than everyone else gets. In this case, I can see it being a big deal with resistance from the USDA. If the ranchers have to pay for the testing themselves, especially through private labs, then that’s a whole different story.

What I got out of the story was that it was the USDA that does the testing. Of course, that isn’t the case. They pay for and do the testing themselves.

But that was all made up for this morning. They had an arts showcase about Neko Case. Holy frickin’ cow what a voice.

Freeman Dyson, the famed physicist thinks so.

Given the current warming trend, I would like to ask the following two questions: First, if the modern increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of 6,000 years ago, when the Sahara was wet? Second, if we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of 6,000 years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today?

Countering that in a way is another post I found via NRO…

ICE, ICE BABY [Iain Murray]
If you want a complete rundown on the science surrounding the supposed rapid disintegtration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has it here. The Center provides a comprehensive, non-alarmist weekly update on climate science for a minimal fee and is well worth supporting.

The conclusion:

These observations reveal that over the latter part of the 20th century, i.e., the period of time that according to climate alarmists experienced the most dramatic global warming of the entire past two millennia, fully 80% of the Antarctic coastal stations with sufficiently long temperature records experienced either an intensification of cooling or a reduced rate of warming; while four coastal sites and one interior site actually shifted from warming to cooling.

In light of these facts, it is clear there is a serious disconnect between reality and the virtual world of climate modeling; and since everything else in the 24 March 2006 set of glacial ice Science papers pertains to climate modeling, there is not much else that need be said about them … except, perhaps, to note that the modeling pertains primarily to the prior interglacial, which makes it essentially meaningless for two additional reasons. First, if the models can’t replicate what happened in earth’s polar regions over the past few decades, there’s surely no reason to give any credence to what they tell us about something that occurred 130,000 years ago. And second, one can easily get the right answer to a computational problem for any number of compensating wrong reasons, so that even a “correct” replication does not imply that the mechanics of the modeled phenomenon are correctly understood.

And that is a pretty good summary of much that is driving alarmism today.

All those getting to this site while searching for Jeanine Garafolo Naked please stop it!  I’m not going to fulfill your sick disgusting habits.

I’ve never even seen that woman with short sleeve shirts on.  C’mon people, get back into something normal, like necrophilia or S&M with chickens.

What do the numbers 1, 2, and 42 have in common?  They are all the moments of the Riemann zeta function.  Seems 42 is something else besides the meaning of everything.

Yes, this is sarcasm.  This woman is pretty damn stupid to be a mother.  It’s about the Seattle shootings

Nancie Thorne told The Seattle Times that her 15-year-old daughter, Suzanne, was in the house when the man opened fire. She hadn’t heard if her daughter survived.It’s the worst phone call a mom can get,” Thorne said, crying. She shouldn’t have gone to the rave. I’ve never approved of those things. … I just hope to God she’s alive. And if she is, she’s grounded for life.”

Hospital officials said the girl was not there.

Lets start with, hey lady:  WTF is your 15 year old daughter doing going to raves, and then to all night parties with booze and drugs in the house?  And you sounding like you had no frikkin’ idea where the hell she was?

“She shouldn’t have gone to the rave?”  That’s your excuse for being an unfit parent?

And like saying she’ll be grounded for life will mean anything.  With your track record of parenting skills, that means you’ll whine at her for a few minutes and go out and buy her a car to assuage your guilt over yelling at her.

Something finally worth my tax dollars

U.S. scientists said on Sunday they had genetically engineered pigs that make beneficial fatty acids and may one day serve as a healthier source of pork chops or bacon.

There just isn’t anything wrong with this at all!

Now, if they could just genetically engineer tofu to taste like bacon, then I’ll be impressed.  Until then, the only artifical meat I’ll eat is soylent green.

Our blog of the week is Pass The Ammo.

Head on over and feel your macho level raise a few points with each post you read.  Remember:  Gun control is not about guns; its about control.

First, it was the delicious pastry.

Then, the cartoons.

And now, workers are going on strike because the factories are cutting their beer rations.
From the BBC NEWS

Danish manufacturing workers are up in arms over an attack on their workplace drinking habits.Currently, only 13% of canteens in manufacturing companies serve beer for lunch, down from about 75% three years ago, according to Danske Idag.

Efforts by employers to restrict drinking has met with considerable resistance in some quarters.

Last year, Harboe Brewery workers went on strike for two days after being told to stop drinking beer while working.

The strike went ahead even though their quota of six bottles of beer per day would have remained unchanged.

The order merely said they would have to go for a break to enjoy their beer.

Health concerns and demands for greater efficiency have led many employers to restrict supplies and encourage workers to cut back on their drinking.

My God, when will it all end???

Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study

Nature magazine has some tough questions to answer after it let its Wikipedia fetish get the better of its responsibilities to reporting science. The Encyclopedia Britannica has published a devastating response to Nature’s December comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica, and accuses the journal of misrepresenting its own evidence.

Essentially it came down to not only is Wikipedia mostly useless in any argument, its supporters have to lie and cook the data for comparisons to relatively reliable resources.

Saddam2008.com - Official Web Site

He’s a Democrat, and he’s mad as hell!

Thanks to the Razor!

More Futurama!!! Straight from Fry’s mouth!

And the other good news is that they’re doing 26 new episodes of
”Futurama” for TV and we’re hammering out the deal now.The original
plan was to have the DVD’s first but that’s no longer the case.I’m totaly
jammed dude.

Greetings from the year 3000! It still sucks!

Billy

My pick for Blog of the Week is for two reasons:  exotic appeal, and an absolutely beautiful theme.
ONEMANBANDWIDTH, an American Professor in China.

Rejected names for the Brokeback Mountain movie.
PRANCES WITH WOLVES
JEREMIAH’S JOHNSON
BUTCH ASSIDY AND THE BUNDANCE KID
THE MAN WHO SHOT ALL OVER LIBERTY VALANCE
HOW THE WEST WAS HUNG
THE LEGEND OF THE LONG RANGER
DOC’S HOLIDAY WITH BILLY THE KID
LONESOME DOUG
DESTRY RIDES AGAIN… AND AGAIN
MCCABE AND MR. MILLER
HI, PLAINS DRIFTER!
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN INCHES
QUICKLY DOWN UNDER
BAREBACK MOUNTING
BONE-NANZA
DON’T MESS WITH TEX’ ASS
HOME ON THE RANGER
OKLAHOMO
ROOSTER COCKBURN
LITTLE BATHHOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE
BALONEY PONY RODEO
TUBESTEAK COWBOYS
SILVER-ROD-Ohhh!!!

OK, some say that Pizza is the perfect food.  I must disagree.  It barely even covers one of the food groups.

Instead, I recommend:  Chicken fried steak.  It has everything you could ever want from a food.  Steak, breading, deep fried, and of course, gravy.

Of course my wife won’t even try it, but she’s just silly sometimes…

What if Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin got into a fight?

The universe would end because a winner could not be declared.

That the cheerleader avoids trial

TAMPA - The former Carolina Panthers cheerleader accused of having sex with a fellow squad member in a bathroom stall at Banana Joe’s in Channelside and then punching a bar patron last November will not face a criminal trial.She appeared in Hillsborough Circuit Court Monday to accept the conditions of an 18-month pretrial intervention program and she will need to complete to keep her criminal record clean.

If that’s the only punishment in this great country for being a lesbian cheerleader having sex in a bathroom stall… well, where do I sign up?

I’m trying something new here… Each week I’m going to try to send people to a new blog I’ve found.  It may not be a *new* blog but it’s new to me.  So, my blog of the week:  Severe Writers Block