Was It Something I Said??

The Iconic Midwest has seemingly been banished from the Blogroll over at The Moderate Voice. (Funny, I was still on it three days ago.)

Maybe somebody didn't like my castigating a commentator who claimed that Republicans single handedly destroyed public education. (Lent a hand, sure....but all by themselves? PUHLEEEEEESE!)

In any event it's too bad. TMV maybe a little unwieldy these days (far too many writers IMO), but it is still one of the better blogs out there.

UPDATE

I emailed a copy of this to Joe Gandelman over at TMV and the IM is back on the blogroll without a question. I'm glad. Joe is one of the first bloggers to have ever sent me a note saying he enjoyed what I did. That encouragement was enough to keep me going for the first few months, when I seemed to be writing purely for an audience of one, i.e. myself.

As always, Joe's a gentleman.

Dawkins Unhinged

After sucha length of time that I've been inactive today has turned into a veritable orgy of posting....but I had to quote a bit from Michael Fitzpatrick at Spiked: The Dawkins Delusion:

There is an old Irish joke, retold here by Richard Dawkins, about somebody in Northern Ireland who responded to a survey question about religious affiliation by declaring himself an atheist. ‘Would that be a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?’ came the insistent reply. Faced with a similar inquiry, I would be obliged to declare myself a Catholic atheist. By this I mean that I am an atheist by conviction, but a Catholic by upbringing and tribal affiliation.

I know that some people raised as Catholics blame the Church of Rome for their difficulties in later life, nourishing a particularly degenerate literary genre. As a child taught by nuns and brothers, I endured a fair amount of pious claptrap and casual corporal punishment and some inappropriate sexual interest. But any detriment suffered was far outweighed by a sound education and by exposure to a rich cultural heritage – of art and music, scripture and ritual. For this I retain gratitude, affection and respect.

Though as an atheist I feel I should welcome Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, as a Catholic atheist, I find myself repelled by his crass polemic – and I am not alone. In his comments on Catholicism, Dawkins reveals a combination of old-fashioned Protestant anti-Popery with the fashionable contempt of the liberal intelligentsia for any kind of religious faith. Thus he refers to the ‘semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than normal intelligence’ (p167). Discussing the consequences of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, he suggests that ‘horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place’ (p317). These are statements of such unmitigated prejudice – and indeed absurdity – that it is shocking to find them in a serious book by a reputable author.

It is amazing how some things come full circle. One of the earliest posts at The Iconic Midwest dealt with a similar type of pig ignorance from someone who ought to be able to know better. (See Evolving Faith) Of course Dawkins has been a little nuts for awhile now. Like a lot of people I knew him mostly from his book The Selfish Gene, which remains one of the best introductions to the Darwinian sythesis out there. So I was horrified when I saw Dawkins in an interview with Charlie Rose where the only thing more shocking than his intellectual dishonesty was his deeply rooted bigotry.

Radio, Radio

I got a chukle over this coverage of the difficulties at Air America:

At Air America, business and politics always mixed, and that was the problem, critics contend…Detractors label the liberal network’s programming as combative, one-note and emotional. At least its business dealings seem to fit that last description…The search for new investors and managers has been marred by infighting among those who want the network to succeed, according to people in the organization.

Hmmm. You mean extreme liberal ideology can interfere with a corporation’s ability to succeed? Who’d of thunk it?

Fortunately for us, the chuckles in this article hadn’t ended: "This is only the latest twist in the short but contentious history of Air America. At the root of its problems, some critics and competitors say, has been an inability to negotiate a middle path between its political mission and its business.”

Another element that won’t be at all surprising to some was how poorly these folks managed the finances of the network:

Air America ran into financial trouble within days of its appearance on March 31, 2004, when it turned out that its original chairman, Evan Cohen, did not have the backing he said he did. […]

Some people at Air America assert that, under Mr. Glaser and the team he put in place, the network was top-heavy with management, inept at selling ads, unwilling to make program compromises that veered from the liberal message and overstaffed with more than 100 employees when two dozen would have sufficed.

“What they did for $45 million they could have done for $10 million,” said Sheldon Drobny, an investor with a contentious relationship with the network.

Hmmm. Liberals overspending. What a shock.

Ever since I got my XM radio a couple of months back I've actually listed to quite a bit of Air America (channel 167). Its main problem is its lack of professionalism. While sounding a little bit like a college radio station can lend a "Hey, let's put a show on in the barn!" sense of fun, sounding ALOT like a college radio station just comes across as inept. But even at its best it Air America winds up sounding like a less interesting NPR.

Which brings another difficulty. Liberal folks love NPR. You have to be better than them to get the listeners to switch over. With the format and programming as is that is never gonna happen.

I Dont Want To Go Off On A Rant Here...

but I just can't help myself. Actually, I'll let other do most of the talking.

The real climate change catastrophe :Misguided energy policies are harming the world’s poor by Paul K. Driessen:

Our planet is again warming slightly, and the weather keeps taking unexpected turns. Many scientists say this is hardly unprecedented, cause for alarm, or proof that humans are now the dominant factor in climate change. Others disagree strongly, and point to every snowstorm, hurricane, deluge or drought as proof that urgent action is needed to avoid imminent climate catastrophe.

Britain’s Royal Society wants ExxonMobil to further squelch debate, by ending its funding of researchers who say natural forces are the primary factor in climate change. (The Society didn’t mention the $250,000 award that scientist James Hansen received from Teresa Heinz Kerry for insisting that humans are the cause.) Others have threatened climate alarmism skeptics with “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials.”

“Socially responsible” investor services refuse to list or recommend corporations they deem insufficiently sensitive on climate change. Companies have brought climate activists into their board rooms, lobbied Congress for climate and ethanol legislation, and retooled to produce new product lines that they hope will boost tax subsidies, profits and favorable PR. Meanwhile, headlines hype every scary scenario.

Asserting “the science is settled” ignores the debate that still rages. Proclaiming that “climate change is real,” ignores Earth’s constant, natural warming, cooling and weather anomalies. Most important, our current knowledge simply does not warrant imposing alarmist policies on the world’s poorest citizens.

Four times, mile-thick ice sheets smothered Europe and North America. A thousand years ago, Vikings raised crops and cattle in Greenland. Four centuries later, the Norsemen were frozen out by the Little Ice Age, and priests performed exorcisms on glaciers advancing toward Swiss villages. The globe warmed in 1850-1940, cooled for the next 35 years, then warmed slightly again.

Detroit experienced six snowstorms in April 1868, frosts in August 1869, a 98-degree heat wave in June 1874, and ice-free lakes in January 1877. Wisconsin’s record high of 114 degrees F in July 1936 was followed five years later by a record July low of 46. In 1980, five years after Newsweek’s “new little ice age” cover story, Washington, DC endured 67 days above 90 degrees.

Studies by National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, Danish and other scientists raise additional inconvenient truths that contradict catastrophic climate change hypotheses, computer models and predictions. The Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years. The “hockey stick” temperature graph (which claimed 1990-2000 was the hottest decade in 1000 years) broke under scrutiny.

The sun’s radiant heat and cosmic ray levels affect planetary temperatures and cloud formation more strongly than most climate alarmists and computer models acknowledge. Contrary to 2005 assertions and predictions, interior Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice mass, not losing it; Gulf Stream circulation has not slowed; and the US is yet to be hit by a major hurricane in 2006.

All in all, nothing suggests that predominantly human influences have suddenly supplanted the natural forces that clearly caused climate and weather cycles in past centuries. Yet, many still demand immediate action to prevent future climate change that they insist will be due mostly or solely to humans.

...

Climate alarmists demand that we handcuff modern economies, to promote solutions that won’t solve a problem which extensive evidence suggests is moderate, manageable and primarily natural in origin.

Infinitely worse, they use faulty models and exaggerated fears of climate cataclysm to justify depriving Earth’s most impoverished citizens of electricity, water purification and other modern technologies that would improve and save countless lives.

That is unconscionable and immoral. It is the real climate catastrophe.

Or there is this from Dr. Roy Spencer:
("Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.")

Climate change alarmists sink to new lows in attacking those who doubt catastrophe theories

As part of the current media frenzy over the “imminent demise” of Planet Earth from global warming, it has become fashionable to demonize global warming skeptics through a variety of tactics. This has recently been accomplished by comparing scientists who don’t believe in a global climate catastrophe to “flat-Earthers,” those who denied cigarettes cause cancer, or even those who deny the Holocaust.

It is interesting that it is not the scientists who are making the comparisons to Holocaust-deniers, but members of the media. For instance, Scott Pelley, who recently interviewed NASA’s James Hansen for CBS’s “60 Minutes,” has been quoted on the CBS News PublicEye blog saying:

“There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about ‘global warming.’ … The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive.”

Pelley also posted this quote to the same blog:

“If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”

This comparison between global warming skeptics and Holocaust-deniers illustrates the upside-down worldview that makes the public increasingly distrustful of the media. The photographs, movie footage, concentration camps, artifacts, death showers, ovens, human bones.

What does manmade global warming have? The theory that mankind has caused the globally averaged temperature to be 1 degree F warmer than it was a century ago. (I’m sure holocaust survivors appreciate the minimization of their ordeal through use of this analogy.)

In stark contrast, what we do have as a direct result of the environmentalist-led restrictions on the use of DDT is tens of millions of deaths, and hundreds of millions of cases of severe illness, from malaria in Africa. The silence from scientists and many in the media on this is remarkable. Thankfully, the trend against DDT bans is finally changing, with countries like South Africa virtually eliminating malaria with DDT. Is mankind really ready for another major policy catastrophe based upon environmentalist (and media) rhetoric?

Whenever you see any media statement that “the science is settled” on global warming, you will observe that there is no mention of what exactly is “settled” about global warming. If something specific were mentioned, the statement would either be false, or at least it would not convey the necessary urgency that we much “do something immediately about global warming.” Of course, it might also be that today’s journalists cannot deal with that level of complexity. However, for the time being, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

So, just what part of “the science is settled on global warming” is really settled? Well, I would say that our current period of globally-averaged warmth is pretty indisputable, though possibly over-estimated. I say “globally-averaged” because some areas have actually cooled in the last 100 years. Furthermore, the majority of climate scientists would probably agree that some part of that warmth is manmade. But in contrast to the warmth itself, which has actually been measured with thermometers, attributing some or all of that warming to mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions is only one possible explanation among many.

A number of us would suggest that we really don’t know how much of the current warmth is manmade versus natural. I suspect we are the Holocaust-denying, cancer-ignoring, flat-Earthers who still think the Moon landing was staged.

And then there is this from Bendan O'Neill at Spiked:

Whoever thought that serious commentators would want it made illegal to have a row about the weather? One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing ‘climate change denial’. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’ Others have suggested that climate change deniers should be put on trial in the future, Nuremberg-style, and made to account for their attempts to cover up the ‘global warming…Holocaust’.

The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.

Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalise it, as the Australian columnist suggests. Because in recent months it has been turned into a taboo, chased out of polite society by a wink and a nod, letters of complaint, newspaper articles continually comparing climate change denial to Holocaust denial. An attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ now surrounds debates about climate change, which in many ways is more powerful and pernicious than an outright ban. I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change, but I know what I don’t like - and this demonisation of certain words and ideas is an affront to freedom of speech and open, rational debate.

Isn't consensus wonderful?

Something Fishy?

In an article outlining some questionable economic assumptions about global warming, Alan Wood in the Australian makes the following observations:

Despite claims of overwhelming consensus, crystal clarity and so on, there is no shortage of dissenting voices.

The truth is the debate about the science of global warming has been taken over by the politicians and their placemen.

There are too many of examples of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trying to suppress dissenting voices, and it isn't the only one.

Recently, Britain's Royal Society wrote to Exxon Mobil demanding that it cease funding for groups that "misrepresented" the science of climate change by denying the evidence. This is appalling behaviour by a supposed premier scientific academy. Since when has science proceeded by enforced consensus, other than when controlled by the church or state? Too often the dissenters have proved right.

Particularly objectionable is the use of the term climate change denier to describe dissenting voices: a deliberate attempt to draw a parallel with Holocaust deniers. Indeed, the parallel has been made explicit by various green extremists.

The truth is neither the science nor the economics of global warming is settled. The increasingly shrill attempts to suppress critics suggests a rising insecurity in the carriages of the global warming gravy train, and the exposure of the dubious economics of the Stern review can only increase it.

Maybe more folks will get on the bandwagon and back the radical notion of free inquiry, but in this day where everything is viewed as an extension of politics I tend to doubt it.

Just chalk it down to another wonderful legacy left to us all by the Baby Boomers.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

"Consensus Science"

I will rarely make the case that anything I come up with is "original," at least in any absolute sense. We all take our different paths to different places, and after awhile you get used to the idea that where ever you go someone has been there before you. So I wasn't surprised to read this take on "Consensus Science" by Michael Crichton (taken from a talk he gave at the California Institute of Technology back in 2003):

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

I wish I had said that.

To Be Fair....

In my post on Lord Monckton's letter I quote a stat that, upon second thought, I think might be total BS. "Last winter’s cold snap in the UK killed 25,000."

I did some reserch on this number and found a couple of difficulties with it. For starters the number relates to 2003, not last year. But that isn't my major issue with the number. I take this from a BBC story that quotes the statistic:

A spokeswoman for Help the Aged warned that many older people would not live through the cold snap.

She said bad housing and insufficient heating aggravated circulatory diseases, which lead to strokes or heart attacks and respiratory diseases such as bronchitis or pneumonia.

The charity estimated that last winter more than 25,000 older people died from preventable causes.

"Broadly put, for each degree colder it becomes, mortality rises by one to two per cent, underlining the urgent need to prevent such needless deaths," the spokeswoman added.

The problem with such "stats" is that they are so nebulous that there is no way to say for certain if you are measuring what you claim to be measuring or not. Sure, when you have a cold snap (or a heat wave) those who are already ill will be more at risk, but how can you come up with a number that accurately describes what happened? You really can't. I think I'd rather have the number of people who died specifically from hypothermia (or heat stroke), than just take a percentage of the numbers of total deaths and claiming that is reality.

This being said, the numbers form the French heat wave are just as suspect.

Senators Rockefeller & Snowe: "Freedom of Speech Is Great...

...as long as we agree with it."

Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists.

Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: "You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to 'senior elected and appointed government officials' who disagree with your opinion."

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers." Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

Responds Lord Monckton, "Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, 'obfuscate' the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the 'consensus' argument and they compel necessary corrections ... "

Lord Monckton's Churchillian reproof continues, "You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

Let's hear it for Lord Monckton. It is sort of sad when sitting U.S. Senators have to be taught a lesson in fundamental freedoms by the nobility of the nation we fought for our own freedoms. It amazes me that sitting Senators can engage in not so veiled campaigns of political intimidation and no one says a thing.

There are many people who think that just because what they think might happen in the future is bad, no one is allowed to gainsay them in any fashion whatsoever. Science doesn't work that way. It also doesn't work by consensus either. Just because you can get a quorum of scientists to claim "X" is the gospel truth, it doesn't follow that people shouldn't be allowed to question "X". Science is the committment to follow a method. Therefore it is NOT acceptable to dismiss someone's work on the basis that it was funded by this or that organization. That is irrelevant to the soundness of the research IN EVERY CASE. For example, the problem with the tobacco research of the 60's and 70's was the lousy scientific standards employed and NOT the fact that Phillip Morris helped pay for it.

The truth is the scientific consensus of just 18 months ago has been shown to be wrong. (From Lord Monckton's letter):

The UN will also reduce its high-end estimate of sea-level rise to 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. Morner (2004), a lifelong student of sea level changes, says: “There is a total absence of any recent‘acceleration in sea level rise’ as often claimed by IPCC and related groups. … our best estimate of possible future sea-level changes is +10 +/- 10cm in a century, or, maybe, even +5 +/- 15cm.” that is a maximum of 8 inches in 100 years.

When you consider that the average rate of sea level rise for the last 15,000 years has been 7 inches a century, it turns out that the skeptics had it right 18 months ago and the "consensus" had it wrong.

That is one of the reasons you allow unpopular speech in the first place. It allows for unpopular (but right and beneficial) thoughts to win folks over in the long run. Stifiling expression for whatever reason works against societies. Did all of these people get through college without reading J.S. Mill's "On Liberty"???

Monckton's letter has a few other tidbit I found fascinating. Especially this:

An unusual heatwave in France a couple of years ago killed 3,000 old people. As is now customary, global warming was blamed, though the real cause was a naturally occurring “blocking high”. Last winter’s cold snap in the UK killed 25,000. The former event attracted many times more publicity than the latter.

Was this really not reported? I certainly hadn't heard about it and I live with about as big an anglophile there is, and watch BBC World news a couple times a week. It doesn't fit in with the espoused orthodoxy so we just pretend it didn't happen?

I'm sure that is exactly how Newton and Einstein operated.

(Thanks to Jim Rose for pointing to this.)

A Good Thing To See

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Muslim leaders here denounce conference of Holocaust deniers

Local Muslim leaders denounced on Sunday the recent international conference in Iran attended by many who deny the existence of the Holocaust.Spokeswoman Ghazala Hayat read a statement at the annual general body meeting at Daar ul Islam mosque in West County. "We, the community of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, denounce questioning the authenticity of the number of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. … Unimaginable crimes were committed by the Nazis during World War II. Denying the pain endured by millions of human beings only intensifies it," she said.About 100 participants listened while she read the statement.

Erbab Majeed, principal of the Sunday school at the mosque, said the statement was necessary to distinguish between the views of Muslims here from those in other parts of the world. "They made their statement, and we're making ours," he said.

Good for them. Let's hope such statements are repeated all over the world.

Political Science Redux

The American Political Science Review has a special Centennial issue with 24 essays covering the varied developments in the discipline since the publication began in 1906. Some of you may know that I went to grad school, getting an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois and another masters in political philosophy from The Catholic University of America in D.C., so it is interesting to see these types of discussions that I am generally (and thankfully) removed from. I'm still working through the essays, or I should say the dozen or so essays that peak my interest, but I see the authors have come more to praise Ceasar than to bury him. That's fine I suppose....but it might have been nice to see an essay that dealt with some of the less savory aspects of the story that is American Political Science; for example, the early advocation of eugenics and even the use of psychopharmalogical agents to "control" the masses. (There is a veiled reference to some of this in an essay by John Dryzek, "Revolutions without Enemies: Transformations in Political Science" , but the early days of the discipline are largely left in a murky light.)

More to come?

(Thanks to Daniel Drezner for pointing this APRS pub.)

Putting Your Money Where Your Idiotic Ideals Are

A few years ago the Onion (America's Finest News Source) did a story about academics blasting a white family from Iowa for lacking "diversity." It was your garden variety reductio ad absurdum joke, nicely done and to the point.

The question I have is, does it still count as a joke when people actually start going out to make a "racially diverse family" ala Angelina Jolie and Co.?

Don't get me wrong, I have good friends who have two children they adopted from the Phillipines. It was a beautiful thing to do and a better or happier family you can't imagine. However, if I heard them say something like, "Well, we already have an asian, maybe we better get a black baby next time.....hmm...or do you think it might be possible to scare up an eskimo child?" I'd think they were sounding pretty damn goofy. Not to mention it kinda treats these children as some sort of expensive accessory, like folks who have two of the same model sports cars only painted differently.....that always struck me as tacky.

Doing the same thing with children sort of creeps me out.

Housekeeping (I Do So Hate)

I've been perusing over my links to other blogs and news sites and I have seen that I am not the only one to start running silently. I was surprised to see that Left2Right , basically the David Vellman Project ("I am the academic in the sky, looking for neo-cons, I can call them names!") is looking a little green around the gills. (How is THAT for mixed metaphors! HA!) It was released with such fan fare just two years ago. Here was the ivory tower coming down from their heady heights to enlighten the great unwashed! How could they have failed??

They just couldn't get everyone to Michigan State......

Where's The Closest Re-Education Camp?

Turns out it is at Michigan State University. Really there is no way I can summarize the jaw dropping sense of horror this "program" instills in me. Go over to FIRE and read about it. And if you are planning to attend MSU any time soon don't forget your copy of The Little Red Book.

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!

It seems that the mountain lion is reestablishing itself in my old home state of Missouri. I'm of two minds when I hear about such things. On the one hand, it is nice to see species return after so long absent. (Although, I'm not sure if the mountain lion was ever an officially designated "endangered" species as such.)

One the other side, most of us are used to the "wilds" of Missouri being pretty benign. It will take some doing to get used to sharing the state with an animal that can and has caused problems when it crosses paths with us humans. Besides, I'd hate to get eaten at my next family reunion. (Hmmm...sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke there....something to do with the Ozarks I'm sure.)

Of course Missouri is simply crawling with deer, so the mountain lions can do us all a big favor by doing a little feasting. We have the same trouble in my new home state of Wisconsin, although I've heard nothing about mountain lions here. However, Wisconsin DOES have the bearwolf (or so it is said.) That being said I think I'd rather run into this...



...as opposed to this...



Wouldn't you?

Making Things Too Easy

Well, they are updating the interface on the old Blogger system. The upshoot of it seems to be that it will be even easier to throw random thoughts down on the world wide web (as if it was a real trek through the Sahara before.) But...when you get out of the habit of doing something, little things can entice you back in. It hasn't helped that there has been a positive dearth of interesting things to talk about....or the interesting thing to talk about have already been talked about ad nausem. Elections are usually good fodder, but the '06 vote was so obviously over before it started it gets nothing but a yawn from yours truly. (In fact I called the '06 election correctly on the night of the '04 election. If you knew my wife she would verify that fact. You probably don't know her, so just take my word for it.)

On the other hand my life as a sports fan has had the thrill of victory (bless you Tony LaRussa), and the utter ignominy of wretched defeat.......(I'm a Blues fan. Sadly.) However, this wasn't meant to be a "sports blog." The occasional post on the subject will have to suffice.

I've no idea if this post marks the beginning of a more active blog or not. For me, inspiration striking is not the lead pipe cinch that the Dems were in '06.