Month: March 2009

Thought for the day

Actually, this should probably be the thought for the next four years.

From Instapundit:

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: From Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

I’m just sayin’.

Obama is systematically driving out the truly creative, productive, profitable people from society.

Bad luck, that.

Chimps! Using Tools!

Dr Sanz told the BBC: “We found that in the Goualougo Triangle in the Republic of Congo, the chimpanzees were modifying their termite-fishing tools with a special brush tip.”

To make their rods, the chimps first picked some stems from the Marantaceae plant and plucked off the leaves.

“They then pulled the herb stems through their teeth, which were partially closed, to make the brush and they also attended to the brush by sometimes pulling apart the fibres to make them better at gathering the termites,” Dr Sanz added.

Houston, we have a problem

Two charts, showing the debt of the Federal Reserve:

Borrowings (debt) of the Federal Reserve, to 2007
Borrowings (debt) of the Federal Reserve, to 2008

Notice that the spike on the 2007 chart doesn’t even register on the 2008 chart. This Is Not Good.

The phrase “mouth writing checks the bank account can’t cover” comes to mind. This is the Obama plan: spend the nation into bankruptcy, and then buy up the bargains, with government, of course, as the holder of all of the strings.

Welcome to the Socialist Workers Paradise. We know from bitter historical experience how well that works out. If you need a refresher, schedule a trip to Cuba.

We won’t recover from Obama’s Presidency for at least a century. If we’re lucky.

How’s that for Hope and Change? You Hoped for the better. You got Change for the worse. I hope you morons who voted for Obama are happy. (My actual opinion of Obama voters is much worse than “moron,” by the way.)

(Not that McCain was much better, but he–I think–knew better than to drive the economy completely off of the cliff it was clinging onto.)

Hat tip: Directorblue[*1]

If we’re causing global warming, what about Mars?

A story at the National Geographic site[*1] :

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Naturally, much of the story attempts to rebut (mainly via argument from authority rather than by rational, logical means) Abdussamatov’s contention.