Global Warming: Is There NOTHING It Can't Do?

I've got a little unexpected time this morning, so at breakfast I scanned the free copy of USAToday that was waiting outside my door.

The headline that struck me first was this:

Global warming may raise kidney stone risk

No, I'm not kidding. The story states:

Global warming could do more than hurt polar bears: It could force a rise in kidney stones, scientists warned Monday.

"We see a relationship between kidney stones and temperatures everywhere," says study co-author Margaret Pearle of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. "Even in places with air conditioning, warmer temperatures mean more stones."

Kidney stones result from salts crystallizing in the kidneys, often triggered by dehydration, causing famously painful blockages. Nationwide, kidney stones strike about 12% of all men and 7% of women over their lifetime.

Warm southeastern states get 50% more cases than northeastern ones. The new research says global warming will drive this so-called kidney stone "belt" north triggering at least 1.6 million new cases by 2050.

The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year warned that industrial emissions of greenhouse gases very likely would raise average global temperatures 3 to 7 degrees this century, raising risks for heat stroke and expansion of tropical diseases such as malaria.

The kidney stone finding, reported Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combines the panel's projections of higher U.S. temperatures with Medicare and Veterans Administration health records stretching from 1982 to 2005 to estimate how many extra U.S. kidney stone cases will result from global warming.

In tomorrow's paper Chicken Little will be quoted stating that the sky is falling - also backed by a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an SUV will be indicted for deliberately killing its passengers in a rollover. GM will be named as a co-conspirator.

NO BLOG FOR YOU

NO BLOG FOR YOU!

I'm up in Tempe, AZ on a project for a couple of days. Won't be much in the way of blogging going on while I'm up here. Sorry. New visitors are invited to peruse the "Best Posts" on the left sidebar

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over there, and old visitors are invited to peruse the archives.

You kids! Off the lawn!!

Remember to Pay Your Domain Fees

Remember to Pay Your Domain Fees!

Somebody at Wilson Combat has some 'splainin' to do!

UPDATE: Looks like it's fixed now. Move along folks, nothin' to see here.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

If you pay eleven million dollars for a photograph of a still-living human, you should do a half-gainer into the Soylent Green tank without being pushed, simply out of shame. - Tam, The end times are nigh.

What the Hell...

What in Hell...

...were the editors of The New Yorker thinking?

(Click for huge size)

What do they possibly hope to accomplish with this?

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

She knows what she is doing. A lawyer who goes to the shooting range. The worst kind. - Michael Crichton, Next, pg. 500

A great quote from one of the more disturbing novels I've read this year.

Hell, this decade.

No, They Don't.

No, They Don't.

Dr. Helen links to this interesting PJM column by Mike McNally, Teaching Human Rights to Toddlers. Here's the portion I take exception to:

According to the UK's Telegraph, the project "will see teachers explaining to children as young as three that people across the world live different lives but everyone has a right to food, water, and shelter."

No. They don't. If they did, some other entity would be obligated to provide them. They have the right to seek food, water, and shelter, but no inherent right to have them.

Further down in McNally's piece comes this gem of observation:

Parents reading about this new obsession with teaching “rights” could be forgiven for thinking that schools should focus on doing a better job of teaching the existing three R’s before adding a fourth to the syllabus. Because, while a decade and more of bar-lowering by Labour has led to more British pupils leaving school with more paper qualifications every year, anecdotal evidence from universities and employers suggests that educational standards are plummeting.

And the rot begins in primary school. A government report last year revealed that forty percent of British children struggle to write their own name, or form simple words such as “dog,” by the age of five, while a quarter fail to reach the expected levels of emotional development for their age.

And with British teenagers leading most of Europe in binge drinking, violence, teenage pregnancy, and abortions, it could also be argued that instead of teaching children about "rights," or worrying about their tolerance of food from other cultures, schools should be more concerned with teaching them "right," as distinct from wrong.

Robert Heinlein published Starship Troopers in 1959, and from it came this canny observation:

The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand -- that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their 'rights.'

Looks like we're still right on schedule.

UPDATE: Rachel has another example of a society where children are told endlessly about their rights, and nothing about their duties.

‘You can't touch us, we're 15, we can do what the f*** we like.

Heinlein would be so proud...

Tony Snow has Died

Tony Snow has Died

I can't bring myself to go look at the vicious gloating from the Nutroots.

Sometimes I really can hate my fellow man.

UPDATE 7/14: Patterico looked in the LA Times online comments.

Weaker Ideas

Kim du Toit has an excellent education post up at Geopoliticus, The "Power" Elite, inspired by the piece from which I got last Saturday's Quote of the Day, and another piece from Pajamas Media by Mary Grabar that I strongly recommend as well. Kim's pretty insistent that you read both before his essay. I concur. Read 'em all.

I have one quibble. Professor Grabar says (and Kim quotes):

I blame it on women, specifically those women who, instead of working their ways into the club through rules of evidence, common values, and objective scholarship, have pushed in their alternate “ways of knowing.” The feminization of education has led to the idolization of Oprah. In the matriarchal upheaval in the academy, the great works of the canon that draw from our Western tradition, like Milton’s majestic Paradise Lost, are replaced by crudely rendered emotive investigations into oppression, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or any of the “multicultural” offerings in the latest anthology.

In addition to eviscerating the canon to add women’s writing, of whatever dubious value (personal letters, diary entries, popular books), the academic feminists’ project was to attack the base of our way of thinking, which they correctly traced back to the notion of a monotheistic God who created a universe with an order based on reason, however indiscernible that at times might be to those he endowed with reason. The matriarchs’ attacks began on linearity, logic, argumentation — the very notion of the individual thinking self. Theorists promoting the “maternal presence in the classroom” accused even the thesis statement of the freshman five-paragraph essay of having embedded within it masculine goal-oriented thinking that in a rapacious manner eliminates weaker ideas.

My only quibble is that it didn't begin with women in academia.

The denigration of reason began with Kant - a point Ayn Rand made, in her own inimitable way, repeatedly.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

America is the last thing standing between humanity's intact testicles and the quivering blade of liberalism. - Rachel Lucas, No. You cannot possibly be serious.

I wish I could write like that.

TRUTH

TRUTH

(Via Theo Spark)

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Some people go through life thinking there's a halo over their heads when that glowing ring they see is actually the sphincter of their own eternal asshat. - Pugs of War

The majority of them go into politics.

The IBMeraphim

The IBMeraphim*

In other good news this week, my order request for one of the 1,007 Italian-return M1 Carbines in "Service Grade" manufactured by International Business Machine Corp. made it to the offices of the Civilian Marksmanship Program at 10:00AM on Monday, July 7. Hopefully my order request will be one that is filled rather than rejected. Abby over at Bad Dogs and Such advises me that if the news is bad, I'll probably hear fairly quickly. If the news is good, it will take 5-10 working days before I receive notice. At least, she tells me, that's how it worked when she got her Saginaw S'G'.

* - "IBMeraphim" is a term from the five-book series by David Drake and S.M. Stirling, The General. If you've read them, you understand. If you haven't, I don't think I can explain it to you in less than 5,000 words, so I won't even try.

You've GOTTA Read THIS!

You've GOTTA Read THIS!

Firehand has the Quote of the MONTH.

See also, this post.

Still MORE on "What is a Right?"

Still MORE on "What is a Right?"

A new (to me) blogger at a new (to me) blog, Gun Values Board, linked to my recent CNN post, and through that link I found an interesting piece by Sailorcurt at Captain of a Crew of One: First time for everything. Curt says:

If your only argument is "that's not a right because it's not in the Constitution", all I have to do is show you the 9th Amendment and your argument goes out the window.

So...what DOES constitute a right?

It's very simple really. A right is something that you can do, obtain, produce or provide that does not infringe upon another's rights and requires no outside intervention for you to do so.

That's a different approach than I took in the eight-part "What is a Right?" series over there

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on the left sidebar, but he makes a good argument for his position.

It's interesting (to me) that discussions of this type are still going on 200+ years after the ratification of the Constitution.

Thanks for the link, Nancy!

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

More from the place where Great Britain used to be:

Steve Kink apprehended a thug after catching him breaking into a mobile phone shop late at night. Although the 47-year-old was punched in the face, he managed to pin the offender to the floor. Passers-by called the police while he stood over him until officers arrested the 25-year-old man.

Mr Kink, who owns a tattoo parlour, was stunned when he found out the next day the suspect had been let off with a caution for criminal damage. But his shock turned to fury when days later police officers turned up at his house to arrest him for assaulting the thug. He was taken to his local police station and held in a cell for six hours before being interviewed.

He was then charged with assault and battery and is due to appear before magistrates next week.

That's not the Quote of the Day. It's a lead-in.

Here's the Quote of the Day:

I'm an alumna of Pepperdine University, a school which proudly owns a house/campus on Exhibition Road, literally across the street from the Imperial University, in the middle of South Kensington, right near Harrods, Hyde Park, the Albert Hall. Within two days of arriving for our first semester in London, our relatively small [American] class (37 students, 10 men, 27 women) was visited by a local police officer to instruct us on living in London. Her first question was to the women, 'How many of you brought mace?' Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn't use it, shouldn't even carry it, it was illegal.

Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too.

Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

The feeling I got was, in London, it is not permissable(sic) to defend oneself. I also understood that this police officer thought Americans were more likely to be agressive(sic) and/or cause more damage to a potential attacker. She was warning us for our own good. I have to admit, she did not make me feel particularly safe.

(My emphasis.) Mr. Kink's arrest reminds me of the story of 64 year-old Diane Bond from 2006 where something very similar happened to her. She was precisely correct when she said:

This sends out the message that if you stand up for yourself, if you try to take action to stop anti-social behaviour, you are likely to end up being arrested.

There's a few more like Ms. Bond listed in this post.

UPDATE 7/8: Rachel has another example.

I Can Haz Podcast?

I Can Haz Podcast?

Squeaky and Caleb are running a weekly podcast every Tuesday night at 11:00PM Eastern on topics of general shooty goodness. Tomorrow night's 'cast includes a pre-recorded interview with Michael Bane "about the ParaShoot and gun stuff."

You can "tune in" by going to Gun Nuts: The Next Generation, and if you can't catch it "live," it's available for download later.

Modern media. They'll let anyone do it.

No wonder the LA Times is laying off people.

Sometimes You Can't Be Paranoid ENOUGH

Sometimes You Can't Be Paranoid ENOUGH

Hmm.... I received the following email this afternoon:

Hello Kevin,

Flaming liberal here, and I enjoy reading your blog very much; you're an great writer with an interesting viewpoint. I particularly liked your Quote of the Day post involving Jeff Foxworthy--between you and me, what liberals don't know about the Flyover States would fill Alaska. I am sickened at the way my own party conducts their politics...but that is a discussion for another time. Coming to more current events, I would very much like your take on this post (ignore all the self-promotion):
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/~

What is FISA? Can you discuss it a little on your blog? (Before tomorrow?) :)

I went to the site and watched the 18-minute video. It's an interview with Daniel Ellsberg on the topic of the FISA reauthorization bill going before the Senate apparently tomorrow.

He's agin' it.

Mostly he's agin' it because it gives immunity from lawsuits to the telecommunications companies who have violated the law by acquiescing to the government's requests demands for wiretaps and other surveillance of American citizens without recourse to a judicially-issued warrant.

Essentially, Mr. Ellsburg's position is that through this bill the .gov can legally spy on anyone, at any time, and then use the information gathered to blackmail the subject of the surveillance - say, a Senator or Congressman.

Um, right.

Here's my problem with that little scenario. If you're going to blackmail someone (which is a crime) then committing a crime in order to get the dirt on them in the first place isn't going to slow you down much.

Mr. Ellsburg places great faith in the power of the voters to stop this bill. He can't understand why Barack Candle in the Wind Obama has reversed himself on his opposition to it. (Along with pretty much every other position he took in the primary race.)

Gee, I wonder if someone might be blackmailing him?

Look, I concur with Mr. Ellsburg that government has done a lot of unConstitutitional things, dating all the way back to Lincoln and beyond, but FISA doesn't strike terror in my heart the way it apparently does Mr. Ellsburg. Perhaps that's due to a lack of understanding on my part, but having read Mr. Ellsburg's 09/26/07 opus "A Coup Has Occurred," I tend to suspect that the tether connecting him to reality is just a bit frayed. I could be wrong. But if the current administration is so intent on violating our civil rights, on unzipping and letting fly on the Constitution, then why bother with PASSING the FISA bill? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Look, either we're over the edge or we're not. Stopping the FISA bill isn't going to make a gnat-fart of a difference either way.

You may, instead, want to take the advice in the third comment to this post at Western Rifle Shooters Association.

I Want to Thank My 16 Regular Readers...

...and the rest of you who voted for me in the Para-USA Win a Weekend at Blackwater competition. I'm going! So is Tam, Dave Hardy, SayUncle, Robb, Ahab, JR, and Joe Huffman! I don't know who the other two are yet, but congratulations to them as well!

Three days, 1,000 to 1,500 rounds of someone else's ammo, and training with Todd Jarrett? What more could you want?

Only downside? My fat ass will be on television, unless they use some damned creative editing. Michael Bane is going to film the weekend for the Outdoor Channel. He also reports (so it's official now) that Para-USA is relocating from Toronto, Ontario to Charlotte, N.C. in October.

Thanks, y'all. You're the greatest!

UPDATE, 7/8: The last two gunbloggers chosen by poll are Armed Citizen and Mad Duck

And even better news, Bitter Bitch and Sebastian will be going as well, according to Michael Bane. (He needs someone to film while the rest of us are worshipping learning from Todd Jarrett.)

One Word Movie Review: Wanted

One Word Movie Review: Wanted

Meh.