PN:

 All Hail the New Year!

A new year: what does it mean? The metaphor I prefer is potential vs kinetic energy.
Every year I skid more or less out of control into January with a thousand unmet objectives, a thousand projects incomplete, a thousand promises unfulfilled, ideas and intentions and grim realities whizzing and banging overhead like fireworks. Maximum kinetic achieved for time spent.  Potential exhausted…….

The first week of January is respite. Lazy, over indulgent, pajama-clad Internet surfing rum laced eggnog sipping mornings. Afternoons are consumed by reverie and reflection and rumination and high caloric intake with the occasional tipple. Books of interest, research, data gathering, music listening, video watching evenings slowly unfold – with or without imbibing. What harmony, what ecstasy, what bliss! What potential potential!

All because an arbitrary time came and passed. A date on the calendar: just another day.
For folks like me (there must be some out there somewhere) it is a milestone by which to gauge disposition / displacement in the firmament; both personal and universal. It is a calculus of intent, an inventory of will, a strategic overview and a tactical plan summit. It is a scoreboard.
Self assessed overall grade for 2014?  C+, and that’s generous. Oh how I miss those youthful days of H’s and A’s, when life was a cameo role and everything came naturally. Life ain’t fair……
It’s easy to rationalize the cause of missed opportunity, unmet goals, broken promises, but I won’t. Suffice it to say the new year permits the hope of redemption, the hope of completion. In short, the new year brings the hope of hope.

Resolutions? I don’t need no stinkin’ resolutions! Well, maybe one tiny request –

For the OCD leaning mind (always a favorite behavior of mine) –

For the pragmatists –

For the realists –

And for the cynics, God bless them all, each and every one –

For everyone else it is prudent to remember there are no guarantees, no rights, no sure things, but that doesn’t mean all is lost…. Free your inner Lucy!

To everyone within reach of the network, a fat man fantasy –

 

 

 

POLITICS, POLITICIANS, WACKJOBBERY, HUMOROUS, STUPID

 

 

 

 

 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AMAZING STUFF

Global Warming (or, Canadian weather fantasy porn)

Pity the average shlum trying to make ends meet in a world of half crazed semi thinkers. For all he knows and can prove, he’s one of them! What possible risk management process is available to mitigate the big No-No? One of the great challenges of all time, all humanity – what is the “right” thing to do, and how do you know such a fact? Powerful groups, organizations, and individuals have tried (and still do) many methods such as voodoo chicken bones, astrology, tea leaves, contrarianism, shouting loudly, “consensus” politics, shunning, coercion, imprisonment, “rehabilitation”, frontal lobotomy, electroshock therapy, gulags, bribery, disinformation, falsifying data, lying, payola, mutilation, sex, terror, religion, death camps, murder / genocide (a few examples) to control the thoughts and therefore the opinions of John Q. Public. What are Mr. and Mrs. Shlum to do? For that matter, include all the other folks too….
A humble suggestion. Try the two most powerful precipitants from the Enlightenment – the question “WHY?” (and it’s 4W+H supporters), and the scientific method.
Friend Ricky D. asked for items he could use in his workshop to counter a few commonly held beliefs about humanity (bad, alien, killing the earth), the energy sector (bad, alien, killing the earth), conservatism (bad, alien, killing the earth), Western Civilization (bad, alien, killing the earth), or whatever causes grown-ups and children to have nightmares, to cry out in the dark. After a brief discussion of what he had in mind, the following is a smattering of Internet searches and previous Sunday Rant ranting I forwarded to him –
Rick:
I’ve put together a few talking points for you, gleaned from previous Sunday Rants and current Internet searches. Long live the Internet!!!

Here’s the Bill Whittle talk about the electrical grid:

The above link is embedded in Sunday Rant – 4914 with an interesting graph re: the North America power grid covering the U.S. and Canada. It’s in your emailbox.
Another excellent Bill Whittle opinion is touted as the best speech of 2012:

The scientific method must be the foundation of ANY inquiry into hot potato issues.
The book I mentioned is “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” by Alex Epstein. There are a number of videos that present his argument. The link below is one of the better I’ve heard: it is Dennis Prager interviewing Alex Epstein:

Here is a video clip of Alex and Ezra Levin of Sun TV News discussing the Keystone Pipeline farce:

Alex’s website:

http://industrialprogress.com/

A Canadian truth-sayer is Patrick Moore, former president of and co-founder of Greenpeace. Here is his presentation “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout”:

This is a must view. He contends, with evidence, that we are currently in an ice age. This is NOT good for humans or plants.

​

Here is a graph of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for millennia past. –

Some bold, factual statements:

• “CO2 is the most important nutrient for life on earth” – Patrick Moore (video above)
  
• CO2 is fuel for plant life – it is what plants need to survive. (I have three plants in my house that are over 20 years old. I HAVE NEVER FED THEM ANY “PLANT FOOD”, only water, yet they continue to grow! What up with that?.)
  
• Humans eat plants.
  
• Other animals eat plants.
• Humans eat animals (that eat plants and / or other animals, or both).
  
• Some other animals eat other animals (that eat plants and / or other animals, or both).
  
• Humans eat only plants and animals. Therefore, there would be no food for humans if there were no plants.
• Plants consume CO2 and O2 is the byproduct (exhaust)
• Humans and all animals must have O2 to survive, yet humans and animals consume O2 and CO2 is the byproduct (exhaust).
• Without plants there is no O2 being generated (all animal life will die)
  
• Plants cannot flourish with CO2 concentrations below 150 ppm. The current level of 400 ppm is borderline hazardous (in my very humble opinion – should be up around 1500 – 2000).
• The optimum concentration for plant growth is 2000 ppm.
  

All of the above (and so much more) is the distillate of the scientific method. The Internet is the greatest humanitarian, social, scientific medium the world has ever seen.

Research rocks.

An addition to the above is Lord Christopher Moncton’s presentation at the 9th ICCC (International Conference on Climate Change) from July of 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ST9KcMA7Ks

Scientific Method – Noun
a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data are gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from these data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested.

Another set of data –

What can it mean, Joe?

Joe and I go off constantly and consistently about “global warming”, “climate change”, and the CO2 boogieman. CO2 is NOT the problem. In ways that matter it is the solution to problems, as the above graph illustrates. More CO2 = fewer climate related deaths. More at this link:

Joe and I agree on this: Canada should haul Al Gore’s big fat ass into court and sue him until he’s penniless.

Sue him for what? I’ll tell you what….. Breech of promise and failure to deliver. Child abuse (view video below “Not Evil Just Wrong”).  That big galoot blabbing his mouth about the CERTAINTY of hellish heat on earth misled many poor Canucks (well, me and Joe) into fervently hoping and anticipating that which will not happen – banana trees in my back yard. Oh, how we long for hot sweaty days all year long, and spiders as big as baseball gloves…. Joe and I are on record as promoters of global warming to the max. As far as the little brown people who will see their countries submerged due to the rise of the oceans, we’d be willing to volunteer some time to teach them how to swim, or build a raft, or, just maybe, retreat from the beach enough distance that their happy carefree innocent little frolicking selves WON’T be drowned! How about them apples? At one time Alberta had a thriving dinosaur population complete with the astounding vegetation density required to support such large creatures. If humanity (oh! the humanity!) is hell bent on “preserving” nature, why not pick the Triassic or Jurassic, or Cretaceous period of history? Hell, anywhere in the Mesozoic Era would suit me and Joe fine. Average temperatures 10°C higher than today, and CO2 concentrations around 2000 ppmV – just right for big animals and big plants! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic ) / ( http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2014/03/26/new-data-on-mesozoic-co2-levels-can-help-map-todays-climate-change.html )

The Mesozoic (“middle life”) era lasted from 251 million to about 66 million years ago. It is divided into three periods: the Triassic (251 million to 200 million years ago), the Jurassic (200 million to 146 million years ago), and the Cretaceous (146 million to 66 million years ago). This era is more familiar to most people than the Paleozoic is, because the Mesozoic was the age of the dinosaurs. Each of the periods ended with some degree of extinctions, but the most dramatic event occurred at the end of the Cretaceous. While not as extensive as the Permian- Triassic event, it nonetheless put an end to the dinosaurs and paved the way for the rise of mammals. We am mammals……

The following documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong – The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria” was produced in 2009.  It is 6 years old and is as pertinent as when it was produced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjE0jvMLA6s

When you see the art and faces of the children in this documentary, you get an inkling of how insidious these activists are in brainwashing the youngest most vulnerable and impressionable people.  Shame on you – this is child abuse.  Leave the children out of it………

As for the ever earnest ever passionate and hopelessly misinformed, a suggestion – get some research happening dudes! –

Beer vs Coffee

Which fully supports my entire existence – lots of great ideas, NO execution…..

 

 

THE CULTURE (THERE IS ONLY ONE)

True Confessions – I’m a Soul Boob Man

Apologies to Sam & Dave for thinking of their iconic song of the ’70’s as a lead-in tune to the culture subject de jour et de semaine……. Looky here….

As the years unravel for me (and Joe) there is a insistent urge to confess to all, to fill the slate, not wipe it clean. This urge becomes quite forceful at times, Intruding on reality as a “Freudian Slip”, or subliminal inclusion, or simply blurted out of the blue…. I’m a boob man!

In 2013 I had an epiphanic realization while gazing into the bathroom mirror looking for someone I recognize. There, under that chin, on that neck, I saw wattles. It was my chin! It was my neck! It was my wattles! I documented this horrific discovery for posterity in Sunday Rant – 4913. Time is a thief:

A similar event occurred in 2014. I wasn’t anxious to reveal the details, but talked around it a few times. Research is a pleasure, a necessity, a hunger (et cetera). Months passed, and I made an effort to disrobe to the waist each day then look in a mirror to confirm or deny my suspicion.

Sure enough, I’m a boob man. Gads, what’s next? The humor well is drying up…. where is the humor when you need it?

Short of posting a selfie, using the above chart, I’d say my classification is A cup, woolly.  Unlike the C cup below, I don’t need a trainer yet…..

Perhaps I’d better join a gym and start the pilgrimage toward a saner, healthier, happier me –

What next indeed?

 

 PHILOSOPHY, PHILOSOPHERS, SMART THINKING

This week Ludwig von Mises

 

 

GUNS, GUNNERS, GUNNERY

 

 

SUNDAY SERMON

In the wake of the wretched excesses of gluttony, drunkenness, and credit burnout some of us experienced during the season of merry, today’s sermon is entertainment with a message: “The Power of Choice: The Life and Ideas of Milton Friedman”:

Today’s lesson highlights: Free trade, personal property, liberty, self reliance.

 

WEATHER (OR NOT)

I’d like to opt for the “or not” this week. The snow keeps falling. It’s been between -5 and -15°C all week. The cold keeps the snowflakes smaller. Visibility as I write this (Sunday afternoon) is about 100 yards. No dog shit in sight. One for the pro column. Gotta resort to humor. And beer. Solely for the ideas of course……

Joe (Whiteout) Mekanic

p.s. Ramirez is no snow job –