XDA

After a long time with no movies, I managed to get to 5 recently. Here are the reviews--first a 5 word one, then a longer, regular review, at least for the ones worth talking about.

The Golden Compass--Movie's demon is overworked accountant.

Juno--Knocked Up with mature wit.

The Savages--Indie comedy pretends it's realistic.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead--Most singularly depressing movie, ever.

I Am Legend--Will Smith can't shoot shit.

Let's start with the good one, Juno, which is about a girl in trouble, as they used to say in the 50s, who does the right thing and gives up her illegitimate baby for adoption. Not the most daring of plot lines (although there are several movies where an inconvenient pregnancy is terminated--Play It as It Lays, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The End of the Road, Love with the Proper Stranger (almost terminated); and Vera Drake and The Cider House Rules featured abortionists). It is classified as a pro-life movie, but I doubt the writer (Diablo Cody (really)) or the director, Jason Reitman (Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman's son), who also did Thank You for Smoking, would be happy with that label.

What makes this movie is the possibly extraordinarily talented Ellen Page, who was so good in Hard Candy, as the title character here. (I say 'possibly', because so far all I've seen her be is the same character, a precocious, wise cracking misfit who can flat out get things done; but I'm hoping for more in the future as she really plays that character extremely well). Jason Bateman, from TV's Arrested Development and older Valerie, Silver Spoons and Little House on the Prarie, comes across as well as he did in Dodgeball (but saner), and was the glue that held the adoption sub-plot together. Everyone else was good on a less intense level. Well paced, believable, interesting--I can't imagine how this movie could have been better.

From the sublime...

There are so many plot holes in I Am Legend (which really is a pretty good, short book by Richard Matheson, although it can't be well filmed apparently despite at least three tries) that its film stock must look like lace. Starting next year, 90% of the World's population has died from a mutating enhanced anti-cancer virus created by Emma Thompson, 1% of humanity had natural immunity but they have all been killed by the 9% whom the virus turned into rabid vampires. Virologist Will Smith is the only non vampire survivor on Manhattan. He locks up at night and then goes to the video store, looting, or hunting in the daytime. He may be the worst hunter since hunting was invented. For one, he uses too small a round (5.64 mm NATO); he has a dog, but he doesn't really use it except to chase the deer ahead of him (I'm not kidding), and when he is mere feet from the deer, he fails to take the shot, again and again and again. He doesn't do much better with the vampires. OK, I can believe the lions escaped, somehow, from the Central Park Zoo, but where has this immense herd of deer come from? (Oh, and note to film makers, computer generated images are not sufficiently good yet and do not look good as surrogate human faces or animal skins--in fact, none of the CGI looked any good in this film).

Smith is still working on a cure and when a compound works on rabid vampire rats, he has to catch a human vampire and test it on it. He sets a snare, powered by a vehicle falling from a height. He then tells us that the vampires have lost all semblance of humanity. So who sets the snare for him?

The Air Force blew up all the bridges around Manhattan in a vain attempt to stop the virus, and the tunnels are realistically full of water, so how actually does Sonia Braga's niece get her girlie SUV, decked out with anti-vampire UV spot lights, onto the island to save Smith's ass?

Grenades have a relatively small explosion and under very few circumstances create a fireball. They almost never create a huge fireball.

When Smith goes into the dark to get his bitch back, that is a very suspenseful scene and it is artfully done with exquisite timing and subtlety. That's about it, though. Director Francis Lawrence, who only really did Constantine and music videos before this, may not be the new Stanley Kubrick.

OK, moving on. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in both Savages and Devil Knows and he looks exactly the same but he is believably not the same guy--not even close. He is rapidly replacing Paul Giametti as my favorite ugly actor. Laura Linney (the new indie 'it' girl ,replacing Parker Posey as a required fixture in each non-Hollywood film made in America) is almost as good, but usually plays a slightly different version of herself. Writer/Director Tamara Jenkins, who also did The Slums of Beverly Hills almost a decade ago, was fortunate to get these two for her movie as they play flawed brother and sister flawlessly, and with such ease.

The only good thing about Devil Knows is the gratuitous sex scenes with Marisa Tomei, who looks absolutely fantastic. Her tits aren't perfect but they are nice if somewhat oddly shaped. I have no complaints about the rest of her. The movie has plot holes too. Why doesn't the mother lock the door behind her? Why doesn't Ethan Hawke (looking bad and playing a very weak person convincingly) recognize his mom or dad or at least his dad's car?

The part time robber uses a .38 revolver of unknown make. Mom has a Beretta 92F; Dad a Smith & Wesson probably in .357 (which he never uses) and Hoffman picks up a Walther PPK in .380 with which he does his mayhem. It's not just kinda depressing, it's really, really depressing, losing your religion, no faith in your fellow man left sort of depressing, and I think The Grey Zone is uplifting. Just the sort of holiday cheer we all look forward to.

I've run out of steam. Sorry. Compass looked good (CGI is good for buildings and some animals after all, I guess) but it wasn't very good despite a valiant effort by a newcomer young girl named Dakota. I doubt it will make enough money above its budget to justify a sequel (even though there are two more books in this purposefully anti-Narnia trilogy). Just as well.

Labels: Movie reviews

Labels: Science; Twilight

The total military dead in the Iraq war between 2003 and this month stands at about 3,133. This is tragic, as are all deaths due to war, and we are facing a cowardly enemy unlike any other in our past that hides behind innocent citizens. Each death is blazoned in the headlines of newspapers and Internet sites. What is never compared is the number of military deaths during the Clinton administration: 1,245 in 1993; 1,109 in 1994; 1,055 in 1995; 1,008 in 1996. That's 4,417 deaths in peacetime but, of course, who's counting?



Alicia Colon

Labels: Alicia Colon quote

Labels: Science; Global Warming

To all my friends on the left--Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to observe religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures.


And to all my Republican friends--Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

(h/t John Rushkin)

Labels: Christmas time wishes

On this day in 1902, an exceptionally brutal three-year war waged by the U.S. Army and others against Filipino Muslims, whom we called the Moro 'pirates,' ended (for a while) with the signing of an armistice by the rebels, which left the U.S. in possession of the archipelago of 7,100 islands. General Arthur MacArthur (father of Douglas) conducted this part of the war. The war, which started about as soon as we occupied Manila, after our slaughter of the Spanish fleet on May 1, 1898, resumed in the Sulu Archipelago and on Mindinao and continued until almost the First World War. The best thing to come out of this conflict was John Browning's Colt 1911 in .45 caliber, which was developed because the .38 caliber Army revolver wasn't knocking the Moros down in time to save the Army officer from edged weapon attack.

UPDATE: Missed the date of the Manila Bay battle by a hundred years, but all corrected now, thanks to Eric's sharp eyes

Labels: Filipino Muslim Rebels

People have been calling for national dialogues and conversations for decades. It usually works something like this: Liberals say we need a frank discussion about race (or class or gender) in this country, and then they proceed to bludgeon any conservative stupid enough to take them up on their offer.

Jonah Goldberg

Labels: Jonah Goldberg quote

Labels: WWII history; European theater

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

Andrew Klavan

Labels: Andrew Klavan quote

Labels: Global Warming

Labels: British Rock

Adventure is just bad planning.

Roald Amundsen

Labels: Roald Amundsen quote

Labels: Second Amendment

At Sweetness and Light, a funny send up/focusing of the faux outrage over Beluga santa hats versus the public slaughter of all sorts of animals as part of Eid. Not for the feint of heart.

Labels: Eid

Labels: KGB History

What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty.

Edmund Spenser

Labels: Edmund Spenser quote

David Deming, at the Washington Times, has a good article on the record cold temperatures throughout the World in 2007.

He ends with near perfect observation:

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

Well said.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax

If the the Senate's numbers for funding regarding the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan pass in the House, the President was won an important battle to fund the troops without any strings attached, and the Democrats in control of Congress have again, broken a promise to end pork spending (the omnibus spending bill has about 9,000 such ear marks worth over $7 Billion) and the Democrats have caved on relatively important matters, yet again. The vote in the Senate for $70 Billion to the troops was 70-25 by the way (the worst of the 42 defeats the Democrats have received on this same issue?)

Democrats again failed to win votes to force removal of U.S. troops or set a nonbinding target to remove most troops by the end of next year.

[...]

Democrats were able to fill in most of the cuts by using the very budgetary sleight of hand lambasted by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Citizens Against Government Waste.

The White House, which maintained a hard line for months, has been far more forgiving in recent days, accepting $11 billion in "emergency'' spending for veterans, drought relief, border security and firefighting accounts, among others. Other budget moves added billions more.

"Congress did come down to the president's overall top line,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "And in regards of the emergency spending, most of that spending would have passed on an emergency basis anyway. It's not added into the baseline of the budget.''

I guess we Republicans are better in the minority, although I wouldn't want us to stay there forever.

UPDATE: Welshperson Dafydd at Buig Lizards has a longer account of the rolling over the Democrats are doing and Michelle Malkin has details here and here.

Labels: Democratic Congressional Failure

On this day in 1998, President Clinton was impeached on two counts, Articles 1 and 3, for perjury and obstruction of justice, respectively. The 42nd chief executive became the second in history to be ordered to stand trial in the Senate, where, like Andrew Johnson before him, he was acquitted, even though, like Johnson, the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, but the magnitude of his wrongdoing, under the totality of the circumstances, was less that Earth-shaking. I was angry at the Republicans for not coming up with more but proceeding, poorly, on what little they had. Of course, had Clinton been any sort of respectable man, he would have resigned after his lie about not having sex with the intern was revealed. As always, it wasn't the fellatio itself but the attempted cover up which should have showed him the door, but then, of course, had Clinton done the right thing, Al Gore would have won in 2000.

Labels: Clinton Impeachment

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Stephen King

Labels: Stephen King quote

On this day in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect. So while first Republican President Abraham Lincoln didn't free the slaves, he fought a rough, bloody war to keep the South in the union so that the amended Constitution would do just that. He would have been there to free the slaves had a Democrat sore loser not shot him in the head.

Labels: Constitutional Amendment Ending Slavery

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer

Labels: Eric Hoffer quote

I remember as a kid seeing movie news films of the Nautilus (or another nuclear submarine) breaking through the sea ice at the north pole, and the sailors set up a baseball diamond around the pole so if one of them hit a home run that guy ran literally around the world. I can't find it on YouTube, but I'll follow this post with one such breakthrough, if I am able. I also recall another submarine rising in clear water at the pole and the sailors disappointed they couldn't play ball like the earlier guys. If my memory is intact, there have been open sea areas at the pole from time to time for at least 40 years. Here's today's photo of the ice.


Except for the Chuckchi Sea, the ice is pretty much over all the traditional area of sea ice and it's not yet Winter. Hudson Bay seems completely iced over. One can walk from Svalbard (scene of much of The Golden Compass) to Novaya Zemlya to Svernaya Zemlya to Alaska, Greenland or Canada for that matter. Except it would be really, really cold and you would die.


Yes, Warmies, the sea ice melt was big this Summer, but it's pretty much all back now, just as it should be and has been doing for millions of years and as it will, no doubt, for millions more.

Labels: Science; Global Warming

Here is a fascinating little story at the American Thinker about CO2 emission increases since Kyoto was signed. Guess who did relatively well in holding down emission increases?

The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998. A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government. If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

• Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
• Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
• Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
• Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

Labels: Kyoto Protocols; Global Warming

I had an argument about global warming this weekend and the subject of sea level rise came up during the discussion. (We were talking about the necessary third question, (after 1. Is it warming? (yes) and 2. Is it human caused? (partially)), Will it be a bad thing?). My opponent said that sea levels had risen alarmingly recently.

Here's a closer look at that assertion. During the depths of the last Ice Age 22,000 years ago, sea levels were 130 meters lower. That's a lot of warming, melting, and rising in 22,000 years, over 400 feet. Remember, however, 80% of the rise of the sea level after warming is thermal expansion of the sea water, not land ice melting and flowing in. But it hasn't been steady. Here's the s-curve graph.
From 22,000 to 8,000 years ago, most of the sea level rise took place, at least 120 meters of it or about .3368 in./year. In the last 8,000 years it's gone up at most 10 meters or .049 in./year.

Now we should take a look at sea level rise between 1880 and 2005, or for 125 years. Is it closer to the alarming rate 22,000 to 8,000 years ago or is it closer to the recent very stable rate?

Since 1880 the sea level has risen 20 cm (that's 7.8 inches in over a century, not alarming in my book) and the rate is .0629 in./year. Well, that's much closer to the recent, stable rate (only about 30% more) and much less than the alarming rate of the ancient past (about six times less, in fact). Nor is there a hint of acceleration in the rate of change; it's merely a straight line increase. So there's certainly no crisis in sea level rise. It's still getting warmer since the depth of the last Ice Age (as it always does during the first half of the interglacial and we've had at least 20 interglacials in the past few million years) and sea levels are gently and very slowly rising. Not exactly 'run for the hills, the sea's rising' sort of news.

Gee, I wonder why my opponent thought that sea levels had risen alarmigly recently?

Labels: Science; Global Warming

Labels: Saturn

On a very narrow vote, the House passed a bill which would make it illegal for the CIA interrogators to do what is prohibited to the Army in the Field Manuel. These are the things prohibited, followed by my comments in dark blue.

Forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner. I'm OK with banning the sexual stuff, but don't we need to get the prisoners naked now and again to make sure they are not smuggling in bad things? One step too far.

Placing hoods or sacks over detainees’ heads or duct tape over their eyes. Stupid to ban these things.

Beating, shocking or burning detainees. I'm OK with banning these (but the belly slap and attention getting face slap should still be OK).

Threatening detainees with military dogs. Stupid to ban this.

Exposing detainees to extreme heat or cold. Stupid to ban this (So long as the extremes are not life threatening--I certainly wouldn't want to bake or freeze our prisoners).

Conducting mock executions. Stupid to ban this.

Depriving detainees of food, water or medical care. I'm OK with no ban on medical care, but short periods of no food or even no water is OK. Man, we are capable of being so wimpy.

Waterboarding. Not torture if done for short periods of time, and apparently very effective with no lasting negative after effects. We should be able to use harsh, effective methods which are not torture--this is the poster child of those criteria.

Labels: War Against Islamic Extremists

Labels: Great White Fleet

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

P. G. Wodehouse

Labels: P. G. Wodehouse quote

Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.

Han Suyin

Labels: Han Suyin quote

Labels: Afghanistan; Taliban Winter Ass Kicking

On this day in 1999, in Port Angeles, WA, Ahmed Ressam was arrested after crossing the border at Port Angeles from Canada with over 150-pounds of bomb-making materials, including 200-pounds of urea, timing devices and a bottle of RDX (cyclotrimethylene trinitramine) in the trunk of his car. The arrest came solely because of the heads-up work of Diana Dean, despite the claims of a former President that he was responsible for foiling of the attack planned for Los Angeles Airport.

(h/t This Day in History)

Labels: War Against Muslim Extremism

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Alexander Hamilton

Labels: Alexander Hamilton quote

On nearly every issue--energy, alternative minimum tax, funding the war and, to a lesser degree, pork spending, the Democrats in Congress are facing the reality that they cannot do what they want and promised to do and our President has probably won on each of these issues. Not too shabby for the moron of Democrat popular imagination.

The agreement signaled that congressional Democrats are ready to give in to many of the White House's demands as they try to finish the session before they break for Christmas -- a political victory for the president, who has refused to compromise on the spending measures.

Music to my ears.

House Minority Leader John Boehner piled on the hapless leadership of Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) pointing out that the Democrats in the majority are as bad at running Congress as the Republicans were. Meow.

Labels: Democratic Congressional Failure

Labels: Ruerto Rico refuses statehood

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz

Labels: Susan Ertz quote

After Mark Dunn and I posted on the same report, it seems appropriate to follow that up with more recent science on global warming. So here we go with a paper by David Evans.

His first point is that, with a finer resolution of measurements, CO2 increases in the atmosphere FOLLOW warming, by an average of 800 years, so Gore's most impressive chart in An Inconvenient Truth, showing congruence of CO2 and temperature, puts the cart in front of the horse.

Second, the temperature modeling by computers, relied on by the IPCC, predict a bloom of heat in the tropic troposphere up to 10 kilometers, but real observation shows no such pattern. Not even close.

Finally, what went wrong with the model is the very reasonable assumption it contained that greater heat would evaporate more water into the atmosphere and cause both low and high altitude clouds, the later of which would further trap heat and warm the Earth, creating a positive feedback which would accelerate the heating. Good assumption, but not true. What scientists have actually observed is less high altitude clouds with warming, so a negative feedback mechanism... Hmmmm.

As I have argued, the only reliable temperature records are satellite measurements, which only go back to 1979. What they show is little to no warming in the Southern Hemisphere and some warming in the Northern hemisphere but none since 2001, and, in fact, temperatures have cooled in the top half of the world since then.

These very recent scientific documents may not be an empire striking back but they are a hit, a palpable hit on the Warmie dogma. Rather than attack the authors, let's see the true believers take each point and show how it is wrong, just as Evans shows how the Global Warming Hysteria industry got it wrong.

I think I hear the crickets warming up their legs.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax

On this day in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Florida Supreme Court was out of control and reversed that Court's decision to recount presidential votes in the peculiar way it had ordered, remanding the case back to that court, thus ending Al Gore's attempt to keep counting the votes until they came out right. I recall this well as it was an energizing political moment for me.

Labels: 2000 Presidential Election

Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you're going to do about it.

Kathleen Casey Theisen

Labels: Kathleen Casey Theisen quote

If you've ever been in a greenhouse, you know that the heat accumulates just inside glass of the roof and it gets cooler the farther away you get from the glass of the roof. The floor is the coolest place inside the greenhouse. Just so, if the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing a greenhouse effect, you would expect the atmosphere to be hotter than the surface of the Earth. That's not what's going on, so the inescapable conclusion is that CO2 is having a negligible effect and that the recent warming is natural and therefore unstoppable.

Yeah, we don't have to waste Trillion of dollars trying to reduce CO2 omissions. That is great news.

Oh, but you ask, who is saying this? Three Four scientists publishing in International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society, professor David H. Douglass (of the University of Rochester), professor John R. Christy (of the University of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson and professor S. Fred Singer (of the University of Virginia) are saying this. Here are highlights.

The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.

Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater.

The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc...

Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless — but very costly.

QED

I wonder if the Warmies will be angry its not our fault?

UPDATE: I corrected my counting error. Thanks, Mary.

UPDATE II: Here is a link to the abstract of the article, entitled A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. I can't afford the $25 for the pdf of the article itself. Sorry to be so cheap. Here is an old post I wrote on discovering how tiny the anthropogenicc CO2 component in the atmosphere is. Really tiny.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax, Greenhouse Model Debunked

On this day in 1972, the lunar lander Challenger, during the Apollo 17 mission, touched down on the Moon's surface carrying Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan. It was the last time man visited the Moon.

Labels: Moon Mission

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

William Wrigley Jr.

Labels: William Wrigley Jr.quote

Polar bears have become an icon of the dangers of anthropomorphic global warming. Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them. The fact that there are more of the bears now than at any time in the last hundred years doesn't seem to matter. They are photogenic animals and most of the photos being circulated are cute family portraits. Here is a photo of a bear doing what they were born to do, kill seals and eat the skin and blubber.

The estimates of the number of living bears varies between 20,000 and 40,000. Canada has the lion's share of the bears, about 60% of the World population. Most of the Canadian bears live in Nunavut, the newest Canadian Territory. The World Wildlife Fund lists the 19 populations of polar bears here.

Below is the map of those 19 areas. There is a noticeable asymmetry caused by the Gulf Stream; that is, there are bears in Ontario at 50 degrees latitude but over in Europe there are no bears south of the Arctic Circle, none even in northern Norway, which is above 70 degrees latitude.

Hudson Bay has three distinct bear populations--the Western Hudson Bay population which is about 1/3 in Manitoba and 2/3 in Nunavut; the South Hudson Bay, which is mainly Ontario with a little Manitoba and some Quebec (in the northern third of Quebec called Nunavik); and then there is the Foxe Basin to the north all in Nunavut. Notice too the population to the east, in the Davis Strait area, which includes some of Nunavik, Labrador, Baffin Island in Nunavut and some of Western Greenland.

Here is what the Canadian government says about the Western Hudson Bay population, that it has decreased by 22%, from about 1,200 in 1987 to less than 950 in 2004. That's not what some residents of the area say and not what the native population says. Inuit also argue the bear population is on the rise along Western Hudson Bay, in sharp contrast to the Canadian Wildlife Service, which projects a 22% decline in bear numbers. The Inuit say the government estimators fly over an area and miss a lot of bears, while they, on the other hand, are actually on the ice and see all the bears that are there. Except for their use of snow mobiles, that makes some sense. So I believe the Inuit and Churchill residents, not the scientists.

Here's some support for that belief. The South Hudson Bay population is stable. The Foxe Basin population is stable. There was not enough information to make a call about the Davis Strait, but now it turns out that the Davis Strait bear numbers have been rising, fast, from about 800 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 now. The scientists admit that if global warming is a cause of the decline in the bear numbers, one would expect it in the south where it should be "the first to show negative effects associated with climate warming and consequent loss of sea ice."

So I'm going to propose a different reason for the supposed decline in polar populations and it is an old one, indeed, it is the same one that led to a 5,000 bear World population earlier in the 20th Century, hunting. Nunavut allows at least 500 bear kills a year. Other Canadian places, like Nunavik, have no restrictions on the number of bears killed (by Inuit). There are no restrictions on Inuit kills of polar bears in Greenland. Who knows what goes on in Siberia. (A reader pointed out that Manitoba does not allow hunting so the Churchill population would not be decreased thereby. To him or her I respond, less than half of the Western Hudson Bay population is in Manitoba and it is disputed whether the population is decreasing). We'll see how the bear populations fare in the next few years, just as we watch, through the wonder of weather satellites and Mr. Gore's internet, the rise and fall of sea ice almost in real time.

Labels: Global Warming, Polar Bears

On this day in 1869, women were granted the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory, the first in the United States.

Labels: Women's Suffrage

Stultus est qui stratum, non equum inspicit, stultissimus qui hominem aut veste aut condicione aestimat.

Seneca the Younger

Stupid is the man who inspects the saddle blanket and not the horse; most stupid is he who judges another man by his clothes or his circumstances.

Labels: Seneca the Younger quote

Labels: Afghanistan; Taliban Winter Ass Kicking

I never paid much attention to the psychological motivation of characters in books and in the movies. Books and movies showed us both the world outside and the inner world of the characters, but since I never studied psychology, the idea that people would do or say things for reasons they did not know or understand was foreign to my worldview.

I still haven't studied psychology, beyond reading some things in the DSM IV-R, but I began to understand the term and see unknown motivation at least in some movies. The first time I thought that I understood every human move for psychological reasons in a movie was in The Remains of the Day. Since then it has been hit or miss, but I do get the concept at last.

Just so, I think it is very possible to see that sort of motivation in some of our politicians, and as an example, I present the following bloody obvious things about Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
Let's skip the influence of his father the admiral, and go directly to his mistreatment, indeed, torture by his North Vietnamese captors. The long term resonance of that is plain to see every time he speaks on the subject of torture or even 'harsh' interrogation treatments well short of torture. Also very clear is his reaction to being one of the Keating 5. That bad experience has apparently blinded him to the damage he has done to our First Amendment speech rights with his absolutely useless campaign reform. There's more, but let's leave it at that.

I believe, however, that anyone can do the same to any other politician or any celebrity for that matter. The question is will we be drawing the right conclusions.

Labels: John McCain, Psychological Motivation

Labels: WWII history; European theater

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

Labels: Thomas Jefferson quote

Sooo cute! and scientists tell us that they are endangered. Here are some tidbits from a fascinating little article.

[The polar bear is the] only predator that will actively stalk a human.

[...]

Dennis Compayre raises bushy grey eyebrows as he listens to the environmentalists predict the polar bear's demise. "They say the numbers are down from 1,200 to around 900, but I think I know as much about polar bears as anyone, and I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid..."

[...]

Flying into Churchill, the weather seems cold enough.
If minus 5C means the greenhouse effect is upon us, heaven knows what it was like before.
According to my taxi driver, however, the seasons have changed, and by rights it should be a whole lot colder.
"Last week, it was minus 20C, but now it's suddenly warmed up again, and not long ago that never happened," he informs me.
In Churchill, the effects of this odd upsurge in temperature are clear.
By this time of year, Hudson Bay has usually refrozen and the bears are beginning to slide off to hunt seals on the fringe of the ice-sheet.
After freezing briefly, however, it has now melted again, and so the bears are still very much among us.

Although hard to find, as opposed to the minimum ice NASA photos you couldn't escape last Summer (and attached here as well) here is a three week old photo of the Arctic ocean showing a very rapid, indeed record recovery (but not complete recovery) of the sea ice in Autumn. I'll wait to the end of April to see the end of Winter extent of the sea ice. We'll see if it's abnormally small.

The guy in Churchill, Canada says it's been warmer than he remembers, who am I to argue? The other guy in the story says there are as many polar bears as ever, who are you to argue?

Labels: Polar Bears, Science; Global Warming

On this day in 1948, the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan annexed Arabic Palestine. So the next time someone tells you that the Palestinians are a people (like the Kurds) without a nation, nod your head in agreement and say, yeah, Saudi Arabs took it from them nearly 60 years ago.

Labels: Jordan History

Most of the people who really love movies have a soft spot in their hearts for Ken Russell, the British director who loves to put the lives of artists, usually composers, on the screen. He had a period of white hot creativity from about 1966 (with the superb black and white biopic of Isadora Duncan) to 1980 (with an updated Jekyll/Hyde story called Altered States). There were only a few bad films in the 20 or so he made during that period and superb ones like The Music Lovers and Women in Love. But very few stay hot artistically forever. He's not dead yet and he, at age 80, is apparently working on a new version of Moll Flanders. But his creative juices began to dry up in the mid-80s and when he really bore down and tried again for magic with another D.H. Lawrence novel about the Brangwen girls, he pretty much failed; The Rainbow in 1989 was pretty awful. Just before that he filmed a really bad novel by somewhat famous Irishman Bram Stoker, of Dracula fame, called The Lair of the White Worm, which is the movie I watched tonight when I couldn't sleep. I'd seen it before.

It's so bad, it's good. Camp doesn't begin to describe the complete over the top, guilty pleasure this pitiful B movie wonderfully is. For one it has Hugh Grant, looking very young but being exactly the same as he has been in every movie since. The real treat is Amanda Donahoe looking pretty darn good and just enjoying the heck out of her super villainess role. She sprays green venom on a crucifix on the wall of a farmhouse from 4 inch fangs in a wide open mouth. That's the first thing she does to reveal she's actually more than just a cougar eccentric in a hot Jaguar XKE. "Do you have children?" ask Grant and Donahoe, as Lady Sylvia Marsh, replies, "Only when there are no men around."

Then it gets really weird.

Some of the acting is so bad as to cause actual pain to the viewer, and the story is worthless, but you see in some of the flashbacks, and in parts of the strange Concorde dream sequence, the final flare ups of the cooling embers of a profligate and somewhat wasted cinematic genius.

If you don't expect a thing, you will have a ball.

Labels: Lair of the White Worm

Labels: Politically Correct Halloween

"...my shoes rubbing across this carpet create more energy than the Democrats' energy bill."
Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.).

The above-referenced House bill failed to get to a final vote in the Senate today, losing 53-42, with some Democrats joining the Republican minority to block passage of the bill.

Republicans and the Bush administration have criticized the plan for including $21 billion in new tax revenues and setting rules requiring 15% of electricity production by 2020 to come from renewable resources.
[...]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the bill would “finally put Americans on the path to solving the energy crisis,” and noted that automakers and environmental groups support the fuel economy increase to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

What energy crisis? We have tons and tons of fuel in the Rocky mountains here in the United States and even more tons and tons up in the heavy oil and tar sands north of Edmonton. Renewable energy will become affordable (and more than 1 or 2% of the world's energy) when there's nothing left but renewable energy. Until then we ought to use responsibly the fossil fuels we can find. It's not like oil, gas and coal in the ground is doing anyone any good.

I could be wrong but I thought the essential reason for energy legislation was to make more of it available (and therefore cheaper) rather than this plan, which taxed it at a much higher rate (making it less available and more expensive). Maybe the Democrats are so deep into global warming nonsense that they actually do want to make fossil fuel less available and more expensive in the hope that the little people will use less of it. ANWAR, bans on offshore production, even Colorado's new 'Watermelon' oil and gas commission, all seem to point to that basic truth.

Some people are saying that this defeat is just temporary, wait 'til next year and the Democrats will really put the screws to energy producers and consumers.

Could be.

UPDATE: David Freddoso, whoever that is, at the NRO agrees with me that the bill is worthless. Here's what he said at The Corner:

That Awful Energy Bill [David Freddoso]

It failed to get cloture today. I don't see why we don't just scrap the thing, it has absolutely no redeeming value. They will probably try it again without the Renewable Portfolio Standard (which forces utilities to waste money on non-feasible sources of energy like solar and biomass), which will give it a better chance of passage. But Bush would be a fool to sign this bill or anything like it.

It will make gas more expensive, it will make cars more expensive, and it won't produce any new energy. There's just no reason to pass an energy bill at all, especially if it looks like this one.

There is only one reason this bill didn't die long ago. Big Corn and Big Ethanol are demanding ludicrous, multi-billion gallon fuel-use mandates so that they can maintain their parasitic attachment to Americans' private wealth. And they have bought the Republican Party in the Heartland every bit as much as they have bought the Democrats there.

I have never been a fan of John McCain, but he attracts me if only because he is willing to speak out against this madness. Ron Paul might be the only other candidate willing to do so.

Labels: Democratic Congressional Failure

Labels: Murder of Cicero

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

Philip Johnson

Labels: Philip Johnson quote

According to Box Office Mojo, here are the foreign box office totals for the following films:

Lions for Lambs -- $28.5 Million after four weeks. Apparently the Europeans and/or Asians like this movie more than we did.

The Kingdom -- $35 Million in nine weeks. We liked this one more here.

Rendition -- $6.7 Million in seven weeks. Weak both here and over there.

Redacted -- $28.8 Thousand in three weeks. Universal disaster.

Labels: Anti-War Movie Grosses, Foreign Box Office

John Bolton lays it out in the WAPO

Very well stated observations.....

Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the "intelligence community" on issues such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.
All this shows that we not only have a problem interpreting what the mullahs in Tehran are up to, but also a more fundamental problem: Too much of the intelligence community is engaging in policy formulation rather than "intelligence" analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it. President Bush may not be able to repair his Iran policy (which was not rigorous enough to begin with) in his last year, but he would leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.

Consider these flaws in the NIE's "key judgments," which were made public even though approximately 140 pages of analysis, and reams of underlying intelligence, remain classified.
First, the headline finding -- that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread. In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE. Moreover, the distinction between "military" and "civilian" programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical to civilian and military uses. Indeed, it has always been Iran's "civilian" program that posed the main risk of a nuclear "breakout."

The real differences between the NIEs are not in the hard data but in the psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives. The current NIE freely admits to having only moderate confidence that the suspension continues and says that there are significant gaps in our intelligence and that our analysts dissent from their initial judgment on suspension. This alone should give us considerable pause.

Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."

Third, the risks of disinformation by Iran are real. We have lost many fruitful sources inside Iraq in recent years because of increased security and intelligence tradecraft by Iran. The sudden appearance of new sources should be taken with more than a little skepticism. In a background briefing, intelligence officials said they had concluded it was "possible" but not "likely" that the new information they were relying on was deception. These are hardly hard scientific conclusions. One contrary opinion came from -- of all places -- an unnamed International Atomic Energy Agency official, quoted in the New York Times, saying that "we are more skeptical. We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." When the IAEA is tougher than our analysts, you can bet the farm that someone is pursuing a policy agenda.

Fourth, the NIE suffers from a common problem in government: the overvaluation of the most recent piece of data. In the bureaucracy, where access to information is a source of rank and prestige, ramming home policy changes with the latest hot tidbit is commonplace, and very deleterious. It is a rare piece of intelligence that is so important it can conclusively or even significantly alter the body of already known information. Yet the bias toward the new appears to have exerted a disproportionate effect on intelligence analysis.
Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

On this day in 1921, after nearly 8 centuries of unsuccessful rebellions, the Irish Free State, comprising four-fifths of Ireland, was declared. The Brits were a little pre-occupied with other matters on the continent, when the Irish, starting on Easter, 1916, once again rebelled from British rule. But to be fair, the Irish Republican Army fought a very effective guerrilla campaign and the Brits were finally willing to get out of most of Ireland. Of course, this day is also the nominal start of the Irish Civil War, a focused, savage little conflict largely over who would govern the new free Ireland.

Labels: Irish Free State

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

Albert Einstein

Labels: Albert Einstein quote

The Supreme Court held oral arguments today in Boumediene v. Bush and Orin Kerr, at the Volokh Conspiracy, listened to the arguments and questions and gave this ominous report.

What is likely to happen in the case? My guess is that the Supreme Court will reverse and remand. They'll probably say that there is a Constitutional right to habeas jurisdiction for the Guantanamo detainees, and then remand back to the D.C. Circuit to shape its proceedings in light of the constitutional requirement. Based on Kennedy's questions, I expect they'll also say that they interpret the DTA to allow a wide range of Constitutional challenges by detainees when they bring suit in the D.C. Circuit following their CSRT decisions. That's my guess, at least.

This would be madness. There is no constitutional habeas corpus right for legal combatants; there certainly is none for illegal combatants.

The Second Amendment DC case scheduled to be heard later next year, now known as District of Columbia v. Heller, is even clearer, yet I fear the Learned 9 will blow that one too.

I need to go see a comedy or something. You know, here was a time I had faith that the Supreme Court would actually do the right thing. Ah, memories

Labels: Constitutional Habeas Corpus; 2nd Amendment

Millions for Defense, not one cent for Tribute.

Robert Goodloe Harper

The stalwart University of Colorado agreed today to settle, for nearly $3 Million, with two former students, who had a party off campus, got really drunk (on their own), had sex with guys they didn't know, and certainly regretted that later*, at least before they started drinking heavily again. But what has that got to do with CU, you ask? That is an excellent question.

If you twist the unnecessary, counterproductive laws we all call Title IX beyond all recognition, then there was the beginning of the color of an argument that CU was on the hook for the boorish (but not criminal) behavior of high school student athletes, inter alia, being shown a not inaccurate taste of what life is like for student athletes at CU (and nearly every other large state university in the country), that is, being recruited. So the university folded like a cheap card table in light of the 10th Circuit's bad decision in September about the previously unknown coverage of Title IX to girls' off campus private parties which male athletes might attend. Title IX's original purpose was to make female student athletes equal to their male counterparts, not to protect heavy drinking, foolish young women off campus. The federal appeals court had reinstated the girls' 'Title IX' lawsuit against CU, and CU today bailed. Part of the reason outgoing temporary president of the university Hank Brown (R) gave for the decision was that to win would have cost a million to a million and a half in University attorney fees, and also they wanted to get out of the stink these girls were making regarding recruitment practices.

Makes you wonder if they'll also bail on the lawsuit (now pending in Denver District Court, before good guy Judge Larry Naves) by faux Indian, sham scholar, former Department Head and Professor Ward Churchill, who has merely a masters degree from a school no one has ever heard of. They would probably win that lawsuit in a walk as well.

I am so glad my children wouldn't even apply to CU.

The Wages of Sin are... substantial.

* I am basing my disdain for the girls' claims of sexual assault on the decision of the Boulder DA not to bring any charges in the matter. It is rape in this State to have sex with a woman whom you know is too blitzed to consent, so it's not like there was a hole in the law. Here there just was not sufficient proof of rape even to call it that in my book. The young men have said there was consent by women not too drunk to know what was going on. Maybe it's the fallout from the Duke Lacrosse case, but I generally believe the less drunk witnesses in these sorts of cases.

UPDATE: My description of the basic function of Title IX was too narrow. It's not just about sports at school, it's about all school activities. And Ward Churchill has filed his treatened suit not just threatened to file it. Sorry.

Labels: CU; Title IX; Drunk girls having sex

On this day in 1933, the federal Prohibition of alcohol came to an end when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment. Not even a noble experiment, making alcohol illegal was ineffective in stopping the consumption of alcoholic drinks. It did cause crime to rise, particularly organized crime, caused corruption in law enforcement to become rampant, eroded our 4th Amendment rights and proved that our Government would do away with our freedoms to be mildly bad, for our own good, of course, as soon as the particular vice fell into disfavor. Like drugs and smoking now.

Labels: Repeal of Prohibition

Raram fecit mixturam cum sapientia forma.

Petronius

Beauty and wisdom rarely mix.

Labels: Petronius quote

One thing we lawyer types can do is judge the severity of the risk vis a vis the likelihood of the occurrence. I know for sure, for example, that I will cut myself shaving again sometime. I will not bleed to death because of it. I'm not worried. In another instance, it would be horrible if a malevolent alien race destroyed the Earth, but that's not going to happen. So again I don't worry about it. Likewise, it would be horrible if Iran developed nuclear weapons and used a few against Israel. So what is the likelihood?

There's a lot of discussion about the National Intelligence Estimates regarding Iran's nuclear weapon program. The spies seem to be pretty sure Iran stopped the program when we finished Gulf War II in 2003 and it's possible they never have restarted it.

Does the CIA help put out the NIE? What is the CIA's 'batting average' regarding foreign nations nuclear weapon's programs? It's like 0. They've never been right. Nearly every Foreign nuclear explosion (other than Great Britain's and France's or the one the Commies announced ahead of time) have been news to the CIA. They admit that after Gulf War I, Saddam's nuclear weapons program was much more advanced than they thought.

What do the Israelis say? They were able to locate, raid and destroy a nuclear weapons fabrication point in Syria just a few weeks ago. I'll go with them.

And they say Iran is doing just what Ahmadinejad says they are doing, making weapons grade uranium in order to make a few bombs to destroy Israel.

Labels: NIE

Labels: Celebrity Trivia

Labels: WWII history; Pacific theater

Nusquam est qui ubique est.

Seneca the Younger

He who is everwhere is nowhere.

Labels: Seneca the Younger quote

Labels: Paris Hilton; Cosmetic Lips

The anti-American, anti-Gulf War II or anti-Afghanistan war or anti-War on Terror movies haven't been doing too well domestically. Here's what Box Office Mojo reports from last weekend about their paucity of paying viewers.

Lion for Lambs is at #18 in its 4th week, having grossed domestically $14 Million on a star studded $35 Million budget. That's not a successful movie.

Redacted is at #62 in its third week and is playing in less than a dozen theaters. The site doesn't list its budget (although I believe it was a modest $5 Million) but its domestic gross is truly pathetic at $54 Thousand. That's thousand, with a T.

In the Valley of Elah, which has been around almost a quarter, is at #72 with a very pathetic $6.7 Million domestic gross.

Two earlier films, Rendition and The Kingdom, are apparently no longer being shown in theaters, and topped out with domestic grosses of 9.7 Million and 47.5 Million respectively. The latter, which was a somewhat apolitical action flick, was merely a disappointment at the box office rather than the serious disasters the other movies were and are. And I'm barely aware there was an earlier anti-war film late last year, Home of the Brave, which vanished without a trace with a domestic gross of next to nothing, $25 Thousand, a worldwide gross of a quarter million dollars and a $12 Million budget. Ouch, that one hurts.

Even the unpopular wars in Korea and Viet Nam had a few good movies come out of them.

I'll research the foreign grosses in the next few weeks.

Labels: Anti-War Movie Grosses