That global warming sure is a mother! Of course it's summer in Antarctica now.
And what do we mean by "Antarctica"? The Peninsula? Queen Maud's Land? The South Pole?
The high temperature at the South Pole yesterday was -23* F.
And if it what does that prove? How is it "global warming" when the winter low in the northern hemisphere is lower than a toasty summer day in the Antarctic? Shouldn't BOTH places be hot?
"Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus — and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights — FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties,” Jordan wrote.
Unattainable Equity
"Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact." ~Honoré de Balzac
"Fairness" is a ridiculous concept from a purely physical and psychological standpoint. As such it falls into the category of Natural Law, the idea that there is a moral and spiritaul code that transcends this physical universe and hence it is evidence for the existence of God. But oddly enough the biggest proponenents of "equity" and "fairness" are those who do not believe in God but rather that the material universe is all. If you believe that then you should dismiss the current bedrock of postmodern civilization as silly nonsense because there is and can be no such thing as fairness. And to pursue it as an ideal is a waste of time and energy. Is the lion unfair to the gazelle when it kills and eats him? Sure, but the lion doesn't care. The lion is a natural creature and accepts the world as it is. Only human beings refuse to accept it as it is. So where does that come from?
I‘ve written about Gravity Wells and Tidal Pumping opening up the ocean trenches of the Ring of Fire, specifically the Tonga Trench driving a La Niña and the Peru/Chile Trench driving the El Niño (our current condition). The Gravity Wells (curving of space inward) from the Sun, Jupiter, Venus and even the Moon overlap and move apart on predictable cycles, such as the Milankovitch cycles. This opens up the tectonic plates, causes submarine volcanism, with significant seismic heat release into the South Pacific.
The counterpart to Gravity Wells are Gravity Waves, emanating from major gravitational events such as Neutron Star Mergers (NSMs). These events drive major climatic periods lasting centuries, again, by sustained Tidal Pumping or diminished Tidal Pumping.
These large gravitational events occur at the Milky Way’s Galactic Center (Sagittarius "A”), approx. 23,000 to 25,000 light years away and exhibit semi-regular pulses or explosions. This is the behavior of Pulsars or Blazars, yet Sagittarius "A” is shrouded in dust and has been very difficult to observe. Just like humans, it’s hard to be self-observant. We do know that the dust of these regions are "birthing” new stars and stellar systems.
Sagittarius "A” was previously thought to be a Black Hole, although the very concept of a Black Hole has been coming under challenge for some time. Thomas van Flandern has identified approx. 30 things wrong about Black Holes. Even Stephen Hawking, who spent his entire life as a promoter of the Black Hole concept, refuted his stance on them in 2014. Matter and light seem to be falling into an Event Horizon to be lost forever but in fact matter and energy spew back out in explosive events accompanied with Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB). Upon reversing himself, Hawking modified his stance to describe the "apparent Event Horizon”. Carlo Rovelli et al use the term "White Holes”. This reversal of matter and light is like a mirror. Everything is reflected back out but it is reverse-imaged. This satisfies a key requirement in Quantum Mechanics: "Information, once created, cannot be destroyed.” You cannot go back to modify history. You cannot nullify history. All the information associated with the matter and energy that is sucked towards the Event Horizon comes back out, but it is all jumbled, like a dream.
An interesting reference on some of this is the work of Paul A. LaViolette, "Earth Under Fire. Humanity’s Survival of the Ice Age”, 2nd edition 2005. He related how ancient astronomers took note of prominent new stars which shone brightly in the sky for several weeks then faded. These are the effects of Superwaves. It was blue light which is the signature color of Cherenkov radiation, observed in Inverse Beta Decay from radioactive decay and the formation of galaxies. I want to get another of LaViolette’s books "Galactic Superwaves and Their Impact on Earth.”
There were significant findings of Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10 dated to 774 - 775 AD (The Charlemagne Event) equal to 20x the normal level of these radioactive isotopes. These isotopes are produced by cosmic ray bombardment in the Upper Atmosphere. Nitrogen transmutes to C-14 and Oxygen transmutes to Be-10. The Charlemagne Event was a century or more prior to the Medieval Warming Period (nominally 900 to 1300 AD). It is known that Warming Periods are associated with diminished volcanism and vice versa for Cooling Periods.
It is estimated that less powerful cosmic ray events occur once every 400–2400 years.
The end of the Little Ice Age is generally taken to be circa 1850.
Finally, to quote LaViolette’s book (page 191):
"CO2 concentration during the Ice Ages was about 6 to 10 percent lower than its present interglacial value and not 35 percent lower, as climatologists had previously claimed. It becomes quite difficult, then, to attribute major changes of the Earth’s climate to CO2. Moreover, glacial records indicate that CO2 changes followed, rather than preceded, changes in global temperature and hence must have been responding to global temperature changes rather than causing them.”
"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for." ~Dostoyevsky
This encapsulates modern Man's ennui and anomie. Nobody has a reason to live any longer, especially our young who find themselves imprisoned in a gilded cage, with a host of amusements that mean absolutely nothing and provide them only with escapist entertainment.
John Lennon asked us to imagine. Imagine a world with no God or Heaven, no country, no religion. Well, he got his wish and look how it has turned out! Modern Man is lost, utterly lost. Wandering in a wasteland of images and sounds and insane thoughts and desperately seeking things to provide life with meaning. But life has no meaning in and of itself. Meaning comes from other sources than society and the entertainment industry. Meaning comes from building for others, from creating as an act of love, from self-sacrifice and being of service to others. But most of all it comes from the knowledge of God and that the work we do is ultimatley for God. Anything less is a waste of time.
Which is what modern Man does. The young in particular are removed from those things which are not a waste of time, and that is not their fualt but it is their fate. They have been told there is no concrete reality and one persons reality is as real as anothers. So there is no Truth to fight for. They are told that they are racist/sexist/homophobes and that is the worst thing to be and their task in life is to fight against their "immoral" nature, a nature that they have been told to embrace in other areas as an immutable part of their character. So they are to resist parts of themselves and embrace other parts, often bad parts that they sense they ought not.
So their minds are divided, split into segments that ignore the totality. In 1948 George Orwell named this phenomenon "double think" and he saw it was the coming thing in the socialist camp. He was right. Double think requires ignoring contradictions in what is espoused by the society and compartmentalizing ideas. But human beings cannot so easily compartmentalize so much. They are forced to lie to themselves and then they know it is a lie they are telling themselves and this further fragments their minds and hearts. They despise themselves as liars.
But then they cannot admit they are lying to themselves so many times they turn this anger outward. It's why we see so many school shootings these days. These kids are unable to repent because they have been taught to believe these contradictory lies. And they have been taught to resent and despise Christianity, which is their way out.
So they are trapped inside a kind of Lewis Carroll landscape in their own skulls and escape is impossible because they can only fall back on what they have been taught, which is a series of lies and distortions.
Nothing they do seems to matter and they lose all sense of purpose, and if they do feel a sense of purpose (usually, and as was planned by the Left, a "social justice" purpose which in the end does not satisfy them as there is no reason to say social justice is superior in any way to anything else) it is generally weak and ultimately pointless.
They want the permanent things and want to feel their lives have meaning. But their lives cannot have meaning in a world that isn't real and that is exactly what they see this world as not being.
Obviously there are people in this world to whom this does not apply, but so many of our fellows are lost souls and will remain so as they reject salvation because society rejects salvation. And only there can meaning be found.
What brings satisfaction to life? Faith,a sense of purpose, work that is meaningful and helps your family and friends and society at large, family, proper education (meaning self-education), order and discipline in one's mind and soul,self government and independence of thought, and a host of other things that we used to have. But we no longer have them because the forces of Modernism and atheism have systematically purged society of these things, thinking that the best is a world of amusements where the individual is part of a collective group and he exercises his lusts and desires and lets others make the decisions for him. But that is at best a gilded cage, a horrible trap. In many ways a soft prison is a worse fate than the boot in the face type Fascism. It is a prison of one's own mind.
So Dostoyevsky saw the truth and John Lennon believed the lie. Lennon and Lenin and all those who have hatred for the God of the Bible have torn the guts right out of our civilization, ripped it's heart out as effectively as any Aztec priest did to a sacrificial offering. And as the West - once called Christendom - continues the long horrible slide into this plastic paradise which is in reality Hell it simultaneously crumbles in every and any aspect of life. Our money is worthless? That came from our unwillingness to believe in reality and our greed. Our schools are unsafe? That came from our unwillingness to tell children right and wrong. Our streets are dangerous and full of poop? We refuse to accept a Godly moral and legal standard and say no.
And without that structure people find themselves forced to reinvent the wheel. But they are not being given even the most basic directions to finding meaning in their lives. They are flailing about like drowning swimmers and those who should be there to help them along - teachers, civil authorities, even priests and ministers - are tossing them rocks rather than life preservers. Nobody wants to tell them that there is indeed a right and wrong and that real satisfaction in life, real meaning, comes from following the path of righteousness. Moral and spiritual relativism is like a tarpit for the human beast.
Western civilization was so successful because it was grounded on our belief in God and the Bible and that reality is a reflection on what God has wrought - not our own puny beliefs or desires or ideas. But we became puffed up by our success and many sought to take credit for what God had done for us. Now all we believe in is our own vain selves and some mystical idea of "progress" and technology. It is a poor god though and deep down everyone knows it.
Is it any wonder why we seem to be in a death spiral?
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp - who helped give America Joe Biden - flew off to hobknob with the Davos crowd of international socialists. Oh, and he won't take steps to rein in Fani Willis.
I see that Blinken jetted off to Davos -- bad cest to him -- but got stranded there due to an oxygen system failure on one of those increasingly sensitive Boeing 737 planes. For starters, just what the hell does the SecState have rubbing elbows with those goons? I hope they made him eat grasshoppers while he was waiting for his substitute plane!
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at January 18, 2024 12:13 AM (lydPE)
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She may not walk on it yet Dana; Kemp may wind up not having the final say. But it is proof that our "heroes" are a bunch of self-seeking scoundrels.
Yeah; I hope Blinken had to dine on cockroaches and spiders while waiting for his "green" plane to actually work.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at January 20, 2024 08:46 AM (AZzSg)
Equally obvious is the fact that they will get zero generation from
the state’s ballyhooed solar farms when the sun isn’t shining, and
ERCOT’s managers should have learned last summer that the battery storage facilities will also fail to deliver much whenever the weather is too hot or, as it is this week, too cold.
The
state’s generation mix taken from ERCOT’s app at 7:19am. Monday tells
that story pretty clearly. What we see is 0 per cent contribution from
solar, 0.8 per cent from power storage, and just 6.8 per cent from
wind. Meanwhile, the "fossil fuels” so detested by the state’s legacy
media sites were kicking in 84.9 per cent of total generation, with a
whopping 67.2 per cent coming from the state’s natural gas industry.
So,
as is always the case on the Texas grid despite all the
renewables-boosting propaganda from the state and national media, the
situation for consumers will come down to whether natural gas producers
can keep their wells pumping, natural gas pipeline companies can keep
the gas flowing through their pipelines, and natural gas power
generators can prevent their plants from freezing up. A lot of that failed to happen during Winter Storm Uri in February, 2021, and massive blackouts lasting for days at a time resulted in the deaths of 300 or more of my fellow Texans.
"Renewables" are making America into a Third World nation.
Trump once said the word "pussy" during a moment of braggadocio
guy locker-room talk –– which is no doubt stupid and regrettable, and
we wish he never said it –– but he's then tarred-and-feat
hered for life.
Trump calls on Americans to protest "peacefully and Patriotically" on
Jan. 6, and he's accused of orchestrating an insurrection and has been
PERSECUTED over it. . . . even though the *actual* protesters (A) were
unarmed, (B) had Police escort, and (C) walked in an orderly fashion;
it's the Fed Agents and hirees, like Ray Epps, who protrayed MAGA
members and engaged in violent assault on the Capitol.
–– vs. ––
Biden who . . .
. . . ordered his DOJ to suppress all video evidence that shows Capitol Police escorting Jan. 6th Protestors into the Capitol;
. . . extorted a Ukrainian Prosecutor investigating a corrupt business
that Hunter profited from, and Biden was stupid enough to admit this on
camera;
. . . sold U.S. influence to enrich himself and his family;
. . . tanked our economy;
. . . directly LIED about the Covid vax, and targeted the unvax'd as
pariahs, even though the unvax'd are now the healthiest and least
infected;
. . . opened the border to a true insurrection (8 to 13 million unvetted illegals);
. . . he stood weak-spined to the World, thus allowing for two MAJOR wars to start under his watch;
. . . he weaponized the DOJ to target political opponents, as they do in 3rd World Banana Republics;
. . . and to add insult to injury, he hits on adolescent girls and creeps them out to point of recoiling away.
Meanwhile, Liberals say:
"The U.S. cannot survive 4 years of Donald Trump."
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Language and Thought
Dean Mellor forwards this quote:
"Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden." ~Karl Kraus
John Lees says:
I totally disagree with this. How, if it is true, does a crow solve a problem involving putting stones in a flask to raise the level.
Does the crow have some kind of proto-language by which to articulate the through process? I don't think that it does.
Imho, thought can handle concepts, even when there are no words to express those concepts. So thought comes first.
Tim adds:
I agree and disagree. I think it more complicarted, and that because there are different KINDS of thought that are both useful and valid.
The brain has two hemispheres, each with it's own unique intelligence and function. Language is entirely based in the Left Hemisphere,and primarily in the human brain in Brocca's region. Animals have nothing comparable, which is why their ability to communicate is more limited than ours. But they can communicate, and in many cases in a fairly sophisticated way. Scientists have been studying the "language" of chipmunks, for instance, and have learned they actually have "words" that can be recorded by machines and identify things.
For that matter, I have a mouse problem in my home and they clearly communicate, not only with squeeks but with smells and those smells change as they try to convey important information (usually about me and what I'm doing).
But the point is language in it's verbal or written form isquite structured and is important for human thought on a left-brain level. The right brain doesn't use language but imagery. But it is no less important as it is also the center for things like spatial senses and creativity.
Albert Einstein had an enlarged node on the right hemisphere of his brain (called the Sign of Omega) and a thickened corpus collosum (the connecting tissue between hemispheres.) It is interesting to note Einstein came up with his theories by imagining things in a spatial way. He pondered what it would be like to ride on a beam of light for instance, and thus developed General Relativity. Language was less important in this than spatial imagination,but Einstein was able to put it into words and mathematical symbols because of the unique structure of his brain, which communicated better than most people's.
So I would say that language is the handmaiden of thought but also the master. Certainly our ability to think is profoundly influenced by language, which can be manipulated to produce results that comport with and describe reality , just as mathematical symbols can be.
I would argue that animal thought can be quite impressive sometimes but in the end animals tend to fail at truly complex things because they cannot think using language that is adequate.
For that matter, the same is true of humans. There are cultures that are technologically savvy and those that are not, and often it is the fault of language that is not suited to science/technology that holds some of these folks back.
I used to translate scientific papers from Russian to English. I was always amazed the Russians did as well as they did in science given the inflexibility of the Russian language in that regard. English is far better suited because English is a pidgin language with multiple words having slightly different shades of meaning and a language structure that helps subtly alter the meaning of sentences. Russian is more blunt and has fewer words. It makes it harder to get some ideas across.
I suspect that is part of why Russia has always struggled with efficiency; their language holds them back.
Granted not all that much; the Russians are both very bright in terms of science and can organize. But there are other nations with other languages even more poorly suited to science and technology. That is why I suspect English is so popular around the globe.
The point is the language is enormously important to our thinking in the abstract while our right-hemispherical imagination helps us in the common activities.
So I think language is both servant and master to thought. There is more than one way to think.
P.S. Intelligent animals can understand human language; my cat would listen to me and do what I asked when he felt like it. But he couldn't manipulate language in the way I can. Even the smartest animals - Gorillas and Chimps - can only go so far. Many have learned sign language and can communicate to a degree but in the end they cannot be taught to do math beyond the most basic arithmetic (as some parrots have learned to count). Language helps us manipulate reality in ways that make us human.
The global average surface temperature so far this month is averaging
+0.59 deg. C above the 30-year mean, which is warm, but cooler than any
of the previous 6 months. Note the beginnings of our (U.S.) cold wave,
which usually begins in NW Canada. (CDAS data assimilation uses all
weather data-- surface, weather balloon, commercial aircraft,
satellites, etc. -- in a physically consistent way to estimate
temperatures).
Anthony Lupo adds:
El Niño and La Niña are a coupled ocean atmosphere phenomena. The map
above is surface air temperature. For example, El Niño moves heat from
the ocean to the atmosphere which is why the global air temperature
will go up with El Niño.
The plot highlights the extent to which the establishment fears Trump’s potential return to power. If Trump wins reelection, he vowed to
deconstruct the administrative state — the apparatus of unelected
bureaucrats who create binding rules with, without, or against the law.
"racing” for Trump’s victory amid positive polling, the coup
would appear under the guise of Trump allegedly converting "the
nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political
agenda,” NBC News reported Sunday.
The establishment worries "there may be nothing
stopping a president from mobilizing the military to intervene in
elections, police American streets or quash domestic protests” and
that"the military’s role is unique in that soldiers and sailors are
trained to obey the commander-in-chief but are told not to follow
illegal orders.”
The establishment’s reported coup includes "legal action” against
Trump and "quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand
presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to
cater to his political needs.”
"We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the
most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re
ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” Mary McCord, executive director
of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at
Georgetown Law, told NBC News.
"He’s going to be one creative motherf—– when it comes to trying to
figure out how to abuse it [power]. Whatever your guess is, open up
your imagination a little more,”Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) told the outlet.
"He’s a clear and present danger to our democracy,” added William
Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in
the Clinton administration. "His support is solid. And I don’t think
people understand what living in a dictatorship would mean.”
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You mean they're trying AGAIN.
As far as that last quote, most of us know pretty well what living in a dictatorship feels like because we're already doing that, what with Crummy Joe ruling by Executive Orders and nobody doing anything to stop him.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at January 18, 2024 12:19 AM (lydPE)
What's missing? Any border enforcement or deportations.
It will increase the number of green cards by 50,000, will grant immediate work visas to anyone as soon as they are released from custody, give work permits to children of H1B holders, give taxpayer funding for lawyers for illegals.
In return the Democrats will allow a "limited" number of really bad illegals to be kicked out of the country, but only if the numbers of people coming are are over five thousand a day for a week straight. And probably only if it is a blue moon and Jupiter is in conjunction with Mercury and Venus and the day of the week does not end in Y.
This is nothing but a giant F-U to the American People. McConnell probably knows he'll have to retire after his term in office so why not tell the country what he thinks of us?
We need to tell HIM what we think of him and boot all of his peeps out of office.
House Speaker Johnson needs to publicly state this is doa in the House.
1
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Posted by: Kellinda at January 16, 2024 10:58 PM (q0MmQ)
2
Good, although I rather doubt it as everyone seems to have one Kelinda. We need to stop immigration entirely at this point in time. Thereare more immigrants to the U.S. than the entire population of Canada and double that of Australia.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at January 17, 2024 08:37 AM (gSj9v)
3
Great, however I have my geometry dash doubts because it appears like everyone has a Kelinda.
Posted by: adventapproval at January 23, 2024 10:43 PM (aTOnr)
The demonstrators marched through central London as part of an international day of action against Israel's military engagement with Hamas in Gaza. The Jewish state started its military campaign after Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on October 7, slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting 240 more.
"I dare you to look into the eyes of a Gazan child and tell him you tried your best," he said to the crowd. "Our day will come. But we must not be complacent. Our day will come. But we must normalize massacres as a status quo."
However, el-Kurd received extreme backlash on social media, insisted that he would "never say that," and pushed back against claims that he called for massacres despite video evidence.
"I was clearly saying we shouldn't be complacent, we shouldn't normalize massacres," he wrote. "Willfully distorting my words is an indication of your own bankruptcy. I'm allowed to misspeak. Also: idagf. Call the police! Write a Yelp review!"
End
So this guy realized he'd jumped the shark and so tried to lie about it - but the video is there.
He wants massacres to wipe out the Jews.
He continues:
El-Kurd also called for an end to Zionism, saying: "Zionism is apartheid, it’s genocide, it’s murder, it’s a racist ideology rooted in settler expansion and racial domination, and we must root it out of the world."
And yet he's the one calling for the murder of Jews and driving Isreal into the sea. The cognitive dissonance is astonishing.
What is REALLY astonishing is that Briain won't deport this guy.
The West cannot survive. We refuse to resist this sort of thing.
I am mindful of Deuteronomy 28. God promised His People peace and plenty if they kept His commands and were faithful and promised misery and war if not. As so few actually believe now what does that suggest? Is this current war a surprise given what was threatened in Deuteronomy?
Bear in mind Iowa is a caucus and that means it was only the party insiders voting. Oh, and it was bitterly cold last night, keeping the fair-weather types - the ones supporting Nikki Haley - in.
As for Haley, clearly her support base is as I have theorized; among the Establishment and with Democrats. It's why she couldn't come right out and say men cannot become women when asked (something that hurt her in the caucus). She knew her sponsors would be angry if she admitted that dirty little secret.
If Haley was too weak to admit so obvious a truth she was too weak to be President and stand up to people like Putin or Xi.
So she finished third behind Ron DeSantis.
Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after coming in last.
But Trump crushed even DeSantis in the caucus. This race is Trump's to lose.
Ten years ago if someone would have told me the GOP was going to be poised to nominate a candidate facing 900 years in prison, a former reality t.v. host, and that I would enthusiastically support him because his opponent was a decripid old geezer who was wrecking the country and facing legal challenges of his own I would have to manually shut my own mouth. But times have changed.
Here are the totals:
Donald J. Trump
56,260 votes
51.0%
Ron DeSantis
23,420
21.2%
Nikki Haley
21,085
19.1%
Ramaswamy got around nine percent of the vote. He quit the race and endorsed Donald Trump.
