Global Warming--another inconsistency explained--world still warming, but faster!

A sharp cooling in ocean water temperature that began in 1945 has now been explained--the Americans, who took the temperatures prior to 1945, measured the water in a slightly different matter than the Brits, who took the subsequent measurements. The same water, measured with the British method, would be 0.3 degrees cooler, same as the observed drop.

Bill O'Reilly Gay Marriage Advocate!

The tipping point has been reached. The battle has been won.



If you watch the video, above, you'll see Bill O'Reilly corner a Gay Marriage opponent -- who admits that only reason to oppose Gay Marriage in California is because, wait for it -- it isn't traditional. Hmmm. Slavery is perfectly traditional, as is the view of women as property... the list goes on.

Marriage is contract law dealing with property rights. Always has been, still is.

H/T Bradblog

Obama's (Great) Uncle

Obama, in a plea for more funds to help vets with PTSD, mentioned that his uncle had liberated Auschwitz, and came home with PTSD. The concentration camp was Ohrdruf (a sub camp of Buchenwald), which, to my horror I find has been characterized by members of the right (one hopes outliers) as a "work camp" and not a concentration camp, so Obama must be lying. Here is what the 89th division's website says:

Concerning the service of Mr. Charles Payne: C.T. Payne was a soldier in the 89th Infantry Division. He served in the 355th Infantry Regiment, Company K. The 355th Infantry Regiment was the unit to liberate Ohrdruf. Mr. Payne was there.

For those who seek to minimize the horrors of Ohrdruf since it was a 'work' camp and not a 'death' camp, we have but one word: shame. Ironically, this argument has been made to us time and time again by various Holocaust-deniers and other pro-Nazi groups. We will let the testimony of survivors and veterans speak for themselves.

Just discovered "The Greatest Bitchslap Ever."

Archangel Thunderbird or Kraut Prog-Rock gone terriby terribly right.

I give you Amon Duul II, you can thank me later.

Yet another post about God.

The incomparable Douglas Adams:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Well, that was easy," says man, who goes on to prove that black = white, and is promptly run over at the next zebra crossing."

Bush, having laid the groundwork, may get to bomb Iran!

From the Asia times, we find that the Bush administration may have set a timetable to bomb Iran in August of this year. This is troubling for many reasons, the main being that it is totally and completely and utterly crazy, with a side of more crazy. The Bush administration has been unable to prove that Iran is delivering weapons to Iraq; while decrying Iranian's building of nuclear power plants, it has helped the Saudis get the same exact technology.

This is even more troubling, as Asmiral William Fallon, the former Commander-in-Chief of Centcom (US Military Central Command over the Middle East) resigned in March, to be replaced by David Petraus. Fallon was widely seen as flat-out refusing to attack Iran under his leadership. Now he's gone, and Petraeus seems to have an itchy trigger finger.

And now, none other than Bushes old press secretary, Scott McClellan, has written a tell-all book documenting how "the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated 'political propaganda campaign' led by President Bush and aimed at 'manipulating sources of public opinion and 'downplaying the major reason for going to war.'"

"The Iraq [Iran] war was not necessary," he concludes.
"Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake."


h/t george, daily kos

You make the choice

I purchased this item, below, at a hipster yard sale about 2 miles from my house.

Sooo cute! With its pink and white bows, and teddy bear.

A cat shoulder massager?

Interesting Copyright Problem

A site uses your image, and slaps a copyright mark on it. Who does the original image now belong to? Practially speaking?

This is already happening. One such story at hownow brown pau. He made a time-lapse video of clouds that then was used by Huffington Post in a different, copyright-logoed clip. The original video was then automatically disabled by Google Video after the similar clip on Huffington Post was apparently spotted by a Google video bot.

There is, apparently, a dispute resolution process. His update.

But, still. Disturbing. Should all us anonymous microscopic sites be licensing our own images under some creative commons or copyleft license to preempt such situations in the future?

This is a subject I know little to nothing about, for what it's worth, just musings on my part.

H/T Boing Boing

Tiny brushes with fame

Plus an excuse to post about Patti Smith again.

I discovered Patti Smith when I was a marginal, deeply isolated, 16 year old. In spite of all those John Hughes movies, not as fun as it sounds. As an aside, I never forgave him for cleaning up Ally Sheedy at the end of "The Breakfast Club." What's the matter with black clothing, questionable personal hygiene, and actual eccentricity? Patti Smith gave me the idea that there was a world out there in which I might fit. (I blame Robert Lowth for that last sentence, btw.)

One day, when I was living in Ann Arbor in 1990, I was standing in line at Zingermans deli wearing a felted green jacket from Uruguay purchased at a yard sale. A woman who looked astonishingly like Patti Smith was standing behind me with a teenage boy. She fingered the jacket and told me how much she liked it. A few months later, she did a show in Ann Arbor--of course, she lived a few miles away and I hadn't recognized her. I should have given her the jacket. It was a bit big on me, would have fit her better. I should have gone to the show, too. But I had no one to go with and was too cowardly to go on my own. Pshaw.



Not Patti Smith, a different brush with fame. Billy Childish (with Smokin' Nurse Julie, or so I am told by the man in my life) playing in Oregon in 2006. You can see me as the blur in the middle, right at the very front, black shirt, necklace, bracelets.

Snapdragon, dubious of advice

being given by Monkey

Another two of my favorite flavors -- Son House and the White Stripes

"Death Letter" + a bit of "Don't you mind people grinnin' in your face." Can someone please supply me with one or more adjectives for "awesome?" It would be much appreciated.

Oh, and Meg White totally rocks, or hits things with sticks, or something not quite so unintelligible. Son House, if I may be so disrespectful, would be pleased, I suspect.

All hail our youtube masters. We bow in your general direction. Plus, should anyone ask, the maximum air speed velocity of a common swallow is 45 mph.

Snapdragon in the flesh

My dearest sweetest
snapdragon, in both a pensive and a black and white mood. Pic taken by her.

People are weird; or the more porn, the fewer sex crimes.

Pornography occupies some weird liminal position here in America. Somewhere around 90% of men view it (I've had trouble finding actual statistics), but it is widely seen as a horrific societal evil. Recent posts at feministmormonhousewives.com have docmented sad tales of men so "addicted."

I decided to do a review of the literature to see what science says about such sad stories. What did I find out? Human sexuality = paradox. Every "common sense" argument is not only wrong, but produces the opposite effect you would suppose.

Two countries, Denmark and Japan, greatly liberalized their pornography laws in the 1960s and 1990's respectively. Both countries had spectacular declines in the number of sex offenses. Denmark even allows "child pornography"--it saw a 50% drop in such crimes, after the liberalization of pornography. Astonishing. Please understand that I am not condoning raping the occasional child for the good of the whole here, I find the idea reprehensible. I'm just reporting on the data.

Japan, who dramatically liberalized its pornography laws in the mid 1990's (or at least reinterpreted its existing laws much more broadly) saw an even more astonishing decrease -- an 85% decrease in sex crimes against children . If such an easy fix is available for such a horrific crime, we should all follow suit--in some non-horrific fashion; and yes, I realise that ay, there's the rub. To sleep, perchance to dream....

The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography, without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%.

Most significantly, despite the wide increase in availability of pornography to children, not only was there a decrease in sex crimes with juveniles as victims but the number of juvenile offenders also decreased significantly.

Another quote

"Other researchers have found the same effect. In Denmark homosexual child molestation decreased more than 50 percent from 74 cases in 1966 to 20 cases in 1969 (Ben-Veniste, 1971; pp. 254). These decreases in sex crimes involving children are particularly noteworthy since in Japan, as in Denmark, for the time under review, there were no laws against the personal non-commercial possession or use of depictions of children involved in sexual activities; so-called "childporn" (Kutchinsky, 1985a; pp. 5). Considering the seriousness in how sex crimes against children are viewed in both cultures, this drop in cases reported represents a real reduction in the number of offenses committed rather than a reduced readiness to report such offenses."

I looked at rape statistics by nation to determine where Denmark and Japan fit in world-wide.


US is at #9. Denmark is at #23, while Japan is at #54.

In retrospect, at right around 1995 this portal into the Hellmouth (no, wait, that's Sunnyvale), into the demimonde, previously only available to the wealthy or those willing to venture into the skeevier parts of town, was now but a click away, and in the privacy of your own home. Here, there, and anywhere with a dial-up phone line. This increased availability of porn coincides (mostly) with a similar drop in rape cases in the United States, so even if the the events in Japan and Denmark are correlative, not causative, something's happening here, even if what it is ain't exactly clear.

On beauty, or why it's only intermittently useful.

I lived in Las Vegas (North Las Vegas, actually) when I was between 13 and 15. There were lots of beautiful women around, none who seemed to be on the sorts of career tracks that I would wish for me or mine. 'Nuf said.

Slighly longer explanation for those who were not denziens of sin city during the years in question--Vegas had, inexplicably, large numbers of showgirls, all beautiful, and prostitutes, some also beautiful, including the mother of my dear friend Bambi, who, besides being built like a taller, leggier, more naturally blonde version of Dolly Parton, would tell me stories about having to ride ostriches, and how frightening she found it. I didn't ask questions. I still feel great guilt about not being able to do anything for her.

How to tell if we're in a housing bubble, or things I really really wished I'd known a bit sooner.

Are median mortgage payments over, say, 40% (or even 35%) of montly median income? Then, yes.

Also, the annual rent on a house is, taking historical averages, 5% of the median purchase price for the house. Currently, it's about 3.5%.That 1.5% difference is the bubble. I, so typically, find this out after I bought in 2006, at the height of the bubble.

Another nice analysis.