UNRWAL

I was over at the Detroit Pistons page at Detroit News last night and a I thought there was some internet typo slang I had missed - like pwn and pron.

User Griz, expressing his dismay that the Pistons could let a former player abuse them so much after a terrible season.

Man, Flip Murray schooled Ben Gordon today .. for about 12% of BG's salary ..

UNRWAL and INSANE to keep Joe Dumars as GM .. Yeah .. it will take some work to get a good GM, but it wont be hard to find a better one ... this team is toast

Link

It took me a second but UNRWAL must have meant unreal. Later, Griz explains his mistake.

I guess UNRWAL was suppose to be UNREAL ..lol .. but it still expresses my true emotions right now!

Sorry Griz, I am stealing your typo.

Dude, did you see that FBI raid on TV. Dude, that was unrwal!

...AND Climate Change

With climate change hysteria unwinding, you would think there would be a memo to physical scientists to cut the crap. But alas, it appears funding trumps common sense and nearly every study concludes that "XXXX AND CLIMATE CHANGE are responsible for YYYYYYYY."

Take this sub-headline from Sciency.com:

Climate change and damming the Nile threaten Egypt's agricultural oasis.

Hmmmm. Didn't I read a scientific study about a year ago that the Aswan High Dam and reservoir were rapidly filling up with sediment? I did.

The reduction of silt is causing serious downstream erosion (lack of seasonal deposition) and massive changes in the sediment chemistry. The dam is preventing the annual deposition of 12 million tons of silt on land.

NOTE TO HEADLINE WRITING GUY AT SCIENCE.COM - 12 million tons is a really big number. Forty years of that really big number has an incredible impact. No qualitative climate changey science needed.

So why add ...and climate change... to every science article? Easy. It's about funding. I am reminded of a famous (infamous) Mississippi lawyer who claims, "have a wreck, get a check!" For disaster chasing scientists its, "have a climate change, get a check!"

John Bohannon's article about the sinking delta also proves one of my favorite maxims about modern science philosophy. I call it the Allen Irwin Blind Spot Trap. To quote myself...

When we scientists observe and report something for the first time, like the ozone hole, there is a natural tendency to believe it must not have existed for long before we observed it. The other problem is that we are developing the ability to observe things at an amazing rate. Therefore we end up with some really good data over a very short periods of time...the Blind Spot.

The last part. Any good scientific study must have a disaster at the end. Just as Irwin Allen brought us Earthquake, the Towering Inferno - scientists seem compelled to run models that predict disaster. Otherwise, who would read that drudge.

Bohannon hauls out the old bogey-man global warming...

The dam, however, now blocks the sediments far upstream of Cairo. As a result, the delta is sinking. At the same time, the Mediterranean Sea is expected to rise as a result of global warming.

...when the simple answer is staring at him like the GEICO googly eyed money thing.



A quick review of some recent stories at Science.com found several other references:

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People: Lots of people, overfishing, AND GLOBAL WARMING.

Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century: Loss of arable land and increasing development of farming systems that use saline water and integrate nutrient flows, bla bla bla, AND GLOBAL WARMING!!!

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: Talking about global warming PROVES global warming is real.

Welcome To The End Of The Holocene

The recent, or Holocene, epoch started at the end of the last ice age. It will end with the start of the next glacial period. The most recent interglacial, or warm, periods have lasted 10,000 years. Our little warm period is celebrating roughly 10,000 years...nowish.

Unfortuneately, there won't be any ice hurricanes like from the day after tomorrow to let us know the epoch (gig) is up. Hurry Jake, CLOSE THE DOOR!!!!!



This information has been known for a long while. In fact it was the basis for the snowball earth projections in the 1970's.

What is new are some studies showing the climate during the last interglacial, or warm, epoch called the Eemian. Russian and German scientists studying lake bed sediments from the Eemian discovered that the end of that epoch was characterized by wildly fluctuating warm/cold cycles. See the paper here.

Quoting from the study,

The current interglacial epoch – the Holocene – has already lasted more than 10,000 years and reached its highest point so far around 6000 years ago.

Don't forget, water levels rose about 100 feet or so at the start of the holocene and those levels are going to be reversed at nearly the same rate we will pay off the national debt.

Now for the good news.

...we are currently at the end of the Holocene and could therefore expect to see a cooling-down in a few thousand years if there had been no human influence on the atmosphere and the resulting global warming.

Global warming may save our rear ends. Like some diabolical plot device from a Bond movie, we are screwing our planet up in the nick of time. Phew!

Since I love a heavy dose of irony, I propose we call the next glacial period, The Gorian.

Now hear this Goldfinger, your luck has just changed.

The Prius And Munchausen Syndrome

The Prius was the darling, a car that was talked about as if it were alive.

Then a funny thing happened. The US Government got in the car business, in a big way. Then all of those niggling issues became big ones at the same time Toyota's ambition to be the biggest, and the inevitable loss of quality, was exposed. A perfect storm perhaps but that isn't interesting or new.

What's new is the "my Toyota tried to KILL me" experience that many are having. Having your Toyota try to kill you makes you unique. Makes you special. Relieves you from making car payments.

And then came James Sikes. Joe Shmoe from El Cajon California. Victim.

On Monday James Sikes, 61 years old, called 911 and told the operator his blue 2008 Toyota Prius had sped up to more than 90 miles per hour on its own on Interstate 8 near San Diego. He eventually brought the vehicle to a stop after a California Highway patrolman pulled alongside Sikes and offered help.

During and after the incident, Sikes said he was using heavy pressure on his brake pedal at high speeds.

When I saw that on TV earlier in the week I turned to my wife and said he was faking it. With all of the press coverage I knew it was a matter of time before someone took the opportunity to become interesting. I said he was probably behind on the payments. Plus he had purchased a Prius in California. A blatant attempt to be noticed.

Munchausen: It's Not Just For Killing Babies Anymore.

And it never was. It was about getting sympathy. Having people see you as a victim. Being a sympathetic character makes you special. It means you have built-in excuses for not accomplishing anything. People like you. Not in a normal way, but hey at least they know you exist.

I've always felt that 30% of the country suffers form varying degrees of Munchausen. It's the only way to understand so much of what goes on. We've elevated victimhood to near saint like status in this country and wonder why people fake shit like this?

James Sikes: His Story Unravels

The funny thing about faking your victim status is this: The bigger victim you are the more "they" are going to look into the matter. In this case, some of the best engineers descended on this little Prius within hours. I'm sure that was a sinking feeling for James, who only wanted what was rightfully his after all of these years, and maybe a new Prius.



James Sikes Getting all of the attention he deserves.

And then the truth started coming out.

During and after the incident, Sikes said he was using heavy pressure on his brake pedal at high speeds.

But the investigation of the vehicle, carried out jointly by safety officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota engineers, didn't find signs the brakes had been applied at full force at high speeds over a sustained period of time, the three people familiar with the investigation said.

The brakes were discolored and showed wear, but the pattern of friction suggested the driver had intermittently applied moderate pressure on the brakes, these people said, adding the investigation didn't find indicators of the heavy pressure described by Sikes.

Oops!

We know what James is all about. But do we know what got this whole thing started is all about? Do we? When the NHTSA looked into the safety issues of Toyota, were they looking out for us or their vested interest in THEIR car company. When they rushed out to California, did they think they were burying a stake in the heart of Toyota or did they expect to find a sad little man whose story made not one bit of sense.

That's the problem our government has, now that they are a player and the referee in the same game.

New Drone Revealed: We're Doomed

The Navy has unveiled the new X 47B unmanned combat air system (N-UCAS), via JaxAir News.

I could tell you that it looks like an early version of a Cylon raider, but...



Now let's deal with that acronym. N-UCAS. Or sounded out NUKE US. If this had been a reveal in the last season of Battlestar Gallactica, we would have been pissed off. No way! Too heavy handed!

I guarantee you that the dorks working on these drones not only watched every episode of Battlestar Galactica, they own costumes, dolls and build mock-ups of every craft from the show. Even the stupid presidential one.

Therefore, the design and name of this new drone is not only predicable but could be part of some sick self-fulfilling prophesy/fantasy straight from the Book of Pythia.

Anyway here's the ladies taking a sun bath. Thanks for destroying our planet you sick drone worker guys.