Sunday, December 26, 2010

Happy Boxing Day -- Not a Bakken Story

Without question, there is nothing that brings a bigger smile on my face than hearing/watching Darlene Love singing her classic:


2010

This is the 2010 performance. Ms Love has celebrated her 72nd birthday.

But among them all, her 2000 version is the best.

"There Is No Bakken Without Hydraulic Frackin'"

... and those out to destroy the domestic oil industry know it.

Link here.

You don't need a weatherman to watch which way the wind blows:


Bob Dylan covers, Alanis Morissette

Just saying.

High School Degrees: Irrelevant?

Twenty percent of American high school graduates cannot pass the US Army entrance examination.
In Minnesota: 14 percent of white-, 20 percent of Hispanic-, and 40 percent of African-American-high school graduates cannot pass the US Army entrance exam.

Link is here.

A couple of comments:

a. If a high school graduate cannot pass the US Army entrance exam, he/she will not survive the "real" world. The Army is one big training program; it provides a drug-free, structured environment; it abounds with educators and mentors. There is minimal competition among recruits; they are trained to survive as team members. The American economy is all about individual competition and survival skills.

b. The report is somewhat skewed. The report is based on data from nearly 350,000 high school grads age 17-20 who took the Army's Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery between 2004 and 2009.  Generally speaking, it is my feeling that the lower-performing students apply to join the Army as enlisted recruits. So, things are not as bad as the report makes things out to be. When the report says that 40 percent of African-American high school graduates cannot pass the Armed Services test, it is not referring to the African-American student body as a whole, just those African-Americans coming out of high school who have tried to enlist in the Army.

c. It sounds like the problem is not that these students are not proficient enough to meet US Army standards, but the fact that schools have dumb-downed so much that they confer high school degrees on these folks.

d. Maybe it's even worse. Think of all the students that didn't consider the military because they knew they couldn't hack the entrance exams or the other requirements. Wow.

But We're Gonna Keep Calling It Global Warming -- Not a Bakken Story

A monster winter storm bigger than some Midwest cities have seen in years slogged toward the nation's midsection Monday (January 31, 2011) as the region geared up its defenses...... when it hits the northeast, this will be the third huge snowstorm this year to hit DC, New York, and Boston.

The white Christmas in the South was one for the record books. Columbia, South Carolina,  had its first significant Christmas snow since weather records were first kept in 1887. Atlanta, Georgia, had just over an inch of snow—the first measurable accumulation on Christmas Day since the 1880s. 

Snow in Phoenix. All we need now is an Al Gore sighting.

NOAA: Coldest December "EVER" in Florida.

Global warming destroys Florida strawberries.

I'm not going to re-print or re-link all the stories about the devastating cold and snowstorms in Europe -- that occurred during the autumn, before the first day of winter -- and the snowstorms that are now hitting the East Coast, just a couple days into winter. 

UK (Great Britain): coldest winter in 1,000 years.

Berlin, Germany: most snow in 110 years!

South China hit hard by freezing weather.

It's not surprising that the NY Times continues to fall for this scam; global warming is causing the cold weather. I would love to hear the explanation for the global warming that occurred in 1000 A.D., the time of the Vikings.
About 900 AD until about 1350 AD there was a warming trend that caused the seas to rapidly rise displacing people; including the Vikings who then invaded England. The Norse records indicate that They were able to grow vineyards in Iceland, Labrador, Newfoundland. For hundreds of years the world temps were much warmer than today. As suddenly as the world had warmed, in 10 years it cooled off again sending Earth into a mini ice age with the 1700's the coldest in 1000 years. it even snowed in New England in June 1814! All of a sudden about 1880, the climate suddenly started getting much warmer and has been increasing in the last century. The world has warmed almost 2 degrees since the 19th century. The world would have to warm up ANOTHER 12 degrees to reach the temps of the 6th to the 13th centuries.
An occasional glimmer of common sense, however, exists. Thank goodness for the internet. Without it, we would only hear ABC, CBS, and NBC's version.

And this is pretty incredible: even sea creatures affected by the frigid cold, December 27, 2010.

Old news, but still a hoot:
Al Gore Sued by 30.000 Scientists