Category: News

A new study questions whether conversion of corn into ethanol actually expends more energy than it stores. When confronted with contrary data, modern scienceocrats do the obvious: they attack the study on merits other than scientific:

Researchers at the National Corn-To-Ethanol Research Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville said there are several federal studies that cite the opposite and said the recent study is harming their ability to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.

“It discourages me,” said Martha Schlicher, director of the research center. “People tend to remember negative news instead of becoming educated in what may not be as interesting. I worry that in a time so critical for energy security and the environment that this detracts from getting accurate information to consumers.”

Forget about the data. How do you feel? The director of the research center nust feel discouraged, because if scientists cannot disprove this data, then something more important than truth lies at stake:

At a time when businesses, state officials and farmers are investing millions of dollars in ethanol research, researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of California at Berkeley found it takes 29 percent more energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount stored in the resulting fuel. [Emphasis mine]

If ethanol proves to as effective as mixing snake oil with banana oil, who’s going to want to pay to maintain research facilities to studying the proper ratios, and more importantly, to keep directors salaried?

Allow me to quickly consolidate the new, revised, and more better

Twenty-First Century Scientific Method

1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Determine that the aspect of the universe impacts some large corporation, public policy initiative, or both.
3. Write grant proposals and get funding for research into the aspect of the universe.
4. Organize and attend conferences to confabulate with others who are thinking about the aspect of the universe, or perhaps just related fields, or perhaps unrelated fields–after all, the universe is holistically interrelated.
5. When funding is about to run out, invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis. You can make it all up if you want; it only needs to be believeable enough to warrant more funding.
6. Use the hypothesis to make predictions and as progress report or new grant proposal fodder.
7. Receive more funding.
8. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and conclude you need more funding to conduct further research.
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 until retirement age.

Nudity or lap dances in strip clubs? Now illegal!

Adult entertainment businesses plan to ask a judge to block a new law that would prohibit lap dances and full nudity in Missouri strip clubs.

The Missouri chapter of Adult Club Executives plans to seek an injunction next week against the law, scheduled to take effect Aug. 28, said Kansas City attorney Richard Bryant, who represents the group.

The legislation, signed Wednesday by Gov. Matt Blunt, would prohibit customers and employees younger than 21 at strip clubs. It also would ban nudity and require seminude employees to remain at least 10 feet away from customers and behind a 2-foot-high railing. The bill would prohibit employees from touching customers.

Drinking in public? Now legal!

For revelers in Kansas City’s downtown entertainment district, the party won’t have to end at the door.

A law signed by Gov. Matt Blunt will allow patrons to stroll in and out of restaurants and bars without dumping their alcoholic beverages. Kansas City officials are reworking the city’s alcohol ordinance to make it conform with the state’s law.

We Libertarians would rather not trade one vice for another because we just cannot choose which one we like best.

A radio station here in St. Louis suspends two morning personalities who had an on-air discussion of how to fight cops effectively. Yes, that’s crass and abominable, but free speech and all that. The radio station has taken steps and public outcry should lead to outright firings and “you’ll never work in this town again!”-esque corporate blacklisting. None of which is censorship because the government isn’t involved.

This, on the other hand, is very, very bad:

But O’Fallon sergeant Tom Otten is far from satisfied by the punishment. “What does a suspension do? It does nothing. That shows a horrible lack of character and moral judgment”[sic]

If the deejays aren’t fired, Otten vows to write and call his fellow officers to have them contact the KATZ advertisers, and urge them to remove their ads.

Law enforcement officials, even if acting unofficially, should not urge businesses to do anything other than obey the law. Because this police-urged boycott does lend itself to censorship.

A shocking image of a vicious killer about to strike!

BAN THESE MENACES NOW but leave the chows, akitas, dobermans, and dachshunds alone.

Ah, so that’s what Hillary needs 100,000 new troops: Grand Confiscation Video Game.

I am getting my conspiracy theories in place just in case (Heaven forfend!) she wins the presidency in 2008. I don’t want to have to merely parrot the byzantine crackpot gossip of others.

Shark chases pup to hospital!

Newspapers make do with the stories they have: Pit bull chases puppy into house.

Meanwhile, here in the Noggle home, Summer of the Tabby continues as one tabby chases the other around the house. Or is it vice versa?

(Link seen on Ravenwood’s Universe.)

From a story profiling the guy behind Internet Haganah in the Washington Post called “Watchdogs Seek Out the Web’s Bad Side“:

He said he has received thousands of dollars in donations, as well as some ominous death threats. One warning came in a handwritten letter mailed to Weisburd’s house. Another letter on a Web site declared that he should be beheaded and it listed his address. For his protection, Weisburd keeps a loaded 38mm pistol in the house.

That would leave a mark, to be sure.

(Link seen on Free Will.)

10 Lines To Get Republican Gals — Like Ann Coulter — Into Bed.

Geez, I would add, for Republican gals like Ann Coulter, something along the lines of Hey, I see tax policies soaking the wealthy are starving you. Can I buy you a sandwich?

(Link seen on Dustbury, who is currently travelling the country and performing field research on the efficacy of the study.)

In a post on Tech Central Station, Professor Reynolds overlooks certain benefits of surveillance cameras. The professor says:

As a deterrent, at least, they were a failure. Civil libertarians fear these cameras, with some reason (my guess is that they’ll be used more to catch parking scofflaws and to dig up dirt on political opponents than to reduce crime or terrorism) but the real story is their ineffectiveness. Every cop sitting in a control room, eating doughnuts and watching monitors, could be out on the street, looking at things with his or her own eyes and in a position to do something about what he or she sees. Nonetheless, the response to the London bombings will probably include a call for more, not fewer, cameras.

That’s a mistake. As Jeffrey Rosen wrote in a superb essay published just after 9/11 (but sadly no longer available online), London’s “ring of steel” camera network never caught a terrorist…

Professor Reynolds overlooks the following benefits (to the watchers, anyway):

T and A.

It won’t be Puerto Rico:

A University of Alberta professor I know sent me a lengthy article he’s trying to get published, entitled: “Let’s get while the getting’s good.”

In it, Leon Craig, professor emeritus of political science, lays out a case for Alberta to declare unilateral independence. And he lays it out well.

Craig makes no bones about it.

Alberta, he says, should go it alone.

Almost overnight, we would become one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

But — and this is his key point — the main reason to secede is not because Albertans would have more money. Not that there’s anything wrong with money.

More importantly, we would create a country that reflects our own political and social beliefs, values and traditions, and our understanding of the common good.

Canada, says Craig, has been so badly governed since the Trudeau era, it has doomed itself to a Third World, banana republic fate.

When the Quebec referendum was held a decade ago, one of my co-workers predicted the biggest consequence of a free Quebec would not be one more annoying Francophone country in the world, but the states of Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba.

Just think, we could drive to Alaska without a passport again.

Come home to US, western Canada. You can finally charge American dollars for hockey tickets.

Seen on the Web site of the Animal Protection Association of Missouri:

Click for full size

Good with children, favorite toy is a blanket and

Funny how that sentence trails off, as though the copy writer couldn’t finish it, ainna?

Current standings, Summer 2005:

Pit Bulls: 20
Sharks: 6
Alligators: 1
Sea Lions: 1

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

Well, Governor Rod Blagojevich won’t surrender his arms:

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich put the Pentagon on formal notice Monday that he will not approve its proposed move of F-16 fighter aircraft from the 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield to Indiana.

In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the governor argued that under federal law if he does not consent to the realignment, the change can not legally be made.

What do you think it means?

I often disagree with Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but when he pans Kelo, who am I to argue? He says:

City Councilman Barry Greenberg was the only city official who attended the meeting. Good for him. On the other hand, it was awkward to see the relationship the people have with the councilman. They had to restrain their anger. He has the power to ruin them. He will be voting for or against the development plans.

I have a duty to look at these plans, he said solemnly.

Why? That’s what I wondered. Since when do local officials have the responsibility to decide whether to use eminent domain to let developers take away homes and businesses? By the way, ideologically, this seems to be an equal opportunity crime. It was the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court that recently declared local governments have that right, but the mayor of Maplewood is a former radio executive who yanked the Dixie Chicks off his station when they criticized George W. Bush. It’s as if both sides of the political spectrum have come together to agree on one thing: Money rules.

Family sets up murder suspect’s surrender:

Kevin Johnson, the suspect sought in the shooting death of a Kirkwood police sergeant, was arrested without incident in north St. Louis County on Friday afternoon, police said.

Johnson, 19, was the subject of an intense manhunt after Tuesday’s shooting of police Sgt. William McEntee. McEntee was responding to a call in Kirkwood’s Meacham Park neighborhood just before 8 p.m. when he was shot several times.

Johnson surrendered at the Ventura Village Apartments on Jacobi Drive and Nemnich Road, police said.

Northwoods Police Chief Greg Moore said Friday night a detective in his department received a call from one of Johnson’s family members just after 5 p.m. Friday.

Moore said Johnson “wanted to turn himself in without any fanfare and without being harmed.”

The detective who received the call and another officer drove to pick up the family member, then headed to Ventura Village Apartments, Moore said.

When they arrived, the relative directed them to an apartment near the back of the complex. Moore said another relative greeted them at the door.

Johnson was sitting on a couch in the apartment with his hands in front of him, Moore said.

Moore described Johnson’s demeanor as “humble and cooperative” as he was taken into custody.

Well, in an alternate universe, the one painted by racial agitators, the cops don’t need an excuse to kill a young black man, and when one is suspected of shooting a middle-aged white police man, the police will surround his hideout and kill him and some nearby blacks in a hail of retaliatory gunfire.

That didn’t happen in this situation; as a matter of fact, the aphrension of the suspect was smooth and without conflict. Perhaps we don’t live in the racial agitators’ alternate universe after all, but this possibility hasn’t inspired any marches.

Jury finds heavy smoking to be grounds for eviction:

In a case that tobacco law specialists say is one of the first of its kind in the nation, a Boston Housing Court jury ruled that a South Boston couple could be evicted from their rented water-view loft for heavy smoking, even though smoking was allowed in their lease.

The landlord who rented the Sleeper Street unit to Erin Carey and Ted Baar ordered them out within a week last November, after neighbors complained of the smoke odors filtering into their apartments.

Carey and Baar, who each smoke about a pack a day and run an information technology sales business out of the one-bedroom unit, fought the eviction, arguing in court that the converted warehouse’s shoddy construction and aging ventilation system were to blame for the wayward odors.

Last Friday, a jury ruled in favor of the landlord and the eviction. Even though the landlord could have written a nonsmoking clause into the lease and didn’t, the jury found that the couple’s heavy smoking violated a more general clause banning ”any nuisance; any offensive noise, odor or fumes; or any hazard to health.”

Beware the word any within your contracts.

Of course, this is not so much a smoker’s rights issue as an issue for all of us. Within any of the standard contracts that govern our rights–from the terms of use for our Web hosts, to the service contracts for ISPs or cellular phones, and into the terms of our leases or mortgages, any number of the clauses are written to make the big corporation with the shrewd attorneys and uninformed, gloss-overish salespeople who only want you to sign the standard contract so they can get their commissions. Those corporations won’t renegotiate the finer points with you because you, individual customer, are not worth the trouble.

But when someone wants to cut you out, revoke your lease, or foreclose upon you, they rely upon these nebulous things within the contract stacked against you to do so.

1. Bombing in Western country by Moslems kills innocent Westerners.
2. Moslems worry, loudly and publicly, about backlash.
   

   Arab newspapers urged Britain on Friday not to turn against Arabs and Muslims after bloody bomb attacks in London blamed on al Qaeda Islamist militants.

   While all editorials condemned the onslaught, some linked it to Britain’s part in the Iraq invasion or its backing for a U.S.-declared “war on terror,” which, they said, ignores the injustice of occupation fueling militancy in the Middle East.

   The Friday prayer preacher in Tehran said Britain, which has said Thursday’s attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, should remember that Osama bin Laden’s group was a U.S. creation.

   Beirut’s English-language Daily Star predicted that Muslims would suffer more discrimination after the carnage in London.

Everyone remember the mosque bombings after 9/11, or the internment? No, me either. So rest assured, Islam, that we in the West can even control our radical outliers in response to the slights and subtle injustice of carnage and thousands of dead innocent bystanders while the majority of the Islam watches silently and probably roots for the radicals in your culture who have, if not your overt support, at least your overt rationalization.

“In spite of the fact that all acts of ‘Islamic’ terrorism blatantly contradict Islamic teachings, such acts serve to further distort the image of Muslims and Islam,” it said.

London attacks fuel debate over U.S. transit security:

Debate erupted Thursday over federal funding for U.S. mass transit security after four bombs in London ripped through several commuter subway trains and one bus, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds more.

So heavily-subsidized, under-used transportation concerns (Amtrak, metro rail programs, and so on) need more subsidies to handle their security. Which should be a standard feature of the service or a risk assumed by the consumer, I would expect.

I suppose the alternative is providing an unimpeachable and unavoidable extension of the TSA to cover these public/private companies. No word on when the Federal government will begin providing additional security for restaurants, shops, and other soft targets, but it will probably follow the realization that these groups can band together to lobby to push off another cost of business onto the taxpayer.

(Link seen on Law, Terrorism and Homeland Security.)

Still believe them when they tell you surveillance cameras make you safer?