Speed Gibson

Score one for the weathermen: the predicted snowfall arrived this time, even if the Friday installment fell short. It's great fun, ridiculing weathermen, and they don't help their cause by tending to assume the worst. You're more likely to tune in that way.

A common argument against "Global Warming" goes like this: "If weather forecasts can't reliably tell you what will happen tomorrow, how can they possibly predict climate changes decades from now?

It sounds like a reasonable rebuttal, based on our long experiences, especially with the likes of a Paul Douglas. But it's no good. The truth is, we can predict long term weather better than short term.

For example, we can predict that July daily high temperatures will average about 75-80 degrees. But day to day variations can be 30-40 degrees. It's the law of averages, actually a well known statistical concept that larger samples are more predictable.

At its extreme is quantum mechanics, which says we really can't tell what any one electron is doing in a given atom. And yet, the overall effects such as chemical reactions and electric currents can be predicted with certainty.

The same is true with atmospheric phenomena. The more precise in time or space, the less certain reliable the prediction. The Friday night storm went east of us; who knew?

So let's take "Global Warming" on directly for what it is: junk science. That doesn't mean the Earth isn't warming. It may be. That doesn't mean mankind isn't responsible to some degree. We might be. But we know little more than this, certainly well short of the certainty to justify the Draconian rationing and other severe policy changes being proposed.

KARE-11 did a follow up on a City Pages article on the recent loss of three high-end restaurants, Five, Levain, and most notably Auriga.

They was a general air of befuddlement in both pieces. How could this happen? Auriga was fabulous, and if nothing else, should have survived on the business no longer going to Five and Levain.

I guess I need to get out more, as Five was the only one of the three I had heard of, but still, what is going on? We also had the piece in the Wall Street Journal documenting how luxury boxes aren't a pot of gold anymore. Some are being ripped out in fact. Is there just no money in high end entertrainment anymore thanks to campaing finance limits and Sarbanes-Oxley?

The first thing I looked for in the City Pages story is where are these restaurants? The answer was that they were all in Minneapolis. Hmmm.

The second thing I looked for was the words smoke or smoking, as in smoking ban. No mention. Odd. Maybe the food was over-rated or over-priced. Maybe its the crime problem.

Or maybe the smoking ban killed yet another restaurant, maybe two or three. Oh, wait, the hoi polloi don't smoke, you silly blogger! Indeed, the smoking ban if anything should have increasingly appealed to the sophisticated urbanites whom the smoking ban proponents claimed would now be going out more.

And yet, there it is, another business lost within the jurisdiction of our Lifestyle Consultants at Hennepin County and Minneapolis. As Ian Fleming's Goldfinger told James Bond, "once is happenstance, twice a coincidence, the third time its enemy action."

The Freedom Dogs are redoing their site. At the moment, all I get is wallpaper in Firefox, and comments doesn't work in IE7.

So if any of you dogs are listening out there, be sure to test Firefox and other platforms.

I've been a subscriber to Bill O'Reilly's premium web site, which features commercial-free mp3 downloads of his radio program. This started when Dennis Prager's site was shut down by Salem in a copyright dispute. I had heard a little of his show on the Patriot II, seemed worth a gamble as Prager's replacemnt in my rotation along with Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham.

I have to say I am surprisingly impressed with The Radio Factor. I always appreciate good production, and O'Reilly is second only to El Rushbo himself. Some things I like:

• It's two hours, not three. I wish that were the talk radio standard, in fact. Very few hosts are like Limbaugh, with the talent, energy, and resources to produce three solid hours a day. Prager and Ingraham would be better as two hour programs, I believe.
  
• He talks straight at you. Too many hosts, including Limbaugh, get sidetracked with "oh by the way" segments. O'Reilly takes a topic and - talks about that topic!
  
• He has perfected the co-host concept. He has at least two who rotate, actually, both female, both liberal, like Lis Wiehl, a law professor and author. They don't speak often, more like a program observer you might say. But the contrast is good, with clear lines between male/female and liberal/conservative.
  
• He handles callers well, goes to break smoothly, runs the whole show smoothly in fact. I particularly like that he doesn't bring up callers with ten seconds left in the hour like Soucheray likes to do.
  
• He's prolific, host of the top-rated program in TV news. He also writes a weekly column and has written several books. He's not above plugging these other enterprises, but he doesn't do it all day long like Sean Hannity seems to do.
  

He's not perfect by any means. His oil company conspiracy theories that Neal Cavuto has no trouble destroying are a surprising anomaly against some otherwise pretty solid thinking.

It's good radio, informative, and enoyable.

In 2005, I learned to stop pretending that Governor Tim Pawlenty was a Republican. I voted for Sue Jeffors, then Peter Hutchinson. In 2006, I learned to stop pretending that the Minneapolis Star Tribune was worth reading despite the transcendent bias. I stopped subscribing.

In 2007, I learned that my U.S. Congressman Jim Ramstad, by his act of betrayal and cowardice in supporting a "non-binding" resolution against this country, isn't worth supporting any longer, either. That and his "moderate" record on many other issues means that I have cast my last vote for him.

Rudy Boschwitz was a much better Republican that Ramstad will ever be, but he had to go, too, when he stopped representing us and started to tell us what to think. The result was Paul Wellstone, but the world didn't come to an end. In fact, Wellstone was so far left that his votes seldom mattered.

A Republican Party of principle will not rise again if it has to continually try to excuse self-serving populist candidates like Pawlenty and Ramstad.

One of my Christmas presents was a DVD sampling of many Gunsmoke episodes, from the original half hour black and white with Chester to the later full hour color episodes with Festus. One of the episodes was Ken Curtis's debut in that character.

There's also nice commentary and four old time radio episodes that were made into TV episodes. It's a nice set, and brings back a lot of memories watching it in my youth.

The radio episodes are new to me, though, starting less than five years ago. I have to say that the radio versions are the superior experience, despite the limitations of the technology back then.

James Arness is "the big SOB" the producers wanted, picked over Raymond Burr, no less. But Arness really is only a so-so actor, really just a big SOB. William Conrad, radio's Matt Dillon is really much better, and they wrote him a bit tougher, "the first man the outlaws look for and the last they want to meet."

I'd also give radio's Chester (Parley Baer) the edge over the more "Barney Fife" TV Chester. Georgia Ellis (radio) and Amanda Blake (TV) are both good.

Milburn Stone (Doc) is the best actor on the TV series in my opinion, and really shows up Howard McNear's radio version of Doc. McNear was a true radio veteran who incidentally had top billing as Speed Gibson's uncle/agent Clint in this blog's namesake. But Stone really understood the role, a true member of the old west, not merely a country doctor.

The radio scripts were tighter, more adult, too, and have given me much pleasure listening to them in bed. I'm jealous of those who grew up in this marvelous world of imagination.

With the murderer of Dru Sjodin sentenced to death, a little more discussion of the death penalty itself ensued.

I had this idea. Maybe we should be allowed to put a clause in our wills, saying that should we be murdered, we do or don't want a death sentence carried out.

Who better to decide?

The DFL wants it all in just two years, opening up many fronts in their war, all unknowing it would seem, against prosperity and freedom. There's a lot to keep track of and it can be difficult to know how to prioritize.

But one of the more important battles might be at the Secretary of State's Office. The initial fears are now reality. This Office has switched 180 degrees from fighting voter fraud to now openly embracing it. I'll stop just short of saying promoting it for now.

This is obviously a battle for 2010, but we need to keep a journal on what should be a long list of the offensives and offenses that will be flowing from the Secretary of State's office. Minnesotans I have to believe still have a strong sense of justice and fair play. They'll do the right thing when they understand the situation.

The 131st annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show is on again, Feb 12-13.

I was very surprised in the first set, the working group, even if I'm not an expert. The three handsome dogs I liked got nary a ribbon.

The Fox Terrier I liked best placed second in the Terrier group, though. And though I wasn't taken with the winner, I loved the name: Fineus Fog. (Any relation to Isotope Feeny's Foolish Fog?)

I like every group except for the toy group, with yapping little runts heavily over-represented. Sadly, yet another poodle won this group, followed by yet another (yawn) Pekinese. The only bright spot was the third place pug.

I was shut out again in the final round, the Non-Sporting group. Another ugly poodle won this one. Is there any dog more ugly than a poodle, especially with a classic dog show trim? Give me a mutt instead, every time.

Tomorrow are the Sporting, Hound, and Herding groups, plus Best in Show.

Dr. Evil is still fighting the good fight on the "global warming" issue. Apparently tired of being characterized as a "flat Earther" or "Holocaust denier" he returns fire:

Al Gore and his crowd are Goebbels reborn, in my view. And global warming is their path to power. Only carbon (and its pushers) is the new Jewish threat.

I agree with this assessment. Every word of it. I, too, am greatly annoyed with the absence of adult reasoning and conversation, even civility on this issue.

Allow me to republish a post from August 2004, when temperatures were well below normal.

Question 1: Is the Earth getting warmer? Such a question needs clarification. How is this measured? Over what period of time? The weather has many cycles, day and night, winter and summer, El Nino, perhaps the eleven year sunspot cycles. But what we’re talking about here is long term, more on the order of many decades at least. We are not talking about millions and billions of years, when as the sun grows, the earth will literally be fried.

So is the Earth getting warmer in this stated timeframe? It may well be, which is to say it also may not be. The difficulty lies in our ability to measure average temperatures and the relatively brief amount of historical data available, little more than 100 years’ worth. The accuracy of the earlier historical data is also suspect, given the technologies available at the time. But the data would suggest a warming trend, though some of the most recent research seems to suggest otherwise.

For the sake of argument, let us postulate that some warming is taking place, though probably less than some have claimed.

Question 2: What’s causing this? The standard answer is the increased accumulation of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, largely caused by the burning of coal and oil.

Carbon dioxide levels have risen, making the atmosphere better able to retain the heat from sunlight. This, too, may well be, but here there are so many other factors that could be far more significant. That atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising was known decades ago, but at that time, the fear was global cooling, leading to another ice age. The scholars of that era clearly saw other factors as more serious even then.

One such factor is the sun itself. We have only acquired the ability to measure the sun’s output in the last 20 years or so, and some of that data suggests the sun itself is getting warmer. The sun may have some sort of cycle, like its sunspots, and we’re in an ascending slope of that cycle.

Another factor is volcanic activity that thrusts millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere. Major eruptions have clearly affected the weather worldwide.

Finally, consider clouds. We have no working models or theories that predict overall cloud cover and densities. Do clouds actually form more readily when the Earth warms, as some data suggest, as a natural correction? God only knows for now.

The intellectual bus stops here as we are largely in speculative territory here. But again for argument’s sake, let us postulate that carbon dioxide et al is indeed the cause of the stipulated increase in global temperatures.

Question 3: Is global warming better or worse for mankind?

Why, bad, of course, we are told. The polar ice caps will melt, flooding coastal areas and cities around the world. This will be gradual of course, not a tidal wave or flash flood, at most about three feet by the year 2100. [2006: Now they're saying 20 feet!]

The increase in temperature in we are talking about is an average, but not uniform. Most of the observed increases are the result of warmer nights and warmer winters, not still hotter afternoons in the tropics. I’m for that!

Finally, carbon dioxide is part of the carbon cycle of life. We ingest carbon and hydrogen, inhale oxygen, exhaling water and carbon dioxide. Plants do the reverse, and there is no question that the plant kingdom is responding to these higher levels of carbon dioxide. This is in fact critical to supporting our population levels.

So the only bad news is the sea level rise, at most a very manageable 3 inches per decade, and some say much less. This is not a crisis by any means, especially given the many positives. But again for argument’s sake, let’s assume it is.

Question 4: Can we fix it?

Those who embrace the Kyoto treaty assume so, that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will make things go back the way they were. This is an unwarranted assumption.

Many physical processes are not reversible, particularly thermodynamic processes. If you stroke a piece of iron with a magnet, it acquires some magnetism of its own. Stopping the process does not make the iron revert to its prior, non-magnetic state. Similarly, if you melt an ice cube, putting the water in the freezer does not re-assemble the water into its original cubic shape.

We have no models or theories that can begin to assure such an outcome. The “damage” may already be done. To severely cut our standard of living, which will no doubt entail casualties and personal trauma, requires a much, much higher expectation of success, especially for a problem that eludes quantification and analysis.

Question 5: What should we do?

Mostly, be an adult. Evaluate the situation, the choices available, and the costs of each choice. This last step is seldom performed by environmentalists. They felt it was important to ban DDT even at the cost of millions of malaria deaths. DDT is powerful; that’s what makes it useful. But it can be handled safely, just like so many other substances.

Until we truly understand the problem and the alternatives, we have no moral right nor any moral obligation to impose Kyoto or similar constraints on a free people. Like so many other evils of our age, the cure is likely worse than the disease.

I haven't posted for these past few busy days, and here Sunday night I'm finally catching up with Almanac and At Issue with Tom Hauser. FYI, for some unknown reason, my DVR doesn't seem to like At Issue. I have to set it each week. It has so far ignored every attempt to make it an automatic series recording.

First up on Almanac this week was Mike Opat, the Hennepin County Commissioner who engineered the Twins ballpark deal now stalled as many predicted in land acquisition. It wasn't until guest two, Peter Bell, Metropolitan Council Chair was nearly done that I realized something was different. I went back to the Opat interview and found I was correct.

Co-host Cathy Wurzer wasn't smiling when Opat was explaining why his plan wasn't working, again as many had predicted. Indeed, one look could have been characterized as "aghast" and a later expression was "the look" that Joe Soucheray made famous. She did smile at the closing yuk-yuk Eric and Mike managed to end on, but even that lacked any real sympathy or warmth. Contrast that with Peter Bell and the rest. Cathy was back to normal, alternating serious and smiling, never scowling, again one of David Strom's many fantasy dates.

I'd call it a "look" of no confidence.

Al Gore should be the one clinging to his melting, fatuous claims in an ocean of facts, not that polar bear in his presentation. Meanwhile, a recent ad makes the completely unsupportable claim claim that second hand smoke is killing nearly 50,000 people a year. But of course, they can't come up with even the first such example.

We need a show like Myth Busters where someone takes on these junk science myths. John Stossel does a little now and then, but you could easily come up with enough material to sustain a half hour weekly show.

PBS's Frontline program took on the "cancer caused by high voltage power line" claims some years ago, and I must say it was excellent work. They tried every way the claimants said, plus a couple of their own to find a correlation. By the end of the program they readily admitted there just was no case whatsover. They showed how the normal statistical "clustering" of any variable can be innocently mis-interpretted as was the case here.

Let's take them all on - mass transit, investing in education, E-12, Ethanol, global warming, nuclear winter, second hand smoke, cell phones cooking your brain, and substituting tofu for real meat, to name a few.

Top Chef is done, and now we have Top Design with a bunch of interior decorators. One of them (Michael?) sures looks like a Salem Radio host.

SCSU Scholars has a YouTube video that you should see. It is a well done mini-documentary / exposé on the "new" math being taught in some elementary schools.

Only an "expert" could make something as simple, fast, and accurate as multiplication the old fashioned way into something unfocused, slow, and error-prone. As Dennis Prager often says, you have to go to graduate school to get this stupid.

There is no safe level of "second hand" tobacco smoke according to the Surgeon General of the United States (SGOTUS?). Lacking any real evidence like Death Certificate statistics, this is essentially the only argument the smoking ban Nazis in our Legislature are using to justify their assault on personal liberty and private property.

That's a remarkable statement. Plain old air contains trace amounts of all kinds of chemicals that aren't good for you. Nitrous oxide (NO₂) for example is acutely lethal, but apparently no problem at the normal 20 parts per billion ( (0.02 ppmv) of the air you are breathing right now.

That is, inhaling even a modest concentration of NO₂ will kill you in an hour but the trace amounts we currently ingest are ... safe. Now explain to me how one can smoke for a month (first hand smoke!) and suffer no ill effects beyond bad breath, yet the smallest trace of second hand smoke is unsafe.

I'm taking the Surgeon General at his word. I can breathe in a deadly poison at 0.02 ppmv without consequence; I have for nearly 58 years now. But the same concentration of second hand smoke is not safe? How have I made it this far?

Very fine. Let's apply this to the Minimum Wage. A $100 an hour minimum wage would kill every job in America. So how can there be a "safe" minimum wage below that?

How about public school funding? Those districts spending the most do the worst. Giving a district even more largess will likely kill off even more dreams and careers. There apparently is no "safe" level of public school funding, either.

How about (surface level) Light Rail, which has killed three people to date on just one line? There clearly is no safe level of this either.

I'm beginning to like the concept. I can criticize what I don't like, without facts, and without thought.

I saw a TV spot for the St. Paul Winter Carnival showing a man putting on an elaborate, multi-colored costume. We are treated to a quick but easily read look at a button he wears, saying "Support Public Schools."

Education Minnesota likely helped pay for the ad and/or the broadcast time, but it still seems like the Winter Carnival should be above politics.

Kermit at Anti-Strib gives a rather glowing tribute to the late Molly Ivins, the far left columnist who soiled many a page of the Star Tribune. As you can tell already, I was no fan of hers. I of course understand the personal loss and grief her family is now experiencing. But the net contribution of her writings to society was a negative one.

Maybe you remember the late Sue Rockne, ardent DFL'er with somewhat the same "in your face" approach. I agreed not at all with her, but she always spoke with class, suitable humor, and with a big, warm smile on her face. She loved the discourse. The last thing in the world she wanted was an absence of debate.

Molly Ivins fell far short of that mark. She was mean. She got personal, well beyond "typical" ad hominem attack. Her columns were simply red meat for the left, largely void of fact and reason, nothing that would stir debate or change minds. To be fair, the right has some of these people, too, like Michael Savage, and I have no use for them either, for the same reasons.