Why there will never be another Monty Python.....

As very lucidly explained by Eric Idle.

Current weather & current reading

More 'global warming' in the shape of snow and sleet today. Having seen the stupid people who insist that man has any appreciable effect on the worlds' climate, despite clear cut evidence to the contrary, (Polar Bears fine, No predicted cataclysmic climate effects evident, rather chilly don'cha think) are so blinded by their own scientifically illiterate dogma that they think anyone with an alternative opinion is mentally ill; I've given up commenting on other climate related blogs. Only a new ice age will convince the pro AGW crowd, but even if that were to come to pass I have the horrible sinking feeling that even when the last of them is being hunted by hungry Polar Bears across the Icy Tundra of just for the sake of a laugh, let's say Florida, they will still think that the climate is all the fault of those nasty SUV driving bunch of 'deniers'. Oh gawd.

By the by, Have picked upon this Ayn Rand meme that is going around and begun to read her work to see what all the fuss is about. Have completed 'We the Living' (Movie link here) and 'Anthem' and heard her speaking in old interviews about her philosophy of 'Objectivism'. I find her work surprisingly easy to read despite it's literary reputation, and extremely hostile to any authoritarian collectivist doctrine such as communism or socialism, yet I do not feel so far that the policy of enlightened self interest as espoused in her novels is any more attractive than Anarchy. This opinion may change.

Current book open on the bed stand is 'Romanitas' by Sophia McDougall. Like the story, but her style is a little opaque for my tastes. Still plugging away at it nonetheless.

But what about....?

The less evidence the advocates of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change have for their case, the more their fellow travellers seem to want opposition to their views sidelined or muzzled. A sensationalist media and a distant political elite throughout the western world seem to be obsessed with the meme that the fact that the climate is in a near constant state of minor fluctuation is it's-all-our-fault-and-we're-all-gonna-die-won'cha-think-of-the-children! One would highlight the following; The IPCC conference gets almost all the mainstream coverage, and the resultant sensational assertions of things that might happen if their base premise that man made CO2 is to blame for all the changes in the world's climate were true. Yet a conference attended by 600 people with more Ph.D's in climate science (and therefore more highly qualified to speak on the subject) over the water in New York gets labelled dismissively as a bunch of redneck 'Deniers'.

Look guys, the climate changes and no-one is precisely sure why it does what it does (Although I get ever more convinced that solar influences are a pretty hefty component). That is not under dispute. It's this big expensive eco-guilt trip I don't understand.

An important comment on the scientific method

As reported in the mainstream media. Draw your own parallels.

A picture speaks a thousand words

Wife managed to get into work this morning despite several inches of snow. I'm working from home today, but it might be worthwhile dragging our little 4x4 up and down the road a few times to help keep things clear for her on the way home this afternoon. Neighbour prophesised blandly that 'this crap' will be gone by tomorrow. I hope so. My diary is full of meetings and schedules this week, and all this white global warming stuff is inconvenient to say the least.

Image taken of our view over the southern end of Dodd Narrows at 10:50am PST.

Telegraph website

News that the UK Daily Telegraph website has been hacked, allowing those who broke the security to see 700 people's e-mails and passwords does not bother me overmuch, as the moderators there have been blocking my comments for the past four weeks. Not really for four weeks, as I noticed that even quite innocuous comments weren't getting past the moderators. Perhaps it was my propensity for pointing out the blindingly obvious that they didn't like.

Who cares, I never use the same username and password for more than one site at a time. Whosoever hacked the site are welcome to do what they like with the ID they find there. I've already changed the password for this and my e-mail.

All seasons in a day

This morning when I took Dog for his tri-yearly shearing, I was wearing sunglasses and the sky was a brilliant blue with nary a cloud in sight. When I drove to pick him up from the dog groomers at lunchtime, the sky was a solid light grey. Two hours later, it was raining, then the sky closed down and it snowed. It is now 3:30pm PST and the sun has just come out again.

Dog has been defurred, the house has been cleaned top to bottom, and Wife is currently sitting reading Ayn Rand's 'Anthem'. Not so much a novel, more a long polemic poem against the evils of collectivism. A Good read, and despite her 'literary' reputation, pre-eminently readable. Have yet to read 'Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged', but was impressed by the power of 'We the living'.

Me, I am struggling with the theme of mental infidelity against the backstory of burgeoning space colonisation. Time for tea and a break from the keyboard methinks.

Life's a beach

Still winters day down in the Narrows this afternoon after a good mornings work. Dog and I went to stretch our legs down by the cold clear waters. Me to watch the Grebes. Buffleheads and occasional Blue Heron, and Dog to find any old bone he fancied crunching.

I often think that a Beach is the charnel house of the sea. It's where all the odds and ends cast into the deep tend to wind up. We get a lot of logs because they escape from the daily log boom traffic. The whole foreshore is made up of pulverised shells and larger rocks, periodically resculpted by a stormy night. No analogy, just an observation.

Still plenty of snow lying about closer towards town. Just when you think you're about to get rid of the last batch, down comes another. Fortunately the new all weather tyres on the van cope very nicely thankyou.

An Austrian researcher thinks he has found the cause of belly button fluff; but quite frankly I'm not shaving my belly, which he claims is the 'cure'. It's like all this anthropogenic climate change' nonsense that keeps on popping up in the news. Fluff. Fluffy news about fluff all.

Day at home

Worked up until ten last night, and find this morning that I've done everything I should. No meetings to attend today, and I'm told that town (Nanaimo) is a bit chaotic right now with last nights snowfall.

Wife is road testing new all weather tyres on the van and just phoned home to let me know that she got to work safely. Dog and I have been for a walk in the three or so inches of snow lying on the ground. I've read the online papers, had breakfast but right now I'm not in the mood for anything serious.

Outside, the Narrows are a steely blue and the trees and hedges lumpy whiteness. No more snow is falling.

Snow falling on Cedars

The sound of snow falling on Cedars makes is a crackling, pattering sound like rain on high voltage lines, but less harsh and with a pattering as the flakes dust down onto the fragile leaf litter from last fall. That is what I learned today. It has a calming effect.

Busy day. Finally got my correspondence and notes organised. Which as Wife might be heard to remark; "Blood and sand Jones?! You, organised?" Such is life.

There's fish out there

Walking Dog this morning, I cast my eyes down to the waterfront at the choppy tidal vortex that forms every high tide half way down Dodd Narrows opposite Mudge Island. Flecks of white scum, like petals, floated in five or six metre long stringy slicks up the channel. The shallows were a particular shade of turquoise.

Could all be a trick of the light of course, but conditions do seem to mimic the early stages of last years Herring run. May be worth getting my fishing kit out.

Standin' in the rain

A bit of musical nostalgia from the days I used to do 150 mile commutes in the deep damp deadness of an English Winter. Headlights framed by pitch darkness and lots of late lonely nights driving to and from jobs all over the country (and sometimes out of it). "Out of the Blue" blasting out of the cheap cassette recorder in the dash of whatever pile of junk I was driving, that leaden feeling in the gut from too much Red Bull and junk food. Sometimes I miss those times, but then my sanity returns.......

How do they get away with this....

The UK Daily Telegraph goes downhill even further with this piece of pseudoscientific bullshit.

As global warming worsens, the idea of vast projects to alter the Earth's environment is moving from fantasy to necessity.

When are the media going to concede that the Earth isn't really warming, and all the calls from the alarmist faction are just that; alarmist. Oh well, what the hell, they wouldn't sell so many newspapers then would they? My pet peeve is that they actually paid someone to write this.

To paraphrase the bard...

I see the zealots are at it again on the BBC with more dogma driven drivel. We're all going to die the heat death of the universe blah-de blah ad nauseum. With a solar minima shaping up, and Earth's global temperature dropping (Although not by that much, but it is unseasonably chilly outside) you'd think the 'climate change' guilt-trip mob would give it up. Little or no correlation with rising CO2 (Should be good for the plants when things finally get round to warming up), Polar Bears fine; coral reefs in fine fettle; currently a bit too much arctic ice, but then that's just me. So where's the warming? Apart from inside incomplete computer models and the heads of the 'true believers'?

To paraphrase William Shakespeare in his Scottish play;
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: man made climate change is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.."