Friday, 28 August 2009

A mighty totara has shot through...


...It’s a sad day. Ted Kennedy, lion of the left, has passed from this world. A vibrant melting pot of Americans of every persuasion mourn the loss, and hope to carry on his ideals in their own lives. I, too, shed a tear. With a lump in my throat, I have written a deeply felt eulogy for Senator Kennedy. Pardon the hastily penned thoughts, but the words came spilling out of me like a deluge...


...and from William Briggs... Now he is dead, but he will be lauded and remembered fondly, more because of his status than what he has accomplished. For we must recall the tale of the counterfactual: while it true that this man has produced some benefit, just as he has certainly caused much harm, we are forced to ask what better and what different could he have been had he, instead of joining the Senate, been farmed out to an ambassadorship in Latvia. These necessary ruminations will not be pleasant to the aristocracy and so they will be ignored...

...and Mark Steyn... As Teddy’s biographer Adam Clymer wrote, Edward Kennedy’s “achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.”You can’t make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don’t know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo’s – but you’re struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy’s Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not?

...and Quote of the day...from a group of scientists who scoff at the green/left's statement that "the science is settled..." the CLOUD experiment at CERN...

"...If a causal connection between GCR (galactic cosmic ray) intensity and low cloud cover were to be confirmed, it could have profound consequences for our understanding of the solar contributions to the current global warming. During the 20th century the Sun’s magnetic activity increased dramatically and the solar wind more than doubled in strength... As a consequence, the mean GCR intensity on Earth diminished by about 15%. The implied reduction in low cloud cover by about 1.3% absolute could have given rise to a radiative forcing of about +0.8 Wm−2 (3.3 · 10−3), which is comparable to the estimated total anthropogenic forcing of about +1.3 Wm−2...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As pointed out elsewhere, more people died in Kennedy's car than in US nuclear accidents....

Ayrdale said...

Teddy: can you swim honey ?
Honey: no but I can hold my breath and lick my nose.
Teddy: jump in.