My Favorite Online Places ... and why.

Thought I'd share some links to some of my favorite online places. In no particular order, these include:

Andrew Bolt: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

James Delingpole: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/

Jo Nova: http://joannenova.com.au/

Anthony Watts (the award winning science blog "Watts Up With That): http://wattsupwiththat.com/

John Rays excellent blogs "Greenie Watch" and "Dissecting Leftism": http://antigreen.blogspot.com/and http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/

And here is an excellent youtube series that should give a good hint as to why the above are favoured by me ... and further clue you in as to what my politics are:

Intro: Collectivism vs Individualism


Part1: The nature and origin of human rights


Part2: Group Supremacy


Part3: Coercion vs Freedom


Part4: Equality and Inequality under law


Part5: Proper role of Government


No prizes for guessing what I am in favour of and give my support to ... and what I am against, oppose, and denounce.

regarDS

Magpie vs 25kv AC overhead powerlines. Magpie wins !

"Today I ..." was astounded at the resilience of a local humble Oz magpie.

There I was, happily internutting, when all of a sudden there was an Almighty bang from outside down the street and my internut connection dropped out.

"That sounded like overhead powerlines shorting or a step-down transformer blowing its knives and/or its guts" thinks I.

Strangely enough though, my notebook power supply stayed on, but a test of the lights revealed exceeding dimness ... a sign of a brownout/reduction in mains voltage.

Considering it was a clear blue sky without a puff of wind to blow lines together or trees into them, my next thought was "oh sh!t, the work-dudes building a house a couple of doors down, have accidentally hit the step-down transformer next to the building site" so I rush outside in my PJs to make sure everything is ok and if I could be of assistance.

Sure enough, the work-dudes ARE shouting at each other and pointing to near the transformer enclosure, but they all appear to be ok and no errant gear is near it.

Well, except for a limp black and white form and another more active one stalking around looking concerned at it.

Yeah, a pair of magpies, and prolly the two that were unhomed and used to play around the tree featured in the youtube in my last blog post which includes a clip of them chasing each other around between the branches.

Okay, here is the clip again:



Anyhoo, the work-dudes fuss around the downed magpie that had managed to arc/short-out the overhead 25kv AC supply to the step-down mains supply transformer with an Almighty Bang.

One of the work-dudes flips the unfortunate creature over and you know what ?

It gets back up to its feet.

I kid you not. I'm standing there in my PJs in the street watching from about 40metres away, and this creature that should be, for all intents and purposes, the pre-cooked filler for a magpie pie, gets back on its feet and just stands there looking like it is thinking the magpie equivelent of "WTF" ... which was clearly what we were all thinking.

So one of the work-dudes gets it a container of water and puts it near the stoned crow wannabe and before you know it, it stepped over to investigate the container contents.

Then its friend hops over to say "WTF mate, you ok ?" in magpie (yeah, it does the "do do do doodle doodle do" thing similar to what I captured in the youtube in my last blog post), and the recently mega-zapped tells it to bugger off for the moment coz it still has its buzz on ... IE, it zots its beak at it as if to say "don't stand so close to me".

Within about 5 minutes, it is wandering about the verge on which it crash landed from about 6 or 7 metres up to, so I go back inside to unplug things like TVs and fridges which don't like brownouts that much (underpower is WAY worse for electrical stuff than blackouts), and when I come back out, the magpie had wandered off completely and its mate was gone too.

I wonder if it, or its chicks, are now going to develop super powers ?

I'm also just simply amazed that it was able to survive being a living short-circuit to such a high voltage AND the concussive bang that happened when it pretended to be a switch. A short-circuit that took Western Power around two and a half hours to fix !

"Today I ..." am also LOLing at the irony of "der spatz" (the sparrow) being "booted" offline by a magpie getting a 25kv AC boot.

I mean, when it comes to little birds vs bigger birds, its usually the former that chase the latter off, yes ?

Oh, and one more.

"Today I ..." was also pleased to learn that a bull in a bullring in Spain decided it didn't want to play the game of being tortured to death for the amusement of a sick in the soul audience but instead decided to join them where they sat and teach some of them and their children a deserved lesson they are not likely to forget in a hurry.



Yay Magpie, and Yay Bull !

regarDS

All good things ...

... come to an end. :(



regarDS

Ich bin ein Snowboarder ...

Here are some youtubes of derspatz proving that you're never too old to learn new things ... and for me and LSCP, that meant trying out Snowboarding at Coronet Peak, Queenstown in New Zealand in the July school holidays just gone.

For a slobbish "likes to hang loose" cool and froody bighead like me, I discovered it came kinda a natural ... and I don't think I'll ever go back to skiing now. :)

But don't take me at my word, not while there are long and boring youtubes to be endured ! Most of the following were taken using a tiny webcam thingy I had clipped to my beanie, so where I look, you see !

First up ?

Me and LSCP riding the fast lift DOWN the mountain:



Next up, a long and boring (coz, let's face it, I was going pretty slow) run down "Meadows Express"



Here is a similar run to that except I take a detour and include some footage of LSCP doing pirouettes on a snowboard. ;) :)



And now for a spill so daring and dramatic that it took me clean off the mountain !



Excellent fun which I well recommend ... and the fact that I appeared to be some mad old man talking to himself while zipping(ish) down the piste (hey, I was giving camera commentary !) tended to keep living obstacles away. Heh.

Snowboarding. Try it some time ... but if your butt bruises easily then I would recommend that you get some padded pants first.

Isn't that right LSCP ? :) :) :)

regarDS

sweethings

regarDS

angelady

regarDS

John 14:6

regarDS

It's the Peppered moths, all over again ...

See http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/butterflies-linked-to-climate-change-20100317-qfm4.html (with the utterly misleading and inaccurate headline of "Butterflies fly early as planet warms" ... since when is Melbourne "the planet" ?) for how Melbourne Uni's AGW alarmist and publicly funded MMGCC (man made global climate change) advocate and lobbyist, David Karoly, has boldy attached his name to the gob-smacking latest lunacy being used to prop up the AGW religion.

Yes, if you visited the link, you just read how butterflies in Melbourne are to deemed a direct proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Yep, David Karoly basically wants you to believe that Melboreds Urban Heat Island Effect (thanks to it being a growing city) equals Man-Made Global Climate Change.

ffs, the study revolves around studing creatures in A CITY, you know, a place where populations, buildings and roads increase and spread, and the UHI effect generally increases, ... so should any of us be surprised that the growth and changes of/in a city should have an effect on the flora and fauna found within ... and who would deny that it happens anyway ?

Sheesh, what next ... another look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth ("The Peppered Moth") and a revision to say it wasn't the amount of evil coal dust around that determined which colour varieties were "the fittest" for survival re: predation, but actually the amount of CO2 in the local atmosphere ?

Anyhoo, I've heard that Melboredites like to see themselves as the whole world, but isn't it getting a bit ridiculous to claim that the city's UHI equals Man-Made Global Climate Change ala Anthropogenic Global Warming ?

Aside from that, can you also now think of a better way your taxes should be spent than on the likes of Karoly and Co ?

Oh, and how is the collecting of data on breeding cycle of butterflys OUTSIDE Melbored's UHI going ?

Did the so called "scientists" bother to study that, or where they all just too busy pushing a barrow (one that also serves to carry the grant funding back to the lab) and providing Karoly with the subject matter for his next bit of advocacy and lobbying on his chosen religion, AGW ?
Hmmmm, let's look at that article provided in the link again. Oh, here we are:

"Dr Kearney said the study, which relates specifically to Melbourne, would prove a practical tool to forecast the impact of climate change on the city's biodiversity."

Nope, just Melbourne.

But it gets worse (or better, depending on which side of reason you are).

Look what has happened to the news item once it made its way out of Oz and on to the rest of the world.

Whatever happened to this being a study of the life cycle of butterflies in MELBOURNE !?

Spun wilder than a common brown butterfly's cocoon found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7464687/Butterflies-emerging-earlier-due-to-climate-change.html

But let's quote a bit here and lock it in.

Butterflies emerging earlier due to climate change
Published: 7:20AM GMT 17 Mar 2010

Butterflies are emerging from their cocoons ten days earlier than 65 years ago because of climate change, experts warn.

The finding represents the first concrete evidence of a link between greenhouse gases and the timing of a natural event, according to researchers.

The team found that on average, the Common Brown butterfly (Heteronympha merope) has emerged earlier and earlier over the last half century, with an average of 1.6 days per decade over a 65 year span.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne said that the findings tally with a corresponding increase in temperature of 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade over the same period.

This warming is shown to be human-induced, researchers say.

Lead author of the study Dr Michael Kearney, from the Department of Zoology, said the findings could help our ability to forecast future impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

He said: "Shifts in these seasonal life cycle events represent a challenge to species, altering the food and competition present at the time of hatching. Studies such as ours will allow better forecasting of these shifts and help us understand more about their consequences."

The study, funded by an Australian Research Council grant to Monash, Melbourne and Wisconsin Universities, is due to be published in Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The team looked at catterpillars raised in the lab and compared their development to increases in temperature and climate change models.

Professor David Karoly said: "Scientists have previously observed that biological events are happening progressively earlier in spring over the past few decades.

"This new work has tied the earlier emergence of butterflies directly to a regional temperature increase, and has tied the temperature increase very strongly to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by humans."

If you hadn't already read the original report that specifically says the study was limited to Melbourne, a city, would it be fair to suggest that the above article would tend to have you think that researchers from the three listed universities had studied "the common brown butterfly" all around the world, and determined that all around the world, where ever it was found, it was hatching out 10 days earlier than it did around 65 years ago ?

For an additional collection of points of view on the topic, also see: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/could_more_concrete_asphalt_and_industry_have_made_laverton_warmer/ which also includes arial photos that show how the lay of the land where the temperatures were gathered from has changed over the period of the butterfly study.

Now ask yourself, why are the likes of Karoly and the Telegraph so keen for the natural cycle of climate change to be seen as being man made, global, ... and bad ?

[edit] About a month later now, and here is something else on the topic, this time from the award winning science blog "Watts Up With That" and commenting on "Confirmation Bias".  See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/23/butterfly-study-a-case-study-in-confirmation-bias/#more-18856

[edit++] Tis now June 2010, and here is the latest on the topic, this time from the Royal Society Publishing. See: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/07/rsbl.2010.0053.short/reply ... and wonder if Karoly et al should be subjected to a rigorous public conducted enquiry in relation to grant funding, etc.

The long and short of the Royal Society published article is that both Kearney and Karoly are just plain wrong, wrong, wrong, and probably fraudulently so.

Anyone really surprised that this would prove to be the case ?

regarDS