Let me show you where my tooth chipped.

Yes, Dennis Kusinich is suing the House of Representatives Cafeteria for $150,000 because he bit into an unpitted olive:

The Cleveland Democratic congressman’s lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages from companies that operate the Longworth House Office Building’s cafeteria.

It says he bought the suspicious sandwich wrap “on or about April 17, 2008,” and eating it caused ”permanent dental and oral injuries requiring multiple surgical and dental procedures.”

“Said sandwich wrap was unwholesome and unfit for human consumption in that it was presented to contain pitted olives, yet unknown to plaintiff, contained an unpitted olive or olives which plaintiff did not reasonably expect to be in the food prepared for him, and could not visually detect prior to consumption,” the lawsuit said.

Gotta be careful about those “suspicious sandwich warps”. And I can’t understand the fuss — wouldn’t an unpitted olive be more natural and organic than a pitted one? For those of you who like to read lawsuit filings, here it is (PDF).

In more serious news, Megan McArdle — my favorite 6′+ female libertarian economist — has a perspective on last nights SOTU that didn’t occur to me but that I agree with:

While watching the speech, I tweeted that “Obama sounds remarkably similar to the CEOs I used to listen to on earnings calls: the ones with mediocre EPS and a failing business model.”  This wasn’t a crack at Obama, or Democrats; it was a reaction to the content.  And after watching the responses, the impression lingers–indeed, maybe it’s strengthened. . . .

So what do those CEOs do?  They spend a lot of time talking about their company’s proud history, even if that history only stretches back a few years. They lavish extravagant praise on their awesome, dedicated workforce.  And they deftly avoid talking about the big problems, for which they have no solutions, by talking about strategic areas for potential growth (“green jobs”), and going over a laundry list of new initiatives that do nothing to solve any of the core problems.  When they are forced to talk about the core problems–and if the company is big enough to attract analyst coverage, they will rudely draw his attention to the problematic areas on the financial statements during the Q&A–he responds in vague generalities that restate the problem as if doing so constituted a solution. . . .

Go read the whole thing.

Speaking of lots of blowing air that does no good, wind power as “green energy” is, all things considered, pretty worthless. It is inconsistent, unreliable, unprofitable, and damaging to the environment. Windmills were nice for grinding grain, but farmers and millers always kept mules, horses, and young children around for all the times the wind didn’t blow. Anyway, the Daily Bayonet has some of the latest wind power failures, including an administrative court ruling rejected Pacific Gas & Electric’s proposal to buy a wind farm for $900 million:

In December 2009, PG&E agreed to buy and operate Iberdrola’s 246 MW facility for about $900 million. It would have been the first wind farm to be owned by PG&E.

The December administrative law judge decision read in part, “We reject the application because we find that the Manzana Wind Project is not cost-competitive and poses unacceptable risks to ratepayers. We find that the proposed cost of the Manzana Wind Project is significantly higher than other resources PG&E can procure to meet its RPS program goal. Moreover, it will subject the ratepayers to unacceptable risks due to potential cost increases resulting from project under-performance, less than forecasted project life, and any delays which might occur concerning transmission upgrades and commercial online date. As a proposed utility-owned generation project, ratepayers would pay a lump sum cost rather than a performance based cost for the Manzana Wind Project. Therefore, ratepayers would be at risk if the project underperforms. In particular, if the Manzana Wind Project fails to achieve production as expected for any reason such as construction delays or curtailments as a result of a collision with a California condor, shareholders face no risks while customers could incur increased costs. In contrast, under a power purchase agreement, project owners rather than ratepayers bear the risk of project performance.

Funny what happens when actual economics of “green power” rather than noble intentions, political fads and good feelings are used to make a decision. The Daily Bayonet has additional coverage of another wind power economic fiasco up in Canada; be sure to read the whole thing.

Finally, courtesy of Sippican Cottage, comes this website that explores the wide gap between advertising creative types and real world people:

Quoth the raven: “Heh.” ..bruce w..

While we have warmed up somewhat in the past week, anyone who lives in San Diego can tell you how cold and gloomy the summer has been. In typical San Diego summer, there is a period in May and June where the cold water off the coast fuels a persistent fog layer that spreads miles inland, keeping the area cooler that the latitude would proscribe and giving rise to what the natives call “June Gloom”.  In most years, this pattern breaks by the 3rd week in June, and gives way to hot, sunny days moderated in the afternoon by a strong sea breeze.

Not so this year.  The gloom was entrenched until mid-August.  One likely explanation is a massively cold area of water in the eastern Pacific.  This is frequently referred to as  La Niña, the cold counterpart to El Niño’s warmer than normal water.

At the moment, science is not able to connect our diminished solar radiation to the cooling of the eastern pacific.  But if the lowered solar output is a driver for this, North America could be in for some unwanted weather patterns.

For starters, it could be very cold indeed over California and Nevada this winter.  With that huge pocket of cold water driving our air temperatures, we could see much lower daily lows than we are used to.  If this acts like the last La Niña, we could see a lack of rain this winter in the southwest, putting further strain on our sources in the Sierra and the Colorado River.?

…Dr. Phil Jones of the CRU made a series of (for warmists) startling admissions over the weekend. And, of course, Hitler has to weigh in. Hat tip to Gerard Van der Leun over at American Digest (one of the best blogs on the web). I know the Hitler clip is a bit overused, but this is very, very well done. Heh.

UPDATE 1830 MDT

FX is showing “The Day After Tomorrow” right now; I don’t know if that’s pure coincidence or some clever programming on someone’s part.  In either case, the movie’s wretched and nonsensical scientific gaffes, as well as the political heavy-handedness (e.g., the Dick Cheney clone), are even more painful in the light of the wholesale collapse of AGW during the past several months.  ..bfw..

…they’d probably look something like the one above. Hat tip to Steven Hayward over at NRO. ..bruce w..

From Time Magazine:

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. [Two years ago] record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada’s wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone’s recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler warmer for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age global warming.

– Monday, Jun. 24, 1974 (editing mine)

Hat tip to Eric Raymond over at Armed and Dangerous.  ..bruce w..

I'm shocked, shocked! to discover that this has been going on.

I’ve avoided doing a lot of blogging on Climategate because so many other sites and bloggers are doing such a great job, while the Left gets increasingly shrill (“Pay no attention to the scientists behind the curtain!”).

But a new critical point has been reached: the Warmist scientific elite are starting to turn on one another:

One of the scientists to whom the emails were addressed, Professor Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University has moved to distance himself from some of the comments in the emails that suggest scientists did not want the IPCC, the UN body charged with monitoring climate change, to consider studies that challenged the view global warming was genuine and man-made.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Prof Mann said: “I can’t put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email.”

Prof Mann also said he could not “justify” a request from Prof Jones that he should delete some of his own emails to prevent them from being seen by outsiders.

“I can’t justify the action, I can only speculate that he was feeling so under attack that he made some poor decisions frankly and I think that’s clear.”

Prof Mann then argued however that there was “absolutely no evidence” that he too had manipulated data, while he also said “I don’t believe that any of my colleagues have done that”.

To quote Glenn Reynolds: heh.  By the way, Mann himself is under investigation by Penn State, which may help explain the hasty denials. Don’t these scientists ever watch “Law & Order”? The first to cut a deal gets off easier.

UPDATE

Oh, and Al Gore has just canceled his pay-per-view ‘global warming’ lecture at Copenhagen. Wonder how many of his slides in his “new multimedia show” were based on Climategate-tainted research?  Hat tip to Climate Depot. (P.S. The photo above is the one that accompanied the original Danish news article.)

YET ANOTHER UPDATE

Courtesy of the Anchoress comes this Ghostbusters clip that let the secret slip years ago:

I worked for 18 months at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, which back then was right next door to NASA/JSC, and while it was possibly the best job I ever had, it forever disabused me of the notion of science as untainted by ambition, greed, money, politics and personality conflicts. ..bruce w..

I haven’t written much about ‘Climategate’ because so many others are doing such a great job (for example, see here, here, and here). But this video (hat tip to Ace of Spades) pretty much sums things up (and with a catchy tune, too!).  ..bruce w..

From Minnesotans for Global Warming via American Thinker, we have the following quote (Discover Magazine, 1989) from Warmist Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary  scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Yep.  That about sums it up.

Some years ago, I ran across a statement by Sen. Tim Leahy made at hearings on some environmental issue back  in the 1980s.  I wish I had logged the source and exact quote at the time, because it was along the same lines. As I recall, someone raised the question as to whether this issue would actually materialize; Leahy’s response was that it really didn’t matter, because whether the threat was real or not, this way things would get done.  (If someone knows that quote and has a source, please let me know.)  ..bruce w..

Hat tip on the video to Matt Yuen, a long-time friend and fellow PMS Commando (that writeup in from world-famous author (and budding politician) Dan Gookin, another one of the Commandos). You jump out of the same plane together, and you definitely are friends for life . . . however brief that may end up being.

ITEM: Obama is losing the ACLU, which (along with the press) is unhappy with the limits on access to detainees at Gitmo:

American Civil Liberties Union Director Anthony Romero said the access problems grate against the administration’s pledges.

“It’s frustrating,” Romero told FOX News during an interview at the Navy base.

He said his organization has never been allowed inside the detention camps — not under the Bush or Obama administrations — but suggested that he was expecting more access since Jan. 20.

“Especially now in light of the Obama administration saying they wish to have greater transparency, it’s more than a bit ironic that members of the press are now being denied access to the camps when they had it before under President Bush,” he said.

The beat reporters who routinely cover the military commissions at the base used to be invited on military-planned side trips to the detention camps when court was not in session. The trips allowed journalists to film, photograph and write about conditions inside.

That is no longer the case. Several sources told FOX News the decision to discontinue the trips came from Washington and the Pentagon.

Where’s that hope, change and transparency now? Welcome to the Chicago Way.

ITEM: Joshua Zumbrum over at Forbes gives eight reasons to remain wary about the housing market, including the end of the housing tax credit, tightened credit standards among mortgage vendors, and the flood of foreclosures still to come. Read the whole thing.

On the other hand, Megan McArdle (my favorite tall female libertarian economist) sees positive signs:

Amid everything the government is doing in the economy, it’s easy to forget that they’ve been putting quite a lot of effort into supporting house prices.  (Supporting, a relative term, in this case meaning keeping them from falling farther).  The FHA has stepped in as the lender of last resort, while the first time homebuyer tax credits have encouraged at least a few people to jump into the market.  Meanwhile, the mortgage modification efforts have kept some foreclosures from happening–but since optimistic estimates place the projected redefaults at 35%, and more conservative estimates look for half or more of the modifications to fail, many of those foreclosures have simply been delayed, and will end up back on the market in winter and early spring.

We’ll see what happens.

[UPDATED 09/30/09 -- 0625 MDT]

ITEM: Warmist Countdown Watch: Successive earthquakes have hit near Samoa (causing 99 deaths due to tsunamis) and now in Indonesia. These are tragedies in a geologically active part of the world. The question is: how long until some Warmists start claiming that these quakes are tied into climate change? (Don’t laugh — it’s an actual set of Warmist beliefs.)

ITEM: “The State doesn’t own my body!” Pro-choice protest? Well, of a sort:

New York is the first state in the country to mandate flu vaccinations for its health care workers. The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be available beginning next week. Much of it is reserved for state health care workers, but there is growing opposition to required innoculations.

Health care workers in Hauppauge screamed “No forced shots!” as they rallied Tuesday against the state regulation requiring them to roll up their sleeves.

I’m pro-vaccination, but it must be a bit disquieting to have health care workers protest and risk losing their jobs over receiving mandatory vaccinations.

ITEM: Andrew Malcolm, over at the LA Times’ “Top of the Ticket” political blog, is always worth reading. Wherever his political sympathies may lie, he’s willing to poke — and poke hard — at failings and foibles all across the political spectrum. His latest analysis of Obama’s growing struggle with Afghanistan is worth reading in full:

Signs are growing that Obama will seek to change the war goals, to redefine what is success and divert the discussion away from the more-troops measure. It’s not defeat in Afghanistan; it’s victory of a different kind. The president used a similar strategic argument recently when abandoning the Bush administration’s missile defense shield in Europe: it’s not less defense, it’s defense done smarter and cheaper.

Biden reportedly opposes additional forces. He was a senator when Obama was a sixth grader, and recalls too vividly the last Democratic administration to pour U.S. soldiers into a distant guerrilla war — and lose. That savagely split his party — and nation — and lead to 20 years of Republican presidents in the next 24.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this week, Sen. John Kerry, who succeeded Biden as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, began the Afghan redefinition.

Kerry, who was in the Vietnam war before he was against it, said that 1) things have changed in Afghanistan since last spring, 2) perhaps what we need is not more troops but a “well-honed counter-terrorism strategy,” 3) the recent Afghan election was deeply flawed and maybe it’s the fault of a weak, untrusted Afghan government if we can’t win militarily and 4) we need to plan how to get out.

As I said, read the whole thing.  Then go over to the Washington Examiner to check out the “ducks-in-a-row” approach the Obama Administration is taking (with a helpful assist from the mainstream media).

ITEM: As noted here a few days ago, much of Leftist thinking can be summed up as if you fervently hope for something good to come true, then it will. This is especially true in the “green/alternative energy” domain, where hopes for magical breakthroughs in solar and wind power ignore serious issues of energy density and production. As it turns out, there’s another big problem with many of these “new energy” ideas: they often require a lot of old-fashioned H2O:

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.

“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.

Read the whole thing.  ..bruce w..

I guess we should make that modern Western Civilization.

ITEM: According to the Onion, the absolute low point of Western Civilization will be reached at 3:32 pm this coming Friday:

Experts predict that the penultimate catastrophe will occur at approximately 7:15 p.m. Thursday night, when the social networking tool Twitter will be used to communicate a series of ideas so banal they will instantaneously negate the three centuries of the Renaissance.

“The sciences, the arts, the humanities—all aspects of society as a whole will reach their respective low-points in just a matter of days,” said anthropologist Robert Davidson, gesturing toward a nearby line graph illustrating western society’s collapse. “We’ve been charting this cultural descent for generations now, from the advent of New Wave music, to the rise of scientific creationism, right through to the trampling death of several Wal-Mart greeters on the morning after Thanksgiving. Everything has been leading up to this Friday.”

According to the panel, the final event will occur at 3:32 p.m., when a tourist, believing the impressive structure to be a giant mall, will enter Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and, not finding what he is looking for, ask where “the damn Radio Shack is supposed to be.

I would dispute them, but I went grocery shopping yesterday, which means that I had to go through a check-out line with tabloids and women’s magazines.

ITEM: First day of Fall, and we have a winter storm warning issued for portions of Colorado east of the actual Rocky Mountains (that is, out here on the plains):

The first day of fall in Colorado felt more like winter, and Wednesday’s weather should be even more unseasonable, forecasters warned tonight.

The National Weather Service office in Denver has issued a winter weather advisory for the Front Range, foothills and Palmer Divide from midnight to 6 p.m. Wednesday.

A winter storm warning is in effect for central and northern Colorado from midnight until 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Snow should be widespread, leaving 6 to 16 inches in areas about 7,000 feet. . . .

Rain is expected to turn to snow above 6,500 feet tonight, with periods of heavy snowfall before daybreak.

Accumulations between 2 and 10 inches are expected, with the largest amounts forecast for southern Douglas and southwest Elbert counties.

Personally, I blame Bush. (Early morning update: here’s the latest from the Denver Post.)

ITEM: Mark Helprin gives some political and historical perspective to the burgeoning foreign policy blunders of the Obama Administration:

When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich at least he thought he had obtained something in return for his appeasement. The new American diplomacy is nothing more than a sentimental flood of unilateral concessions—not least, after some minor Putinesque sabre rattling, to Russia. Canceling the missile deployment within NATO, which Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to that body, characterizes as “the Americans . . . simply correcting their own mistake, and we are not duty bound to pay someone for putting their own mistakes right,” is to grant Russia a veto over sovereign defensive measures—exactly the opposite of American resolve during the Euro Missile Crisis of 1983, the last and definitive battle of the Cold War.

Read the whole thing. Hat tip to the Gormogons (and I agree it’s been way too long since Helprin published a novel).

ITEM: A group at MIT has a website up called Personas that is intended to show you how the ‘web’ views you.  It’s a bit weak — you can pretty much get the same sense from typing your name into Google. When I entered “Bruce Webster”, I got most of the usual suspects (and a few new ones); when I entered “Bruce F. Webster” instead, it only came up with items dating back 10-20 years. But, hey, it’s fun to try out.  Hat tip to Popehat.  ..bruce w..