Workarounds, 2
Way back in 2005 Polistra wrote about workarounds:

I wonder how much of our GDP is taken by workarounds? By this I mean parallel institutions that exist only because the "real" institutions are hopelessly corrupted by Sensitivity and other leftist poisons.

Private security is the most obvious and probably the largest. Urban police departments serve the interests of the Anti-Civilization Lawyers Union, leaving citizens who want police service to provide it separately. One statistic claims that there are more private than public police officers.

Second is private schools; in many urban areas less than half of the students are in the public system.

A more subtle and specific example: At Penn State, the engineering school genuinely wants its students to have a well-rounded education. The only way they can make this happen is through a workaround. Because the math department has its head in the clouds of abstract set theory, Engineering offers its own courses in applied math. Because English is devoted to Derrida and Deconstruction, Engineering provides its own curriculum in writing and communication. Because Physics focuses solely on quarks and quanta, Engineering has a whole department of "Engineering Mechanics" to teach real physics.

The three listed above are good workarounds: the nominal system is totally corrupt and good people have found ways to get things done without it.

Since then I've noticed five more workarounds, which are more mixed. In the list below, the first two are bad workarounds, where the nominal system was beneficial, but criminals have reduced the system to triviality while operating outside it. The last three are good workarounds, replacing a bad formal system with good informal arrangements.

Voting. [bad workaround] We go through the motions of primaries, conventions, and general elections, and all the Experts assure us that we're Exercising Democracy, Throwing The Bums Out, etc, etc, etc. In fact the results are decided in advance by gerrymandering and political operatives.

Trials. [bad workaround] We pretend that A Jury Of Your Peers decides everything. Nope. The jury trial is strictly reserved for the privileged 5%. (1) Rich dickheads who can afford excellent lawyers; and (2) Members Of Privileged Classes who can get Soviet-front organizations to pay for excellent lawyers. For the unprivileged 95%, "justice" means plea bargaining or arranged judgments. This works reasonably well for routine crimes and routine lawsuits where everyone knows what happened; but it fails wildly when a prosecutor goes rogue.

Science. [good workaround] Nuff said.

Capital. [good workaround, new and nascent.] The stock market has completely failed. It is pure crime, operating entirely to serve gangsters and automatic trading algorithms. Real companies can't use the stock market to raise capital. So they're finding new ways to do it, such as crowdsourcing. This basically re-creates the original concept of a stock market, without all the criminal shit.

Fashion and entertainment. [good workaround, new and nascent.] Young folks are tired of feeding off the conspiracy of TV, multinational corporations and Chinese slave labor. They're making or modifying their own clothes, hair and makeup; and making their own entertainment. Refreshingly, this also leads to a reassertion of healthy normal gender roles as young women find joy in women's work.
  ¶ 5:05 AM

  Which?
News item: Lance Armstrong admits he cheated. (Well, sort of. In effect he's pleading nolo contendere, which is as close as any power-loving monster will ever come to the truth.)


Seems like the world of Sport is doing a pretty good job of detecting liars and cheaters lately.

Meanwhile, the world of Business/Government works the opposite way.

We continue to reward the banksters with trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, instead of hanging them.

We continue to "elect" the same monsters over and over and over and over and over and over and over, instead of hanging them.

Which is more important? Obviously Sport is more important.

Business/Government is just a trivial light entertainment. It only starves millions of people and shoots thousands to maximize the profits of Goldman and advance the glory of grotesquely false pseudoscientific pseudotheories. Nothing important there.
  ¶ 3:54 AM

  Unprecedented!
It's unprecedented! It's a historical first! It's a dangerous trend!

In measuring Number of Eyes Closed While Sleeping, I've discovered a new and lethal development! Last night (August 21) I closed TWO eyes while sleeping! This is a historical first! This has never happened before while records have been kept.

Look at the graph! (Excel here)



Numbers don't lie! Just follow the grim linear extrapolation to see the grim future! Only ten days from now I'll be closing at least 20 eyes when I sleep! Where am I going to get all those eyes? How many Chinese slaves will have to give their lives to supply my ever-growing ocular occultation needs? Who knows?

The theoretical reason for this lethal phenomenon obviously requires much more research, but one initial hypothesis could be that I didn't bother to keep records of how many eyes I closed until last night. Thus the graph properly shows zero eyes for the unrecorded dates.

Pending further federally-funded research, the Precautionary Principle requires us to remove all toxic Carbon-based eyes from all humans! Now! We must get underway before the Planet dissolves!

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 7:41 AM

  He would understand only too well
Via UK Telegraph:

When the George Orwell Memorial Trust proposed a statue of the writer for outside the BBC’s new headquarters it expected an enthusiastic response. ... According to Baroness Bakewell, who is backing the campaign, Mark Thompson, the Corporation’s outgoing director general, said the statue could not be erected on BBC premises because Orwell was “too Left-wing”.

Orwell worked as a BBC journalist, producing radio programmes at Broadcasting House during the Second World War...

Yup, Georgie would immediately understand purges, show trials, and icepicks.

This is one of Orwell's BIG POINTS, and it's one that most people miss. What makes Leninism especially evil is the constant CHANGE of orthodoxy.

All cultures and governments lie. All cultures and governments have an Approved Set Of Ideas. All cultures and governments punish people who oppose the Approved Set. This is not problematic, because people who grow up inside a certain culture or government naturally learn the limits.

Lenin's special invention is Total Confusion And Uncertainty. It's not just "2 + 2 = 5". That's a normal and tolerable lie. Under Lenin, "2 + 2 = Whatever we say it is RIGHT NOW, AT THIS MILLISECOND." Only a few people with an unerring sense of Status can keep their balance on the shifting sands of fashion; most folks just surrender, lay down and let the Master do what he wants.

And that's the goal.

= = = = =

More specifically, I'm trying to figure out why Thompson would consider Orwell "too left-wing". When Orwell was alive, most British Commies rejected him as "too right-wing". Why this particular switch?

Orwell thought a good socialist regime should serve the poor and punish the rich, but should NOT embrace thought control. The Commies of his time were Marxists, who agreed with Orwell on serving the poor but hated him for opposing thought control. Modern Gramscian/Randian Commies (the entire ruling class of the Anglosphere) have switched on the poor/rich point. They believe in enriching the rich and starving the poor, but they still love thought control. (Of course they have new names for thought control and total censorship. One "side" calls it Individual Liberty, and the other "side" calls it Human Rights.)

So a Gramscian/Randian must hate Orwell on both points. He was bad because he respected the poor, and he was bad because he disliked tyranny.

I'm not sure why this counts as "left-wing" in Thompson's mind, though. Presumably the poor/rich aspect is visible to him but the thought-control aspect is invisible. Orwell would understand that also.
  ¶ 3:50 AM

  This is getting dull
Too easy, like taking carbon from a baby. But I'm going to keep doing it.

Comrade Peter Goldmark, Wash state land commissioner, talked about the supposed extreme fire danger in EASTERN WASHINGTON this year. He said the main problem was insect infestation, caused by DROUGHT (yes, that again) and also by lack of cutting. At least he got the latter part right, so maybe I should go easy on him... No, I won't.

Here's Eastern Washington as the NCDC divides it:



And here's a century of year-total precip for those 4 zones:



The 4 zones are fairly similar, each showing the expected 66-year cycle. But where's the fucking drought? The last 10 or 20 years have some ups and downs around the long-term average. What we have is a drought of chainsaws, not a drought of raindrops.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 9:18 AM

  Nice but stinky
Nice welcome thunderstorm this morning, after a month of cool morning/hot afternoon summer. Typical for Spokane, and sort of reassuring to have the usual pattern locked in place again. Earlier this summer we had a couple weeks of Midwestern swamp heat with Midwestern thunderstorms. Swamp heat is much harder to take than desert heat; never gives you a break.

There is one good thing about steady humidity, though: Humid air carries sweet smoky and flowery smells. Desert air carries only diesel, sulphur and shit.

Today's storm is true to form. The rain didn't freshen the air; it just activated the dogshit in the grass and scared a nearby skunk.

Ick.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 8:08 AM

  Coupla random thoughts
Our peculiar system of inverted and meaningless "parties" creates a lot of ingratitude.

Ordinary people are happy when their product gets used. Money helps, but usage means more. For a few years I tried selling my Poser graphics, and the money was indeed satisfying; but I finally pulled out of the sales market and stuck with ShareCG freestuff. In that setup, people feel obliged to let me know when they've used my furniture or cars, and they're happy to show off their own artwork modifying and surrounding the item. Satisfaction and gratitude in both directions. Can't beat it.

Well, how about politics? I think Obama has acknowledged that Obamacare is really Romneycare, and that it was based on a proposal from the Heritage Foundation. But Romney has never thanked Obama for using it. Heritage, which is in the business of offering detailed proposals for politicians to use, should be wonderfully happy and grateful to see their hard work turned into real policy for once! But they're not. It has the wrong label, so it doesn't exist.

The same idiocy happened the other way around with Emperor Teddy's "No Child Left Behind" education ruination. Teddy never thanked Bush The Son for implementing it, and the teachers unions HATED Bush for putting Comrade Teddy's plan into action.

Pure branding, no substance.

Assholes.

= = = = =

Completely unrelated: I was thinking about the so-called "grammar" rules that schoolteachers used to jam into our unwilling ears. Even in 9th grade I understood that Miss Marley's rules were not grammar. They were style rules.

Just now realized that some of Miss Marley's rules were in fact the exact opposite of grammar. Any moderately intelligent native speaker knows the rules of grammar by about age 12. Without training we simply can't use bad grammar. If we wish to express a negative preference toward rodents, we WILL NOT say "Micen likings I notted." But an untrained or young speaker WILL say something like "I don't like mouses." When he does that, he's not violating the rules of grammar; he's enforcing the rules too strictly. He's not allowing exceptions.
  ¶ 12:54 PM

  Why did he have to do that?
Gack! Why don't the "parties" select candidates more carefully?

Todd Akin has given the Leninists two beautiful pieces of ammunition, all without any need.

When Commies ask why you oppose abortion after rape, there's a perfectly simple and logical answer: Because the baby is still a baby, and killing a baby is still killing a baby.

No need to throw in dubious stuff about automatic contraception, which may or may not be true. (Because the Satanic media are loudly calling it false, I'm inclined to think it's true; but it's completely irrelevant in either case.)

Akin has not only ruined the proper and strictly scientific case against abortion, he's also ruined the logical and moral case against the evil feminist invention of "date" "rape" with his odd use of the term 'legitimate rape'.

There is a huge difference between the following two acts:

(1) rape

(2) consensual sex followed by a decision that the dude wasn't cool after all

Under the Satanic influence of Betty Fried[m]an, we've decided to treat (1) and (2) with equal force. This dilutes the perceived immorality of (1), and yields thousands of false accusations against uncool dudes. Meanwhile, cool dudes know in advance that they will escape the false accusation, so they have a better advantage than before. Satan wins all the way around, civilization is fucked all the way around.

= = = = =

Next day: Britain is having its own Satan-storm on the same subject, but with a huge difference in results. On a BBC program, two well-known leftists have exposed the false "date" "rape" accusations against Julian Assange. The usual Satan-possessed bitches are projectile-puking the usual toxic green bile, but it's not working very well there. Why? First, because one of the exposers is George Galloway, a leftist hero, and the other is Craig Murray, a "human rights" attorney. The leftist media can't dismiss these two as crazy. Second, because Galloway and Murray are simply telling the plain goddamn truth, without throwing in weird stuff about automatic contraception. They gave the names of the false accusers, which caused BBC to pull down its podcast of the session. Pointless censorship. The names are already out, and the whole sordid story has already been told by no less than Australia's national broadcasting system. It's the usual soap opera shit. Bitch #1, Anna Ardin, was fucking Julian and thought he was "the coolest". Then Julian started fucking bitch #2, Sofia Willen. Apparently bitch #1 and bitch #2 were not friends. So bitch #1 decided Julian was no longer the coolest, and she brought "date" "rape" charges against Julian.
  ¶ 5:38 AM

  Cargo cult
The grocery stores seem to have adjusted to their new and highly profitable stock of liquor, but I'm still not used to it.

I haven't done any drinking since 1983, so the whole alcohol 'scene' has become unfamiliar. (Thank heaven!)

This morning I noticed a dude buying something called R&R, which stands for Rich and Rare. He paid about $20 for one bottle.

Wonder what was going through his mind? Was he subconsciously thinking that he would become Rich and Rare by consuming this liquid called Rich and Rare?

News for you, dude. You just became B&C, Broke and Common.
  ¶ 10:54 AM

  2012: Year of mega-droughts!!!!!!!!!
Our children will never know rain! We need to plant cactus instead of corn! We need to genetically modify our skins so we can slither like snakes! We're baking and burning! Dry! Dry! Dry!



Nuff said.
  ¶ 8:53 AM

  Tiny status
Nice article in UK Guardian about the high-status attraction of Tiny Houses. I understand the basic appeal, since I've been cheaply and happily living in this 500 sqft cottage for 21 years. Distinctly small but not tiny by the proper definition.

Author touches an important point but doesn't quite hit it:

I know I'm not alone in finding tiny homes so weirdly compelling. People have lived in very small spaces since the dawn of civilisation, of course, whether out of necessity or monkish self-denial. ... The rural wing of the tiny homes movement, meanwhile, is motivated primarily by environmental concerns. How much more lightly can you tread on the planet than by having only one room to heat, and no space to accumulate the detritus of the modern consumer economy?

As usual the Greenies are backwards. When you own enough land for a farm but don't use it for farming or livestock, you're not Green. You're just another rich man engaging in Conspicuous Consumption. When you live far from town, unless you're strictly self-sufficient, you're using vastly more gasoline and other materials than you would in town. Number of rooms isn't the main variable when the energy has to be transported 30 miles to reach your house. The fuel and labor for the propane tank truck, the maintenance and resistance of the long single-user electric wire, and the electricity needed to pump and purify your well water, more than compensate for the rooms you're not heating.

The best way to use minimal resources is to live in a closely-built 'walkable' city with good mass transit. Apartment, semi-detached, or small house, equally good when you're not operating a car.

Some Greenies do appreciate that point, but not the Tiny-housers described above.

Another thought: Trailer-park living is pure Tiny-house, but the Tiny-housers refuse to recognize it. An 8 x 32 travel trailer is beautifully designed to make the best use of available space, and the trailer park uses land and utilities efficiently. Nope, doesn't count because it's incurably unfashionable. Associated with poor white Christians, thus unthinkable.

In short, the Tiny-housers are reinventing the 5th-wheel, and doing a shitty job of it.

Labels: Shack people - Cottage people

  ¶ 4:43 AM

  Mencken on Pussy Riot


Listening lately at bedtime to the NBC series 'Biographies in Sound', from '56 and '57. Lots of good stuff.

Last night heard the episode on Mencken. It concludes with a rare recording of Mencken toward the end of his life, musing on religious matters. Perhaps those who are defending Pussy Riot based on "libertarian" views should pay attention to one of their "libertarian" mentors.

Here's the segment, about one minute.

Transcribed for non-listeners:

I think there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go; but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions of free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. For example. Take for instance the Catholic Church, which I'm on good terms with personally, but have no belief in whatsoever. I've got a right to print my dissent from its doctrines. I have exercised that right for many years. But I have no right to go on the cathedral steps on Sunday morning, when the Catholics are coming out of High Mass, and make a speech denouncing them. I don't think there is any such right. Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

In other words, Mencken agreed with Putin.

For what it's worth, I'm not endorsing this set of views ... I don't go along with the whole nonsensical doctrine of "rights" ... but Mencken (and Putin) are voicing plain common sense.

Under the Satanic guidance of the Soviet Front Anti-Civilization Lawyers Union, we've come to believe that "Petitioning For Redress" was meant to justify every sort of demonstration, disturbance and annoyance, as long as the demonstration, disturbance or annoyance is sponsored by the Communist Party. Needless to say, speech that differs in the slightest from this week's Communist Doctrine is not covered by "Petitioning For Redress." Speech that is not a verbatim quotation of this week's Communist Doctrine shall be silenced with maximum force. That's what the Constitution says, according to all Experts and Black-Robed Saboteurs.

Nope. Entirely wrong. "Petitioning For Redress" literally means literally presenting a literal petition to the literal government. That's literally all.
  ¶ 2:10 AM

  The bucket's warm again
Polistra enjoys spotting rules by their exceptions. One such exception happened just now....

NPR was covering this year's pointlessly noisy campaign, the perfect illustration of Freud's Narcissism of Small Differences.

Played three clips in a row: Romney accusing Obama of something or other, Obama replying with fake outrage, and then a third guy who I didn't recognize at all. Never heard that voice.

The announcer identified the third voice as Joe Biden.

And there's the exception. The rule during my entire lifetime has been that VPs serve as effective 'head of state'. They wander around the world speaking and representing the administration, always pushing some stupid National Initiative that will go away after their term is over.

Not Biden. He's been absolutely silent during Obama's term. His voice is unknown. Biden has gone all the way back to the Alben Barkley style of veeping.

Barkley was known for being unknown, but it turns out that he was an interesting character with strong principles. This episode of NBC's "Biographies in Sound" program profiled Barkley. The program is worth hearing for one definitively dramatic moment.
  ¶ 4:49 PM

  Freedom?
A BBC correspondent examining Russian response to the trial of Pussy Riot finds mixed feelings in Moscow, but universal and firm approval of the trial in less urban areas.

Good. Normal Russians, like normal people everywhere, do not want "freedom". They want normalcy, which has an especially strong meaning for Russians. They want to practice their own culture and religion. They want to work and support their families without constant disturbance and fear.

Pussy Riot represents "freedom". Pussy Riot destroys civilization, destroys religion, destroys culture, destroys marriage, destroys families.

That's why the Satanic media in America love them.

That's why normal people hate them.

Especially in Russia, where normal people had 70 years of experience with "freedom".

= = = = =

Bit later: Judge sentenced them to two years in a work camp.

Good. They will have to learn how normal people get along, and most of all they will be deprived of the status and pleasure of celebrity. Assuming the other women in the camp are dull ordinary criminals, I can safely predict that the pussies of Pussy Riot will experience a different sort of riot. Ordinary criminals don't appreciate radical deviants.
  ¶ 3:52 AM

  Big chief
Vulture Romney is still playing games.

"I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years I never paid less than 13 per cent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So, I've paid taxes ever single year, Harry Reid's charge is totally false."

Okay, Big Chief Bathes-in-data. Nobody seriously believed Harry, but we don't believe you either. You're supposed to be the Numbers Man, Big Chief Bathes-in-data. You fired thousands of Americans, hired thousands of Chinamen, and ruined thousands of lives, to increment the bottom-line variable of your paycheck. You stole lives that had real value to increase your own numerical "value".

Now you give us a free-floating number, and you don't even tell us what the number means. Is this 13% the rate you pay on the adjusted gross? Or is it effective tax, which is the only meaningful number? (Effective tax = the check you wrote to IRS divided by the total amount you made.)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =



Me Little Chief Bathes-in-data. Me do number also. Me workum heap new Iron Brain Machine, use many number. Me get wampum same like you, from publisher royalty. Me pay tax same like you, with check to Great White Tax Man instead withholdum.

Me poor man, you heap heap heap rich man. You no show 1040. Me show 1040. Now you do same, or you heap big liar.



Okay, enough Tonto talk. This is the bottom-line part of my 2010 tax form, which is somewhat above my average for the last ten years. The effective tax is 4239/21579, or 19.6%. That's more than the 13% you claim to pay.

Put up or shut up, vulture-ass.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Dead serious for a moment: The real problem is that Romney is NOT a numbers man. He showed repeatedly and consistently in 2008 and 2012 that he does NOT understand numbers or science or economics or business or foreign policy or much of anything. He's an empty mannequin, a jerky marionette, a wind-up doll reciting a random mix of prerecorded slogans clipped from Rush and Hannity. When he has to make a spot decision, the prerecorded response is always "I'll have to consult my advisors on that."
  ¶ 4:54 PM

  Where's the Chief?
BBC feature on wheat growers in the Midwest said: "The current drought is much steadier and more persistent than the '30s." And along the same lines, On Point interviewed a fraudulent apocalyptic wacko posing as an alleged so-called quote "scientist" unquote, who bizarrely claims the current trend "inevitably" points to "permanent" "mega-droughts".

Say kids, what time is it? Especially you in the peanut gallery, sing along:

It's NCDC time,
It's NCDC time,
It's NCDC time,
It's NCDC time!!!

Where's Clarabell? More to the point, where's Chief Thunderthud?

I guess the chief is busy doing a rain dance, which he wasn't doing in the '30s.

Here are the main wheat-growing areas of Kansas:



And here are the NCDC precip charts for those zones, in the same positions. These are 12-month totals as recorded by Princess Summerfall Winterspring, with a highlight on the decade of the '30s.



Hmm. No matter how I look at it, the drought of the '30s was more steady and persistent than the current "flash drought". Note especially that the last 12 months are wetter than the previous 12 months, indicating that we're already on the way out of the "flash". More broadly, note the slight but clear upward trend over the century in all 4 regions. Predictions from limited data are always dubious, but the ONLY prediction you can draw from this limited data is that we'll get WETTER in the near future, not MEGA-DROUGHTIER.

Well, Howdy, I guess those BBC experts are just a whole lot smarter and holier than I am. They must be capable of sensing Spiritual Auras well beyond the mere earthly facts.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 4:58 PM

  Day of weirdness
Weirdness comes in threes as well.

Finally finished off the latest QA fix on courseware. One of those typical 'jelly on a tree' programming things. You start to fix what looks like a simple missing button, and it turns out to be a deeply rooted bad assumption compounded by a Windows 7 oddity. Had to find the bad assumption that I made in 2008, then find a new way of making the same thing happen without bumping into the W7 oddity. I suspect this small section of the program doesn't get used much, because we hadn't heard any complaints about the problem from real users. Anyway, it's fixed now. Maybe. Knock on silicon.

Then I had to deal with another jellytree. For unknown reasons probably related to Obama/Romneycare, Group Health has switched its coverage to something called Molina. Again for unknown reasons, this automatic change did not automatically transfer existing prescriptions. I've been emailing with the Group Health people, and they've been calling the Molina people. Today, for unknown reasons, I had to call a toll-free number to talk about it: an impenetrable jungle of menus to reach a human, then a nearly incomprehensible conversation with a jungle-human who barely understood English. It appears that the ball has now passed back into Group Health's court for unknown reasons. Maybe. [Later: Found the exit from the bureaucratic maze! Persuaded Group Health to mail me a hardcopy of the prescription so I can take it to Walgreens and pay for it the old-fashioned way. Just in time, too. Dealing with this mess was raising my blood pressure, thus defeating the purpose of the pills.]

Then a mysterious hand-addressed letter comes in snailmail. Feels like a greeting card; it's addressed TO a house a few blocks from here, and the return address (without a name) is MY address. Apparently the intended recipient isn't at the nearby address, so USPS "returned" it to my address, which was not the actual source of the mail. The penmanship is elderly, which makes me think the sender is confused.

Later: Google tends to verify that assumption. The recipient has an ordinary-sounding name, but Google shows exactly one person with that exact spelling. She grew up in this part of Spokane and her 1966 Shadle High class hasn't located her for reunions. She's in Michigan now. I'd guess the sender is mentally back in the '60s, sending a card from her own '60s address (this house) to the recipient's '60s address a few blocks away. Maybe congrats on graduating, maybe Happy Birthday. The reality is probably less interesting, but I like this story.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 10:38 AM

  That's 2! Do I hear 3? Who'lllll gimme 3? 3, gimme 3....
Partaaaaaaaaaaaay time in Hell!

Comrade Helen Gurley Brown joins Comrade Gore Vidal at the doorway. Gonna be hot times in the old hot town tonight!

In the traditional 3-strike pattern for new Hadean recruits, we now eagerly await #3.

= = = = =

From the earthly perspective, our burden of evil has been notably lightened in the last few weeks. Two massively powerful servants of Satan, grand destroyers of civilization, highly efficient manufacturers of chaos and death, have departed.

Come on, #3! Do it now!


  ¶ 3:27 AM

  Hottest ever in 48 ... oops, in ONE state.
I got tired of hearing that July was the "hottest ever in 48 states", so I looked at good old NCDC.

July 2012 is the hottest ever in ONE state, Virginia.

In several states, LAST year was clearly the hottest ever, but this year is down from 2011.

In many Western states, the last decade has been about average, with a definite downward trend.

In several Great Lakes states, 2012 appears to be on a strong upward trend, but nowhere near the '30s.

The overall pattern seems to ... No, there isn't an overall pattern.

GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE IS LOGICALLY MEANINGLESS AND IMPOSSIBLE.

Here are all 48 thrown together in one loop so you can see the patterns.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 5:01 AM

  Emanating


Polistra continues to pray for the success and strength of Egyptian president Morsi, as he continues to create a new government with the consent of God and the people.

Up to this point, the evident support of the people has prevented the military from roaring back into power, but there may be a limit to their tolerance.

Morsi clearly sees his power as emanating from the hearts of the people.

So, for what it's worth, I'll add my little heart to that spiritual force.
  ¶ 4:02 AM