Author: Robert Zimmerman

The incremental approach is working

11:19 am

He has a point: Fred Barnes argues that the Republican incremental approach to cutting the budget makes sense politically. Key quote:

The end zone is far away, however, and impatience won’t get Republicans there. Impatience is not a strategy. It may lead to a government shutdown with unknown results. To enact the sweeping cuts they desire, Republicans must hold the House and capture the Senate and White House in the 2012 election. Then they’ll control Washington. Now they don’t.

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Move on from Sunday in the Park with George

8:01 pm

An evening pause: Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin sing “Move On” from Steven Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George.

Stop worrying where you’re going.
Move on.
If you can know where you’re going,
You’ve gone.
Just keep moving on.
I chose and my world was shaken.
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken,
The choosing was not.
You have to move on.

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Quarter-mile diameter asteroid to pass only 200,000 miles from the Earth on November 8, 2011

2:06 pm

Get those telescopes out! A asteroid, a quarter-mile in diameter, is going to pass only 200,000 miles from the Earth on November 8, 2011. Key quote:

Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years. However, this will be the closest approach to date by an object this large that we know about in advance and an event of this type.

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McIntyre finds more fraud by Mann and Jones

6:12 pm

Hide the decline: Steve McIntyre has found more fraud by Mann and Jones. Key quote:

It’s therefore evident that they had, at one time, plotted the Science 1999 spaghetti graph showing data before 1550, but elected to delete the pre-1550 data as well as the post-1960 data.

If you look at the graph on Steve’s webpage, climateaudit.com, you will see why. The data clearly shows that the tree ring data they used in their Science paper was basically useless as a proxy for estimating past climate temperatures. To make it work they eliminated any data that didn’t fit their theories, a action that is completely unacceptable for any scientists.

Moreover, that a journal like Science permitted them to do this suggests strongly that there must be a great deal of corruption there as well.

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A modern journalist, disconnected from reality

9:42 am

First, watch this short youtube clip of NBC anchor Brian Williams on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon expresses his discomfort with President Obama’s activities during the last week (picking the winners in the NCAA finals, traveling to South America) while simultaneously getting us involved in a war in Libya.

Williams, almost as if he is a White House press spokesman, immediately defends Obama.

During Williams’ aggressive effort to defend the actions of the Obama administration, he said two other things that I think are important, though not for the reasons Williams thinks. » Read more

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Hideaki Akaiwa: Badass of the week

10:50 pm

What heroes do.

Surrounded by incredible hazards on all sides, ranging from obscene currents capable of dislodging houses from their moorings, sharp twisted metal that could easily have punctured his oxygen line (at best) or impaled him (at worst), and with giant fucking cars careening through the water like toys, he pressed on. Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched.

Hideaki maintained his composure and navigated his way through the submerged city, finally tracking down his old house. He quickly swam through to find his totally-freaked-out wife, alone and stranded on the upper level of their house, barely keeping her head above water. He grabbed her tight, and presumably sharing his rebreather with her, dragged her out of the wreckage to safety. She survived.

And that’s only the beginning. Read the whole thing.

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