Rosie O'Donnel is a North Korean plant.

So I just saw a clip of Rosie, who, today on The View, spouted off that the seizure of British sailors by Iran was actually a setup, carried out by the British navy itself. This is all a ruse to get the U.S. to invade Iran by the summer, she claims.

Right. The British are sacrificing their own people so that the U.S. can invade Iran. And Tony Blair is in-line to be the next CEO of Halliburton, I suppose?

Unfortunately, the clip isn't on YouTube yet, otherwise I'd have linked it. But lo and behold, you can read it yourself on Rosie's own blog. (is this really her blog? it reads like it was written by a 10 year old punk kid... hmmm...)

In the same report, they quoted Rosie as stating that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the US government itself, in order for us to invade Iraq.

And so, that leads me to a single conclusion. Rose O'Donnell is working for the North Korean government, spreading anti-US propaganda in support of Her Dear Leader.

What a crack-pot.

The UN is run by idiots, and I have proof

Human Rights watchdog group, UN Watch, gave a statement to the human rights commission, which I've linked below. The transcript is below that.

But the statement isn't why I'm making a post here. It's the *response* by the Human Rights Council President, Luis Alfonso de Alba. In short, rather than address anything in the statement made, he proclaims the comments to be made in inappropriate language and any future such comments would be stricken from the official record.

Now, read the statement (and response) for yourself. From what President de Alba said, you would think that they guy went on some kind of shouting rant calling them all three-headed venomous beasts! Instead, the statement is, I believe, to-the-point, effectively conveys the opinion of the spokesman, and raises serious points. If this is the kind of thing that is deemed rude and unfit for the official records, then the U.N. is really showing what a joke it's become.

Even if you disagree with every word in their statement, you can't honestly say that this is the type of statement that should be ignored and removed from the records, can you?

(link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWgZu6tcZU)

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Statement delivered by Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? With terrible lies, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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Response delivered by Luis Alfonso de Alba, President of the UN Human Rights Council

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement.

I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you'd kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I'm not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council.

The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language.

Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.

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Entrepreneur Boot Camp

For those of you that check this out regularly (or should I say, both of you... haha), you know that I sometimes spout off stuff that hasn't really been though through, or in some cases (yes, I'll admit it), I take a bit of an extreme position just to have the chance to toss the ideas around.

However, this post is not one of my usual manifestos of things that tick me off. This post is actually about something I participated in that I thought was really good.

Today, the Indiana Economic Development Council held it's first ever "Entrepreneurial Boot Camp for College Students" - and I was asked to participate on a panel and in some smaller discussions. As it turns out (and I didn't realize this until today), this is actually an implementation of an idea I tossed out back in October, when I was invited to a dinner hosted by the Governor, where 25 entrepreneurs from Indiana met with Gov. Daniels to brainstorm on things the state could do to foster entrepreneurship.


Little did I know, that they were actually listening to what I was saying. Maybe I should have just suggested that the state give me $25 million to start a few companies with... LOL.

Anyway, lo and behold, the event was here, and wow, it really turned out to be something. There were about 500 college students there, all voluntary, who were legitimately (to my surprise) interested in started real companies, and learning what they could about doing so.

I wish something like this existed when I was in school. Around 50 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others, were in attendance to participate with the students and help them learn what this hair-brained lifestyle was all about.

I speak at these things a few times a year - in fact I'm off to Purdue tomorrow to do something similar - but the genuine enthusiasm of the students really made this one worthwhile. The change in attitude around starting companies right out of school has really been dramatic around here. I can't imaging even 1/5 of the turnout when Scott, Eno and I were drawing up those first business plans while still in school.

I even learned from some of the students that Rose-Hulman has an entrepreneurship club now. I think Scott and I would have been the only members back when we were there. LOL.

I even got the change to make a fool of myself on TV, as one of the local stations, WRTV 6, was there and interviewed me for a spot on the evening news. Thankfully, they didn't make me sound as they certainly could have. LOL. If I can find the clip online, I'll link to it later, but my 10 seconds of wisdom went something like "these kids need to jump in with both feet and start a company right now!"

Anyway, it was really cool, and I hope the event and others like it continue in the future.

Supreme Court Hears Freedom of Speech Case

Another trip on a plane, another opportunity to ramble on about something and post it to my blog. Today’s episode of Incoherent Thoughts from Jeff’s Head is on the topic of free speech, inspired by a case currently being heard by the Supreme Court. I’d give more specifics, but there’s no internet access on the plane, and as ridiculous as that may seem in 2008, it’s still the cold hard truth.

The premise of the case goes like this: Prior to the last Olympics, the Olympic torch runner was scheduled to run through some town in Alaska. In order to give students the opportunity to witness this event first hand, the local high school canceled school for the day so the students, if they wanted to, could partake in watching the parade. This isn’t any different than if school is let out in Indianapolis so people can go to the Colts’ victory parade.

One such student (I’ll call him Jack since I don’t have access to the ‘net right now) was at the parade. As the torchbearer strode past (how’s that for some masterful literary writing), Jack unfurled a large paper sign he had made which read, nice and big for everyone to see: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”

At this point, a teacher of the school, who happened to be standing right across the street, came across the street, tore the sign in half, and promptly suspended Jack for 5 days.

Shortly after, Jack protested the suspension on the basis of First Amendment rights, and was then suspended for an additional 5 days. For the record, the school claims that the original suspension was for 10 days, although the witnesses seemed to support the 5 day number Jack alleged.

Jack was not at school at the time, he was standing on a public sidewalk holding up a sign, and a government employee, acting on behalf of the government, tore the sign down and enacted punishment. And, not that it really matters but it does help make a point, Jack was 18 at the time.

There are numerous stupidities at work here. First, if you can’t figure out that the phrase “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” is a nonsensical prank staged by the goofball 18-year-old Jack as a joke, then you are an idiot. He was trying to get something offensive and funny on TV, and then joke with his friends about his accolades. Stupid? Yes. And I’m sure it’s not the only stupid thing done by an 18-year-old in Alaska that year.

Second, why the teacher ever thought this was okay is beyond me, but, even after it happened, an evening of sleep and a reflection on the events they should have told the administration that the right thing to do was to revoke the punishment, apologize to Jack, and call it a day. From what I’ve read of the case, I don’t get any impression that Jack was searching for some kind of free-speech lawsuit, and I have to believe that would have satisfied everyone. Instead, the administration allegedly doubled the punishment after Jack protested the suspension.

Third, how is it possible that this case has made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court? Believe it or not, Jack lost the first lawsuit. Then, he won the appeal. So now, it’s all the way to the Supreme Court in what is reported to be the first freedom of speech case heard by the court in 20 years.

Which brings me to the fourth stupidity: how is it that in an era of political correctness and people getting all bent out of shape because they were ‘offended’ by someone’s words, that this is the first freedom of speech case heard in 20 years? You’d think these things would happen all the time… unless, of course, the lower courts were vigorously defending the freedom of speech instead. But, based on this case, it appears that they are not.

I don’t see how the case could be more black and white. If this had happened at school, or even during a school function, there is some legal precedent that limits the free speech of students. You can argue if that precedent is legit or not, but it does exist and would make the case less clear-cut. This was not a school event, school was not in session, and Jack attended the torch running of his own freewill.

If this were a private school, then there would also be no real problem, other than you can’t go around ripping down a sign someone is holding as they stand in the street. But, it would be within the rights of the school to suspend Jack if that's what they wanted to do. If Jack’s parents want to take away his car and ground him for a month, that’s fine too. If his employer wants to fire him, that’s also fine (Jack might win a wrongful termination suit, but they could still fire him, the issue at hand would be very different). If someone wanted to hold up a sign that said “Jack is an a-hole poopy-head” or “I’m with stupid”, that would be within their rights as well.

But, what *IS* plain-as-day, is that no action can be taken by the government to limit the free speech of citizen, unless the government action is undertaken to protect the rights of another citizen. I hope you don’t need me to tell you, but the Constitution does not give you the right not-to-be-offended by someone’s sign, speech, or poor personal hygiene.

Sadly, this brings up the fifth, not yet realized, potential stupidity of the whole thing. The speculation is that Jack will win the case, but that the rationale given by the Supreme Court go something like this: “Bongs can be used for things other than illegal drug use, such as tobacco use. Therefore, the phrase ‘Bong Hits for Jesus’ does not inherently promote or condone the use of illegal drugs, and as such, the speech was not within the jurisdiction of the school.”

Now, I don’t know if that’s how this thing is going to flush out or not, but to me, the ruling should go something like this: “A citizen, functioning in public, has the inalienable right to free speech, and, as Jack’s sign did not infringe upon the rights of any other citizen, the government has no right to take action against Jack regardless of the underlying meaning of the sign.”

If it’s any less direct than that, then I believe the Court will have failed miserably in a case which even the most junior student of the Bill of Rights can figure out in about 3 seconds. The fact that Jack’s speech (if you were to believe that he was somehow actually promoting drug use in the name of Jesus Christ) is offensive to a lot of people and is against the anti-drug policy of the government institution in question, is PRECISELY the reason it is protected under the First Amendment.

The founding fathers did not come up with the Bill of Rights and free speech to protect the future of child pornographers or some other nonsense. Freedom of speech is all about making political statements, moral statements, or other such statements without the risk of the government shackling you up, tossing you on a train, and moving you to a Siberian labor camp. It’s there so your government can’t arrest a professor for posting an anti-government editorial on his blog, as just happened yesterday in China. It’s there so that young master Jack can make a fool of himself on TV, and we can all point and laugh at his foolishness, or maybe get so offended that we organize an anti-bong hits march (complete with awareness ribbon), all the while calling Jack a (pun intended) jackass.

In a similar case that I just read about in a local Silicon Valley paper, a woman is being fined $50 a day by the city government because she has painted a sign on her roof that contains “messages from God”. It sounds like she may well be out of her gourd, but at least she knows what her rights are, and so, while paying the fine, she has filed a federal lawsuit against the city for infringing on her rights.

And she should win, hands down. Neighbors are offended and annoyed, so they complained, and the city now claims that the sign is in violation of the local signing ordinances. However, those ordinances are there to restrict commerce (which, with limits, is within the jurisdiction of government), so that Wal-Mart can’t make a 3000 foot-wide sign and flashes all night and talks to you as you sleep. The ordinances are not there so that the local government can infringe upon your personal rights as they are trying to do in this case.

There was a similar case in my hometown of Griffith a number of years back, when a guy painted “If you want to get rich, then be a lying, thieving, politician” in huge letters on the side of his garage that faced the main street through town. Griffith played the same violation-of-the-signage-ordinance card on him. As I recall, It went all the way to the Indiana Supreme Court, and the guy won (as you would expect, or maybe not, if you don’t understand how this all is supposed to work). He then added “The town hall clowns lost, I won” to the top of his sign. LOL.

So good for that bitter old man. And, hopefully, good for woman who receives messages from God, and for crazy Jack, the pot-smoking evangelical Christian kid from Alaska.

As it turns out, our friend Jack is now studying in China, where I hope he doesn’t get any hair-brained ideas about freedom of speech, lest he find out that a 5 day suspension isn’t the kind of punishment the Communist regime had in mind. :)

A link to a news article about the case is here.

I hate communists.

So I'm sitting here after a good St. Paddy's day watching the local news in Chicago. One of the segments had a few shots of an anti-war protest that took place today in Washington D.C. As they pan to the parade itself, what do I spot but a bunch of people holding up Che Guevara banners.

Excuse me? What is with the rampant anti-capitalism, anti-individualism, pro-communism component of the anti-war movement?

If you don't know who Che Guevara was, you might recognize this photo as appearing on various pieces of communist propaganda and the t-shirts of economically-ignorant individuals. Che was a marxist revolutionary who participated in Castro's communist overthrow in Cuba, later headed to various other countries to help lead more communist revolutions, was captured by U.S. & Bolivian special forces, and executed.

For some reason, this militant revolutionary is now an icon for the anti-war movement. The only thing dumber than communism as an economic system is an anti-war protester idolizing a militant revolutionary. Just how ignorant can you be?

What is with all this anti-capitalist/pro-communist crap over the last 5-10 years anyway? Are people really that stupid?

And away we go!

I got my first flight of the year in this week while we had our first 70+ degree weather of the year. The snow drift in front of the hangar finally melted. Unfortunately, high winds were forecast (and did arrive), so I only got an hour of flying in before putting the plane away. At least I got some practice in.

I also did a quick addition to see how much flying I got in last year:

2005: 65.7 hours
2006: 48.6 hours

Considering the amount of time the plane was down for maintenance last year, that's not to bad.

But we just wanted to help the poor and helpless...

Next time some politician is blathering on (lying) about how program X helps the poor and helpless, keep this statistic in mind:

Call it welfare, income redistribution, subsidies, or whatever: 85% of this money gets paid out with no regard to the financial situation of the recipient.

The largest programs by far are age-based (Medicare and Social Security). Followed by occupation-based (veterans, farmers), followed by other special interest groups (race-based). Your financial status has no bearing on your eligibility for most "social" programs.


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PS: props to Hawkins for letting me steal his earlier blog post on the swindle.

Global Warming Swindle

This is brilliant. At least I know I'm not the only one to interpret the global warming data in, as it seems, exactly the way I did. For those (ridiculous) schools that are showing the Inconvenient Truth movie as part of a class, it would be appropriate to show this as well. Watch, learn, enjoy.

What you really need to know about minimum wage:

(editors note: No, I didn't spend all morning typing this. I wrote this while on a plane from California to Minnesota, and only being able to use one hand was a blessing because it killed more boredom time on the plane.)

I thought I’d take a minute to share some realizations I had about minimum wage legislation after reading through and digesting some material about the subject. And, since I’m trapped in the world’s smallest airline seat, that of a 757-200 featuring a configuration that could only comfortably seat an army of toddlers, writing this will give me something to do for awhile and distract myself from the pain that is my back and legs right now.

First, let me give you my prior position up to this point: for one, raising the minimum wage doesn’t do anything to actually help the people that are making the minimum wage. If you run a business that employs such workers, when you have to pay them more that money has to come from someplace. Perhaps you’re going to let some employees go. Perhaps you’re going to rely on alternatives like automation or outsourcing. Perhaps you will change your raw materials to use cheaper goods, although this will reduce the quality of your own end product. Or, most likely, you are going to simply pass the added cost along to your customers in the form of a higher price.

Some people might incorrectly think that the business can simply lower it’s profit margin and pay for the added labor cost that way, but this will only work in the absence of free-market competition. If the business in question were making above normal profits, new competitors will always crop up to take a piece of that action, unless there is some force, normally government regulation, that prevents that from happening. Besides this being fundamental economic theory, I know this actually happens, because I’m one of those crazy entrepreneurs that starts those businesses. (by the way, if you have identified a market in which companies are making unreasonable profits and in which there isn’t some stupid anti-competitive legislation blocking entrance into that market, please let me know. I’ll be all over it.).

Ok, so that said, now think about the industries where people actually make minimum wage. The things that obviously pop to mind are jobs in food service, hospitality, and perhaps the very lowest, unskilled manufacturing and service jobs. Of course, if you’re making minimum wage, you may very well depend on the fact that you can get a double-cheeseburger at McDonald’s for 99 cents. By raising the minimum wage, it’s that very cheeseburger that’s going to cost more, and so the net result to you personally is going to buying-power neutral: you make a little more money, and your basic goods and services cost a little more. You also run the risk of making the companies less competitive globally, because your labor costs more than that overseas, but I discount this argument to a great extent, because, while accurate, the fact is that the minimum wage jobs are generally not making a significant contribution to the labor pool of international companies. McDonald’s is not grilling burgers in Detroit and selling them in Mumbai, so it doesn’t play much of a role.

In general, so long as minimum wage is kept low enough to only effect the small pool of workers that it does, my opinion is that, while more or less stupid, it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, this often comes up during election years and this year was no exception. I had been lumping minimum wage discussion as an attempt at simple voter-pandering for votes: “elect me and I’ll make sure you get more money!” But it was always curious to me why they’d make such a big deal out of it, when really not that many people make minimum wage. The census statistics show that about 2.5% of wage earners make minimum wage, but the vast majority of these are in an industry where they are really working for tips, and as a result make much more than minimum wage (by the way, it may surprise you to know that airport skycaps, the guys that take your bag, move it 2 feet to a conveyor belt, and expect a tip, average over $100,000 a year in income at busy airports. And I’m sure they’re accurately reporting all those dollar bills on their tax filings…).

How many people actually make minimum wage, without tips? 0.33% of workers. Not exactly a large voting block.

But, at last, I had the ah-ha moment where I realized that all this claptrap about minimum wage wasn’t about that little handful of people, struggling to live off of such meager wages. Nope, not at all. That is just posturing to make you feel sad for those folks and support the position of increasing minimum wage, despite the fact that basic economics says it won’t help them.

Here’s the real reason those politicians made such a big deal about it: a significant number of union jobs are tied to the prevailing minimum wage rate.

Unions. A large and powerful voting block. That’s why it’s such a big deal, and this is a way to get higher wages for union employees, not because of their work for the companies they labor for, but because of propagandist tactics making you feel sorry for the 0.33% of people that make minimum wage.

So, if an apprentice in the local union gets 2x minimum wage, then you’ve just increased his salary. Same for the guy that makes minimum wage plus $25 an hour. And right up on the chain the wage increases go.

And that WILL make the companies those employees work for less competitive, because, while McDonald’s does not make burgers locally and sell them overseas, Boeing does indeed make airplanes locally and sell them overseas, and you’ve just driven up the cost of their airplanes while Airbus can keep making them outside the reach of American minimum wage laws. And that does hurt the company, the economy, and overall, the United States.

Of course, this isn’t the only issue you need to look at when casting your vote,. I can think of one state election this past year where the two candidates differed on the issue, but I would have (if it was my district), voted for the guy that wanted to raise minimum wage, even with this new knowledge, because the guy that didn’t want to raise minimum wage was a crazy right-wing religious nutjob who might well stomp all over your rights for his moral superiority. However, I think it’s important to understand that the ramifications of increasing minimum wage are much different that the stories about Jennifer, single mother of three who makes minimum wage, would lead you to believe.

And perhaps just as important, ask yourself whether your congressman should really be involved in setting the wages of pipe fitters or autoworkers, or if thats something that should really be up to the employers and their employees.

Snap, Crackle, Pop

And I'm not talking organic rice krispies here!

Today I went in for my 2 week follow-up x-rays, and, despite my careful efforts to keep my hand protected, the bones slipped apart again. In fact, they looked worse than they did in the first x-ray.

So, what that means is that the doc got to resent (i.e. re-break) my bone again. This time, he numbed it up (which worked great) for the manipulation. The second x-ray showed that everything was perfectly lined up again and this time they splinted it at a much greater curvature than the first time. Basically it's at the same curve that you'd have if you were making the "OK" sign with your ring finger and thumb. This also means it's going to be much more in the way - nice.

By the time I was getting in the car to drive home, the nerve block was wearing off and - yowza - this thing smarts. To put it in perspective, when I first broke it, they gave me a prescription of Vicodin for the pain, and I only took one tablet on the very first night right before bed. Now, I'm on my forth tablet of the evening.

And Vicodin sucks. I'm sure it affects different people slightly differently, but for me, I'm not sure how much pain it's taking away (but I'm not about to run a personal experiment since it is helping some), and it makes me feel like I've just woken up from a NyQuil induced sleep. So now my finger hurts and I feel like I'm got some kind of unpleasant hazy hangover going on. Oh yes, sign me up for more.

So I go back in one week. If it slips again, it's time for surgery to put a pin in it. Fantastic.

No hand fracture, no worries, god bless global capitalism

I called the orthopedist this morning and found that he was in surgery. So, I left a message with his staff about the xray discovery. They asked if the Dr. had a copy of the xray, and I said I didn't think so because I carried the xrays in myself. However, I said I had scanned in the xrays and could email them in. She just giggled -- you know the "I don't know what in the heck you are talking about" giggle.

Anyway, I left the message and then spent 15 minutes or so trying to determine the format of the email addresses at OrthoIndy so I could email the xray anyway. I took my best guess and sent it off.

At lunch, I got a call back from the nurse who said the Dr. had received my email and reviewed the xray again (imagine that! email! hilarious!). He thought it was probably a vein, but that it might be a hairline fracture. If it was bothering me I could buddy-tape the two fingers together, but unless it got really bothersome, not to worry about it.

After some more discussion at home, I thought that it was probably worth trying to get one more opinion on the xray, rather than risk a long term injury over my laziness to do so. I happened to find JustAnswer.com, which is a website for posting medical questions and having them answered by doctors from around the world (ie. India).

You only pay if you are satisfied with the answer, and it's $15 bucks. Within 10 minutes I had two doctors answer my question, and they both took the time to read through my blog as well as the info I submitted on the site. Here's what I got back:

In my opinion there is a single fracture in distal part of middle phalanx of ring finger of left hand. The other shadow which you are questioning is actually an artifact & not a fracture.

and this as well:

I agree with Dr. Munjal that it does not look like a fracture. It is rather the superimposition of one structure on another. I have an additional suggestion for you that would provide even MORE evidence that is based on my knowledge of American medicine and ER care. I looked at your blog and found that the X-ray was done in the Emergency Department of a hospital. At this point that means that THREE MDs have read this X-ray.
1) the emergency physician
2)the radiologist (X-ray reading specialist MD who would read it the next day) AND
3) your orthopedist.
Simply go to the hospital and ask for the "Official" X ray report from the radiologist. You are entitled to it. If he or she also read it OFFICIALLY as normal you have THREE MD's who have read it as "normal". That would put it totally to rest; they can't ALL be wrong!

So there you go. And let me point out that it wasn't a long wait in the bowels of socialized medicine program that helped me out, but instead it was a non-insurance based, global capitalist website that got me what I needed, in under 10 minutes, for $15 bucks. God Bless Capitalism. Boo-yah.

hand fracture or no?

Well, I just did some digging and found a "standard" hand xray for comparison. Maybe my suspected second fracture is just where other bones connect and it's no big deal. I'll probably call anyway, but here are the two images for you to comment on. My hand is on the left, standard hand on the right.

Xrays and stuff you don't want your doctor to say

You know you're in trouble when your doctor says "Ok, now I'm going to have to hurt you, hold tight..." ouch. As you might have guessed, thats when he reset my finger, and no, it wasn't very pleasant.

Here are my xrays before they fixed it. I'm in a new splint now, and he estimates 5 weeks to heal, with a new xray at 2 weeks to see how it's doing.

In this first xray, you can see pretty clearly that my finger is broken just behind the first joint. After the adjustment, this was all lined up again.

Ok, so I *thought* that was the more disturbing image.... that was until I started messing with the contrast and exposure in order to make these easier to see. Here is the second image:


Ok, so all I was going to show here was that if you look at the longest finger, you can count the three joints. If you look at the ring finger there, you can see between the first and second joint there is a nice horizontal line that looks kinda like an extra joint. Thats the fracture.

However, when I dimmed the exposure and cranked up the contrast, I made what appears to be a disturbing discovery. Look at the bottom between the two fingers I just mentioned. I'm no xray technician, but I would say that is pretty clearly a sizable crack right down the middle on the palm of my hand. To my knowledge, no one even looked at my hand as the focus was just on this finger. The emergency room report doesn't say anything about my hand at all, and so the orthopedist didn't even look at it to my knowledge. Something tells me that I need to give the orthopedist a call tomorrow morning and email him my enhanced image. I hope I'm wrong, but that doesn't look right to me.

More to come...

Oh, snap! (literally)

Only I could manage to break a bone while at my soccer game, but not while playing soccer. Last night, after playing the first half in goal and stating the second half as midfield, I subbed out to catch my breath. A minute or so later, the ball flew out of bounds through a hole in the netting that surrounds the field (this place isn't the best maintained, as this story will show), an bounded down the hallway toward the emergency exit.

Not wanting the game to get slowed up too much, I jumped up and ran down the hallway to get it. Well, this hallway doesn't have any lights on so it was pretty dark, especially given that my eyes were adjusted to the field lights... Anyway, the ball stopped in the corner by the alarm-door, and as I tried to slow down to pick it up, much to my surprise I discovered that there was a leak in the roof back there, and with all the snow we had it was leaking pretty fiercely. I'm sure you can see where this is going but, let me spell it out mathematically for you:

linoleum floor + giant puddle of water + darkness + flat soled indoor soccer shoes + being in a hurry + 32 years old + a few extra pounds around the midsection = bad news

I hardly even remember trying to stop. I remember thinking "ok, I'll pick the ball up and Johnny will be back at the bench. I'll just turn and throw it back to him so that...." WHOOSH! Both feet and most of my rear end were airborne and higher than my head, I was staring up and the ceiling, and BAM! On my back. "Man that hurts... must get ball... must get ball."

So I popped up, thew the ball back to the bench, and realized that my left ring finger was in considerable pain. It started swelling up immediately and I could feel it pushing on my wedding ring. After a minute or two of gathering myself, I headed over to the snack counter and got some ice. 10 minutes of holding my hand over my head inside the ice bag and considerable pulling later, I got the ring off, thankfully.

I was able to move my finger mostly, and it looked straight, so I figured this was just the latest in a fairly colorful history of bad finger jams (much to my mother's chagrin, I was goalie in soccer, catcher in baseball, an have really poor basketball handling skills...). Once I got the ring off it wasn't hurting nearly as bad so I subbed back in for the last 5 minutes (not as goalkeeper, mind you). I figured in a week or two it'd be fine again ("just rub some dirt on it!").

One of the guys invited me out for a beer afterwards, so I took him up on that. I kept my finger on ice the whole time and really, it felt stiff but only a bit sore and not too bad. After a beer I headed home and told Amy the story, etc. By the time I settled in for bed, it was pushing 11pm or so which was about 2 1/2 hours from when I fell.

Well... I took another glance at the finger and now it had turned considerably more purple and the swelling was, shall we say, unevenly spread on the finger. Yadda yadda yadda, better get an x-ray of that thing, and off to the emergency room, since all the immediate care places were closed at that point on a Sunday.

A nurse, doctor, and an xray technician later, I have a nice clean horizontal fracture straight across my ring finger about a quarter inch below the first joint, with a little twisting of the fractured piece to boot. Temporary splint and make an appointment to see the orthopedist after they open in the morning.

I'll post an update tomorrow as well as an image of the xrays if I can figure out how to do that as well.

Be cautious, however, because by reading this blog post, The Curse of Dairmuid Zoolander O'Dowd may set upon you next. It can apparently travel vast distances over the internet, including crossing large ocean bodies, as it was only two days ago that I read how Dairmuid (in Ireland) broke his finger in a rugby match, and then it struck me.

Consider yourself warned!

An Inconvenient Truth

[disclaimer: it's late, and I've not reread this at all before posting it. there are likely grammatical errors and such in there. you'll have to deal with that.]

After spending the last several days working on the inconvenient truth that is taxes, I decided to watch Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming. As most of you know, I spent a whole lot of time digging through a whole lot of research over the last several weeks, and I’ve taken a good week off from reading it to give it some time to digest. I felt that I had a good scientific basis to work from when watching the movie, and as much as I didn’t want to give Al Gore any money by watching the movie, I wanted to see what all the talk was about.

Let me start by giving a few overall impressions.First, as you might expect, the movie is well done. It's not the greatest thing I've ever seen, but it's as interesting to watch as a good episode of Nova or a documentary on Discovery Channel. It’s not as though it’s made in some blatant Michael Moore propaganda method, and Al Gore does not come across as some kind of crazed lunatic or anything like that.

Second, I was surprised at the overall lack of real scientific content there was in the film. While I didn’t time it, I’d guess that well over half the film, perhaps as much as 3/4ths is spent on non-science issues: Al Gore’s home farm, his sister with lung cancer, anecdotes about this glacier here, or a woman’s house on the permafrost. Yes, these things are meant to be emotionally moving, and if I were making a movie like this, I would use the same sorts of tactics. However, there was a *lot* of that in the movie… a lot. It’s the amount that surprised me, no the mere presence of such emotional angles.

Finally, the movie, and presumably Al Gore’s underlying presentation, simply makes the assumption that, given a chart on CO2 levels and a chart of temperature levels, that I’m going to buy into the human CO2 production causes global warming concept. That is intended to happen in the first 10 min or so of the movie. After that, it’s all about what will happen when the temperatures rise, and providing evidence (much of it anecdotal), that temperatures are rising and that all these bad things are starting to happen.

I’ve already discussed what I found in researching the correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures—that being that historically it’s temperature that moves first, not CO2 levels. Because of that historical relationship, there isn’t overwhelming scientific reason to believe that if CO2 levels move first, temperature will follow. It could happen, as I’ve said before, but jumping to that conclusion and then basing billions of dollars on what will happen if you are right is not a prudent thing to do. Spending some time and money proving, or disproving, your assumption would be the appropriate next step.

There are a number of things in the film that I could debate and discuss. For example, Mr. Gore says 40% of the worlds population depends on the Himalayan glaciers for fresh water, and that they are receding—but then I’ve read reports that only 0.5% of the glaciers in the Himalayas are even being studied. He claims that global species are being lost at a rate “1000 times greater than the natural background rate,” and some casual internet searching suggests that this is a whole other pandora’s box to explore, but the founder of Greenpeace thinks quite differently as commented in the Penn & Teller Bullshit episode Hawkins sent the link to. I don’t’ know who’s right, but everyone that talks about it, much like global warming, seems to throw information around without the facts they are pulling from. He talks about the importance of Antarctic ice and how it’s melting into the ocean, but just yesterday I read a report that says Antarctic temperatures are disagreeing with global warming models.

But all that, while it might be interesting to research and find out what is solid and what is a stretch, is beside the point. The point is that a clear scientific link between human CO2 production and global warming isn’t made in the movie. It’s assumed. And really, that’s a well known (and effective) way to get people to believe you. Right in the beginning of the movie, Al Gore says something like “I know you’re all aware of how greenhouse gasses warm that atmosphere, so we won’t spend much time on that,” --which is something right out of the debating class 101 handbook: establish your basis as indisputable common knowledge and build from there. No one, after all, wants to feel like they’re the only ones that weren’t aware of this alleged “common knowledge.”

To quote from the link I just gave:

In the 1990's scientists started to question the greenhouse effect theory, because of major uncertainties in the data sets and model outcomes. They protested the basis of the theory, which was data of global annual mean temperatures. They believed that the measurements were not carried out correctly and that data from oceans was missing. Cooling trends were not explained by the global warming data and satellites showed completely different temperature records from the initial ones. The idea began to grow that global warming models had overestimated the warming trend of the past 100 years. This caused the IPCC to review their initial data on global warming, but this did not make them reconsider whether the trend actually exists. We now know that 1998 was globally the warmest year on record, followed by 2002, 2003, 2001 and 1997. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1990.

What Mr. Gore completely avoids stating is that the Greenhouse Effect is, in fact, a theory. It is not a proven fact. Certainly there is evidence to support the theory, and it’s hard to imagine that it doesn’t play at least some role in the global temperature, but how much of a role, if any, is an open question. Ignoring this and passing the greenhouse/co2 theory off as hard-proven fact is grossly misleading, and is the basis for the entire movie.

My point being, again, that you can’t just ignore the fact that greenhouse warming is a theory still under debate, and then charge ahead without even alerting the viewer that that is the case, particularly when it’s alleged to have such significant consequences.

He uses statistics to establish consensus, and then consensus to provide credibility for the theory-which-isn’t-called-a-theory. He says that of 900-some-odd scientific papers reviewed, none of them disagreed with the concept of human caused global warming, but I’ve found published papers myself that do just that, and they date back into the 90s, so I’m not sure what the basis there is. In fact, the wikipedia entry on the global warming debate cites “when I checked the same set of abstracts, I discovered that just over a dozen explicitly endorse the ‘consensus,’ while the vast majority of abstracts does not mention anthropogenic [human caused] global warming.”

So the statistic is that zero of 900 said humans weren’t the cause, and so the implication is that 900 said it was. But that’s where statistics can lie. I could use the same body of work and say “Of 900 peer reviewed journal articles about the origins of global warming, only twelve—scarcely more than 1%--advocated humans as the cause of global warming.” Such a statement, while statistically accurate, is completely misleading, and is made in the same way using the same data as Mr. Gore used. The truth is that you’re using a lousy sample set to establish an opinion on either side, but again, this is great stuff for winning a debate. The thought process they want you to follow is:

• These guys are scientists.They’re smarter than you, and they aren’t fooling around.
• 900 peer reviewed articles might involved thousands of different scientists! That's a lot!
• None of them think humans AREN’T the cause of global warming.
• Only non-scientific morons would think otherwise, given all this evidence.

So that’s all good for winning your high school debate contest, and it’s inevitably going to fool a whole lot of people that either don’t know better or haven’t built up a base of knowledge on the issue, or both. I won’t call it an outright lie, because the idea of the movie is to ‘win the debate,’ and anyone trying to do that will probably use the same sorts of time-proven tactics. But, I am pointing out that these statistics to prove consensus are very misleading when the underlying data is examined.

While I’ve not looked (although I probably will) for websites that have analyzed this movie in great detail, because I’m really not interested in nit-picking the individual statements made in the film. Are sea levels going to rise 20 feet? Is Florida going to disappear under the ocean? Will 40% of the people die from lack of fresh water? I have no idea, and I don’t think it matters at this point in the debate. Anyone that’s making a film which is designed to get a point across will use anecdotes and statistics which support their point of view, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. The problem is that, in this case, the very core of the argument is presented in a casual “hey, you already know this is true, lets move on” sort of way, and I think it’s very misleading—particularly when you and I both know that a whole lot of people are going to take that information at face value, and it will be the only source they ever use for forming an opinion on global warming.

So again, for the umpteenth time, I’m not saying that humans are definitely not causing global warming. I’m not saying that the greenhouse effect is some kind of myth. What I am saying is that we should really try to get some more scientific proof via hypothesis and experimentation before we go dumping all kinds of cash into this. There are plenty of other scientific “theories” that I’m fully on board with, and they’re still theories too. But – if someone were to tell me that evolution proves that humans are on the verge of evolving into mindless beings that will destroy themselves, and that we need to suddenly spend a couple hundred billion dollars to stop it, I’d probably start by reexamining that theory of evolution to be sure that I really understood where things where headed, why, and what I could do about it before I busted out the checkbook and handed over that kind of cash.

There are *plenty* of perfectly good reasons to promote energy efficiency, less dependence on fossil fuels, and the like. For one, I’m not all that keen on coal power, given that, in the US, over 800 tons of uranium is spewed into the atmosphere each year from the burning of coal for power. I also find it pretty darn stupid to be using coal in that way when the energy potential of the uranium burned in doing so is greater than the energy produced by the coal power plant itself!

It may surprise you to find out that in the United States, where every garage is filled with a handful of automobiles, that electricity generation is still far ahead of automobiles as the leading producer of CO2 emissions. If you factor in the rest of the world, the spread would be even greater. Coal and natural gas represent nearly all of the CO2 emissions from electricity generation.

So I have an idea of Mr. Gore’s next move. I call it “A Convenient Solution: Nuclear Power.” The data suggests that choosing nuclear over coal and natural gas for power generation could cut the CO2 emissions of the US by over 50%. And you know what, I’d feel a lot better knowing that theuranium waste is either in a pebble-bed graphite ball, or in a barrel a mile under a mountain, rather than being spewed up into the air for me to breathe in, day in and day out, while I scratch my head wondering how in the world we could cut these pesky CO2 levels!

But, nuclear power continues to fall victim to pressure from environmental groups – probably the same environmental groups that are complaining about CO2 levels.How’s that for an inconvenient truth?

This photo/headline struck me as funny

Reuters had a story which ran at the top of Yahoo today titled "Taliban Deploy 10,000 Fighters for Attack" and then had this photo:


So here are, I presume, 5 of the 10,000 men, apparently armed with, from right to left: A Kalashnikov, nothing at all, some sort of bi-pod assault weapon, a bowl of oatmeal, and another Kalashnikov.

I'm not sure what about this picture is supposed to lend credence to the 10,000 man assault team, but five guys armed with three machine guns and a cauldron of breakfast cereal doesn't really reflect the headline, does it?

Impact of air travel on CO2 levels

Looks like about 2-3% of human CO2 emissions come from airplane exhaust. That means that airplanes account for:

(3% from airplanes) * (0.7% increase in CO2 levels attributable to humans) = 0.02%

So, air travel accounts for 0.02% of the increase in CO2 levels. Lions and tigers and bears - oh my!

One of the news reports I read points out that "travel by ship produces 160x less CO2 than by air" which I had to laugh at. They don't give any explanation as to how they calculated that -- is that point-to-point or per hour, or what? I have a vision of super-commuters that were flying from NYC to L.A. now piling into ships bound for the panama canal aboard a giant, diesel powered beast, rumbling through the waters. LOL. Am I really to believe that a ship full of people crossing oceans over a period of weeks produces less waste than a jet in the air for 4 hours?

Some days there's just too much material...

You can't make this stuff up...

Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain...

Environmentalists warned that "flower miles" could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.

If you want to read the article, it's here, but seriously, don't waste your time. There's no scientific evidence provided and you've got everything you needed to know in that quote. I'm assuming that this must be a reasonably wide-spread theory among 'the believers', so if I get a chance, I'll see what I can dig up and what the rationale is...

Global Warming Interview with President of Czech Republic

When people aren't being politically correct, they can say some funny things. I love it.

[copy-paste from the Drudge Report]

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity
Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say. Well, it makes a lot of sense, Prof Klaus. Other parts of the interview were dedicated to the Organization of European States (and Jo Leinen), the Czech civil cold war that has already ended, the radar for the U.S. missile defense, and his relations with the current Czech government. Show postings on this blog that contain the word Klaus.

[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]

More on global warming and cloud formation

Here's another article which, after raising some of the same complaints that I have about this global warming debate, cites Dr. Svensmark's experiment with the cloud formation in a box. There's no new data here, but I'm glad to see someone else raising questions about the unscientific nature of what should be a scientific debate.

Now, granted, I have not seen the actual data from the Svensmark's experiment. The whole thing could be bunk. Maybe he's making it up. BUT - at the very least, someone has proposed an experiment as a method of determining the cause of global warming, and someone else (the writer of the above article) has taken notice that experimentation is fundamental to scientific proof.

I'm also raising my estimate to the odds that no one has conducted an actual experiment proving the CO2=greenhouse gas=global warming tie to about 99.9999%. Either the internet is completely absent of that experiment, or it just doesn't exist. I'm guessing the latter. (I have no scientific evidence to back up this claim either, but that seems par for the course...)

Which leads me to my next irritation about this thing. People who have not bought into the human/CO2/warming combination are referred to as "global warming skeptics" or, in more propagadized (is that a word?) terms "global warming deniers" which is a really stupid attempt to equate skepticism of human caused warming with denial of the Holocaust. Whatever.

Anyway, ignoring that obvious stupidity, calling someone a "skeptic" in science implies that someone doubts the results of a particular experiment or overwhelming proof. If I said I had developed a drug that destroyed all cancer, then, in the absence of data, you'd dismiss me as a lunatic. If I backed my claims up with data, you'd probably be skeptical of my claims until you could repeat the experiment that produced the data yourself.

So, "skeptic" implies that there's something to be skeptical about. There isn't, because in this case there is no experimental data or overwhelming proof. There is only circumstantial evidence. So, to me it doesn't seem like there should be a group called "skeptics" so much as there should be a group called "believers". Belief in the absence of proof is something that you find in religion and philosophy, not science.

Instead of spending billions to address the CO2 problem, how about spending millions to get some experiments setup and completed which confirm (or deny) this linkage? Is that too much to ask, given the kinds of dollars that will be spent here?