Rule Five Friday
This is going to be brief, as a long drive followed by a plane ride beckons, and that’s coming off a late night (working) last night and a nearly-full day working today. Add to that no prep since there was no telling when our hosting service’s server crash would be resolved, and add in a touch of procrastination…
…well, sorry.
But the big deal in the news lately? Well, if you’re interesting in geopolitics, Cold War-like military posturing and possible sparks to regional warfare, then surely the Russian boots-on-ground in the Crimea are on your mind. Some relevant stories:
Things Are Getting Dicier in Crimea.
Obama Signs Executive Order on Ukraine Sanctions.
Crimea Sets Referendum on Joining Russia (Shades of 1930’s Austria!)
Russia Blows Past Obama’s Off Ramp.
What will the Obama Administration do about this? Other than some sanctions that Vladimir Putin will laugh off, nothing. Putin knows this. He seized the Crimea knowing this. He will keep the Crimea knowing this. Down the road, he may indulge in more 
military adventurism elsewhere, knowing this.
Remember what started the first World War? A minor arch-duke got himself popped, and the world was plunged into war. WW2 was arguably a continuation of the Great War, with a second theater opened in the Pacific.
Is the world ready for Round Three?
Back in Action
A server crash at our service provider caused several day’s absence, but we’re back now. Rule Five Friday may be delayed, but we’ll be back with a Saturday cheesecake post and more to follow. Hang in there, True Believers – you ain’t seen nothing yet!
Saturday Gingermageddon
Rule Five Friday
I love Japan.
While all you True Believers enjoy today’s dose of summery totty from the Land of the Rising Sun, consider also the fact that HOLY SHIT IT’S COLD. Excerpt:
The number of days with subzero temperatures has reached record or near-record levels for many Midwest cities this winter. We have the rankings for several of these cities, starting with two locations that will log day 70 of subzero temperatures on Friday.
Note: A subzero day is one where the temperature fell below zero at any one point during a particular calendar day.
If you grew up in the upper Midwest, like yr. obdt., you’re used to cold winters. But this year, with the jet stream still stuck somewhere around the Gulf Coast, sucking a bunch of Arctic air down across the country’s midsection, the cold is just hanging on.
And hanging on.
And on.
Now tomorrow is the first of March, and we’re still stuck in January temperatures. Honestly, Mr. Gore, where is all this global warming? We could use a little bit of that right now.
One thing, by the way, that’s hard to understand about the whole climate-change controversy. The fact that the climate changes over time isn’t in doubt. The question of how much human activity affects 
climate is subject to debate. But consider this; what also isn’t in doubt is that over most of the Earth’s 4.55 billion year history, it’s been warmer than it is now. As recently as 2,000 years ago, the Romans were growing wine grapes in Britain – an act of agronomy that requires warmer climes than those isles see today.
So who are we to say that the average climate we see today is the “correct” climate? Who are we to say what the proper temperature is? Just because this is where it’s been since, say, the Middle Ages?
The fact is, the planet doesn’t have any “correct” temperature. Many factors affect climate – the Sun, volcanoes, plant life, the positions of the continents as they slide around the Earth at the rate of a fingernail growing, ocean currents and, yes, people. And all of those factors add up to one thing – an unimaginably complex system that we can’t hope to understand completely, much less model.
And if the Earth were to warm up a few degrees? Some bad things would happen – coastal areas in particular would have some problems. But Siberia would blossom into an Asian breadbox. Alaska’s Matanuska Valley would likewise bloom.
Those who would have us clamp down on all manner of economic activity, like the Keystone pipeline, in the name of “climate change” are peddling a line of buncombe. Examine carefully their motives- it 
generally isn’t about science.
The other side of the unfortunate coin is this: The unsettled question of climate change has led many – mostly on the right – to include other areas of scientific endeavor in their skepticism, whether their doubt is warranted or not. And that’s not a good thing.
In the meantime, the deep freeze continues.
Brrr.
Animal’s Daily News
Should the GOP leadership be so stuck on Ted Cruz? Excerpt:
All this whining about Ted Cruz is getting on my nerves. They’re upset that he’s criticizing Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell, instead of rallying to the Republican establishment banner in all the primaries, the better, they seem to think, to take over the Senate after the November elections. “Fight Obama, not the Republican leadership.”
So their argument is that hard-fought primaries might produce more conservative candidates in November, and this would be a bad thing. It’s going to be hard to convince Cruz, since he’s only in the Senate because he challenged the establishment candidate in the Republican primary in Texas a couple of years ago. And won the primary. And then won the general election bigtime.
Mind you, I’m not in favor of supporting deranged candidates. I shudder at the thought of repeats of some of the latest conservative nominees. But I’m not at all convinced that tough primaries are bad for the Republican Party, or indeed for the country. Quite the contrary. I’m all for it. The country’s in a terrible jam and we need outstanding leaders, men of strong will and conviction, who won’t catch Potomac fever, who won’t go along to win the next election. I don’t think the Republican Party is well led. Who does? I think McConnell and Boehner have run away from too many important fights.
Boy howdy, ain’t that the truth. Witness as an example the GOP’s recent cave on the debt ceiling, where they went tits-up and didn’t receive one single concession in return.
Both political parties are going through a time of transition, but while the Democrats are moving to the left, led by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and, yes, Barack Obama, the GOP’s transition is much less clear. The libertarian wing of the party, a group that includes yr. obdt, is gaining ground, while the older, uber-religious wing of the party seems to be losing a little influence.
Bear in mind that both major parties are coalitions, and the various wings have to agree on a candidate, at least for the most part, or the party won’t win elections.
Cruz is a gadfly. Gadflies are good for the political process. They stir things up. The GOP could use some stirring up – they’ve been far too spineless lately.
Animal’s Hump Day News
Once more into the Hump Day breach!
One wonders about all the implications of this science-y tidbit: Dad May Join Two Moms for Disease-Free Designer Babies. Excerpt:
A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.
The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans.
Because the process would change only a small, specific part of genetic code, scientists say a baby would largely retain the physical characteristics of the parents. Still, DNA from all three — mother, father and donor — would remain with the child throughout a lifetime, opening questions about long-term effects for this generation, and potentially the next. Ethicists worry that allowing pre-birth gene manipulation may one day lead to build-to-order designer babies.
It takes some doing to wrap the brain around this one.
We’re only really beginning to unravel the mysteries of genetics. At the moment we can’t guess at what all may be possible – although a lot of ink and pixels have been burned up in speculation, both in fiction and non-fiction. Robert Heinlein’s entertaining work Friday is one such, the story of a genetically engineered superwoman trained as a combat courier. A common saying among the artificial humans in that work is this: “My mother was a test tube – my father was a knife.”
At the present, here in the real world, there’s no evidence that genetic manipulation could be used to produce designer babies, much less supermen. But fifty years from now?
Who knows?
Animal’s Daily News
Thanks to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!
Bye bye, Piers Morgan. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, although I suspect his regular viewers will be disappointed – both of them.
Were I to add a personal message to Mr. Morgan’s departure from the American media scene, it would simply be “good riddance.”
Related stories:
12 Reasons Why Everyone Hates Piers Morgan.
Good-Bye, and Good Riddance: @PiersMorgan Canned at CNN.
New York Times Blames Accent for Piers Morgan’s Failure to Connect With Americans.
While CNN did blaze the trail for every cables news channel to follow, they long ago fell well down the ranks of American cable news networks – Fox News has held the top spot for quite a while 
now. Programming decisions like placing the smarmy, self-righteous leftie Morgan in a slot to replace Larry King – who leans left but was a legitimate American broadcasting icon – that may be one of the reasons CNN has dropped like a rock in the ratings.
Still, their lot could always be worse.
They could be MSNBC.
Goodbye, Blue Monday
Another Monday after another plane ride; another week ahead in the Arctic environs of the upper Midwest. We could really use a little of that global warming right now.
This appeared yesterday from the inestimable Dave Barry: Dave Barry’s Manliness Manifesto. Excerpt:
But the point is, these pioneering men did not do “crunches.” These men crunched the damn continent—blazing trails, fording rivers, crossing mountain ranges, building log cabins, forging things with forges, etc. We modern men can’t do any of those things. We don’t have the vaguest idea how to ford a river. We’d check our phones to see if we had a fording app and, if not, we’d give up, go back home and work on our cores.
We American men have lost our national manhood, and I say it’s time we got it back. We need to learn to do the kinds of manly things our forefathers knew how to do. To get us started, I’ve created a list of some basic skills that every man should have, along with instructions. You may rest assured that these instructions are correct. I got them from the Internet.
This is a matter that has perplexed yr. obdt. for some time, in spite of personally having maintained a tight connection with the Manly Arts, and not just on the one week a year when loyal sidekick Rat and I head to the mountains to do battle with antlered ungulates. A man should know how to do certain things: Catch fish, operate heavy equipment, use a rifle, shotgun and handgun, start a fire without matches or lighter. A man should be able to change a tire. He should be able to jump start a car. He should be able to drive a manual transmission vehicle. He should now how to find his way in the woods without a GPS device.
Mr. Barry is right to decry the loss of manly skills, but there are still a lot of us out there who maintain them; Brad Paisley said it best:
Saturday Gingermageddon
