What's Next?

Here is American Thinker's post "Everything is Caused by Global Warming." Well....not everything, but the 600+ links cited clearly demonstrate that the GW frenzy has become a major disease within a year or two, and one that has only tenuous links to anything sensible about climate change. At such times it's a good idea to remember:

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

- Henri Poincaré

Next: Pizza

The History Channel deserves the name because it is subverting history. It does so by placing established fact and surmise, speculation, and the most outrageous claims on the same plane and concluding the episode (whatever the topic may be) with "Who knows?"

Well, in a recent case...we do. The UFO files (more and more cable channels are developing a love affair with UFOs & Las Vegas devoting more and more air time to these subjects) claims in one episode that we owe integrated circuits, lasers, and Kevlar to items found on or near the putative crashed UFO in 1947 at Roswell, NM. If you've never heard of the Roswell Incident, you're lucky; quit reading this post immediately, and always look (or run) away any time you hear the word "Roswell."

In the cases above, one individual (a former Army officer named Corso) claims that the alien technology was turned over to Bell Labs, or some such thing, and they came up with it. It is specifically claimed that Bell Labs developed the microchip from alien technology. This is patent nonsense, as it is documented that the integrated circuit was developed at Fairchild Semiconductor (Robert Noyce) and Texas Instruments (Jack Kilby) under circumstances that brook no dispute. The technology of integrated circuits requires no postulate of the introduction of alien materials or design.

In all of these cases, it is only necessary to apply Occam's Razor. Simply put, no wonderful and mysterious stories of extraterrestrial intervention are required, thank you very much. And yet the conflation of prosaic fact with wild speculation continues, and on a multitude of topics, every day, via media that are supposedly reputable. Soon, when I claim that the thermometer reads 25 degrees C, I will be told "Not necessarily; that thermometer could be an illusion, or...." Is this a symptom of The Coming Dark Age? I'd better go and consult Nostradamus.....

Media Suicide

The instances of "news that is not news" proliferate.

Family asked to leave Louisville restaurant because child is crying.

While this may be a number of things, it is not news. Not even local news. In fact, it's amazingly trivial.

Twins recover from drug overdose.

And in one of the more maddening categories, this is news, of course, because it happened to the children of someone in show biz. News by reason of "fame by association." Occurs daily.

Thug turns self in early to begin prison sentence.

This has been done to death, only because the thug (and his fellow thugs) are sports celebrities and "ethnic minorities." Not to mention that their handlers have decided that the best route to follow for Mr. Vick, since he has (to use the British term) been "grassed" and forced to plead guilty by his good friends, is to make a mad dash to attempt to rehabilitiate himself.

Oh, it's Darwin Time again....

This is rich....nothing like petting Bambi, particularly in the peak of the rut. Then the animal acts as its nature dictates, and it's reported that some kind of "problem" exists. Of course, this makes little difference in a world where 90% live in cities, and that includes those who live in the faux rurality that go under the general label of "suburbs." These people have no idea what a wild animal really is, and in fact think that the bacon they eat for breakfast grows on some kind of bush.

Back to Blighty

Haven't done any posting in November, because we've been in Bavaria and Austria for the last two weeks. Great trip, enjoying all the usual activities of that part of the Continent. The Tirol, all the fantastic scenery, the Königschlossen, Kirchen und Klosteren. And then there are the attractions of München- wonderful musems, and der Hofbräuhaus (as well as Bräuhausern too numerous to mention).
And then there was the KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau. We'd never been to a concentration camp before, although a tour in 2003 was supposed to include an excursion to Mauthausen. Dachau is not to be missed if you're in the neighborhood. Even if it were not for the ability to walk around the whole rest of the site, the museum (in the former "maintenance" building) would be worth the trip up. Just take the S-Bahn from Munich to Dachau, walk across the street from the Bahnhof to the main Dachau bus stop, and get on the #726 bus, which is clearly labeled "KZ Memorial."
But the rest of the site, the entire former camp, is still there. A cold rain fell the whole time we were there; a perfect atmosphere for Dachau. The barracks were torn down after the war (two have been reconstructed), but the concrete foundations of all the others, with a numbered memorial for each, are still laid out in two orderly rows, like the jaw of some hideous giant whose teeth have been extracted. The memorial is all very neat, orderly, and efficient- and it is this simple effect that conveys -as nothing in the museum could do- how the Nazis applied that same Teutonic efficiency to the 30,000 recorded dead, plus the unknown thousands who died at Dachau of things like "Special Treatment" (a small-caliber bullet in the head). Admission to the camp is completely free. Touring the camp is not easy, but I emerged from the experience believing it was a necessary thing for me to have done.