Has global warming tapered off?

Observational or experimental data, if plotted on a graph, consist of a set of discrete points. There are potentially an infinite number of lines that can be drawn through those points. In some cases, the data itself suggests an overall rising or lowering trend but whether the relationship is a simple linear one or more complicated is not often easily discernible with the naked eye. We have to impose a curve based on prior expectations of [Read more…]

What the Occupy movement has achieved

A quite extraordinary thing has happened in American, and even world, politics. It used to be the case that great wealth and income inequality were topics that were not mentioned in mainstream discourse and to suggest that this was not healthy for a democracy was to be accused of being envious or creating class warfare or attacking capitalism itself.

But how things have changed. Now the vast disparity in income and wealth between the top 1% and the remaining 99% is front and center. The gulf between the former and the latter is a major topic of discussion in [Read more…]

Mitt Romney, early front-runner for president of heaven

It turns out that Mitt Romney and his father George successfully converted Mitt’s wife’s entire family to Mormonism, with the mother doing so practically on her deathbed. The one holdout was her father who was a committed atheist and went to his grave asserting that all religion was “drudgery and hogwash” and that he considered people who were religious to be “weak in the knees.”

But Mormons don’t let a little thing like death prevent them from [Read more…]

A Newt in the path of an elephant stampede

After Newt Gingrich’s unexpected big win in the South Carolina primaries, I said that we could expect the Republican party establishment and the oligarchy to freak out and make every attempt to drive a stake through his campaign’s heart.

And lo, as the prophets spake, so it has come to pass, with the attacks on Gingrich coming so thick and fast from every direction that he must be thinking that he is living in the Book of Revelation.

The conservative media chattering class has [Read more…]