Bigfoot showed up in Minnesota again

The story sounds plausible but, as it says towards the end, let's see a real carcass first.

Climategate

The Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is coming unraveled it appears. Apparently some sort of hacker broke in to some computer somewhere and stole thousands of e-mails showing the conspiracy to perpetrate this hoax on the rest of us. Here are some stories about it:

The Final Nail
Congressional investigation
Junk Science
The Fix is In

I don't know how this will percolate out but it's definitely a big earthquake in the AGW proponent's world.

Friends of Science

Here's a website about the failure of the computer models that predicted global warming. In the last 10 years, scientists can't figure out why average global temperatures haven't continued to increase. Because all the models said it would. Now they're baffled. Maybe they need to check some of their assumptions in the computer models?

Government failures

Comment from a reader on this article:

So non existent jobs were created or saved (a non existent metric) in districts that don't exist using money that hasn't been printed yet that will be collected from children that haven't been born yet.

If they can't get a simple "stimulus bill" right for only 878 billion, how are they going to fix healthcare that costs 1/7th of the economy?

Minority Thought Pattern

Written by a former NFL player and now pastor who happens to be Black, this piece says a whole lot about why Rush Limbaugh wasn't allowed to buy a small piece of an NFL team. And it says a whole lot about what many of the leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others who use the victim mentality to keep their power at the expense of the ones they're supposedly serving.

Healthcare insurance ideas that make sense

Here's another opinion piece about a healthcare plan that makes sense. It's unfortunate that the congresscritters currently working on numerous plans haven't figured out that less is better. They're trying to kill a gnat on a glass dish with a sledge hammer without breaking the dish. All we need is to cover the most catastrophic cases of healthcare needs and then let people shop for their own, everyday needs. Then we won't have to worry so much about rationing, death panels, or anything else since the most catastrophic cases will be covered and the marketplace would take care of everything else.

Oddly enough this article came from the New York Times. I hope it becomes a more widespread idea with broader coverage.

Natural Gas bubbling up everywhere?

It seems that the energy crisis may have now been averted according to this article. Apparently engineers have figured out new ways to extract natural gas, thus increasing the amount of recoverable reserves to levels never before imagined. Some time ago, I posted a link to another article saying that the earth itself is creating this natural gas along with oil, that it's not some kind-of result of dinosaurs remains. If both articles are accurate, it looks like we don't need to worry about long-term energy needs unless these environmental wackos can convince governments that climate change is real, then we're all in trouble.

Wait a minute, there's a sun?

Talking to the global warming/climate change alarmists, you'd think the only reason the earth is as warm as it is, is because humans polluted it so much that now it's becoming too warm. However, apparently there are some variables that they may have missed in their calculations, like the sun for example. The amount of energy released by the sun varies too, like with sunspots. Recently we've been going through a very low minimum of sunspot activity, coincidentally corresponding with a general cooling of the planet. I guess that may be why the catchphrase has changed from global warming to global climate change.

Found? A Chupacabra

Well, if it is really a new creature and not just a mangy coyote, someone claims to have found one that was poisoned. He says he's going to mount it as a conversation piece.

Edit: An article with pictures.

A hero in more ways than on the football field

This kid who apparently is pretty good on the football field, also possibly saved the lives of a busfull of kids. I think he deserves all the recognition he can get.

Beware the taxman!

I have nothing to hide from the taxman but that doesn't mean I go posting a lot of information about myself online either. However, based on this article, it appears that the IRS has been getting more creative about tracking down tax deadbeats by using social networking sites. Even if someone doesn't have a Facebook or MySpace page, they often still post in other places all over the internet and can be found with a little bit of creative Google searching.

And the Yeti shows up too!

Someone thinks they have videotape of the Yeti running around in Poland.

Why is it that the picture is always blurry and taken from a long ways away?

Oh look! The Loch Ness Monster!

I don't use Google Earth but this is the second time I think someone has found an interesting thing that I've blogged about here. Someone thinks they may have spotted the Loch Ness Monster there. I don't know if it's true or not but it's an interesting picture nonetheless.

The real problems with the healthcare industry

Now here's an article that makes sense about the healthcare problems facing our country. It is written by a self-identified Democrat who has spent some significant time studying the problems with the industry. However it's a long article so I don't know who will have time to read it.

Some high points are:

• It doesnt make sense that people expect the insurance company (or government) to pay for routine care.
• Insurance makes the most sense for unexpected, big emergencies.
• There isn't a lot of real competition in the healthcare industry except for elective care items like LASIK eye surgery and cosmetic procedures.
• The lack of competition is largely driven by the fact that most services are not paid by the consumer of the service, the patient.
  
• At the end he suggests using a government option but only for emergencies over a very high threshold like $50,000 and using health-savings accounts for all other services.
• It would take a transition period to get to this point but it would be better in the end.

I've been thinking some of these very thoughts for a long time but never saw it written down so eloquently before.

They don't get it do they

Arkansas protesters shout down their blue dog congressmen

Well dressed protesters want to "hurt the president"

Carrying swastikas

The Natives Are Getting Restless!

Wow. It seems our nation's congress critters are up against some tough questions out there in the heartland.

Lloyd Doggett D-Texas 25th district (near Austin)

Arlen Specter D-Turncoat senator from Pennsylvania (do it fast?)

Tim Bishop D-New York 1st district (east end of Long Island)

Yes he was!

Anyone who still thinks Barack Hussein Obama wasn't born in the US making him "natural born" should go check the newspapers from August 1961 in Hawaii. A notice of his birth was listed in two different competing papers there.

Some say his birth certificate that has been released was faked and other such nonsense but it's hard to go back in time and place those notices 40-odd years after the fact just to create some sort of conspiracy.

Mythology of the Health Care Crisis

Apparently there are a few things we know that ain't so. Here are a few of them:

• Healthcare costs are soaring
• Canadian drugs are cheaper
• Socialized medicine works in some places
• Public insurance can co-exist with private insurance
• We can have health care without rationing
• Health care is a right
  

Fossilized octopus?

Scientists looking at rocks spend most of their time looking for old fossils of bony creatures like dinosaurs and fish. Bones tend to decay a lot slower so it makes sense that they would last longer based on most evolutionary theories that the bones were buried slowly over some period of time and eventually fossilized.

Now they've found a set of octopi. An octopus has no bones and decays into a slimy mass within days if it isn't eaten by scavengers. So these fossilized octopi must have been buried quickly. Why, even their suckers are visible and they look very similar to modern octopi today. Amazing.

How could this have occurred?

Check out American Solutions - Petitions

American Solutions has a petition campaign, Freedom Not Fear, to defeat the Employee "Free Choice" Act. I signed their petition and I think you should sign it too.

It would strip workers of the right to vote by private ballot when deciding to join a union, and it would undermine the right to freely negotiate contracts.

Please take a minute to sign this petition by going to www.AmericanSolutions.com/FreedomNotFear.

Antarctic Mountains

Apparently scientists are studying the ice sheet covering Antarctica. Among other things they've learned that there exists a large mountain range that rivals the Alps in height. The interesting thing to me was the following:

The mountains would probably have been ground down almost flat if the ice sheet had formed slowly. But the presence of jagged peaks might mean the ice formed quickly, burying a landscape under up to 4 km (2.5 miles) of ice.

Now, how could that have happened?

Or maybe not

As these "discoveries" tend to go, it looks like "Atlantis" may not exist where someone thought it did after all.

I smell a RAT

No, not the little critter that tends to become endangered whenever there's a cat around. I'm talking about the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. How is this stimulating the economy?

The lost city of Atlantis?

Now this is just weird. It looks like a city at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Someone was browsing on Google Ocean and found this interesting site that no one else ever saw before.

When the world (almost) came to an end

According to this September 18th, 2008 almost marked the end of the world as we knew it. But it didn't happen. Someone pointed out that it was the turnaround point from when McCain/Palin went from leading in the polls to trailing again. It makes you wonder who might be behind the events of that day.

Sea ice grew faster than ever

Why is the sea ice growing at such a rapid pace when all the "models" are predicting global warming could cause sea ice to disappear completely? Maybe the models are wrong, eh?

You can read more here for proof that sea ice is at the same level now as it was in 1979 when satellite tracking began.