Flying in Style

Pics of a tricked out Airbus A380.

Next time I'm being told by an United Airlines employee to go fuck myself, I will try not think of these.

God Forbid...

... an organization that can't even count the number of child abusers it has in its ranks listens to what a gay homosexual has to say.

Bad Santa

Funny movie, wouldn't want to live it.

Well, now ...

Interesting:

This is the first year that Gridiron officers have dropped the off-the-record rule that had been in place for more than a century. Modest twittering is permitted, though not during the speeches or songs. At a meeting this morning, the officers explained that the change is a bow to media realities – the rule was often broken and Palin's appearance was certain to leak anyway.

Awesome

Enjoy!

Guess the Brits Were Happy about their World Cup Draw

[via SbB]

More Records Theft

Another Climate Research center has been, this time, physically broken into:

A series of repeated break-in and computer hacking attempts at a Canadian climate research institute are a sign of a "well-orchestrated campaign of harassment" against climate researchers ahead of the Copenhagen summit, several news sources report.

Employees at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, have revealed that the school's Centre for Climate Modelling has experienced at least two break-ins in recent months, as well as several attempts at hacking into the center's computer network.

[...]

Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

Once is a fluke, twice is trend, three times and you might be on to something...

[via D]

An Open Question to Climate Change Deniers

If there is no such thing a climate change, what happens to the exhaust created by burnt fossil fuels?

Until this question can be answered in a way that demonstrates the exhaust does no harm to the atmosphere, climate change deniers have no legs to stand on.

[via P]

Bonjour!!!

Nous sommes populaires en France:

The Daily Telegraph (United Kingdom) is reporting that a video meant to showcase the "joys of the French way of life " features scenes that were apparently shot in the United States.

[...]

French TV channel, Canal+, discovered that footage was bought from Getty Images , the Telegraph reports, including one image of Oshkosh schoolchildren. The video also shoes houses and families from California and U.S. states' license plates on vehicles.

Here's the video -- you don't need to know French to get the drift:

Pour son clip, l'UMP achète les vidéos d'une agence US
by zap-tele

The Chief's Person of the Year: Sarah Palin

It occurred to me this morning that there is just no getting around it: this year belonged to Sarah Palin.

I can't think of a single person who can summon a scrum of reporters by doing next to nothing. Sure, Barack Obama's life is probably more scrutinized and analyzed, but he's the President. Palin's just ... well, Sarah Palin.

And yet even with attention that most politicians would sell their mothers for, she's done nothing to further a political career. She quit a cushy job as governor of Alaska, needlessly fought with the father of her grandchild in public, alienated many supporters with a spotty record of making public appearances and threw campaign staffers overboard. None of these thing will endear her to people who could get her elected.

Her memoir and subsequent book tour were huge successes -- but the book was "self-serving and omitted several significant details," demonstrated zero command of policy, and was filled with so much score settling that it will almost certainly come back to haunt her in the future. She continues to fight with a media that she should be manipulating. Her approval numbers have plummeted. This is a person who is not taking advantage of some serious post-election media attention.

So what's next for Palin? Beats the hell out of me. Palin has clearly demonstrated that she's incapable of being a serious candidate for President, so that pretty much leaves her the "political celebrity" niche. But she's not very good at being that either (one needs more than a FaceBook and Twitter account to manage the kind of fan base she controls). Furthermore, her celebrity is intimately tied to the possibility that she could run for President. The instant that ceases to be a realistic scenario, she will stop attracting as much attention.

There are three people who absolutely love Sarah Plain: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. Much of the silliness and pettiness that comes with being President hasn't really affected Obama, and I'd posit that much of that has to do with the Sarah Palin sideshow filling much of that vacuum. In case you haven't noticed, Mitt Romney has been conspicuously quiet since last November. That's because it's best not to interrupt your opponent when she's hanging herself. Lastly, the more ridiculous that Palin appears to the public, the more Presidential Hillary Clinton seems and the more likely she is to become the Dems' heir apparent after Obama. If you want to thrown in a fourth, let it be the press. Contrary to what Palin and other conservatives think, the media loves her. She makes their lives easy and profitable.

I don't know how long the nation will have to endure Sarah Palin. It's likely that her star will lose some luster sooner or later, but this was her year. Don't be surprised if she gets the nod from Time -- it's a sure fire way to sell some magazines.

Come to Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference...

... stay for the free sex.

Birthers

Palin's one!

MORE: Best post from the Memeo thread:

Transcript via Allahpundit, who asks: "I wonder if she realized when she said this that it’s going to follow her around." Well if not, she is hardly qualified to manage a fantasy baseball team, much less the government of the United States.

MORE STILL: Dave Weigel:

Another angle here is what it reveals about Palin’s character. She has spoken and written angrily for more than a year about the people she calls “Trig Truthers,” anyone who questions whether Trig Palin is her son. The lesson she’s taken from the experience is not that conspiracy theories are out of bounds. It’s that if they are going to be conspiracy theories about her, there might as well be conspiracy theories about her political enemies.

EVEN MORE: Rod Dreher:

What she seems to be saying is, "They did it to me first, so it's fair game." Given the disgusting way she was treated by the Trig Truther trolls, Palin of all people ought to understand how immoral and insane these birther-truther conspiracies are. Yet she went right to it without a moment's hesitation in that interview.

Question of the Day

Does Widgerson really want to decide the validity of climate change based on the number of Oscar winners/nominees who believe in Global Warming?

I'll take that bet (but will still stick with what the scientists say).

Baseball < Football ?

I don't know if it's been the NFL marketing squad or a realignment of the sports world's celestial spheres, but there have been an astonishing number of compelling personal narratives in professional football this year. Here are just a few:

• Brett Favre: yadda yadda...

• Michael Vick: He may not be getting much playing time, but his redemption tour has been a model of public relations rebranding.

• Vince Young: This guy has been through more ups and downs in the last three years than just about anyone.

• Payton Manning: Still doing his thing...

• Drew Brees: On fucking fire.

• Bill Belichick: 4th down call may never stop being debated.

These are all extremely compelling personal narratives that weren't typically found in football not too long ago. Football was supposed to be the ultimate team sport, no one was allowed to take off his helmet, etc. These kinds of stories were more likely to come from baseball ...

Which begs the question: what happened during this year's baseball season? Not much. The Kevin Greinke story was nice, but that's about it...

So what does that say about the state of the two sports? I don't think it's outrageous to say that football long ago replaced baseball as America's national secular religion, but does this magnetic reversal of the personality poles signify that baseball is in the midst of a more precipitous decline?

The next Baseball Commissioner has a lot of work to do...

Conservative Calls for More Regulation!!!

That's not very conservative.

MORE: You know, the more I think about this piece, the more I say to myself, "Man, this person seems to be very knowledgable -- almost intimately aquainted -- with the 'self-banning' procedures at the Potawatomi Casino..."

It reminded me of this Onion video.

Patrick Michaels is Not Galileo

Such comparisons are absurd:

Less than 400 years ago, Galileo challenged the prevailing orthodoxies and became “the father of modern science.” Today, men like Patrick Michaels are again challenging the prevailing orthodoxies and they may just save science from politics.

Galileo used the data that he himself had collected to form a theory of motion that revolutionized the way people thought about physics, an alternative to the contemporaneously accepted theories of Aristotle. Michaels nit-picks, at best. One of the chief criticisms against "climate deniers," generally speaking, is that they lack their own raw data to back up their criticisms of the science and they offer no comprehensive alternative theories to explain related natural phenomenon. When Michaels can bring back ice core samples from Antarctica and offer an elegant alternative explanation to anthropogenic climate change, then we can start to think about calling him Galileo.

Until then he's just another guy on the Cato Institute's pay roll who runs his own PR firm.

It's far more instructive to think of the recent e-mail leak fiasco as a combination of two more recent episodes in science. The first was the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's seminal paper on genetics and the ongoing debate over whether he falsified his data. We will never have an answer to this question, no matter how much time we devote to it. We do know, however, that Mendel was on to something.

The terrestrial climate is in many regards far more complicated than the human genome largely because it's so uncooperative and difficult to manipulate or recreate in a lab. Galileo could drop objects off the Leaning Tower of Piza to his heart's content (something of an apocryphal tale, by the way), but if one wants to study precipitation he has to wait until it rains. This means unlocking the climates secrets will take thousands of people -- thousands of personalities, work ethics, personal problems, perspectives, etc.

Which leads us to the second event: the publication of James Watson's "The Double Helix," a book that should have dispelled the the image of the scientist as an ascetic devoted solely to the investigation of nature. It turns out that scientists are dicks just like the rest of us. They're competitive, envious, ego-maniacal, stubborn, jealous, prejudice, bias, and want to get ahead just like everyone else. Scientists argue like lawyers, compete like capitalists and sometimes cheat like card players -- but just because the Piltdown Man was shown to be a hoax doesn't mean Evolution is any less valid.

There are no heroes coming out of the email debacle, to be sure, but let's not mistake real persecution for professional ostracization. Galileo was willing to suffer house arrest for the last eight years of his life for his beliefs. No such fate awaits Michaels, who has made a tidy fortune selling his "expertise." The ancient Greeks had a word for these folks: sophists.

Oshkosh Mayor Heroically Defends his Monopolization of Tavern Jukebox with Fisticuffs!!!

Sources say no Moody Blues tunes were preempted during the incident.

Paranoid Whackjob of the Day

I really can't even decipher what this guy's saying, but since he seems to think he's the only one who has uncovered the awful truth about Obama's Af-Pak plans, he wins.

Good News for the Pack

From Brian Burke:

Overall, the Packers have a 77% chance of making the playoffs. They have games remaining against the Ravens, Bears, Steelers, Seahawks, and Cardinals. If they can get to 11 or 12 wins, they will almost certainly get a playoff spot. They can afford to lose 2 more games and still be very competitive for the wild card at 10-6. If both of those losses happen outside the conference, they have a better than 99% chance of making the playoffs. If they lose one conference game and one out-of-conference game, their odds drop to 96%. If both losses happen in the conference, their odds are about 90%. Three losses to finish 9-7 would drop their odds to 55%.

It's entirely possible for the Pack to go 2-3 the rest of the season with losses to the Raven, Steelers and Cards, so ... we'll see.

Dennis McHugh to Retire from the Council

The move was not unexpected and leaves us with way too much to talk about given McHugh's lengthy involvement in city government over the years.

Love him or hate, and chances are you didn't have a moderate opinion about the man, McHugh represented a very real segment of the city, one that often feels left behind by many of the decisions that are made by city government. I disagreed with many of his calls during his tenure, but could not deny they were coming from a sincere place.

I'm sure there will come a time to discuss his track record in greater detail, but for the moment I think it's best to note that McHugh's eloquent and moving defense of his support to fund the Grand Opera House restoration this summer is as pleasant a public service swan song as one could ask for.

Monte's Out

I literally just pushed "publish" when ONW refreshed it's news ticker with the news...

Let the shit show begin!

OASD Cat Fight

Before we get rolling on what may prove to be the local controversy of the holiday season -- let me just explain from where I'm coming with this:

First, I believe that local elected officials are under paid. For the expertise and time commitment we ask of city council and school board members we should be providing them with more compensation. It's currently little more than a stipend, a tip from the voters. If the voters don't like they way you work, they won't rehire you. The end.

Second, I have no expectation that local office holders win perfect attendance ribbons at the end of their terms. Many, if not most, issues that come before the council/board are routine matters that pass on unanimous votes without much debate. They do not require the attention of the full body.

More importantly, I can't begin to count the number of incredibly qualified people who should be holding office, but aren't, because of the time commitment. In my experience, it actually out paces "putting up with all the bullshit" for the number one reason why good people don't get involved in public life. Please, stay home with your kid if he gets sick or take that two week vacation in Hawaii. You deserve it. I genuinely don't care if you can't make every meeting.

I'm extremely lax about this and I'd wager that most people probably don't mind if someone skips a meeting or two either unless someone tells them that they should care.

The problem that Teresa Theil has with Monte's recent string of absences has less to do with compensation then it does with a broken promise and a personal grudge. When Monte brought up Theil's voting record in 2007 she was telling voters to care about attendance. Now that argument she made against Theil is coming back to haunt her. This is not the first time an argument made by Monte has boomeranged back against her (and I imagine if I cared enough to look further I could come up with more examples).

I get the impression that Monte's jab at Theil's voting abstentions was initially less about Theil's track record on the board than it was a means to highlight and use her occasional conflict of interest against her. When Theil informed her that her conflicts weren't really all that conflicting, Monte was forced to roll with it or back down and she chose the former. Obviously, Theil believes Monte's point was invalid, a circumstance that was likely made all the more irritating by Monte's refusal to acknowledge Theil's evidence to the contrary. If I were Theil, I'd be pretty pissed off too.

Was Theil's post mostly about a personal grudge? I'd say so. One can also accuse it of being petty, trite and a million other things, but that's what local politics is all about, folks -- in the grand scheme of things all we're working with are nickles, dimes and the feelings of our neighbors. When you create enemies at the local level, they tend to stick around for a very long time.

Be that as it may, Theil also has a valid concern about a public official. So far as I can tell she's the first person to point out that Monte hasn't been to a meeting for the last two consecutive months. I'm as lax as it comes to council/board attendance and even that made me raise an eyebrow.

Which brings us to the last aspect of this curious case: the lack of explanation. This is Accountability 101. So far as I'm concerned, if Monte doesn't show up for another board meeting ever again she's still entitled to collect her check from the OASD for the rest of her term (unless voters recalled her, of course). The money's not the important thing here -- it's about keeping up appearances. If voters can't rely on someone to explain his or her whereabouts, how are we able to trust them with the hard decisions the school board faces?

The Chief's SAT Word of the Day

Skank Agent

Cue the Shit Show

Yikes.

We'll try to say some more on this later today.

[via EoO]