Balafon

People with more time on their hands than me have been poring over the source code in the leaked CRU files. Here is a snippet of IDL code that produces a graph showing temperature data for the twentieth century (osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro):

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8, 1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)


That long string of numbers with some negative values in the middle and positive values at the end? Those numbers are multiplied by the real temperatures to hide a warm period in the 1940s, and exaggerate the temperatures at the end of the century.

This is scientific fraud, pure and simple.

Herodotus was right. A team of archeologists has discovered Achaemenid artifacts and human remains near the oasis of Siwa, leading them to believe they have discovered the lost army of Cambyses:

It was a rock about 114.8 feet long, 5.9 feet in height and 9.8 feet deep. Such natural formations occur in the desert, but this large rock was the only one in a large area.

“Its size and shape made it the perfect refuge in a sandstorm,” Castiglioni said.

Right there, the metal detector of Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat of Cairo University located relics of ancient warfare: a bronze dagger and several arrow tips.

“We are talking of small items, but they are extremely important as they are the first Achaemenid objects, thus dating to Cambyses’ time, which have emerged from the desert sands in a location quite close to Siwa,” Castiglioni said.

About a quarter-mile from the natural shelter, the Castiglioni team found a silver bracelet, an earring and few spheres which were likely part of a necklace.

“An analysis of the earring, based on photographs, indicate that it certainly dates to the Achaemenid period. Both the earring and the spheres appear to be made of silver. Indeed a very similar earring, dating to the fifth century B.C., has been found in a dig in Turkey,” Andrea Cagnetti, a leading expert of ancient jewelry, told Discovery News.

Demonstrates that ancient writers might have known what they were talking about.

The Averter of Evil, the Mouse-Catcher, the Delphinian, the Radiant God, the Watcher of the Heavens, graciously answered his priestess’s prayer and granted his gift of divine fire today to the nation of Canada.

He had withheld his favour from the past three Winter Olympics, so Canadians should feel especially εὐδαιμονίαι.

Turns out there’s still at least one religion whose priests can sodomize children and be excused and even applauded.

The religion I speak of is, of course, Progressivism, whose self-appointed high priests are the glitterati of Hollywood. Roman Polanski, a genius at film directing, admitted to drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, and then fled the country. Now his extradition to the US is being protested by a large number of hollywood celebrities. (Thankfully there are some, both celebrities and non, who are rightly appalled by this.)

It’s a little ironic, don’t you think, that in this day and age a high-status male can sexually assault a child and be excused and applauded. How very . . . patriarchal.

Camile Paglia has some trenchant words for her fellow Democrats:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

She doesn’t spare the GOP, either.

If I were American I’d probably join the Modern Whig party.