I’m not a fan or 99% of bumper stickers. And now I know why. Drivers with bumper stickers on their cars are more likely to be aggressive drivers. From the Washington Post:

Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.

That’s the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other “territorial markers” not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express rage — by honking, tailgating and other aggressive behavior.

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love — “Visualize World Peace,” “My Kid Is an Honor Student” — or angry and in your face — “Don’t Mess With Texas,” “My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.”

…

Szlemko and his colleagues at Fort Collins found that people who personalize their cars acknowledge that they are aggressive drivers, but usually do not realize that they are reporting much higher levels of aggression than people whose cars do not have visible markers on their vehicles.

Drivers who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, Szlemko and his colleagues concluded in a paper they recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don’t act out their anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.

“The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked,” Szlemko said. “Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver.”

The article says that this is surprising. I disagree. How angry does someone have to be to keep a Kerry-Edwards sticker on your car until 2008? That’s pretty obvious.

By the way, bumper stickers are something white people like.

David Brooks in the NY Times reports, “Households with incomes under $13,000 spend, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income.

The Pussy Cat Dolls are on tonight’s So You Think You Can Dance. What’s ridiculous is that each of the Dolls have a microphone. Really? Really? Really? Microphones?

Why even pretend? The odds of them “singing” while dancing are lower than me making it So You Think You Can Dance. But, the fact that each of the Dolls is fake singing is fall-down funny.

Guy 1: So you went to gladiator school huh?

Guy 2 (a small, weasely-looking guy): Yeah.

I have no Guy 1 really asked if Guy 2 went to “gladiator school,” that’s what it sounded like.

There has been no global warming for 6-7 years. How do I know this? Because I actually look at data.  For example here is a graph of temperature anomalies from 1979 to today as measured at surface stations around the world by the Hadley Center in the UK. But surface stations aren’t always the most accurate. So  here’s a graph from a satellite that measures temperature in the lower atmosphere.

If you look at these graphs you see that temperatures haven’t increased the last few years and that so far, 2008 is a cool year. How cool? According to the National Climactic Data Center, it’s the 36th coldest spring on record. In other words, it’s colder than average.

Yet, what do the global warming alarmists say? You guessed it–global warming is causing the tornadoes this year. You can’t make this stuff up. The Center for American Progress Action Fund says:

The evidence for the consequences of global warming is appearing with alarming frequency. This morning’s headlines are filled with tales of deadly weather: “At least four people were killed and about 40 injured when a tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa on Wednesday night”; ; “two people are dead in northern Kansas after tornadoes cut a diagonal path across the state”; “[t]wo Maryland men with heart conditions died this week” from the East Coast heat wave.

…

GLOBAL BOILING: This tragic, deadly, and destructive weather — not to mention the droughts in Georgia, California, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, North Dakota, and elsewhere across the country — are consistent with the changes scientists predicted would come with global warming.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Cooler than normal weather is not “consistent with the changes scientists predicts would come with global warming.” To be consistent with global warming, the first thing you need is warming not cooling.

If people like the Center for American Progress Action Fund cared about science or honesty, they would do some research and look at actual data as opposed to saying that global warming is causing whatever weather event is happening at any given time.

If the Center for American Progress Action Fund were curious, they would discover that tornadoes are typical of times when there is a La Nina, like there has been this spring. It’s not consistent with a warming.

But all this doesn’t matter to global warming alarmists like the Center for American Progress Action fund. Trusth doesn’t matter. Science doesn’t matter. Common sense doesn’t matter. All that matters is the almighty dollar which comes from fundraising.

Today I was standing on the street, looking at a small fire that burned part of the outside of the Heritage Foundation’s building and I talked to a homeless guy who was hanging around. His name is Peter Bis and this is his blog. Strange stuff.

Foreign Policy reports on the top tourist spots Americans can’t visit.