Check out these pictures of the Tour de France. What sport is more beautiful that this?
Why cycling is the most beautiful sport on earth
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Monthly Archives: July 2008
Beware of Shotgun
DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and the DC Council are acting like petulant children after the Supreme Court slapped them down in the recent Heller gun case. Here’s how they are planning to allow guns in DC:
- Allowing an exception for handgun ownership for self-defense use inside the home.
- If you want to keep a handgun in your home, the MPD will have to perform ballistic testing on it before it can be legally registered.
- There will be a limit to one handgun per person for the first 90 days after the legislation becomes law.
- Firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and disassembled, and secured with either a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. The new law will allow an exception for a firearm while it is being used against an intruder in the home.
- Residents who legally register handguns in the District will not be required to have licenses to carry them inside their own homes.
Wow that’s helpful.
By the way, this is a public warning to anyone who wants to break into my home. Don’t worry. You will most likely not be shot by a handgun. I’m not very good with them. I am, however, very comfortable with a shotgun…
The Pope
Obama and Private Schools
From Andrew Coulson:
After telling a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers that he opposes school voucher programs over the weekend, Senator Obama added that: “We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.”
Senator Obama sends his own two daughters to the private “Lab School” founded by John Dewey in 1896, which charged $20,000 in tuition at the middle school level last year. Though he says “we” should not be “throwing up our hands and walking away” from public schools, he has done precisely that.
That is his right, and, as a wealthy man, it is his prerogative under the current system of American education, which allows only the wealthy to easily choose between private and government schools. But instead of offering to extend that same choice to all families, Senator Obama wants the poor to wait for the public school system to be “fixed.”
I could editorialize about this, but I really don’t see the need. Readers of this blog are perfectly capable of drawing the obvious conclusions.
The US Income Tax System is Truly Offensive
The U.S. tax system is highly progressive. The top 1 percent of income earners, by household, paid 39 percent of all federal income taxes in 2005, whereas the bottom 50 percent paid a little over 3 percent. Further, 32 percent of all tax returns filed in 2005 were from people who paid no federal income tax at all.
As someone who actually pays taxes, this is highly offensive. One of the reasons we were supposed to have a republic and not a pure democracy is because it was supposed to protect the few from the tyranny of the many. That is obviously not happening.
One Reason to be Skeptical of the Science from the Environmental Protection Agency
I’ll be posting a lot about EPA over the next four months. They recently announced plans to require Americans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors of the economy, including large houses, lawn and garden equipment, cars, trucks, ships, boats, and large cattle and beef operations (cows “emit” large amounts of methane to put it delicately).
Today I was reading through a document titled, “Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.” In plain English, this document summarizes the science they believe requires them to regulate greenhouse gases because of the damages caused by increasing temperatures. On page 11 I came across this misleading graph:
So why is this graph misleading? Because the data is at least 6 or 7 years out of date. EPA’s document is supposed to present the most recent data about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. So why do they include such out-of-date information?
I don’t know why they used out-of-date information, but I suspect they wanted to avoid an inconvenient truth–China has surpassed American greenhouse gas emissions and China’s emissions are only projected to go up.
If I were at EPA, I’d be honest and include recent information. Last month, for example, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency put out a new report on global carbon dioxide emissions in 2007. Here’s a graph from that report:
This graph is far superior to the EPA’s graph. This graph shows relative emissions from different countries ad it shows those emissions over time. It shows that America’s emissions have increased, but only slowly and that China’s emissions are rapidly increasing.
EPA argues its case to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as if it is an attorney arguing for a client. EPA only includes information that helps it make its case, instead of presenting all pertinent information. This is completely inappropriate for a regulatory agency.
Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Conference
I recently attended the Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Conference in Orlando, Florida. Look above–photographic evidence.
Congratulations Cadel Evans
I’m a fan of the Australian cyclist Cadel Evans. Is is a very soft spoken, but very good cyclist. He crashed during yesterday’s stage. You can see his ripped jersey and ripped shorts in this picture, complete with some nice road rash on his left thigh. But today, he took the Yellow Jersey in the Tour as the new race leader.
Why environmentalism as religion is not necessarily a bad thing
Freeman Dyson, one of the most respected physicists in the world, writes an interesting review of two books about the costs of global warming policies. I might write something about that later, but he writes something very insightful about environmentalism as religion. He defines environmentalism as “a religion of hope and respect for nature.” I can completely accept that. Too bad that’s not what most environmental activists are about. Here’s Dyson:
All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.
Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.
Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.