North Coast Online

The Sky Is Falling

Speaking of global-warming alarmism.

An interesting interview with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."  If we follow Gore's advice on climate change, how will the future judge us?:

So if we stand back, as Al Gore asks us to do, and look at it from the coming generation's point of view, they are going to ask "what were they thinking?' They tried to do a tiny little bit about climate change at a fairly high cost, but have done very little good, whereas there are many other problems that they could have tackled that would have left a much better world behind.

Put differently, they pursued their emotional passions at the expense of real improvements.

In other words, do we want to make things better or do we want to punish people.

Not So Bad, Is It?

Is the human condition as bad as we're led to believe?  Jonathan Pearce doesn't think so and cites Alistair Heath.

For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology.

If you believe that such apparently outlandish claims cannot possibly be true, think again. In a book which will trigger intense controversy when it is published later this month, the acclaimed American economist Indur Goklany, former US delegate to the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change, demonstrates that on every objective measure of the human condition - be it life expectancy, food availability, access to clean water, infant mortality, literacy rates or child labour - well-being and quality of life are improving around the world.

A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, published by the Cato Institute, reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious.

And despite made-up worries over income "distribution" (income isn't distributed, it's earned) in the U.S., we are objectively better off now than at any time in our history.  Even the great, supposedly-disappearing American middle class is worrying much more this Christmas season about whether to buy a 52" flat-screen TV or vacation in Cabo San Lucas than they're wondering how the mortgage payment will be made.

I wonder sometimes if the increasingly desperate appeals to worry about climate change aren't a result of the far left's tardy realization that we are able to meet the world's material needs. But there must be something, after all, that will convince us to renounce our capitalist ways and return to the ideal of sacrifice and shared misery that so many inexplicably revere.

In Defense Of Thanksgiving

Wow! Ross Runfola really hates Thanksgiving.

There is a hypocrisy re-enacting a mythical friendship that resulted in genocide as reprehensible as the Holocaust of World War II. There is general consensus among demographers that between 9 million and 12 million Native Americans were in North America when the Pilgrims came. By the beginning of the 20th century, mass extermination through starvation, forced marches out of their land, intentional exposure to smallpox, military battles, incarceration and attempted enslavement left only approximately 332,400 indigenous people alive

He goes on to label Christopher Columbus a terrorist, does a quick riff on degrading Indian mascots and still finds space to rue the "capital punishment" of 45 million turkeys which we shouldn't be eating anyway because we're not sensible and skinny vegetarians like, um, him.

Now, I don't know about your family but mine spent a truly enjoyable Thanksgiving and didn't even think of Indians for one second let alone re-enact scenes from Plymouth Colony.  But I suspect the good Mr. Runfola would consider our lack of concern that day for the plight of America's indigenous peoples as just one more sad symptom of the thoughtless hedonism that  has "become part of the American fabric while people in Third World nations like Darfur starve."

Well, we didn't cause the people of Darfur to starve any more than we caused the people of India and China to prosper.  In fact, we could send Darfur all 45 million of those murdered turkeys and next year this time its people would still be starving.  We needn't feel any more guilty about that than we should over the actions of our ancestors towards the Indians.

Ugly as those actions were by today's standards, they're done with and we had nothing to do with it.  And renouncing Thanksgiving won't change a thing -- even symbolically.

So let the five year olds dress up like Pilgrims and Indians and act out the mythical Thanksgiving.  There will be plenty of time for them to learn the ugly truth of history when they're older.  In the meantime let's think of the day as an allegory for how people should behave towards each other.  It's a worthwhile lesson.  And, yes, I'm perfectly content that they believe in Santa Claus for a while, too.

And next year, please, consider having a few slices of turkey yourself.  It tends to make you sleepy and it  sure sounds as if you could use a good, relaxing snooze.   

Your Check's In The Mail And Other Lies

Recycling is bullshit.

Use those blue totes to store your old college textbooks and, um, watch the whole thing.

PartiallyClips

I've been remiss lately in not passing along the latest creations of one of my favorite comic strips, PartiallyClips (click on the image to enlarge.)

Always good stuff, but definitely not for the ironically-challenged.  Doonesbury fans, for example, will probably scratch their heads.

Internet Explorer 7 Update

Dissecting Leftism hears from a reader who had much the same experience I did after downloading IE7.

After being prompted by my computer to download and install the latest Windows update, it asked me to also upgrade my browser to IE7 (I was using IE6).I like to use IE most of the time because I run so many websites, and I like to see them through the same viewer as the majority of the population. So I decided to go ahead and update IE. After it finished, I was no longer able to launch an IE browser. In fact, any time I attempted to, it froze my entire computer. I even tried right clicking the IE icon on my desktop, so I could check on the settings and THAT made my computer freeze too. At first I thought it killed my internet connection, but fortunately I was able to connect using Mozila FireFox so I could do a quick search. What I discovered was that hundreds (probably thousands) of people have posted similar problems in the past week, meaning it is likely affecting MILLIONS of people. I simply did a Windows System Restore to yesterday's restore point, and all is good again. If you haven't updated to IE7 yet, I would suggest waiting for a few months and making sure the general word on the street is a "go" before trying it.

Yes! I inexplicably forgot to mention that after downloading IE7, my computer, upon rebooting, would bring up Windows XP with nothing but the landscape:  no icons and no menus.  I, too, had to reboot in "safe mode" and specify "last known safe settings."  That did take care of the problem, but I'm not so sure that the majority of Windows users would know to try it.

I was perilously close to losing everything and reinstalling the original software disk.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

A Pox On Your House

Rachel's disgusted, so am I.

I'm disgusted with the American people, who allow themselves to be swayed by idiotic comparisons such as the fact that we've been in Iraq for as long as we fought World War II. We lost more than 400,000 men in World War II, and fewer than 3,000 in the present war. But you would have those men and women die in vain. You would desert the Iraqi people the same way we deserted the South Vietnamese. You think that any loss of American prestige that would come about as a result of a pullout is a minor detail, as if American prestige is some kind of international keeping up with the Joneses.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to the ChicagoBoyz.

Ah-Choo, No, Cough

Worried about the dropping American dollar?  The Euro is supreme and the Yen's nothing to sneeze at.  China's cleaning our economic clock.  Should we be terribly concerned?

Do You Have An Accent?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
The South
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

That's about right, I have no accent.  How about you (you's?)

1929 All Over Again

If you graduated from high school since 1980, you may not have heard of Smoot-Hawley.  If you're not familiar with it please follow the link and study up.  Its passage was the cause of the Great Depression.  We're too close to repeating history.