Agnostic As To The Cause

Pic of the day, part i:  Great Fire of Salem, by Andreas Brugger

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One day I feel I’m on top of the world
And the next it’s falling in on me
I can get back on — I can get back on
One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel,
And the next it’s rolling over me

Neil Peart, Far Cry

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Acta is dead.  None of the 8 signatories to the document have actually ratified the damned thing, and now the European Union has voted it down.

Good.

The main point of the treaty is to protect the rights of people who create music and content is laudable.  Great. The treaty itself was a travesty though, it was a major threat to everyone’s ability to live and work on the internet, and its death in the EU happily makes the whole thing disappear…

Or does it?

I don’t trust these bastards, just because the billionaires who wanted to throttle our internet in the name of poor bedraggled artists have been beaten here does not mean they are done.  Therefore we can’t think of this as over.  They will try again, and again we will have to stand our ground and keep them from getting their billionaire mitts on our rights and our internet.    Just because ACTA is happily dead does not mean they won’t try to get something different yet doing much the same thing past us.

We gotta keep on our toes.

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Climate change is kicking my ass right now.  It hit 100 degrees here today.  It has been an average of 8 degrees above normal for the past week, and it did the same thing from the 20th to the 23rd or so last month.  Happily it gave us a few days respite at the tail end of June.  Happily, the weather is supposed to finally break after tomorrow does the same thing to us yet again.

Right now we are sitting at the average high temperature we normally get around here this time of year.  And just an FYI.  It’s after 11 pm.

Do I know this is climate change rearing it’s ugly head?  No I don’t, but I’ll tell ya this much; if it is and I find out about it,  screw this crap I’m moving to northern Canada.

I’m agnostic as to the cause, as to why it’s happening.  Fact is, it’s happening.  I don’t give a crap whether it was the goddamn squirrels who broke the sky.  If we can change it by doing things differently on our end, then dammit let’s get cracking.  I don’t wanna leave a planet beaten half to death due to our lack of effort for our kids to suffer and burn to death on.  Don’t doom other people’s kids to flaming death because you don’t think humans broke the sky, K?

All you climate change denying prick bastards can all kiss my sweaty ass because it’s too fucking hot out all the damn time.

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I got paid.

I finally have a few dollars in my pocket.  Feels good to be able to say that.   Money doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket, I’m not a big spender.  The reason I had no money was because bills ate the money we had, and I didn’t work for two weeks, so I had no money coming in.  That combination bled my wife and I white.

Now that I have money, the last thing I want to do is spend it.  If I spend it, I won’t have it any more, and I’ll be in the same hole again.  Better to not spend.  Money is like supplies you have for a rainy day.  You don’t use it just because you have it.  Storing it, put it away for when you need it is the right way to do it.

I won’t trade tomorrow for today.

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Pic of the day, part ii: The Fire, by Guiseppe Archimboldo (1566)

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We are secrets to each other
Each one’s life a novel no one else has read
Even joined in bonds of love
We’re linked to one another by such slender threads

Neil Peart, Entre Nous

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

July Random Thoughts

Once a month or so, I clear out some of the pages and place them here on the blog to make room for fresh content on those pages.  This article contains all the content from the “Random Thoughts” page from the month of July.  Enjoy!

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Found an old blog that I haven’t used since I started writing here.  Shouldn’t say found, more like re-discovered.  I’ve posted there twice, It is going to be for all the stuff I am not sure I want to say here. I won’t give the URL here just yet though, I want to make sure I am happy with what I am writing there, make sure it isn’t pure unadulterated crap before I start planting links to it here.  I’ve begun writing fiction there, and I am not sure I like it. (7/1)

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Anagram: June Random Thoughts / John mugs donut hater. 

I like my anagrams, and any anagram that involves a mugging is alright by me.  :-)  (7/1)

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I am pushing back, for a few hours, my job hunting so I can get some food shopping done.  Cats need food, and the wife and I need a few things.  Seeing how the only calls I get are from debt collectors, I don’t think waiting at the phone for a call that will not come makes much sense.  And I can send resumes whenever, it being Friday, and the calls I have to make, I have to make before 5 pm, so I have a few hours to play with, it being quarter after eleven in the morning now.  (7/2)

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Happy Independence day!  Show some Independent thought today dammit, that’s what freedom is all about!  And also…don’t go blow your arm off celebrating, that would suck.  Don’t go blowing shit up unless you have a degree in blowshitupology or sumthin!!      (7/4)

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Anagram: Patriotic American/ Top Maniac Criteria (7/4)

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It’s 98 degrees On Staten Island right now, at 2 pm, and it’s expected to go up to 100 tomorrow.  Both numbers either tie or exceed record temperatures.  Both are 15 degrees above normal, and those kind of numbers were around yesterday and the day before and the heat wave is expected to last until at least Wednesday.  Ooof.  I wonder how much the people who were laughing at global warming because it snowed in winter, not because it was actually colder than normal (it wasn’t), are laughing now.  Just curious.  (7/5)

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Ron Paul and Barney Frank are calling for cuts in Military spending!  YAY!   We are the world’s policeman, and we have been since before I was born.  The military industrial complex runs the Pentagon, and has it’s claws deep in the White House and the rest of the civilian government.  With all the talk of cutting wasteful government spending. it makes sense to cut the pentagon’s budget, the military’s budget, especially if we want to fight terrorism and not break the bank.  How many nuclear subs do we need to fight terrorists? How many nuclear armed carriers? (7/6)

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For those who pay attention to these things, I added a widget to the sidebar here on The Rhino Report, it’s for a thing called socialvibe, and it helps raise money for a variety of different charities, and the one I chose is the leukemia and lymphoma society.  I know all you rhino heads out there are more than willing to click and help people in need, and if you could find it in your heart to donate, well, that would be about the best thing you could do for these kind people.  Any help is greatly appreciated. (7/7)

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I really don’t care where Lebron James and his really annoying pre-game show are going to go….

That said (this subject being on everyone lips today, I have to write a lil bit about it), why the hell would he go to a shit organization like the Knicks?  He wants to WIN, and the Knicks haven’t had a winning season since 2000-2001.  Hell, even I, Mister Optimistic sports fan, who roots for the New York Rangers, and has hope they’ll go deep into the Playoffs, EVERY YEAR, despite the fact that that douchebag Dolan and that shithead Sather keep scuttling the teams chances by simple Being attached to the organization, gave up on the New York Bricks, years ago.  No way Lebron goes to the Knicks.

He’s sticking with the Cavs.  That’s my bullshit story and I’m sticking to it.  (7/8)

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Anagram:  LeBron James/ Men Jab Loser (7/8)

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Ya, know, the more I read about Sharron Angle, the more I think she is Bozo the Clown.  A slush fund, Mrs. Angle, are you serious? I especially like when she says “the caller and I should not have used the term slush fund, that was incorrect”.  Like the caller made her use the term.  He used it, yes, she could have used a different one, but she didn’t. 

She thinks money put aside for those hurt by the disaster in the gulf is a slush fund. We all know what a slush fund is, right? The textbook definition of a slush fund is:  A fund raised by a group for corrupt practices, such as bribery or graft. So, Mrs Angle, the $20,000,000,000 put aside to pay for the damage done by biggest environmental disaster in human history is a slush fund?  Paying for what you have done is corrupt, Mrs Angle? Is that Bribery, Mrs. Angle?, or Graft, Mrs. Angle?  Really?

This is the same clown who called for the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. And she backtracked on that, too. 

Honk your nose for us, Bozo! (7/9)

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Anagram: Responsible Thinking / Bleeping Rhino Stinks (7/10)

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After a few days writing articles here, and roaming the wild green yonder, and looking for work, I am a wee bit tired.  The job thing still is not working out, but I am only just beginning to send in applications for writing jobs.  I’ve sent in one for a sports writing job, one for a blogging gig on Examiner, and one for a temporary research assistant over at media matters.  The Media matters job looks pretty good, but it might be tough, because they would want me in office there once a week, and their offices are in Washington D.C.  I think I can handle it though. (7/16)

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Bosradio.com.  Hang with Das Rhino.  Tis  a good place with good people and good music.  (7/19)

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My wife just won a contest from XM/Sirius.  We have been invited to the Hard rock Cafe on Wednesday at noon to hang out with, among other people, Maurice Jones-Drew and Jeremy Roenick.  Nice!  Gonna go call Roenick a shithead.  ROFL!  (7/19)

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Never went to the thing at the hard rock.  Ah well.  I was looking forward to annoying Jeremy Roenick.    (7/20)

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Anagram:  Andrew Breitbart/ write barbed rant / A bent drab writer/ retard want bribe/ ten rabbit reward (7/21)

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It is only a matter of time before I get a job.  I have been sending in, on average 3 resumes a day, and making phone calls when the opportunity avails itself.  I am using the department of labor resources available to me, and every other source I can get my mits on.  The only real problem is that there really isn’t all that damned much out there that I am qualified for.  My old job, copy machine operator, seems as a class, to have almost completely dried up.  There just isn’t any more copy work out there.  I still put in for it when and where I can.  I’m pushing hard, and I am optimistic, long term, but there just isn’t a lot out there right now. (7/22)

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There is a lyric in the song  Territorial pissings : “Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you“   Odd lyric, but it feels at least somewhat fitting today.  I just got a letter from the department of labor in New york saying that my former employer Sotheby’s was challenging my claim for unemployment, due to the fact that I never worked there. 

Curious… I have vivid memories of being at Sotheby’s, at 1334 York Avenue, filing out paperwork, including a w-4, working for several months, and getting paid for it.  I have the pay stubs to prove it.  The NYSDOL asked for copies of pay stubs, so I sent them 4 of the nine I could immediately find, (the other 4 are around here somewhere) one from each month I worked there.  Let them argue with the paystubs. (7/24)

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Been going through my old baseball card collection, to see what I can sell and just what the going price on some of the cards I have is.  I was pleasantly surprised by a few, and saw price drops from the prices I paid 20 years ago on others.  Best?  My 1959 Ernie Banks has more than doubled in value, and I paid $60 when I got it.  I have a fair number of cards that are worth over $50, some as high as $125 -$150.   The Jerry Rice rookie cards are worth a fair bit, as is the 1964 Hank Aaron.  Nice. 

Selling them all.  Want something? Drop me a line! (7/25)

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Sent in 9 resumes so far today.  That is pretty damn good!  I haven’t found that many potential job openings, that many job opportunities in one day in a very long time.  Been sending resumes for 3 solid hours.  Lately the trail for job leads goes cold after about 3 sends, which takes about an hour to dig up and find.  Not finished yet either.  Will run when done.  Nice.  I love feeling like I’m doing something to move myself forward.  Feels good.  (7/26)

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I’ve sent in 3 or four resumes since i wrote that last bit on Monday.  Not because i haven’t been trying to find work though, I just haven’t seen all that much out there since Monday. But I have contacted xerox, a place I used to work at, and dropped a resume on Kelly services.  Maybe getting a staffing agency involved will help.  It hasn’t before, but that doesn’t mean it won’t this time. (7/28)

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Anagram: Tea Party Patriots/Tasty Ape Portrait (7/28)

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Anagram:  Copy Operator/ Or A Poetry Cop/ YO Trap Cooper/Poor Actor? Yep. / Coy Rapper, Too/ A rectory poop  (7/29)

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful….

I’m agnostic as to the causes. All I know is there is water where there once was ice.

Admiral Thad Allen, March 2010

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I went out to the bank about an little while ago. The bank is all of four blocks away.  I went to put a check in the bank, and since I knew the bank was closed, I filled out a deposit slip before I walked out the door.  I walked out of the door, and was hit with a wall of heat.  I almost forgot what I went out for when I hit that wall of heat.  It hit me hard enough where I honestly, for just half a second, actually questioned why I was leaving the house.

Now that may have had just as much to do with the comfort level that I had when I was in the house as it did with the heat outside.  Or that was the thought I had when I regained my senses a second or two later.  The walk to the bank was uneventful, traffic volume was lower than normal, with the twin factors of temperature and the fact that it is the Monday after the 4th of July, and a holiday at that. 

There is a time/temperature clock outside the bank that I go to.  A short aside about the clock itself.  It used to be a great clock/thermometer.  It made it’s own temperature up for years.  It would be 80 degrees out, but the clock decided that it was  -70 degrees.  It would be colder than hell out, with a foot of snow on the ground, under 20 degrees out, and the temperatures on that thermometer would soar all the way up to 60 degrees.  I tell you it had a sense of humor, but they had someone come and fix the clock, and took the soul right out of the thing.

Like I started to write, there is a T/T clock outside the bank.  The clock said 3:07.  That’s cool, the clock actually works, whoop dee freakin doo and other such statements.  Then it showed the temperature in Celsius.  39 degrees.  Hmmm…. I know it’s hot, and I know that is very hot, but I’m not sure how hot that is in Fahrenheit. I know it’s hotter than hell, but I want to know how much hotter than hell it is, and I’m curious.  The temp turns from Celsius to Fahrenheit. 

103 degrees. 

Holy Crap.  That breaks the record temperature by at least 5 degrees, to my knowledge.  It’s 18 degrees above the average temperature for this time of year.  It’s the third day in a row of temps over 90 degrees, and there are 2 more days of this ahead, from what I am hearing.

I’m wondering where all the global warming deniers that populated the east coast a scant few months ago, when we had a ton of snow during the wettest (but not the coldest) winter in recent memory.  Have you heard from them?

Seems mighty quiet on their end, doesn’t it?

More in a second, enjoy a few links and a viddy before I revisit global warming.

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Monday’s melted links;

Weather around the world

Blistering heat expected in northeast

Heat wave on eastern seaboard; Warnings for New York, Philadelphia, Washington

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Viddy of the day:  How to run in hot weather from the people at howcast.  Step one, find hot weather.  Step two, run.  Call me crazy, but that’s how I do it. They over-complicate the issue… seriously, what is this safety crap anyway? 

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The human mind is a wanton storyteller and even more, a profligate seeker after pattern. We see faces in clouds and tortillas, fortunes in tea leaves and planetary movements. It is quite difficult to prove a real pattern as distinct from a superficial illusion.

Richard Dawkins;  A Devils’s Chaplain

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Global warming:  I see it, feel its effects, or I think I do.  Not everyone thinks that way, feels that way, or they don’t want to. I’m not entirely interested in that right now though.  I am interested in why people talk the way they do about it.  One would presume if people had a hair more of their wits about them on this subject, they would be able to speak with some greater level of moderation about it.

But they feel like they have skin in the game, anyone who argues on this subject with any level of passion does.  And because views on global warming are linked to both political and world views, on both sides of the argument, that are antithetical to proper thought on the subject it, ego obscures reality, obscures everything else but their singular personal world view on this (and a great many other) subject(s).  We can’t make a rational judgment about the subject if we feel like we can lose something by allowing rational thought into the discussion which clashes with our own ideas.  It turns what should be a somewhat impersonal and scientific discussion on the possibility of the effect that humans have on nature and what to do to prevent damage if necessary, into a personal argument, where the winner isn’t the one with the strongest arguments, but the one with the loudest voice.

That isn’t rational intelligent adult conversation.  That is an over-sized hissy fit, more in line with nine year olds in a playground than actual adults.

Both sides have what they call “facts”, and what the other side calls “fictions” and outright ”lies”  No one is willing to even admit that their view of reality is capable of being wrong, that something that they want to be true could possibly be incorrect.

I am willing to say that I may be wrong on this subject.  I am more than willing to say that I can fail to get the facts straight.  Are you? Can you be that adult about it? It will take intelligent adult thought, and intelligent adult action, regardless of the truth of the science here, for or against, to get to the bottom of this, and make it stick where both sides of this argument can live with it.

If that is even possible.  So let’s start with a basic argument.  No temperature in any one place can be used to argue either for or against global climate change, for one basic and simple reason.  It’s the first word in the statement.  GLOBAL. One cannot, and should not use merely local phenomena to discount, or recognize as fact, anything global in scope.  And the reason is simple, and with it a concrete example of why it doesn’t work. 

If you argue that it snowed a lot last winter here in America, claiming that is a convincing argument against global warming,  I can argue the unseasonably warm temperatures in Australia last summer, or here this summer for it.  All we both are doing there is making nonsense, not points, because they are both local phenomena.  If we look at temperatures everywhere, for years on end, and we have well over 100 years worth of data to look at, the average temperature looked at on a year by year basis will tell you more about how the entire globe is being impacted than one season on one part of one continent or in one city will.

Now the argument as to who, if anyone, is responsible is a huge undertaking, one that I will not attempt here. Perhaps another time. 

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That’s it from here America, turn on your air conditioners and relax.

Anagram: All The Wrong Things/ Hallowing Strength

               I am an idiot. there is no way around it.  My name is Mike, and when In doubt, I am wrong.  That’s OK, mind you.  You are exactly the same as me, just as wrong.  The difference between me and you is that I admit the truth, and you do not. 

       What brought this on, you ask? 

 I am, as you know, a fairly political individual, something of the exciteable boy sometimes, and those two don’t always mesh well.  It happened today that I was responding to a story in digg about Sarah Palin, and how she doesn’t believe in the effects of Man made carbon dioxide on the planet…aka she’s a global warming denier.  This gets me set off right away.  To my mind, global warming is a fact.  Then I see people posting about how it’s great that we have someone in the spotlight who has their head screwed on straight, something like that.  This REALLY sets me off.  I go through the whole thing about the ozone layer being eaten away because of carbon based emissions, and how there’s 5,000,000,000 metric tons of crap tossed in the sky annually, and a few years ago it was 6,000,000,000…..

     For those of you who know what’s going on you see where I went wrong.  For those who don’t let me show you.  “ozone layer being eaten away because of carbon based emissions”  This statement is patently false.  It is CFC’S that do that.  Got burnt pretty good for it too.  Deservedly so.  I mentioned science.  I mentioned facts.  Then I went and in my opening statement, got them wrong.  I still think I am right about global warming, but it made me rethink exactly what do I know about the subject.  One of the things thrown at me, and I can neither confirm nor deny the truth of this statement, I don’t own a scale that large, was that the Atmosphere weighs something like 5,700,000,000,000,000 metric tons.  That is over 100 times the annual amount of Co2 created, and Forests, dwindling though they are, still manage to eat a few billion metric tons of the stuff.   

     Again, I still believe in global warming, but now I know there are things I don’t know, due to my own ignorance.  There were other things.  Talk of water vapor and it’s effect, and how it makes up 95% of the atmosphere and it is discounted by scientists who do research on global warming.  This leaves me with a dearth of facts and a bunch of questions.  Questions I want answered.  Those questions are.

      1) What effect does water vapor and forests “eating” (for lack of a better term)Co2 have on Man made carbon based emissions?  Where do i go to find out if this is even a valid question?

     2) Is that number correct, that atmospheric weight number, that 5.7 quadrillion tons, and what effect does that have on Co2 and it’s effect, man made or otherwise, and it’s effect on global warming (or even cooling)

     3) What are the most pertinent facts that I need to know about this entire environmental question? About how best to treat the earth? Because that is, I think, the most fundamental question here, how do we best take care of the earth?

       It seems that when the air in my city is brown, that there is something wrong.  Pollution, ozone depletion, greenhouse gases which are made of the things that turn my city air brown, Melting Ice caps, which i have been led to believe is caused by the same things that make my city air visible to the naked eye, all these things seem tied together.

      Am I wrong? I do not know everything, and I can’t, but I would like to know as much as I can. 

    If you have any facts, any thoughts, anything at all to share on this subject, please, wipe the cobwebs from my eyes, so that I may see the truth in this matter.   

     Two videos for you before I go, First up, Al gore on Global warming:   

     

       The Second, a refutation of Global Warming:

      

       Perhaps I am too small a mind to know the truth, but I would like to have all the relevant facts at hand so that I CAN know. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

That’s it for me.  Later.

Today’s Nuggets: There’s a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know — except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics,” said D. James Baker, administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as nature’s.   Joby Warrick

The European Union and environmental advocacy groups use global warming hysteria to advance their own special agendas. The European Union recognizes any significant reduction in CO2 emissions by the United States will significantly reduce its economic output, thereby bringing it closer to the inferior output of European nations. Environmental advocacy groups work to stifle economic and industrial progress wherever they find it to inhibit the successful advancement of peoples in developing nations, inevitably making mankind a second class citizen of planet Earth.  Dr. Jay Lehr