Medary.com

Wired Science remembers the 1859 solar flare and subsequent magnetic storm:

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

“With this a beautiful tint of pink finally mingled. The clouds of this color were most abundant to the northeast and northwest of the zenith,” the Times wrote. “There they shot across one another, intermingling and deepening until the sky was painfully lurid. There was no figure the imagination could not find portrayed by these instantaneous flashes.”

As if what was happening in the heavens wasn’t enough, the communications infrastructure just beginning to stretch along the eastern seaboard was going haywire from all the electromagnetism.

If that same solar flare (or "coronal mass ejection") happened today, it would mess up modern civilization pretty seriously. Put it down on your list of things to worry about.

Via Instapundit

The gay Democrat guys from Chicago at Hillbuzz use those four words that nobody really wants to hear: We Told You So.

Well, just imagine our chagrin last year, when we tried to tell the whole Daily Kos crowd that Dr. Utopia and his wife are nothing more than con artists. Whatever “hope” and “change” mean to these Leftist Loons, that’s not how Dr. and Mrs. Utopia interpreted everything they said during the campaign. ”Hope” to them was “hope these fools don’t wake up before the election”. “Change” was “instead of farting through silk in Chicago, we’ll be doing that in Washington now, suckers”. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!

Crass, true, but it’s fitting with the Utopias we know from Chicago. The ones we warned you about, but you didn’t listen, Kossacks, or whatever you call yourselves.

You are that girl in the dorm with Tang-orange hair cut around a bowl on your head…and you have no one to blame but yourselves. The interesting question in all of this is…just how low will Dr. Utopia’s numbers go, and just how bad will 2010 be for Democrats, if now Dr. Utopia’s base is starting to wake up and swear off the Kool-Aid too?

I don't think you want to get the Hillbuzz guys mad at you. Their snark is world-class.

They chose not to link to the Daily Kos web site. This is probably wise, unless you want to wallow in the fever swamp but I'll do it as a public service.

Two stories--first, from Reuters:

U.S. sheds 216,000 jobs in August, jobless rate hits 9.7 percent

Next, the Kansas City Star:

Canada adds 27,100 jobs in August

How's that stimulus working out for ya?

The phrase introduced by Sarah Palin was admittedly a bit hyperbolic. Nobody proposes a system that judges that old people have lived long enough and should go home and die. Nope, nobody would EVER propose such a thing.

It just kinda happens, when you have government-run health care.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air relates yet another horror story coming from the government-run NHS in the United Kingdom, as reported in the UK's Telegraph newspaper:

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

Read that first sentence again. Read it very, very carefully. Understand what it says. Then, read the second sentence.

No, no, no, nobody EVER proposes anything like death panels. They are just a natural consequence of a "single-payer" system.

Oops. Sorry about that. But hey, health care is a RIGHT! Well, a right for some people, anyway.

It's Back!

Attentive folks may have heard of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions and their sordid campaign to shut down anyone who comes into their (naturally, left-leaning) crosshairs.

Well, it seems he's lost a case. A big one.

Today's shocking decision is a victory over Mr. Warman by Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org and a prominent figure in the Canadian far right, who was supported in his constitutional challenge of Section 13 by the legal team defended Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

Mr. Warman alleged that postings on Mr. Lemire's website, written by others, contravened Section 13 in that they were "likely to expose" identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt."

Mr. Lemire responded by challenging the law itself, which was last upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 1990 split decision, before the Internet age.

Could the day be near when political speech is more free in Canada than in the USA?

At Classical Values:

According to most accounts, a MoveOn.org member punched an anti-Obamacare protester and the pro-Obamacare protester had a finger bitten off in the process. However, in these versions of the story, it was the older anti-Obamacare protester who had his finger bitten off. (An eyewitness account posted here claims that the biter was pro-Obama.)

Let's keep other people's fingers out of our mouths, m'kay?

Keith Olbermann. NBC Sports.

He's why I don't watch NFL football on Sunday nights. And I won't until he's gone. Actually, you know what? I might not watch NBC even after they axe Olbermann.

Catching up on correspondence . . . this sent in by contributor Bill:

Haribo MAOAM sour candies feature 'fruits in pornographic poses'

A POPULAR confectionery is causing an uproar in Europe after a flood of complaints about its packaging.

Claims have been made that the fruit figures that appear on Haribo MAOAM sour candies are engaging in sex acts.

I'll pause for a minute to let the full implications of sex between consenting (I assume) fruit to sink in.

OK?

Go ahead and click on the link to the story at Australia's News.com. The accompanying illustration is pretty amusing.

Fifteen days, actually. Going smoothly, even with a trip to Chicago to visit Snookums' best bud Linda and see Steely Dan in concert.

I had real food, too--three times! Three dinners in Chicago--all some variation of whitefish (broiled preferably) and steamed broccoli, with an iceberg lettuce wedge or salad with red wine vinegar. It's a good thing that I like whitefish and broccoli, isn't it?

When we got home from Chicago, I had a big box of meal replacements from DietDirect.com waiting for me at our front door. Mmm, mushroom soup and a variety of new shake/pudding flavors get added into the menu.

At the Center for Nutrition today, the dietitian weighed me in at 261.9 pounds, and then took my blood pressure.

Want to know what it was?

Really?

I'm teasing, now.



102/70.

That's below normal. Low blood pressure is good--at least as long as it doesn't go too low, I'm told. The Mayo Clinic web site says 90/60 is considered low.

I doubt that I'll keep losing over a pound a day, but 230 lbs by Halloween is within reach, I think. 220 would be nice, but that would be close to that pound-a-day thing. I'm not sure my joints would stand up to the amount of exercise I'd need to do to make that by Halloween. Maybe by New Year's Day?

I'm pretty happy.

Simian-blogging comes as a welcome relief, doesn't it?

Science News: Chimpanzees develop 'specialized tool kits' to catch army ants:

Chimpanzees in the Congo have developed specialised 'tool kits' to forage for army ants, reveals new research published today in the American Journal of Primatology. This not only provides the first direct evidence of multiple tool use in this context, but suggests that chimpanzees have developed a 'sustainable' way of harvesting food.