Famous Last Words

The "Morality" of Global Warming

There was a good piece on the American Thinker blog the other day, but I did not get around to reading it until riding the train home today.

It's not a long article so I'm going to go ahead and post the whole thing.

Why Did Global Warming Become a Moral Matter?

By Tim Thorstenson

As a scientist, I find the current strategy of the global warming crusade to be fascinating. Particularly because I am a scientist, I also find it insulting. Everyone should find it very disturbing.

I am referring to the fact that the global warming issue is now regarded as a "moral" matter by its advocates. None other than The High Priest of Global Warming (Al Gore) has decreed it as such. Of course, there is some obvious humor in this because the liberals will also tell you that you "cannot legislate morality". Well, it does not take complicated logic to conclude that if global warming is indeed a moral matter and if it is true that you cannot legislate morality, then it should hold that you cannot legislate global warming.

But making funny distracts us from a deeper concern that should worry anyone who wants to see the truth remain relevant in the matters that face our society. To see this deeper danger, let us forget about global warming for just a moment and consider morality in very general terms.

There are numerous ways to define morality, but one that is particularly helpful here is to regard morality as the "lens" through which one views the facts. Morality should not be used to simply deny the facts; and people who really understand morality do not use it that way. Rather, they use morality to put the facts in a proper context. Morality tells them "what to make of the facts".

This sounds a little abstract, so consider a practical example:

Let us assume that Bob has just shot George dead with a shotgun and that this is an undeniable fact supported by overwhelming evidence. Now, one could use a moral argument to suggest that the shooting was justified as an act of self-defense. Alternately, one could also use a moral argument to insist that the shooting was cold-blooded murder. But one cannot use a moral argument to insist that the shooting simply did not happen. In other words, moral considerations influence how we view the facts and can be used to argue "what we should make of the facts", but they cannot be used to literally change or deny the facts. Whether a claimed fact is indeed true should be a purely intellectual question, rather than a moral one.

Now consider, in contrast, how "morality" is being employed by global warming advocates like Al Gore:

For many years, global warming seemed to be a fact-focused debate. But a persistent problem for the advocates has been dissenting scientific opinion. Some very reputable scientists hold that global warming may be attributed to natural phenomena like the intensity of solar radiation.

Others have valid questions about how much warming will actually occur and how severe the resulting effects will really be. Still others suggest that, if the problem is indeed real and serious, then serious responses are indicated. These folks propose an honest examination of real solutions (like a renewed emphasis on nuclear power) instead of the childish games of useless treaties, carbon credits, windmills and fluorescent light bulbs that seem to enamor so many of the advocates.

It is one thing to write these dissenting opinions off as factually false, but this is apparently no longer regarded as adequate by the global warming advocates. The dissent keeps popping up, it backed by some very reputable people wielding very credible facts, and the availability of alternate information outlets has made it impossible to smother the doubters and dissenters.

Now enter the moral angle. If global warming is now a moral matter, it would seem to suggest an associated implication that these inconvenient viewpoints are immoral. Apparently it is now the duty of "good" people to reject these opinions on this "moral" basis and without regard to whether they are factually true or false.

The most bizarre aspect of this strategy is that it is exactly what the liberals have always (unfairly) accused us conservatives of doing. Here, morality is not being used as a lens through which to view the facts, but rather as a hammer that can smash the inconvenient ones. Regardless of the evidence to the contrary, I must not believe it possible for Bob to have shot George because such a fact is not compatible with the accepted moral viewpoint! If I dare to believe otherwise, then I am "immoral".

The message of these pseudo-moralists is that "good" people must start by accepting the pre-ordained orthodox conclusion and then work backwards through the claimed facts, making not an intellectual assessment of whether they are indeed true, but rather a "moral" assessment of whether or not they agree with the conclusion. Things claimed as facts which are "good" (in this moral sense) should be embraced and those which are "bad" (in this same moral sense) should be discarded, not because they are factually false, but because they are "immoral".

In all honesty, this should scare the heck out of everyone. This is an atmosphere in which scientific inquiry is steered not by factual truth, but by a pre-ordained "moral" position. What is at work here is exactly what the liberals have always claimed to condemn. How is this any different from the decree of a radical theocratic dictator who will allow only those scientific conclusions which are approved by his church?

The liberals always claimed that such behavior - allowing moral considerations to trump factual ones - was the ultimate evil. But apparently, even this "ultimate evil" becomes "acceptable strategy" if the cause is justified. This is "liberal moral relativism" taken to a whole new level.

Global Warming Hysteria

According to wikipedia, "Deforestation" is:

the conversion of forested areas to non-forest land use such as arable land, pasture, urban use, logged area or wasteland. Generally the removal or destruction of significant areas of forest cover has resulted in a degraded environment with reduced biodiversity. In many countries, massive deforestation is ongoing and is shaping climate and geography.

Ooh -- sounds bad. So, it stands to reason that "reforestation" -- an increase and spread of forest lands -- would be a good thing. Well, it's not. Why?

Because it doesn't fit the global warming hysteria template. Check out this "news" item I saw today:

Tundra Disappearing At Rapid Rate

Science Daily — Forests of spruce trees and shrubs in parts of northern Canada are taking over what were once tundra landscapes--forcing out the species that lived there. This shift can happen at a much faster speed than scientists originally thought, according to a new University of Alberta study that adds to the growing body of evidence on the effects of climate change.

The fact that the forest is growing and displacing the tundra -- you know that vast wasteland where nothing grows and is inhabited by ... virtually nothing -- can't be a good thing because it's "caused" by global warming. So this story has to be put in a negative framework.

All logic and common sense must bow before the imperative of advancing the global warming template.

The other part of the template that must be supported at all costs is that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus which holds that global warming is an indisputable scientific fact. Accordingly, look how the paragraph ends: "a new University of Alberta study that adds to the growing body of evidence on the effects of climate change."

Notice how this study doesn't add to the body of evidence regarding climate change. No, the study adds to the body of evidence on the effects of climate change -- i.e., global warming.

Think I'm exaggerating? Maybe. But, let's take a time out. I saw this "news" piece about 4:00pm this afternoon. So, I'm going to do a quick search and see how this "news" has been picked up and translated by our objective friends in the mainstream media. BRB

tick ... tick ... tick ... tick


OK, I'm back. I don't think I was wrong in my prediction, just a little premature. Here's what I found:

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News
Global warming could rapidly escalate the expansion of forests into tundra landscapes in Canada's North and force out indigenous species such as caribou, according to a group of Canadian researchers.

Live Science
Rising temperatures fueled by global warming are causing forests of spruce trees to invade Arctic tundra faster than scientists originally thought, evicting and endangering the species that dwell there and only there, a new study concludes.

Environment News Service
Northern Canada's tundra is disappearing at a rapid rate, with forests of spruce trees and shrubs taking over the once frozen landscape, new research finds. The study offers further evidence of climate change and the authors warn it shows that the shift in the Canadian tundra can happen at a much faster speed than scientists originally thought.

The research examines changes in the treeline between forest and tundra ecosystems, a prominent landscape feature in both Arctic and mountain environments.

Scientists have long believed that the treeline will advance as global temperatures continue to increase, but the new study shows that such a shift will not always occur gradually.

This story doesn't appear to have been picked up by the mainstream media -- yet. But, I think it's only a matter of time. In fact, I saw the initial Science Daily article being disseminated as a press release on one site (see here). So, it looks like the steps are: (1) new study "supporting" global warming comes out. (2) environmental groups send out press releases to their reliable media outlets. And, I bet step (3) is the breathless stories in tomorrow's major media outlets.

Stay tuned.

Oh, Those Mischevious "Youths"

What is it with us? Does the West have such a death wish that we refuse to even acknowledge the enemy in our midst?

Muslim gangs are running rampant in Paris again, yet politicians, the media, etc. refuse to call them what they are. The number one description for them is "youths". Only in a couple of places have I seen reports go further than that in identifying them. And then only with timid, innocuous phrases like "youths of Arab and African origin".

Something to Think About for Lent

Mercy in itself, as a perfection of the infinite God, is also infinite. Also infinite therefore and inexhaustible is the Father’s readiness to receive the prodigal children who return to His home. Infinite are the readiness and power of forgiveness which flow continually from the marvelous value of the sacrifice of the Son. No human sin can prevail over this power or even limit it. On the part of man only a lack of good will can limit it, a lack of readiness to be converted and to repent, in other words persistence in obstinacy, opposing grace and truth, especially in the face of the witness of the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Therefore, the Church professes and proclaims conversion. Conversion to God always consists in discovering His mercy, that is, in discovering that love which is patient and kind as only the Creator and Father can be; the love to which the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is faithful to the uttermost consequences in the history of His covenant with man; even to the cross and to the death and resurrection of the Son. Conversion to God is always the fruit of the “rediscovery” of this Father, who is rich in mercy.

Authentic knowledge of the God of mercy, the God of tender love, is a constant and inexhaustible source of conversion, not only as a momentary interior act but also as a permanent attitude, as a state of mind. Those who come to know God in this way, who “see” Him in this way, can live only in a state of being continually converted to Him. They live, therefore, in statu conversionis; and it is this state of conversion which marks out the most profound element of the pilgrimage of every man and woman on earth in statu viatoris. It is obvious that the Church professes the mercy of God, revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, not only by the word of her teaching but above all through the deepest pulsation of the life of the whole People of God. By means of this testimony of life, the Church fulfills the mission proper to the People of God, the mission which is a sharing in and, in a sense, a continuation of the messianic mission of Christ Himself.

The contemporary Church is profoundly conscious that only on the basis of the mercy of God will she be able to carry out the tasks that derive from the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and, in the first place, the ecumenical task which aims at uniting all those who confess Christ. As she makes many efforts in this direction, the Church confesses with humility that only that love which is more powerful than the weakness of human divisions can definitively bring about that unity which Christ implored from the Father and which the Spirit never ceases to beseech for us “with sighs too deep for words.”

Dives in Misericordia
Encyclical on the Mercy of God
John Paul II
(my emphasis added in bold)

Taking Responsibility

I love it when people agree with me. I don't watch much TV, especially the news. However, when I do, one of the things that frosts me is the obliviousness and lack of irony parents show when their kids are arrested for crimes, or, conversely, are the victims of some tragic accident.

For example, there was a story here recently, one that's all too common across the country, of a car full of teens that were killed or maimed after the driver (drunk) lost control and crashed after leaving a party at 2:00am. The father of one of those killed, a 14 or 15-year-old girl, was going on about how awful it was, and how could this have happened, etc.

I wanted to jump through the TV and slap this idiot in the head. I wanted to get in his face and shout "How could this happen!? This kind of stuff happens when you don't know where your daughter is at 2:00 in the morning!"

Similarly, we've all seen those TV shots of the mom or dad of some young psycho who just shot up a convenience store or some rival gangbangers. The parent laments "There's some mistake. He's really a good boy." Really? How would you know? If you were doing your job -- being a parent -- maybe you'd wonder why your kid had a semi-auto pistol under his pillow. Or maybe you'd wonder how your kid could pay $200 for gym shoes when he doesn't have a job.

Well, I know this took place a while ago, but I just read some of Bill Cosby's comments from a speech he gave. And I'm glad to see he agrees with me. Here is an excerpt from Cosby's speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing. ...

[L]adies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have fifty percent drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

Enjoy

April Fool's Day Comes Early for the Tribune

The Chicago Tribune continues its quest for the most idiotic paper in the country. I saw this story headline in today's edition and laughed out loud:

"City agrees to ban patronage"

Did you ever hear anything as stupid in your life? Chicago, the City founded on machine politics, doing away with the political currency of patronage. We're talking about a city which has been run by a father and son for 39 out of the last 52 years.

Daley has Chicago so firmly in his grasp that I did not realize he had been re-elected this month until after the election was over. Think about it, this is the third largest city in the United States. You can't turn on the news without hearing about Obama, Hillary, Guliana, McCain, et al, even though the presidential election is not for 18 months. But, here in Chicago, the election of the City's chief executive is such a foregone conclusion that the "campaign" isn't even news! I don't even know who, if anyone, ran against him!*

Patronage is how Daley rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. Saying the City is banning patronage is like saying an addict has voted to give up his vice. Usually, the only person their fooling is themselves. Except in this case, the "addict" also managed to convince the useful idiots over at the Tribune.

* I just checked the Chicago Board of Elections site. Two people "ran" against Daley: William Walls got 8% of the vote; Dorothy Brown got 20%. Daley won with 71% of the vote. Incredible.

Now Here's a Source of Global Warming

'Nuff Said!

More Sowell

Anyone who has spent anytime on this blog knows how I feel about Thomas Sowell. Simply put, he is a national treasure. Here are some quality excerpts from a couple of his recent columns.

A regular feature Sowell has is "Random Thoughts" where he writes short pithy thoughts, ruminations, etc. rather than a full-length column on a particular topic. Here are some of those thoughts:

We all enter the world knowing nothing but, by the time we are teenagers, we know it all. Sometimes it is decades later before we know enough to realize how little we know.

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Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

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What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.

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It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense.

The Duke "Rape" Case story has pretty much fallen off the news radar screen. (Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the "victim" changed her story umpteen times, or that the prosecutor was more interested in creating headlines while he ran for re-election that he was willing to deep-six evidence exonerating the "perpetrators".)

Thomas Sowell saw the real agenda behind this story from the beginning. Here are some excerpts from his column entitled "Duke Case: The Larger Tragedy":

The larger tragedy is what this case revealed about the degeneration of our times and the hollowness of so many people in "responsible" positions in the media, in academia, and among those blacks so consumed by racial resentments and thirst for revenge that they are prepared to lash out at individuals who have done nothing to them and are guilty of no crime against anybody.

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All it takes is something that invokes the new holy trinity of the intelligentsia -- "race, class and gender." The story of a black woman gang-raped by white men fit the theme so compellingly that much of the media had no time to waste trying to find out if it was true before going ballistic.

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The unraveling Duke "rape" case should be a wake-up call, both for blacks and for liberals, on how easy it is for their emotions to be manipulated by even a third-rate demagogue with a flimsy fraud. The time is long overdue for some of those who consider themselves "thinking people" to start doing some thinking.

Many liberals can at least afford their mindless crusades. They may end up looking silly, but that has never stopped them before.

The biggest losers from getting sucked into these frauds are blacks, especially young blacks who go off on an emotional tangent that leads nowhere, at a time when there are so many opportunities in other directions, if they will direct their time and efforts in those directions through education and other serious interests.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The link in the post below is broken. Here is a link that should work: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

Update: The Great Global Warming Swindle

I see that the great Thomas Sowell wrote a column on the global warming swindle program. I haven't even read it yet but I'm posting it now and will read it along with you. Why would I post something I haven't read? Because if Thomas Sowell wrote, you know it's worth reading.

Global Warming Swindle
By Thomas Sowell
Thursday, March 15, 2007

The British Broadcasting Corporation has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media -- but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.

One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.

While the public has been led to believe that "all" the leading scientists buy the global warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats -- and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored.

There is no question that the globe is warming but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there were any automobiles and before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today.

None of the dire things predicted today happened then.

The BBC documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty.

According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds.

These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models that have been used to hype global warming hysteria, even though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.

What is even scarier than seeing how easily the public, the media, and the politicians have been manipulated and stampeded, is discovering how much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Academics who jump on the global warming bandwagon are far more likely to get big research grants than those who express doubts -- and research is the lifeblood of an academic career at leading universities.

Environmental movements around the world are committed to global warming hysteria and nowhere more so than on college and university campuses, where they can harass those who say otherwise. One of the scientists interviewed on the BBC documentary reported getting death threats.

In politics, even conservative Republicans seem to have taken the view that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So have big corporations, which have joined the stampede.

This only enables the green crusaders to declare at every opportunity that "everybody" believes the global warming scenario, except for a scattered few "deniers" who are likened to Holocaust deniers.

The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is causing such hysteria, we have only a movie made by a politician and mathematical models whose results change drastically when you change a few of the arbitrarily selected variables.

No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago.

What the climate scientists in the BBC documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe.

"Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Wow. A first for me. It's not often, in fact it's closer to never, that I'm ahead of the curve on a story.

A couple of days ago, I was surfing the web and came across a conservative blog out of the U.K. It had a video documentary posted debunking the lies and distortions surrounding global warming. It looked interesting, so I copied the link and sent it to a number of people even though I had not had a chance to watch the whole thing myself (it's an hour and 15 mins. long).

The next day, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from a number of people saying how good the documentary was. (I had had second thoughts about recommending something I had only watched a few minutes of.)

But, like I said above, somehow I managed to beat most of the U.S. based blogosphere as this video has just showed up on Powerline today. Powerline also has a link to a news story out of Canada (from the Calgary Sun) on this documentary. (For those of you I who I may have overlooked sending the video too, I'm posting the link to it at the bottom -- and sorry for the oversight!)

Debunking global warming myths

By LICIA CORBELLA

The British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle is, well ... great.

The program, which aired last Thursday in the U.K. to much buzz, has since been watched by hundreds of thousands of others around the world via the Internet. It exposes numerous lies and myths presented as fact by those who believe in the unproven hypothesis that human-created carbon dioxide (CO2) is the driver of the Earth's warming climate.

The same broadcaster -- Channel 4 in the U.K. -- that recently exposed the extremist ideology being preached in Britain's supposedly "moderate" mosques has now similarly helped to tear away the veil of lies and religious zeal surrounding the global warming industry.

The film features an impressive group of experts in the fields of climatology, oceanography, biogeography, meteorology, and paleoclimatology from reputable institutions such as NASA, MIT, The International Arctic Research Centre, the Pasteur Institut in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of Winnipeg, Ottawa, London, Jerusalem, Alabama and Virginia.

That should help top the claims there is a consensus of scientists who believe in man-made global warming.

Expert after expert in this film blasts craters into the theory that CO2 -- which only makes up 0.054% of the earth's atmosphere -- has ever driven climate. Ice core records, in fact, prove the opposite, that CO2 lags warming by as much as 800 years.

The main cause of warming is, not surprisingly, the sun.

"The analogy I use," says Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, "is my car's not running very well, so I'm going to ignore the engine, which is the sun, and I'm going to ignore the transmission, which is the water vapour and I'm going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel which is the human produced CO2. The science is that bad."

The film starts off covering indisputable facts. There was a Medieval Warm Period that was warmer than today -- that led to incredible wealth in Europe when the bulk of the continent's great cathedrals were built and when Britain had thriving vineyards. Then came the Little Ice Age that started in the 17th century and was so cold London's Thames River would freeze so solidly festivals were held on it.

About 10,000 years ago, during a time known as the Holocene Maximum, it was much warmer even than the Medieval times.

Dr. Ian Clark, Prof. of Isotope Hydrogeology and Paleoclimatology at the U of Ottawa, notes polar bears (which have become the poster-animal of the global warming industry) survived that sustained warm cycle and that volcanoes produce more CO2 every year than all human activity.

What's more, prior to 1940 temperatures on Earth were rising long before industrialization took place.

Then, when carbon dioxide emissions rose markedly in the post-war economic boom period, temperatures fell for the next three decades, again, in direct contravention of the theory being espoused and believed by so many.

Ironically, in the 1970s, just as scientists started predicting another climate catastrophe -- an impending ice age -- the planet started warming again.

The documentary ends with a quote from Dr. Fred Singer of the U of Virginia.

"There will still be people who believe this is the end of the world, particularly when you have, for example, the chief scientist of the U.K. telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the Earth with be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who move to the Antarctic. I mean, this is hilarious," he says with a chuckle.

"It would be hilarious, actually, if it weren't so sad."

Here is the link to the video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=Great+Global+Warming+Swindle

The Original Dead Parrot

419 Eater Meets Monty Python

The previous post prompted me to look for a good Monty Python clip to put up for the benefit of any youngsters too young to have ever seen Monty Python, or for any culturally deprived adults whose parents were too smart to let them stay up late and watch goofy British comedy shows when they were still impressionable youths.

I plugged 'Monty Python' into the youtube search engine and, lo and behold, that wild and crazy guy who runs the 419 Eater site has created an awesome video of how he enticed a 419 scammer into making an a** of himself.

Don't know what a 419 scammer is? Sure you do. Anyone who has had an e-mail account for more than one week knows what it is, you just didn't know that was the name for it.

You know the e-mails I'm talking about. They run like this: "Greetings my good friend. I have been referred to you as one who is honest and trustworthy. I am Alkoona Falloona Pattoona, wife of the late President of Liberia. I have $50,000,000 million my husband stashed away in an account and in order to get it out of the country, I need to move it into a U.S. bank account and I thought you'd make a good partner. ... etc., etc."

Now you know what I'm talking about. Obviously, these are total scams and most of the time they get filtered by your e-mail application or you just delete them if they end up in your in-box. They're called 419 scams because 419 is the section of the Nigerian criminal code that they violate and these scams are thought to have originated in Nigeria.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, this guy in the U.K. runs the 419 Eater site where he posts on how he "baits" these scammers. What he does is actually respond to these con artists and then strings them along in order to waste their time and -- when he's lucky -- their own money. His thinking and purpose is that the longer he can keep them tied up in knots, the less they can run their scams on the naive and/or foolish. (N.B. his site has lots of samples of the baiting ploys he and others have pulled, some of which are hilariously ingenious, but exercise caution as some of them are pretty crude and/or have inappropriate content).

Here's a video where he actually cons one of these 419 scammers into filming himself re-enacting a famous Monty Python clip. Check it out.

'Top Gear' Limos

There's this car show from the U.K. called 'Top Gear'. It is the funniest thing since 'Monty Python' (although it's nothing like Monty Python). Here is a clip from a recent show in which they made their own personalized limos.

The Dream Team

And These People Are Allowed to Vote

Fr. Garrigou Lagrange:

[A]s St. Augustine often reminds us, the same
spiritual treasure can belong in its entirety to all men, and at
the same time to each, without any disturbance of peace between
them.  Indeed, the more there are to enjoy them in common the more
completely do we possess them.  The same truth, the same virtue,
the same God, can belong to us all in like manner, and yet none of
us embarrasses his fellow-possessors.  Such are the inexhaustible
riches of the spirit that they can be the property of all and yet
satisfy the desires of each.  Indeed, only then do we possess a
truth completely when we teach it to others, when we make others
share our contemplation; only then do we truly love a virtue when
we wish others to love it also; only then do we wholly love God
when we desire to make Him loved by all.  Give money away, or spend
it, and it is no longer yours.  But give God to others, and you
possess Him more fully for yourself.  We may go even further and
say that, if we desired only one soul to be deprived of Him, if we
excluded only one soul -- even the soul of one who persecutes and
calumniates us -- from our own love, then God Himself would be
lost to us.

The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life

Priceless

Must be a "Temporary Correction"

From the National Weather Service

Hazardous Weather Outlook

HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO/ROMEOVILLE IL
400 PM CST FRI MAR 2 2007

ILZ003>006-008-010>014-019>022-023-032-033-039-INZ001-002-010-011-
019-031030-
WINNEBAGO-BOONE-MCHENRY-LAKE IL-OGLE-LEE-DE KALB-KANE-DU PAGE-COOK-
LA SALLE-KENDALL-GRUNDY-WILL-KANKAKEE-LIVINGSTON-IROQUOIS-FORD-
LAKE IN-PORTER-NEWTON-JASPER-BENTON-
400 PM CST FRI MAR 2 2007

THIS PORTION OF THE HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR NORTH CENTRAL
AND NORTHEAST ILLINOIS...AND NORTHWEST INDIANA.

.DAY ONE...TONIGHT

A SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT FOR THE ENTIRE OUTLOOK AREA.
THE ADVISORY IS VALID THROUGH 6 PM CST THIS EVENING GENERALLY
SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 80 BUT EXTENDS UNTIL MIDNIGHT ALONG AND NORTH OF
THERE.. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS THIS EVENING WILL BE AN INCH OR LESS
BEFORE TAPERING TO LIGHT SNOW SHOWERS OVERNIGHT. VISIBILITIES WILL BE DOWN
TO ZERO AT TIMES AND ROADS WILL BE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP CLEARED AS WINDS
TO 45 MPH LIFT AND BLOW FALLEN SNOW. THIS IS
ESPECIALLY TRUE ACROSS RURAL AND OPEN AREAS. THE STRONG WINDS WILL
ALSO MAKE CONTROL OF HIGH PROFILE AND SMALL VEHICLES DIFFICULT TO
MAINTAIN. WINDS SHOULD BEGIN TO SUBSIDE INTO THE 30 TO 35 MPH RANGE
THIS EVENING.

THE COMBINATION OF SNOW MELT...RECENT RAINFALL AND SATURATED AND
FROZEN GROUND CONDITIONS HAS RESULTED IN HIGH WATER LEVELS OR
LOCALIZED FLOODING OF DITCHES...CREEKS AND SMALL STREAMS.  THE
FLOODING IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH THE DAY TODAY.
TEMPERATURES HAVE DROPPED TO BELOW FREEZING OVERNIGHT AND WILL
REMAIN BELOW FREEZING THROUGH THE MORNING HOURS.  THIS MAY LEAD TO
SOME OF THE PONDING AREAS AND LOCATIONS WITH WATER STILL RUNNING
OVER ROADS TO FREEZE.

FLOODING WILL CONTINUE ALONG PORTIONS OF THE KANKAKEE AND ILLINOIS
RIVERS.

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN... SATURDAY THROUGH THURSDAY

PERIODS OF LIGHT SNOW WILL AFFECT THE OUTLOOK AREA THROUGH SATURDAY
EVENING. LITTLE OR NO ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATION IS EXPECTED.

RECENT RAINFALL AND SNOW MELT WILL CONTINUE TO MAINTAIN HIGH WATER
LEVELS OR LOCALIZED FLOODING OF AREA STREAMS AND RIVERS. FLOODING IS
EXPECTED TO CONTINUE AT SOME LOCATIONS ALONG THE
KANKAKEE...ILLINOIS...AND IROQUOIS RIVERS FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS.

Death Wish Fulfilled

I was driving around Sarasota yesterday doing some last day of vacation errands and heard this story on the local news. What an incredible waste.

College Student Killed by Truck
Warner Southern College student Heath Horne, 21, was identified Wednesday as the man who died Tuesday night after stepping in front of an oncoming tractor-trailer on U.S. 27, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.

Witnesses told deputies that Horne, of Lake Wales, had an argument with his roommate Tuesday. He told his roommate he was going to jump in front of a truck, sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said.

Horne then drove his vehicle to U.S. 27, got out and stepped in front of 1996 Freightliner at 9:45 p.m., Rodgers said.