About Me

Name:Far_view
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Blog Roll

wind power and global warming? not so much...

Posted by Far_view on Thursday, May 08, 2008 10:36:54 PM
I've been on a road trip to the Northwest and thought I'd make some observations. On the drive up here, I went past three or four wind farms and at each of them there were only, at best, 30% of the turbines going. Is that typical? I think from past observations driving past these things that it is. So how efficient is that? So much for wind power. We ought to be building nukes instead.

My destination was Winthrop, Washington on the east side of the Cascades. The weather is rather chilly here and the folks here have been telling me how late their Spring has been in arriving. Also, I was informed that the snow pack was greater than normal with the consequence that the mountain glaciers are building up again (for the second winter in a row). So I don't know that two years make a definitive trend, but this is definitely different from what the "global warming" obsessed media likes to report on.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Iron Man: Awesome!!!

Posted by Far_view on Sunday, May 04, 2008 7:45:28 PM
I went to see "Iron Man" this afternoon. What a great movie! Ironman has always been one of my favorite Marvel heroes right from the time I got into comics in middle school. So it was really great to see him brought to life on the big screen... and done pretty much right to boot. I think the changes they made from the comic were pretty reasonable. I even wasn't put off by Stark giving up on the weapons business after coming back from Afghanistan. I was afraid they'd put some left wing anti-war spin on it and maybe there was one in a very subtle fashion but as it was done in the movie with Stark's weapons being used against American troops and civilians, I was able to buy it. I was even happy with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Howard Dean lies

Posted by Far_view on Sunday, May 04, 2008 12:46:25 PM
I was just listening to Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday. Some of the things he said were just incredible. Chris Wallace asked him about whether the Rev. Wright issue was hurting Democrat candidates down-ticket. Dean accused the Republicans of race baiting. So bringing up the issue of this guy who says God d*** America is race baiting? Come on! That is ridiculous and Dean knows it. Dean then went from the sublime to the ridiculous by saying (paraphrasing) "oh, the Democrats would never do race baiting". Say what? It seems I recall a Democrat party radio ad that Sean Hannity has played on his radio show from a few years back that was saying "when you vote Republican another black church burns". Can Dean honestly say that that ad was not the most blatant form of race baiting? I guess I shouldn't use the word "honest" in the same sentence with the name Howard Dean.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

blaming the Bush administration for food shortages?

Posted by Far_view on Friday, April 25, 2008 8:52:05 PM
I was listening to the Coast to Coast AM radio show early this morning. The guest, Linda Moulton Howe was reporting on food shortages and the linkage was to increased ethanol production. While I think that is probably a fair rap, what I was kind of fascinated by was how Howe kept on talking about the ethanol policy of "this administration" (spoken in kind of a condescending tone). You know, it seems to me that the criticism that I've always heard about the Bush administration is that they're supposed to be giving sweetheart deals to the oil industry. In this case they're promoting an alternative fuel, something the Left always seems to be screaming for, and what happens? Bush gets criticized for it. He just can't win with those people.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

required reading on Obama's terrorist pals

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:24:29 PM
The Powerline guys have a couple of posts here and here with links to audio and video of Barack Obama's Weathermen pals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This is just incredible stuff. I was surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been) to read that Dohrn has publicly approved of the Charles Manson murders! These people are just the scum of the Earth and Obama kicked off his state senate campaign at their house! It is also amazing to me that Ayers and Dohrn are university faculty. How pathetic is it that a university would give these low-lifes faculty positions? It is just another commentary on how out of touch the realm of higher education is.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Dennis Prager on the Left being anti-war rather than anti-evil

Posted by Far_view on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 1:20:13 PM
Dennis Prager has a good column here where he examines the most recent TIME magazine cover and how the Left prefers to fight global warming instead of Islamists. A key line is:

"The Vietnam War did to American liberals what World War I did to most Europeans -- it rendered them anti-war rather than anti-evil."
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Predictions for 2058: Both interesting and clueless

Posted by Far_view on Saturday, April 19, 2008 10:12:13 PM
Interesting piece here with predictions for the world of 2058. There are some interesting ones including some predictions by Vint Cerf of Google about a possible way to get up to the speed of light and skirt around that Einstein-imposed speed limit. The predictions are also pretty clueless because they don't talk at all about the demographic shifts that Mark Steyn chronicles in his book America Alone. Let's face it... those shifts are happening and unless there is some kind of Islamic Reformation, we're in for a REALLY rough ride. Then there's the completely idiotic stuff like the secretary of Interpol saying that international terrorism will be brought under control "because governments will realize counterterrorism is primarily a police function rather than a job for the military". Puh-leeze!
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Mark Steyn on Obama's "bitter Americans" comment

Posted by Far_view on Saturday, April 19, 2008 2:19:52 PM
Once again Mark Steyn hits the ball out of the park with this piece that perfectly captures where Obama was coming from with his "bitter Americans" comment and why it was so erroneous. He notes that Obama and so many on the Left seem to think that Americans that vote against European-style big government are stupid for doing so. They (the Libs) think that Americans who vote against big government liberals are voting against their own self interests. However, as Steyn points out:

"Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" – i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35-hour workweeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc. – and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day."

Period. Dot. Bingo.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

spot on analysis of Obama by Thomas Sowell

Posted by Far_view on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:13:50 AM
Thomas Sowell has an opinion piece here that is a picture perfect analysis of Barack Obama and how even though he has presented himself as this great uniter, he is really just a hard leftist with contempt for the working class. A key paragraph by Sowell says:

" Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings."
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Science Fiction classics

Posted by Far_view on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:13:13 AM
Apparently the Instapundit put out a call for lists of science fiction classics and the fellow who runs MarsBlog has his own list. Mine would be:

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune by Frank Herbert
Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Forge of God and The Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear
The Star King and its 4 "sequels" (actually intended as a 5 book set) by Jack Vance
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Geez, I could go on and on. Just about anything by Heinlein (actually probably my favorite Heinlein novel is one of his few forays into fantasy- "Glory Road") or Jack Vance I love. Jack Vance is someone who doesn't typically come up in these types of lists I think, but he is simply an amazing writer. He doesn't write hard SF, it's more like adventure novels (and in many instances, social commentary) with SF trappings, but he has such a gift for prose that his novels are just an immense pleasure to read.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Obama's elitism is revealed

Posted by Far_view on Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:12:02 AM
Wow, Obama slipped and let his true liberal elitism shine through with this statement:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

So basically the people in Pennsylvania are just bitter, angry hicks who needs Obama to enlighten them. I hope people in the U.S. see this guy for the liberal elitist that he is.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Awesome color HiRISE image of Phobos

Posted by Far_view on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 10:31:01 PM
The HiRISE camera on-board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an amazing high resolution color image of Mars' moon Phobos. Check out the detailed image and description here. It is much more red than I thought it would be although the HiRISE color bands are not red, green, blue, but rather near infrared, red, blue/green so it isn't by any means a "true color" image.  It is still very impressive though!



Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

flashy disinformation from the ID crowd

Posted by Far_view on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 10:42:42 AM
I just heard a radio ad for "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". Good grief. I'll have to look into this some more and have some more detailed comments but it looks like an effort to try and make it seem like there is some kind of conspiracy against intellectual debate on the intelligent design "theory". These guys just don't get it. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE!!!! A scientific theory has to have testable hypotheses. God is not a testable hypothesis. If these guys want to have intelligent design presented as an alternative, you know that is OK to have it in a social studies or some other class but it IS NOT SCIENCE. There's no "conspiracy to stifle debate". It is just not in the ball park, it is outside the parameters of scientific debate since it isn't science.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Mark Steyn on Michelle Obama

Posted by Far_view on Monday, April 07, 2008 9:05:22 AM
I caught Mark Steyn on Bill Bennett's show this morning. He had a great take on the comments from the one Michelle Obama speech where she went on with this bit:

"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Steyn in his humorous fashion, talked about how it is our constitutional right to be uninformed! Geez, you look at the language in that Michelle Obama speech and it is downright scary. If that is not liberal fascism in action I don't know what is. Steyn has a post here from the Corner on this topic.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

the Bad Astronomer endorses a vet for Colorado's 5th District

Posted by Far_view on Monday, March 31, 2008 11:53:31 PM
"Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait, on his web page, endorses U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Hal Bidlack for Colorado's 5th Congressional District race. Bidlack is running as a Democrat. I couldn't really glean what his positions are. I wasn't too enthused that Lamborn won the Republican primary in '06, but I'd have to hear more about what Bidlack's position on issues are before saying anything too definitive about him. What is really disturbing though is that if you go to the comments page on Plait's endorsement piece. Plait gets a lot of lefties on his page and so you have yabos there posting things like "I’m sorry, but I feel compelled to point out that part of our problem as a species is that we still revere images of people in military uniform in front of a billowing flag." What a dope. Part of our problem as a country is that we have people who don't believe anymore in the things that made America great.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive
« Previous123456789101112Next »