They don’t give Colbert much respect. Of course, any amount is too much, as far as I’m concerned.
The Cause Of The Bee Die Off
Has it been found? Hint: it’s not climate change.
A Predator That Ruled Before The Dinosaurs
This is interesting:
the find is important for two reasons: First, Pampaphoneus is the first Paleozoic terrestrial carnivore discovered in South America. Combining this find with earlier discoveries of plant-eaters from the same time frame will help paleontologists “picture a more complete ecosystem during the Permian period,” the statement said.
Second, the skull suggests that this South American species was a close relative to similar dinocephalians previously found in Russia and South Africa. That supports the idea that therapsids were able to disperse easily from one part of the Pangaea supercontinent to the other, during an age when most of Earth’s modern-day land masses were linked together.
Emphasis mine. South America’s a big place, and this is the first time they’ve seen this. It just shows how rare fossils are, and how ridiculous it is for the creationists to demand to see all “transitional species” (a notion that demonstrates nothing except the demander’s ignorance of evolution, because every species is a “transitional” species).
Regulation Versus Inequality
It’s a false frame. But one convenient to the statist narrative.
Newtering Obama’s Election Strategy
Did Gingrich’s and Perry’s failure to hurt Romney with their class-warfare rhetoric bode ill for Obama in the fall?
President Obama should be very worried by the backlash against these attacks, real or perceived, on free-market capitalism. The White House’s divisive class-warfare strategy of running against free enterprise, against the “1 percent,” was given a test run by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry, and it failed miserably. Not only was Mr. Romney given the opportunity to preview that line of attack and prepare accordingly but, more importantly, the voters soundly rejected it.
Democrats will claim that these Republican primary results do not necessarily reflect the sentiments of general election voters, but not so fast. New Hampshire has an open primary, and 45 percent of its primary voters were “undeclared” as to political party. Independent voters are unquestionably rejecting the ahttp://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-what-make-obamas-approval-bounce_617121.htmlssault on free enterprise. What’s more, Mr. Romney received a higher percentage of voters, despite the large GOP field, than either Mr. Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton did in 2008.
I don’t think it will slow them down. It’s all they have, really. They’ll go ahead, and rationalize that Newt and Rick just didn’t do it right. They knew the words, but Obama sings the music.
[Afternoon update]
How to explain Obama’s approval bounce?
As we can see, Ronald Reagan blew Jimmy Carter out of the water in 1980 (then Walter Mondale in 1984) because he won substantial support among Democrats. However, the party more or less consolidated its base vote starting with Michael Dukakis in 1988, and this is pretty much all Obama has managed to do in the last two months. His relentless, partisan campaign of this winter has only moved him into Dukakis territory.
Good luck with that.
It’s Getting Harder And Harder To Parody Newsweak
But some people are still giving it the old college try.
Ed Driscoll has more.
The Space Code Of Conduct
Over at Open Market, I have the latest on the administration’s decision to start negotiating new protocols for space, and the potential concerns with them.
The Ship Captain And The Italian Coastguard
A surreal conversation. As someone over on Twitter noted, Italian ship captaining has gone downhill since that guy from Genoa half a millennium ago.
Please Don’t Sell Them Down The River
Just when you think it can’t get more absurd: DC exterminators aren’t allowed to break up rat families:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says he is worried that a new District of Columbia law that governs how pest control operators must handle rats may result in entire rodent “families” being relocated across the Potomac River into Virginia by D.C. pest control personnel.
Lately, there have been reports of growing rat infestations around the Occupy DC protests at Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square.
Cuccinelli said D.C.’s new rat law–the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (Wildlife Protection Act of 2010.pdf) –is “crazier than fiction” because it requires that rats and other vermin not be killed but captured, preferably in families; no glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a “wildlife rehabilitator” as part of their relocation process.
The law does not allow pest control professionals “to kill the dang rats,” Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com. “They have to capture them–then capture them in families. [Not sure] how you’re going to figure that out with rats. And then you have to relocate them. That brings us to Virginia. Now, if you don’t relocate them about 25 miles away, according to experts, rodents will find their way back. Well, an easy way to solve that problem is to cross a river, and what’s on the other side of the river? Virginia.”
“So we have real concerns about this ridiculous–ridiculous!–law and we’ve been pretty genial about dealing with D.C. on it,” said Cuccinelli. “But when you see an article like the ‘Rats Occupy Occupy DC,’ it points up the problem that we’re going to have in Virginia because of that–and because D.C’s really outrageous–outrageous!–treatment of these varmints who, for those who don’t remember their history, carried things like bubonic plague. I mean, these are true vermin.”
The easiest thing to do would be to leave the rats and move out the occupiers. It would improve sanitation, too.
Go Buy The Latest Reason
So says the editor. It’s about space. Yours Truly is given a plug.