Medical "science" is finally approaching what ought to have been obvious; that the "epidemic" of asthma and allergies are most likely our own doing. Our homes are TOO CLEAN for children!

Babies have fairly primitive immune systems; like every other part of a baby, it needs to be trained. When babies crawl in the dirt and get exposed to "nature", their immune systems come to recognize what's normal. At some age - about a year or so - their immune systems begin to react to "new" things in the environment, and begin to fight them. So dust or pollen become a problem, especially if mommy has been keeping the house spotless and immaculately clean. Never rolled around on the floor with a dog? Never ever eaten peanut butter? By age 4, you're going to be deathly allergic to them.

Mothers; take your babies out into the yard! Let them crawl in the grass, like us old folks did when WE were babies. They need the vitamin D to prevent rickets, and they need exposure to earth so that they don't develop allergies to the Earth.

Science fiction writer L. Neal Smith has suggested that our descendants born on orbital habitats may never be able to come to Earth; they'll be allergic to it. It may be a matter of shipping a few tons of dirt and dust up to spread in the air filters, just to ensure that our grandchildren can come visit!

Fascinating! Why has the Flashlight app used 6.5MB of data? I've now turned that off. Thanks!

Neither Bush nor his team created the banner; the "Mission Accomplished" was for the SHIP, whose deployment had been successful. You lacked context, so your error is understandable.

Granted, for the President to give a public speech in front of that context-less banner was bad politics, but we've experienced far worse from the incumbent. For example, failing to send a representative - even the otherwise useless Sloe-Joe Biden - to Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but flying himself to Saudi Arabia for the funeral of the king of the Saudis, Definitely bad politics - and bad international policy, as well.

More free expression is always better, and censorship is generally wrong. And self-serving.

But your other statements are flat-out hallucinations. Bush never claimed that the war was over, but for a couple of years, the level of violence in Iraq was at least dramatically reduced. ISIS didn't come into existence until Obama declared that he would withdraw all troops by a certain date, no matter what. Now that ISIS is doing whatever they please, Obama is waging a pinprick war against it, and trying to appease the real aggressors in Iran.

If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. Excellently said!

A photo of the incineration of the Jordanian pilot, with the legend

"Waterboarding no longer bothers me."

Warning: Graphic Photo, and general political incorrectness
http://www.theospark.net/2015/...

We used to wonder what in the hell was making these ultra-bright quasars; now we believe that they are "active" galactic cores which are in the process of forming a supermassive black hole in the centers. It's possible that two such black holes might form and orbit their mutual centers of gravity, but eventually they would merge. This merging is probably the source of the gamma ray bursts.

Planets couldn't form until enough hydrogen had been fused into metals and expelled by supernova. Complex life couldn't form until there were enough different heavier elements. It's at least possible that early races and civilizations were exterminated by GRBs when their galaxies were new; it's even possible that intelligent life formed near the Galactic core of our own galaxy before the supermassive black hole formed. (Larry Niven may have been right! Thrints!) They were all killed in the GRB when our own galaxy shined like a quasar. Now that the Milky Way has settled down into gentle middle age, other races can develop.

It may be unlikely, but it's possible that humans are the most advanced of these third-generation beings.

The "open office" plan has also been MOCKED for almost as long. cf. "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", a Monty Python spoof in which office drones in exactly that sort of "open office" make the office manager walk the plank, and then sail their office building into pirate battles against other insurance companies. Even by Monty Python standards, it was silly. Almost as silly as "open offices".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I once had a job in a much smaller version of that; one big cubicle with workstations at all four corners. Turn into the corner to your PC to actually "work"; turn into the center to collaborate or discuss things. That worked all right, but I cannot imagine being on the phone talking to customers in an "open office" environment.

I'm not the guy making the emotional "WE HAVE TO DO THIS IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD WILL BURN" arguments. Science isn't a thing; it's a method, a technique for discovering the truth.

A scientist will share his raw data so that other scientists can replicate his work. Warmists have not done so. Scientists will reveal their algorithms and explain their assumptions. Warmists have not done this, either. Scientists don't invent data, or make bogus and conflicting claims about their data. Warmists have. Scientists will attempt to make predictions about the future, and if their predictions are falsified, they modify their predictions. Warmists have been predicting greatly increased tropical storms and disappearing north polar ice caps. Neither has happened.

Warmists actively manipulate the "peer review" process, and attempt to have opposing views banned. Warmists claim that the government should hunt down and execute "deniers". OK, that's from the more hysterical faction, but it has been said.

https://devilsneuroscientist.w...

The problem with the notion of "science denier" is that is entirely too close in concept to "heretic". The AGW advocates are entirely religious in their zeal, and their religious belief is that the End Is Near, and We Must All Repent!

Remember, before Al Gore got into politics and invented his own Church of Warmism, he had flunked out of Divinity School. Being the High Priest of Warming, he has invented his own religion - and every religion has to have heretics.

Weather is inherently unpredictable; Sacramento, CA (where I live) has already had more rainfall since December 1 than all of last year. El Nino events are even less predictable than "average" weather is. Meteorologists are only beginning to understand the underlying patterns of an El Nino. Is this going to be an El Nino year? I wouldn't place bets either way. The Japanese have a word, "modoki", which means "the same, only different". At least one prediction is for an "El Nino Modoki".

http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc...

The NASA report today (based on data collected earlier in the year) says that California would need 11 TRILLION gallons of rain to make up for the drought. Entirely coincidentally, there was a bit (on the generally-unreliable TV news weather) yesterday that said that this year's rainstorms dropped 10 trillion gallons on the state so far this month. Not all in the right places, of course; parts of Napa County were getting an inch an hour, which is nearly Philippines style rain. The ski resorts in the mountains are rejoicing in a couple of FEET of new snow.

I'm all in favor of increasing water storage, but there are too many Greens in San Francisco who want to tear down what we already have. For example, there's a great place on the North Fork of the American River near Auburn, CA, and they were about a third of the way into preparing for a dam, when the eco-freaks decided that since California is earthquake country (true enough, but not near Auburn) that we shouldn't build any dams. Then they wanted to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and tear down the dam - despite the fact that most of San Francisco's water comes from Hetch Hetchy!

I guess they thought that unicorns would fly into SF with magical water spigots. Which wouldn't be the strangest thing that they believe....

Certainly, flat-rate water has been a major factor in wastage of water in California. We only got water meters installed here in Sacramento about 4 years ago, which has resulted in a tripling of our water rates - and quadrupling of the pay to the bureaucrats who get sinecures on the various water boards.

But California is a boom-and-bust state when it comes to water. We have 3-5 year drought periods that alternate with floods, such as the floods of 1986 and 1997. If this actually turns into an El Nino year (the forecasts for this are mixed, but generally unreliable either way) this may be another flood year. Folsom Lake and Lake Shasta were at historic lows 3 weeks ago, and have been at least partially refilled since December 1. And it's raining right now, with more rain predicted to continue through Friday.

How ENTIRELY coincidental is it that the weatherman here in Sacramento, CA reported yesterday that the storms since December 1 have dumped 10 trillion gallons of water on the Golden State!

Granted, only about 10% of that has fallen in catchment areas that feed into our many reservoirs and lakes, and rainfall doesn't percolate into the ground water for years - but this is a STUNNING example of the AlGore Effect.

I'm an agnostic Jew; I'm not certain that God exists. But I _AM_ certain that He has a great sense of humor, and delights in confounding pompous braggarts.

We're pretty sure that most large galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the center. We know that some very-VERY-far away astronomical objects are very active in radio and X-ray output; we call these "quasi-stellar radio objects" or "quasars".

Is it not at least remotely possible that these facts are related? My physics degree is 30 years old and I have only sort-of kept up with the news, but it seems at least possible that those gamma ray bursts and quasars are symptoms of the formation or expansion of those black holes. Nearby galaxies seem quiescent by comparison, so since our observations of the very distant objects are also views back in time, I think it likely that those gamma ray bursts are more like childish temper tantrums, and that our own Milky Way has grown up and matured and is now ready to create new life of its own.

It's entirely possible that life on Earth arose about as early as it could have, and that we may be among the "senior" intelligent lifeforms around. Or, perhaps we're entirely alone, which carries with it its own philosophical baggage. It's interesting to speculate, but it's foolish to make definitive statements when we are 99.9% ignorant of what's actually out there.