{"id":12745,"date":"2014-05-12T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12745"},"modified":"2014-05-12T00:01:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T07:01:48","slug":"open-thread5122014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/12\/open-thread5122014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–5\/12\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, and I\u2019m rushing.  Tomorrow is almost here.  I have been busy with housework and could not sleep.  Fortunately I did my research early this morning.  Day 21.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 3:05 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>The huge Kelvin wave that formed in the Pacific a while back, and may bring us a big El Nino, is now reaching the surface.  It’s huge, and it’s one of the warmest ever recorded.  Here’s the latest from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center<\/a><\/p>\n

\"0512Wave\"<\/p>\n

The vertical scale is the depth of this pool of water, while the horizontal scale is the longitudinal location of the pool.  A back of the envelope calculation shows that the pool is roughly 5500 miles wide!  It seems reasonable to assume that water this warm and this amount of it, is going to dump a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and the resulting weather may not be very pretty for some people.<\/p>\n

This may well be the source of the unseasonably hot weather I’m getting this Spring. Such events used to be less common and less intense.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has had a tough month.<\/p>\n

Two of his fellow commissioners this week said he should delay introducing a new set of net neutrality rules, which he had scheduled for May 15. <\/p>\n

A group of 11 United States Senators told him Friday that rules allowing companies to pay an Internet service provider for express-lane access to consumers, as the rules are widely expected to do, would violate the principle of an open Internet. <\/p>\n

And last week, a finger-wagging, tough-talking speech he gave to cable television executives received a lukewarm response and engendered questions about what some listeners perceived as a \u201cfather knows best\u201d tone.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wheeler has vowed to forge ahead.<\/p>\n

Late Friday, the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation released a letter from Mr. Wheeler, in which he said that he would ask for public input on whether to classify broadband Internet service as a sort of public utility, a route that many consumer advocacy groups have pushed\u2026 <\/p>\n

Could it be that Wheeler designed a plan in compliance with a Republican court order to allow a corporate "fast lane" with the intent of stimulating opposition to that plan to use as a rationale for reclassification under Title II? Consider that Wheeler has supported Net Neutrality in the past. When the new rules are released, we must respond forcefully and often.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Charles Krauthammer continues the assault on science, calling it superstition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hey, Fox News managed to find another crazy, irresponsible idiot disguised as a sentient being to debunk facts and science: good old Charles Krauthammer. He said on Tuesday that the belief in global climate change is mere \u201csuperstition\u201d akin to the \u201crain dance of Native Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why would he say such a thing? Such a provably wrong thing? We have no idea. It could be wishful thinking. Sure, we wish this whole climate change catastrophe would go away, and that we could wake up from it like a bad dream. We wish all these meanie scientists conducting real research based on actual facts would just stop discovering that the news is so very, very bad, and bullying us about it.<\/p>\n

Krauthammer took his point a little farther, about science actually being superstition. Yah, and the other way around, too. Up is down Charles. Black is white. No is yes. \u201cIt\u2019s always a result of what is ultimately what we\u2019re talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon. It\u2019s the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it\u2019s in the rain dance of Native Americans \u2014 if you sin, the skies will not cooperate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still more crazy talk from Chuckie Kraut:<\/p>\n

\u201cNinety-nine percent of physicists were convinced that space and time are fixed, until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not,\u201d Krauthammer said. \u201cI\u2019m not impressed by numbers, I\u2019m not impressed by consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does impress you Charles? On second thought, maybe don\u2019t answer that.<\/p>\n

This is just one of eight most wacko Republicans in their War on Science from last week alone. Click through for the other seven. Note that Krauthammer was not satisfied just to attack science. To the delight of the Republican Reichsministry of propaganda, Faux Noise<\/em>, he also included a racist attack against Native American spiritual tradition. In sharp contrast, authentic Christian respect others’ beliefs.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"0512Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, and I\u2019m rushing.  Tomorrow is almost here.  I have been busy with housework and could not sleep.  Fortunately I did my research early this morning.  Day 21. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:05 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do? Short Takes: From Daily Kos: The […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-religion","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}