Are Gabi Grecko's tits for real?

A bit too firm to be real, I think.  Nice, though.

NOTE FOR CENSORS:  This clip first appeared in a British family newspaper, The Daily Mail

Another finding that increased CO2 is greening the earth

Increased greening over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area


Greening of the Earth and its drivers  by Zaichun Zhu et al.

Global environmental change is rapidly altering the dynamicsof terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioningof the Earth system and provision of ecosystem services1,2. Yet how global vegetation is responding to the changing environment is not well established. Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition(9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. The regional effects of unexplained factors suggest that the next generation of ecosystem models will need to explore the impacts of forest demography,differences in regional management intensities for croplandand pastures, and other emerging productivity constraints such as phosphorus availability.

SOURCE


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

The effect of putting a tax on gold imports



At least three airline passengers have been caught smuggling bars of gold in their rectums in recent days, say authorities in Bangladesh. One man had eight gold bars concealed inside his body, while an X-ray revealed four bars inside a man who was in a great deal of pain, said customs officials.  In a fourth incident, officers found nearly £500,000 worth of gold bars in a plane’s toilet.

The latest arrest occurred today when customs officials detained a person who had eight gold bars hidden inside his body at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the Daily Star reported.  The man had just stepped off a flight from Dubai and admitted to carrying the bars after being challenged at border control. Later, at the airport toilet, he pushed out eight bars worth nearly £40,000.

On May 2, six bars of gold, weighing 600g and worth £26,500, were recovered from a passenger's rectum. The 32-year-old man who smuggled the six gold bars told customs officials he was paid £265"

Source

37-year-old woman charged with sexual assault of a minor



A 37-year-old woman is accused of sexually assaulting a teenager in a group home in York and ending up pregnant.

The 15-year-old told investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol that he was living at the Epworth Village group home in York when he and Jamie Bishop began having sex two to three times a week from January 2015 to July 2015, according to an affidavit for her arrest.

Bishop was a staff member of Epworth Village at the time of the alleged assaults and was suspended last summer and then terminated, officials at the group home said.

All sexual relations allegedly took place in the victim's room at Epworth Village, or outside on the facilities grounds.

Bishop and the boy were seen together several times on surveillance video and her Internet history showed she searched for the definition of degrees of sexual assault in Nebraska, consequences of lying to police and the age of consent in Nebraska, documents say.

DNA test results returned March 9 show the teenager fathered Bishop’s now 5-month-old son, documents say.

In Nebraska, children younger than 16 cannot legally consent to sex.

Bishop was arrested March 15 and charged with first-degree sexual assault of a minor Wednesday. York County Judge Linda Senff set her bail at $75,000.

SOURCE  

Global warming won’t just change the weather—it could trigger massive earthquakes and volcanoes (?)

There's a grain of truth in what he says.  Drastic warming would cause crustal uplift in circumpolar regions -- but all the rest is speculative, entirely dependent on CO2 causing warming.  That there is no correlation between the two seems not to bother him

Bill McGuire is not optimistic about humanity’s future. In his book, Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, he explains why.

By his estimation, carbon dioxide emissions from human activity since industrialization began have changed the trajectory of earth’s climate for the next 100,000 years. We are already experiencing the mayhem and destruction that these changes can wreak, and, in the long term, things are only going to get worse.

On the face of it, the hypothesis that a few degrees’ rise in the average temperature of the atmosphere can cause the earth’s tectonic plates to move sounds ludicrous. Yet, McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, shows through careful analysis of historical records that the relationship between the weather and the “solid” earth is incontrovertible.

We caught up with him recently to talk about his hopes and fears. Here’s an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

Q. How is that human activities in the last two centuries could have an effect on the earth’s climate for the next 100,000 years?

McGuire: The climate system takes so long to respond and return to normal. We had a period about 55 million years ago, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). It was a period of about 10,000 years, where global temperatures rose by about 6°C [11°F]. This is extremely rapid in geological terms. We had palm trees in Russia; crocodiles swimming in the Arctic ocean.

It sounds incredible, but the really scary thing is that we could now see our temperatures go up by 6°C in a few hundred years.

What we are doing now, and if we carry on doing it for the next few centuries, is raise temperatures in 1/50th of time it took to do the same in the PETM. The rate at which we are raising the global average temperature is simply unprecedented.

Q. But wasn’t there a time when the global temperatures were even higher, like 15°C higher than pre-industrial times?

What we’ve done now is that we’ve taken all the carbon from hundreds of millions of years, which has been locked up in fossil fuels, and we’ve stuck it in the atmosphere in a time of two hundred years.

Then there are the feedback effects that will kick in. Human-caused warming will trigger natural events, which will increase temperatures further. One of those is the release of methane permafrost, especially that stuck under the Arctic.

We don’t need to wait till 2100 to trigger that. People who are working on this say that we could see the release of this permafrost at any time. There’s potential for tens of billions of tonnes of methane to be released just like that [snaps fingers]. Some of these releases could bring global warming prediction ahead by as much as 30 years.

People don’t understand these events. They think it’s a gradual ramping up of the temperature. The real impacts are extreme events—storms, droughts, floods—but also potentially even more extreme events, like these methane outbursts.

Q. OK, so, say that happens. Temperatures go up. When do we then see the effects on the solid earth?

We could see that very soon. The big worry is Greenland. It has 2-3 km (1.2-1.9 miles) of ice on top of its lithosphere. That weight is pushing down the crust. Taking that ice off could trigger earthquakes.

We’re seeing that in Alaska. A lot of ice has been lost in the last 100 years, and the faults there are lot more active now. Previously, because of the weight, they couldn’t move but they were accumulating strain because of the earth’s movement.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Alarming moment student tries to take his plaster face mask off in art class... but it's STUCK!



There's plaster in your eyes, nose and mouth and you're struggling to breath.  It's the stuff of nightmares, right?  For one man in America this became a horrible reality after an art class activity went wrong and his plaster face mask became stuck.

 He can be seen with his hands clasped to the mask, trying to remove it as others give him advice. 'Stretch your face into different facial expressions,' one lady says but he can be heard whimpering quietly behind the white plaster. 'You've almost got it,' a girl encourages, but another man is more realistic: 'Pull hard! It's not even moving dude.'

 'It's like pulling a band aid,' the first lady soothes as she moves forward to help him, 'Pull your skin away from the mask.' The woman too attempts to pull the mask off but can be heard saying, 'Oh no I broke it' as the video comes to an end"

Breaking it presumably got it off

Source

Woman, 26, is charged with molesting a female passenger after 'touching her breasts and genitals' during Alaska Airlines flight -- gets let off



An Oregon woman was charged with molesting a female passenger on a flight from Las Vegas to Portland.

Police said Heidi McKinney, 26, touched the woman's breasts and genitals without consent during flight 621 on Alaska Airlines on Sunday.

They arrested her at Portland's PDX airport after the plane touched down, according to an investigation report published by The Smoking Gun.

The alleged unwanted contacts happened while the plane was in Oregon airspace, the document states.

Police spoke with the other woman after the flight landed and later arrested McKinney.

The 26-year-old, of Banks, Oregon, was charged with misdemeanor third-degree sex abuse.  She was booked into the Multnomah County jail on Sunday and her bail was set at $2,500 according to The Smoking Gun.

Authorities released McKinney on Monday and a 'no complaint' disposition was filed in the afternoon according to KGW.

SOURCE

5 Years Later, Deaths Caused by Radiation Leak at Fukushima: 0

Good disproof of the Leftist contention that there is no safe level of radiation.  Moderate doses can even be beneficial

Since the horrific earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan on March 11, 2011, there have been no deaths directly caused by the radiation leak from the nuclear plant in Fukushima, which is located on the northeast side of Japan.

The latest update (in April) by the World Nuclear Association on the Fukushima disaster states, “there have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident.”

Also, in a May 11 e-mail to CNSNews.com, Jaya Mohan, information officer for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), said “no deaths directly caused by radiation exposure after the accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant have been reported.”

That conclusion corresponds with what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in August 2015, and what UNSCEAR confirmed in 2013 and projected for the future.

In its 2015 report, the The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, the IAEA stated, “No early radiation induced health effects were observed among workers or members of the public that could be attributed to the accident.”

The IAEA noted that the “latency time for late radiation health effects can be decades,” but said “given the low levels of doses reported among members of the public, the conclusions of this report are in agreement with those of the UNSCEAR to the United Nations General Assembly.”

The UNSCEAR had reported in May 2013, two years after the Fukushima accident, “Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.”

“No radiation-related deaths or acute effects have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers (including TEPCO employees and contractors) involved at the accident site,” reported the UNSCEAR.  (TEPCO is the acronym for the Tokyo Electric Power Company.)

“On the whole,” said UNSCEAR, “the exposure of the Japanese population was low, or very low, leading to correspondingly low risks of health effects later in life.. The actions taken to protect the public (evacuation and sheltering) significantly reduced the radiation exposures that would have otherwise been received.”

Three TEPCO workers were killed “directly by the earthquake and tsunami, but there have been no fatalities from the nuclear accident,” reported the World Nuclear Association in April 2016.

The earthquake on March 11, 2011, triggered a massive tsunami, which killed about 19,000 people and destroyed more than a million buildings.

A combination of factors caused by the earthquake and tsunami led three of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi to go into meltdown – the nuclear fuel rods could not be cooled and subsequently got too hot and started to melt, which led to several explosions and the release of radiation.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Passengers board flights with pets as mass evacuation continues in wildfire-affected Canada



 "Calgary-based airlines Canadian North and WestJet have broken their own no-animals-allowed flying rules to help pets escape the catastrophic wildfires burning in the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Close to 90,000 residents have been ordered to abandon the town as devastating fires — among the worst in Canada’s history — burn through an area larger than the US city of Chicago.

To assist with the mass evacuation, the two airlines allowed feline, canine and even reptile pets board flight cabins with their owners, turning the planes into flying Noah’s Arks. "Due to the unusual circumstances we were able to bend the rules to accommodate these animals,” a representative for Canadian North said. One Canadian North flight last week carried 19 dogs, including a Great Dane, five cats and two turtles alongside 130 human passengers.

“When we touched down, we got a standing ovation. It brought tears to our eyes,” flight attendant Wanda Murray told CBC"

Source

Perverted Jewish headmistress evading justice



A woman who was allegedly sexually abused at the hands of an ultra-conservative Jewish headmistress has spoken out for the first time.

She is one of at least eight girls that were allegedly abused by Malka Leifer while she was principal of Adass Israel School in Melbourne between 2003 and 2008.

Leifer, who is now under house arrest in Israel after she fled Australia, is wanted by Victoria Police on 74 child sex offences.

Rebecca said when she first spoke about the abuse she wasn't believed and was told to keep quiet. One of the woman she confided in told her: 'That didn't happen. Make sure you keep it that way.'

Eventually a second victim came forward, but within hours of the allegations being made, Leifer fled Australia with her family in the middle of the night

She was arrested and put under house arrest six years later, in 2014, following an extradition request from Australia.

Despite the charges facing her in Australia, Leifer has managed to skip seven court hearings for her extradition, due to ill health and panic attacks.

Her lawyers called for the case to be thrown out in February and have said they will fight extradition to the Israeli High Court.

A Melbourne woman was awarded $1.27 million in compensation for the abuse she suffered last year, and two former students have sued Leifer.

Victims have claimed the fugitive is manipulating the Israeli justice system and her extradition is long overdue.

SOURCE

Does RACISM explain the rise of Donald Trump?

An amusing lack of thought below.   The study concerned is methodologically weak (many more females than males;  no representative sampling etc.) but I believe its conclusions are mostly right.  Support for Trump IS mediated by racism:  Leftist racism. 

Mainstream  whites are discriminated against all the time by America's elites.  "Affirmative action" is nothing if not racist.  Leftist are the racists, not conservatives. And American whites don't like being discriminated against any more than blacks do.  It's only the brain-dead Left who think that the cure for discrimination is more discrimination.

And whites know that all sorts of minorities are privileged over them:  Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, homosexuals, the sexually confused, Greenies, welfare parasites etc.  So when reminded about the discrimination that they suffer, they become more favourable to those who are against favoritism:  The Donald and the Tea Party.  And that is exactly what the researchers found.

Being Leftists, the researchers seem to think that they have discredited Tea Party and Trump supporters in some way. They fail to see that mainstream whites have real grievances and that the Left is to blame for those grievances. White males in particular are both badly treated by government and often mocked, condemned and even demonized. The researchers seem to think that they should not be aware of all that. Trumpism is protest -- protest by ordinary decent people, nothing more. It is the Left who are responsible for the rise of Trump


Many white Americans now believe that their hierarchical standing is being threatened by minority groups, leading them to support political forces that would help ‘restore the status of whiteness,’ a new study claims.

Through a series of online experiments, a Stanford University sociologist found that heightened levels of racial resentment were tied to greater support for the Tea Party in white participants.

The study suggests that the perceived ‘decline of whiteness’ prompts some to align with platforms that condemn minority groups – and they say this mindset may be at play in the rise of Donald Trump.

According to Stanford professor of sociology Robb Willer, this trend began with the election of President Obama in 2008 and grew through the Great Recession, along with the rising political influence of minorities in America.

The team, which also included Matthew Feinberg of the University of Toronto and Rachel Wetts of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted five survey-based online experiments involving 1,329 participants.

In the first, white participants were shown altered photos of President Obama.

Those who viewed an artificially darkened picture of Obama were more likely to express their support for the Tea Party, at 22 percent, compared with those who were shown a lightened photo, at just 12 percent.

In another set of studies, white participants were either told that white share of the total U.S. population was decreasing, or that whites’ average income was declining in comparison to other ethnic groups.

Both groups showed greater support for the Tea Party, which the researchers say is partly explained by increased racial resentment.

This was also seen when the researchers emphasized the declining portion of whites in America.

In the last experiment, the researchers found that the participants reported stronger support for the Tea Party when they emphasized aspects of the platform that could have racial implications, including opposition to immigration and welfare, over libertarian ones, like government spending.

The researchers say this is the first study to demonstrate the link between Tea Party support and racial resentment.

WHAT THE STUDY CLAIMS

Since the election of President Obama in 2008, followed by the Great Recession and the rising political influence of minorities in America, some white Americans feel their ‘racial standing’ is threatened, the researchers say.

‘Together these factors could be viewed as a collective threat to the status of whiteness in the U.S., which provided fertile ground for the rise of a social movement that promoted a return to the way things used to be in America, including a set of policies that could restore whites’ position on top in the racial status hierarchy,’ Willer said.

The study suggests that this perceived ‘decline of whiteness’ prompts some to align with platforms that condemn minority groups, including the Tea Party and likely even Donald Trump.

These groups advocate restrictions on immigration, opposition to Obama, militant positions toward Muslim nations, and other policies which the researchers say would help to 'restore the standing of whites in America.'

‘Past work finds that economic downturns can exacerbate racial resentment by giving whites the sense that they have a shrinking piece of a shrinking pie,’ Willer said.

This, combined with the election of a non-white president and other factors in recent years, are leading some white Americans to feel more ‘threatened,’ the researcher explains.

‘Together these factors could be viewed as a collective threat to the status of whiteness in the U.S., which provided fertile ground for the rise of a social movement that promoted a return to the way things used to be in America, including a set of policies that could restore whites’ position on top in the racial status hierarchy,’ Willer said.

And, the findings don’t just apply to the Tea Party; the researcher explains that the growing trend is likely playing a role in the growing support for Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.

‘Donald Trump’s candidacy pulls support from much of the same base that the Tea Party did and has,' Willer said.

'And there is good reason to think that many of the same psychological forces propelling Tea Party support also propel support for Trump’s candidacy. Indeed, Trump’s statements probably go further in criticizing minority groups than the Tea Party did.'

‘What was largely implicit in the case of the Tea Party has become more explicit in the case of Trump’s candidacy’ Willer said.

According to Willer, the findings suggest the ‘threats’ to racial status have caused some to turn to support for the Tea Party, and likely Trump, based on their advocacy of certain policies, including restrictions on immigration, opposition to Obama, militant positions toward Muslim nations.

The researcher says these policies would help to 'restore the standing of whites in America.'

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

WTF

New Zealand schoolteacher is jailed after three years of indecently assaulting underage boy



For three years a Porirua school teacher kept her child abuse secret, manipulating her school boy victim with threats and lies. Talia Shadwell reports.

Stacey Reriti told the boy it was his singing that stole her heart. She was in her late 20s, he was just 10.

They swapped sexual messages on a phone she had secretly given him. She drove him to water side carparks and a motel for illicit sexual encounters. They told each other they were in love.

Their relationship persisted in secret until the boy was 12-year-old. Only another teacher stumbling across one of the text exchanges broke the silence.

The boy would later tell the court they were "like normal couples that text in the morning and say 'I love you' and stuff".

She told the police, and a jury, he was a "cunning liar".

Someone other "mystery" person had sent the boy explicit photographs. Someone else had threatened him if he revealed their relationship. Someone else had claimed she was pregnant with his child.

But in High Court in Wellington in October, the jury took just three hours to return a guilty verdict for the Natone Park School teacher.  She was convicted of the seven sexual abuse offences against the boy and, on Friday, Justice Mark Woolford sentenced her to 10 and half years in prison.

Throughout the trial, the jury would hear the extraordinary lengths Reriti would take to control her victim.

When he failed to respond to text, she would call him a "bad boyfriend" and threaten to call the cops on him.

While the boy was in the grips of a family tragedy, she threatened to out him for not contacting her.

She often texted the boy, telling him she felt sad, scared and alone, demanding he "send nice texts to her to make him feel good". She demanded his Facebook log-in so she could check whether he was messaging other girls.

The relationship start with her rubbing his cheek and confessing her love. They kissed in her car, parked up at the edge of the Pauatahanui inlet, gradually progressing to more explicit acts.

In February 2014, Reriti drove the boy to a Paraparaumu motel.

The jury heard how she made the 12-year-old hide in her car, so she could book them into a room without the motel staff seeing she was with a child. There, for the first time, she had sex with him.

Reriti - who maintained the boy was a cunning liar telling "disgusting" stories - shook her head and grimaced in the dock on Friday, as Woolford detailed what the boy said they did in there.

Women could not be charged with rape, Woolford noted. They can be charged with sexual violation offences, which carry the same penalties.

However, describing in graphic detail what happened in the motel room, Woolford remarked that it was,  "colloquially, if not legally, known as rape."

The boy was not in court to see Reriti jailed on Friday. However his family turned out to see her put behind bars.

Reriti's crimes had created a "scar" on their lives, Woolford said. The boy wished it had never happened. "Understandably he is angry at you, Ms Reriti, he feels that his childhood has been taken from him."

Police welcomed the sentence and said investigations into female child sex offenders were rare.

Caroline Burns, clinical leader at WellStop, said it was impossible to be sure how rare women offenders actually were, as there was a view among some men that any sexual advance should be celebrated.

"Victims might have the feeling they wouldn't be believed. As well, we know male victims of sexual assault find the reaction often is, 'well, lucky you.' "

Reriti's lawyer Stephen Iorns told the court on Friday that mental health issues and a troubled past had contribute to her actions.

When Reriti had been on track to be a "very successful" teacher her "career is over".

THE TRIAL

"It's disturbing. It wasn't me. I would never do that to a child, never," Stacey Reriti.

"[We were] like normal couples that text in the morning and say 'I love you' and stuff," the boy.

"Not one scrap of evidence puts them alone together, except for the words of a troubled child," Reriti's lawyer, Stephen Iorns.

"It was the evidence of a teacher that is unwilling to admit the enormity of what she had done," Crown prosecutor Dale La Hood

SOURCE  

The most dangerous hobby

The rise of the Donald has got the Left scratching their heads. They need some explanation that will save them from admitting that a lot of what he says is right.  Out of that has come the essay below by academic Eitan D. Hersh.  He provides the explanation that Trump supporters are "hobbyists". 

I think Hersh does have a point in general and I think that "hobbyism" may well be part of the explanation for Trump support -- but I see the enthusiasm for Trump as too great to be explained fully that way.  I think a lot of Americans really are fed up with a GOP that repeatedly kow-tows to Leftist thinking, with all its double standards and lack of reality contact.

The way both sides of politics describe Islam as a "religion of peace" is truly astonishing.  What do Muslims have to do in the name of their religion for it to be described as a religion of hate? And The Donald is the only one who has said anything negative about Muslims.

But I do think that the Obamamania of 2008 was a prize example of the "hobbyism" that Hersh describes




Something troubling has emerged on the American scene: Political activity has become a hobby. Voting, petitioning, partisan cheering, donating, watching infotainment news: The chief purpose for participating in politics seems to be self-gratification.

We are accustomed to thinking about participation in politics as motivated by civic duty or self-interest, not gratification. That has changed due to a combination of factors related to the nature of free time, the openness of the political process to mass participation, and a recent period of relative peace.

For Americans who are far enough removed from military service, economic hardship, and discrimination, political stakes can seem pretty low, especially in the quarter-century since the end of the Cold War when foreign threats seem less immediate. And so politics has become an erudite way to spend leisure time. But unlike softball or beekeeping, the stakes are actually high.

Donald Trump’s surprising rise sheds light on the perils of political hobbyism. It is clear that far too many people have been treating a high-stakes affair like a low-stakes one. That’s why they never saw Trump coming. When politics is treated like an unserious game, unserious candidates emerge.

TO UNDERSTAND POLITICAL hobbyism, consider three important forms of political participation: campaign contributing, activism, and voting. Today, all three activities are dominated by hobbyists.

Wealthy donors are pouring money into politics. Why? Our reflexive answer is so they can get something in return, like tax breaks or government contracts. But when political scientists study campaign finance, they mostly do not see self-interested donors. Most donations come from individuals, not corporate PACs. Most of these individuals (97 percent) give to only one party, which is not a savvy investment model for self-serving contributors. And donation patterns suggest that donors are less motivated by ideology than by pure partisanship.

So what are donors buying? Not policy, but time with their celebrity crushes. Donors want to attend cocktail parties, pose in photographs, and golf with candidates. They want to socialize with other donors. They want the candidates to solicit their advice. They want to be friends with their favored politicians.

Would a wealthy person really contribute thousands of dollars just for self-gratification? Yes, actually, the rich spend money to gratify themselves in ways that seem unfathomable to the rest of us. Politics is just one of those ways.

Here’s an example: Journalist Matea Gold recently noticed that wealthy donors have been traveling around the country to attend the presidential debates in person. The political parties were saving them seats. Why are donors traveling to watch the debates live? Because they are groupies. Republican donor Foster Friess told Gold, “It’s the same thing as going to a football game. If you’re in the crowd, you can hear the cheers, unfiltered by microphones. The chemistry is so much more exciting.’’ For the avid and wealthy hobbyist, a few thousand dollars is a small price to pay for a good show.

NEXT, CONSIDER ACTIVISM, a form of participation open to nonwealthy hobbyists. When a presidential campaign season is in high gear, millions of people engage. During the 2008 presidential contest, for instance, more than 13 million Obama supporters provided the campaign with their e-mail addresses, more than 3 million donated, and more than 2 million volunteered.

Obama’s campaign organization hoped it could channel this grass-roots energy into policy advocacy. Thus, the campaign morphed into Organizing for America, a group positioned to push the administration’s policy agenda through grass-roots mobilization.

It didn’t work.

The problem is that policy advocacy is much less fun than campaigning. Campaigning involves competition. Policy involves compromise.

In 2009, when Organizing for America began mobilizing support for its first big issue, the Affordable Care Act, only a fraction of campaign supporters took action. The organization tried to get supporters to town hall meetings where conservatives were a dominant presence. But the millions of campaign enthusiasts largely disengaged, even in the first year of Obama’s administration and even on his signature issue.

The demise of Organizing for America (and its reboot after the 2012 election, Organizing for Action) is hardly surprising. For most hobbyists, governing is simply less gratifying than campaigning. Measured by Google searches, almost nobody is interested in “Organizing for America’’ or “Organizing for Action” anymore, and they haven’t been for a while. Organizing for Obama? Fun. Organizing for Action? Meh.

Consider another example of hobbyist activism: online petitions, like those sent to the White House. Over 1,800 petitions (signed by 13 million individuals) were submitted in the first 20 months of the White House’s online petition program, which launched in 2011. Only 5 percent of these petitions addressed issues like health care, public education, taxation, paid parental leave — big issues that social scientists call redistributive. Most petitions either focused on minor issues (Recognize diaphragmatic hernia awareness day!) or addressed broad issues that were not directly related to economic well-being. Even when liberal groups like MoveOn.org and CREDO solicit petitions from their progressive base, economic issues are not particularly popular among petitioners. The most popular political petition that CREDO has ever circulated demanded funding for NPR.

Despite their enormous potential, online petitions are primarily tools for hobbyists. To hobbyists, large-scale economic issues are complicated and tiresome. And, frankly, these issues may not be a priority for hobbyists, whose lives are reasonably comfortable. They’d rather focus on issues that are gratifying and simple, or else just wait for the next exhilarating campaign season to begin.....

For citizens who are socially and financially comfortable, the risks seem low. They have a safety net. They do not fear military conscription. Their lives are stable. And so they do not approach politics with the solemnity appropriate for a high-stakes undertaking. Acting as if the stakes are low when they are high can be exceedingly dangerous.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Extreme weather events have NOT become more frequent in recent times

Warmists never tire of claiming that global warming is causing more extreme weather events, particularly of the windy variety.  Skeptics in turn  point to statistics showing (for instance) that hurricane landfalls on the USA have in fact been much reduced in the last 10 or so years.

The authors below however rightly argue that if you are going to detect trends, you need as long a time series as possible.  What has happened over the last 10 or 20 years may not be typical.  So they go back to 1872 to get their data for analysis. And they devise methods of statistical analysis that take account of the relative rarity of such events.

So they divide their data into two halves, an early half and a later half.  And they find that there has been no change in the frequency of extreme events between the first half and the second half.  From 1872 to 2011, there was no  change in the frequency of extreme weather events

The prophecy that global warming would bring on more extreme weather events was always on fairly shaky theoretical ground  anyway.

The opening clause in their Abstract below would have been needed to get their article published


Need for Caution in Interpreting Extreme Weather Statistics

Prashant D. Sardeshmukh and Gilbert P. Compo

Abstract

Given the reality of anthropogenic global warming, it is tempting to seek an anthropogenic component in any recent change in the statistics of extreme weather. This paper cautions that such efforts may, however, lead to wrong conclusions if the distinctively skewed and heavy-tailed aspects of the probability distributions of daily weather anomalies are ignored or misrepresented. Departures of several standard deviations from the mean, although rare, are far more common in such a distinctively non-Gaussian world than they are in a Gaussian world. This further complicates the problem of detecting changes in tail probabilities from historical records of limited length and accuracy.

A possible solution is to exploit the fact that the salient non-Gaussian features of the observed distributions are captured by so-called stochastically generated skewed (SGS) distributions that include Gaussian distributions as special cases. SGS distributions are associated with damped linear Markov processes perturbed by asymmetric stochastic noise and as such represent the simplest physically based prototypes of the observed distributions. The tails of SGS distributions can also be directly linked to generalized extreme value (GEV) and generalized Pareto (GP) distributions. The Markov process model can be used to provide rigorous confidence intervals and to investigate temporal persistence statistics. The procedure is illustrated for assessing changes in the observed distributions of daily wintertime indices of large-scale atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic and North Pacific sectors over the period 1872–2011. No significant changes in these indices are found from the first to the second half of the period.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

The crook Cook again

John Cook is a bald-faced liar and I would be delighted if he sues me for saying so.  He trots out below the old 97% myth when his own research showed that two thirds (66.4%) of climate scientists TOOK NO POSITION on global warming, which is what any skeptic would do in the present climate of censuring and censoring dissent.  The only 97% consensus was among the one third who DID take a position.

Check it for yourself. The abstract of his paper says:  "We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW". Anybody who can read can see what a crook Cook is  -- just from his own writings

Cook does however make an interesting admission below.  He says that discussing the climate facts is unlikely to persuade people of global warming, which is right.  There are NO scientific facts which unambiguously support global warming.  It's only a focus on that bogus 97% that might win people over

I live only about 15 minutes drive away from where John Cook works so I challenged him to meet me and discuss global warming in person.  He agreed.  But when I asked if he minded me recording our conversation, I heard no more from him. He knows that his claims cannot stand the light of uncensored publicity


Communicating climate change is hard. Debunking climate myths is even harder.

Take it from me, I’ve spent the last decade researching climate communication and the psychology of misinformation. So let me express my expert opinion on a Jimmy Kimmel comedy segment on climate change.

It’s one of the better pieces of climate communication I’ve encountered.

Not everyone agrees. Scientist/filmmaker Randy Olsen has criticised Kimmel for giving free attention to climate denialist Marc Morano. Olsen does have a point. Morano scores a win by getting mainstream TV attention. But there’s a bigger picture here. The main winner on the night is public perception of scientific consensus.

The average person has no idea just how strong the scientific agreement on climate change is. Multiple studies have found 97% agreement among climate scientists that humans are causing global warming. In contrast, only 12% of Americans are aware that the consensus is over 90%.

Why the huge gap between public perception of consensus and the 97% reality? Part of the answer goes back nearly two decades. In the late 1990s, a Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote a now infamous memo, advising Republicans to maintain doubt about the level of scientific agreement on climate change. Luntz’s market research had identified that what people thought about expert opinion affected other views on climate change.

It turns out Luntz was ahead of his time in identifying the psychological importance of perceived consensus. Scientific studies from 2011, 2013 and 2015 have identified perceived consensus as a “gateway belief”, influencing a range of attitudes about climate change including support for climate policy.

As a result, social scientists have urged climate scientists to set the record straight on scientific consensus. As far as climate communication messages go, this one is relatively straightforward. You don’t need to explain the mechanism of the greenhouse effect or the nuances of the carbon cycle (although those are good to explain if you get the opportunity). To effectively communicate the reality of climate change, you just need to mention that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.

So Kimmel nails it. His approach is entirely consistent with the advice of communication experts. My guess is this is probably due to his instincts as a professional comedian rather than a thorough familiarity with the psychological literature on consensus messaging.

Either way, along with President Obama, John Oliver, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and Bernie Sanders, Kimmel has provided another valuable contribution to closing the consensus gap.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

Social worker, 38, had sex with vulnerable boy, 16, in a hotel after sending string of 100 'graphic and sexually explicit' messages on Facebook  

A social worker has been struck off the register after engaging in a sexual relationship with a 'vulnerable' teenage boy. Claire Runkee, 38, was struck off the register of social workers after her relationship with the 16-year-old, during which she took him to a hotel for the night and sent him a string of explicit messages.

At a Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) hearing it emerged the boy - who was placed with his foster carers at the age of four and known as Child A - had to undergo therapy after the liaison was uncovered.

Ms Runkee was caught when the boy's foster carers saw more than 100 'graphic and sexually explicit' messages on Facebook.

She qualified as a social worker in 2012, and had been working with a children's safeguarding team for a year before developing 'a friendship' outside of work with Child A. The boy was vulnerable, had struggled at school and was under a care order.

His foster carers saw the Facebook messages from Ms Runkee between January 1 and February 13 last year, which showed she had 'placed pressure' on the boy not to reveal their relationship.

One message stated: 'Choose what you want to say and stick to it, don't rock the boat baby.  'Think about keeping your mouth shut as to deviate will cause us problems.'

The foster carers sent the messages to the council that had placed the boy in care and an investigation began.

The HCPC found that although she had expressed remorse, she showed no evidence that she 'fully acknowledged the degree to which her behaviour was wrong'.

The HCPC stated yesterday: 'The foster placement very nearly broke down as a result of these events.

'Sessions of therapy were organised and, more significantly, Child A was given professional help to understand the inappropriate nature of the relationship.'

The conduct and competence committee stated: 'Although the sexual relationship was consensual, the conduct was an abuse of power and trust which included deliberately attempting to conceal actions for personal gain.'

During interviews at Hull City Council, East Yorkshire, Ms Runkee said at first she believed the boy was 18 before admitting she knew he was only 16.

'She accepted that the relationship was inappropriate,' the ruling stated.

During one interview, she admitted booking a hotel and taking the boy there.

She said: 'I became aware of his age and entered into a sexual relationship with him. I should have ended it but I didn't.'

The committee, chaired by Gill Madden, stated: 'She placed a child at risk of emotional harm. 'This was a deliberate and reckless act with Child A.'

While she had not committed a crime and had no professional connection with the boy, the committee ruled she had breached standards of conduct, performance and ethics.

An email from Ms Runkee, sent to the committee last month, stated she had 'lost her integrity, her reputation and her self-respect, that she continues to manage her shame and anxiety on a daily basis'.

While she did not attend the hearing, the panel said there was no evidence she had recently reflected on the impact on Child A.

The panel concluded striking her name from the register was a 'last resort', adding: 'It was a significant breach of basic social work standards and risked bringing the profession into disrepute.'

Jon Plant, city children safeguarding manager at Hull City Council, said Ms Runkee was suspended when the allegations came to light and no longer worked for the council.

He said: 'We do not tolerate conduct that falls outside of the code of conduct and the professional standards for social workers, which we expect our staff to uphold at all times.'

Ms Runkee began working for Hull City Council in 2011 before qualifying as a social worker the next year.

SOURCE

Will Hitler be forever with us?

He will, as long as it suits the Left.  They use the evils he did in the name of racial differences to discredit all mention of race.  They think, rightly, that if they accuse someone of racism, people will think of Hitler's monstrous deeds and become very wary of the accused person.  So they need to keep memory of Hitler alive.  And they use the schools to do just that, leaving out all the inconvenient bits, of course.

So for better or worse we are stuck with old Adolf.  That being so, it pays us to know as much as we can about him and to tell everyone in politics as much as we can about him.  If it becomes widely known that he was in fact a fairly conventional Leftist of his day, all memory of him will suddenly be forgotten.  Which is a reason why WE should not let his memory die.

So about ten years ago, Michael Miller of North Carolina put together a library of information about Hitler, focusing on  things that Leftists "forget" about.  And he used my essay on Hitler to show that Hitler was a Leftist.  But he asks other questions too:  What was Hitler's attitude to abortion, to animal rights, and smoking etc.

Michael used a free hosting service offered by Lycos to put his material up.  And, after a while, when he bowed out, I took on the job of maintaining the site. Recently however the site has disappeared. Someone at Lycos obviously decided that they would -- in typical Leftist fashion -- do a bit of censorship and delete it.

But I am a cautious old conservative type so I had all the files backed up onto not one but two hard disks.  So I have been able to re-post everything.  Reposting did require a lot of alterations to links so it was a bit of work but I think everything now works again.  If there is anything missing I would be obliged to hear about it.  The new home is here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).  

Teacher, 39, 'had sex with 18-year-old student, touched him sexually during class and showered him with gifts



A teacher has been accused of having sex with an 18-year-old student several times, touching him sexually during class and then showering him with gifts to keep him quiet.

Rose Limuli, 39, had an 'inappropriate sexual relationship' with the student at Upper Dublin High School, north of Philadelphia, from November 2015 until March this year, police said.

Students - including the alleged victim - would spend lunchtimes in Limuli's classroom because she would bring in cake and was 'cool', according to investigators.

After the student turned 18, he and Limuli allegedly swapped phone numbers and started messaging each other on Snapchat, ABC 6 reported.

In November, the English teacher picked up the student in her car and drove him to a park, where she performed oral sex on him, according to a criminal complaint.

She allegedly made sexual comments to the teenager in class and is even accused of touching him sexually during a lesson.

Limuli also allegedly went to the student's home in January and had sex with him, the Montgomery News reported.

Afraid of being caught, the teacher then showered the teenager in gifts, buying him a bicycle, sneakers, clothes and giving him $1,000 in cash, the complaint states.

Investigators also said Limuli gave the student access to her credit card and told him she would get in trouble if anyone found out about their relationship.

The pair are believed to have had 10 encounters outside of school between December and March, during which they spoke on the phone to each other more than 200 times.

Limuli, who had been a teacher at the school for more than two years, was arrested and charged with 12 counts of institutional sexual assault on Monday.

She was already on administrative leave after the police started their investigation on April 19.

The teacher has been released on a $50,000 bail and cannot contact any of her students. She will appear in court on May 16.

School district Superintendent Deborah Wheeler said Limuli underwent background checks when she joined the school which 'gave no indication of any previous criminal behavior'.

SOURCE  

Asbestos-laden building materials slipping into Australia as result of weak regulation, report finds

The whole asbestos scare is conventionally correct and worldwide but is utter nonsense.  There has NEVER been any proof of harm from asbestos in building and other products.  The only people harmed by asbestos were those involved in mining, fabricating and installing it.  There has never been any harm to the general public from products in their environment that incorporate asbestos.  I spent a significant part of my childhood living in a house lined with unpainted asbestos sheeting ("Fibro"), as did countless other Australians.  It was once a very fashionable building material.  And none of us came to any harm from it.  Asbestos is one of the many things that are harmful only if you are exposed to large amounts of it

Glaring weaknesses in regulations and border protection issues are allowing building products contaminated with potentially deadly asbestos into Australia, a Senate committee has warned.

In an interim report tabled late on Wednesday, the committee raised particular concern about "the ability of Australia's enforcement agencies to effectively police borders so that [contaminated products] are detected and prevented from entering Australia".

"At the moment, this area of enforcement appears to require substantial strengthening and should be a high priority for government," it read.

"The importation of banned materials, such as asbestos, raises very serious concerns about the capacity of Australian authorities to deal with this issue, particularly in light of our open and dynamic trade environment."

The report notes only two importers have been fined over asbestos-laced building material since tougher penalties were imposed in February 2014.

It said fines of up to $170,000 could be imposed, but only $64,000 in fines, penalties and costs had been issued since 2009.

The committee said the role of foreign governments in stopping contaminated products from leaving their shores should also be considered.

It has requested the inquiry be extended for a fourth time, to September 30, 2016, "due to the seriousness of the problem and the disjointed regulation of the use of building products, both manufactured in Australia and overseas".

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).