An Ummah of Ants

From the BBC Earth News comes this:

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

Remarkable behaviour. See the article "Ant mega-colony takes over world".

The Hive of Islam

The post title links to a live Saudi web cam trained on the ka'aba in the so-called "Grand" Mosque of Mecca. Watch the swarming ummah at your leisure. For additional background on the ka'aba and the black stone go here or here or here. If you didn't think before that Islam was a creepy and predatory cult of amalgamated ancient superstitions, crossed with a thin and impressionistic understanding of Judaism and Christianity, now you've got some work to do. And be sure to click-up the links, especially this one.

UPDATE 6/16/2009
It appears they've shut off the web cam, leaving the page there, but without the swarming image. It was a live version of this....

UPDATE 6/18/2009
The web cam is back up.

All four men were US-born.

From the Daily News comes a timely timely report on a lowdown, homegrown, ex-moderate, 100% genuine Islamic activity:

The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought was packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.

The four African American men, three of whom were said to be jailhouse converts to Islam, also allegedly had what they believed was a working Stinger missile in their car.

Officials said they hoped to shoot down a plane at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh in Orange County.

..................

Arrested was alleged ringleader James Cromitie of Newburgh, the son of an Afghan immigrant and his African American wife.

Cromitie served a long stretch in prison in the past.

Alleged henchment David Williams, Onta Williams and Leguerre Payen were busted with him.

Sources said the three were jailhouse converts to Islam.

Here are my questions about this story. Why are we permitting Saudi Arabia to finance the training for a universal jailhouse da'wa and what is it that criminals find attractive about converting to Islam and engaging in jihadist razzias in their own backyards? Where stand the ikhwan CAIR and their spokesman Ibrahim Hooper in all of this? Do the Saudis find jailhouse conversions to be a cost effective jihadi recruiting strategy? Do they enjoy the clever irony? After all, we absorb the cost of the initial criminal activity plus we absorb the cost of housing the prisoners, and then we pay the Saudi-trained imam-chaplain to do the rest prior to their release.

The technique seems to be in maximal use all across the kuffar prisons of the Western world. Were we to halt the in-migration of Muslims to the USA would that make a difference to the Homeland Security program? Would it be safer to fly an airplane or be a Jew? What's really pathetic is that after all this stupidity we then go on to pay the directors and agents of the FBI to plan and infiltrate and entrap these traitors after we release them while they go about putting into action the Islamist belief system we enabled them to acquire while in prison. Why, the next thing you know, we'll be be cleaning up the wreckage from middle of a city or something. At our expense. Sheesh. Why don't we just convert and pay the jizya? It would be cheaper.

Cleaner Air? There must be some mistake

This just in:

President George W. Bush drew the ire of environmental groups throughout his eight years in the White House, perhaps the loudest in 2003 when he announced that he would end a Clean Air Act program that required older power plants, refineries and industrial sites to install pollution control devices when they expanded their operations.

But in looking over the data on air quality from the Bush years, Hayward notes that levels of most air pollutants decreased at a faster rate than they did during the Clinton administration.

How odd. How odd that people of good will, intellect and intention would come together without the specter of government compulsion to accomplish a socially useful purpose in course of making their own choices for their own purposes? That to accomplish a socially useful purpose might be one of their purposes? That that purpose might be cleaner air on its own merits? I wonder how that national forest policy of relaxing federal regulation in favor of local administration of local priorities worked out???

More Israeli Genius: 40% Better Gas Mileage

An Israeli teen has conceived and developed a new device that improves gas mileage by as much as a whopping 40% and cuts emissions as well. The credulous broadcasters can't resist the "saving the planet" schtick, however, in their somewhat over-the-top presentation. They should have just shut up and let the kid talk, and let his testers give their testimonials. The device can be very easily retro-fitted into most gas and diesel powered vehicles apparently and reportedly boosts engine horsepower as an added benefit. Great news on the conservation front that can help to push the cost of gas lower by reducing demand, unless of course, the eco-fascists in government move to snatch the savings out of your pocket with a compensatory gas tax designed to discourage you from the frivolous extra driving you'll no doubt do. Maybe someone can figure out a way to keep the device out of Iranian hands while they are busy shouting "Death to Israel". Gas shortages are our friend in their corner of the world.

Update 28 April 2009

My architectural training has me now wondering if this technology could be adapted to home heating. Many homes in the northeastern U.S., more percentage-wise than any other area of the country, use fuel oil for heat. If so, huge savings could be obtained, and possibly more B.T.U.'s could be extracted per gallon of oil burned in the the home heating market. This could be another frontier of engineering exploration. The entire notion of "peak oil" may have just gotten smacked by a new consumption paradigm.

Why is Nancy Nervous?

John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, has just returned from a fact-finding mission in Pakistan, his timely and worrisome observations challenging President Obama's bellicose but confused Af/Pak policies, while trying to come off as helpful. At home, the country is in a furor over the President's declaration that there could be criminal prosecutions of some Bush era officials based upon the new and improved "torture" policies, contravening his own chief-of-staff and Director of National Intelligence.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, former ranking Democrat of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and as Speaker, the 3rd highest Constitutional Officer of the U.S. government, is backpedaling furiously onto the ropes over the same subject, attempting to defend herself from allegations that she had been advised in sub-committee of the secret details of the torture techniques and the policy approach to using them, and had legitimized their use by the CIA (however tacitly). That she chooses to respond to pointed questions by anxiously and nervously defending herself (to her base, no less), is the most telling aspect of her reaction.

That the President might not be displeased by this turn of events should be considered a good bit more than possible. The size and of complexion of the stimulus legislation, for which the President has been roundly criticized even by members of his own party, was composed and packaged by the most left-leaning of the Congressional Democrats, and led by Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker has shown herself to be feisty when it comes to standing up to the Obama White House. Though she leads the left wing of her party, she is not particularly well-liked by her colleagues in the House. Further, were she to fall the chances are slim that her successor as Speaker would be as far to the left as she. Whoever succeeds her leadership among House progressives is not likely to occupy the Speaker's chair. Conceivably she could lose her credibility with the left and yet retain the Speakership. However, if the left's protection of her falls away for this cause, coupled with her role in the Harman wiretapping incident and they begin gnawing at her, she will also be punished by them. As for President Obama, at this point in his career the Community-Organizer-in-Chief no longer requires the brokering services Nancy Pelosi provided him with the bellwether San Francisco Democrats, or with progressives in general.

With Pelosi moved to the sidelines and out of his way, a more Obama-compliant cadre of house leadership will emerge--and she won't be calling in the plays from the left. How this resolves remains to be seen. If questioned about torture-gate on what he knew and when he knew it, Senator Kerry will no doubt turn the conversation to Afghanistan and his very recent trip, accompanied by some helpful statesman-like hemming and hawing. Maybe Nancy's nervous because she senses she's about to be cut into political ribbons by the harpies on the left unleashed by virtue of the President's abrupt flip-flop to their cause. It will be telling to see if she is defended by him now, if given the opportunity, or if instead he chooses remains silent. If it is silence, or less than serious and reasoned defense, listen then for the sound of knives being sharpened in the cellar; Nancy may be on her way out and the president free of one more thorn in his side. Irony or intention?

Update 26 April 2009:
Porter Goss, who was, in the fall of 2002, chairman of the House intelligence committee of which Ms. Pelosi was the ranking minority member, (and later Director of Central Intelligence), has established that the Congresswoman was in on the waterboarding from the very beginning. His piece in the Washington Post makes it very clear that she was, in fact, deeply involved and committed to the technique in the pursuit of information from the al Qaida operatives in CIA hands at the time. Barack Obama, back in Illinois was not, so his hands are clean.

The EPA Takes a Call from Obama's Science Officer

Presumably its ok for the government to deliberately fill the stratosphere with massive quantities of dust in order to "cool the planet" (forget about the Clean Air Act), but hey, its not okay for you to burn the toast. Down the road, these hyperventilating bureaucrats will be on your case making sure you get the opportunity to pay your fair share out-of-pocket for your own personal carbon "emissions". Just think of it as a sin tax to fund the syntax of post-modern existence. Life will be beautiful in the thrilling, new sustainable world that's out there somewhere beyond tomorrow; I can just feel it coming on, can't you? Of course you can. I do however, sense a troubling disturbance. For the "settled scientists" of man-made global warming worries:

Panic attacks are almost always associated with shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. When people feel short of breath, they often respond by hyperventilating, another common symptom of panic attacks. People hyperventilating exhale more carbon dioxide than they produce, thereby lowering carbon dioxide levels in the body. As carbon dioxide levels drop, several other changes in the body result in the lightheadedness and dizziness that often accompany panic attacks.*

You'd think a little more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be beneficial for some people. And that they'd be self-aware enough to recognize it.

*or maybe its just breathing abnormalities

No Representation Without Taxation?

What was once merely an outlandish disparity in numbers between those who benefit from U.S. income tax policy and those who actually pay the taxes, is now on its way to its largest and most disturbing level in history. So many voters today pay no income tax that there is little natural incentive within the electorate to keep the cost of government low, to set reasonable spending priorities or to vote for anyone other than a redistributionist Democrat. Rather than trumped-up publicity stunts, I hope that the Tea Party rallies tomorrow will shine a light on this problem above all others. In an article published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal Ari Fleischer, a former Bush press secretary writes:

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 — 60% of the country — paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation’s income.

When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that’s a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes. For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation’s income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.

Not that this is an entirely new phenomenon; however, the situation in which we find ourselves today, to a far greater extreme devalues work, undermines success, and is at bottom, fundamentally corrupt and debilitating. The pendulum has swung too far in a direction that can only lead to a self-perpetuating and thuggish majority, voting themselves no taxes, but only benefits to be paid for by the minority who are taxpayers.

"in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

"The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air. John Holdren told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort."

"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.

Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions."

Living as we are in an era of mass psychosis, I shouldn't be surprised to learn that this kind of nonsense is being seriously discussed in the White House. Giddy with power, and out for a joyride in a hybrid with bad brakes, the Obama administration is accelerating into a foggy left turn.

Israeli Science Breakthrough Extracts Fuel from Water

What if they came for the carbon tax and no one paid? Enterprising men will always find a way to redefine the political playing field and send the politicians scrambling. The carbon tax juggernaut, now being eyed as the coming cash cow for financing an ever more bloated and intrusive government must surely, if there is any justice in the world, or any luck at all, sputter and die. And hopefully with it will go all of the other avatars of eco-fascist impulse.

An Israeli research team at the Weizmann Institute has found a promising way to convert water into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen parts that may make hydrogen fuel cells economical. The current technique for creating the hydrogen for fuel cells from water has required so much energy input, that hydrogen fuel cells are not now economical to operate as an everyday energy source. The Israeli scientists have devised a three stage process inspired by photosynthesis which actually utilizes light energy in its third stage.

Among the most important challenges facing science today is designing an efficient system for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The ability to do so will introduce hydrogen into the market as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems for getting to the root of water that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents.