Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

Someone found a green meteorite, which some theorize to hail from Mercury. Yeah, Mercury. That's it. No way it could have traveled halfway across the galaxy from that doomed planet Superman says he's from.

Labels: Science

Punxsutawney Phil sued for fraud?

Labels: Curiosities

Al Franken (D-Minnesota) is up for reelection.

James Lileks lives in Minnesota.

Labels: Politics

Statistically speaking, is a murderer more likely to be a member of the National Rifle Association, or the Screen Actors Guild?

Update:  And a related random thought: how is it that so many actors and musicians, members of industries rife with illegal narcotics, can come to the conclusion that gun control will keep guns out of the hands of killers?

Labels: Random thoughts

"Hunger Games" - in reverse.

Note that five of the nation's 10 richest counties border the District of Columbia. And their chief industry is...the District of Columbia. I'd like to see a sequester cut that forces agency heads to start buying ramen.

Labels: Politics

Back in January, the Daily Mail reported that the Met Office (the UK's national weather service) had revised its global warming projections, predicting a flat trend until 2017 - which started in 1998. A March 16 article displays a chart that shows how far-off the warming projections have been.

In May 2008 I blogged on a Telegraph article about global warming revisions of that day: "Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: 'The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that.'" Well now. Back then the Germans were right about the trend (up to present). Wonder what they're projections are now?

Labels: Science

Iain Murray passes along a really bad prediction initially spotted by Zerohedge.

Labels: Economics, Europe, Politics

That certainly seems to be the case from the Kurdish point of view.

Labels: Middle East, Politics, War on Terror, World

Ann Althouse asks: "Can you accidentally do a Nazi salute?

Take a good look at the Hummel Millennium 2000 figurine.

Labels: Culture, Curiosities, Sports

Or, why the grassroots needs to show up on the Republican National Committee HQ doorstep with a gigantic wooden horse.

There's not much to the article, really, but it raises one vital principle: don't treat enemies as friends:

To implement [increased minority outreach], RNC chairman Reince Priebus has promised to establish dialogues with groups such as LULAC, La Raza, and the NAACP, which strikes us as unhelpful and willfully blind to the fact that such groups are ideologically opposed to Republican principles. A truly conservative minority-outreach strategy would severely weaken these groups by challenging their claims to represent their respective ethnicities.

What conservatives (and libertarians) need to do is to illustrate how the policies of LULAC, La Raza, and the NAACP are detrimental to the interests of their nominal constituencies.

Labels: Politics

Pi pie plate.

Labels: Cool stuff

Amy Alkon reports that even Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat from the Show Me State, is not immune to TSA enhanced searches.

Our intrepid blogger tweets what the common citizen finds obvious to the senator:

@amyalkon .@clairecmc Do you understand how idiotic & wasteful it is to treat every citizen as plausible suspect, sans probable cause? #TSA

Labels: Politics

John McCain says of the Rand Paul filibuster's participants and defenders: "[I]t's always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone."

They're not wacko. They're angry.



Left to right:

Red - Rand Paul (R-KY)
Yellow - Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Blue - Justin Amash (R-MI-3)
Green - John McCain (R-AZ)

Click here for an enlarged version.

Labels: Humor, Politics

Hey, you folks who got upset over a pastry shaped vaguely like a gun - ever seen a map of Idaho lately? You gonna ban US maps from the classroom?

Actually I think the pastry looks more like Idaho (with the topmost counties missing)than it resembles a gun.

Labels: Education, Food, Politics

On the silver screen we see but a small fraction of the creative talent that goes behind the films that mean so much to us. My uncle Clyde Smith was one of those people behind the scenes, involved in such tasks as camera operation and set construction. Scleroderma eventually forced his retirement from the film industry. He spent his last years in Magnolia Springs, Alabama, and passed away Friday at the age of 69. He will be missed.

IMDb list some of the highlights of his career.

Labels: Obituaries

From Frontpage Magazine.

Labels: Politics, World

From the Heritage blog: Busting 5 Myths About the Minimum Wage .

Several commenters note that one of the side effects of minimum wage hikes: unions rely on them as a pretext for demanding union wage hikes.

Labels: Economics, Politics

Hugo Chavez is dead.

Update:

Labels: Obituaries, World

Spending junkie.

Labels: Music, Politics