“Putin said his move to take control of Crimea was justified by what he calls “fascists” in Kiev who overthrew pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich last month after three months of often deadly street protests.”
The biggest fascist in Europe is Putin.
via Russian forces storm Ukraine naval HQ in Crimea – Yahoo News.
To be included as a record, the NCDC has a rather loose requirement for including stations. Their website has some problems witht he map plotter at the moment, but if I recall correctly, there a station can be included if it has a 30-year record and each year has coverage of at least 182 days. Therefore, any station that has recorded temperature data for half of each year since 1984 will be considered as setting a new record.
Such as loose definition, however, is likely very misleading to the media, politicians, and the general public. When most people hear that a new “record high temperature” has been set, they usually have a longer period of time in mind. I suspect that most people would react differently to an announcement of a “record high temperature” if they understood that the records began when Ronald Reagan was president. Of course, it is convenient for political reasons to maximize the number of “record high temperatures” because it fits the mandatory narrative about global warming or climate change.
Skeptics have been quick to point out that many of the stations in question have short records lasting only relatively short time scales, so these so-called record temperatures are relatively meaningless in the context of the longer times that most people are thinking about. Skeptics are also quick to point out when even the skewed NCDC records go the wrong way. For instance, the fact that 2013 had more daily record low temperatures than daily high records was fairly well communicated on skeptic blogs. (BTW, this trend has also continued for January and February of 2014, with more record low records than record highs.)
via ‘Record temperatures’ placed in context with station history | Watts Up With That?.
I don’t begrudge anyone the good fortune of right place/right time, take your money and run, but first drop a knee and be humbled before God reflecting soberly on the knowledge that you didn’t deserve it. I love getting paid, do whatever you can do to get paid, but do not let the money whisper to you that you are worth it, it will be lying and you will believe it. You hold a fetish of value and not actual value.
via The Last Psychiatrist: Who Can Know How Much Randi Zuckerberg Is Worth?.
Since the last space shuttle flight two-and-a-half years ago, our only means of getting NASA astronauts or anyone to the ISS has been on the Soyuz launch system, at an ever-rising cost, now over $70M a seat as of last August. Alternate competing U.S. means to replace it are under development in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, but Congress has been continually underfunding the effort in order to instead funnel money to the Space Launch System, a giant rocket with no funded payloads and no apparent mission other than providing job security in the states and districts of those on the congressional space committees.
via PJ Media » Time to End Our Dependence on Russian Spaceships.