http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29388

There must be a good reason why there are no polar bears in the south pole… maybe it is to darn cold there and there is not that many places where they can fish through the ice.”

They’d have to compete with those vicious leopard seals. Of course Polar Bears usually make quick work of Walrusses, Leopard Seal couldn’t be that much more difficult.

Polar Bear would have to migrate a long way to naturally reach the south pole. They tend to overheat, don’t think they would make it through the tropics. Whales have the advantage of swimming in a temperature-regulated ocean. Sorry for getting off track, I’ll let the experts continue the topic at hand.

I remember a phot in the Detroit News a few years back (may have been about ten years) of French farmers leading a protest, driving their tractors. On the windshield of the lead tractor was a sticker reading ‘New Holland’.

Maybe they just wanted new tractors: http://www.newholland.com/h4/index.asp?Reg=FR&RL=FRFR

I deleted a bunch, can we ban IP address ~ Charles.

> Is there any such thing as a obese sun?

Yep. It’s called a Red Giant. It’s the likely fate of our sun. It will expand so much that it will engulf Earth. You probably want to be out that day.

OT: Odd search terms.

The web traffic data I get from my ISP usually includes things like source links, and search engines generally pass in the search string. I got a hit yesterday for my climate science page from a search for “What type of personality is best for a climatologist?” (My page has no direct answer for that.) It’s certainly easy to give examples of bad personalities!

My page is not the sort of thing people go looking for, and people who would most benefit from it have no idea they need it. So I’m happy when people stumble upon it. I have a cartoon referring to the leaning tower of Pisa, and get a hit or two each day from searches like “galileo leaning tower of pisa.” Even spellings like piza and pizza work!

Sometimes I learn something, as search for “aristotle’s rules of motion” may not have been really a query about Newtonian physics, Aristotle did formulate laws of motion, see http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/aristot2.html

Tres funny.

MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf

From the oplinion of the Court: “He found that petitioners’ affidavits more than adequately supported the conclusion that EPA’s failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions contributed to the sea level changes that threatened Massachusetts’ coastal property.”

An excerpt from a Mark Steyn article about earmarks in the bail-out bill which has a global warming analogy: “I suppose sophisticated insiders would assure me that regrettably there’s no possibility of earmark reform; this is just the price of doing business in Washington. But that’s why non-sophisticated non-insiders hold the political class in contempt. The same blowhards who run for office on a platform of lowering ocean levels and healing the planet then turn around and insist they’re unable to do anything about the one small area of human endeavor for which they bear sole responsibility.”

Let them eat cake.

Toner cartridge makers.

Not our dear Doctor but a team at University of Surrey in the UK.

http://www.fcrn.org.uk/frcnResearch/publications/PDFs/CuaS_web.pdf

(But only if you are prepared to wade through 156 pages (!) of dreadfully verbose and repetitive prose.)

From the Abstract:

“Changes in behaviour – in what and how we eat – are essential. As priorities, we need to reduce our consumption of meat and dairy foods, to eat no more than we need to keep ourselves healthy, to limit consumption of food that is of little nutritional value, and not waste food. Efforts to encourage us voluntarily to change will not achieve what is needed in the time
available. Regulatory and fiscal measures that change the context within which we consume are vital.”

Translation:

We will use the Law and we will tax you until you do what you are told …