On Sunday we visited the Chautauqua County Fair.

I love fried dough..

.. and rides that spin you around..

(though not in that order). It was lots of fun.

Unfortunately, I missed most of the demolition derby.

Colby Cosh on Richard Branson's suborbital dreams:

Here, with talk of satellites and zero-G research, Branson seems to be cynically availing himself of the public's confusion between "going into space" and "going into orbit". It is a bit like confusing a walk around the block with an ascent of K2. SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital system designed to reach an altitude just above 100 km, and thus barely breach the arbitrary technical line between the atmosphere and space-in other words, to repeat, with a passenger load, what SpaceShipOne already did in 2004. This will be no mean feat, but as Mark Wade's authoritative Encyclopedia Astronautica observes, "Orbital flight to space is a whole different order of magnitude than suborbital tosses. To reach 100 km altitude typically requires a vertical cut-off velocity of 1100 m/s at 40 km altitude. To reach orbit requires a cut-off velocity of 7800 m/s at 185 km altitude—over...7 times the cut-off velocity, and 20 times the energy."

The wealthy buyers who have already lined up to ride SpaceShipTwo will be in free fall only at the very peak of the winged capsule's trajectory, and as a microgravity research platform it will be about as much use as the cardboard box your kid turned into the Millennium Falcon with his crayons. Branson has the vague plans to design a SpaceShipThree capable of orbital flight, but the relatively humble materials and fuels he is using for SpaceShipTwo won't cut the mustard.

If it's possible to get ordinary civilians into orbit through sheer marketing ability, Branson is the man to bet on. What the general public may not know is that other private commercial enterprises are currently tackling the challenge of manned orbital flight, and could conceivably one day put tourists into low earth orbit at relatively sensible prices..

The Gulf state friends of bin Laden use their alliance with a gullible government to spread extremism and hate. It's not just happening in America and Britain, it's also happening in Macedonia.

Michael Totten describes The Bin Ladens of the Balkans, Part II

I met Shpetim Mahmudi at a covered outdoor cafe on a cold day in late spring in the ethnic Albanian region of Macedonia. Black clouds hung low over the city of Tetovo. Fat rain drops pelted the sidewalk and the awning over my head as I shivered in my light black leather jacket. “Let's go inside,” he said, “where it's warmer and drier.” We found a table and ordered coffee. He leaned in close to whisper when the waiter stepped out of earshot. “We are really in trouble here,” he said. “We are really in trouble with the Wahhabis.”

After the Kosovo War ended in 1999, well-heeled Gulf Arabs with Saudi money moved in to rebuild mosques destroyed by Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslav army and paramilitary forces. They're still there trying to impose a stern Wahhabi interpretation of Islam on indigenous Europeans, and they're having an awfully difficult time getting much traction. Almost everyone in Kosovo despises these people. They are known as the Binladensa, the people of Osama bin Laden.

Things are different in next-door Macedonia. I had driven two hours from Kosovo's capital Prishtina through beautifully sculpted mountains and forest to Tetovo near the Kosovo and Albanian borders.

What I saw there was startling...

More..

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gives his last lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" *

For more, visit cmu.edu/randyslecture

* Link thanks to Bruce

I've been kicked out of my apartment while they do the floors. Posting will be even more sporadic than usual...

Belmar waves and Don Henley..

Beirut reactions to Hizbullah's prisoner exchange:

Some Beirut residents see Nasrallah's speech as entirely political. Tony, a student at the American University of Beirut, who watched the speech with others at an open-air café commented, "the speech makes it sound as if this was pre-planned, like it's just a continuation of what Hizbullah wanted the whole time. But it's not. Why did he do it now?

"For political reasons, he is politicizing something that should unite all of Lebanon."

Ghassan, a shop owner in Beirut's Hamra district and a supporter of Sunni political leader Sa'ad A-Din Al-Hariri, contests Hizbullah's victorious claims arguing, "this is not just about the prisoners. Hizbullah got the prisoners, but it is not about the numbers in the exchange. Thousands of people in Lebanon died in the 2006 war. It was destruction. The economy was ruined. For what? You cannot start a war for just this."

Dana M., an employee at a Beirut public relations firm, observed, "I am so angry with the Sunni political leadership, who are bending over backwards to praise Hizbullah's prisoner release. I supported [Prime Minister] Siniora and [Future Movement leader] Al-Hariri through all the conflicts, even after they did nothing to protect their supporters in Beirut [during Hizbullah's May 2008 invasion], but now I'm angry.

"Hizbullah started a war to free a notoriously evil man who is in Israeli prison for smashing a little girl's head with a rock. This man definitely does not deserve a hero's welcome."

Hizbullah tarnished its image when it, along with other Lebanese opposition parties, attacked Beirut and the Chouf mountains in May 2008. The party claimed it would never use its weapons against other Lebanese and would only use them to protect Lebanon against Israel, but then struck at the heart of the nation.

Hizbullah's prisoner exchange is seen as an effort by the party to return to the media spotlight as a victor against Israel, not as an abuser of its countrymen...

More..

According to Business Week: *

Will Saudi Arabia manage to raise their production to 12.5 million barrels per day? BusinessWeek has a reliable source that says the Saudis can not ramp up their production nearly as much as they claim they will.

But the detailed document, obtained from a person with access to Saudi oil officials, suggests that Saudi Aramco will be limited to sustained production of just 12 million barrels a day in 2010, and will be able to maintain that volume only for short, temporary periods such as emergencies. Then it will scale back to a sustainable production level of about 10.4 million barrels a day, according to the data. BusinessWeek obtained a field-by-field breakdown of estimated Saudi oil production from 2009 through 2013. It was provided by an oil industry executive who said he had confirmed it with a ranking Saudi energy official who has access to the field data. The executive, who has proven reliable over several years of reporting interaction, provided the data on condition of anonymity to protect his access to the kingdom and the identity of the inside contact who confirmed the information.

Among those who dismiss Peak Oil fears oil reserves in Saudi Arabia were supposed to provide so much increased production that world oil consumption could continue to rise along with economic growth and increasing demand. But the great Saudi hope is a dud...

...On oil matters, the kingdom's credibility has been clouded by intense secrecy. The Saudis, for instance, refuse, unlike Russia, Venezuela, and Norway, to release detailed assessments of their oil reserves, which has made many skeptical. "They are just a bunch of empty boasts," Matthew Simmons, chairman of Houston investment bank Simmons & Co. International, says of the kingdom's recent promises of 12.5 million barrels a day. He is also skeptical of Saudi reserve estimates.

One dramatic part of the data concerns a site called Ghawar, which has been the kingdom's workhorse field for decades. It shows the field producing 5.4 million barrels a day next year, but the volume then falling off rapidly, to 4.475 million daily barrels in 2013. "That's why Khurais is so important—to make up for that decrease," said the oil industry executive who released the data. He was referring to a supergiant field that is to come online later this year and produce an estimated 500,000 barrels a day of crude. In last month's gathering in Saudi Arabia, officials of the kingdom told journalists that Ghawar had produced just under 5 million barrels a day from 1993 through 2007.

Mainly the data show flat production; apart from the addition of Khurais and a heavy oil field called Manifa, no increases appear in any of the fields during the next five years. Production at Manifa is to begin in 2011 with 125,000 barrels a day, according to the data, and rise rapidly to 900,000 barrels a day two years later. Though 2014 is not included in the data, one of the fields listed—Shaybah—is to have a volume increase to 1 million barrels a day that year, from 750,000 barrels a day from 2009 to 2013, according to the oil executive.

Still, despite its enormous reserves and bullish statements, Saudi Arabia appears likely to fall well short of the daily production it has targeted in the near term.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to invest all of our hopes and dreams in the hub of world terrorism. But, now that we know better, isn't it about time we told them to f*ck off?

* Link thanks to Instapundit, who also has good news about solar.

From Michael Totten's An Abominable Blood-Logged Plain

It’s European, but it isn’t Christian. It’s majority-Muslim, but it is not anti-American. Foreign soldiers are hailed as liberators and protectors rather than occupiers. Most Western countries recognize the majority-Muslim nation’s recent declaration of independence from Serbia, but not a single Arab country has done so – partly, perhaps, because Israelis as well as Americans are thought of as allies and friends. The United Nations is widely perceived as offensive, incompetent, corrupt, and deserving of banishment.

More...

Gene says:

I think I speak for the other Harry Placers when I say I’m grateful for the most of the support we’ve received from the blogosphere after we reported the threatened lawsuit against us by Mohammed Sawalha, the Hamas supporter who is president of the British Muslim Initiative.

Much of the backing comes as a result of an item posted by Glenn Reynolds at the very popular right-of-center blog Instapundit, who linked to a “Support Harry’s Place Blogburst” set up by the conservative blog NeoConstant. Although I haven’t done a thorough review of all the blogs that have signed up, at a glance they appear to be overwhelmingly on the political right. In most cases, I have no problem with this– for the most part I welcome the support of anyone who opposes the BMI’s dishonest efforts to suggest that we deliberately misconstrued the meaning of what Al-Jazeera originally reported Sawalha as saying about the Jews in London celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary. (I hope they would all be equally supportive if, for some reason, we were being unfairly sued by Mark Steyn or Rush Limbaugh, but I live in the real world.)

As a result of this lawsuit, IslamExpo - the marketing effort that was attempting to paint lipstick on the pig of fascism, has lost some of their featured speakers, including Stephen Timms, the Minister of State for Employment, Shahid Malik, the international development minister, Stephen Timms MP, the Minister of State for Employment, conservative Douglas Murray and the political editor of the New Statesman, Martin Bright.

Perhaps as a result of this (a very big "perhaps"), George-airplanes-are-the-devil's-work!-Monbiot speaks out against British libel laws, calling them a "national disgrace, a global menace, and a pre-democratic anachronism".

Well, that's a sure sign of end times, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. For once I agree with George Monbiot.

We drove down to the Belmar shore yesterday (a one hour drive) without checking the news. That was a mistake.

When we arrived, sweaty, hot, and ready to jump in the water, we saw the red flags. Tropical storm Bertha was churning up the tides, and swimming was forbidden.

The water is still off-limits to everyone except surfers with longboards. They see these things differently.

So, remember to check the weather before you go, and don't forget this helpful advice:

Strong rip currents can move you away from the shoreline very quickly. Please check with lifeguards before entering the water. Do not swim in unsupervised areas. Do not swim alone or at night.

If you become caught in a rip current... stay calm and do not fight it. Swim parallel to the shore until you break free of the current. Then swim at an angle... away from the current... toward the shore. If you are unable to escape by swimming... float or tread water. When the current weakens... swim at an angle away from the current toward the shore. If at any time you feel you won/T be able to reach the shore... draw attention to yourself by calling or waving for help.

Even though we couldn't swim, the lifeguards didn't complain if you got your feet wet. With the currents, wet was a short trip from the feet to the whole body. Here's a film from yesterday, going in as far as I could without ruining the camera.

London's Daily Mail covers the elaborate funeral plans for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I just wonder, why are the Brits describing these plans with such loving care when Thatcher isn't dead yet? According to her friends, she's happy and might even go for a walk...

Sudan president expected to face war crime charges

I wonder why Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's oil tick friends can't protect him, as they have in the past. Maybe they're losing influence?

I was on vacation last week and missed this great post at Solomonia "Holy Shmoly. I just watched a turtle lay eggs in my lawn"

I'm not kiddin'. You remember that turtle I caught prowling around my yard? Well, I have no idea as to whether it's the same individual, but I've caught that little guy making a regular run through my yard in the late afternoons. Pretty predictable-like.

Well, if it was the same individual, it appears "she" was casing the joint in order to find a good place to lay her stash!

This afternoon I go outside to put out the sprinkler and I notice some movement in the usual place. 'Hey,' I think, 'our pal the turtle is back, I'll go over to say hello.' Well I get close and notice that she's dug a little hole behind her. 'What's this?' I think. Why would she dig a hole in the lawn...she's not...plop, a little white sphere drops into the hole...she sure is. Call the wife outside. Run, get camera...

Read more here, and read the comments (90+), some from people who have egg-laying turtles in their backyards too...

At Fresh Bilge, Alan Sullivan links to this story of tick terror on the runway:

A Des Moines bound United Airlines flight from Denver was delayed six hours Tuesday when passengers alerted flight attendants to three ticks in the plane’s cabin.

“It is an unusual situation to find ticks on the plane, and we regret any inconvenience this might have caused our customers,” United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said.

How the wayward arachnids got on the jet had not been determined. A replacement aircraft shuttled the 107 passengers to Des Moines while Flight 1178 was deticked and checked.

Of the six hour delay, Alan S. says:

The second topic here is rampant ninnyism. If I found a tick on an airplane, or anywhere else, I would kill it. Something hard is needed: ticks are armored, but slow moving. The crystal of a wristwatch would be a convenient crusher in the circumstances. I would not think to “alert the crew.” Fer Chrissakes, are we so delicate that we need swat teams from Orkin to protect us? Why must a hundred people wait six hours for a trio of goddamn bugs?

I think rampant ninnyism is just the required state of mind in most airports. A pair of nail clippers or a Swiss Army knife could kill a tick too. So would a 4oz can of bug spray, but those dangerous weapons are forbidden.

It's bad enough that Hamas openly has a branch in the UK. It's worse that Hamas-UK is having a rally in central London. But I think we all have to agree with the political editor of the New Statesman, Martin Bright, when he says that when Hamas is allowed to sue a blogger for basically hurting the clerical fascists' tender feelings, this is "a step too far".

[However, it is amusing to see that Hamas are such whiny pussies]

From We’re Being Sued By Hamas UK by David T.:

Last Friday, in the wake of a closely argued debate about whether Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative, had used the phrase “Evil Jew” or “Jewish Lobby” in a speech, Harry’s Place received a letter. The letter is from Dean and Dean, a firm of solicitors who are acting for Mr Sawalha. Mr Sawalha has demanded that we take down certain articles from Harry’s Place, and publish an apology “in the attached wording”.

The solicitors have failed to attach the apology that Mr Sawalha insists we publish. That omission matters little, as we have no intention of apologising to him at all, nor of taking down any article.

We have responded to Mr Sawalha’s solicitors, through Mishcon de Reya, who are acting for us.

Mr Sawalha claims that we have “chosen a malevolent interpretation of a meaningless word”. In fact, we did no more than translate a phrase which appeared in an Al Jazeera report of Mr Sawalha’s speech. When Al Jazeera changed that phrase from “Evil Jew” to “Jewish Lobby”, we reported that fact, along with the statement that it had been a typographical error.

Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas. The BBC report disclosed that Mr Sawalha “master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”....

..Mr Sawalha has been the prime mover in a number of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood associated projects. He is President of the British Muslim Initiative. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque.

The British Muslim Initiative has co-organised with Liberty, Britain’s most prominent civil liberties campaigning group, a National Rally to Defend Freedom of Religion, Conscience and Thought. Speakers included Ken Livingstone, the Tory Party Vice Chair, Sayeeda Warsi, and the shadow Tory Attorney General, Dominic Grieve MP, and Andrew Stunell MP, the Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Community and Local Government.

All these people spoke on the platform of a group founded by a man who has been identified as a senior Hamas activist...

The British courts have been notoriously sympathetic to whiny Islamists in the past - libel tourism is an industry there. The British government also has a history of accomodating the most extreme Muslim groups.

David T. says:

...To make the same mistake again, by treating with Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood linked groups, would be a disaster for this country, and also for the vast majority of British Muslims who are not terrorists, and who are likely to be the primary victims of the Islamists in this country, as they are abroad. We all deserve better.

If Mr Sawalha persists in attempting to silence us with this desperate legal suit, we will need your help.

We won’t be able to stand up to them alone.

Visit him at Harry's Place to give your support.

I've been planning a trip to the Middle East in August, and was hoping to visit Socotra, but since the Yemeni government is currently waging war against its journalists and citizens, that probably wouldn't be such a good idea.

Which is a shame. Socotra looks like a beautiful and unique place.

Lake Chautauqua with ducks

Is it more energy-efficient to buy a gas-guzzling used car than a brand-new hybrid? Slate's Green Lantern decides...

Charles at LGF links to this 2002 Article in Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling...

More...

The hardest part of arguing against creationists is the fact that you can't reason a man out of something he was never reasoned into. This article uses logic, and therefore will not sway the committed creationist. However, it is an interesting read.