“Half a game” Artie is gone. RIP Arthur Beetson. A great player and a man with some commonsense. When the League got politically correct about racist sledging on the field he said, what about cleaning up all kinds of sledging, especially at the school level. And he pointed to his dusky arm and said “This is not sunburn, mate”.
The Grand Tour has reached the Pacific Ocean and I can empathise with stout Cortez as with eagle eyes he stared at it. On the day that I traveled from Columbia to Palo Also everyone seemed to be interested in Australia. The man at the desk of the hotel wanted to know where I came from, I said Boston via Washington but he said. “No, where in Australia,my daughter is living in Melbourne”. A taxi driver in Columbia wanted to know if kangaroos are dangerous for humans, I told him that koalas are more dangerous because they are inclined to piss on you if you pick them up for a cuddle. The guy who drove the shuttle from Columbia to the airport at St Louis (one and a half hours) wanted to know about the size of Australia. The big black girl who checked in my bag said “Hey, you an Aussie, you from Sydney or Melbourne?” Reply: “Sydney. We keep away from Melbourne when we can, except when we have to fly over to get to Tasmania”. ”Hey Man, what about the tennis?” The big Italian fellow who drove the shuttle from the airport to Palo Alto said he had a friend who used to run a car repair shop in Sydney but the business was killed by the cost of electricity. I told him it is going to get worse. He really wants to visit India and Australia.
The plane from San Fran was delayed by high winds – not as bad as the situation at Vegas and Los Angeles which were closed. So it was late heading back and the caravan reached the Cardinal Hotel in the dead of night, the area looked rather drab, possibly with reduced street lighting to save the planet. The hotel itself is right out of Brideshead Revisited, all dark wood, gilt mirrors, Edwardian furniture, the oldest lift in the city, but a nice cheery imitation fire burning in the fireplace of the lobby. This makes it look better, indicating the power of creative photography and copywriting.
The room could be described as compact and not overloaded with mod cons, though as a concession to the 21st century there is a flat screen TV mounted on the wall, God knows where you would find room for a conventional one. Fortunately the weary Grand Tourist only wanted to sleep, not host a dance party or indoor cricket (a la Deirdre McCloskey).
In the light of day the precinct turned out to be all that you expect in this part of the world. Every kind of boutique cafe/restaurant, a massive picture framing business next door, one of the best of the (dwindling number of) second hand bookshops around the corner, a small movie house with two Barbara Stanwyk features running, another movie house in the next block etc.
Just a shame that I can’t be bothered with all these things, I just want to get home. Next time the Tour will start here while I am fresh and it can end in Europe and Tel Aviv where I can rest and relax as a house guest in places that do not scream out for heavy exploration. Apart from Prague where I have promised to catch up with Charlie and Cherie from Boston.
Moving on to the Roundup.
Saving the planet is fun!
David Cameron turns nasty. Fancy using leftwing in a derogatory sense! Can you bear it? Bring back speech codes for politicians.
Bad news from the oceans. Bad news for the warming alarmists and bad news for me as well, given my perceptin of the benefits that come from a bit of warming and extra plant food in the atmosphere.
If there is one topic that trumps all others in climate science, it’s ocean heat.
If there is a planetary imbalance in energy, and Earth is acquiring more heat than it’s losing, we ought to be able to find that heat. Energy can not be created nor destroyed. It has to be somewhere.
On this Water-Planet, virtually every scientist agrees that the vast bulk of the extra energy ought be stored in the water. The oceans cover 70% of the surface, and are 4km deep; water has a high heat capacity (meaning it can store a lot of energy), and, because water flows quickly (unlike rock), turbulence and mixing can take that heat energy away from the surface. Every skeptic (and taxpayer) ought to know that since 2003 (when we started measuring oceans properly) the oceans have been cooling: Douglass and Keen 2010.
Another nice talk and dangerous as well, from that sink of subversion the Mannkal Foundation. What do you expect to come from a place called Hayek House?
The point I want to develop in this lecture is that environmental protection does not require that we adhere to millenarian beliefs, or ecocentric political philosophies, or biodynamic agriculture, or any of the other ‘New Age’ or other non-rational elements we can find in contemporary environmentalism.
Rather, good environmental policy requires that we reject such beliefs and uphold the Enlightenment commitment to sceptical, rational humanism. This also requires open contestation of science and the rejection of the idea that science can be too closely embedded within the affairs of the state. In other words, it requires the political liberalism that also emerged from the Enlightenment.
For travelers, useful phrases in all languages (thanks to Barry Williams)