The Blackboard

The short version:

University of Utah student evidently decides to stop global warming by bidding up prices for parcels of land in a Bureau of Land Management auction.
Student wins 13 leases.
Student indicted.
Student’s lawyer tries to enter a “necessity” defense, claiming “claiming he chose the lesser of two evils and acted to prevent imminent [...]

This month, Nature discusses results of a “Big Foot” study by Jeff Lozier of the University of Illinois. Prof. Lozier and colleagues analyszed sightings recorded by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization using a novel, not yet fully understood technique called “ecological niche modelling” . Their conclusions?
The reported sightings imply that the wooded and [...]

Today, on the basis of a recent article about climate change induced sheep shrinkage appearing in Science, Gavin informed his flock the phenomenon might result in a climate feedback he dubs the “second sheep-albedo effect” which would extend the Team’s equally speculative “sheep-albedo effect”.
I was saddened to see the tendency of the herd at [...]

Three of our most important founders, debating the national bird:
Officially, John Adams wins the argument: our official bird is a bald eagle. Clearly, Thomas Jefferson’s choice of a dove has never applied to the US. But, at least in November, the turkey is the national bird.

Monckton’s June Missive invokes “Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies”.
So it is that the intellectual descendents of Goebbels are chained to the work-benches of their spin-factories, churning out an interminable series of colorful fantasies, each repeating and magnifying its predecessor, yet all having no point of contact with reality or truth.
As usual, [...]

The English language needs a word for when advocates on both sides of an ongoing debate switch rhetorical positions, and yet they insist on decrying the inconsistency of their opponents while overlooking their own inconsistency. [...] I don’t know of a word for this particular phenomemon, but I think we need one.
Thus spake Orin [...]

We have a contender for weirdest anti-capitalists claim of the year. The theory is expounded in two stories:1)
Climate change undermines Oxygen Producing Ecosystems which links to the even more intriguingly titled 2) Ethical Extraterrestrials, the Global Oxygen Supply and Big Oil.
Ethical Extraterrestrials?!
Key features of the theory:

Oxygen is being [...]

Where are they all today, those bed-wetting moaning Minnies of the Apocalyptic Traffic-Light Tendency–those Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds?
So it began, Lord Christopher Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley’s colorful keynote speech at Heartland. Here’s are the highlights:
“.. bed-wetting moaning Minnies of the Apocalyptic Traffic-Light Tendency [...] Greens too yellow to admit they’re [...]

The birthday of a hard to buy-for family member is coming up. So… I browsed some best seller gifts. Now, I knew almost anything that can be done manually can also be done using electricity. It turns out you can now buy an electric wine opener.
In comments on the post about [...]

Explaining the actions we must take to save the planet from CO2, Bill McKibben provides evidence to support Godwin’s Law:
Now, these are three of the hardest tasks we’ve even thought about since we took on Hitler.
In case you are not familiar with the law, it is sometime expressed this way:
As an online discussion [...]