Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs.

Bill Whittle of PJTV addresses Jon Stewart's labeling of Truman as a war criminal for deciding on using atomic weapons on Japan.

Video

H1N1 Swine Influenza.

• Don't slaughter your pigs.
• Don't wear masks in public unless you want to be laughed at.
• Don't stop eating pork products.

At this point, it's looking like it won't be as lethal as previously thought. One good thing that MIGHT come of this is that the government/CDC can use this as a test run and hopefully improve our preparedness for the coming day when a real pandemic might show itself. Unfortunately, I have to stress the word 'might' because this is Big Brother we're talking about.

Now might also be a good time to educate yourself about why it's thought that these deadly influenza strains seem to kill the healthy adult as opposed to seeing much higher mortality rates in children, elderly or other immunocompromised individuals like the run-of-the-mill seasonal influenza. More importantly, not much is known about 'cytokine storms', thus making treatment difficult (and almost impossible if there was mass infection across the U.S.). Here are a couple easy to understand articles:

News Blaze / John McCormick
FluWiki

Joe Biden Needs A Better Teleprompter...

Today, on the Today show, Joe Biden went ahead and said he wouldn't want his family riding public transportation or going to the mall due to the 'swine' influenza madness.

Sigh. Thanks a whole lot, Joe. Now Big O is going to have to schedule another prime-time press conference and postpone my shows so he can assure us that it is okay to ride in an airplane or take MARTA.

Speaking of teleprompters, check out this hilarious blog written from the point-of-view of TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States): Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog.

The Global Warming Thing.

There were a couple of points I was questioned on regarding climate change. I'll attempt to address them to the best of my understanding.

First, the 'scientific consensus' thing was brought up, although I never used that term. I don't particularly care for it either as it's often thrown around without regard, which cheapens the meaning. While I don't like the term, practically every major science academy in the industrialized world has come to a 'consensus' that man is responsible for global warming/climate change, which I'm on the fence about. Imagine the amount of climatologists who support the general theory that Earth is warming if this many respected institutions believe in man-made warming. The source for that is here: Wikipedia. Yes, it's Wikipedia, but each item is cited with an external reference and posting one link is far easier than going through all of them individually. As far as the consensus thing goes, sure, you can always find someone with 500 'scientists' who believe the opposite. That's fine, there are always skeptics and that's how science progresses in many cases, but the massive number of people who believe the opposite are not to be discredited, either. They're experts in their field with a far greater understanding of things than you or I.

The next point brought up was that the surface temperatures may be inaccurate due to the monitoring stations not meeting the standards set to prevent faulty readings. Approximately 70% of these stations could have an error as great as +/- 2 degrees Celsius. So yes, they could be reading higher based on bad placement, but they could also be reading lower just the same.

In addition, while it's funny that it always snows when Al Gore is due to give a global warming speech, it's largely irrelevant to the big picture. Anomalies like record temperatures one year or a bunch of hurricanes the next don't do much to offset the overall tread.

This is really brief compared to how much discussion could be had about the issue, but it's rather polarizing and most people who are against the idea of global warming wouldn't switch sides regardless of the evidence, so arguing is pointless. The bigger issue isn't a potential doomsday (there won't be one), but the political side of it. Carbon offsets and caps/increased regulation. Carbon taxes. That makes me ill to think about.

Evolution In Action.

How the 'swine' flu came to be and the reasons why the flu can never be stopped or 'cured' is summed up pretty well in this interesting article: Swine Flu Is Evolution In Action.

When humans evolve, the cause is typically random genetic variations that prove beneficial — eventually leading to thumbs for grabbing or brains that process fear impulses more successfully.

Viruses don't have to count on such long odds. They steal DNA that they find useful to their success.

"Many viruses can easily incorporate ready-made genes from other viruses into their genomes," as explained at Understanding Evolution. "This is a possibility anytime a host is infected with two different viral strains."

That's likely what's happened with swine flu.

"It appears the H1N1 swine flu may be a reassortment of the H (hemagglutinin) gene from typical North American pigs with the N (neuraminidase) and M (matrix) genes from European pigs," Deems said. "If so, this new virus is an example of the importance of recombination in evolution. That is, evolution proceeds not only by small mutations of individual DNA or RNA bases, but also by transmission of large pieces of genetic material from one individual to another."

Global Warming.

I received an e-mail from someone who doesn't believe the Earth is warming in general. I'm apparently supposed to respond, so I'll be working on that. And no, 105 degrees in California and a blizzard in Colorado in the middle of April doesn't mean anything either way.

0.003%.

Let me preface this by saying that ANY reduction in federal spending should be viewed as a positive. Of course, where the reduction is taken out is a different story and another post later on down the road. However, this is kind of silly.

The FY2010 federal budget proposal stands at roughly $3.6 trillion. That's $3,600,000,000,000 for those keeping count. Or $3.6 x 10^12.

Yesterday, on AO90, the President ordered his cabinet to cut $100 million out of the federal budget. The new federal budget will now be roughly $3.6 trillion. That's a cut of roughly 0.003%. You're telling me that only 0.003% of that $3.6 trillion can be cut?

$1.438 trillion of that spending goes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The total estimated receipts for 2009 will be $2.381 trillion. Right now, we are looking at over 60% of our government's receipts going toward those 3 programs. That should be alarming. And it should also point to the real area of the federal budget that could be entirely eliminated over time if we start now. Or we can do nothing and watch that entitlement spending swell to the point where it's unsustainable.

Sorry for going off topic. $100 million is not even a drop in the bucket. I'm not sure if it was a weak gesture to acknowledge the tea parties, but it's almost insulting. No, it is insulting.