DUFF & NONSENSE!

There will now be a short commercial break

I don't know what I'm doing advertising Sky Movies, I mean, it's not as though old Rupert is short of a bob or three, but his ghastly TV programme guide thudded on to my door mat this morning and instead of binning it instantly I paused to check on the movies over Christmas.  I did find one I thought I might waste 90 minutes of my life on and having reached my expectations I was about to give up when I spotted another film called A Bunch of Amateurs.  Apparently this stars Burt Reynolds and Imelda Staunton, two excellent comedy players, and the story concerns an ageing Hollywood 'legend' on the slide but who receives an invitation to come to England to play Lear.  Alas, it turns out not to be the RSC at Stratford but some 'bunch of amateurs'.  Given my recent bereavement disappointment there could not be a more suitable film for me to watch.  Perhaps some of you might be interested so I hope it's as good as it promises.

Since writing the above, I went on to Google to check it out and found this, part of the review from Time Out:

A Hollywood has-been slums it in an amateur British production: it’s a description that covers both plot and film in this amiable but scattershot comedy. Burt Reynolds is Jefferson Steel, a pampered action star desperate to make a comeback. He accepts an offer to do Shakespeare in Stratford, little knowing that it’s not upon Avon, but the (fictional) village of Stratford St John in Suffolk.

Naturally, the amateur theatre group is in raptures about the arrival of their LA King Lear, but the man himself is less than enthused about acting alongside pig farmers and staying in a B&B with no ensuite facilities. It’s a reasonably amusing idea, and the script duly has fun with the contrasts between LA-la land and sleepy Suffolk. Steel pops his shoes outside his bedroom door only for a dog to chew on them. Later, the local mobile library is hurriedly transformed into a makeshift trailer. 

I don't know about you lot but that strikes me as perfect TV fodder for idle Christmas 'telly' watching.

 

Sign 'ere!

'My Lord Bishop Hill' points out that there is a Downing Street petition calling for a public enquiry into the scandal at the Hadley Centre CRU which is in receipt of public funds but appears to avoid proper enquiries under the Freedom of Information Act.  You can sign you will sign, here, and that's an order, you 'orrible little man, er, or woman! Actually I think all these enquiries are a waste of time and only of use to historians years later but still, there's much enjoyment to be had from the equivalent of emptying one's bed-pan over the heads of wretches like Dr. Phil Jones.  So go on, sign it, it's so easy that even I managed it in about 15 seconds.

This about sums it up

From the hand of an unknown programmer trying to implement the Hadley Centre CRU data which Phil Jones and his rapscallion crew of artful dodgers tried to hide from us despite it being produced on our tax money:

OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform
data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found. [Emphasis added]

Thanks to WUWT.

Obama's popularity disappearing faster than belief in global warming

Now this, courtesy of those old lags over at IHTM, is a really vicious assault on 'The One':

If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:

Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.

Oh no, I hear you groan, he's not quoting that Glenn Beck again, surely.  Well, surely not because those are the words of the doyenne of liberal Obama lick-spittlers, 'Dowager' Maureen Dowd, of the impeccably Democrat-supporting New York Times, no less! 

Is it any wonder that in the latest Rasmussen poll Obama's approval rating, that is, the difference between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove has sunk t0 -15, and last week for the first time in his presidency he fell below the magic 50% marker in a Gallup poll.  As a rough guide I seem to remember reading some expert who said that Obama's ratings needed to sink to the low 40s to ensure a Republican resurgence in the Senate likely to give them control.  There's a year to go!

He asked Americans over and over if they could change and they answered with an almighty, "YES WE CAN", and that's exactly what they have done, changed their minds!

The King is dead, long live the KIng!

Er, King Lear, that is!  Some of you may remember I was trying to put this on with my local AmDramSoc but, alas, the actors, or most of them, voted with their feet and stayed away.  Perhaps my directorial reputation as a foul-mouthed, carpet-chewing fanatic went before me!  It's a pity because it is a play of immense, almost unplumbable depths and I would love to have tried to get to the bottom of it.  Mind you, pity the poor actor who takes on that role.  Here is just one speech from the text to give you an idea of the hideous difficulty of it:

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Exasperation at his ungrateful daughters
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, he tries to control himself using reason

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need! but fails, feels his temper rising
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both! self pity battles with anger
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, now it begins to give way
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! Rage erupts, fury bursts forth  No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall- -I will do such things,--   he is so demented with rage he cannot think of the words
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.  now, anger spent, he breaks down  You think I'll weep   
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. and finally, dreadfully, he glimpses the future   O fool, I shall go mad!

 

All those changes of mood and emotion to be reflected by the actor whilst at the same time complying with the poet's discipline of iambic pentameters and their variations, remembering where the breathing points are to ensure he has lungs full of air, as well as making the right moves and gestures at the right time and place, and above all, making it look and sound natural and not as though he had learned and rehearsed it for months. 

Oh, and retaining sufficient energy because he hasn't even reached the interval yet!

 

Well, acting's easy, innit?  Yeah, right!

Little Georgie says sorry - sort of . . .

When I read, over at WUWT, that little 'Georgie Moonbat' has said sorry for being a prat and that his Mum had told him he was a very, very naughty boy, I rushed to my OED Dictionary of Quotations for the only possible contender for use in this instance which, like most quotations I sort of know but not exactly, and which I needed to get dead right lest one of you pedants tick me off.  Here it is:

Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

Alas, when I read little Georgie's piece in full I then realised that it was only half an apology, but even so, most of us would choke on the words rather than issue even that much of an apology:

It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

He takes unerring aim at the main man:

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed. (My emphasis)

Unfortunately, like a sole survivor from the sinking Titanic without even a piece of wrecked flotsam to cling to, he thrashes about in the icy waters of disillusionment and pretends he's having a dip in the Med:

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8,9) Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.

He then goes on and on with a long, tedious and peurile piece of clumsy satire which is, alas, all too typical of the spotty swots in the Lower 5th (or, The Guardian, as it likes to call itself).  Even so, half an apology is better than none and me and my mates might leave off bullying little Georgie - for a while.

It's "An Education" - DON'T MISS IT!

And lest there be any doubt about it, that's an order!  I mean, of course, the film An Education which was released a few weeks back but which has only just reached these western outreaches.  I put it up there alongside The Painted Veil as one of my top ten films of all time.  The story concerns the coming-of-age of a 16-year old girl in 1961 and that summary alone would normally have put me off for life but such were the rave reviews that I decided to give it a try.  What a simply terrific and almost faultless film.  Amongst the smiles of recognition for times past there were occasions in the film when I almost cried.  The acting is sublime in its apparently effortless reality.  Every single performance was exactly right, nothing overdone, just exactly right.  The settings and the furnishings were so accurate for their time - where do they find all those artifacts so common in the '60s but mostly long disappeared.  The cinematography was brilliant with occasional vista views of countryside and then almost microscopic close-ups for effect.

I am still on an emotional high from seeing it this afternoon and my thoughts are somewhat jumbled so I might return to it tomorrow for a cooler critique but, please, please, in the meantime, do go and see it, I promise you, you will not see anything better in a cinema for a long time.

Schadenfreude: so delicious with a dollop of revenge on top!

You, dear reader, may* have misunderstood me all these years.  From my light-hearted scribblings you might* have taken me for a rather jovial, jolly, old cove full of almost Santa-like kindness and goodwill to my fellow men and women . . . sorry, I didn't quite catch what you said . . . do you need a glass of water . . .?  Where was I?  Oh yes, well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I must confess to possessing a mean, vindictive streak in my character.  Far from kicking an enemy when he is down, I like to jump up and down on his face!  And even as I write I am tying the laces on my 'bovver boots'.  Not, mark you, that I am in a bad mood, just the opposite, I have not enjoyed a happier weekend in a long time, and the prospects for the immediate future are positively rich in good humour.  Let me explain.

A few posts back I remarked that one of the few advantages of growing old is the possibility of finding out that you were right years ago and most of your friends (and enemies) were wrong.  I wrote that in the context of the recent revelations concerning the Soviet infiltration of the Labour party, but whilst I was quietly enjoying my smug feeling of righteousness, somehow it lacked quite the zest I might* have expected because, like me, the story was so old.  But, as you will have seen in the immediately preceding posts, some good - no, excellent - news has just broken which has proved me (and others more deserving) right and utterly dished my enemies.  You may draw back in distaste at my use of the word 'enemies' because, of course, I do not know them, indeed, I have never met them, but in my (old testament?) book, 'enemies' is how I think of them and so that's what they are!  I will explain why later.

The scandal - and somehow that word seems inadequate - which has been exposed at the Hadley Centre Climate Reseach Unit (CRU) is slowly but surely growing apace.  For the first few days the MSM trod very carefully, unlike 'Blogdom' which always rushes in where angels (and lawyers) fear to tread.  However, it now seems certain that the exposed documents are genuine.  No one is sure whether the source was really a hacker or just a truth-exposing insider.  My guess, for what it is worth, is that it may have been one of the disgruntled CRU programmers, those unknown Stackhanovites who labour away trying to turn 'scientific' data into code.  Indeed, there are indications that some of the juicier examples of chicanery at the CRU are to be found in the exposed coding documents - see here and enjoy a quick read of the comments.  Anyway, today I notice that the MSM, world-wide, are taking up the story and the momentum will grow.

I refer to this wretched cabal of unscientific scientists as my 'enemies'.  Even the little 'Memsahib' bridled at that as I exhulted in my triumph (well, not mine exactly but you know what I mean).  So I turned nasty and spelled out why they are enemies of us all.  They have disgraced and denigrated science which at its very best can be a huge benefit to Mankind.  They have allowed politicians to use and abuse them and their crap science to impoverish us all by higher taxes on energy which is as essential to modern Man as wild life was to primitive Man.  We in the west are only mildly impoverished but those struggling for their very existence in the Third World will be eliminated by expensive energy.  It is, and I have pondered on this before committing my words to publication, as big a crime as anything Hitler or Stalin executed, the only difference is that it is more diffused and therefore more difficult to discern.  They have conspired and colluded in a massive fraud against the earth and its inhabitants which they pretended to care for.  They did it for the usual grubby reasons of greed for money and fame.  I want them all sacked and prosecuted for the litany of scientific frauds and malfeasance demonstrated in these documents. In particular I want Dr. Phil Jones and the official at the University of East Anglia responsible for compliance with the Freedom of Information Act hauled in front of a judge to explain exactly how they evaded FoI requests.  Better still, let them be hauled round the streets in an open cart to be pelted with rotten veg.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230122/How-climate-change-scientists-dodged-sceptics.html

Of course, none of my wishes will be met but I am content to know that despite all his blusterings, Jones will henceforth be the subject of nudges and sniggers as goes about his business, his reputation in tatters behind him, an example to everyone of perfidious science.  Likewise, his equally wretched cronies, Mann, Briffa 'et al'.  Yes, all in all, a perfect weekend and I am happy, happy, happy ...

*My e-pal, Oliver Kamm, writes the 'Pedant' column in The Times and on his blog he recently corrected another writer on the proper use of 'may' and 'might'.  There are times when Oliver is a total pain in the bum, particularly when he is in nit-picking mode.  However, honesty insists that I come clean and admit, through grinding teeth, that actually I do think correct grammar is important even if my innate idleness and carelessness makes its use here somewhat haphazard.  And whilst I'm on the subject, the pedants amongst you will already know that my understanding of the 'which' and 'that' rule is equally bereft.

ADDITIONAL: I was so taken with the particular post and thread I linked to on Anthony Watts's site that I missed the one before it which you do not have to read but can just sit back and listen to the very knowledgeable Dr. Tim Ball at your leisure.

Real Climate? You're having a laugh!

Needless to say, 'RealClimate', the HAFs' favourite blog-site and its principal editor, Gavin Schmidt, have been working overtime trying to rebut or play down the nuclear fall-out from the hacked e-mails.  As an integral part of the whole global warming farrago, RealClimate has been forced on the defensive by its own supporters. 

san quintin says:

20 November 2009 at 2:01 PM

One purported email says:

“guys, I see that Science has already gone online w/ the new issue, so we put up the RC post. By now, you’ve probably read that nasty McIntyre thing. Apparently, he violated the embargo on his website (I don’t go there personally, but so I’m informed).

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

You’re also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont’get to use the RC comments as a megaphone…”

I’m not a sceptic (far from it…I’ve been involved in climate science for a long time and have been convinced about AGW for years) but I do think that this sends a pretty crap message to everyone. If RC is screening posts to push a particular point then it’s not that much better in that regard than a lot of the sceptic sites.

[Response: This is a moderated site, and always has been. We do screen out a lot of the random squawk of the blogosphere and the baseless accusations of malfeasance that are commonplace on open forums. We do that unapologetically in order to maximise the signal-to-noise ratio in threads. When there are technical issues that we aren't qualified to judge, we often ask people more involved to comment - and these comments appear inline with the questions so that the answers are not lost and are provided at the same time as the question appears. This leaves a record for later readers that is much easier to follow. We don't screen out comments just because they disagree with us (as is evident in any comment thread). - gavin]

That is followed immediately by a shorter but much deadlier thrust:

JohnAnnArbor says:

20 November 2009 at 2:01 PM

Your anger at people for simply asking questions and trying to replicate results is damning.

[Response: Nonsense. Anger is restricted to people who misrepresent views and make up false accusations. Asking real questions about real issues is welcome. - gavin]

Watching these charlatans wriggle on a hundred deadly barbs almost qualifies as a cruel sport. Gimmee more!

Just one of the hundreds of smoking guns

Here is just one of the hacked e-mails as reproduced at the ever-excellent WUWT:

So far one of the most circulated e-mails from the CRU hack is the following from Phil Jones to the original hockey stick authors – Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes.

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. [My emphasis] Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

"To hide the decline"!  Could anything better expose these rascals for the scientific charlatans that they are than that deadly phrase from the keyboard of one of their leaders?