Friday, 25 February 2011

Linkage

“And seriously, where are you going to go?”


Answer:  Here.
Please stow hot beverages safely before departing.

(Via:  Tam)

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In Passing

England tries becoming Indiana

Just in time!   Dept

Time addicts such as Fuzzy Curmudgeon Nathan may find this report on events across the pond of interest:
Hey Britain, steel yourself for Double Summer Time.  This is the Coalition’s latest wheeze to boost tourism/save energy/cut road deaths by making our evenings lighter later.  More specifically they’re considering changing from GMT to GMT+1 in the winter, and from GMT+1 to GMT+2 in the summer.  This doesn’t increase the amount of daylight we have, that's physically impossible, but it does shift more of the available daylight past breakfast to a time when you're actually awake.  In June Double Summer Time would mean it’d stay light until roughly 11pm, but conversely in late December the sun wouldn’t rise anywhere in Britain before 9am.  [Links in original. -O.G.]
In essence, the United Kingdom’s government wants to replicate should-be-CST Indiana by bumping its clocks ahead to match... Warsaw?
This is astronomically perverse. The sun takes precisely one hour to travel through 15 degrees of longitude, but the longitudes of Belfast and Warsaw are nearly 30 degrees apart.  We’d be joining a CET timezone that’s twice as wide as it ought to be, with the sun taking two hours to travel from one side to the other rather than just one.
...except that being further north, the effect would be even greater than it is in Indy.
•Sunrise (winter):  There’d be five (yes five) months of the year when the sun rises later than 8am, and two months when it rises later than 9am  (ugh, that’d be miserable)
•Sunrise (summer):  There’d only be one month of the year when the sun rises before 6am  (hurrah, this minimises the amount of wasted daylight while most people are asleep)
•Sunset (winter):  There’d be only three months of the year when the sun sets before 6pm, and just one when it sets before 5pm  (hurrah, that’d be great)
•Sunset (summer):  There’d be four months of the year when the sun sets later than 9pm, and two months when it sets later than 10pm  (hurrah if you're outdoors) (boo if you’re trying to get to sleep)
And what’s worse, if “London time” is actually to be an hour ahead of Greenwich, when do you celebrate New Years?  (Snappy answer:  Twice.)

Given the other important things presently going on in the world, the cynic in me suggests that the...erm...timing of Coalition’s focus on this issue may be an attempt at an “Hey, look, squirrels!” distraction for the British electorate.

Given that DG’s post already has 40-some comments, one fears they’ve succeeded.


Previously:

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Dear Diary...

Surrounded!

 
NWS Radar, February 24, 2011, 6:42pm EST
We have a “rain changing to 2-5" of snow” forecast for central Indiana, then temps. back into the 50s by Sunday.  Well, maybe it’ll keep the Democrats away.

UPDATE (110225 17:23):  Roberta has a report.

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Thursday, 24 February 2011

Meta

Get ’cher tickets!


It's blogmeet time again!
February Indy BlogMeet!
Monon Food Company is at 6420 Cornell Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46220. Right next to the Monon Trail.  Brunch menu runs until 3:00, so brunchers may want to arrive earlier.

(Art stolen from the September, 1904 Monon Route timetable, found here.)

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Wednesday, 23 February 2011

In Passing

Mitch blows it...


but then...

If you know your goals and if your beliefs are strong, you don’t stumble over what you’re saying.  Every day Mitch sounds more and more like George Bush, and less and less like Ronald Reagan.
Daniels sure does seem to have to clarify a lot of things after-the-fact.
- Andy, in AOS sidebar
Daniels’s other problem is he persists in playing Charlie Brown to the Democrats’ Lucy.  If he hasn’t learned by now– after two terms dealing with Pat Bauer as House Democrat leader– he’ll never learn, and the top of the Republican ticket is no place for somebody who thinks he’s playing ping-pong when the Democrats are playing Rollerball.

Oh well, I really never thought he was all that interested in being president in the first place.

Related:

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Monday, 21 February 2011

Linkage

“Was an actual leopard involved with those shoes, and if so, did she shoot it herself?”

You’ve been spotted  Dept


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Saturday, 19 February 2011

Rants

92 reasons for *NOT* donating to the National Republican Congressional Committee


And here they are:
Adams, Sandy, Florida, 24th
Aderholt, Robert, Alabama, 4th
Alexander, Rodney, Louisiana, 5th
Barletta, Lou, Pennsylvania, 11th
Bass, Charles, New Hampshire, 2nd
Berg, Rick, North Dakota, At-Large
Biggert, Judy, Illinois, 13th
Bilbray, Brian P., California, 50th
Bonner, Jo, Alabama, 1st • Chairman, Standards and Ethics
Calvert, Ken, California, 44th
Camp, Dave, Michigan, 4th • Chairman, Ways and Means
Cantor, Eric, Virginia, 7th • Majority Leader
Capito, Shelley Moore, West Virginia, 2nd
Carter, John, Texas, 31st
Cassidy, William "Bill", Louisiana, 6th
Cole, Tom, Oklahoma, 4th
Cravaack, Chip, Minnesota, 8th
Crawford, Rick, Arkansas, 1st
Crenshaw, Ander, Florida, 4th
Culberson, John, Texas, 7th
Denham, Jeff, California, 19th
Dent, Charles W., Pennsylvania, 15th
Diaz-Balart, Mario, Florida, 21st
Dold, Robert, Illinois, 10th
Dreier, David, California, 26th • Chairman, House Rules
Duffy, Sean P., Wisconsin, 7th
Emerson, Jo Ann, Missouri, 8th
Fortenberry, Jeff, Nebraska, 1st
Frelinghuysen, Rodney, New Jersey, 11th
Gibson, Chris, New York, 20th
Gingrey, Phil, Georgia, 11th
Granger, Kay, Texas, 12th
Grimm, Michael, New York, 13th
Hanna, Richard, New York, 24th
Harper, Gregg, Mississippi, 3rd
Hastings, Doc, Washington, 4th • Chairman, Natural Resources
Heck, Joe, Nevada, 3rd
Herrera Beutler, Jaime, Washington, 3rd
Issa, Darrell, California, 49th • Chairman, Oversight & Government Reform
Johnson, Timothy V., Illinois, 15th
Jones, Walter B., North Carolina, 3rd
King, Pete, New York, 3rd • Chairman, Homeland Security
Kingston, Jack, Georgia, 1st
Kinzinger, Adam, Illinois, 11th
Kline, John, Minnesota, 2nd• Chairman, Education and the Workforce
Lance, Leonard, New Jersey, 7th
Latham, Tom, Iowa, 4th
Lewis, Jerry, California, 41st
LoBiondo, Frank, New Jersey, 2nd
Lucas, Frank, Oklahoma, 3rd • Chairman, Agriculture
Lungren, Daniel E., California, 3rd • Chairman, House Administration
McCarthy, Kevin, California, 22nd • Majority Whip
McKeon, Buck, California, 25th • Chairman, Armed Services
McKinley, David, West Virginia, 1st
Meehan, Pat, Pennsylvania, 7th
Miller, Candice, Michigan, 10th
Noem, Kristi, South Dakota, At-Large
Nunes, Devin, California, 21st
Nunnelee, Alan, Mississippi, 1st
Olson, Pete, Texas, 22nd
Palazzo, Steven, Mississippi, 4th
Paulsen, Erik, Minnesota, 3rd
Petri, Thomas, Wisconsin, 6th
Posey, Bill, Florida, 15th
Reichert, David G., Washington, 8th
Rivera, David, Florida, 25th
Roby, Martha, Alabama, 2nd
Rogers, Mike, Alabama, 3rd
Rogers, Harold, Kentucky, 5th • Chairman, Appropriations
Rooney, Tom, Florida, 16th
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana, Florida, 18th • Chairman, Foreign Affairs
Roskam, Peter J., Illinois, 6th
Runyan, Jon, New Jersey, 3rd
Schilling, Bobby, Illinois, 17th
Schock, Aaron, Illinois, 18th
Sensenbrenner, F. James, Wisconsin, 5th
Shuster, Bill, Pennsylvania, 9th
Simpson, Mike, Idaho, 2nd
Smith, Chris, New Jersey, 4th
Stivers, Steve, Ohio, 15th
Sullivan, John, Oklahoma, 1st
Terry, Lee, Nebraska, 2nd
Thompson, Glenn W., Pennsylvania, 5th
Tipton, Scott, Colorado, 3rd
Upton, Fred, Michigan, 6th • Chairman, Energy and Commerce
Walden, Greg, Oregon, 2nd
West, Allen, Florida, 22nd
Westmoreland, Lynn A., Georgia, 3rd
Wolf, Frank, Virginia, 10th
Womack, Steve, Arkansas, 3rd
Young, Don, Alaska, At-Large
Young, C.W. Bill, Florida, 10th
source

Related:
Mark Tapscott:
Nearly three out of four likely voters think they are more supportive than politicians in either party of making the kind of deep federal spending cuts that are required to restore economic growth and get the government back on a sound financial footing, according to Rasmussen Reports.
(via Insty)

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Friday, 18 February 2011

Dear Diary...

The ice man (reluctantly) goeth


NWS temperature graph - last 7 days

After nearly a week of above-freezing temperatures, the snow and ice is almost gone...

...just in time for “rain changing to snow” on Sunday.


Winter’s not over yet; it just wants you to think it is...

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Wednesday, 09 February 2011

In Passing

Blogger continiues its descent into lameness


Now it’s requiring cookies to read comments.

(Pssst... I know a service that works without ’em!)

LATER:  You can get around it by viewing the individual post pages, but whatta drag...

Previously:

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Monday, 07 February 2011

The Press

Spot the difference

You don’t know what “news” is  Dept
Associated Press:
AOL to Buy Huffington Post News Site for $315M[1]
Ace of Spades HQ:
What’s the going rate for an asylum full of crazies these days anyway?

Just to make things clear, I wouldn’t call Instapundit a “news site,” either, even though Glenn’s news-to-snark ratio beats Arianna’s Gang by a mile or so...

For the AP link, HT to anonymous in Roberta’s comments.
-----
[1]  Yes, that’s the subhead; but the story’s first paragraph makes clear the AP’s view of HuffPo:
Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 16:21:51 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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