Given the thrust of most reporting, one might be forgiven for not knowing this, but the earth as a whole seems to have stopped warming for the past four or five years, and in fact seems to have slightly cooled. (And, compared against 1998, it is more clearly cooler.) Of course, we are told that the trend is none-the-less upward.

Now, some proponents of the theory of global warming have even presented a remarkable prediction:

So now a theory of global warming allows for at least a further decade in which temperatures won't actually rise.

For at least the next ten years, no matter what the temperature data say, the theory of global warming isn't to be taken as falsified.

The BBC WWWebsite has a story with the headline Dutch bill to ban magic mushrooms. My first-pass parsing of that headline took magic as a noun and mushrooms as a third-person singular active indicative verb.

Neither the Woman of Interest nor I would ordinarily wish to live forever, whether it be on Earth or on the other side of some Pearly Gates. But I posed a problem to her:

I have little doubt that, so long as it were kept in good health and otherwise fairly physically comfortable, the typical cat would choose not to die. A dog might additionally need friendly companionship, but then it too would not ever want to die.

I don't know whether the Woman of Interest knew where I intended to go with my hypothetical, but in any event her first question about the device was of who would take care of the Beet Weasel, and I offered that I would have a slightly larger device for her. So, now the question becomes one of whether one would allow one's companion animal to die in order that one might oneself have the freedom to die.

Having come upon this article

as translated thus I am now wondering about various sorts of assaults (some homicidal or sexual) alleged to have been perpetrated against non-combatants by American soldiers in Iraq, and about what share of these are associated with soldiers coming from backgrounds in domestic criminal gangs, and more specifically with soldiers who are considered to be present members in such gangs. I think that an active investigation is warranted.

I have to wonder whether the BBC was having a laugh when they wrote that sentence. (Of course, here in America, Congressional Democrats once held a special hearing so that Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek could testify on US farming policy.)

Ordinarily, I'd see no urgency in deposing the Australian monarch. As with Canada, the powers of the head-of-state are virtually ceremonial except under extraordinary circumstances, the de facto head of state is a Governor General, and the Governor General is in practice a countryman chosen by the Prime Minister.

However, the present Queen is almost 82 years old, and the heir apparent is, uhm, Charles. (Canada is perhaps stuck with Charles. Canada became distinctively defined in terms of a rejection of independence for the British North American colonies. Little remains of that rejection beyond having the same monarch as does the United Kingdom.) Then again, have the republics really done respectable jobs of selecting heads of state? There have been and are greater fools than Charles occupying Presidential offices.

I see that Alan Greenspan has endorsed McCain. Back in January, Volcker endorsed Obama. This leaves no Fed Chairmen to endorse anyone else, as the present Chairman is supposed to stay out of it, and the other guys are dead.

Nobody much cares, but I am not endorsing anyone. I'm especially not endorsing Mike Gravel, who has joined the Libertarian Party and is seeking its nomination, nor the Libertarian Party, who have welcomed him. Mike Gravel has made plain where he stands on the issues, and it's plain that he's not a Libertarian.

(Harrison was killed by lung cancer.)