Smith and Wesson; Bribing the Customer

SW vice president Amaro Goncalves has been pinched for allegedly bribing a couple of FBI guys posing as henchmen for the defense boss of an unnamed African government. Bribing is bad and y'all shouldn't be doing it. But l think that moral outrage would be most seemly coming only from men and women who have been required to do business with third-world thugs.

I say, Old Chap, she's dead and the Butter did it

I see from The Bitch Girls that our British cousins are at it again. Actually, I'll bet the Brits are just jealous of New York City for scooping them on trying to ban the killer crystals of death.

So Parliament and No. 10 Downing are under pressure to crack down on the greasy globules of imminent demise.

This all stems from one of your large moral failings: You like butter.

After a roundabout PR exercise well explained by the BG's, a high-level British Worrier -- so high-level as to require hyphenation -- has hit the papers with the money quote:

" President of the Faculty, Professor Alan Maryon-Davis said: " ... 'Food can be made perfectly well without trans fat (read: butter, Ed.) and the Government should move to ban them as soon as possible because eliminating them would help save many lives'."

I forgot the exact name of the faculty he's the president of, but you can bet it (a) consumes large bales of British citizens' tax money at a single sitting and (b) has a faculty for knowing better than you about almost everything.

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An afterthought: Banning butter will automatically reduce the prevalence of butter knives, thereby mitigating yet another publlic safety scourge bedeviling the lives of our former colonial masters.

At least my heart cockles are warmer.

The United Nations may soon issue a correction that could, but probably won't, tone down a little of the caterwauling about global warming.

Hand-wringers got a lot of mileage out of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007 saying:

"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

Which would really put the old kabosh on the Kathmandu bobsledding industry with all the human anguish that portends.

One small problem has appeared. The laws of physics don't permit any such thing. Even if they did, the evidence is one, count-em one, obscure Indian science professor named Hasnein who, 11 years ago, took a call from the New Scientist. This magazine can safely be thought of as the Mechanix Illustrated of its field.

Flattered to be consulted, Professor Hasnain adjusted his bed sheet and popped off that the glaciers to his north were rapidly melting. The New Scientist journalist may or may not have added dramatic details, including the 2035 date for end of the glacier as we know it.

For a few years no one paid any attention, not even me, and I'm locally known as an enthusiastic advocate of healthy Himalayan glaciation. It's for the kids.

Then, in 2005, Professor Hasnain's words to the New Scientist were picked up in a World Wildlife Federation report forecasting the end of China, India, Nepal, and Cute Baby Pandas as we know them because my son drives a Suburban.

That got the U.N. climate worriers excited, and in 2007 they issued a report making Himalayan glacial death a pillar of high level scientific thought as that term is understood by the United Nations General Assembly.

In due course some thoughtful high school graduates started asking questions and, to state it briefly, Professor Hasnain eventually conceded his evidence came out of his ass. His concession may have been prompted by the term "inherently ludicrous" which other scientists applied to the notion.

The Times concludes:

"The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific conensus over climate change. It follows the so-called climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key date. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely."

Brown, Coakley, or Acorn?

When I was dabbling in politics we worried about vote fraud in Massachusetts almost as much as Chicago.

Will Acorn and the remnants of the Kennedy machine thumb the Coakley side of the scale heavily? *

I don't, of course, know, but I hope the national Republican apparatus has set aside a lot of money for EDO-- election day operations -- to include nimble poll watchers with Hawking-like brains and large brass wedding tackle. It is a given that the NRSC has quick-draw legal help on call, and this is one of the times we should declare a moratorium on lawyer snark.

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*The "heavily" is important. They'll cheat a little, but, of course, so will the other side. Small-time vote fraud is universal and generally self-canceling.