Titanic, Tic Tacs And Trailers. It’s Fact Day.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

Welcome to another fact day at the fasab blob.

Last one for May 2015. Time flying as always.

This selection includes facts about the Titanic Tic Tacs and trailers, and lots more.

Enjoy.

.

.

Light pollution usually doesn’t have a

significant impact on humans but it

causes major problems to many animals.

Birds often confuse days and nights and

scientists found out that light pollution can

change migration patterns in some animal species.

 

.

.

The Titanic was so big that 176 men were needed

just to shovel coal into its furnaces

 

.

.

Although Tic Tac’s claim to have 0 sugar,

they consist of nearly 98% sugar!

This is because the size per serving is

.49 grams and according to the FDA a food

cannot be labeled “sugar free” unless it

contains less than .5 grams of sugar per serving!

How sweet!

 

.

.

Bulgaria is the oldest country in Europe and

it hasn’t changed its name since 681 AD

 

.

.

When Soviet archaeologists opened the tomb

of Tamerlane, a Mongol descendant of Genghis Khan,

they found an inscription that read,

“Whoever opens my tomb will unleash

an invader more terrible than I.”

It was June 20 1941.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22.

 

.

.

The only part of a Swiss Army Knife not

made in Switzerland is the corkscrew.

It is made in Japan.

 

.

.

Mothers become emotionally attached to their

children prior to birth by the virtue of

carrying the child in their wombs.

According to some studies men won’t become

emotionally bonded to the child for several months

after birth when the infant begins to smile, respond,

and interact with him.

 

.

.

During Peter the Great’s reign in Russia

there was a beard tax which

anyone with a beard had to pay.

 

.

.

Nobody knows how the Mayan Empire declined.

Long before the Spanish came many of the great

cities had already been long abandoned and lay in ruins.

Scholars have hypothesized reasons ranging from

drought and famine to overpopulation and climate change.

 

.

.

JRR Tolkien’s estate only received $62,500

for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy

until a lawsuit was filed.

 

.

.

In June 2010 Oscar the cat received bionic limbs

to replace his original ones lost in an

accident with a combine harvester.

 

.

.

Movie trailers were so named because they

were originally designed to play AFTER the movie,

but when marketers realized that people don’t tend

to stick around when a movie has finished they

started to play them at the beginning of the main movie!

Here’s an example…

 .

.

=============================

.

 

It’s A Funny Old World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

It definitely is a funny old world, especially when it comes to global warming and particularly the reasons for it happening – even though it isn’t.

It has also been funny watching all the pseudo-scientist and political upstarts trying to jump on this bandwagon to try to promote themselves in the public eye. Al Gore managed to bag himself a discredited Nobel Peace Prize and millions of dollars with his well timed trip on this gravy train. Although I still don’t know what global warming had to do with a prize for peace because as far as I know they hold wars in all temperatures!

I say “global warming” because that was what they called it. Scientists even falsified data to “prove” that the planet was getting hotter and hotter because of the increased emissions of carbon dioxide generated by us, people. We may well be in the midst of a climate cycle, but the reliable evidence does not show that it’s our fault. Nor is it the fault of too many cows letting too many farts, which was another one of the not so scientific theories that was doing the rounds a few years ago.

Then there was the theory that the Polar ice caps were all going to melt, raising the sea level so much most of us would drown. Technically I suppose if you were keen enough you could drown in a couple of inches of water, but I think personally I would just pull on my gumboots and walk casually toward some higher ground.

Unfortunately for it’s supporters, the REAL evidence has been showing little or no change in average temperatures, certainly not the apocalyptic amounts forecast by the flawed models of the global warming scientists.

On that very subject, some of these scientists are currently “baffled” by the fact that, rather than the Polar ice caps melting, there now seems to be an all-time record area of sea covered by ice around the Antarctic’s coasts.

The beautifully named lead scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Ted Scambos, admitted “What we’re learning is, we have more to learn,” as he announced the latest annual sea ice maximum for the austral continent.

The sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent reached its maximum extent on September 22, 2014, at 20.11 million square kilometers (7.76 million square miles). This is 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) ABOVE the 1981 to 2010 average extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above average.

This new record follows consecutive record winter maximum extents in 2012 and 2013. The reasons for this recent rapid growth are not clear. Climate scientists have been puzzled by the behavior of the southern ice for many years.

You have to laugh as you watch the pro-global warming scientists squirm as they try to fight off reality by proclaiming that their forecasts should be correct and what is actually happening should be wrong!

Suck it up guys, whoever created the model to show that the icecaps would melt was wrong, not the ice caps!

In fact, air temperatures have been steady for the last fifteen years and more, and deep ocean temperatures are not increasing either. They call it a mystery. The real mystery is why anyone still takes them seriously!

But, remarkably, a lot of gullible people still do. When it became too obvious that there was no global warming, rather than giving up their lucrative money and publicity maker, it’s proponents simply changed the name from “global warming” to the more generalized “climate change”.

And as recently as the last weekend of September, hundreds of thousands of these idiots turned out in the ‘People’s Climate March’ in New York City calling for governments to address the so-called “crisis” surrounding climate change. The demonstration was timed to coincide with a meeting at the United Nations to discuss how countries can come together to combat temperature fluctuations, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, blizzards and other forces of nature.

So, if the evidence does not back up the theory of global warming (er, I mean… climate change) being the fault of mankind, why do governments persist in wasting time on the subject with wide-ranging plans and conferences in a host of different countries?

There are various reasons.

Politicians like Obama used it to get himself elected and has had to stick with the lie ever since or back down and publicly admit he was a fool. Other politicians in other countries are similarly caught.

Also a false crisis like global warming is a welcome distraction from some of the real crises we are facing due to continued government incompetence.

And the manufacturing of a global warming crisis leaves the way open for the imposition of “carbon taxes” and other spurious ways for governments to try to steal our money. Watch so-called “carbon taxes” being levied on corporations who will no doubt pass on the cost to the people who buy their products.

Yes, that’s you and me, folks. We’re going to have to pay to fix something that isn’t even broken!

It’s painful to have to watch this going on. Even more so when there seems to be nothing that we can do to bring stupid people to their senses. All you can do is have a rant now again.

Oh, look, I just did!

================================================

.

The Rise And Fall Of An Opportunist.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

This Sunday Sermon was inspired by a recent post on things I love recently. Thanks for the idea Alex.

Cast your mind back to 2006, when failed presidential candidate and former Vice President Al Gore was searching for a new ’cause’.

He chose Global Warming and for a while he fooled a lot of people.

He won an Oscar for a largely unproven ‘scientifically based’ documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” that made wildly exaggerated claims about man-made climate change. With hindsight perhaps “A Convenient Lie” would have been a better title. Then he was awarded the much discredited Nobel Peace Prize  –  although just what climate has to do with peace was never properly explained, after all people do fight wars in the rain!

He went on to found an ‘activist group’ and to create a new nonpartisan global movement around climate change that he misleadingly called the ‘Climate Reality Project’ –  misleading because it had very little to do with reality.

Yes, Gore was in the ascendency and was now the world’s leading advocate of Global Warming….brrrrrr …ooops… make that Climate Change would you.

As lately as last January Gore took his old college roomy Tommy Lee Jones and a contingent of other gullible celebrities, donors and scientists on a cruise to Antarctica. Ostensibly they were there to see for themselves the effects of Global Warming, but the real purpose was probably to try to attract more publicity for Gore’s Climate Change crusade. When I say he ‘took them’ of course I meant the multi millionaire Gore was kind enough to let them pay for their trip themselves!

But last gasp publicity stunts or not, things haven’t been going so well recently for the Gore crusade. In fact if you look at the numbers, which I always like to do, you will see that the downward spiral has been a steep one.

For example, at its zenith just a few years ago Gore’s organization could spend the best part of $30 million on PR, advertising and political lobbying. It had offices in over half the US States, sometimes more than one office per state, and employed over 300 people. 

Today those 300 employees have become just 30 or so, and all its state offices have been shut. There are no more hefty advertising campaigns and no more highly paid lobbyists in Washington. Not surprisingly financial donations have also dropped, by around 80 percent. And so cold a political potato is Climate Change nowadays that in the 2012 Presidential election campaign question sessions it wasn’t even mentioned!

Now Gore is going to call it the “Alliance for Climate Protection”, probably a recognition that all the claptrap he was formerly spouting has been largely discredited  –  a bit like himself.

The climate does change, Al, there’s no doubt about that. But the only climate man changes is the political climate where you can go from hero to zero when enough people catch on to the fact that you really don’t know what you are talking about!

Cheers Al

Or should that be Cheerio???

.

==============================

.

Sorry Al, Nobody’s Interested

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

While hardly anyone in the media was paying attention a study was recently released by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago – a large, long-standing and respected non-profit organization.

The results are based on surveys which began in 1993, back in the boom times, and “are the first and only surveys that put long-term attitudes toward environmental issues in general and global climate change in particular in an international perspective,” according to NORC’s Tom W Smith.

The seventeen years of continuous surveys covering countries around the world show that people not only do not care about climate change today – which is understandable in the current world economic and financial difficulties – but it also shows they did not care about climate change even back when times were good.

The NORC spokespersons add that decades of climate alarmism have had basically no effect on people’s attitude around the world!

 

The latest surveys were completed in 2010. Similar surveys have been conducted since 1993, and little change has been noted on people’s concern for climate change.

The economy ranked highest in concern in 15 countries, followed by health care in eight, education in six, poverty in two, and terrorism and crime in one country each.

Immigration and the environment did not make the top of the list in any country over the 17-year period; in the United States, the economy ranked as the highest concern, while concern for the environment ranked sixth.

In terms of national averages the surveys showed that the order of concern was the economy (25 percent); health care (22.2); education (15.6); poverty (11.6); crime (8.6); environment (4.7); immigration (4.1); and terrorism (2.6).

 

Essentially, the environment joins terrorism and immigration on the list of subjects nobody has ever been able to really give a toss about, though the compiling professors did note that in Turkey they do consider terrorism serious: the Turks rate it number one, in fact, though nobody else does.

“Terrorism’s low ranking was notable in light of the widespread attention the issue has received since 2001,” comment the NORC analysts, perhaps sounding a knell of doom for Al Gore and his accomplices who believe they can gain support for their agenda through incessant publicity.

Those interested can view the report at

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Public_Attitudes_Climate_Change.pdf

. 

=====================

.