97 Percent of World To End Tomorrow!!!!

English: Amnesty International Sections, 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Greenland is melting, the polar bears are drowning and you're watching the Olympics. Have you no shame?

The article.

From the combox:

How is it that these people ( the BBC or NASA or the Royal Society or the Guardian
or the Independent or the National Academy of Sciences or the Prince of
Wales or Al Gore or any US TV broadcaster that isn't Fox) plus teachers, lecturers,  lazygoodfornothingstudents, the WWF, the Nazis, communists, Liberals,  greenies, the Boy Scout Movement, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Blue Peter, The French and other lesser Europeans, The Red Cross plus many others and thousands of scientists and experts of every stripe, have banded together to destroy us by lying about the weather?
I mean, how did they manage this and what is it that they really want???

The BallBounces answers:

1. Alarmism fuels funding.
Scientists crave funding.
Hence, alarmism.

2. Climate change hysteria supports the leftist agenda of state control and redistribution of wealth(*).
Big Media is leftist.
Hence, alarmist articles.

* The BallBounces favors redistribution of weather. Canada is too cold.  Why should Arizona have all the heat? In the name of climate justice, Arizona, give us some heat!!!

Related articles

• NASA warns 97 percent of Greenland ice sheet surface melted in four days
• Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
• Ice melt found across 97 percent of Greenland, satellites show
• Planetary Emergency issued by NASA

Greek Olympian Given The Boot: Announcing "Celebrity SafeTweets"™

Charlie Sheen does the Sunday Comics (Photo credit: susie.c)

A Greek Olympian's career bites the dust because of a Tweet that with a bit of tweaking could have been used on Leno. 


This is gonna lead to tweet-chill™!


Future tweets from athletes and other public figures: 


"Another sunny day!"; 


"Let's all give peace a chance!"; 


"All we need is love"; 


People are the greatest!"; 


"We are the world!". 


"I love everybody!"; 


"Little kittens, adorable puppies, warm milk and cookies!"


In fact, this gives me a business idea. 


Announcing Celebrity SafeTweets™ -- an internet service that automatically generates innocuous, inclusive, gender-neutral (male/female/other) tweets for busy  celebrities. Here's my advertising pitch: "Scared of career-ending motor-mouth tweets? Keep it safe and cut out the middle-man (your brain): subscribe to Celebrity SafeTweets!™  


Slogans: "Celebrity SafeTweets -- Sweet!™" and, "Celebrity SafeTweets: "How Tweet It Is!™"


Charlie Sheen will be my celebrity spokthperthon.


Another winning idea from the Ball Bounces!

Obama Gets Something Right?

English: Frame from 1967 trailer for Bonnie and Clyde showing Beatty and Dunaway with "Faye Dunaway" in type onscreen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Obama meets with Colorado shooting victims’ families, refuses to utter suspect’s name"

In a rare instance, I think Obama got this one right. My theory of (mostly white) one-off mass murderers is that they do so for the notoriety; IOW they don't do it for the kill itself, but for the limelight that follows. I could be wrong -- just a theory.

My approach to mass murderers like Colorado what's-his-name would be not to ban guns but to ban media naming -- and not ban in the legal sense, but ban in the social constraint/convention sense. So, a guy shoots up a Colorado movie theatre? Fine. Nobody mentions his name or shows his picture. Ever. Maybe, just for the record, one reference using his initials only, as in the suspect, identified as I. A. Looser. This would apply to the subsequent court coverage as well.

I suspect that notoriety is the air these guys breathe.

Another aspect to this -- ironic in the face of the facts of this event -- is that the US glamorizes evil-doers and criminals. Yes, they do. Bonnie and Clyde. Scarface Malone. And, irony of irony, the primary vehicle for this glamorization is... movies.

Starve them of the oxygen of glamorization and notoriety and the motivation disappears.

Just a theory.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

Are Gunless Gangs The Solution To Toronto's Problems? Really?

Overheard on a morning CTV interview of a Toronto "African-Canadian leader" (I think she's a spokeswoman, not a leader...)

Overheard: "The answer is strict gun controls".

Really? That's it?

A culture that is gang-friendly, but gunless, is the solution"? Really?

And do you really think that if Ontario had the world's strictest gun controls that gangs would have no guns?

Really?

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

The T.O. Shootings: Toronto Media Imposes A Comments Lock-Down

Toronto Skyline (Photo credit: Bobolink)

The National Post and the Globe and Mail have embargoed comments on their coverage of the Toronto shootings this week. Probably they're afraid citizens have un-PC opinions and may want to express them. A bit like Fawlty Towers' The Germans episode: "mustn't mention the war".

I learned today the organizer of the "block party"/BBQ bought $1500 of booze for the event. Not sure if she charged people to attend or if the booze was sold or given away. I'm wondering if this was even legal, and/or if a permit was needed and/or obtained. I'm not expecting the media to do any deep digging or ask any tough questions. They are all tip-toeing around the obvious social issues involved.

A sub-culture where single-parenting is the norm, the police are distrusted if not despised, and gangs and guns are tolerated if not glorified, is a recipe for mayhem. Toronto has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

The face of a hero...

Hero catches girl after window free fall.


"St. Bernard, who has been working for the MTA for 10 years, has four kids of his own — and one of them is a 7-year-old girl, just like Keyla."

Video with commentary at end. Yo!

Dawkins' Interview Goes Badly Off-Message

Design... design... design... appearance.... design... design... design, illusion, design, design, maya.

A Dawkins interview goes badly off-message (but the guy has a great smile!).

Is Dawkins really a Hindu?

Just askin'.

The New York Times weighs in on high school cheating

Image via CrunchBase

The headline: At Top School, Cheating Voids 70 Pupils’ Tests.

The commentary: "The revelations that dozens of Stuyvesant students had cheated on tests not considered particularly challenging for them were the latest example of the competitive pressures inside top schools."


Latest example of competitive pressures? At which point the Ball Bounces asks, "who wrote this?". Back to top of page. Ah, the New York Times. That explains it. Not the students' fault.


Next up at the New York Times: "Shoplifting Latest Example of Competitive Pressure to Look Good And Wear Nice Things"; "Steroid Use By Athletes Latest Example of Competitive Pressure to Win".


The principal of the school weighed in: "Stanley Teitel sent a letter to dozens of students implicated in the cheating, telling them he found this 'breach of integrity very serious.'"


A breach of integrity taken very seriously -- is that it? What makes the principal think there was integrity to begin with? And what does "seriously" end up meaning? According to the article, the impact on most of the students is they have to re-take the exam.


That's it? How about an automatic zero as a minimum?


If we want to develop moral citizens, shouldn't moral behavior be one of the criteria of academic success?


And that's the way the Ball bounces.

The Illusionist: How Herbert Marcuse Convinced a Generation that Censorship Is Tolerance & Other Politically Correct Tricks

The Illusionist: How Herbert Marcuse Convinced a Generation that Censorship Is Tolerance & Other Politically Correct Tricks.

Highly recommended read.