Blogging while recovering from back surgery hasn't dulled Captain's Quarters ability to connect the dots.

This photo looks more and more like the real thing every day.













Thanks to Jacques Itch for maintaining the photo on his site.

The anti-American New York Times takes somewhat less jaundiced look at the ethanol fever, and raises some interesting questions. For Good or Ill, Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland

One key issue not discussed in the article in the Times is Ethanol's demand for water: "Resources becoming a concern, with new facilities requiring millions of gallons".

I know we're supposed to have World Cup fever despite the rioting fans. For those fans of rugby who feel left out, here's a post at Little Green Footballs that will make you laugh--and cry: The Scrum of the Incredibly Strange Fully Garbed Iranian Female Rugby Trainees

The revelations in the "drive by media" that we are using the law to connect to dots on terrorist activities--that would be called treason if we had the guts to use the term properly today--are instructive to the terrorists on our capabilities if not entirely revealing about the scope of our methods and means. Michelle Malkin posts a nice set of "blabbermouth posters" modernized to illustrate the costs of aiding the enemy. How about a nice big glass of.

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has an excellent post with even more interesting commentary on the release of the National Academy of Science's report,"Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years": NAS Panel Report
The comments in the post go on for days--more than 500 entries! After reading them, go to the home page for more recent entries on this very worthwhile site.

Steve is dead-bang right. So is the ordinary citizen who recalls that Greenland once produced abundant grapes and wine in the middle of the last millenium. So is the common man who asks, after reading the headlines that scream "Study says Earth's temp at 400-year high" thinks, "Wow, so before the industrial age really kicked in, the world was warmer than it is now. I wonder what caused that? And, what else aren't they telling us?"

One of the commenters linked to another useful site on the CO2 debate.

The NAS panel report can be found here.

Tom Evslin, my old friend from the late 80s when I was at Apple and he was CEO of Solutions, Inc., is right as usual when he takes on the question of Korea's nuclear capable long range missle capability: Fractals of Change: What To Do About North Korea

Connie Chung makes absolutely, positively her last gig...notable, if not memorable YouTube - memories

I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the discussion among the group that pulls together names for seasonal hurricanes--still no "black" hurricane names, by the way--when they picked "Alberto". Were they admiring "Crazy Al", or more likely, poking fun at him?

Carbon emissions are still measured in parts per million, and not very many at that. Instead of spending incredible amounts of money to reduce already diminishing carbon emissions (except in the developing world, including perpetual coal mine fires in China), if we're really at a tipping point, among the prudent, good government acts we could take including having the government buy back land from all coastal property owners up to a certain point above sea level and prohibiting development in at risk areas so that we can adapt to the crisis until it can be studied and solved without bankrupting the industrial or the developing world. Repeating "Crazy Al's" mantra, "See, see, another hurricane--I told you!" solves nothing except dramatizing the inability of government to address the undesired outcome of global warming.

Of course, the Hollywood elite supports "Crazy Al" --that is, unless their expensive beachfront property was condemned. They would probably support a "cut and run" strategy that still offered them dibs on the "new" beachfront property--wherever that may be.

The Dutch built dikes to hold back the sea instead of living with flooding. They did not tell farmers and villagers to stop farming and trading. There are endless examples of man's ability to adapt to nature. Unless we start to hear policy proposals that deal with adaptation to global warming, all we're hearing is more hot air.

FOXNews.com - Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

The poorly exploited captured trove of documents from Saddam's regime slowly gives up its secrets. FOXNews.com: Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle

So, UBL and friends were meeting with Saddam's inner circle in 1999? Interesting if you put aside your "Bush lied!" sign and read the article carefully.

James Lileks uses his Newhouse column to take us through the fevered logic that infuses the far left's reaction to the aborted attack by home grown Islamic terrorists on...Canada.

David Harsany at the DenverPost.com calls for us to "Chill out over global warming"--quite rightly, according to Colorado State University's Bill Gray and Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado.

From Mr. Harsany's column, "Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming 'hoax' makes him an outcast."

Why is the politicization of science so unashamedly tolerated by the left of its enviro-wackos? Is the temptation to embrace self-hate so appealing that it extends to the success of the industrial world and the educational establishment that it seems bent on radicalizing if not destroying? The global warming debate is far from over, and it is far too soon to prescribe solutions to a problem that is simply not well understood.

The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com section runs an editorial by "Krazy Kofi" Annan who claims that illegal immigration is a form of "migration". That's it--we're not being invaded by people who have no legal right to be here; we're just hosting innocuous migrants, like a flock of birds.

Every nation-state since the Treaty of Westphalia has retained the right to defend its borders and set rules on citizenship for those who would wish to settle permanently. No thinking person can possibly confuse the waves of uneducated, unskilled immigrants--and who knows how many "OTMs"--with a harmless flock of birds. Americans are awakening to the real invasion, not a migration, that is underway in America. Mr. Annan is right to say that America has always been a refuge for those fleeing oppression or who wish to bring their skills and abilities to an entrepreneurial society that doesn't prohibit advancement like some in Europe, Asia and Africa. We're tired of being taken for a free ride, though, by those who would enter without permission.

Think of the current wave of "America for Americans" as the second coming of "welfare reform" and you'll be closer to understanding the roots of the movement.

The Seattle Public School District unintentionally makes the best argument ever put forward in favor of school choice Planning ahead is considered racist?

The first few sentences of the column, by Andrew J. Coulson, are astonishing:

"Are you salting away a little money for your retirement? Trying to plan for your kids' education? If so, Seattle Public Schools seems to think you're a racist."

"According to the district's official Web site, 'having a future time orientation' (academese for having long-term goals) is among the 'aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype and label people of color.'"

Unbelievable. Read the whole thing, then start saving your money to send your children to private school or to home school them.