I have a story in the current edition of Doublethink about Reason Magazine science writer Ron Bailey and his conversion from global warming skeptic to believer:

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Georgetown is a pretty swanky place, but Ron Bailey would rather be somewhere else. It’s a rainy Saturday morning in October, and Reason magazine is hosting a two-day event called “Reason in D.C.” It is mainly for donors to the foundation that publishes the magazine. Bailey, the libertarian journal’s science correspondent, is getting ready to head a panel discussing global climate change.

As he prepares to take the stage he mutters, “I’m going to have to go up and experience some pain.”

Bailey has a reason to be apprehensive. He was once one of the leading skeptics of climate change. Yet in recent years he has shifted. He now believes that global warming is real, man-made, and potentially a serious problem. This stance has led him to embrace taxes as a solution.

(more…)

 

Actually it was Ohio, but the difference was marginal. I just spent a little less than a week there following around a certain guy who is seeking to get inside a very exclusive rental property. Let’s just say the dude has attitude and style as well as some very devoted fans and leave it at that …

I’m leaving shortly for a business trip. I’ll be back in a few days, I think. Anyhow, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone …

Okay, rule #1 in a case like this really ought to be that when you go to the police station to demand the return of the drug money the cops confiscated from you, you shouldn’t do that in a stolen car:

Authorities say a man drove a stolen car to the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office to demand the return of nearly $2,000 officers seized from him during a drug arrest last June.

Deputies said after they told Charles Chambers, 36, to leave Tuesday afternoon, an officer noticed he got into a car that matched the description of a vehicle stolen about three hours earlier.

Read the whole thing here.

Joe Queenan, in a review of Tonya Reiman’s The Power of Body Language in the Weekly Standard:

Reiman, a brilliant, charismatic body-language expert who appears regularly on The O’Reilly Factor, has advanced a revolutionary theory that only 7 percent of communication between human beings is verbal, perhaps even less in northern New Jersey.

“I wanted to put together the band I never saw on stage. I wanted to be in a band that gave bang for the buck. I wanted to be in the band who didn’t look like a bunch of guys who, you know, should be in a library studying for their finals. You know, I wanted stars up on stage.”

– Gene Simmons on NPR on the origins of KISS.

The Oscars may be this weekend but another, rather less glitzy ceremony was held recently: The 16th Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala. The event honors films that “increase people’s understanding and love of God.”

According to the Christian Post:

Winners were selected by Christian Film & Television Commission, which awards movies based on Biblical principles and positive family values. The event was introduced by the organization in 1992 and has since been likened to the “Christian Oscars.”

Tuesday’s event was hosted by Ted Baehr, founder and publisher of Movieguide and movieguide.org, a Christian-based website that ranks movies. Baehr also chairs the Christian Film & Television Commission.

One of the highlights of the awards ceremony was the announcement of winners to the John Templeton Foundation Epiphany Prize, an award of $50,000 for God-honoring films and television programs.

The big winner this year was “Amazing Grace” a big Hollywood prestige production about the effort to end the British slave trade. The film appears to have been first released in 2006, not 2007, but otherwise seems to hold up the ideal behind the awards.

Some of the others films in the running however leave your humble blogger a little baffled.

Nominees for best 2007 film for adult audiences include (drum roll, please):

1. “Amazing Grace”
2. “August Rush”
3. “Spider-Man 3″
4. “I Am Legend”
5. “Strike”
6. “The Great Debaters”
7. “The Astronaut Farmer”
8. “Pride”
9. “Transformers”
10. “Live Free or Die Hard”

Could somebody please tell me how the Transformers increased people’s understanding and love of God? Or some of the others like Spiderman 3? Seriously I’m at a bit of a loss here … Or are the pickings just that slim?

A British government agency is in a spot of bother after it accidentally gave a small town way more funds than it intended. And now the town won’t give it back. AFP reports:

The Department for Communities and Local Government mistook the market town of Newcastle-Under-Lyme — with a population of just 74,000 people — with the industrial city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne — which is 186 miles away and has 260,000 residents — when calculating funding budgets, resulting in a 1.1 million pound overpayment.

The market town claims that its 2.5 million pound grant has already been earmarked for projects and they are unable to pay it back.

“It was a large amount but we assumed it was in recognition of the work we’ve done to encourage business growth,” said Simon Tagg, the borough council leader. “We have no intention of giving the money back at this stage.”

Meanwhile in the Czech Republic, government officials have managed to lose a bridge:

Police in the western Czech border town of Cheb have launched an investigation into the theft of a four-tonne railway bridge.

“We are not sure if it was taken for personal use or for its scrap value,” police spokeswoman Martina Hruskova told AFP. “It is the first time we have dealt with this type of theft.”

The company charged with looking after the bridge, which was on a disused stretch of track near the town, raised the alarm, Hruskova said.

An Italian man was busted recently for faking his disability. He had falsely claimed to be blind for 40 years (no, that’s not a typo) in order to get a disability pension. So how did they smoke him out? Well, they caught him driving:

The “particularly nervous” man was stopped during a routine road check in the northern city of Spezia and could not provide a driving licence, city police chief Massimo Giaramita said.

“Then we checked his medical record and were amazed to find that he was registered as 100 percent blind,” Giaramita said.

He had been claiming an invalidity pension and other benefits from his former employers for 40 years, the report said.

The whole story is here.

Author, essayist and bon vivant Jeremy Lott sizes up the presidential field and casts his vote for the one candidate he can truly believe in:

WE WILL SOON be warned against “throwing your vote away” on some crank third party candidate in the general election. Instead, we should figure out which of the two major party candidates will do the least damage, fasten that clothespin, and do our Christian duty.

Or not. Granted, most votes for non-Big Two candidates really do seem like wasted votes. We cast those ballots to send a message but nobody listens. Politicians and pundits and our fellow citizens simply ignore results that don’t affect the larger contest of R’s and D’s. But sometimes those statements are still worth it, because they are important to we the only nominally enfranchised voters.

That’s why I’m voting for my dad in this year’s presidential election. I’m not saying any reader should follow my example but you could do worse, and likely will. Bob Lott is not and has never been a candidate for any office. If elected, he will not even think about serving. I doubt he’d give interviews to curious journalists. In fact, he might not speak to this one for a few weeks after so public an endorsement.

Read the whole thing here.