A news and comment blog dealing in the mundane, the profound, and everything in between.

2.12.11

Early Edition

1. Krauthammer on Mitt vs Newt
The always-insightful Krauthammer on what is likely to be the final GOP primary match-up: Romney vs Gingrich. He examines both of their serious flaws and strengths (though he sounds a bit more sympathetic to Romney), and ultimately concludes that we’d have been better off with Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie (and incidentally, I couldn’t agree more). Cue the trombone.

2.
I Rarely Agree With David Brooks, But….
He actually gets it almost entirely right (except for his assertion that the American bank bailouts were necessary) on the global debt crisis and specfically the crumbling of the Eurozone. It’s Atlas Shrugged come to pass in Europe right now, with the irresponsible leaches demanding their bailouts from the industrious, financially responsible (comparatively speaking) Germans.

3.
East Asia Gets Credit For Inventing Dogs
Genetic evidence concludes that dogs originated in eastern Asia, meaning that the indigenous cultures in the region south of the Yangtze River get the credit for being the first humans to successfully domesticate the grey wolf. So I guess chalk up one more awesome thing we owe to the Chinese…

4.
New Study Challenges Apocalyptic Climate Change Scenarios
Regardless of whether this study’s assertion that the climate is far less sensitive than the IPCC says it is, I am always struck by what to me seems the futility of attempting to replicate all of the conditions contributing to the earth’s climate in these climate models. You read about these scientists jockeying the models until they spit out the results they would expect for certain climatic epochs like the last Glacial Maximum, then using that model to generate results for our modern climate. Perhaps I’m missing something but that seems incredibly sloppy and largely unreliable.