Short notes

* Hot, hot, hot: Locally, Brisbane has been very unusually hot and humid the last week or so. (I heard somewhere that the maximum the other day was four degrees above average, and last night seemed particularly sticky.)

And in fact, although you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media, average global satellite temperatures for March were very hot; very nearly at the 1998 peak caused by that year's super El Nino. Normally, Andrew Bolt at least copies into his blog the chart for the UAH global average readings, but he didn't do it for March. (I'll be generous and assume it's because he's getting ready to start a radio career, not because the temperatures don't suit his warming scepticism.) Anyway, here it is, from Roy Spencer's blog:


If you ask me, there's been a distinct air of diversionary tactics about Roy Spencer's posts lately. He seems very keen to justify his scepticism against the evidence being produced by his very own satellite work.

Yet where is the mainstream media on all this? Yes, winter was cold in the populated parts of the northern hemisphere, but can't journalists read the internet and report that it was in fact a local phenomena, with parts of the far north very unusually hot, and now 2010 is on track to be the hottest year on record? Instead, they would rather report on parliamentary enquiries as to why scientists got irked about too many FOI requests over the last decade or so ago. Pretty pathetic, really.

* Scientists want you to have faith: I recently made a comment about how scientific materialists sometimes suggest that, although free will is an illusion, it's important to pretend it isn't. Well, there's a whole column about that attitude in Scientific American now. Interesting reading.

* Isn't there a law against it? Britain seems to have a nanny State law against every possible form of annoying behaviour, except for being a stupid media arrest tart. First it was Monbiot wanting a citizens arrest of Tony Blair; now its Dawkins, Hitchens and Geoffrey Robertson who are going to rugby tackle the Pope as soon as he lands in Britain. Twits. They are good candidates to remedy the problem in my next story:

* Help your local lesbian or lonely heart:

A leading IVF specialist is calling for men to start donating sperm because of growing demand from single women and lesbian couples.

I am slightly pleased if this shows a slightly conservative view towards the importance of fathers actually being present for their kids. But in fact, it's probably just men worried that somehow they'll be made financially liable in future.