200909 Obiter Dicta: Early Advent 2009

voters-lied-topollsters-banned-minarets-soon-the-international-peasants-revolt-could-engulfimmigration-climate-change-and-even-dave/ The Swiss pollsters were caught by surprise. When a real vote is held, popular anger may very well get registered. So, just as I am fond of a little Danish, I'm looking forward to indulging the Burgundian-Swiss side of my heritage (Hoover/Huber/Hubere). I may have to get a Swiss magnet-flag to join the Swedish one on the refrigerator. There is usually little to cheer about in the news from Europe. I remember when the first mosque in 500 years was opened in Spain. King Juan Carlos was part of the dedication. Yet I dare say there has not been a church on the Arabian peninsula since roughly 635 AD. But turnabout is fair play. When can we expect a Saudi prince to preside over a ribbon-cutting for a new cathedral in Mecca? I wonder how it is that the Germans give no quarter to the Scientologists but then turn Muslim quarters in their major cities into no-go zones. So it is about time for a little push-back. The Swiss, like the Norwegians (also part of my heritage), are still willing to behave like nation-states. And I won't wrote off the Danes or the Brits just yet. But there is an article in tomorrow's Times of London that the United Kingdom Independence Party, which holds a dozen seats in the European Parliament, is faced with a rebellion in its ranks. Some members have complained that the newly elected leader does not wish to contest the next general election in Britain but plans instead to throw the party's support behind the Tories if the Tories will commit to a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. I have read that some MEPs are threatening to resign. Monday 30 http://www.climatedepot.com/a/4099/Pressure-Mounts-Scientist-from-U-of-East-Anglia-Suggests-UN-IPCC-has-run-its-coursepoliticizes-climate-scienceauthoritarian-and-exclusive-form-of-knowledgeproduction NOTE: All of this illustrates Thomas Kuhns' thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Here is a top level climate scientist (not one of the skeptics) saying that something like perestroika and glasnost is needed to recover public trust. The IPCC is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. The AR5 is the Fifth Assessment Report. http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_07df51b2-cd5a-51c6-a441-601dbea0048c.html This clipping is a tribute to Fred Decker, a meteorologist at Oregon State University who was an early television weatherman and was also a forensic meteorologist. He developed correspondence courses that he continued to teach after retirement. Fred introduced me to the skeptic side of the global warming controversy. I first met him just after he had served as assistant undersecretary of education in the Reagan Administration. I was attending my first Philadelphia Society meeting in 1985, a year after we moved from Oregon to Indiana. Along with Otto Scott and Russell Kirk, Fred later sponsored me into the Society and I was made a member in 1990. Fred was active in the Mont Pelerin, Philadelphia, and Mt. Hood Societies, which are the chief international, national, and local classical liberal/economic conservative gatherings. I first met Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in the early 80s at a meeting and dinner sponsored by the Mt. Hood Society.