Facts are the Air — Update: CRU Director Steps Down

December 1, 2009 By

I stum­bled across this quote, and I love it.  It fits the whole “Cli­mate­Gate” issue going on.  Read it, under­stand it:

Per­fect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsup­ported by the air. Facts are the air of sci­ence. With­out them a man of sci­ence can never rise.

– Ivan Pavlov, Russ­ian phys­i­ol­o­gist (1849−1936)

UPDATE (2:51 P.M.):  Just saw on Fox News that Phil Jones, the Direc­tor of the Cli­matic Research Unit in the U.K. that was involved with the leaked e-mails, is step­ping down pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion that he over­stated the case for man-made cli­mate change.  Well, how about that?

Filed Under: Politics, Science Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Century Ago: The Year 1909

June 2, 2009 By

I receive an e-mail here at work about what life was like in the year 1909.  So, I fig­ured I’d leave you with some inter­est­ing and fun facts:

Busi­ness and Industry

Gov­ern­ment and Military

Sports

  • The Pitts­burgh Pirates win the World Series 4–3 over Detroit.
  • The Ottawa Sen­a­tors win the Stan­ley Cup.
  • “Win­ter­green” wins the Ken­tucky Derby.

Eco­nom­ics

  • A loaf of bread costs $0.05.
  • A first-class stamp costs $0.02.
  • The aver­age price of a house is $4,500.
  • The Gov­ern­ment Bud­get was a mea­ger $690 million.
  • Unem­ploy­ment was %5.1.
  • U.S. issues the first Lin­coln penny.

World Events

  • Joan of Arc is beat­i­fied in Rome.
  • Ernest Shackleton’s expe­di­tion finds the mag­netic South Pole.
  • Amer­i­can explor­ers Robert E. Peary and Matthew Hen­son reach the North Pole.
  • Ger­man bac­te­ri­ol­o­gist Paul Ehrlich finds a cure for syphilis.
Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: , ,