SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:51 P.M. ET: 

WOW! – "American Sniper" continues to clean up at the box office.  From USA Today:  "Clint Eastwood's American Sniper ignited the holiday weekend box office, leaving January records behind as it made a stunning $90.2 million in three days.  The total easily topped the previous January high, James Cameron's Avatar at $68 million in 2010. Warner Bros. estimates that American Sniper will make $105 million over the four-day Martin Luther King weekend, which would be another record.  'This is staggering. It's blockbuster numbers in January, the sort of numbers usually reserved for summer films and superhero movies,' says Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for Rentrak. 'No one saw this coming. The film has been building an audience and blasting any projections all weekend.'"  I'm glad to see a patriotic movie do this well.  People can have different reactions to it, of course – I had some criticisms myself – but it is pro-American.  How refreshing!

TALES OF ACCOMPLISHMENT – From Timesonline.com:  "CENTER TWP. — A woman is accused of leading police on a high-speed chase Wednesday night in pursuit of their own vehicle — with her hands cuffed behind her back.  Center Township Police Chief Barry Kramer isn’t sure how she managed to drive through at least six communities in two counties in a stolen police car, but he said 27-year-old Roxanne Rimer will face charges as a result of the incident."  If she can just convince authorities that she's "oppressed," she'll be offered college scholarships as someone who shows great imagination and dedication to success.  Watch it happen.

CLIMAGE CHANGE FOLLIES - ANOTHER "OOPS" – From London's Daily Mail:  "The NASA climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true.  In a press release on Friday, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record.'  The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS’s analysis – based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide – is subject to a margin of error. NASA admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.  Yet the NASA press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous 'warmest year,' of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much."  Oh, that explains it.  Now do you see why so many thoughtful people are skeptical about the statements of climate "scientists"?

January 18, 2015