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You have to assume that America's dying monodailies are now actively auditioning for state ownership. How else to explain the silence of the massed ranks of salaried "environmental correspondents" on the daily revelations emerging from the fast disintegrating "scientific consensus" on "climate change"? You get livelier coverage from the Chinese press.

But in competitive newspaper markets they still know a story when they see one. Surely the most worrying sign for the thuggish enforcers of "settled science" is that even the eco-lefties at The Guardian and The Independent, two of the most gung-ho warm-mongers on the planet, are beginning to entertain doubts. From The Independent: 

Professor Jones and a colleague, Professor Wei-Chyung Wang of the State University of New York at Albany suggested in an influential 1990 paper in the journal Nature that the urban heat island effect was minimal – and cited as supporting evidence a long series of temperature measurements from Chinese weather stations, half in the countryside and half in cities, supplied by Professor Wei-Chyung...

However, it has been reported that when climate sceptics asked for the precise locations of the 84 stations, Professor Jones at first declined to release the details. And when eventually he did release them, it was found that for the ones supposed to be in the countryside, there was no location given.

Oh, right. Very scientific. From The Guardian: 

It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist...

Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more..."

Ah, yes. The old dog-ate-my-tree-rings excuse yet again. As Andrew Bolt notes, the Warmergate scandal is actually a media scandal, too:

Meanwhile, James Delingpole can do without these johnnies-come-lately:

Happily, the terminal somnolence of the American press is undisturbed by such vulgar ructions. The St Louis Post-Dispatch knows its priorities when it comes to environmental news:

Of course she is. You're not one of these "deniers", are you?

National Review's The Corner, February 2nd 2010

HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review

“It’s ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety, mate, innit?” You only have to spend, oh, 20 minutes in almost any corner of the British Isles to have that distinctive local formulation proffered as the explanation for almost any feature of life. The signs at the White Cliffs of Dover warning you not to lean over the cliff? It’s Health & Safety, mate. Primary schools that forbid their children to make daisy chains because they might pick up germs from the flowers? Health & Safety, mate.The decorative garden gnomes Sandwell Borough Council ordered the homeowner to remove from outside her front door on the grounds that she could trip over them when fleeing the house in event of its catching fire? Health & Safety.  The fire extinguishers removed from a block of flats by Dorset buildings risk assessors because they’re a fire risk? Health & Safety. Apparently the presence of a fire extinguisher could encourage you to attempt to extinguish the fire instead of fleeing for your life.

In December a death in the family brought me face to face with Health & Safety. I don’t mean the deceased expired because he tripped over a garden gnome or succumbed to a toxic daisy chain: He died of non-Health & Safety-related causes. A funeral just before Christmas is always a logistical nightmare, and I didn’t really start grieving until the car pulled into the churchyard. It was a picture-perfect English country setting: The old part of the church dates from the 9th century, and the new part from the 10th century. I felt a mild pang of envy at such a bucolic resting place: Mossy gravestones, the shade of a yew tree, cattle grazing across the church wall.

Ahead of us, the pallbearers emerged from the hearse, very sober and reserved. And at that point they produced a contraption halfway between a supermarket cart and a gurney. “What’s that?” asked someone. Funeral directors are immensely finicky, and, in the course of a thousand-and-one questions about the size of this, the color of that, nobody had said anything about a shopping cart.

“Oh, that’s to roll the coffin in on,” replied one of the pallbearers.

“Hang on,” I said. “You’re pallbearers. Aren’t you going to carry the coffin?”

“Not allowed, mate. ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety. The path’s uneven.” He motioned to the dirt track leading from the church gate to the door.

“The path’s been uneven for a thousand years,” I pointed out, “but it doesn’t seem to have prevented them holding funerals.”

“It’s not me, it’s ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety,” he said, sullenly. “They’d rather we wheeled it in in case one of us slipped. On the uneven path.”

We conferred. The ladies were unhappy about the Wal-Mart cart. “Screw this,” said my brother-in-law gallantly. “We’ll carry it in.” He motioned to me and a couple of other male relatives.

“You can’t do that,” protested the head pallbearer. “You’re not licensed pallbearers.”

“So what?” I said. “As you’ve just explained, a licensed pallbearer is explicitly licensed not to bear palls.”

“You can’t just pick up the coffin and take it in!” he huffed. It was now the undertakers’ turn to confer. Inside the church, the organist was vamping the old Toccata & Fugue and wondering where everyone was. I had a vague feeling we were on the brink of the more raucous moments of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s funeral, with rival mobs tugging his corpse back and forth.

The pallbearer returned. “We’ll carry it,” he informed us, “but you blokes have to help us. That way, if ‘Elf & Safety complain, we can say you made us do it, and they can take it up with you.”

“I don’t believe New Hampshire would extradite for that,” I said confidently. And we made a rather moving and solemn sight as we proceeded stiffly down the dangerously uneven path that villagers had trod for over a millennium until we reached the even more dangerously uneven ancient, worn flagstones of the church itself.

As they say over there, it’s Health & Safety gone mad, innit? Or as a lady put it after the funeral, as we were discussing the fracas, “There’s only one thing that annoys me more than Health & Safety gone mad, and that’s when people say, ‘Ooo, it’s Health & Safety gone mad.’” I know what she means. In Britain, the distillation of any daily grievance into a handy catchphrase seems to absolve one of the need to do anything about it. As long as they can grumble the agreed slogan, they’ll put up with ever more absurd incursions on individual liberty. No state can ensure its citizenry against all risks, although in Nanny Bloomberg’s New York City and hyper-regulated California they’re having a jolly good go. And that’s the point: The goal may be unachievable, but huge amounts of freedom will be lost in the attempt. The right to evaluate risk for oneself is part of what it means to be a functioning human being.

Meanwhile, back at the headquarters of the Health & Safety Executive itself, it was reported in 2007 that staff are forbidden to move chairs lest they do themselves an injury. Instead, a porter has to be booked 48 hours in advance, which makes last-minute seating adjustments at staff meetings somewhat problematic. “Pull up a chair”? Don’t even think about it.

It’s good to know that at their own HQ the ever more coercive tinpot bureaucrats don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. Even if they won’t push the push.

from National Review

LOST IN TRANSLATION (WE HOPE)?
I live in Texas and, apparently, this Saez moron you've been writing about has been wanting to do this floating banana stunt for years. He says the whole thing will cost $1 million total, and gives a rambling explanation about why he wants to do it: "It is in Texas because it has oil and a lot of Wal-Marts, Exxons and Halliburtons (and the Ranch). It is a buffoon act, trying to impress. ... Texan dominant Aerospace and all the Gun Clubs."

Yeah, that makes sense.

Blair

NO TAXATION FOR BANANA FLOATATION!
How is it that the people that are always complaining that we're not generous enough in solving a multitude of (admittedly real) problems are the same people that scream for more support for the arts? (Well maybe they're not the same people, but they're in the same political party.)

Assuming this banana guy is legit, he would need to pass the hat around until he collected the million dollars necessary to hoist his prodigious prodigal plantain. Nevertheless, I would love to see him collect the money… so long as the check could be presented in Haiti or some other Third World country where the peoples' main concern isn't "Are the arts receiving enough support?"

I love the arts (especially the ones that make a profit all on their own), but seriously, can we agree that this guy gets the first dollar just as soon as worldwide disease and famine are permanently wiped out?

Steve

AT LEAST THERE’S NO ELEPHANT DUNG ON THIS ONE
Just reading Ms. Thrasher's line— "The grant was to undertake research that would lead to the creation of a geostationary banana”— caused me to crack-up. How could any sane person write such a line with a straight face? It is a near-perfect summation of all that is wrong with government arts funding.

Rick
Michigan

MARK SAYS: Actually, what's interesting about Ms Thrasher's line is that, as she puts it, the grant was "to undertake research that would lead to the creation of a geostationary banana." She says his research fully complies with the terms of the grant, and yet it did not lead to "the creation of a geostationary banana". No such geostationary banana exists. That Quebec radio guy is quite right to be demanding: "Où est la banane?"

LESSONS FROM THE GREAT BANANA SPLIT OF 2010
This banana story is indicative of two things I’ve always believed:

1) intellectuals dream of influence without responsibility
2) artists dream of money without accountability

Greg Hlatky
Pasadena, Texas

WE HAVE ALREADY REPORTED YOU TO THE THOUGHT POLICE
I shudder to think what the racial fallout would be if a 300-meter long banana had been commissioned— whether it was actually ever constructed or not— to float over Illinois to protest the policies of Barack H. Obama.

Chris Traczek

DON’T CRY FOR US, TIM RICE AND ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
I really enjoy your commentaries, and since you're into composing songs, here's one I would dearly love to hear Madonna sing, if you can arrange it:

We have become Argentina
The truth is, we're going bankrupt
I blame the Congress Rove, Bush and Cheney
The banks aren't lending
We must keep spending

And as for fortunes, we'll tax them away
You're all too rich anyway
Though it seemed to the land I was really quite smart

I'm an illusion
This is not the change I promised to you
The answer was hid at the time
Got your vote 'cause I know you love me

We have become Argentina

Have I said too much?
There's plenty more I plan to say unto you
But all you have to do is look at me to know
Some of the words are true

Feel free to tinker with this.

Gary Irwin
Moraga, California

MARK SAYS: Well, I'll pass that on to Tim Rice, who, as you know, was a guest on this year's Mark Steyn Christmas Show. I have a feeling he may query some of your amendments to his rhyme scheme ("lending"/"spending"). But, on the other hand, Tim once released a cover version of "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" in which he sang it backwards - "Window The In Doggie That Is Much How?" - so he's hardly in a position to complain.

Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from America, Canada, Britain, Australia and around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. It would help if you could indicate your city or town, or, at any rate, your state, province or country. If not, at least let us know what planet you're on.

HAPPY WARRIOR
CARRIED AWAY
Health & Safety, and liberty 

THE CLIMATE FRAUD
ALL THE NEWS THAT FIT THE FOREIGN PRESS LAST MONTH
The New York Times tries to bore the story back to sleep

IN THE CORNER
THE GAY BOMB
America's nuclear homophobia - plus Yes, we have no geostationary bananas; and Sarah Palin's hand jive

MARK'S MAILBOX
BANANA FLOAT SONG
Tallying taxpayers' bananas

A couple of years back, I wrote:

That's an anecdotal observation. So now look at these two pictures: First, the Cairo University class of 1978, with every woman bare-headed; second, the Cairo University class of 2004, hijabed to the hilt.

Whenever I give a speech on Islam, some or other complacenik always says, "Oh, but they haven't had time to westernize. Just you wait and see. Give it another 20 years, and the siren song of westernization will work its magic." This argument isn't merely speculative, it's already been proved wrong by what's happened over the last 20 years. Compare the Cairo University class of 1959 with those of the 21st century, and then see if you can recite your inevitablist theories of social evolution with a straight face. The idea that social progress is like the wheel or the internal combustion engine - once invented, it can never be uninvented - is one of the laziest assumptions of the western left.

National Review's The Corner, February 1st 2010

Song of the Week #156
by Bobby Charles 

See You Later, Alligator
After 'while, crocodile
See You Later, Alligator
After 'while, crocodile
Can't you see you're in my way now?
Don't you know you cramp my style? 

Notwithstanding the confident assertion of a remarkable number of dictionaries, the phrase predates the song. "Alligator" is jazz rather than rock slang. In fact, it was one of the earliest jazz contributions to the vernacular. The term "alligator" was originally applied to jazz musicians back in the Twenties, initially to those who opened their mouths and did such extraordinary things that it seemed natural to compare the power of their jaws with members of the alligatoridae family - Louis Armstrong, for example. But "alligator" soon became a general term for any musician working in the jazz vein. Fats Waller and Andy Razaf, authors of "Ain't Misbehavin'" (discussed in my book A Song For The Season) wrote a number with Joe Davis called "Alligator Crawl". Razaf was a very vivid lyric writer: In "My Handy Man" and other risque songs, he took the double entendres and extended the imagery all the way to the end. But "Alligator Crawl" has nothing to say about gators or jaws or or swamps or lizard-like skin - because Razaf took it for granted that a song about alligators was a song about jumpin' musicians:

You're a lucky girl and lucky fellow
If you're among the happy crowd in the hall
When those music men start gettin' mellow
And they play that Alligator Crawl...

So an "alligator" was a musician. And in the Thirties and Forties "alligator" got abbreviated to "gator" and "gate". As in "Solid, gate!" - ie, "I say, fine work, musician chappie" - or (which is more germane to our musings today) "Later, gator!" - as in, "À la prochaine, mon ami!" "See you later, alligator" belongs to the same generation of hipster slang as "Man, dig that crazy frail" - or "You're in the groove, Jackson!", to cite Bob Hope's celebrated master class in how to speak American for a trio of Latin musicians in The Road To Rio (1947).

That said, the man who took a music world expression and made it a musical expression was Bobby Charles. He died suddenly last month at the not too ripe old age of 71, after years of ill health and decades of reclusiveness punctuated by the occasional "rediscovery". He re-emerged to perform "Down South In New Orleans" at The Band's famous farewell gig in 1976, but the number wasn't recorded and in the film of the concert, The Last Waltz, you only get a glimpse of him during Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released", for most of which he's blocked from view. And after the film's release he dropped from view even more totally. He had terrible bad luck: He lived in Maurice, Louisiana, but his house burned down, so he moved to the Gulf Coast, and his house got washed away. But all the cool cats dug him the most: Willie Nelson, Dr John, Ray Charles, Maria Muldaur, Neil Young. Yet, for all the aclaim of his colleagues for his later work, for the purposes of our weekly get-togethers in this space Bobby Charles is best known for three early rock'n'roll hits - "See You Later, Alligator", "(I Don't Know Why I Love You) But I Do" for Clarence "Frogman" Henry (it turned up again in Forrest Gump), and "Walking To New Orleans" for Fats Domino.

He was born Robert Charles Guidry in Abbeville, Louisiana in 1938. His dad was a truck driver for the gas company, but Bobby had other ideas, ever since the night a young kid barely in his teens retuned the radio dial from his parents' favorite Cajun station and stumbled upon Fats Domino. Bobby was hooked. Later, after he'd started writing music, he sent Fats a song called "Before I Grow Too Old". A few days later, Domino came to Lafayette, and Bobby went to see him. Fats said, "You gotta come to New Orleans to see me and hang out with me."

"I'd love to," replied Bobby, "but right now I'm really on my butt and got no money and no way to get over there... The only way I'd be able to get there would be to walk to New Orleans." The light bulb popped. "I gotta run," he told Domino, and wrote the song in the car on his way home to Abbeville. Fats made "Walking To New Orleans" a national hit in 1960.

Bobby Charles had good stories for all his big songs, and the best story of all was for his first and biggest hit. The year was 1952. Bobby was fronting a local group called the Cardinals, and he'd developed a habit of saying "See you later, alligator." Don't ask me why. Maybe, when you're a 14-year old in Abbeville, Louisiana, it's kinda cool to talk like a hep cat from a New York nightclub. At any rate, after one dance at a local eaterie, he headed for the door and, spotting his piano player in one of the booths, shot off his trademark, "See you later, alligator."

"There were two drunk couples in the booth in front," recalled Charles years later. "And it was one of those doors that closed real slow. I heard a girl say something about a crocodile. I walked back in and said, 'I don't mean to bother you, but I just told him, "See you later, alligator." What did you say?' She said, 'After a while, crocodile.' I said, 'Thank you,' and went home and wrote the song in 20 minutes. My daddy was screaming at me to turn out the lights, because he had to get up and go to work at 5 o'clock in the morning. I said, 'Give me five more minutes.'" Bobby Charles never played an instrument, so he heard the tune in his head and had to sing the words over and over and over until it stuck. You can see why, if you're getting up at dawn to go drive a truck, having a guy like that in the house might get kinda annoying.

Did it really happen the way he described it? I dunno. But in nearly 60 years nobody's ever tracked down the gal whose riposte fired Bobby Charles' musical imagination. Which is odd, considering that Abbeville isn't that big, and Bobby was not only born there but spent the final years of his life there. And even odder when you consider that he performed his song - then called "Hey, Alligator" - around town, both with the Cardinals and solo.

A couple of years go by, and Bobby's 16, and he's still singing his alligator song. And it comes to the attention of Charles Relich, who owns Dago's Record Shop in Crowley. Relich calls a guy he knows, Leonard Chess, one of the two brothers who own the Chess label, and he says, "You gotta hear this song." And he fixes up a date for Bobby to sing the alligator number down the phone to Leonard Chess. Next thing you know, Chess has booked a studio session for young Bobby in New Orleans, and wants to fly him up to Chicago to sign a contract. Phil Chess, Leonard's brother, picked him up at the airport, and was stunned to discover their new prodigy was white. "You can't be Bobby Charles," he said. "Leonard's gonna shit." Chess was an all-black label - Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters. But the record was out, it was an r'n'b hit, and they were stuck with the white kid. If you listen to the original "Later, Alligator", you can sort of hear why the Chess brothers might have got confused. It's not that Bobby Charles' singing is especially black, but the song is in the form of a 12-bar blues, complete with lyric repetitions, and the backing sounds like a straightforward r'n'b record:

Well, I saw my baby walkin'
With another man today
Well, I saw my baby walkin'
With another man today
When I asked her what's the matter
This is what I heard her say

See You Later, Alligator
After 'while, crocodile
See You Later, Alligator
After 'while, crocodile
Can't you see you're in my way now?
Don't you know you cramp my style?

It's a nifty idea for a song. Especially a song from Louisiana, where alligator isn't just some zoot-suit vernacular, but your next-door neighbor. His snout's a little different from a croc, but so what? A monkey's not the same as a chimp, but it didn't stop the two of them being yoked together to great success in "The Aba Daba Honeymoon", a big hit before the First World War, and to which "Later Alligator" is a kind of lizardy sequel, an Aba Daba bust-up:

As things transpired, being mistaken for black was, financially, the best thing that ever happened to Bobby Charles. His single on Chess got to Number 14 on the rhythm'n'blues chart, and so naturally, as was their wont with so called "race records" in those days, the major record companies in New York started rummaging through their pasty-faced rosters to find someone to do the white cover version of the black guy's alligator song. And that's where Bobby Charles got real lucky. His song fell into the hands of Decca Records and Bill Haley and the Comets, whose previous record was not so much a hit but a phenomenon: "Rock Around The Clock". It was Number One for two months in the summer of 1955 and represented such a decisive break with what had gone before that for pop musicologists it remains to this day the Year Zero of the rock era: the song that officially marks the fall of the ancien régime and the dawn of the rock'n'roll revolution. As it happens, its composer, Jimmy DeKnight, originally wrote it as a foxtrot, and, as Tim Rice likes to point out, its lyricist Max Freedman was born in the 19th century. So, if not exactly ancien régime, he was certainly pretty ancien: When Freedman was a rebellious teen, the big hits were Rudyard Kipling's "Road To Mandalay" and "When A Fellow's On The Level With A Girl That's On The Square". In the wake of "Rock Around The Clock", Decca had released "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie" and a couple of other Haley trifles that were not exactly comet-like when it came to rocketing up the charts. But where to find a real follow-up to Bill's blockbuster? The answer turned out to be a goofy novelty song by a Louisiana teenager half-a-century younger than the author of "Rock Around The Clock".

Bill Haley gets short shrift these days (see Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello's observations in this spot three weeks ago), but when he went into the Decca studio in New York on December 12th 1955 he made several improvements to Bobby Charles' song. You're never quite sure with the original whether Charles meant it to be real bluesy - ie, whether we're meant to take the tale of love and rejection and regret at least semi-seriously. Haley doesn't waste time with that at all: He might as well be reading out his tax return for all the emotional investment he puts into the verses; they're there because you need an interlude between the singalong choruses, that's all. Meanwhile, he picks up the pace of the Charles version, simplifies the accompaniment into a crisp rock'n'roll backing, adds that signature sax fill, gets his lead guitarist Franny Beecher to announce the title of the song in an almost child-like voice, and for the end virtually reprises the close of "Shake, Rattle'n'Roll". Before he became a rock sensation, Haley had been an accomplished hillbilly swinger, and he knew how to bounce off a lyric. He perks up "See You Later" all the way to the wind-up:

See You Later, Alligator
After a while, crocodile
See You Later, Alligator
So long!
That's all!
Goodbye! 

The critics were unimpressed: "Rock'n'roll rhythm in full cry, primitive to the point of idiocy," pronounced Time magazine. "The title is warmed-over jive talk; the response: 'After a while, crocodile.'" But that bit of "warmed-over jive talk" went mainstream on an industrial scale. Haley and the Comets tore up the screen with it in the hit film Rock Around The Clock. In America, grade-schoolers loved it and eagerly sang along. In Continental Europe, non-anglophones latched onto it. In Britain, Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret was heard to use the expression. Chess Records liked it, too. Hitherto, their music publishing subsidiary had been pretty much an afterthought to their record sales. But the mechanical royalties from Decca's "See You Later" earned the brothers more money than any of their own records.

As for Bobby Charles, he was one of those guys who wound up living all the cliches of the music business, including the one where the formerly naive young popster decides he's being ripped off by the music biz sharks. He parted company with Chess, formed his own publishing company with a friend, parted company with the friend, took up with the legendary and notorious Albert Goldman, parted company with Goldman. When a guy writes big hits but doesn't wind up with big money, it's usually because of him. After all, he's supposed to look out for him; the record company's looking out for the record company. Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan and all kinds of other folks figured that much out. But Bobby Charles seemed to take a perverse pride in not doing so. When Martin Scorsese was filming The Last Waltz, he wanted Charles to sing "Later Alligator" and have The Band and Dylan and all the other bigshots play along - an act of hommage from the biggest stars of the day to a protean rock'n'roll landmark. But the singer figured he'd like to do a new song that nobody knew. "Martin Scorsese dropped his jaw," remembered Charles. "He couldn't believe I was saying no to him... 'Who is this guy?' he asked. 'He's somebody that doesn't want to be a star.' I said, `I'm sorry, it's just the way I am.'"

And so he was. And he knew himself well enough not to let it chew him up. In 1956, an 18-year old boy from Abbeville, Louisiana had a monster worldwide hit, and in the next half-century never matched its success ever again, and never seemed bothered that he hadn't. In 2003, 50 years after he'd first sung the song, he re-recorded it with a fat horn sound and Sonny Landreth on slide guitar, on yet another one of those obscure Bobby Charles albums beloved by insiders but unknown to the public. In 2007, he was supposed to star at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival but bailed at the last minute. By then, after the fires and floods, he was back living in the same town he'd started out in - Abbeville, Louisiana. He kept himself to himself, dining alone most days at a seafood joint where the waitress knew him well enough to start mixing his martini as his car was pulling into the parking lot.

See You Later, Alligator
So long!
That's all!
Goodbye!

See you later.