Predictions Are Easy for Predictable Systems

A scant four months ago I made a prediction of what would happen if gas prices rose significantly.

[T]he same people who cried “Socialism!” every time the Obama administration tried something (other than tax cuts for high-income people) to jump-start the economy will wail for government intervention to lower the price of gas.

They will do this without recognizing any irony.

I just read this, originating from the speaker.gov blog, so it’s Boehner’s position — Running on Empty: Obama Administration Does Nothing to Address Skyrocketing Gas Prices

I hereby claim success. It didn’t even take until $4 a gallon.

It’s also funny how they claim that Obama’s policies are the cause and in the same breath observe that this oil-price spike happened in 2008 for the same reasons as the current spike. That would seem to violate causality.

Water Doesn't Put Out This Fire

Fire ants assemble into living waterproof rafts

What happens when you dump 8,000 fire ants into a tray of water? Nathan Mlot from the Georgia Institute of Technology wanted to find out. Mlot scooped the ants into a beaker, swirled it around to roll them into a ball, and decanted them into a half-filled tray.

Two can
can
a toucan but

You can’t
decant
an ant

(sorry; I seem to have contracted poetry. A case of bad poetry.)

 

Here’s the repeated attempts to push the ant-raft into the water

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