The bloggers' coven

So there we all were, a generation lost in ... Blogistan, or something. Some decidedly dissident bloggers of the Boston area met tonight in an undisclosed location, and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the people behind these outstanding sites, whom I now count as friends:

• Solomonia (who made it all possible)
  
• The Augean Stables
• Libertarian Leanings (runs Chris Muir's Day by Day, which is A-OK in my book :)
  
• JihadWatch
• Miss Kelly
• Neoneocon
• Sisu
• Boston Maggie
  

Apologies to bloggers present whom I overlooked!

To start with, we all laughed ourselves silly by reciting out loud Iowahawk's priceless parody (but is it?) of the current Archbishop of Canterbury and his take on the rise of shari'a in Britain. It's a rewrite of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and not to be missed, especially its surprise ending:

Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge
Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge
Gaia in hyr heat encourages ....

On a more serious note, we discussed the provocative and controversial short movie Fitna, which has led to death threats for Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders. We also discussed the larger problem in Europe of developing a consistently non-supremacist approach to opposing the rise of shari'a. There is a wing of the European right with a questionable past and questionable present-day democratic credentials, and who are opposed to Muslim immigration altogether - they were mentioned here last year and denounced perhaps unfairly in overly-sweeping terms. The problem is that serious and difficult issues like this are still often avoided by Europe's mainstream parties, leaving fringe parties to capitalize on them.

Finally, I must mention that the divine Sisu, Mr. Libertarian Leanings, and I had a lengthy discussion on climate. My contribution, besides trying my best to be the evening's instant expert on the subject, was to mention the two most important recent popular books on the subject:

• Essex and McKitrick's Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming, revised edition out last fall. It's not available through any US outlet, but the Canadian Amazon has it (click link).
  
  
• Bjorn Lomborg's Cool It!, which I have not read, but keep hearing good things about.

Sisu has an excellent recent posting on temperature and ice trends in Antarctica, which not only continue to track colder and colder, but just this past year, have gone more in that direction than any year recorded. In a rational world, that decisively stop the "global warming" insanity cold, if you'll excuse the expression. Whatever's going on in the Asian/Pacific Arctic, isn't global - it's local.

POSTSCRIPT: Minor updates today - thanks for comments!