Monday, December 14. 2009
A practical Christmas.
Around here, the son and heir needs a new business suit or two from J. Press, and some new dress work shoes like these from Nordstroms. He is supposed to look professional at work. Suits only, it seems. J. Press or Brooks are always ok unless you work at Goldman. Those oxford shoes from Nordstrom's are great, very comfortable shoes for the price. I have a pair of em in brown which had been hiding in the back of the closet, but there are plenty of custom hand-made Italian- or Brit-shoe snobs around here who would only wear such things on rainy days. Not me. They are plenty good enough for me.
Decent shoes, if you have a few of them, last at least half a lifetime (or until gravity broadens your footsies and the old shoes don't fit). The lad could also use a pair of classic Brooks' tassel loafers too, but Santa is on a budget. Santa will try to help a little bit, but a fellow's permanent professional wardrobe is built over time. Fortunately for most guys, fashion doesn't play a role in it. What was appropriate from Brooks Brothers in 1960 is about right today in most work settings.
Me? I should dress well for work, but I can't be bothered anymore. A character flaw maybe, but I just got tired of it.
Who among our readers knows what "Shoes for Industry" refers to? Or, I should say, "to what 'Shoes for Industry' refers." And, in passing, where the heck do those " s belong? Inside or outside the . s?
Send a thanks, if you agree with him, to my independent and independent-minded Senator Joe Lieberman (with whom I agree about 30-40% of the time), for his strong stand against government-controlled medical care.
Here's his email.
I just sent him one. "Thank you, Sen. Joe."
 I made a batch of Gingerbread Men yesterday. Only three are left on the plate.
I guess they ran away. Gingerbread Men are known to do that.
 Oopsie daisy. Story at Dr. X. Luckily, it wasn't occupied yet. Only 1 guy was killed.
Government vs. Markets: Q&O
Vanderleun defuses Gore's lethal poem
Diversity Infects Medical School. Brilliant!
Heather Mac Donald: The Bilingual Ban That Worked
Thomas Sowell dissects intellectuals
How Mossad hacked the Syrian computers for their raid on the mysterious facility
Teddy Kennedy From The Grave: Medicare As A Path To Single Payer
Jimmy Carter: Abuse of Women Including Genital Mutilation is the Fault of Catholics & Southern Baptists.Everybody knew that.
Mark Steyn: Obama goes from dazzle to drone. A quote:
Can you believe this line made it into the speech?
"I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war."
Well, there's a surprise.
David Horowitz on Better Red than Dead.
Related, from Michelle: Hollywood & Howard Zinn’s Marxist education project. Good grief.
Why docs and hospitals are wary of government medicine, via Marginal Rev:
State Medicaid programs, by the way, are easily the worst payers, according to Athena's annual ranking. In New York, for instance, claims must be tendered on a dead-tree form instead of electronically and in blue ink—black is grounds for rejection—and then go on to spend a full 161 days, or almost a half year, in accounts receivable.
I was sent this photo of American Black Ducks ("Blacks") by a reader in CT. Blacks are never abundant, but they are around. These northeastern dabblers, which are closely related to the Mallard, breed around both fresh (expecially beaver ponds) and salt water (mostly salt marshes).
You can read about these fine ducks at CLO.
Sunday, December 13. 2009
Or five ducks, or a goat. World Vision
A wonderful Christmas hymn written by the Baptist English newspaper editor James Montgomery in 1816. Over the years, the lyrics have been sung to different tunes.
One verse I like:
Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.
I am no sage, but I am happy to escape my contemplations to view a brighter vision. The lyrics and a midi of the music here.
 Lowry: Is health care bill tottering? Via Lucianne, It's going from awful to worse. Smith at Am Thinker:
The Democrats' colossal experiment threatens to unleash forces that will ultimately overwhelm the doctor-patient relationship, ration our health care and stifle innovation and excellence in medicine.
Is it degrading to look for a job? Douthat: The Conscience of a Social Democrat. He is responding to Judt's October defence of social democracy in the widely-unread NYR of Books: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?
Astroturf in Copenhagen
Duke at Am Thinker: The Pathology of the Rich Socialist. He asks
How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious "capitalist" imaginable? Well, I have a theory about this.
Cool: Sarah Palin on The Tonight Show w/Conan O'Brien & William Shatner 12/11/09
The head of Athenahealth:
"I still have to keep going to Washington and sucking up," he says, switching metaphors. "Because the problem is when you have a baby with an Uzi, right, they might accidentally mow you down. But here's the thing . . . they're brilliant people. It's just that the idea of a market in health care never occurred to them."
What's in the Senate h/c bill? Via Betsy:
Responding to a complaint by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that Republicans haven't been told what's in the new bill, Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, responded that he's in the same position.
"I would say to the senator from Arizona that I'm in the dark almost as much as he is. And I'm in the leadership," Durbin said on the Senate floor.
Majority Leader Harry Reid has submitted the bill to the CBO from scoring, but Durbin said no one involved in the compromise will spill the beans until the score is released.
"We had a caucus after this was submitted to the Congressional Budget Office where Sen. Reid and other senators who were involved in it basically stood up and said, 'We're sorry we can't tell you in detail what was involved here, but you will learn. Everyone will learn."
Matthew 18:20
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
Yes, there is a dusting of snow:
Saturday, December 12. 2009
 In the WSJ: Deconstructing TV's No. 1 Show - 'NCIS' isn't young, hip or edgy, it just has the most viewers.
I watch it because I love Abby.
I’ve stayed away from the subject of global warming before. The primary reason is that I’m somewhat of an agnostic. It is in defense of reasonable agnosticism, or the scientific method, that I finally speak.
A thinking person will see the subject as so vast and so ultimately unknowable or predictable and the costs of global warming advocates’ proposed actions so apparently unsettling – even disastrous -- to human progress as we know it (particularly in the West where technology’s benefits are manifest compared to any prior or current alternative) that a thinking person cannot blithely go forth with global warming warnings.
Yet the possible (versus what advocates say is probable) consequences of rejection are presented as so dire that I hesitate at taking a position that may doom us to climate purgatory or worse. That’s why the scientific method, the thinking person’s agnosticism, is most needed.
A hypothesis is disproven by failure to predict, replicate, and be simpler than alternatives. The scientific bases of global warming advocates’ forecasts is now largely exposed as severely lacking in scientific rigor and reeking of manipulative deception. Global warming advocates’ “proofs” are invented vapors.
But, this is not per se a definitive disproof of the hypothesis. It is a clarion call for any of the hypothesis’ advocates who have any integrity or deserve repute to come clean and propose new, transparent, tested and testable scientific work. Otherwise, and until, none of their severe remedies can be tolerated.
At the same time, it is a repeat lesson in exposure of the destructive consequences of the past 100+ years of anti-modernist, anti-Western utopianism pursued by leftists who seek power over the rest of us. Their prior “gods” – socialism, communism, fascism, for example – failed in every way. Their fears of an inability to compete, and their seeking of power and position, impels them to new utopian schemes that again reek of self-aggrandizement, now with global warming mania, regardless of the prices and burdens imposed on the masses yearning for improved living conditions and more freedoms of choice. This, as usual, fits neatly with the self-preserving enrichment and entrenchment of faux populists in the underdeveloped countries.
We do know that reasonable emission controls on engines, smokestacks and chemical discharges are beneficial to the quality of life we require in the US. Still, the costs, the loss of jobs and manufacturing, and the dislocations of adjustments have been tremendous. We now know that when taken to minute-reduction excess, the benefits are outweighed by the penalties.
We, also, know that domestic substitutes for producing energy – whether wind or geothermal or shale or nuclear, along with conservation efficiencies -- are preferable to imports of oil that fund foes and deplete our wealth.
As with more honest scientists, we need more honest politicians. They must be willing to take strong stands, lead, and persuade based on the highest empiricism – instead of sneakily impose -- in pursuit of reasonable environmental and self-sufficiency goals rather than in pursuit of personal profiteering and election contributions. Otherwise, as with those who fail to live up to scientific standards, politicians who fail to live up to democracy’s standards should be rejected. The established measures are clear.
 Dynamite from Krauthammer: The new socialism
Forget CO2 - now it's nitrogen!
Dino on climategate: Something’s (probably) got to give
SISU on Scott Brown
About time: Britain, Long a Libel Mecca, Reviews Laws
More on the Minnesota Teacher Brainwashing Program
High Premiums in Senate Democrats’ Health Plan
Climategate’s Harry_Read_Me.txt: We All Really Should
Get a Government Job, Series #4,291 John Derbyshire
CNN: 61% Oppose Senate Health Care Plan
The Nobel speech is getting good reviews.
Bainbridge: Is Medicare Really "Big Government at its Best"?
Trying to rewrite history:
Reid, like most Liberals, is trying to revise the racist history of the Democratic Party, and better yet, to transfer that history to the Republican Party. You would too if you had the racist history of the Democrats.
Study Shows Good Little Eco-Ninnies Who Buy Organic 'n Stuff More Likely to Lie and Cheat in Experiments That Test Ethics
I do not understand this: ACORN wins in federal court
15 reasons why they fell for the hoax
No Pasaran: "It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action."
Christmas Bells
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!’
Friday, December 11. 2009
Interview with Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left.
How many of us have similar stories?
A pal stopped by for a beer with his pup the other day after work. A sweet, gentle puppy. Can you name the breed?
"Carl Pham" replies in the comment thread of a post at McArdle:
Broke, you're one of the good examples of why there is a "consensus" among "scientists" that AGW is real, and it's just a question of how much. And you're also an excellent example of why that consensus should not exist, how scientists who took the vow of empiricism seriously should not be part of that herd. (And I don't mean to be too critical; I understand the temptation, as one who happens to be an expert in very similar fields.)
Here's the problem. As someone who knows the molecular physics well, you can see the components that go into the AGW hypothesis. CO2 has an infrared cross-section of foo, and the atmospheric concentration of the stuff atop Mauna Kea has increased from bar to baz since 1960, and you get CO2 from burning any hydrocarbon in O2, so...well, there you go. Plain as a pikestaff. Hitch these facts together with a little logic, and you have a hypothesis of AGW.
That's actually fine as far as it goes. But what you should bear in mind is the key distinction we always teach youngsters between a hypothesis and a decent theory: empirical verification. It's simply not enough to say oh, A follows logically from B. That's Aristotelian "science," the way the Greeks deduced that there were four Elements (fire, water, earth, air) from which everything was made. The same way 18th century chemists came up with the theory of phlogiston to explain combustion. The same reason Michelson expected to find an ether drift.
No, it only becomes plausible theory when you actually run the experiment, and show that B produces A, every time, and not B produces not A, every time. Unless and until you do that, you merely have a plausible speculation.
As you know, the big problem with climate "science" -- I'm inclined to call it "climate studies" myself -- is that it is impossible to do the relevant experiments. We can't take a planet and jack up its CO2, then see whether the climate changes relative to some identical planet where we hold the CO2 constant. In the absence of that kind of experimental test, you do not have an empirical science. Yes, the components of climate studies -- molecular physics, atmospheric chemistry, complex systems simulations -- are all legitimate sciences, because you can do the experiments that directly confirm or contradict the theories. But when you assemble all these pieces into predictions of climate -- of what happens to the whole damn planet, over centuries -- then, alas, it stops being a science, because the experiments can't be done. (It's like theories of history: in the same way, we can't run history over again, have Truman make a different decision, and see whether lives were on balance lost or saved by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This is why history is not an empirical science.)
Good engineers recognize this problem. Even if every part of your machine has been proved to work as you expect, that doesn't mean the assembled whole is going to work as you think it will. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts, and can surprise you.
You're an expert on one component of climate studies. Excellent. The constructions seems plausible to you. Fair enough. But your experience as a scientist should convince you (unless you are so young you have not experienced any surprising failures of your ideas) that unless it can be subjected to the crucible of experimental proof, the most convincing argument in the world is merely that -- an argument -- and does not rise to the level of empirical science.
 The lists coming in to Santa this year seem to be more about work needs than personal wants. That's what happens as kids grow a bit older. It's more fun to surprise a kid with stuff they never thought of, but first things first.
The Hurricane daughter needs a new Armani business suit or two (as in photo). Armani is made for her (or vice versa), and she is expected to be well put-together at work in NYC.
Santa cannot do everything, but he can try to do a little, depending on what space is left on his Mastercard.
This year, Santa definitely needs the help of his cute nsfw elves (pictured below the fold).
Continue reading "Need, not want or wish for"
Via Climate Skeptic:
Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:
Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW [ed: Anthropogenic Global Warming]
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.
Follow the money — perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.
If only alarmist results are funded, then it should not be surprising that only alarmist studies are produced.
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
Thomas Jefferson
Y2Kyoto: I Say We Start By Canceling The Olympics
Take This Paradigm and Shove It: Each year, I get invited to Washington DC to serve as a pimp. (h/t, Insty)
Climategate gaining traction - even in New Jersey
Dino: From the Snail Darter to CO2
Watts: The Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero
NASA Stonewalling Stokes Fears Climategate Will Spread to U.S. |
Climategate may be just the tip of the global-warming iceberg, according to experts. The next weather-science scandal may erupt right here in the United States. For nearly three years, NASA has resisted the efforts of free-market groups to release e-mails that could reflect the same sort of pro-warming bias seen in the recent e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University.
Breitbart launches a new Big
Medical magic:
Shut up, they explained, everybody's going to be totally stoked about the new plan. Well, everybody except the doctors and hospitals...
Betsy begins:
Something Olympia Snow gets right!
The Wall Street Journal points to a speech that Olympia Snowe made last month when she pointed out that the best social reform bills passed by Congress are ones passed by a real bipartisan majority not a phony one of just one Republican senator voting to give the whole shebang a false veneer of bipartisan cover.
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Dems Need to Come Out of the Single Payer Closet. I thought they already had done so.
Thursday, December 10. 2009
From Frank Tipler: Orwellian Nightmare: Science Is Whatever ‘the Party’ Says It Is. ( Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press) and the author of The Physics of Immortality and The Physics of Christianity both published by Doubleday.)
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