Tuesday, March 2. 2010
Marriage, and Conflict or Divorce? A ?Lenten confessional piece, with good links.
Who ever said anybody was really a "great catch"? We're all just flawed people.
 Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss.
I needed this quick refresher on Hobbes' moral and political philosophy
Our tax dollars at work: The FDA Takes on Cheerios
Hawaii elevates race, big-time. Aren't WASPs a tribe too?
Mohawks Only. Canadian Indians go for ethnic cleansing
To conservatives: Shut up. You are hurting the kids.
A new lame campaign to deal with evil talk radio
Black ministers for WalMart
Chicago Boyz:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
We do not always vote this way, but I think this is true:
America is, quite simply, a center-right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65% to 75% moderates and conservatives.
Monday, March 1. 2010
- The new, improved Science. Prof. Phil Jones:
...he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.
- You can now forget everything they said about hurricanes. Never mind.
- Everybody is mocking Al Gore's goofy NYT op-ed piece. I am beginning to feel sorry for the guy. This from Big Journalism's Former Veep Goes Girly-Man, Has Hissy Fit in Pages of New York Times:
This piece of pure, dribbling, drooling emoting is going to either make you collapse in a torrent of tears or retch into the nearest barf bag. The only human beings on the planet to whom this editorial would appeal are a bunch of 13-year-old girls without a single clue between them.
With hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, Al is going all out to save his “investment” in global warming hysteria. Here, he comes up with histrionics befitting the amount of personal loss he stands to suffer.
Prof. Lindzen, in his talk at Fermilab which we posted yesterday, refers to the Prosecutor's Fallacy (aka Defender's Fallacy), which refers to a strategy of counting on a jury's inability to understand statistics, and specifically conditional probability.
Conditional probability is about the amount of linkage in events.
The simpest case: Given a red, green and blue marble in a bag, what are the odds of drawing a blue one after drawing a red one?
See the sad case of Sally Clark, who fell victim to the fallacy.
 A re-post. We'll do the Western species later in the week -
It's getting near Opening Day around here, so here's an update on the Salmonidae. For our other pieces on fishing, enter "fishing" in our search space - you will catch some good stuff - along with some random entries.
Taxonomy: The family Salmonidae includes a number of cool-water fish subfamilies: trout, salmon, char, grayling, Lake Whitefish, and other less well-known fish. The Brook Trout and Lake Trout are technically members of the Char subfamily of the Salmonidae.
Heritage: The aggressive, young-trout-killing Brown Trout is a transplant from Eurasia. The fast-water Rainbow Trout is a transplant from the Pacific watershed. The splendid Brook Trout and the big Lake Trout are the common native game species of the Eastern US, and both are technically Char, not trout per se. At this point, the wonderful game "trout" have been transplanted world-wide, and some have established viable wild populations, as with the trout in Patagonia, where you can even catch New England's Brook Trout today.
Anadromy: Most Salmonidae have the capacity, or the preference, to be anadromous - to migrate to salt water until maturity - when they have the opportunity. The Arctic Char, of culinary and cold water fame (anti-freeze in the blood), is anadromous. So is the Steelhead - actually a migratory Rainbow. Salmon are, of course. Sea-going fish grow larger on the rich variety of big-water foods. Interestingly, many land-locked Salmonidae imitate anadromy by entering streams to spawn, and then return to their home fresh-water lakes or just stay put in the streams, if there is enough to eat.
The Great Lakes and other large lakes have their own Salmonidae species, such as Lake Whitefish, and Lake Trout which are not found in trout streams.
Hatchery fish: When you fish for trout in the East, you are, in all likelihood, catching hatchery fish, not wild, born-in-nature fish. Too many anglers, and not enough habitat, so we pretend we are catching wild fish. Catch-and-release gives your fellow angler a chance, and saves your state government, or your fishing club, money on their hatchery budgets. Still, some wild breeding populations do exist, and fly-fishing with barbless hooks gives every fish a sporting chance to avoid the crushing humiliation of the sportman's net. But I still wonder what would happen if we banned all fresh-water stream fishing for five years. What would we find in our streams? Nothing? Or big, mature breeding trout hunkering under stream banks and fallen logs? We will never know, but I suspect that many of our streams would not support wild trout populations.
Other details:
- Superb taxonomy website: ITIS
- Good Eastern trout summary, Pennsylvania Fishes
- An example of how eastern states manage their fresh-water recreational fisheries, from Connecticut
- An example of what fish hatcheries do, from New York State
Image: Brook Trout, by Denton
From VDH's excellent but scathing Obama Fatigue:
...just as liberals were turned off by Bush’s cowboyisms, so too conservatives are tired of Obama’s professorial, condescending sermons. After a year, the people are tired of all the “let me be perfectly clear” psycho-drama, the “make no mistake about” pseudo-tough man pose, the straw man “I reject the false choice that some would…,” and the narcissistic “I have ordered…..my team…to.” The boilerplate is now recognizable even to the Washington press corps. But as important, it dovetails with more disturbing propensities: there are the periodic signs of inanity like “Cinco de Cuatro” and “corpse-man;” the constant fudging on the truth of multibillion dollar new programs really “saving” money; and the surreal bowing to dictators and emperors, with the relish of turning our misdemeanors into felonies and our enemies’ felonies into benefactions.
Read the whole thing. I did not vote for the guy, but I "hoped" for better.
 Perfect place for moonbats to move to.
Powerline: Global Warming Fraud: The Big Picture
Related, A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC: The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
From Roger:
It is just lovely that the New York Times — the world’s most discredited newspaper — would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner — or maybe a padded cell.
Frank Rich: Liar
UK update: Now the Government wants competence tests before you can be a dog owner. How about to enter the country? Or to have kids?
Latest:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. healthcare even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.
Do you think they might just promise them jobs? I'm sure of it.
Now you know: The O says "We can't control nature."
Commenter at Politico:
Had Rangel had an "R" next to his name, he would've been gone last year.
Sunday, February 28. 2010
Smart guys do not tolerate fools or BS, and Lindzen doesn't. How about a Nobel Peace Prize for Prof. Lindzen's lecture videotape? It's long. It's about data vs. models.
Richard Lindzen PhD, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming.
If that link doesn't work (it works for me), try this: http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/f.htm#
From Steyn's Our Own Greek Tragedy:
Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still just about functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn't pay. You'll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?
You're the engineer of a great big freight train. Nothing stands in your way! What's that? There's a huge 18-wheeler stalled on the tracks up ahead? No problem! You'll cut that tin can in two and just keep on goin'! Nothing stands in your way!
Well, unless you attempt to drive through a tornado, of course.
But who'd ever do that?
 In the NYT, We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change:
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Somehow I doubt that it would be "an enormous relief" to Al. He is doubling down. It's his familiar hysteria and fear-mongering accompanied by many factual errors.
From Am Thinker:
Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer - as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an "instrument of redemption?" Holy Mother, that is the scariest idea ever to drool from Gore's mouth. The rule of law is just that - the rule of law. There should be no special qualities that animate the enforcement of the law - certainly not a drive to "redeem" anything or anybody. That smacks of titanic hubris to use the law to enforce your idea of "redemption."
More push-back from Bill McKibben (h/t Legal Ins) - a guy with as much math and science in his background as Al Gore:
... inertia is what gives the climate cynics ground to operate. That's what we need to overcome, and at bottom that's a battle about data, but also about courage and hope. In the last year, we've rallied millions of people in almost every country to demand action on climate change, and to start building the world beyond fossil fuel. The truth will out.
Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books, including the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet." He's a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, a global grass-roots climate campaign. A longer version of this article can be read at tomdispatch.com
So science is about "cynicism" and "also about courage and hope"? Maybe now it is. See Post-Normal Science (h/t, Vanderleun). A quote:
Normal science made the world believe that scientists should and could provide certain, objective factual information…The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge - must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge.
How do we adjust to a world that is packed with narratives and lies? Not too difficult: be skeptical.
Philippians 3:17-4:1
3:17 Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.
3:18 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.
3:19 Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.
3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
3:21 He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
Looking forward to fishing season, and hoping Capt. Tom will have some fresh info for us, especially about fly fishing in Yankeeland. In the meantime, I will dig up some of our archival bamboo fishing posts -
That's Editor Bird Dog in the distance, happily fishing in the rain on an April Saturday on the Eleven Mile Brook in CT, with a Haney 7'4" quad bamboo, on Beat #4. Plenty of mostly hatchery Brook Trout, all sizes. Which are not trout, as I am regularly reminded. Called trout, look and act like trout, but Brookies are, in fact, a species of char, not trout. 
Saturday, February 27. 2010
The Jewish celebration of Purim began tonight. The story (Megilah) of the Book of Esther is read. Persia’s King Ahasuerus’ new queen, unknown to him Jewish, Esther, relays to the king the plot overheard by her cousin Mordecai by the king’s councilor Haman to exterminate the Jews. Esther reveals to Ahasuerus that she is Jewish, and the king learns that Mordecai previously saved his life. Haman is ordered hanged. Jews are given the right to defend themselves. There’s much more to this exciting story of intrigue and integrity found, well worth rereading at least annually.
As important is what’s missing. There is no appeal to or intercession by G-d. This is the all the workings of man and woman.
At American Thinker, a brief word on the topic.
America don't need no steenkin' noblesse. But, re the elites, Liberals are smarter. I knew that! They are smart and I am dumb. But not too dumb to be able to support my family and my wife's dumb animals in some degree of comfort and pleasure.
Thank goodness for the equality of one dummie, one vote. I have two Ivy degrees but always doubted my brains. Guess I was right about something.
If not, why not? Alpha USA. It is a wonderful thing. Do it, if you hear the call.
I did.
Case in point: New York State. Competition is needed to try to keep politicians semi-honest.
A reader sent in this photo of Phragmites australis, aka Phragmites, aka Common Reed, from a southern New England marsh yesterday. This presumably non-native, invasive reed has spread like a cancer in marshes across the US, crowding out native marsh species and, in many areas, creating hundreds or thousands of acres of sterile "monoculture" marshland (eg the vast and once-biologically-bountiful New Jersey marshlands).
(There is a native species of Phragmites, shorter, far less aggressive, and pickier of habitat. I took a photo of a stand of it in Canada, but can't find my photo. Here's a genetic study of Phragmites species in North America.)
Ducks Unlimited has many programs, such as this one, to try to control these weed reeds. Nonetheless, they are here to stay. Illegal immigration or globalization?
Re medical care, from Andy McCarthy's post at NRO:
I'm glad Republicans have held firm, but let's not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.
 Are You Content?
I call on those that call me son,
Grandson, or great-grandson,
On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,
To judge what I have done.
Have I, that put it into words,
Spoilt what old loins have sent?
Eyes spiritualised by death can judge,
I cannot, but I am not content.
He that in Sligo at Drumcliff
Set up the old stone Cross,
That red-headed rector in County Down,
A good man on a horse,
Sandymount Corbets, that notable man
Old William Pollexfen,
The smuggler Middleton, Butlers far back,
Half legendary men.
Infirm and aged I might stay
In some good company,
I who have always hated work,
Smiling at the sea,
Or demonstrate in my own life
What Robert Browning meant
By an old hunter talking with Gods;
But I am not content.
Friday, February 26. 2010
This fascinating "virtual back lot" video saddened our friend The Anchoress.
It didn't sadden me, but rather impressed me with the use of graphics software. How do they perform this theatrical magic?
When I consider it, our lives are packed with incoming lies and virtual realities: the news, stories and fiction writing, advertising, photoshopped photos, politicians' statements, theater, legal "theories," activist's anecdotes, fantasies and imagination, memories, dreams (and the tales our patients tell us about their lives).
Mr. Plato had plenty of thoughts on the subject of human perception of reality, and he was darn well aware of the human distorting component too.
Some good blogger (I forget who) recently commented that she (I think a she) was sick of the term "narrative." I sympathise, but I am not sick of it yet. I find it useful. The overused term "authentic" is the one I am sick of.
I have not yet entered a pomo solipsistic world in which reality is a pure mental construction or, worse yet, a pure social construction (see the wonderful Berger and Luckmann). Reality does exist: Just hit your thumb with a hammer or stub your toe on something in the dark to be reminded of that. Many of us, fortunately, do not distort things very much to ourselves, or to others.
However, I do live in a world in which meaning is indeed a human construction, both personally and socially.
A "narrative" is an effort, conscious or unconscious, to ascribe meaning: designed to deceive, to manipulate, to entertain, to seduce, to support one's wishes or self respect, to indulge, to self-justify or to rationalize or serve some other defensive purpose, etc. - or just to try to make sense out of the stuff that seems to happen - more or less regardless of its objective validity. Every song, picture, poem, film, and book is a "narrative" too. Like any blog post. "I" am a narrative, I guess, and right now, presenting a narrative about narratives.
One of the many interesting things about being a shrink is to contemplate a person's "narrative," whether it is just a report of something that happened, or a life story. When somebody is engaged in an exploratory, depth treatment, these narratives change over time - which is why we never take them at face value. We assume a narrative meets some present want, or need, or fantasy. Our always-challenging and endlessly-interesting job is to probe the meaning of the narratives we see or hear in the work of untangling what ails a person's heart and soul.
One of our luxuries as people in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy field is the reliable consistency of the human personality "structure" (another term I hate - shrinks often use fancy latinate terms and complex conceptualizations for ordinary things): like a jigsaw puzzle, there is always a picture of something in there somewhere. Another is the luxury of not worrying too much about the literal truthfulness of things (unless dealing with undiagnosed sociopaths).
I could go on and on about this, but that's enough for now.
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