Thursday, December 30. 2010
 Am Thinker: Snow Blind at the NYT
At Watts, Terence Kealey: What Does Climategate Say About Science? It's a good brief history of how science works. A quote:
...scientists are not disinterested, they are interested, and as a consequence science is not dispassionate or fully transparent, rather it is human and partially arcane. As I argue elsewhere, science is not the public good of modern myth, it is a collegiate and quasi-private or invisible college good. That means, by the way, that it requires no public subsidies. More relevantly, it means that individual scientist’s pronouncements should be seen more as advertisements than as definitive.
Peer review, too, is merely a mechanism by which scientists keep a collective control over access to their quasi-private enterprise. One the e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia included this from Professor Phil Jones, referring to two papers that apparently falsified his work:- “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
 You're with Stupid (meaning yourself)
A Plague of Pigs in Texas - Now numbering in the millions, these shockingly destructive and invasive wild hogs wreak havoc across the southern United States
Via Hot Air, Delaying Sex Makes Better Relationships, Study Finds
Hewitt: Obama's EPA and the 2012 Elections
Rauh and Novy-Marx: The crisis in local government pensions in the US
NYC babies complain about the snow: "I'm Angry Too": Mayor Mike on City's Snow Response
Reason: Carbon Rationing By Other Means
Examiner: As governments go broke, public employee unions must share the pain
GREEN SCOTLAND Relies on French Nuclear Power During Deep Freeze
Via Insty, Lunchbox mix-up leads to charges for Sanford teen
Stossel: Please Stop "Helping" Us
Via Powerline:
Mayor Bloomberg may be receiving an unfair amount of criticism for his lackluster performance in coping with Mother Nature, given the almost unprecedented nature of the storm, but the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can't take care of the basic obligations of government.
Examiner: A truce in culture wars as voters focus on economy
Voters flee to states with less government intrusion
Am Spectator on government medical care: Is It a Right or Isn't It?
Michelle: Un-merry Christmas from the ACLU
The ACLU was co-opted by the radical Left years ago. Sad.
Global Warming Skeptic Predicts Brutal Winter, Warns “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”
Wednesday, December 29. 2010
Another NOLA performer I saw over the holidays was this dude Trombone Shorty, with his band, Orleans Avenue:
A quote from the piece at The Pope Center:
By the mid-1980s engineering and science curricula began their sea-change. Programs were “softened” in order to admit minorities and women. “Outreach” efforts were begun. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs were funded to entice women, inner-city blacks and other minorities into disciplines like engineering and physics. Grant applications (to the National Science Foundation, for example) that once dealt only with engineering now had to address social concerns, outreach to minorities and women, and other issues with which engineers were wholly unfamiliar. Current NSF proposals require a minimum of 2 pages out of 15 on the integration of education, outreach, and enhancement of diversity under subheadings such as “Focused Diversity,” “Underprivileged Student Participation,” and “Participation of Women and Minorities.” That leaves at most 13 pages for the scientific content.
I always thought America was about some sort of social equality where all had equal rights and human dignity. Equality of wealth and income is another whole kettle of fish. A good piece by Kaus in Newsweek:
There are two big questions to ask liberal opponents of income inequality. 1) What, exactly, is it about greater economic inequality that's so bad? and 2) What you gonna do about it?
It's worth reading. One of the constants I find in Lefty writings (not in Kaus) is the assumption that wealth and income is zero-sum, like slices of a pie. That is, that there is a set total amount of income and/or wealth in the world. Whether they write that way to fool the ignorant, or really believe it, I do not know.
I suspect the former.
From the Chimney Safety Institute of America.
Even if you rarely use it, have it checked regularly. Birds, animals, or leaves could make an obstruction up there, leading to a fire.
The launch event for a year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's birth, February 6, 1911, is the first-ever float in the New Years Day Rose Bowl Parade honoring a US President.
There are "replicas of 11 black-and-white photos of moments in Reagan's life, and those photos have been constructed by hand out of onion seed, poppy seed and rice....There's also a replica of the statue of Reagan now at the U.S. Capital, made of flax seeds."
Dyson uninvents the vacuum cleaner
Social Security: The Chilean Model
Sarah serves S'mores!
The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions
Dalrymple: When Predators Don’t Prey - Another good word bites the dust.
The Death Panels are back.
Mead: Give The People What They Want. A snippet:
Twentieth century liberalism started with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson; FDR rejiggered it somewhat for the New Deal. In the 1960s and beyond liberalism continued to build on the basic concept that a powerful federal government was the friend rather than the enemy of individual liberty, and that the truly liberal thing to do was to help that government grow and take on more missions. While I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, it does seem to me that this road has reached the point of diminishing returns.
On both the left and the right today there are many people who believe that the real ideological contest in America today is between liberalism 3.0 (the more individualistic, laissez-faire kind of liberalism that dominated 19th century thought) and the more state-oriented, collectively minded liberalism 4.0 of the 20th century. 3.0 liberals denounce 4.0 liberals as betrayers of the liberal legacy who’ve taken a philosophy grounded in individual freedom and limited government and turned it into a charter for Big Government. 4.0 liberals respond that 3.0 liberals are simple reactionaries who don’t understand how the complexities of modern life make the outmoded, simplistic pieties of liberalism 3.0 wholly inadequate to the problems we face today.
Tuesday, December 28. 2010
Attended an event recently where Buddy Guy was performing (along with some other NOLA folks I'll mention later). Sweet guy, heavenly-sweet music. He played this set, same band.
In the NY Post: Deep in the heart of taxes -Why I won't move to New York. He begins:
Like lots of media professionals (and fashion mavens, artists, musicians, et al.), I’ve penciled out the numbers for what it would mean to take a job in New York City. There’s barely enough room on the back of the envelope for subtracting the double-dose income tax hit from the city and state, and that’s before even adjusting for cost of living.
That’s one of the reasons I’m in Dallas. You know, Texas, the state that parlayed this year’s census data into four new House seats — pinching the two lost by the Empire State — because people actually want to live here.
Lots of Texas professionals love New York this way: fly in for $200 round trip, suck down the city’s beefy marrow of culture for a weekend and jet back to live cheap and pay no income tax. It’s all the pleasure and we keep our treasure.
You Can Have the Placebo Effect, Even If You Know It's a Placebo.
Placebos are strangely effective medicines. Thus it's no wonder that people feel better when they eat organic, or buy into nutritional schemes and health food store products. It's called "hope" and "self-deception" and all of that "mind-body" stuff.
Monday, December 27. 2010
At City Journal, Cities from Scratch - A new path for development. A quote:
During the twenty-first century, more urbanization will take place than during all of human history. Both the global population and the fraction of it living in cities will reach their peaks, as 3 billion to 5 billion people join the 3 billion who already call cities home. That staggering urban growth will be strongest in the developing world. If the existing cities there simply grow by accretion, many people will end up in dangerous slums.
From a BD daughter, re Christmas: "It's A Mall and the Night Visitors."
She likes Macy's in NYC at Christmastime. Who doesn't? (You know Amahl, right? I've seen it twice, which is enough.)
Brokaw: ‘We’ll See’ if Obama Can Learn on the Job — He Didn’t Have Hard Political Experience as a Gov Like Reagan Did.
A good comment on that piece: "If Palin were a Black Liberal they would think she was extremely qualified."
We've had only 15-18" thus far, I think, but the drifts are the real problem. It's been blowy and blustery, with gusts up to 60 knots. See NYT: “Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming”. Ya gotta laugh - unless it's intended as satire.
I'll try to get some links up when I can, but shoveling and getting things plowed comes first. In the meantime, catch up on our recent posts.
This is early this morning. I love it:
I took the pup for a walk in the snowy dark, strolling - no, trudging - down the middle of the roads, after my excursion to Dunkin. The old Explorer plowed thru the drifts, with some difficulty. This blacksmith's storefront looked pretty in the snow. He'll make custom stuff, and shoes for your horses too. Anything iron -
Dunkin, this morning. Their 2 am Donut delivery couldn't get through, but the nice Mezzican gals were there making coffee. Dunkin is one of those things in life that you can count on.
Sunday, December 26. 2010
1. Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?
2. Multiple Personality Disorder --- We Three Queens Disoriented Are
3. Amnesia --- I Don't Know if I'll be Home for Christmas
4. Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
5. Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and ...
6. Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me
7. Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire
8. Full Personality Disorder-- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll tell You Why
9. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ---Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells ...
10. Agoraphobia --- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn't Leave My House
11. Senile Dementia --- Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House in My Slippers and Robe
12. Oppositional Defiant Disorder --- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House
13. Social Anxiety Disorder --- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas while I Sit Here and Hyperventilate.
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