Wednesday, March 10. 2010
Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company since 2005, plays hard to get what he wants.
Case #1: Not Child Friendly
The New York Times reports today that under pressure from Disney The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood was evicted from the Judge Baker childrens mental health center in Boston that housed and sponsored it for a decade. The Harvard Medical School professor who oversaw the Campaign, psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, also co-wrote books with Bill Cosby.
The campaign had for years fought Disney’s marketing of the Baby Einstein videos — short videos filled with colors, nature pictures, music and puppets — as educational; it contended that there was no evidence that babies learned anything. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under 2.
After the campaign filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint, Disney dropped the word “educational” from its marketing. But that was not enough for campaign officials. They forwarded their research to lawyers who threatened a class-action suit, prompting Disney to offer refunds of $15.99 for up to four Baby Einstein DVDs per household.
Barely two weeks after the story of the refunds appeared, Dr. Poussaint said, he and Dr. Linn were called before the Baker center’s executive board.
Dr. Poussaint wrote the board:
“You told me that the mission of C.C.F.C. — to protect children from harmful exploitation by corporate marketers — is not in line with the Judge Baker mission. Indeed, we were told that we could no longer criticize any corporations, even if they were exploiting children.”…
“It’s really chilling, that any corporation, and particularly one marketing itself as child friendly, would lean on a children’s center,” said Dr. Lynn, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School. “And it’s heartbreaking that a children’s center would cave in.”
Case #2: Democrat Friendly Exceeds Shareholder Friendly
Disney CEO Robert Iger is known for his support and funding of Democrat politicians and causes. For example, his 2009 political contributions counted by Open Secrets include $25,000 each to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, a $1000 to Walt Disney World’s Florida-home Republican governor and US Senate primary contender Charlie Crist, then another $14,600 to Democrat Senators.
Iger and Disney have refused to respond to why Disney refuses to sell the distribution rights or to re-air its subsidiary ABC-TV’s docudrama The Path To 9/11. The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, a Disney shareholder, has been speaking out at Disney shareholder meetings, including today’s, “warning Disney shareholders that CEO Robert Iger's progressive political bias puts investors at risk.”
"Iger's rejection of several offers to sell the distribution rights of the ABC-TV docudrama, The Path to 9/11, is a sign that his personal political views are affecting business decisions," said Free Enterprise Project director Dr. Tom Borelli, who has raised the issue personally with Iger at past shareholder meetings.
Big Hollywood offered more background.
A $30+ million project that aired without sponsors on two September nights in 2006, The Path to 9/11 dramatized the historical thread that connected the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Islamic attacks on American interests throughout the ‘90s, and the terrorism of that fateful morning in 2001.
Prior to its premiere, the producers at ABC were so proud of the impending project that they had high hopes of airing Path every 9/11 anniversary and showing it in schools across this country as an engaging educational tool – until an accusation of “conservative bias” (horrors!) on the part of the filmmakers quickly spun into liberal hysteria that the project was actually a “well-honed propaganda operation” on the part of a secretive, right-wing network-within-a-network….
Clinton administration alumni, fearing the miniseries would highlight their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism and tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it. The show very nearly wasn’t aired at all – Robert Iger and Disney were pressured by the Senate Democratic leadership, led by Harry Reid – it hasn’t aired since, and today you cannot even obtain it on DVD.
And why not? Disney President and CEO Robert Iger explains without elaboration that it’s a “business decision.” Oh, well then, case closed. Not only does he refuse to re-air The Path to 9/11 or release a DVD, but he has no intention of even selling the DVD rights to another company. I’m no financial wizard, but I can recognize that, as business decisions go, willfully taking a $30+ million bath on your product when there is a vast audience hungry for it and distributors making offers, is not one of the more lucrative marketing strategies I’ve ever heard of.
Case #3: Lining Own Pockets at Others' Expense
Disney is a leading member of the US travel association’s lobby group, Discover America, that spent millions of dollars to pass its Travel Promotion Act, that was finally recently approved by the Congress and signed by President Obama. It will charge a $10 fee to travelers to the US that will go into a fund to promote tourism to the US. I was on the trail of its misrepresentations, starting in 2007. Tim Carney, muckraker at the Washington Examiner, joined in. Then, in February 2008, Jeff Birnbaum at the Washington Post wrote a 6,746 word expose Mickey Goes To Washington: Lobbyists for America’s richest mouse set out to persuade Congress to scare up $200 million to promote U.S. tourist destinations. In my summary post, which links to my earlier posts on this money-grab by the $1-trillion US tourism industry, I wrote:
The points I’ve been driving home are all there: The statistics Discover America ignores about the strong recovery of post-9/11 international tourism; The cynical marketing by Geoff Freeman, Discover America’s PR specialist; The “inside-beltway” lobbying that swells our federal expenditures and enriches lobbyists and Congressional staff’s future job prospects.
Exposed, the bill stalled until the Democrat Congressional sweep of 2008.
Foreign visitors will surely be thrilled by the added fee. Disney and its travel industry cohorts certainly are at getting others to pay for its own self-promotion efforts.
Isn't that how it works when you go to Disney Land?
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
 Joseph Schumpeter ominously speculated that as capitalism succeeded, democracies in time would come to expect its end (wealth) but reject its means (free-market competition). He worried that because of the inequality and creative destruction it brings, capitalism would provoke a kind of adverse reaction. A popular call would arise for government to plan market outcomes according to some utopian view of society's good, and this democratically guided central planning would inevitably slow economic growth. Schumpeter predicted, in turn, that if economic expansion faltered, individual liberty would be directly imperiled or quietly ceded by citizens resigned to having their diminished economic position protected by the state.
We hear more voices these days yearning for a benevolent autocracy, including the creepy Thomas Friedman. The whole terrific essay, Can Democracy Survive Capitalism?, at Claremont Review.
Photo: Kim Jong-il, beloved, benevolent, altruistic autocrat who understands everything and who only cares about what is best for his people
 Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.
However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.
I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.
"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
Monday, March 8. 2010
Two posts about Marxism on Maggie's in two days! That's a record. And now for a third:
The Left in the Western World, such as it is, remains Marxist at core. I have read and studied Marx, as has Mead. They have some worthwhile and interesting insights into psychology, sociology, and human nature.
The problem is their reductionism. The rare people in the modern world with fresh new insights - eg Freud, Marx and Engels, Adam Smith, Burke, etc. often find their notions reduced to simplistic, reductionistic equations which they might not have anticipated.
Re Marx and Engels, every human is, in part, Homo economicus. But only in part. Humans are also Homo spirito, Homo ludens, Homo conflictus, Homo everything. That's why freedom is so important, if we accept our Western idea of the uniqueness and, almost, sanctity (not almost, if one has religion) of the individual.
Photo: Killer Whales killing Sea Lions just for the fun of it.
Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.
Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt).
Euphemisms are a form of propaganda (see The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook: Updated! New Entries!) designed to kill reality.
"Imagine," indeed.
Please post your favorite euphemistic reality-killers in the comments.
 From a commenter on our Communist Manifesto post:
Quite a few years ago I was at a company management training class at which we had a Marxist professor as an invited speaker. He explained to us that our political views were determined merely by our economic self-interest.
I raised my hand and suggested to him that maybe the political views of the academic class are partly determined by their economic and status self-interest.
He had clearly never thought of such a thing, and was a little upset. Some of the other attendees thought I had been rude to a guest by raising the question...
A companion piece, from another brilliant commenter here:
A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I've since forgotten when he said, "From each according to ability: to each according to need".
My standard and automatic response to that statement (which I hadn't heard anyone actually spout in MANY years) is, "Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?"
 It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.
It's Here. I love it.
(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)
Sunday, March 7. 2010
The Washington Post’s editors took Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task in February 2009 when she downplayed speaking out about human rights abuses during her trip to China. She'd said: "We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." The Chinese were delighted. The Washington Post editors pointed out that the US speaking out hasn’t interfered in the past when there are mutual goals, “But Ms. Clinton's statement will have an effect: It will demoralize thousands of democracy advocates in China, and it will cause many others around the world to wonder about the character of the new U.S. administration.”
Last December, Hillary Clinton clarified. In an address at Georgetown University:
Under the first element of the agenda, Clinton said the United States would be working to hold everyone accountable for human rights in their countries. In order to “reinforce our moral authority,” she said, the U.S. will lead by example by way of reporting figures for human trafficking that occur within its borders for the first time.
Clinton said that while holding other accountable could entail public denunciations of a country’s leaders, “other times our negotiations would take place behind closed doors,” such as with China and Russia.
The second element, “principled pragmatism,” also applies to China and Russia especially, she said. The administration can deplore the murders of Russian journalists and violation of minority rights in China, but “the assumption that we must either pursue democratic rights or [national strategy] is wrong.”
The third element involved partnering with and supporting groups like NGOs which share U.S. goals, and the fourth involved highlighting success stories and rejecting the notion that some situations cannot be remedied.
Tomorrow, Monday, Sec. Clinton has the opportunity to effect her third element.
The Wall Street Journal editorial highlights Friend and Faux on Human Rights:
Some of the world’s most courageous champions of human rights will convene today, Monday, March 8, in Geneva, seat of the United Nations’s Human Rights Council [where gross human rights violator Iran is up for possible election to the UN Human Rights Council]. But don’t expect the Council itself to welcome these distinguished visitors.
The Geneva Summit -- organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel -- will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum.…
In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that it was time “that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell.” In Geneva today, the real truth tellers will be meeting down the block from the Council’s chambers. It would be nice to see the U.S. ambassador show up.
The world’s oppressed await.
We posted about the prodigal son a couple of weeks ago. We are finding Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith so compelling and eye-opening that we want to re-recommend it, especially during Lent.
Image is Rembrandt's Prodigal Son
Saturday, March 6. 2010
I thought I'd list out some tips & tweaks that might make your browsing experience more enjoyable. I'll cover Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.
Below the fold, I'll offer some suggestions on how to clean things up and get more web viewing space (IE in particular needs help in this department), how to make the tool bar buttons more efficient, how to get rid of those ugly purple fonts that some pages display in IE, some clarification on browser speed, and some bug fixes.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Browser tips"
Re-posted from a couple of years ago -
(Trout season around 
here opens on in April. Fishing has a lull during the summer, and perks up again in the fall.)
“Fishing Bamboo” is the name of a wonderful book by John Gierach, a veritable fishing curmudgeon of the old school.
In reviewing the book, W. D. Wetherell said, “The split bamboo fly rod and the mystique that goes with it is a subject that deserves just the right mix of skepticism and reverence, and John Gierach is just the writer to supply this, in a fascinating book that explains what the excitement is all about.”
Yet like many wonderful things of the past, the bamboo rod is close to being on the endangered list. I took one of my late father’s wonderful E.C. Powell rods to Montana to fish the Bighorn (hated it – we were trolling downstream from a boat with the fly being swept ahead of us by the current). As I assembled the rod, the 20ish guide said “It just don’t look right, being yellow.” He had never seen a rod that wasn’t molded from green or brown-dyed synthetic petroleum by-products reverently referred to as “graphite”. A professional fishing guide, on the Bighorn, and he had never seen a bamboo rod.
Well, I have to wonder why not, and deal with the conclusions. Those of us who use bamboo are probably using our father’s or grandfather’s rods, because the values of these rods have gone from high to stupid. I lost my mother’s 2½ oz. 7-foot “baby Powell” on a transcontinental flight, and after two years of mourning and being unable even to contemplating fishing, I felt morally obligated to replace it. The 2½ oz. 7-foot Leonard “Fairy Catskill” I found on eBay cost me $3,600, and I fish it often, refusing to be terrified. It’s just Ma’s rod reborn, and it is meant to fish the 7”-9” wild trout we find where I fish in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The tip, maybe one millimeter thick, is still composed of six long, incredibly slender, patiently-planed pieces of Tonkin cane spliced together, tied with dark red thread and then lacquered. There are precious few people alive today who can replicate or repair such artistry.
Orvis still sells bamboo, and there are still some fabulous rodmakers working today, like my friend Jim in Florida, a retired USAF Master Sergeant, who not only makes amazing bamboo rods, he also make all his own machine tools for the bamboo and also the metal fittings.
Well, where are the rods? I fear they have fallen into the hands of “collectors”, look-but-don’t-touch people with a lot of money and minimal fishing skills – much like Purdey shotguns. Have you ever seen a Purdey in the field in the US where it can get dinged on stone walls, fall in the mud, and run over by SUVs (except for those fancy-ass Hudson Valley corporate clubs).
I have several old bamboo rods and may add one of Jim’s quad rods to my arsenal, and I have some English shotguns, but I follow – and leave the gentle reader with – my partner Tom’s advice. Be sure you can say that you have caught a fish with every rod you own, and that you have taken a bird with every shotgun; only then do you honor the rare skill of the maker.
(Image is an old Heddon 7-8 wt. 9' rod, for big fish - salmon and salt-water fishies. I never thought I'd see it, but salt-water fly-fishing has become all the rage these days.)
Friday, March 5. 2010
California Republican Senate primary contenders Tom Campbell, Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore had an hour radio debate today, their first, slated to focus on national security issues. I listened closely to the first 43-minutes, leaving to play 1-on-1 with my son after school and watch the basketball tryouts. I was struck that at the tryouts there was none of the under the basket elbows and knees I was used to from Brooklyn schoolyard basketball. But there was plenty at the debate.
Continue reading "CA Senate Debate Knees and Elbows (UPDATE: Refs Miss Campbell Fumble)"
This is a re-post from guest author Skook:
Glaciers and mountain-building have created many distinct species of trout throughout the Pacific drainage. To find them, fish a mountain river, take a boat out on the Pacific, or hike to a desert lake.
Rainbow (above) – Silver with black spots and a reddish band along the side. Their native range is the West Coast mountains, though they have been introduced elsewhere in North America and beyond. Redbands are a variant found in the Great Basin, where they have adapted to high summer temperatures. Steelheads are anadromous rainbows that spend parts of their lives in the North Pacific from Kamchatka down to Malibu Creek near Los Angeles. In the Northwest, rainbows and steelhead are the premier game trout of the rivers and coast.
(While Rainbows are to be found in the East, these are all transplants or hatchery fish. The native stream trout in the East is the Brook Trout - which is a char.)
 Cutthroat – Meriwether Lewis stopped at a Philadelphia tackle shop before setting out and his purchases served his expedition well, like on the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805. Private Silas Goodrich fished the river as Lewis described events. Goodrich caught a trout “with specks of a deep black…and a small dash of red on each side behind the front ventral fins… the flesh, when in good order, of a rose red.” There are at least 14 types, often unique to particular river systems. Cutthroats are the classic trout of the inland American West, and they sometimes interbreed with Rainbows.
 Dolly Varden - These are char (as is the eastern Brook Trout), like trout but with different teeth and coloration. Dollys are olive or gray-green with yellow to pink spots and light gray bellies. A character from a Dickens novel, Dolly Varden became the name of a patterned dress and in the 1870’s the name was given to the char found in California’s McCloud River. Dolly Varden are similar to Bull Trout, another char, and at one time they were thought to be the same species. They spend time in the ocean as do Cutthroats.
There are a few other species found in isolated areas that exist today only due to the hard work of folks like Trout Unlimited. Here are two examples:
Apache Trout - Jump in your car and drive to the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation about three hours northeast of Phoenix. There in the White River is the gold, red, and black Apache. It has been a long struggle due to loss of habitat and interbreeding with rainbows. But now things look good enough to move it from the endangered list to merely “threatened” so you may legally try your luck at catch and release.
Gila Trout – Another modestly reviving species in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, it too had been pushed to the brink by development and competition with non-native trout introduced decades ago. Gilas have black spots on gold and copper bodies and grow to over a foot. Long term restoration has brought them back enough to permit limited fishing in a few beautiful mountain streams. Bring your hiking boots.
Thursday, March 4. 2010
The current Newsweek reviews a new book about North Korea based on study of its internal news reports, art and school texts. Threats, mostly hollow, and mild sanctions, by Bush and Obama, have not stopped North Korea’s nuclear bomb making or long-range missiles fired over Japan.
Kim Jong Il and, before him, Kim Il Sung based their legitimacy not on fabricated reports of the country's economic success (that line is directed at outsiders) but on a world view that casts them as "great parental leaders" who embody Korean virtue at its most untainted. In this national narrative, the Korean people "are too pure-blooded, and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world" without the leaders' benefic guidance, writes Myers. This potent myth of racial superiority is aimed at confirming to the North Koreans that they are morally superior to Americans and the rest of the world, even if they lag behind it in technology or wealth. When visiting foreigners are covered by the domestic media, they are portrayed as being highly respectful--even obsequious--toward their North Korean hosts.
Today a North Korean colonel who spent 16 years in Austria procuring luxury goods for the father and son tyrants, before faking his death in order to defect, held a news conference to tout his tell-all book that “shows the deep divide between the lifestyles of the North Korean leadership and their citizens, who sometimes must subsist eating tree bark, knowing they will be sent to labor camps if they criticize the government.”
Kim Jong Ryul said the late dictator had dozens of sprawling villas — some of them built underground — filled with crystal chandeliers, silk wallpaper and costly furniture…. It was in these palatial homes that Kim Il Sung and his family would feast on an immense array of fine foods — including Austrian specialties….He also described how Kim Il Sung — while publicly denouncing "Western decadence and imperialism" — had an extensive luxury car collection that included Mercedes, Lincolns, Fords, Cadillacs and Citroens. Kim Jong Il, who liked taking fast sports cars for a spin, also appeared to share his father's passion.
There’s more tasty tidbits, like Kim Il Sung sending chefs to Austria to ferret out recipes from the best restaurants.
Admiring the North Korean regimented mass dance steps, Vietnam has imported North Korean marching dancemasters to advise the government on choreography for its celebration of Hanoi’s 1000th anniversary.
Impoverished and isolated, North Korea has little to export [aside from nuclear materials and technology] and its tourism earnings have been hit by political wrangling with South Korea over the North's military threats to the region and nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea’s agriculture minister who defected in 1998 estimated that up to 2.8 million North Koreans starved to death during the ‘90’s, that’s about 10% of its population. Now, Pyongyang’s geniuses have committed “currency reform” that made its currency worthless, to wipe out the black market trade that kept many North Koreans alive. Then there’s about 200,000 in North Korea’s prison camps, worked and starved to death in harsh conditions, along the way experimented on, tortured and even babies murdered.
Hey, but don’t let some dead or starved North Koreans, like this woman, stand in the way of a party.
A disastrous currency reform, which wiped whatever little savings North Koreans had, has compounded the effect of international sanctions. For many, survival has become impossible. Currently, ten million North Koreans are living on less than a dollar a day.
In the meantime, this year’s celebrations include the traditional Flower Festival.
For Kim’s birthday, the red kimjongilia was all the rave. The flower, a begonia, was created by Japanese botanist Mototeru Kamo of Shizuoka Prefecture and dedicated to Kim Jong-il.
Two sporting events were also held in the capital yesterday (figure skating and synchronised swimming) in honour of Kim who opted instead to attend a concert by the Unhasu Orchestra, organised to mark the new lunar year, which began on Sunday.
The North Korean leadership’s new motto: Party Hearty Like There’s No Tomorrow. It’s worked so far, for them.
 - Robin from Berkeley at Am Thinker
- Driscoll: I Think We Can Now Officially Pronounce The Late ’60s D.O.A.
- and via that Driscoll post, this good one from Reason last fall: The Paranoid Center - How the panic over right-wing violence is being used to marginalize peaceful dissent
Your Maggie's Farm posters tend to be fairly Centrist-Conservative, like most Americans. How scary are we?
I see that George Will wrote a piece, The Basement Boys -The making of modern immaturity, which echoes the themes I mentioned in my post this week, Are men "naturally" monogamous?
Will wearily concludes:
Last November, when Tiger Woods's misadventures became public, his agent said: "Let's please give the kid a break." The kid was then 33. He is now 34 but, no doubt, still a kid. The puerile anthem of a current Pepsi commercial is drearily prophetic: "Forever young."
Alas, Will makes the common error of associating years with psychological maturity and strength of character. I have known plenty of mature 18 year-olds - even 16 year-olds, and plenty of infantile 75 year-olds.
The Endeavor, off Newport in 2004
Our recent post on this year's America's Cup race in Valencia got me to reviewing the history of J-Class boats, often known as "J-boats." An excellent summary here, which takes note of the surviving Js.
I've seen 'em up close, but never sailed one. Open for an invitation, though. I do know how to trim a jib but that monster foresail is one big Genoa, not a jib.
Wednesday, March 3. 2010
 Just stumbled on this 2001 book by Ted Dalrymple: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.
I think I'll track down a copy. It's the first book I have heard of from a Psychiatrist taking a look at the topic, and Dalrymple has spent much of his career in tattoo land.
I assume he is talking about Brit families of multi-generational poverty and dysfunction rather than the temporarily poor (eg the unemployed, new immigrants, grad students, people down on their luck, etc) or the electively poor (eg hippies, small farmers and farm help, spendthrifts, Maine fishing and hunting guides, aspiring artists and actors, etc) who together make up much of the American poverty stats.
Addendum: By coincidence I see from Insty that Dalrymple has a new book:
IN THE MAIL: From Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.
Can he say that nowadays? Oh, I forgot. He's in the USA now, isn't he?
Photo: Ted Dalrymple, aka Anthony Daniels MD, retired Psychiatrist
 - The Mediterranean population of the Bluefin Tuna - "Tonno" - the King of Fish, is headed for extinction due to overfishing. Their vulnerability is that they all congregate in one place for breeding, and helos direct the netting. EU politics will permit that extinction to occur. A damn shame. Of course, the regular Atlantic population is headed for the same fate.
- And Bottlenose Dolphins aren't really fish, but the Japanese in Taji kill 23,000 of them each year. This is not stewardship.
- Another fish tale: An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World.
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
 A charming female figure affects men like a drug.
A dinner partner asked me "Are men naturally monogamous?" on Saturday. What a silly question. "Of course they aren't."
Men are obviously programmed to want to have a good time spreading their DNA around willy nilly, as it were, but, at the same time, normal men are capable of forming these strange things we call "relationships," of forming sturdy and deep attachments, of developing strong character restraints, and of living by moral codes and committments to others.
We often refer to those latter things as core aspects of "manliness" in our culture: loyalty, honor, dependability, reliability, responsibility, self-control, providing support and family defence and all that. Otherwise, a guy is just a teenager. The combination of the former and the latter is part of the male challenge. (Females have their own set of life dilemmas.)
Still, these "naturally" questions I get always raise the basic problem: How does one discuss "natural" for a naturally culture-building and society-building animal like man? The discussion always becomes circular.
Freud was not the first person to address the topic, but he did his best.
 Tar and Chip is a good way to do, or re-do, a driveway. It's more attractive than asphalt, cheaper, and affords better traction.
It can also be applied on top of an asphalt driveway to improve the appearance. It's basically stone chips or small gravel, of whatever color you chose, rolled into hot tar. Over time, careless snow-plowing will wear away the gravel. Not quickly, though. It lasts for years.
This guy loves his tar and chip.
Do we have any readers who are tar and chip fans?
Monday, March 1. 2010
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
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#
 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.
|
