Climate resistance rips apart a study claiming obesity is a big cause of global warming.
The original article is behind a firewall. But, man, is this what passes for science these days? I couldn’t get the NSF to fund my proposals, but some twerp is getting paid to make a bunch of unsubstantiated hyoptheses. And the guy can’t even bring himself to blame the obese. It’s not their fault they’re fat — it’s a corporate conspiracy!
You know, maybe leaving academia wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Remember how studies showed women talk three times as much as men? Um, never mind.
Actually, it will be interesting to see — and the authors note this — whether the trend holds up with age. I suspect it won’t. College-age guys talk a lot because, well, college students talk a lot of crap. And, college men are trying to get laid by college women and think talking a lot will help (it doesn’t).
As I get older, I find an increasing amount of my male-to-male communication consists of watching the same football game or buying someone else a beer.
Wait a minute. Are the environmentalist getting some perspective?
China, by some reports the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, is a “crucial target” of the Live Earth concerts’ anti-global warning message, the United Nations representative in Beijing said Thursday.
China’s business center of Shanghai is one of seven cities staging the 24-hour concerts on Saturday aimed at raising awareness of climate change.
The location is poignant since the city is the linchpin of the booming Chinese economy – blamed for spewing ever-growing levels of green house gasses into the atmosphere.
But . . . but . . it’s America that’s evil! We can’t blame the Chinese worker’s paradise!
One thing that’s gone unnoticed is that the Bushies have been working to reduce industrial methane — methane being 23 times as much of a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and not a necessary byproduct of industry.
Maybe they can get China to go along.
Sorry for the radio silence. Work, baby and July 4 all caught up with me at the same time. But later today, I’ll be back to my usual blather.
That Bushies aren’t the only people to abuse the pardon system (or commutation system).
I like being consistent. I opposed this nonsense when Clinton did it; I oppose it when Bush does it.
Hits the point on The Fairness Doctrine:
This is all thinly-disguised posturing for what’s really bothering the senators: They don’t like that people are allowed to criticize them on public airwaves.
Notice that the Republicans didn’t like it either when it was scuttling their immigration reform.
I’ve been invited to be a contributor over at Moorewatch. Crap. That means people may actually read what I write.
No matter what you think of the Libby thing, you have to read Cato here and here on the thousands of people out there who deserve clemency and have not received it — miscarriages of justice far worse than a guy getting a nasty jail sentence in line with the Administration’s own sentencing guidelines just because he lied and obfuscating about the outing of a CIA agent.
I still don’t think the Libby supporters understand why everyone is so outraged over this. These idiots have been strict law and order types, demanding the book be thrown at criminals, that minimum sentencing be upheld, pardons denied, parol abolished.
Except when it comes to their political buddy.
Now why didn’t I think of this. Probably because no one would have given 10,000 pounds of crap for it, least of all 10,000 pounds sterling.
Friend of W? Get a commutation. Not a friend of W? Get the bookthrown at you.
Jeezus. Bush is so nepotistic even the NYT is making him look bad.
Volokh makes a great point:
Why Didn’t FItzgerald Close Up Shop After Learning That Armitage Was the Leaker?: A popular argument for why Scooter Libby should never have been prosecuted is that Patrick Fitzgerald knew early on in the investigation that Richard Armitage at the State Department was the leaker. If Fitzgerald knew Armitage was the leaker, why didn’t he stop the investigation right away? Why did he continue? For some people, Fitzgerald’s decision not to close up shop after learning Armitage was the leaker proves that he was an overzealous prosecutor run amok. He must have had some irrational desire to go after Libby, the argument runs, making the entire Libby prosecution unfair from the get-go.
I don’t find this argument persuasive. To see why, imagine yourself in Fitzgerald’s shoes. Here are the relevant facts as you know them (reconstructed as best I can — please let me know if these facts are misleading or wrong and I’ll correct them). You’ve been appointed a special prosecutor to investigate intentional leaks to the media of the covert identity of a CIA agent. Early on in the investigation, you learn that one high-level political official has admitted that he leaked Plame’s identity to one reporter; he claims that it was an accident, as he didn’t realize the agent’s status was covert. You also know that a lot of other reporters were leaked the same information, but you don’t know who was behind those other leaks. The reporters won’t talk: They insist on going to jail rather than revealing their sources.
If you were Fitzgerald, would you close up shop at that point? Would you conclude without even speaking to other potential witnesses that the one high-level official was in fact responsible for all the leaks, and that he acted accidentally and entirely on his own? Or would you at least want to dig deeper to see if the story checks out?
You would close up shop, of course! Just like Ken Starr did after he convicted the McDougals! Once you have an official story from the Bushies, you just accept it and let it go! You would never ever question the President’s adherence to the rule of law. The judge and prosecutor just wanted to get Libby, they were Democrats who wanted to…
Uh-oh.
I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as “overwhelming” and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.
Of course. Because anyone who oppose the Dear Leader — McCain, George Will, Bill Buckley, Andrew Sullivan, Dick Lugar — is a RINO, an evil traitor who wants the terrorists to win.
Jesus, don’t you guys get it? Everything Bush does is good. He define conservatism by his acts, just like Jesus defined Christianity by his (Although my New Testament is apparently missing the sections where he stones gays, gets into politics and becomes obssessed with money. I think that’s in Hypocrites II.)
If Bush decides that conservatism supports massive spending, socialized medicine and incompetently fought wars, then that’s what conservatism is. Conservatism == platform of the GOP. And anyone who opposes Bush is just a bed-wetting liberal Democrat. It’s so simple. You don’t need to think for yourself, you poor deluded simpletons. All you need to do is fine out what Bush thinks and repeat it!
I’m sick to death of this. I’m sick of an Administration that has utter total contempt for Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, conservatism, the intelligence of the American public, the rule of law and the Constitution. I’m utterly totally sick of a “conservative” media machine at NRO, WSJ, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz that mindlessly repeats every meme that emerges from the West Wing no matter how bizarre it is (the VP is not in the executive) or how much it rapes every conservative principle out there (perjury isn’t a crime unless another crime was committed) or how much it flies in the face of the facts (Valerie Plame wasn’t undercover).
You can call this many things — power worship; mindless partisanship; obsequious obedience. But you’re not allowed to call it conservatism any more. We’re taking that title back.
Responding to Matt Yglesias, he says what I’ve been trying to say:
Matt Yglesias drools over the possibility of getting the entire country under the government’s healthcare thumb. Medicare is a particularly revealing program idea in this respect. At a deep level, the left sees all of us as the equivalent of senior citizens, dependent on the benevolence of government for our needs and wants. Of course, they will provide our needs as they see fit – they’re good people, you know. And so much smarter than the rest of us. There will be none of that wasteful drug spending we now have. How dare Americans spend their own money on treatments they actually want? It’s inefficient! This remains the key template for liberals: citizens as permanent supplicants. Those who do manage to look after themselves? Don’t worry. They’ll tax you till you really do need the equivalent of Medicare. And expect you to be grateful for it.
How bad is it when MTV is more insightful on Sicko! than Roger Ebert.
After marveling at Moore’s rosy view of the British health care system in “Sicko,” Christopher wrote, “What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have.”
Read the whole thing.
Well, I’ve finally rounded out my 2006 movie viewing. Since it is the first day of the second half of 2007, I can now officially review 2006. Ah, home theater.
I list my ratings at IMDB, which are out of ten points. I’m marked a few as provisional as I almost never give 9’s or 10’s on an initial viewing. I need time to grok a great movie. Anything marked with an asterix may be up-rated in the future.
Here are the critics’ top choices, along with my commentary. Metacritic’s best-rated movies includes obscure films and rel-releases, so I’m going with their list of movies receiving the most #1 rankings and awards, which is closer to the apparently defunct criticstop10.net.
Looking at IMDB and restricting the list to movies with more than 25k votes, we see the top ten with viewers were The Departed, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Prestige, Children of Men, Little Miss Sunshine, Casino Royale, Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, Stranger than Fiction, United 93. I enjoyed little Little Miss Sunshine, have not seen Blood Diamond, Apocalypto or Stranger than Fiction. I’m not terribly interested in latest ultra-violence from the modern Sam Peckinpah, but I will see the other two.
Expanding the list to films with 10k or more votes brings in The Lives of Others, An Inconvenient Truth, Little Children and The last King of Scotland. I have not seen any of these, but will see three of them shortly.
The surprises on the viewers’ list are The Prestige, a movie that got strangely little love from the critics, possibly because it overlapped The Illiusionist, and Casino Royale, which the critics liked as well. But you can’t put a Bond film on your top ten list and still get ballots from the AFI. I enjoyed both films.
As for the other films from the critics list, Borat was ranked 13th and Babel 15th. Cue critic scrailing about the uneducated provincial public.
All in all, 2006 was better than 2005. This wasn’t terribly hard since 2005 was one of the worst years in modern movie history. Of the top movies of 2005, I have one on DVD and even that one (King Kong) I wasn’t too sure about. With 2006’s movies, I’ll get at least two and probably four on DVD.