I apologize for the light blogging — all two of you who are reading this. But it’s been crazy time in the Siegel household lately. To wit:
Anyway, so I’m not exactly in a blogging mood.
Sign #45 You Are A Simpsons Geek
After two years, we have someone living in the lot next to ours. Everytime I see them, I have to bury the temptation to say, “Hiddely-ho, neighborinos!”.
They’re from Canada, so I assume they all talk like that.
Kyoto and Forests
Want another reason to oppose top-down solutions to global warming? How about the Kyoto Accord causing deforestation?
He’s Back
He’s Bad. TMQ returns.
PS – And I made the same Bloom County reference as Easterbrook before I read the article.
Romblor
The name comes from Right-Thinking. It applies to the starched, vacuum-packed Governor of Massachusetts.
Balko Blast
Radley Balko has a raft of stories on injustice. I’m particularly struck by the case of Kenneth Foster, about to be executed under the ridiculous felony murder statute.
MC Rove on the Shelf
Karl Rove is out. But the surgery is too late to save the patient. Like most mediocre writers, I’ll let a better one speak for me:
The man’s legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power – which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government’s reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America’s 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.
Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war – and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president’s eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.
Lets put him and Bob Shrum in a box and throw it into the Atlantic.
Chinese Toy Torture
Looks like the man responsible for the lead-based toys has accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the chest while shaving. It’s supposedly common for disgraced Chinese officials to kill themselves. But I know I’m not the only one wondering if he had some help.
Rearranging
Last week, it was announced that a new analysis of temperature data showed the hotest year in history was 1934. Limbaugh, Boortz and others have been using this to say, “global warming is a myth!” because we all know that something supported by hundred of pieces of evidence is wrong whenever one piece of evidence falls away.
The Bad Astronomer take this nonsense apart:
For the 1994 to 2006 bin I get a deviation of +0.57. The average temperature in the second bump is 0.1 degrees higher than the first. In other words, it was warmer on average in the last 13 years than any time in recorded history.
Look again at the numbers. If you look at the top ten years, even with the new method, only the year of 2001 goes away (replaced with 1939, see chart below). All the other years are fairly stable, though the numbers themselves have changed. In other words, old method or new, more record years have happened in the last decade or so of the record keeping than you’d expect.
There’s still no explanation as to why it was so hot in the 1930’s. I suspect it sunlight-blocking industrial pollutants played a role. in droping the temp.
But it’s becoming clear that many who discuss global warming — on either side — have no idea how science works. Scientific knowledge is formed from all the facts, not carefully selected ones. A few planets warming does not prove the sun created global warming. A minor revision of temperature scales does not disprove global warming. A single bad hurricane does not prove it either.
You have to take into account all the data.
Update: TNR really takes the “conservatives” to task . Among other things, the 1930’s were local warming in the United States, not global warming. And the models aren’t constructed using surface temperatures.
The global warming debunkers are increasingly reminding me of the creation scientists — in fact, they are much the same people. They will happily use one piece of evidence to debunk conclusions based on thousands of pieces of evidence. Their argument range from misunderstandings (“the temperatures were revised”) to scientifically unsounds theories (“it’s the Sun!”) to outright brassbound lies (“it’s all commies!”).
Mind you, I’m not with the global warming crowd either, who are irresponsibly predicting disaster, jumping on every little factoid as though it proves global warming, shamefully exploiting unrlated tragedies for political gains and embracing stupid collectivist solutions.
But at least the science is on their side.
Subprime
Thomas Sowell on the subprime loan implosion:
Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans.
The Community Reinvestment Act lets politicians pressure lenders to make loans to people they might not lend to otherwise – and the same politicians are quick to cry “exploitation” when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk.
The huge losses of subprime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micro-manage the economy.
Yet with all the finger-pointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them.
While financial markets are painfully adjusting, and lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky “creative” financing, politicians show no sign of changing.
Why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered?
I don’t quite agree with Sowell here. He’s right in some aspects but we must remember that markets get stupid sometimes. The subprime lending market has been compared to the dot-com bubble and the comparison is very apt. A lot of banks knew they were acting stupidly and are paying the price.
Of course, where there’s dumb ideas, there are even dumber ones and a truly idiotic idea floating around right now is that the government should bail out the subprime mortgage lenders or, even worse, the borrowers themselves. Democrats in particular have been promulgating this piece of pander.
It’s a terrible idea. The market has to correct. If it doesn’t, we will get even worse loans made and the industry will completely explode in about 2012. Right now, it’s just taking the Dow Jones with it. We subsidize this nonsense and it might take down the entire banking industry.
Let the forest fire burn. We need to clear out the dead wood of bad loans.
Bill Was Right
How do you resolve a dispute? Get rid of the lawyers.
Thursday Night Linkorama
I just can’t seem to find the time for half a page of scribbled lines. I’m way behind on blogging these days. But the lawn is mowed, the babby asleep and the wife placated. Here’s a linkorama to tide over until I get my mojo back.
Gangs
A fascinating article about gangs over at Freakonomics.
756
It was a great moment in sports and Henry Aaron, never one to disappoint, was all class. More here.