Humor, Politics, The Nanny State

Midweek Linkorama

  • As expected, the “temporary” stimulus spending is becoming permanent as states become dependent on the Feds.
  • The Philly school spying case gets creepier.
  • George Washington — desperado.
  • Probably the most depressing thing about politics is how rapidly people’s attitudes change depending on who is in power. Here’s one example: people who used “regime” to describe the Bush Administration expressing alarm when that word is used for the Obama Administration. I hated the word both times; I can’t listen to Limbaugh because he uses it. But some consistency from anyone but libertarians would be nice.
  • A cosmic thought on free trade.
  • Just when you thought the GOP couldn’t get stupider; the Arizona wing sponsors a birther bill.
  • The food grabbers strike again. And again. And now the military is getting in on the act.
    • Science and Edumacation

    A Climate Summary

    Spiegel has one of the fairest and most complete analyses of Climategate I’ve seen out there. It’s a long article but worth the read because it details exactly what has happened, what is going on and what the status of the science is.

    As usual, I find myself between warring camps. I think AGW is real and a problem but I’m concerned about the quality of the science going into it and am extremely skeptical of the proposed solutions. I think much of the climate controversy of the last few months is overblown and over hyped by people who have a religious/political belief that AGW is a myth. At the same time, I think AGW supporters are far too glib in dismissing the controversy.

    So whenever the subject comes out, I get bashed on one side by “It’s a conspiracy” bad skeptics and bashed on the other by “you’re a tool of industry” believers. But if I wanted everyone to agree with me, why would I bother with blogging?

    Civil Liberties, Cool Stuff, Religion, Science and Edumacation

    Weekend Linkorama

  • Stunning pictures of the Icelandic eruption. Hat tip to Astropixie.
  • Part Two of the debunking of Lord Monckton. Again, notice how fundamentally dishonest he in the debate. He is one of the principle sources for much of conservative opposition to AGW. And he’s a complete crackpot.
  • Sometimes, I’m so happy I live in a country that takes the First Amendment so seriously.
  • Irony. The EPA has dangerous levels of lead in their building.
  • Color my unimpressed that NYC is planning to close their rubber rooms. They are not firing anyone or expediting the hearing process. They’re just giving them make-work jobs. Typical of the “conservative” Bloomberg.
  • A small triumph over the absurdly generous British libel laws. And pseudo-science.
  • Some sensible talk on IT security.
  • Coolness. Saving lives at $3 a pop. I love innovation.
  • An open letter to the Catholic bishops that reads more like the Declaration of Independence than anything else.
  • Cool windows.
    • 'Culture', Law and Order, Politics, Sports

    Midweek Linkorama

    All politics this week I’m afraid.

  • I’m starting to warm to Marco Rubio. Anyone who takes the Social Security issue seriously has a good mark in my book. And Crist is worthless.
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates destroys the idea that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery while commenting on the worship of Robert E. Lee. In response to his question of whether you can admire someone who fought for a bad cause, I’d say yes. Many of our WW 2 veterans had great admiration for the German and Japanese soldiers.
  • How on Earth is Marc Thiessen taken seriously? His entire existence is based around dishonestly vindicating the shitty record of the Bush Administration.
  • Reason dig in to figure out why Texas was immune from the worst of the housing bubble. My theory? In Texas, houses are for livin’, not money makin’.
  • Is another McMartin case going on in Georgia? As a parent, I want children protected. But sometimes, it seems to go ridiculous extremes. Meanwhile, the Pope is vigorously defended by religion conservatives despite his complicity in serious repeated abuse.
  • Conservatives, once defenders of liberty, are apparently thrilled that Arizona cops can now approach anyone and demand their papers.
  • I’m just so happy that baseball is back.
    • Science and Edumacation

    Moms Alive

    Yet another subject for the We Hate It When Things Get Better file.

    Whenever anyone tells me that things are getting worse in the world, that we’ve fallen away from some great glorious golden age, I have many responses. But one of those has to be “childbirth”. In the natural unsullied state, one in fifty women dies giving birth. And it’s not a fun way to go. Were it not for modern medicine, I might very well have lost both my wife and daughter that way.

    Thanks to modern technology, that rate has plunged to less than one in ten thousand in the industrialized world. And rates are plunging in the undeveloped world.

    But advocates for better maternity care are unhappy about this, or at least unhappy about letting people know about it. They fear that the issue will lose its urgency (which, if it’s getting better, it sort of should, no?)

    Politics, Science and Edumacation, War on Terror

    Monday Linkorama

  • The Volokh guys have a point. Where should accused criminals live?
  • It’s only one guy claiming that Bush knew hundreds of Gitmo occupants were innocent. But given what we’ve found out in just that last two years, does it really sound implausible? Just one more reason I don’t mind the GOP being out of office.
  • Two more notes from the global warming front. First, a new report on glaciers disappearing from Glacier National Park. And then a nice, if snarky, debunking of Lord Monckton. Monckton is probably the worst of what I call “Bad Skeptics” on AGW. He is not interested in accurately assessing whether AGW is real or dangerous. He’s interested in using whatever tricks he can to claim it’s a hoax. The video mentions a “Good Skeptic” — the team analyzing satellite data at Alabama-Huntsville. They disagree with consensus — but do with real science and real data.
  • Lenore Skenazy has another great idea. Do we really want another generation of kids who need their parents to negotiate job benefits?
  • A wonderful article from Reason disputes the notion — now mantra among supposed conservatives — that we once had a golden age of liberty from which we’ve declined. In the words of Clarence Thomas, it doesn’t seem that way to black people.
    • 'Culture', Culture War, Healthcare, Politics

    Thursday Linkorama

  • Wow. That’s a long way to go for a cup of tea.
  • Well. At least the Boomer are coming clean on how badly they’ve screwed us.
  • Rush Limbaugh: not an elitist. No sir.
  • When Tom Coburn is the voice of reason, we’re in trouble.
  • A preview of what lies ahead for the nation? Massachusetts healthcare plan is producing early fights over insurance rates and people gaming the system.

  • This is just plain mean. Shame on them.
  • Philly takes some smart steps in ramping down the war on drugs.
  • Ten years later, Fidel Casto is still milking Elian Gonzalez for propaganda.
    • Science and Edumacation

    Green Kids

    In the middle of an article defending the child-free lifestyle, Lisa Hymas notes:

    If you consider not just the carbon impact of your own kids but of your kids’ kids and so on, the numbers get even starker. According to a 2009 study in Global Environmental Change [PDF] that took into account the long-term impact of Americans’ descendants, each child adds an estimated 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to a parent’s carbon legacy—that’s about 5.7 times his or her direct lifetime emissions.

    I don’t begrudge anyone the child-free lifestyle. I like the kid thing but it’s not for everyone.

    But this particular child-free argument falls flat for me. I’ve pointed out before that we need future generations of smart people to solve our ecological problems. And smart people, while not guaranteed to have smart kids, are more likely to.

    But what brought this post up was that ridiculously precise figure on how much CO2 your kids are going to produce. It’s utterly ridiculous to speculate on things that will not happen for many decades. If nuclear fusion becomes viable by 2050, the carbon footprint of my kids and grandkids will be far lower than mine. It’s the return of he Fallacy of the Unbroken Trend. Since carbon emissions per capita have followed trend X, we can extrapolate trend X a century into the future and draw conclusions appropriately.

    Garbage.

    Civil Liberties, Politics, Taxes and Spending

    Weekend Linkorama

  • The states, desperate for revenue, now want to tax services. Now there’s a way to stimulate the economy!
  • Let it not be said that only the Right indulges in conspiracy theories on global warming. Greenpeace has listed Reason as a climate “denier” even thought their science correspond, Ronald Bailey, is no such thing. All he does is disagree with how severe AGW is likely to be and how we should solve it. But to Greenpeace, anything but panic-laden submission to grandiose institutional solutions is “denial”.
  • Rubber rooms for everyone! If this keeps up, the taxpayer is going to need a padded room.
  • The Institute for Justice has a great video on asset forfeiture. Hopefully, some big guns are coming onto this issue.
  • On the subject of videos, Reason takes on public employee unions.
  • Fumento on information cascades. I’m reminded of the shark attacks.
  • I’ve beaten the “tea partiers are Nazis” bullshit to death on the other site. Still, it’s worth reading Moynihan’s article. I think the best comparison is to the war protesters of the Bush era. Similar odious comparisons; similar anger; similar mis-spelled signs. It seems like the angry, like the poor, will always be with us.
  • English laws continue to get dumber and dumber. (Caveat: the English press is not the most accurate; I got burned earlier this week by bad reporting on a similar incident.)
    • Humor, Science and Edumacation

    Debunking Cracked

    Cracked.com is one of my favorite websites. But today they ran an article on how a biotech company almost killed the world.

    I have to assume that this article is a joke, not a serious article. Because if it is serious, it’s incredibly sloppy and poorly researched.

    The claim is that scientists tried to modify Klebsiella planticola, a ubiquitous plant bacteria, to produce alcohol when it broke down plants. They were about to release this bacterium into the world when a researcher found out it killed plants. Had it been released, all the plants in the world would have died.

    Maybe this story is accurate but it set off my bullshit antennae something fierce.

    1) Lack of specifics. We’re told a “European biotech” company was doing this. No name is given; no country is given. This is especially strange given European attitudes toward GM crops. Only vague references are given to the study that saved us all. Someone in the comments pointed me to the PDF. It’s very mild compared to the article’s claims. Cracked tends to exaggerate for humorous effect, but this is a bit far even for them.

    2) Google “Klebsiella planticola”. The only thing you will find are fringe anti-GM sites repeating this story. You will also occasionally find claims that the “world will die” study was withdrawn or debunked. The fringe anti-GM sites make me think the article is serious, not satire.

    3) I found the website of Dr. Ingham, who is supposed to have saved us. While she has several papers in preparation on Klebsiella planticola on her CV, her bio suspiciously leaves out the part where she saved the world.

    4) If this story were real, anti-GM organizations like Greenpeace would be flogging it constantly. Every time someone so much as moved a corn starch gene, we’d hear that “we don’t another Klebsiella planticola”. It would be the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island of genetic engineering.

    5) The author, in responding to comments, states that this was ready for “worldwide release”. Given that we can’t persuade countries to accept GM crops that have proven to be safe, this sounds dubious.

    I checked out the author’s website for his book. It’s about 20 ways the world could end. One thing he cites is HiPER, a nuclear fusion experiment that could “consume us all in a fiery fusion reaction”, which is laughable.

    Again, I have to assume this article, and the book, are a joke. This guy is not a scientist, but a humor writer. But if it is a joke, it’s a poorly disguised one.

    Politics

    Sometimes I Like Him

    The non-stop poll watching in Washington drives me nuts. We are not a democracy; we are a constitutional republic. The beauty of our Republic is not that the people get what they want; indeed the beauty is that sometimes they don’t get what they want. The beauty is in the accountability that a republic creates. The only time polls matter is in November.

    That having been said, we will be watching this, Mr. President. And if healthcare doesn’t deliver what was promised — and I don’t think it will — it won’t be forgotten.

    Culture War, Healthcare, Humor, Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Midweek Linkorama

  • Chili grenades? Chili grenades.
  • Stripper week continues on the blog with this story about Iceland banning the practice. This is being proclaimed as a great victory for feminism, but I don’t see that taking away women’s freedom — even if it’s the freedom to “degrade” themselves – and probably forcing them into illegal activity, is progress.
  • A fun story about the First Seder in the White House. I wonder how the Demented Right will square this with their vision of Obama as an Israel-hating Muslim.
  • Radley Balko has a point. Why doesn’t the public have a fraction of the outrage over real killings and bloodshed committed in the name of the War on Drug as they do about a brick thrown through a politician’s window?
  • Barack Obama and the Democrats kept abstinence-only education funding in the healthcare bill. Because what this country really needs to bring our healthcare bills down is a bunch of pregnant teenagers. And I thought I was snarked out on that subject.
  • You know the thing I hate about being a libertarian? Being right all the time. For the last decade, we warned that states were spending beyond their limits and creating a fiscal time bomb. We were right. Again.
  • More on the Godwinizing of the Tea Party.
  • Some legal humor from one of my favorite judges.

    • Astronomy, Sports, Mathematical Malpractice, Whatever Else Pops Into My Head