Medary.com

Another odd little chunk of synchronicity--I was just talking with my personal trainer this morning about how much I dislike insurance companies.

This Christian Science Monitor story distills a big reason why I feel the way I do:

. . . "When an umpire bets on the outcome of a game he is refereeing, he has a conflict of interest," writes (one of the lawyers), in his brief.

"MetLife is equally conflicted when it decides whether a beneficiary is entitled to benefits. If MetLife answers 'yes,' then it is the one who has to pay; the beneficiary's gain is MetLife's loss," (the lawyer) writes.
. . .
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the American Council of Life Insurers says appeals courts finding a conflict of interest have embraced "an overly simplistic view of the economic realities of the business of insurance."

The reality of the business of insurance, in my opinion, is that it's legalized gambling.  And the house (i.e. the insurance company) makes the rules and decides who can and can not play.

Insurance companies are not your friends.  Ever.  At best they professionally hold to their end of a gambling wager.  Sure, you get the occasional person trying to defraud an insurance company, but I think the much more usual case is the big, impersonal, uncaring insurance company steamrolling over someone who by circumstance is unable to defend themselves.  Like most crimes, it's only illegal if you get caught.

I'm slowly working my way through Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.  It's a pretty horrifying book, partly because it reinforces just how easily people who start with the best of intentions rapidly run off the track from well-meaning busybodyness and all the way into full-blown we-know-better-than-you-do-how-to-run-your-life arrogance which is a signal trait of fascism.  Time after time the book presents the ugly underside of the left, from the Progressives at the end of the 19th Century all the way to today.  It's not a very comfortable read but it's must-reading for anybody who really cares about freedom and liberty.

So, now comes some of the same argument from a completely different source:  a blog for the New Scientist magazine by Fred Pearce.  He takes on "green fascism."  Based on the general tone and tenor of many of my recent posts (as well as my current reading matter documented above) it seems spookily timely:

Most of us breed. And those of us who do have one ecological footprint in common: our offspring. Me included. So all greens have to ask: is having babies bad for the planet?

Fair enough. But there is another question that I find increasingly being asked. Should we be trying to stop others having babies, especially people in poor countries with fast-growing populations?

I must say I thought this kind of illiberal thinking had been banished from the environmental movement. But it keeps seeping back. When I give public talks on climate change, I am often asked if all the efforts in the rich world won't be wiped out by rising populations in the poor world.

(emphasis added)

It's almost like some people can only conceive of two possible futures:  one where the developed world is pulled down to the economic level of the Third World by environmental restrictions and regulations; or a world where the entire Third World is left to starve and bake in the globally-warmed world while the environmentally-advantaged jet from conference to conference and from benefit concert to benefit concert, while their lessers look up at them with envy and hatred.

I reject both futures. 

Via Ace of Spades HQ, an article in The Australian.  That article ends with:

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

The tagline for the author reads:

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Now I'm not exactly of the opinion that two opposite histrionically apocolyptic climate visions necessarily are better than one, but I belive that Chapman's use of the Cromwell quote is well-taken.

I tend to be a bit of a contrarian about many things scientific (diet and climate being two significant examples).  All the experts tell me that starving myself and eatling a low-fat diet will make me thinner and more healthy.  They are wrong.  What starving myself and eating low-fat does is make me go out and binge uncontrollably.  I don't do that nearly so much when I'm low-carbing religiously.  And we understand climate processes even less than we understand human biochemistry.  So I hope you forgive my huge dose of (metaphorical) salt I take with every single scientific pronouncement that comes out today.

If you haven't clicked through to the article in The Australian, the punch line is that the next sunspot cycle, numbered #24, is late.  Some scientists look at this as the reason why global temperatures haven't decreased significantly since the late 1980's (didn't know that, didja?)   Why should you care?  From the article:

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know everything.  Not even close.

If we really, really had to, we could do something about a long-term warming trend of the Earth's temperatures.  Build a system of giant space umbrellas to help reflect the Sun's energy, if all else fails.  Could we do that?  Absolutely, if life on Earth--or even Western Civilization--was really in the balance.  We could do it fast, too.  IF WE HAD TO.

But if the Sun really cools down significantly, there's just not a whole hell of a lot we're going to be able to do to keep the glaciers from rolling again, except move south.  The good news is that all those coastal cities won't be flooded.  The bad news is that all of those coastal cities we're worried about flooding out with Climate Change (well, those cities that aren't under hundreds of feet of ice) will quickly become landlocked, inland cities.

Oops.

More science, please.

George Orwell:  "We have now sunk to a depth where the restatement of the obvious is the duty of intelligent men"

A most excellent quote.  It leads off this American Thinker article.

Emotion has totally replaced reason as the arbiter of arguments in public life today.  It is enough to really, really, really, really believe that you're right.  Facts simply don't matter--they're just things you can manipulate to say whatever you want them to say, anyway.  All that really matters is that you care more than your opponent.

This is really, really dangerous.

I don't mean to, but I keep hearing this quote in the voice of the Swingline-Stapler-loving hero of the movie OfficeSpace:

"Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

I still Hope for Change.

Stephen Hawking:  Alien but primitive life is likely - Yahoo News/AP.

Apropos of this--Arthur C. Clarke's First Law:  "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Arctic ice more vulnerable to sunny weather, new study shows  - Science Daily.

Wait, wait, I thought we knew (courtesy the climate catastrophists) that solar radiation can't possibly be a cause of global warming/climate change--it is only the evil CO2 molecule emitted by mankind which is the root of all evil.

More science, lest catastrophism, please.

Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate -- from Science Blog.

Larry Bartels writes in the New York Times, via JustOneMinute:

Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

Primarily, I think, because it is much easier for affluent, college-educated city-living types (of which I now am one) to work themselves up into a frenzy.  When you decide to go off the rails and start spouting nonsense, the overwhelming reaction in a big town is that most people will ignore you.  Those that don't will probably cheer you on--either because that small minority of people really do agree with you, or because they simply enjoy the entertainment you're providing.

In a small town (where I once lived), those who get worked up into a frenzy about anything are quickly brought back to reality by their less excitable friends and neighbors.  That's how small towns work.

Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government to do what’s right.

Possibly because small-town people have a closer connection to their local government.  Almost everyone in a small town knows the mayor, the police chief, or one or more of their city council members.  If you've got a beef, you can go talk to somebody who can do something about it--just go down to the downtown diner, the bowling alley, or at the local watering hole in the evening (which is the same establishment in some towns).  But you want to be careful doing that, lest you get the reputation as the town crank/crackpot/complainer.  You can get that reputation in a bigger town, too, but it takes a LOT more work and you have to piss off a LOT more people.

Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect religion and politics.

I think that's because, paradoxically, because religion is so much closer and more relevant to the daily life of a small-town resident.  Everybody knows who goes to which church--who goes weekly and who just shows up for Christmas.  There's a lot of the "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" attitude in small-town religion.  People in small towns realize, I think, that religion's greatest benefit is in providing a framework where people can self-moderate their own behavior.  Not that a small-town person would put it that way, of course.  They'd probably say "you gotta know what's right and what's wrong" and leave it at that. 

Overall, the great strength of the small town vs. the big city is, I think, that you can't hide when you do something bad (or stupid).  There is no anonymity.  If you screw up, everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY will know it, and henceforth treat you accordingly.  This keeps most folks on the straight and narrow.  You also can't hide if you're hurting, and there will always be someone in a small town who'll pitch in and do what's right.  There's a sense of comfort from living in a small community that is incredibly difficult to recreate in a larger city.

Hat tip:  Instapundit

UPDATE:  Don'tcha just hate it when you post an article and forget to provide all of the applicable links?  I know I do . . .

Even some Kansas City area people report having felt this morning's earthquake.  Kansas City Star:

The quake just before 4:37 a.m. was centered six miles from West Salem, Ill., and 66 miles from Evansville, Ind.

Kansas City police dispatchers reported receiving a few calls from people who felt the quake. However, there was no report of damage.

A dispatcher said some dispatchers inside their building in the 1100 block of Locust Street in downtown Kansas City felt their building shake too.

Jane Pryor of south Kansas City said she awoke to a strange noise that sounded like a vibrating washing machine going through its spin cycle.

Not me.  I was asleep.  ZZZZZZZZZ