Month: April 2008

Earth DUH-Day

Arctic ice more vulnerable to sunny weather, new study shows [*1] – 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.

Speaking TRUTH to the Power-hungry

Larry Bartels[*1] writes in the New York Times[*2] , via JustOneMinute[*3] :

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[*4]

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

Didn’t feel the earth move here

Even some Kansas City area people report having felt this morning’s earthquake[*1] .

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

Longer living through chemistry?

University of Washington researchers[*1] may noticed something that could one day lengthen all of our lives:

University of Washington scientists have uncovered details about the mechanisms through which dietary restriction slows the aging process . . .

In this project, the UW researchers studied many different strains of yeast cells that had lower protein production. They found that mutations to the ribosome, the cell’s protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. Ribosomes are made up of two parts — the large and small subunits — and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts.

“What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit,” said the study’s lead author, Kristan Steffen, a graduate student in the UW Department of Biochemistry.

The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes’ large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50 percent longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes’ large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction — the TOR signaling pathway.

So, one day, there might be a drug that would suppress the aging process.  How cool would that be?

Hat Tip:  Gizmodo[*2] .

Suppression

Reporter Lawrence Solomon, of Canada’s Financial Post, tells a tale of systematic suppression[*1] of opposing views.

Guess what’s being suppressed?

If you guessed “views counter to the alleged consensus on man-made global warming” you win.

The Wikipedia page is entitled Naomi Oreskes[*2] , after a professor of history and science studies at the University of California San Diego, . . . The page is mostly devoted to a notorious 2004 paper that she wrote, . . . This paper analyzed articles in peer-reviewed journals to see if any disagreed with the alarming positions on global warming taken by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position,” Oreskes concluded.
. . .
When Oreskes’s paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe . . . no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes’s page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes’s correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Solomon then discovers that his edits to Wikipedia have vanished, and the previous, inaccurate text has been restored.

Nonplused, I investigated. Wikipedia logs all changes. I found mine. And then I found Tabletop’s. Someone called Tabletop was undoing my edits, and, following what I suppose is Wikietiquette, also explained why. “Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong!” Tabletop said.

I undid Tabletop’s undoing of my edits, thinking I had an unassailable response: “Tabletop’s changes claim to represent Peiser’s views. I have checked with Peiser and he disputes Tabletop’s version.”

Tabletop undid my undid, claiming I could not speak for Peiser.

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop’s undid and protested: “Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him.”

Tabletop parried: “We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant.”

Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled. I investigated further. Others had tried to correct her interpretations and had the same experience as I — no sooner did they make their corrections than she pounced, preventing Wikipedia readers from reading anyone’s views but her own. When they protested plaintively, she wore them down and snuffed them out.

This is how you build a “scientific consensus” nowadays.  You suppress all dissent, regardless of its merit.  Actually, you concentrate on suppressing exceptionally meritorious dissent.  This is why I have a really hard time buying into the climate change conventional wisdom.  There are too many stories like this one.  If the scientific case for man-made global warming is so strong, then the data should show this.  From what I can tell however, the data are at best ambiguous.

More science, less suppression, please.

Substituting feeling for thought

Today’s example:  some people held a “lie-in” to advocate limiting Bill of Rights freedoms around the country, on the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.  The Kansas City Star[*1] :

About 50 people laid down in protest of Virginia’s gun laws on Wednesday. The protesters stretched out on the grass for three minutes, to symbolize the amount of time they say it takes to buy a gun in Virginia.

Similar “lie-ins” were held at campuses around the country.

And if they had continued to lie in place for seven more minutes, they would be getting close to the median time for police to respond[*2] to violent crime.

Ten minutes total, laying on the ground, waiting for the crazed gunman to come over and shoot you in the head.  Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Before you decide that disarming the responsible majority and depending on the armed police to protect you from harm is a good idea, try laying on the ground for ten minutes in fear and silence, with the sounds of a madman screaming and shooting, the sounds of victims crying out and dying around you.

For ten minutes.  Go ahead.   Try it now.  Ten minutes.

Then tell me in good conscience that you really think that surrendering the individual right to self-defense in favor of a government monopoly on armed force is the correct approach to dealing with insane people.