Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Monday, December 21st, 2009
erudito	7:09p	Antipodean links Kiwi Parliamentarians having a lot of fun during Question time. Oz ranks in top 10 of gender-equal countries according to World Economic Forum. About the Oz diaspora (many whom are in fact migrants who have returned to their original countries). Australians have the world’s biggest houses. Raising a few issues on the Rudd Government’s regulation of non-married couples. Suuggesting that Federal involvement in urban planning will not improve matters. About the lack of evidence-based urban planning in Oz. RBA Director suggests Rudd Government’s second stimulus package was too big, gets dropped from Science Council. Tony Abbott is the new Opposition Leader. His ascension does not seem to have hurt the Liberal vote in the two by-elections. A hostile analysis of the politics of Clive Hamilton: It's a sign of the decline of Left politics that a reactionary, pro-censorship sexual moraliser who hates the idea of working people enjoying a higher material standard of living could ever be considered left-wing. In Bradfield, the Australian Sex Party did better than the 9(!) candidates for Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats combined while the Greens only picked up a little over half the ALP primary vote and the Libs had a small swing against them on primary votes. In Higgins, the Greens picked up about two-thirds of the ALP primary vote, with a much higher profile candidate but the Libs managed to maintain their primary vote. About ideas in politics and the travails of the Liberal Party. Calling for Federal intervention in the NSW ALP (basically on the grounds that the polling is so bad there is no downside). The NZ Opposition Labour Party withdraws support for inflation targeting. Premier Brumby and the Victorian ALP government are doing well in the polls: Brumby is rather keener on making decisions than his predecessor, it seems to be paying off. Some observations about how Oz policy debate looks from the US: Australia lacks America's bottomless think-tank and K Street resources for publicizing policy differences. Its parliamentary government puts all the policy levers, including a ready resort to secrecy, in the ruling party's hands. Australia is a small nation, with a small elite that tends to place limits on burn-the-bridges debate. This may sound ideal to Americans, but the results aren't always good, says Mr. Burgess. Australia, like America, has its "wingnuts," he says, but they don't get a hearing. "There's no sharpening of issues. Policy ideas aren't fully vetted." The NBN, a tremendously awful idea, is a case in point. The government wants to spend $39 billion to deliver 100 megabits to every household in the next decade, without the slightest idea how it might be done commercially or whether customers, who already can get 21 megabits through wireless in most of the country, would be willing to support NBN's huge costs. Unions blamed Family First Chair (and H R Nicholls Society Board member) Bob Day for keeping the Construction Authority going: Bob will be proud. Current Mood: hungry (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
cagekitten	9:00p	A vampire novel with an older, mature woman I'm in the middle of a couple theology books but I wanted some fiction brain candy to read while on my flights to and from California this week. While browsing the book department of Fred Meyer I was shocked to see an entire section devoted to vampire romance. I remember 15 years ago trying to find vampire romance novels and having to scrounge the depths of eBay for old used ones because no one was really writing them or buying them. I guess since Twilight, it's all the rage. So of all the vampire romances I could have purchased, I chose this one for a reason... All the vampire romance novels seem to be about teen-agers or women in their early 20's. This particular novel is about a woman who is about to turn 40 and has never been married. That's right - a 30-something gal who has never been married. Now THIS is a heroine I can relate to. I also checked Amazon.com after I purchased it and the reviews are very good. Can't wait read this one on the flight. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	10:44a	cat opens door OMG! Kitten Opens Door @ Yahoo! Video (Comment on this)
erudito	11:21p	War links Damage analysis on the (pdf) battlecruiser IJS Kirishima, sunk by the USS Washington at close range off Guadacanal in 1942, whose underwater wreck has now been explored. Further details. Study finds that Al Qaeda has killed eight times as many Muslims as non-Muslims. The study (pdf). Historian Michael Burleigh looks back on a decade of terrorism: Intelligence experts reckon there are probably 120 core al-Qaeda operatives, their overriding concern being to get through each night still in one piece by day break. Using drones to target Al-Qaeda and related insurgents in Pakistan. Yemeni forces strike at al-Qaeda militants. US special forces have been sent to Yemen to train local troops amid fears of the stability of the Yemeni state. Paper on the effect of Pakistani possession of nuclear weapons in encouraging conventional conflict in South Asia. About the misreading the Iranian regime and the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran: if Iran achieves nuclear capability, transnational Islamic terrorism will be sheltered by a nuclear umbrella, a deterrence—military and diplomatic—that will shield them from any consequences of their terrorist outrages. Further, nuclear weapons—suitcase dirty bombs—will proliferate among non-state Islamic terrorists, and nuclear blackmail will become coin of the realm. A former intelligence and nuclear affairs specialist for the French Government on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. Public opinion in Arab countries has shifted to seeing Iran as a great threat than Israel. About the dangers that Obama’s realism might be read as weakness. The destructive delusions of Hezbollah: Hezbollah's new manifesto condemns the United States as the "root of all terror," and a "danger that threatens the whole world." The document also reiterates the call for the destruction of Israel, describing the need to "liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa" as a "religious duty" for all Muslims. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that these sentiments are intended for the printed page only. Indeed, recent visitors to Lebanon speak of a high, almost delusional state of morale among circles affiliated with Hezbollah. In the closed world around the movement, it is sincerely believed that the next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be part of a greater conflict in which Israel will be destroyed. Discussing killing a bomb-armed terrorist in a crowded supermarket. About Israeli women with guns. About the data-mess and entangling bureaucracy that Coalition forces face in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report (pdf). A case in point: THE Taliban commander was back in the village. Our base roared to life as we prepared to capture him. Two Chinook helicopters spun their blades in anticipation in the dark. Fifty Afghan commandos brooded outside, pacing in the gravel. I was nearby, yelling into a phone: “Who else do we need approvals from? Another colonel? Why?” A villager had come in that afternoon to tell us that a Taliban commander known for his deployment of suicide bombers was threatening the elders. The villager had come to my unit, a detachment of the United States Army stationed in eastern Afghanistan, for help. Mindful of orders to protect the civilian population, we developed a plan with the Afghan commandos to arrest the Taliban commander that evening before he moved back into Pakistan. While the troops prepared, I spent hours on the phone trying to convince the 11 separate Afghan, American and international forces authorities who needed to sign off to agree on a plan. Some couldn’t be found. Some liked the idea, others suggested revisions. The plan evolved. Hours passed. The cellphone in the corner rang. “Where are you?” the villager asked urgently. The Taliban commander was drinking tea, he said. At 5 a.m. the Afghan commandos gave up on us and went home. The helicopters powered down. The sun rose. I was still on the phone trying to arrange approvals. Intelligence arrived indicating that the Taliban commander had moved on. The villagers were incredulous. This incident is typical of what I saw during my six-month tour in Afghanistan this year. We were paralyzed by red tape, beaten by our own team. Our answer to Afghans seeking help was: “I can’t come today or tomorrow, but maybe next week. I have several bosses that I need to ask for permission.” Seeing Afghanistan as a war that is itself, not through the prism of quite different conflicts: Since the 2001 invasion, U.S. soldiers have come and gone from the Arghandab, but we’ve never had enough soldiers to sit still. More recently, the Canadians made jabs at Arghandab but did not get far. Some people believe the Canadians have been militarily defeated in their battlespace. No US officer has told me that the Canadians have been defeated, and none have denied it. There is no doubt that Canadian troops earned much respect, and that more that more than 130 paid the ultimate price. On current course, Canada will have fully retreated by 2011. This is crucial: the enemy realizes that our greatest weakness is Coalition cohesion and they have defeated what was an important partner. An ordinary ambush. About the work of a British bomb-disposal sergeant killed on his last day of his tour. Electrification effort that fails to come together. Current Mood: sniffy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
cagekitten	11:11p	I couldn't live like that I had an experience today that broke my heart. I overslept (stayed out too late the night before at a really enjoyable party) and so I was rushing around quite a bit in the morning (and by morning I mean 11:30 which is my idea of early morning) trying to get ready for some private lessons I had to teach this afternoon. Vader wanted some love and attention and tried everything from meowing at me to jumping up on me. The jumping on me is part of a game we play where he leaps at me (no claws out, thank goodness!) and I pretend he knocked me over and fall down and grab him as I roll to the floor. Then I pull him on top of me, belly up, and rub his belly. He likes this enough to keep leaping on me. But I couldn't respond to his requests for love and play this morning because I had to go teach. So I said, "I'm sorry Vader, mommy can't play right now because she has to go to work." Insert heart breaking and dropping like a bomb! It felt like a little death to not love him when he was asking for it. And because I normally work from my home office where he can get love all day long whenever he wants it, he had no idea why I was running away from him and out the door. The worst part is, when I finally got him from teaching, I had to rush around like a mad woman to get ready in time to be at a surprise party before the birthday girl got there. So once again, when Vader was following me around asking for attention, mommy had to run. Once again, heart break. How do mothers of actual human babies do this without dying a bit more every day!? If I can't stand to break my cat's heart, how would it feel if it was a human child begging for my love while I say, "I'm sorry, mommy has to go to work." If I were single and had to work full time or part of a relationship that required two full time work away from home type incomes to live, I'm pretty sure I'd rather die than have a baby. Because I couldn't possibly want a life with that kind of heart break over and over and over again on a daily basis. I imagine it to be perpetual pain of having your heart torn out. When I got home from the birthday party Vader was VERY needy by then. Lots of snuggles ensued. I never want to be apart from him. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
randycorman	5:48p	Dance class at the Renton Community Center; the 2010 recreation brochure is available online Dance teacher Amira (left) teaches Anastasia (center) and Cathy (right) how to belly dance Renton Parks and Recreation continues to offer many excellent classes in our city facilities, and we will again offer a very full schedule in 2010. Our Winter/Spring 2010 Parks and Recreation Brochure is available here , and in it you can find fun and inexpensive activities for everyone. The most visible losses to our schedule in 2010 will be the absence of the summer teen musical (which would have seen its 25th year), and summer drop-in activities conducted in some of our smaller parks buildings (which will remain closed this summer). My wife Cathy, daughter Katie, and daughter-in-law Anastasia have been learning to belly dance from "Amira, The Belly Dancer" in the pictured series of classes. (Katie is taking a break because of her move to Japan, but she hopes to restart classes in late 2010). Here are a couple more pictures. Anastasia found the pretty costume for Cathy, and gave it to her as a gift. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	2:38p	My super instructor Taken at Jenyne Butterfly's workshop last night. This is one of my instructors doing a new trick Jenyne taught called the Allegra hold. Ideally you let go with the bottom hand and still stay on the pole. But she just learned it, so baby steps... (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
erudito	7:11a	Science and technology links It is confirmed: all young men watch porn: “We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn't find any.” Although hampered in its original aim, the study did examined the habits of those young men who used pornography – which would appear to be all of them. Tool using among octopi: the footage of the octopus with the coconut shell is lots of fun. Expensive running shoes do not appear to be a good investment. Via qamar. How Climategate shows the CRU should have gone the open source way: Once you’ve looked at a few code snippets you begin to understand that the guys at the CRU would have benefited from contracting it out to the free software community. We all know the mantra from the culture of the bazaar, that many eyes makes for shallow bugs. Pity the hubris of the scientists didn’t put out a call to the open source community for freely given expertise. It could have saved them grief. The CERN super-collider as an example of how to use open source software in science. Nice discussion of what Paul Samuelson called Milton Friedman’s “F-twist”: the notion that the plausibility of the assumptions of a theory do not matter, only whether it achieves empirical verification. The expansion in human DNA data is likely to have ideological implications. Poll data from the US on how scientist’s self-identification and public perception of scientists are quite different. On not over-stating the power of peer review: The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability -- not the validity -- of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong. A review study of polar bear populations (pdf). About changes in fertility: Most of the developing countries where fertility rates have fallen sharply in the last 20 years are places like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Brazil, which have had relative political stability and solid economic growth. Because there are so many such countries, there's reason to be optimistic on the global population front. But in countries that aren't seeing political stability or sustainable economic growth, and where women are illiterate and repressed—countries like Afghanistan, or Yemen—fertility is running disastrously high. The story of a African kid who decided to build a windmill … The villagers have also stopped using kerosene, which means they no longer breathe in the toxic fumes and can use the money previously slated for fuel to buy other things. Kamkwamba’s example has now inspired other kids in the village to pursue science. Where previously they had no futures, Kamkwamba says they now see that if they put their mind to something, they can achieve. “It has changed the way people think,” he says. The US military is finding it has more data than it knows what to do with. About Google™Earth, military bases and using drones. Insurgents have been using cheap software to tap into the drone information feeds. And into US warplane data feeds. Claims that the problem has been fixed. Arguing about how often to do mammograms. About the US role in health innovation: I three of the four general categories of innovation examined in this paper — basic science, diagnostics, and therapeutics — the United States has contributed more than any other country, and in some cases, more than all other countries combined. About the growth in authorship: We found that the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries. By 2000, there were 1 million book authors per year. One million authors is a lot, but they are only a tiny fraction, 0.01 percent, of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including books and new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. That’s 100 times faster. Authors, once a select minority, will soon be a majority. About defining gender and the Caster Semenya case: South Africans have been appalled by the idea of a person who thinks she is one thing suddenly being told that she is something else. The classification and reclassification of human beings has a haunted history in this country. … Unfortunately for I.A.A.F. officials, they are faced with a question that no one has ever been able to answer: what is the ultimate difference between a man and a woman? “This is not a solvable problem,” Alice Dreger said. “People always press me: ‘Isn’t there one marker we can use?’ No. We couldn’t then and we can’t now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that’s what it means to be male.” In 2000, Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology at Brown University, conducted what remains the study of record on the frequency of intersexuality, and concluded that 1.7 per cent of the population develops in a way that deviates from the standard definition of male or female. … We depend on gender to make sense of sexuality, society, and ourselves. We do not wish to see it dissolve. It is one to thing to create categories of the human, it is quite another to use them to define the human. Current Mood: sniffy (Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
randycorman	12:15a	Renton's Shannon 'Shambo' Waters voted off 'Survivor: Samoa' Renton's own "Survivor", Shannon Waters, was voted off the island tonight. She had a great run, and made it into the final six. Here is the story in the Seattle Times. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
cagekitten	4:25p	best instructor in the world One of the best pole instructors in the world, Jenyne Butterfly, is in town for just one day. I just had a shared private lesson with her (myself and 2 other instructors did the lesson with her together). She showed me the secret to a couple tricks I have been wanting to learn for years. Most importantly she taught me the grip for this move: All this time I have been trying to do the trick by pushing down into the pole with my bottom hand. It turns out you have to push away from the pole instead of pushing down. You also have to keep your elbow and fist parallel with the floor. The minute it points down, you lose the grip. And in spite of how it looks in the picture, this trick is much easier when you twist your chest away from the pole rather than facing it. She also taught me a way to learn the grip for this move from an invert: All this time I've been trying to learn it from the floor standing up and kicking up into it. It's much easier to invert and twist toward the pole and slowly slide your legs off the pole to your ankles. Granted I have not mastered either of these tricks yet. But she gave me all the tools I need to practice on my own until I build the strength and courage to do them. I'm so excited! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
erudito	11:29p	(An enormous number of) climate links About geo-engineering and the benefits of procrastination. The CIA: … warns of climate change that will lead to floods and starvation. ‘Leading climatologists’ speak of a ‘detrimental global climatic change’, threatening ‘the stability of most nations’. …: the ‘new climatic era’ was said to be bringing famine, starvation, refugee crises, floods, droughts, crop and monsoon failures, and all sorts of extreme weather phenomena. The Sahara would expand. Except it was 1974 and global cooling was the problem. Now the CIA and Pentagon are worried about global warming, which will lead to … About the way CO2 lags temperature in ice core data. If that is the core CAGW position, I am a bit bemused since it is such an ad hoc way to treat data and, if both upward and downward turning points lag CO2 increases, indicates clear negative feedbacks in how the atmosphere works (there needs to be significant positive feedbacks to make the catastrophist case work). Roy Spencer has a primer on what sceptics believe. A sceptic’s credo. A biologist and his son demonstrate clear urban heat island effect from publicly available US data. A useful discussion of variability in global temperatures . NASA on why surface temperatures are adjusted. A nice presentation of temperature data from ice cores over varying time frames. Also here. A narrated version. Allegations from Russia that the CRU selectively excluded Russian temperature data. A practical suggestion: The recent “Climategate” scandal in which hackers attacked the server used by the Climatic Research Unit in Britain clearly shows that it is necessary to fund and organize climate research in such a way that scientists are protected from the state’s political interference and even from their fellow scientists. For much less money than has been needed to combat the economic crisis, it would be possible to establish permanent climate-research centers at leading universities and provide them with all of the accumulated data that they require for their work. In that way, the political majority would have a more solid scientific foundation on which to base its decisions. Al Gore gets himself into a minor bother over some Arctic ice science that is far from settled. What we learn from the CRUtape letters: It's being called Climategate, but more than one wit is calling them "the CRUtape Letters." … As tempting as it is to indulge in Schadenfreude over the richly deserved travails of a gang that has heaped endless calumny on dissenting scientists (NASA's James Hansen, for instance, compared MIT's Richard Lindzen to a tobacco-industry scientist, and Al Gore and countless -others liken skeptics to "Holocaust deniers"), the meaning of the CRU documents should not be misconstrued. The emails do not in and of themselves reveal that catastrophic climate change scenarios are a hoax or without any foundation. … Because the gap between observation and conclusion in this subfield is so dependent on statistical techniques rather than direct measurement, it was bound to be a matter of intense controversy and deserved the most searching review by outside scientists. It is exactly this kind of review that the CRU insiders acted to prevent or obscure. … One of the things the CRU emails prove is that the oft-cited figure of 2,000 top scientists is misleading; the circle of genuinely active scientists in the work of CRU and related institutions in this country is very small. … There have been rumors for years about political pressure being brought to bear on the process to deliver scarier numbers, because the effects of a 2-3 degree increase in temperatures just weren't going to be enough to justify the kind of emission reductions the greens want. … One of the striking features of the CRU emails is how much time the CRU circle spent discussing with each other the myriad problems with processing these data and how to display them to a wider world. On the one hand, this is typical of what one might expect of an evolving scientific enterprise. On the other hand, these are the selfsame scientists who have insisted most vehemently that there is a settled consensus adhered to by all researchers of repute and that there is nothing left to debate. Another striking thing that emerges from the emails is that the climate modelers don't have a high regard for paleoclimatology, and the paleos have a palpable inferiority complex. Judging by the length of many of the email chains kvetching about their problems, it is a wonder this small group had time to do any actual research. … Tempers got so out of hand that Tom Crowley of Duke University intervened: … Mann responded with his best imitation of Don Corleone: "This is ultimately about the science, it's not personal." If the CRU circle treat each other this way, it is no wonder they treat skeptics even more rudely. … McIntyre is not a climate-science insider, with peer-reviewed articles in journals that the hockey team firmly controlled. He's an amateur with mathematical chops, with a serious track record for spotting statistical funny business. McIntyre, who spent decades in mineral exploration, was involved in exposing the Bre X fraud in Canada several years ago. Bre X was a gold mining company promising fat profits on a new proprietary technology for ore deposits in Borneo; McIntyre smelled a rat and demanded the raw data. Bre X collapsed shortly after. And McIntyre scored a major hit against NASA's chief climate alarmist James Hansen, discovering significant errors of overestimation in Hansen's temperature reconstruction of the 20th century. (NASA's Goddard Institute website publicly thanked McIntyre, no doubt through gritted cyber teeth, for pointing out their error.) The hockey stickers' obsession with McIntyre seems out of proportion if there was nothing amiss in their work. … The NAS reported its findings in 2006, and the language was sufficiently hedged in diplomatic equivocations that Mann and the media claimed the hockey stick had been vindicated. But a close reading shows that the NAS report devastated the hockey stick. … The HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, over 100,000 words long, paints a picture of haphazard data handling that would get almost any private sector researcher fired. … No drug company could get through the FDA approval process with data handling this slapdash, yet the climate policy process contemplates trillions of dollars in costs to economies around the world based partially on this incompetent work. … Scientists at top universities have been telling me privately for several years now that their best graduate students are avoiding climatology because they dislike how politicized it has become and consider it a dead-end field. Unfortunately this means many students who take up the field are second-raters or do so out of ideological motivation, which guarantees that the CRU scandal won't be the last. … MIT's Kerry Emanuel, as "mainstream" as they come in climate science … nonetheless offers this warning to his field: Scientists are most effective when they provide sound, impartial advice, but their reputation for impartiality is severely compromised by the shocking lack of political diversity among American academics, who suffer from the kind of group-think that develops in cloistered cultures. Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank. ... The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA's James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. … The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause. … I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s--as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Indeed, there is a direct line in the prescriptions for dealing with the “population bomb” that was not to dealing with the “climate crisis”. Philosopher and environmentalist Martin Cohen on the distortion of debate involved and the propaganda principle of something stated often enough becomes the truth: Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them (see box page 36)? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously? … Policymakers seem not to be aware of what the modellers know: that the results of their climate simulations are "likely to remain speculative for some time to come" and that people should be "extremely wary of extrapolating results to longer periods". This demonstrates that the present climate-change models aren't just useless - by offering spurious precision, they are worse than useless. How, then, does a theory that is incomplete and missing essential data become orthodoxy? … Today, global-warming "deniers" have all been told they must fall into line with "the science". But this is not science, this is propaganda. And we are not being asked to be more rational but to suspend our own judgment completely. That, not "runaway climate change", is the most dangerous threat to the world today. … Not a conspiracy but confirmation bias. Not a conspiracy, but a conjunction of belief and incentives, as suggested by a comment on this post: Paul Vaughan (07:53:54) : norris hall (05:10:11) “[...] it is possible that this is just a big conspiracy by climate scientist around the world to boost their cause and make themselves more important. Though I find it hard to believe that thousands of scientists [...] all agreed to promote bogus science. [...] Pretty hard to do without being discovered.” Actually not so hard. Personal anecdote: Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety: Successful candidates will: 1) Demonstrate AGW. 2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW. 3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2. Follow the money — perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice. Some further discussion and comment here. A criticism of the original post. A commenter with an academic science background explains the funding incentives. And there are huge sums of money involved. And also: None of these outfits are per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science. Why past temperature numbers matter for the catastrophist case. Hammering the point about data availability. An example of why it matters. More on the data release/data lost issue. About the computer code and the data. More on the code: I don’t think it resulted from any conscious fraud or deception on the part of the scientists. Instead, I think the problem arose from the simple fact that scientists do not know how to manage a large, long-term software project. Worrying about the effects on the credibility of science. And also. An applied mathematician responds to the former worry. About the need for data openness. But it is not easy being eco-righteous: You can spot the problem long before you get to Copenhagen. I'm sitting in St Pancras station about to start a journey for which I have paid – deep breath - £480. That's for a standard return journey from London to Copenhagen, with a bed in a six-berth compartment. It's not the most expensive ticket. I booked it over a month ago, which means I haven't had to re-mortgage my house (and I'm splitting the cost of the ticket 50:50 with the Guardian, for whom I'll be blogging most days). I could have got there by plane for £18. Pointing out how un-serious Oz governments are about climate change policy. Backing NASA’s Hansen over Krugman on a carbon tax rather than cap and trade. Copenhagen summit has angry developing world delegates after the Danish text of the proposed agreement leaks. The leaked text. If one has not twigged to how much the green push is about keeping the developing world down, one has not been paying attention. Prof. Plimer the toast of the anti-Copenhagen conference. A professor of astrophysics is very unimpressed with Plimer’s book. About belief versus cold realities: the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view. As Copenhagen grinds to a halt with riots, deadlock and deepening divisions, a BBC interviewer asks whether 45,000 delegates are really necessary. Suggesting the Russian secret service was behind the hacking of the CRU emails. The Russian admit it was via a Siberian server, but say they did not do it. (The article also has a nice discussion of the “hockey stick” problems and pressuring of journalists.) Suggesting internal evidence from the released emails and code indicates it was an internal leak. Some physicists want the American Physics Society to rescind its AGW statement. More, including statements about funding incentives. Noting the sheer humourlessness of the hacked emails, as part of the humourless of environmentalists generally. Or indicating True Belief (in the Eric Hoffer sense). Clive Hamilton displaying the moral viciousness of the True Believer. Wanting to save the world from the thermomaniacs. A case of science has not failed, government has: One is that the lack of scientific ethics exposed by the CRU whistle-blower is not really news. It has been obvious to those of us who were paying attention for a very long time. The leaked documents make it clear, however, to those who don’t understand the mathematical subtleties of regression analysis or program in Fortran. … The fact that the U.N.’s climate gurus have destroyed data, hid inconvenient truths and subverted the peer-review process is not, by the way, proof that anthropogenic global warming could not possibly occur. Nor does it prove we are not in a natural period of cooling caused by solar cycles. The only thing it does prove is that models are junk and that the most powerful government-anointed climate scientists have no idea what’s going on — as the leaked e-mails stated over and over again. … This is the big lesson. It isn’t science that has failed. … Real science is a process of discovering the truth through transparency, experimentation and verification. Look around you. You can see the fruits of real science in the increased length and quality of life that we all enjoy. Science is alive and well in the private sector. Climategate is a failure of politicians and bureaucrats involving over $90 billion in tax-funded research grants. It is complicated by passionately cheerleading environmentalists who have turned their movement into a kind of religion. Sceptic and catastrophist battle it out on NZ TV: according to the reader poll, the sceptic overwhelmingly won. A left-wing NZ commentator sets out the (politicised) stakes: If, therefore, the battle against climate change has to become the moral equivalent of war, with all the sacrifice that war entails, then climate change denial must become the moral equivalent of treason. Over the top? No. The stakes really are that high. Lots of the commenters do not seem to quite agree. But it is the latest form of salvation politics on the left and, if you do agree, why you are an enemy of salvation! A particularly trenchant statement of “up yours!” resistance to the whole thing is here. So, the received position seems to be that the CRUtape letters et al show that the core climatologists as less-than-ept at data management, management of software management or use of statistical methods; have models which do not explain current lack of warming; have refused to share data; have refused to share their data management algorithms but we should just trust they have the science fine and dandy and spend billions and billions of dollars on that basis. One can imagine the gales of laughter if some “right wing” group tried that one. But there seems to be little limit to the amount of cognitive blockage that “this is what good people believe” can generate. Also, that the planet is warming does not demonstrate AGW: it is what AGW seeks to explain. That CO2 adds to warming, and humans have been adding to CO2, does not demonstrate that we have a problem: CO2 on its own (no matter how much we pile into the atmosphere) will only get about a degree Celsius of warming (since CO2 only blocks a small range of frequencies and once it has blocked those frequencies it has no further warming effect). The “we have a problem/are the problem” claim rests on the claim that anthropogenic CO2 will generate significant positive feedbacks in the atmosphere: that is not even close to being “settled science” and is something no amount of computer modelling will demonstrate since such models only display the consequences of your premises. Particularly when those same models cannot explain the current pause in warming. Current Mood: sniffy (9 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	1:19a	Creative parody Love the original video, love the parody more. Here they are back to back: The original... The parody... (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
cagekitten	11:52p	$409 per month Well, merry X-mas to me from Lifewise Health Plan of Washington. I just got a letter in the mail letting me know as of January 1st my health insurance monthly premiums have been raised to $409 per month. They claim this is due largely in part to the aging population that requires more prescription coverage and the government now requiring all health insurance companies to raise the maximum amount they will cover for organ transplants. I have asked my insurance broker to shop for a new plan for me. But the problem is that the plan I have now is so good (no annual deductible, just $30 per doctor visit) that they discontinued it. Those of us already on the plan get to keep it. But if I leave the plan, I can never get it back if I change my mind. So this is my only chance to have any kind of zero deductible plan. I love having my own business. But I sure do envy people who have their monthly premiums paid for or at least partly paid for by their employers. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	10:19a	gratitude Love this rainy, cloudy weather. Love it. Love it. My head is also swelling with pride. On Monday a student told me how great my business is and how my classes have changed her life. I needed that. And while the holiday bonuses I gave my instructors was small, it was still a bonus. And the idea of being able to do that just makes me really happy. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
randycorman	11:28p	First flight of the 787! Photo by Alan Berner, Seattle Times; 787 touches down at Boeing Field after its first flight I can't let the day end without sharing how exciting it was to gather with colleagues at Boeing Field today and watch the 787 Dreamliner touch down for the first time. As the airplane arrived, the overwhelming view was that it was beautiful, extraordinarily quiet, and landed perfectly. The two chase planes that were tracking the 787, and the five or six helicopters hovering overhead, gave the event an airshow feel. Crowds cheered and waved on both sides of Boeing Field as the airplane landed, and then we cheered again as the plane taxied north along the west side of the field. It was a great day for all of us at Boeing. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
erudito	4:02p	Note to myself: do not have the pancakes Sometimes, when I am indulging in breakfast out, I look at the pancakes on the menu and consider indulging. This morning, Seddon Deadly Sins has cinnamon apple pancakes. So I indulged. Really, I should not. No reflection on Seddon Deadly Sins, but pancakes are simply too much starchy-stodge for how I eat nowadays. Crepes, of course, are an entirely different matter. Current Mood: sniffy Current Music: something melodic (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
randycorman	8:26p	Renton resident Meeghan Black shines as new host of King 5's Evening Magazine Mayor and Council stand with Meeghan Black, (fourth from right), at last night's council meeting. The Mayor and Council declared "Meeghan Black Week" at last night's meeting, in honor of Evening Magazine's charismatic and talented new host, Meeghan Black. We have already been enjoying Meeghan Black for many years in other King 5 roles, including traffic, weather, weekend anchor, and one of my favorites-- "Gardening with Cisco." Ms. Black is the first Northwest native to host the Emmy-Award-winning Evening Magazine. She grew up on Mercer Island and graduated from Mercer Island High and University of Washington. She makes her home in Renton highlands, and she told us last night she is eager to showcase many of our city's interesting places and stories. You can email her at King 5 if you have any tips for her. I already have a couple ideas I plan to send her. In recognition of Renton's "Meeghan Black Week", Ms. Black hosted last night's Evening Magazine episode from Renton's Coulon Park. I linked this segment from the King 5 website for your entertainment. This particular segment is about the ability of dogs to help cure depression (a coincidence of sorts, as another speaker approached us on Monday night with a well-planned request/proposal for allowing dogs on the Northern half of Coulon Park. I'll write about that request more in a day or two.) Please join us in observing Meeghan Black Week by enjoying her show (weeknights at 7:00 PM on channel 5), and heartily congratulating her for her new role if you run into her about town. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	11:03a	No snow = $$ bonus It still has not snowed. This means no income loss for the business. This means all my employees get a little bonus. I've decided to buy Visa gift cards for all of them and just eat the taxes. I don't see the point of a small bonus if the employee has to pay the IRS some of it. It turns out all Chase banks sell Visa gift cards and the first $25 of each card is a tax deduction as a gift. Anything over $25 I have to pay taxes on. Off I go for a long errand to-do list today. Need to rush though. TONS of e-mails to answer and they only back up more while I'm away from my office. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
erudito	8:30p	Tired of being sick I have had a nasty head-cold for the best part of a week now, and I am so over being sick. At least on Monday and today I felt well enough to do my exercise-walk-with weights, which I had not been up to for almost a week. Had a really quiet weekend recovering slowly. Dinner Saturday night with montjoye was lovely, as usual. Monday evening, listened to an informative talk on Sudan, by woman who had been there several times recently. Today, helped Kerry G and bar_barra with their Christmas card addressing: a paid gig. Spent much of Friday with Mark L in St Kilda, discussing stuff, as we do. Wednesday, had the office lunch with our staff, ND and mishymoocow. Tuesday night, Mannie G gave a well put together, and very Popperian presentation on AGW. So, things happening but I would prefer to be healthy Current Mood: sniffy Current Music: bird song (3 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	12:52a	(1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
randycorman	9:26p	Fairwood residents will vote on a single annexation resolution on November 2, 2010 Fairwood residents will have the opportunity on November 2, 2010 to vote on whether or not their community of 27,000 will annex to Renton. Tonight we made a single voter resolution out of the two Fairwood annexation petitions that had been given to us by Fairwood citizens: the Red Mill petition (which contained signatures covering 78% of the assessed value of the "Red Mill"/Fairwood business district); and the greater Fairwood 10% voter petition (which contained signatures representing ten percent of voters from the last election). Then we chose to place the single resolution on the ballot in the November 2010 general election, delaying from the originally proposed August 17 2010 date, to give voters enough time to become familiar with the facts surrounding the decision. Not everyone in the public preferred this approach. Business owners in the Red Mill area have written to council and asked for quicker action on their petition, and several speakers have testified that they don't think that the entire population of Fairwood will feel ready to annex right now. (It remains unclear to Renton whether the King County boundary review board would have allowed the Red Mill Annexation petition go through by itself, but we opted not to even try) From Renton's side, we only want Fairwood to join our community if that is what the people of Fairwood want-- we have no desire to bring them in if they don't collectively wish to be part of our city. And the approach we've taken puts everything to a vote of the residents. Furthermore, if Fairwood does chose to annex, we want them to join our city at a time when we can collect an annexation-related state sales tax rebate, which will provide millions of dollars over ten years to help provide services to the Fairwood annexation. This is important to ensure we do not spread services thinner in the rest of the city to service Fairwood. The state money will help off-set the costs of additional employees as well as providing and maintaining additional equipment such as police cars, snow plows, lawnmowers, etc. But to obtain this ten year assistance, we have to have initiated the process by the end of 2009-- this is what we accomplished tonight. After 2009, the option to collect this sales tax money will expire. So, its up to you Fairwood voters. Best wishes for a productive decision-making process. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
randycorman	8:57p	New RTC Board member Kirby Unti asking for more time to decide on college president A reader pointed this out in my comment section. The Renton Reporter education blog explains HERE that Kirby Unti is asking for more time in choosing the next RTC president. I'm glad to see he's taking the time necessary to ensure the public has plenty of opportunity for input and a proper process is followed. (Comment on this)
cagekitten	3:33p	Is it okay to be manipulative if you're not really doing it on purpose? I just saw this article on 5 Behaviors of Manipulative People: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/5-behaviors-of-manipulative-people-549848/ I'm glad I read it because I had an experience recently with some one who left me feeling very manipulated. But she disguised it as compassion and it left me feeling confused. I ran into a woman at a vendor fair recently who's actions in my social circle had an effect on my life. The thing she did was just one of those things that showed some selfishness and a lack of integrity on her part. And since no one really wants to be involved with a woman who does things that hurt others, my friends and I tend to gravitate to each other at our shared social events rather than her. Well she approached me and tried to be friendly as if it had never happened. Rather than let her do that, I brought it up right away (I don't see any purpose to pretending it never happened) and she tried to give the situation an entirely different spin. Instead of saying that she felt excluded because my friends and I don't include her, she told me I should feel free to talk to her at events because she doesn't want ME to feel excluded. This didn't make sense to me and before I could rationalize what was going on, she began the #1 manipulation technique in the above linked article. She began to butter me up with compliments. The next thing I know she's telling me what a great body I have, how well liked I am in the community, how successful I am, etc. I think she was implying that I have so much going for me that I shouldn't care what things other people are doing to me or others in the community. The butter up effect worked and before long I found myself thinking I actually liked her. She even pulled the #4 tactic in the above linked article: selective memory. She was telling me her actions were not what I thought and that's not how it happened. And because she had buttered me up, I actually started to believe that maybe I shouldn't be upset with her since she didn't realize she was doing what she actually did. It took me a day or two to realize I had been manipulated and it has bothered me that I fell for it. But the problem is, any time I have had these manipulation techniques used on me, it's never on purpose. I don't think people consciously approach you thinking: Hey if I do and say these things I can control this person. It's never like that. People just express themselves in a way that helps them feel heard and understood and in some cases with certain people it just happens to be some of those manipulative techniques. So here is my question. If a person does this, just naturally speaks in a manipulative way without having any malicious intent or malice, are they truly manipulative? Or are they just being who they are and it happens to be a personality and speaking style that lends toward getting their way? And how can you tell who is truly complimenting you because they like and admire you and who is trying to manipulate you? (11 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	10:34a	What other items can I combine with these for my next Steampunk costume? So forget the leather corset I posted a few days ago in this post. I found a better steampunk corset on sale on etsy.com last night and ordered it. Here it is: Do you think I could make a convincing saloon girl steampunk costume by wearing it over the new dress? Here's the dress again below, I can wear it without the rhinestone top under it. How would the corset look with this (minus the striped gloves and top hat)?: Should I get one of these ruffly cabaret style shrugs to go with it?: Shrug or no shrug? And please suggest some other items I can use to combine with these to make a steampunk saloon girl. *** (6 Comments |Comment on this)
cagekitten	12:33a	Gas mask masquerade at the Mercury The fabulous new feather dress from Bebe with a layered lace and ruffle and sparkly skirt layered under it. Click the link or thumbnail pic below for more pics of us in our dressy best! ( click for more pics ) *** (3 Comments |Comment on this)

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