Dangerous Intersection is 4 years old!

Back on February 21, 2006, I created the first post for Dangerous Intersection. Somehow, it got to be 4 years later all too quickly. Since that first post, DI authors have now published 3,840 posts. And many of you have created one or more of those 18,913 comments that you can still read at the site (all of our posts and comments are available at DI). Our traffic indicates that we're not small and we're not big (yet). We typically get about 140,000 visitors per month (about 5,000/day-- 1.7 million visitors over the past 12 months), including about 85,000 monthly unique visitors. Over the past 12 months, we dished out more than 7 million pages. Quantity doesn't mean much, in and of itself, of course. But I'd like to think that those of us who have participated in the writing and reading at this site have also learned some important things along the way, along with more than a few laughs. I'd also like to think that DI offers some perspectives that you don't find in most other places, and that we have contributed to the blogosphere and beyond in a significant way. My plan is to carry on, to learn from past mistakes and to make the site better in the future. One thing I've learned during the past few months is that digging into the news cycle too hard and too often can bring me way down, and that's not good for anyone. Therefore, when I'm feeling a paroxysm of cynicism in the future, I will make sure that I pull out of the news cycle for awhile in order to detoxify (thanks, to Ebonmuse for the encouragement and the terminology). In the future, I will also try harder to think of a take-away for those posts that concern ignorance, corruption and incompetence. It's not that we're going to solve society's big problems quickly--most of the time, it's going to be about baby steps if we see any progress at all. That's not going to be an easy task to present a take-action to every one of society's woes, but I'm going to give it more effort. The ultimate goal should be to figure out how to make some real-life progress whenever we identify social dysfunction. I'd like to give thanks to each of the authors, Mark, Brynn, Mindy, Dan, Erika, Mike, Lisa, Ebonmuse, Tony, Tim, Zoevinly, Grumpy, Hank and all the rest for provoking us with your postings and musings. And I really need to thank all of our comment-writers of whom there have been so incredibly many thoughtful people who have offered their own writings to keep the DI authors honest (special commendation to Niklaus). Yet I do know that there are many of you out there who read but don't write--thank you so much for visiting! Maybe this will be the year that you jump in and write your first comment (remember that you can do so anonymously, if you wish--many comments are anonymous). Almost all of the submitted comments get published (I even publish some of the comments that tell me that I'm going to go to hell!). If nothing else, post a comment to this post just to say hello and join in this modest fourth year celebration. I would ask for two little favors. If you know someone who might enjoy the kinds of writing you find at this site, please consider sending our home page link to them. Equally important, if a particular post seems well-written to you, please do follow the green-colored directions on the right side of the page and recommend that post to one or more social sites (e.g., Facebook, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon). Doing this really kicks up the traffic. It brings a wider (and hopefully a more diverse) audience to the site, which can benefit all of us thanks to more diverse comments. A larger audience would also help me to pay for the hosting costs and the other expense of running this site. I'll be candid. My hosting costs $100/month, and I'm extremely happy with it (thanks, Josh). The ads you see on the site recoup about 75% of that cost. It would be nice to break even financially, and that's my main financial goal here. BTW - none of the authors is paid. None of us has made a cent from writing at this site. All of us have day jobs--writing for DI is purely a labor of love. My overall goal is to present information and opinions that you can trust, but that also challenge you, even though you might disagree with us. In fact, when I tell people on the street about DI, I tell them to visit the site and to comment "especially if you disagree with us." One of my favorite in-person comments came from a well-accomplished lawyer who was also extremely conservative. He said, "Erich, I sometimes visit your site. It is fascinating and well-written. But I disagree with almost everything you say." That comment was a prelude to a good conversation over lunch--this kind of comment often is the beginning of something interesting. I'll end this "happy birthday" post by suggesting that I love to get email with interesting links. I know that this is true of all of the authors. If you find an good link, do write to us and you'll likely see it published at DI. Many of our email addresses can be found at the "About" page. Considerable amounts of the links you see here have been recommended by our readers. My own email address is erichvieth@gmail.com (You can also hit the "Contact" link at the top menu). If you want to reach one of the other authors, but you don't see their email addresses, send me an email and I'll pass it on. Once again, thank you. It has been a privilege to write as part of this thoughtful, iconoclastic and kind-hearted community.

Continue ReadingDangerous Intersection is 4 years old!

Climate: OJ and the Haystack

Why Climate Change Denial Is Like the O.J. Trial is an interesting article. The essence is that the climate denialists are using the same techniques as the OJ defense team: Find anything resembling a needle in a vast haystack of data, then claim that the presence of the needle casts doubt on the character of the haystack itself. Because there is an overwhelming pile of evidence in support of anthropogenic global warming, there are bound to be occasional pieces of data that can appear to contradict the mass of affirmative information. The pile is overwhelming, especially to non-scientists. Therefore few have the patience to understand the whole thing. Those who want to spin the counter argument claim that, because the two sides are both represented, therefore the issue is in doubt. And, as in the OJ trial, if there is cause for doubt, then no action is to be taken.

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Warming to Climate Claims

As Washington D.C. gets record snowfall, climate denialists cackle with glee. It was a cool summer, and now a cold winter. So, they wonder, where is this global warming? "People," I want to condescendingly say, "look at the sun." Weather girls of all genders and persuasions are mentioning that this is the coldest winter in 11 years. Notice that? Are they unaware that there is an 11 year cycle of solar warming and cooling that corresponds to -- and can be measured by -- sunspots? So it's like saying with implied importance that this is the coldest month since 12 months ago. The spots are just starting up, much like the days getting longer at the end of December. Here is a nice look at the sunspot phenomenon. It is intuitively confusing that dark spots mean more heat. But the pair of images here shows visible and ultraviolet views of the same scene. Those dark spots are tunnels into the gamma-hot regions of the sun. Our eyes can only see one octave on the spectrum. Both hotter than blue and cooler than red ranges are invisible. Dark. Red hot is the coldest temperature that gives off light. (Read about Black Body Radiation if you want to know how this is known.) Another detail that climate denialists get wrong is the meaning of heavy snowfall. If you get heavy precipitation, it implies much moisture aloft. That is, many more megatons of water are evaporated. By heat. So before you point to a low local current temperature as evidence against global warming, please look at the time scale that climatologists use, like the Temperature record of the past 1000 years, or even for the last century and a half:

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Amazon Accidentally Increases Internet Disinformation

We have previously posted regarding the latest reprint of Darwin's "The Origin of Species", by Ray Comfort. If you don't know about it, it has a 50 page forward full of untruths, confusion, and misdirection in an attempt to discredit the original text that follows. Yes, he's trying to use Darwin to discredit 200 years of thoroughly tested evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, Amazon.com reviews and ratings confuse it with another (reputable) reprint by the same name, as discussed in detail here:

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Microsoft Stabs FireFox

I've long been an advocate of the FireFox browser. I've used it since it was first announced, and rarely use IE for anything but testing web designs and browsing Microsoft's own non-W3C compliant web pages. One of my reasons is that Internet Explorer has major vulnerabilities via its ability to directly run ActiveX code on the machine of users without asking permission. That is, it is a hacker's pipeline into your operating system. Well, a few weeks ago, a Microsoft Update quietly installed the .Net Framework assistant into any FireFox browser it found. Shoved that narrow shiv of vulnerability right into the heart of the generally more secure FireFox core. When it was noticed, the savvy segment of FireFox users were outraged. Not just because it was done, but because it was done in such a way that it couldn't be easily removed! Sure, it would let FireFox users see those rare sites dependent on ActiveX, but it would also let hackers run ActiveX on your machine! When I found out, I first Googled to find a way to remove it using regedit and about:config (two dangerous powerful tools). But a week later, updates by Microsoft and FireFox made it easier to remove. If you have it, remove it. Here's one of the articles about it from ZDNet, a generally Microsoft friendly environment. This article also contains removal instructions that assume you have recent updates. btw: If you didn't know. FireFox spell checks all blog entry fields as you type. And you can add nifty customizable Make Link tools for easy creation of links in comments to blogs and such. Just highlight text on a page, rt-click and Make Link to copy complete link code, ready to paste.

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