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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And now it’s Kirk Cameron’s turn . . .

Jenny McCarthy, a famous non-scientist who has toured the country warning that vaccines caused her son's autism, now says that her son doesn't actually have autism and that vaccines might not actually cause autism. You see, real science doesn't make things up. Real science is a self-critical activity . . . Now it's time for Kirk Cameron to see the light.

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What passes for ethics in DC

What do they want in order to make a finding that a politician was politically corrupt? Apparently a signed confession, based on an article in the Washington Post:

The House ethics committee ruled Friday that seven lawmakers who steered hundreds of millions of dollars in largely no-bid contracts to clients of a lobbying firm had not violated any rules or laws by also collecting large campaign donations from those contractors.

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News story pet peeve

Here's an example of a type of news story that really bugs me, and it happens every so often. Someone gets fired for saying something, and the entire story revolves around the thing that was said. Should the guy who said it resign? Should he be suspended? Did he have a right to say it? Intense story, right? But wait a minute! What, exactly did the guy say? In stories like this, you never learn what he said. Nope, viewers are little babies and the news media must protect our ears from such potentially vile/rude/inappropriate language. Or should they? It all depends on what he said, and we'll never know. But it was rude and he deserved what he got, or maybe not.

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More of my favorite quotes

I collect lots of quotes. Lots of bang for the buck. There's a novel in every good quote. Here's my most recent batch of favorites: "Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms." Alan Corenk "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Plato "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." Aaron Levenstein (Professor of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York) "I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom." Noam Chomsky "Some people are called to build the piano, some to carry the piano, and some are called to play the piano" Darrin Patrick "One of the most powerful teachings of the Buddhist tradition is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will." Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are “None of us are as smart as all of us” Japanese proverb "The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe" H.L. Mencken Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose Bill Gates Atheism is a religion like off is a TV channel. The Godless Blogger "There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it." William Jennings Bryan at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1896. "[T]he life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Thomas Hobbes "Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest", 1982 "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." Thomas Jefferson

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