26 posts from November 2009

Last week, I reported on the yearly stoning festivities, in which followers of Allah try their damnedest to kill the Devil, but which inevitably results in a certain number of stoners getting trampled to death and Lucifer living to see next year's Hajj. And while "organizers" say that, owing to increased security and improvements to the stoning area, they expect a significant decrease in deaths due to trampling this hurling season, the highest concern of a group of world health organizations, coincidentally called Haj (health authority jerks) is that it's a perfect environment for the transmission of Swine Flu.

Quoting from a recent news report: "The annual Islamic pilgrimage draws 3 million visitors each year, making it the largest yearly gathering of people in the world and an ideal incubator for the H1N1 flu virus... Under a hot sun Saturday, hundreds of thousands of sweaty bodies pressed against each other toward the stoning walls. The majority did not wear masks, and many sneezed, coughed and spat and looked visibly exhausted."

Ya hate to see that... seriously. And considering that Muslamists shun pigs, there's certainly some irony involved here - with the devil in the details, I predict that instead of a few hundred people dying in a pilgrim pile-up, the actual death toll will be much higher this year - 666 to be exact, not owing to Trichinosis but to the devilish disease now called Trickinosis because that's more fun-sounding and decisive than H1N1 which, as you know, is a tie.

More from the article: "Like many here, Mikail Ocasio, a 28-year-old pilgrim from Maryland, dismissed the swine flu worries. 'No disease was going to stop me from making my Hajj,' he said. 'Allah made the call to me and made it available and nothing is going to stop me.'"

And who said Al doesn't have a sense of humor?

Taranto:

Keeping the Homeless Healthy
This pre-Thanksgiving story in the New York edition of Metro International has drawn a fair amount of attention:

When a small church comes to the Bowery Mission bearing fried chicken with trans fat, unwittingly breaking the law, they're told "thank you." Then workers quietly chuck the food, mission director Tom Bastile said.

"It's always hard for us to do," Basile said. "We know we have to do it." . . .

The city's law banishing trans fat took effect in July 2008 and touched everyone with Health Department food licenses--including emergency food providers.

Most of the commentary has been to the effect that this is an example of the nanny state run amok. We suppose it is, but the nanny state ran amok in New York long ago, and we see no reason why street vagrants should be allowed pleasures that are denied to those of us who work for a living

Can anyone name a single Republican who has stood up and said, "GOD DAMN YOU AL GORE," or "GOD DAMN YOU SCUMBAMA?"

The massive University of East Anglia global-warmist archives are now searchable at this site, and one particular email demonstrates the nexus between the scientific shenanigans and the popular press, on which most people rely for their information on global warming. This email, dated Sept. 29, 2009, is from Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania to New York Times warm correspondent Andrew Revkin. The crucial exchange begins with this question from Revkin (quoting verbatim):

I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?

And here is Mann's response:

Re, your point at the end--you've taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

In principle, Revkin and Mann are quite right. But as we noted Monday, one of the most damning findings in the archives concerns the corruption of the peer-review process.

In one email, under the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL," Phil Jones of East Anglia writes to Mann: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Mann--discussing a journal that has published a paper by skeptical scientists, puts forward a plan for such a redefinition:

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...

The scare quotes around "peer-reviewed literature" are Mann's. And it hardly needs to be said that peer review is a sham if papers that present alternative hypotheses are not even allowed into the process.

So how does Revkin, who two months ago took the words out of Mann's mouth, deal with this problem? Barely at all. In a Sunday amendment to a Friday blog post, he mentions it and quickly changes the subject:

[UPDATE, 11/22: Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post explores some email exchanges criticizing certain peer-reviewed papers and journals and focused on excluding the papers from inclusion in the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change report. I'm running down tips and assertions related to the theft and hackings. It remains interesting that before they were placed on an ftp site and dispersed across the Internet, someone tried to plant them on Realclimate.org and publish a mock post linking to them. Needless to say, if anyone has information or ideas, feel free to email dotearth AT nytimes.com.]

Yesterday, he had another post, titled "Report Aims to Clarify Climate Risk for Diplomats." Here's how it begins:

A team of climate scientists, seeking to remind the negotiators who will hammer out a new climate treaty of what is at stake, has produced The Copenhagen Diagnosis, a summary of the latest peer-reviewed science on the anticipated impacts of human-driven global warming.

Revkin reports that the "latest peer-reviewed science" shows that "the case for climate change as a serious risk to human affairs" is "clear, despite recent firestorms over some data sets and scientists' actions."

What we now know about the "peer review" process in this field indicates that this is a predetermined conclusion. Revkin misleads his readers by describing it as if it were a real finding.

The Litigation Begins
Yesterday "the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal--for nearly three years--to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act," CEI fellow Christopher Horner announces at Pajamas Media:

The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "Climategate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer code, and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's East Anglia University.

All of that material, and that sought for years by CEI, goes to the heart of the scientific claims and campaign underpinning the Kyoto Protocol, its planned successor treaty, "cap-and-trade" legislation, and the EPA's threatened regulatory campaign to impose similar measures through the back door.

A lawyer writes us that "'the purloined 'global warming emails' suggest several lines of legal inquiry":

Tortious interference. For researchers and academicians, publication in peer-reviewed journals is important to advancement, raises, grant funding, etc. Wrongful interference with the ability to publish has monetary and reputational damages. If that interference is based not on editorial judgment of worthiness for publication, but rather on protecting reputations, scientific positions, political goals or "places in history" (as mentioned in one email), then it could give rise to liability in tort for the individual scientist and possibly for the university or organization for which he works.

Breach of faculty ethics standards or contracts. Most universities and research organizations have ethics clauses in their faculty/employee manuals and in their contracts with faculty/researchers. If (as suggested by the purloined emails) these individuals cooked data or manipulated assumptions to achieve preferred outcomes, or denied others access to data essential for replication of result that is essential to the scientific method, they could have violated university or organizational ethics standards.

State-chartered universities. Some of these individuals appear to work for state-chartered and state-funded institutions, and might well be classified as state employees (and thereby eligible for generous state benefits). The conduct suggested by the purloined emails might violate state ethics or funding policies. State governments and legislatures therefore might have a basis for inquiry and oversight.

Federal grants. Federal grants typically have ethics/integrity clauses to assure that the research funded by the grant is credible and reliable (and to assure that the agency can avoid accountability if it isn't). As noted, the purloined emails suggest that data might have been cooked and assumptions might have been manipulated to generate a predetermined outcome. If true, and if the work in question was funded by federal grant, the researchers in question might well have violated their federal grant contracts--for which there are legal consequences. Inspectors general of the grant agencies should be in position to make inquiry if the data/assumptions in question could be linked in time and topic to a contemporaneous federal grant to the researchers in question.

This promises be a boon for comedians as well as lawyers. Here's our first effort:

Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. There's a consensus that it's going to change, so they've decided to keep us in the dark

One month is, Windows 7 is definitely more stable than Vista, and I suspect that it's the most stable version of Windows ever, but I can't say that with certaintly since I've never used XP. However, I probably try a dozen new freeware programs a day, and not one has succeeded in crashing Wondows 7.

However, if you have no problems with Vista, there's also no compelling reason to upgrade to 7 if for no other reason than I've had to find a new program to do backups (which I haven't needed and the program I found was a simple upgrade of the one I had). Because my backup program is the single most important program I hope I never have to use again for restoration purposes.

Otherwise, I haven't found anything that Windows 7 does that Vista didn't do, nor have I found any programs that won't run that ran under Vista. All I can say is that 7 has a subtle feeling of smoothness (but no meaningful increase in speed) which translates into reduced stress - when there's a rare glitch, I just sit for a second and Windows recovers (if in fact it was recovering at all since hangups can be caused by any number of things).

So I wish I had something dramatic to report, but for ordinary users, drama in the operating system is something they can probably do without - And Windows 7 certainly lessens the drama. I don't believe I've lost anyting since I've upgraded to Wondows 7, and that includes restore points. However, I did have to find them initially as they are another example of Microsoft moving something for seemingly no reason.

It started a few days ago when I read some screamin' liberal (liar) media report of the Glenn Beck gathering in Florida last weekend. The moron was fearful of Beck, of course, but what caught my attention was something else the guy said that had a ring of truth...

It was about Beck calling people to action and the resulting personal enrichment he was getting for it from books sales and appearances, not to mention ratings. I had to admit that it was slightly troubling that Beck might be profiting from the many crises created by the incompetent and crooked Obanimal and his pack of dogs.

Then yesterday, Beck mentioned that he would be conducting seminars next year on how to mobilize and win. "Fine," I screamed, "As long as you don't charge for them!"

Then today something real happened... Beck was talking to some financial guy from Britain (which automatically makes him less credible), and Beck proposed a value-added tax. I started yelling every swear word I could think of, but then I paused for a moment when it sunk in that not only had Beck proposed a value-added tax, he had done so matter-of-factly.

No conservative/libertarian would ever do such a thing, much less do so blithely. Period.

There have been a few times over the years that I have become unglued at Beck's hand. One that comes to mind is also current.

Beck is now playing up the "global warming" fraud that's been uncovered, as he well should. The problem is that last year I heard him tell someone that he believed in global warming, and no, I didn't misunderstand and my memory isn't fuzzy - because I started screaming then too.

So the question is: when is enough enough? I mean, I've never really liked Beck but he's right about the overall problems and who's responsible for them, and he's not partial to Republicans the way most conservatives are so he's not all bad. And he hasn't cried in some time, so that's a plus, but I not only don't trust someone who would propose such a hideous tax, I feel I can never trust him because now his idea is out there.

I can only hope he'll feel the kind of heat he wants us to put on Congress and the President because any new taxes are unacceptable, and a value-added tax is unforgivable.

Obowma

Hey, it could be worse - the picture's crooked!

But then so is the President!

Dearest Doxie,

Remember when believing in man-made "global warming" was cool? May I ask, who was the first person you thought of when you heard/read that it's gone bust?

So Doxie, what do you have to say now? Now that every argument I advanced was right on the money?

Peer review? Do you recall what I said about it? Something about it being crap?

The models? How did I put it... they're garbage?

Your reasoning? How did I characterize it? Moronic?

I was trying to recall some of the brilliant others who, with you, formed a moronic monolith... let's see, there was John, The Queen of Frontal Nudity, Henrietta... who else?

Anybody want to step forward? Because I know there were lesser idiots involved.

And you called yourself a scientist? Yes, I know, so did the guys with the emails.

Of course I came here not to ridicule you, but to bury you...

Best,

Ted

Should we erect a statue of Broke Obama in The Bowery titled "Obama Bow Wow" and dedicate it on the day Khalid Sheikh Mohammed"s trial begins?

Bobo

Bowbo

Made in Japan - 100% Pewter