Good morning. It’s snowing now, 3 inches predicted … for round one. Tonight 2-4 more expected in round 2.
- A prayer for the children … of Gaza.
- Commuter bike design contest finalists.
- A clean joke.
- A clean country mile viewed from the Yukon.
- The “evils” of the Pope, refuted.\
- Apparently law school doesn’t teach logic. Ms Fey -> accountability … alas no connection.
- Permitted rape?
- The Christian reconciliation carnival returns.
- Ms Goldberg feeds thousands with 3 fish and 6 loaves? or not.
- Beauty, romance, and the christian life.
- Making the abstractions concrete.
- Two observations made by the late Fr Neuhaus.
- Don’t forget the package.
- Kill them, in a Christ-like fashion?
- Persecution on the quiet.
- And to think, there are real babies needing love and comfort.
- If the intentions aren’t pure, the deeds make no difference I guess.
- Watching the globe cool.
- More on the Mumbai murders.
- Might one of the Presidents defenders ‘splain (or defend) the notion of intelligent spending of $1.5 billion (500 times)?
If the intentions aren’t pure, the deeds make no difference I guess.
You obviously didn’t read the post. The point isn’t that the intentions are impure, but that the deeds are:
More disturbingly, Warren’s allies have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiative, the so-called ABC program in Uganda. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations’ special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is “resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred.”
Whether that’s true or not I have no idea, but really, your “summary” was ridiculous.
Might one of the Presidents defenders ’splain (or defend) the notion of intelligent spending of $1.5 billion (500 times)?
Define “intelligent.” We just spent that much in Iraq, so clearly it’s not that hard to spend it. There will be wastage whenever you’re dealing with such large sums, but all the economists seem to think the most important thing for the economy is that the spending happens. How else could we inject that money into the economy? If you give it all as a tax rebate, too much will be put in savings, etc.
From the cooling link:
I’m kind of stumped. If the hypothesis is global warming a 100 year time series is not enough evidence. If the hypothesis is no global warming a single data point is sufficient to overturn the theory.
Well one factor to consider is that allocating and spending are different things. Take a $500 per worker tax cut. This may cost $300B and may take 100 people to ‘allocate’ (writing the law, IRS administrative rulings on the law, making various forecasts and so on). But the actual spending happens as each person does whatever they are going to do with the $500.
Ditto for spending. You may have $5B allocated for mass transportation but when you follow it all the way down tot he actual checks getting cut the number of people involved will go up dramatically.
Corporations are similiar. It may take 20 high level people to decide to spend $1.5B on marketing and $1.5B on R&D in a pharmaceutical company. But that’s just a high level number. Those 20 people aren’t cutting checks to ‘Robbies Print Shop’ to print up 10,000 brochures for an upcoming health fair. Those 20 probably don’t even know that one particular health fair is being targetted by the $1.5B marketing fund.
But to take a step back, take Keynesian economics head on. The gist is let’s say GDP should be $100. This is what GDP would be if every person had a job, all the factories, office buildings, and other forms of capital were working at capacity (minus normal ‘frictional’ unemployment that happens when people change jobs, factories retool for new products and so on). If GDP is running at $75 due to a financial collapse gov’t spending essentially makes up the difference. If the multiplier is 5, gov’t will spend $5 and the other sectors of the economy will spend $20 to make $25 in additional spending bringing the economy up to $100. If the multiplier is 1, the gov’t will have to spend $25 to restore GDP to where it is normally. Overall the spending level is actually the same, if all goes well, $100. If there was no reason why the economy didn’t have enough intelligence to spend $100 during the non-recession period there’s no reason the economy wouldn’t have intelligence to spend $100 during the recession period.
Public satire isn’t part of political accountability anymore? Poor Jon Swift. Who’s going to tell him?
Seriously. Tina Fey was the only reasonable reaction to Sarah Palin. She barely even exaggerated in her impression. Sometimes she quoted Palin verbatim.
Stalinist mindsets typically target satire and comedy first. ‘Accountability’ indeed.
I almost forgot. Didn’t Palin promise to donate all those clothes valued in excess of $150K to charity? When is that auction happening? Odd isn’t it that we never hear about it being advertised. It’s snowing, $150K could buy a lot of poor kids some good coats.
JA,
On the Kuznicki post, so what matters about witchcraft? I don’t get it. He repeats that is important in the comments as well. You believe in global warming and I don’t believe in the germ theory of disease. How that impacts distribution of medicine such as anti-virals in Africa if we chose to do so … matters not at all.
Boonton,
On global warming, if you require 100 year timespans to prove/disprove well that is clearly unfalsifiable … which is clearly convenient for the Al Gore climate for profit machine.
David,
Hmmm. Gulliver’s Travels as compared to SNL. I’ll have to remember that when I think of the decline of modern society. More to the point, your “felony” allegations turned out to be smoke. But then, when the subject is a Republican indictement = conviction in your mind it seems.
On global warming, if you require 100 year timespans to prove/disprove well that is clearly unfalsifiable … which is clearly convenient for the Al Gore climate for profit machine.
Why would it be unfalsifiable? Did the world begin last year or something?
Hmmm. Gulliver’s Travels as compared to SNL. I’ll have to remember that when I think of the decline of modern society.
To be fair Swift had to write Gulliver’s Travels just once in his lifetime, not every Saturday. More to the point, what does this have to do with Palin? Why must Fey be held ‘accountable’ for offending the Great Leader of the right wing tribe?
Boonton,
OK. We’re talking about setting policy decision today. We have a two year substantial cooling trend going on now. If that continues are you suggesting that it can get colder and colder for 100 years before global warming is disproven. I’m sorry, if falsification requires waiting until 2100 (or
2090) too bad, that’s effectively unfalsifiable.
Uhm, Mr Schraub wasn’t suggesting Ms Fey be held accountable, but that Ms Fey was a method by which Ms Palin be held accountable for her “felony” charge.
I don’t follow that. If you’re talking about a 100 year moving average the last two data points are no more significant than the first two. More intelligently, if you have 100 years worth of datain two years you’d have 102 years worth of data (why throw out the two oldest years?)
It seems you owe Mr. Schraub an apology. He didn’t accuse Palin of a felony. Read the post again, specifically:
It’s pretty clear he is talking about Alaskan Senator, Palin mentor Ted Stevens (the one Palin chaired a re-election committee only a few years ago) who finally got voted out right after he was convicted. He is saying, quite clearly, that he feels Palin did stuff that was short of a felony but nonetheless merited her to loose the election.
Boonton,
I’m not talking about a 100 year average, that’s your supposition. High levels of CO2 output has been only going on for the last 4 or perhaps 5 so decades so if you’re going to take seriously both 100 years as a requirement to establish climate change and industrial carbon then you’ll have be waiting another half century to make up your mind. Over the last 4 or 5 decades (perhaps more, I’d have to look at the data carefully) the last two years count among the largest yearly fluctuations in average global tropospheric mean temperatures. These two extremal fluctuations have been cooling not warming. One would expect that in a warming trend that fluctuations in the other direction would be dominant.
I am not a believer in the religion of anthropogenic carbon causing global warming. However, I do fully believe in cutting energy (especially oil) consumption. I have recently replaced the furnace in my house with a 97% efficient furnace, a few years ago we got a tankless water heater, I currently own two hybrid automobiles (Honda Insight … one of which btw I’d like to sell). The other car we drive is a diesel VW, which gets 45+ mpg. Last summer we ran the air conditioner about 5 days, and even then the thermostat is set to 80. In the winter daily household temperatures are set to 66 and at night 52.
I should note, that my position is not that global warming does not exist, nor that it does. But that the science on this matter is, contrary to politically motivated/corrupted science, should still be undecided on this matter. For example, as for anthropogenic origins of climate change I’ve yet to see serious comparisons to terrestrial warming and non-terrestrial warming (mars has receding ice caps and Saturnine rings are shrinking) alongside terrestrial measurements. There are other questions, but that will do for now. Furthermore, I think the computer models as a methodology for science is suspect in the climate industry.
Mr Schraub wrote several essays during the election run-up noting the investigation into Mrs Palins “troopergate” affair for which she was exonerated. He never remarked at all to my knowledge on the matter after she was exonerated. Perhaps he wasn’t talking Palin regarding regarding felonies but Mr “Cold Cash” Jefferson? Hmm.
I’m not talking about a 100 year average, that’s your supposition. High levels of CO2 output has been only going on for the last 4 or perhaps 5 so decades so if you’re going to take seriously both 100 years as a requirement to establish climate change and industrial carbon then you’ll have be waiting another half century to make up your mind.
Not quite, you have 100 years of datapoints of carbon & temp. Now if we were talking about a simple linear relationship you can see how minor two additional data points are but we almost certainly aren’t. Each additional year adds to our data collection but I’m at a loss as to why a year or two of cooler than average temps somehow refutes or confirms anything.
However, I do fully believe in cutting energy (especially oil) consumption. I have recently replaced the furnace in my house with a 97% efficient furnace, a few years ago we got a tankless water heater,
There is a lot of overlap here so even people of two different minds can agree on similiar policies but the overlap is not perfect. Imagine two different energy uses that are both equally efficient but one yields greater CO2 than the other. If you assign low probability to global warming you’ll be indifferent between them, if you assign a greater chance you’ll favor the less carbon intensive.
Mr Schraub wrote several essays during the election run-up noting the investigation into Mrs Palins “troopergate” affair for which she was exonerated. He never remarked at all to my knowledge on the matter after she was exonerated.
1. The post you referenced made it clear she was not guilty of a crime, in fact the post makes no sense at all if you’re trying to tell us the author was asserting she was a felon.
2. Palin was never exonerated of wrongdoing in the troopergate scandal. At best she can be said to not be guilty of any crime. It is undeniable that she flat out lied about her role in the trooper’s firing. It is undeniable she broke her word when she first promised cooperation with the investigation and then discovered it was ‘political’ despite the ample Republican representation on the investigation.
3. Schraub’s post emphasized accountability. I understand to a GOP supporter still recovering from the Bush years accountability might sound like it means avoiding convictions by the criminal justice system (or scoring a pardon if you get one or two) but the term actually has a much broader meaning. Palin’s behavior was reprehensible and a blatent abuse of power. But go ahead, build a political platform around “Not technically guilty of a felony” as a rallying cry.
I don’t believe in the germ theory of disease.
Wait, what? Really?
JA,
Well, I think I’ll have to expand on that, but in brief I think that germs (bacteria/viruses) are a necessary condition but not the primary cause of disease.
One suggestion: Could you perhaps letter or number your Highlights entries. That way when discussing them we can reference them quickly….sometimes I’m at a loss when trying to follow these threads and need several minutes to click each link to see what is being discussed (yes I know you want us to click each link every day….but we are lazy).
On witchcraft, the question comes down to whether the preacher’s wacky beliefs do or do not disrupt the effort to address HIV/AIDS. I’d be less concerned about his belief in witches under Lake Victoria and more about his efforts to incite violence against gays.
Boonton,
I try a numbered vs bullet list next week.
I’ve looked a bit more the Ssempa/Warren issue.