Monthly Archives: May 2014

Kerfuffle

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“We Only Have 500 Days Left to Avoid Climate Chaos!”

Cool!

I started a kerfuffle without really trying when I posted a random quip on Facebook.

If you distrust what the Administration told you about the military, why do you trust what they say about global warming?

There’s nothing particularly profound about tossing out a query that rotated into my email signature file. On the other hand, it does ask a profound question.

You can read the more than 100 comments here but I’ll summarize the discussion:

“Because they said so!”
“Oh no they didn’t and besides, they’re wrong!”
“Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

That’s the usual take on social media these days when a person who studied materials science, a cartoonist, an international banker, a retired chemist, and a couple of writers set themselves up as the experts on climate science. Or any other hot button issue.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
–Mark Twain

The solar deniers in this argument are quick to blame “the Internet” or “Faux News” or the “Koch Brothers” for any data that contradicts them. The irony that their proofs come from “the Internet” or “MSNBC” or “Tom Steyer” or the totally political IPCC aggregation committee apparently eludes them.

Once upon a time, I thought that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by global warming true believers and spinmeisters. Then I reported on the anti-GMO campaign. The way the Far Green consortium has distorted science makes Dr. Murari Lal look pure.

“We thought that if we can highlight [the fake ice melt data], it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action,” Dr. Lal told the Daily Mail.

In both cases, the purpose is to convince you, Dear Reader, to take up arms in the cause.

In both cases, the purpose is to keep the Green flowing. The green research dollars. The green investment dollars. The green tax dollars.

Science is not a Harris poll. It doesn’t matter a whit whether you believe in cold fusion or phrenology or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. It doesn’t matter if 71% or 51% or 0% of all mankind believe in global warming. 100% of scientists believed Aristotle who told them a heavy body falls to earth faster than a light one. One man didn’t. The Church later found him “vehemently suspect of heresy” for saying the sun didn’t rotate around the earth. He spent the last years of his life under house arrest.

The trouble with our liberal friends
is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just
that they know so much that isn’t so.
And they would force us to go along.
–Dick Harper paraphrasing Ronald Reagan paraphrasing Mark Twain

Want to to know why I distrust our liberal friends?

Because they deride faith but put their faith in all the fads their polls tell them to believe. Because they adhere to vaccination denials but don’t accept the things Galileo (and others) showed them data to support.

And because everyone jumped to defend their faith in the “settled science” in this thread but not one of them answered the original question.

 

Roundup

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Not the grass assassin. Some juicy tidbits have flowed in over the last couple of weeks while I was out goofing off.

Idle Hands
In the great state of Vermont, it is now illegal to let your car idle for more than five minutes during any one-hour period, thanks to a law that went into effect last week. Violators will receive a $10 ticket for the first offense, $50 for the second, and $100 for the third.

Police, fire, and other emergency vehicles don’t have to obey that law so when the cops write you that first, second, or third ticket because your car is “idling” in a Shelburne Road traffic jam next January, you can bet the police car will be running the entire time.

Sheesh.

Garbologists
Socrates TeachingAn “educational technology specialist wants students to connect with the land, and to grow with it. Literally.” So sayeth the newspaper about a man who teaches at a local elementary school. Students spent a day outside with him as they planted blueberry bushes, apple trees, and blue spruce trees in a field behind the school nature center.

“Educational technology specialist”?

We used to have “educators.” Probably then “educationalists.” Now “educational technology specialists.” What is wrong with calling someone who goes hands on with classroom students a “teacher”?

Sheesh.

A Fatal Wait
Speaking of gummint, veterans have languished and died on the VA’s secret list.

VA hospitals are killing people by not getting around to caring for them. At least 40 vets have died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system alone, all while VA managers there tried to hide that some 1,400-1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor.

Just a foretelling of what to expect as the Unaffordable Care Act (like HealthCanada) looks for ways to cut the cost of affordable care.

Sheesh.

Apologists
Some Liberal apologist will come along and remind us that the idle law will increase health benefits, cut down on carbon emissions, and save fuel.

No. Vermonters don’t need a nanny law for that but it will certainly help the ticket nazis raise revenue.

Some Liberal apologist will come along and remind us that teachers are professionals and the descriptors help lay people to understand what educators and educationalists and educational technology specialists do.

No. Vermonters know what teachers do. Teachers need to act professional, not make up multi-syllabic titles and print business cards.

Some Liberal apologist will come along and remind us that the Veteran’s Administration and the Health and Human Services (which runs the ACA) are completely different departments.

No. VA is funded by Congress. Obamacare is funded by Congress. That’s a CF. As funding declines and managing-the-finger-pointing increases (the usual route for any government program), we’re gonna die.

Fortunately, two apples a day reduces the risk of stroke by 32%.

 

Vacated

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I’ve been (mostly) on vacation this last week. Oh, I took care of a couple of client problems and I did some webwork but mostly I worked on my tan and irritated SWMBO and the fair gekko.

We went to Vegas to poke around Fremont Street (the “old” casinos) and to see Kà. In between we went to the Circus Circus amusement park and took in a couple of circus acts and I spent a dollar in the only slot machine I could find with a handle. I took 300 or so exposures from which I’ll get a bunch of snapshots and half-a-dozen salable prints.

Vegas Snapshot
I really, really want a backstage pass to Kà. The Cirque du Soleil’s coming of age story of a young man and a young woman features phenomenal stages. Oh. It has 80 artists and is a “gravity-defying” ballet of music, acrobatic feats, Capoeira dance, puppetry, and martial arts. The Los Angeles Times wrote that it “may well be the most lavish production in the history of Western theater. It is surely the most technologically advanced.”

The two moving stages and five smaller lifts and platforms float through space. The Sand Cliff Deck, their largest moveable platform, measures 25x50x6 feet and weighs 50 tons. It moves up and down 72 feet, rotates 360°, and tilts from flat to 100°, all on a vertical gantry crane and four 75-foot-long hydraulic cylinders. This is material handling design heaven, baby.

On the other hand, we did get a backstage pass to the Hoover Dam. The Bureau of Reclamation had shut down the hard hat tours of the power plant and inner tunnels after 9/11 but they do guide visitors through the power plant and the passageways within the dam itself.

It should come as no surprise that most of the hardware looks like it came from the railroads. Except for the leaning power towers. Likewise, it should come as no surprise that about a quarter of the visitors on most tours are engineers. We had a mechanical (me), three EEs, and an engineering tech who does the real work. No Civil Engineers, though, despite the gazillion (<==technical term) tons of concrete floating free between the walls of the Colorado River.

It should come as a surprise that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has its own police force.

A quick kvetch about the prices. It cost $7.50 to park near the downtown casinos but parking was free on the Strip. Circus Circus’ Adventuredome 5-acre indoor amusement park offers the yellow Loco and the pink Canyon Blaster roller coasters. Pink, a double-loop, double-corkscrew, literally shook the building (for the record, a roller coaster is just another big package delivery system). Each was $10 per ride, though. We passed on the $60 Kobe hamburger with truffles. The Hoover Dam dimes and quarters visitors, too. $10 to park. $30 for a tour. And, of course, lots of different people giving lots of different directions. “Sit here.” “No, stand there.” “Sit on the Group W bench.” “Go to the observation deck.” “No, go to this video.” My National Parks pass didn’t work there, either.

You RockAt the other end of the price spectrum, we did eat at Ellis Island (the original pub was opened in 1967 by Frank Ellis) where we missed the nightly karaoke but sampled the in-house microbrewery. We were running a little late for Kà so they seated us in the bar with a nice bunch of other diners. The microbrewery sold me a $2 pint of a pretty decent American IPA. I shall say little about the boilermakers other than to note that they make one with Jägermeister and their own old fashioned “real brewed” Root Beer.

In Phoenix, the Windsor neighborhood bar and restaurant is right next door to an ice cream and candy shop. We took a trip down memory lane with the “penny” candies. That’s a place I’ve visited before (we were aghast that penny candy could cost more than quarter gasoline) but the food was great.

I’ve done a lot of walking. Time to change my feet.