Friday, April 6, 2012 by Dick.

In Mother Jones, Kevin Drum takes on Chris Mooney’s stance In The Republican Brain. The question both writers pose is “Who has been anti-science, and why?”

I know some people who are anti-science but they seem to come from all over the political spectrum. In fact, I know more liberals who support the false god of political science than conservatives who denounce the real thing. And that is the crux of the problem.

When Buster Door said to me, “You’re anti-science” he and his friends are mostly saying “You’re against what I oh-so-strongly believe.” They have no rigorous proof to back up either the claim or what they believe. NPR’s Ira Flatow who “barely grasped chemistry” is a good example of that.

“The science of climate change is fixed,” he says regularly on his weekly radio show, Science Friday. “Why can’t people just accept that [man causes it] and move on?”

I don’t think anyone would argue for a static climate. I don’t understand how anyone who has ever seen a 5-day weather forecast could argue that we know enough about climate to “fix the science” in Mr. Flatow’s favorite concrete.

Stephen Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time, “A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.”

The theory of anthropogenic climate change describes a smaller-and-smaller class of observations on the basis of a model that contains an increasing number of arbitrary elements. Many proponents ignore historically larger climate swings that do not fit the theory. Many proponents ignore solar influence that does not fit the theory. Many proponents ignore the inconvenient truth that new temperature data shows the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years which does not fit the theory.

Mr. Drum makes some good points but he overlooks the most obvious when he writes, “Doubt about climate change is obviously motivated by a dislike of the business regulation that would be necessary if we took climate change seriously…”

I just can’t see that.

I see that doubting anthropogenic climate change means we understand how science works.

And I see the political scientists of anthropogenic global weirding as worshipers of Ptolemy.

Pretty bright guy, our Ptolemy. His Harmonics defined music theory and the mathematics of music. His Geographia not only compiled world geography in the Roman Empire, but also used coordinates and established latitudes and longitudes. But he also believed the Earth was the center of the Universe. It took 1500 years before Copernicus could dispel that.

I know these pieces are always All About Me, but I also know I am not the center of the Universe.

If it takes us another 1500 years to understand that bankrupting ourselves on political science so we have nothing left to adapt to the looming colder or hotter lands and seas, we have indeed met the enemy.

He is us.

Posted in Global Warming, Weather, Newspaper "Science", Science (real), Politics & News, Random Access | 8 Comments »

Monday, April 2, 2012 by Dick.

Everything I know about history, I learned from Thomas B. Costain.

That would truly annoy Frank Wright, the exceptional high school history teacher from whom I also learned a lot. I tell the Costain story often. It is mostly the truth.

Canadian journalist and editor Thomas B. Costain published his first best-selling historical novel, For My Great Folly, at the age of 57. He had toiled in the writing trenches for most of his working life before Folly. Mr. Costain’s fiction relied so heavily on historic events that one reviewer said “it was hard to tell where history leaves off and apocrypha begins.” Mr. Costain made the story of Joseph of Arimathea and the lowly Basil of Antioch come alive for millions of Americans, including me. The Silver Chalice may have been the first historical novel I ever read.

I had read Chalice, the Tontine, Below the Salt, and the Last Plantagenets before leaving for college. My mom, a Swarthmore alum, also knew American writer James A. Michener and introduced me to his work as well.

Mr. Michener penned some of the best known sagas in literature, novels that spanned the lives of uncounted generations in exotic or previously under reported locales. He was known for his meticulous research which let him work the entire history of each region into his stories. I can almost say I know more about the Chesapeake Bay from reading Mr. Michener’s Chesapeake than from growing on the water there.

The Italian government lauded biographical novelist Irving Stone for the way he highlighted Italian history in the Agony and the Ecstasy, the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.

So.

How do we separate fact from fiction when our favorite novelists leaven their rising stories with actual history in search of a truth? Or in search of a good story?

It is hard, after reading Costain, not to mistake the Grail story as truth. It is hard, after reading Michener, not to mistake the many generations of the Buk, Bukowski, and Lubonski families as real.

Fast forward.

Jon Stewart is a brilliant satirist. Pew Research Center’s search for the most admired American journalist has Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, at Number 4, tied with actual news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS, and Anderson Cooper of CNN. Dan Rather? OK, it was a 2007 poll. The Daily Show does have pieces of substantive news but satire can’t handle the whole truth and Mr. Stewart has repeatedly insisted that he is only a comedian on a fake news show.

Monologist Mike Daisey played the Lane Series at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, Vermont, this weekend. His The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs has caused a national foofah over what is and what isn’t true in his monologue about Apple and its manufacturing practices in China. In January, NPR’s This American Life and its host, Ira Glass, published a critical 39-minute story that detailed the appalling Chinese iPhone plants, a program adapted from Mr. Daisey’s theatrical monologue.

Last weekend, Mr. Glass retracted the story.

The most admired reporter of our times, Edward R. Murrow said, “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.” From Costain to Michener to Stewart to Daisey to Survivor we’re blurring the line between truth and fiction.

We in the news business must be truthful. But most of all, we must remember that entertainment has no such need.

“Get the facts, Dick,” Frank Wright would tell me. “It’s not the truth without the facts.”

Of course, I’m not sure Mr. Wright ever watched “reality TV.”

Posted in Sociology, Society, Politics & News, PC, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Monday, March 26, 2012 by Dick.

At first glance this is a perfect project! 1.1 million dollars of Other People’s Money! Tourists screaming down a wire behind the galloping spiders and raccoons! 21 new full time jobs!

But wait. There’s more.

“A zip-line (also known as a flying fox, foofie slide, zip wire, aerial runway, aerial ropeslide, death slide, or tyrolean crossing) consists of a pulley suspended on a cable mounted on an incline… Zip-lines come in many forms, most often used as a means of entertainment. Longer and higher rides are often used as a means of accessing remote areas, such as a rainforest canopy. Zip-line tours are becoming popular vacation activities, found at outdoor adventure camps or upscale resorts…” ¹ 

The Florida Keys Land Trust’s mission is to save the tropical woodlands called “hardwood hammocks” in the Florida Keys. The Trust purchased 63 acres at Crane Point to save the unique homestead from development, about five years after we moved to the Keys. I don’t think the two events were related. The tropical forest there is home to rare and endangered species, a series of unique archaeological and historical finds, as well as a large thatch palm hammock, a hardwood hammock, a mangrove forest, tidal lagoons, wetland ponds, and the associated animal life.

Unfortunately, money is tight and conservation doesn’t grow on trees.

The Crane Point board wants to install six zip lines starting at the Cracker House and passing over the historic Adderley House and the Crane family’s 1959 home. Riders would zing over the butterfly meadows, the mangroves, and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Board asked the City of Marathon for a $735,000 state Community Development Block Grant and an additional $85,000 Tourist Development Council grant from the County.

The Monroe County Commission last week found a “significant cost discrepancy and heard residents’ concerns” so they tabled the Tourist Development Council grant.

I’m in the “Let’s not zip over the Hammock” category but I’m also in the “Let’s Bring in Some More Visitor Dollars” category.

I reckon that zip lines do indeed fall outside the Crane Point mission of preserving one little sparkling piece of the natural Keys. And there is that nagging little question of scaring the spiders.

If Crane Point wants zip lines, let’s install them over to Survivor Island instead. We could start from 20th Street (which ends at the now defunct Boot Key bridge) or from Sombrero Country Club. Maybe both, to go downhill out to Boot Key from 20th Street, then back to the golf course. I could see zip lines criss-crossing Boot Key itself and then making the long run up the verdant length of the golf course to cross the Overseas Highway and terminate at the Crane Point parking lot. I volunteer to take the first ride!

Let the Land and Sea Trust install and run the thing as a profit center for Crane Point.

We’ll just need to be careful of the dangly bits going over Boot Key Harbor.

See, a saltwater crocodile jumped a Key Largo dock to snatch a 65-pound dog named Roxie last week. The owners heard Roxie bark once. Then they heard a splash. Witnesses who included Florida FWCC officers, estimated the saltwater croc to be at least 10 feet long. It sprang at least four feet out of the water to snatch the mutt headfirst off the seawall.

Oops.

Posted in Local Issues, Business, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Monday, March 19, 2012 by Dick.

I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”

“An early adopter or lighthouse customer is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology; in politics, fashion, art, and other fields, this person would be referred to as a trendsetter.”

I’m not old enough to have bought RCA’s CT-100, the first production color TV, but I did carry the first battery powered transistor radio to my elementary school so I could be schooled in the proper musical offerings of WFIL.

And speaking of appliances, we were about the last on the block to get a television at all (it was a 19″ black-and-white RCA that my dad bought used for $75 in 1955) and the last to get a microwave oven. I bought that new, but it was by then deeply discounted.

The “early adopter tax” refers to the trend of new products costing more when they first go on sale than later in the product cycle.

I hate to pay taxes. Hate it.

On the other hand, my great-grandfather had the first railroad train in a front yard in Doe Run and we were the first on our block to own a boat.

I’m a gadget guy from a long line of gadget guys but since bright and shiny long words like early adopter never swayed us, we ended up buying what we needed at the time we needed it, rather than the moment it appeared on the market.

I may not have been the first kid to trade my slide rule for a calculator but I was certainly in the top few; that was in the days when a good K&E slip stick cost $29.95 and the nixie-tube, 4-function calculator cost $179.95, about six times that. Of course the calculator could add and subtract, something I have never done effectively on a slide rule.

I never owned an IBM 5150, but I did build a Sinclair ZX80 which I replaced with one of the early Commodore C-64s. I ran my first business on that Commodore computer and might still be using it today had not the spreadsheets gotten too large for storing on a single floppy disk. My friend Rufus has a Betamax somewhere. On the other hand, he gave up his Pulsar watch for a Casio C-801 about 30 seconds after it arrived on the market. He still has a couple of those.

Liz Arden switched briefly from a standalone GPS to the Google™-driven app in her smartfone. She just bought a new GPS because it works better.

Today, I travel with a GPS (see above paragraph), an iPod Touch which I use as my PDA, and a “feature” cellphone. I think that’s all I need for now. Of course, I’ll be on a great silver bird in the sky on Wednesday where I’ll find a Sky Mall in every seat pocket.

Is it time for lunch yet?

Posted in Business, Society, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Monday, March 12, 2012 by Dick.

One of my oldest friends sent me the Geezer Test! Are You “Older than Dirt?” It included a question that took me back 45 years.

How was Butch wax used?
a. To make floors shiny and prevent scuffing
b. To stiffen hair cut into a flattop so it stood up
c. On the wheels of roller skates to prevent rust

My granddaughter doesn’t understand my haircut.

There’s a (back)story. Of course, there is always a story. When I was born (OK, it’s a longish story) I was covered with fine, black hair that started at my eyebrows — or perhaps started as my eyebrows — and continued up, over, down my back, around my toes, and all the way back to my nose. My grandmother was aghast. And worried.

She needn’t have worried. Men’s hair falls out.

Mine did, but then a lot of it grew back.

My mom’s favorite baby picture of me as about an 18-month old came before my first ever haircut. My folks, having grown up in the Depression and then gone through WWII, considered the crew cut the height of fashion. They subjected me to the weekly travail of itchy fur down the back of my shirt all the way through high school.

In early 1921 Mathew Andis, Sr. built the first electric hair clipper but the John Oster Manufacturing Company became the USA industry standard in 1928. I never knew a barber without that particular sheep shearing implement.

I rebelled in senior high. It was the era of the Mop Top Beatles so I grew my crew cut out into a … flat top!

“A flattop is a type of very short hairstyle similar to the crew cut,” Wikipedia reports “with the exception that the hair on the top of the head is deliberately styled to stand up (typically no more than an inch) and is cut to be flat, resulting in a haircut that is square in shape. It is most often worn by men and boys, particularly those in the military and law enforcement in the United States.

“The haircut is usually done with electric clippers to cut the side and back hair to or near the scalp, and then more intricate cutting is done on the top hair to achieve a level plane. When cutting a new flattop, the top hair is usually cut to about an inch long, then blow-dried to stand up straight, and then finally cut with clippers and scissors to achieve the final look. Wax can be used to stiffen the front of the flattop.”

The real issue with a flat top is that it leaves a nearly bald strip right down the center of that aircraft carrier landing deck on the very top of one’s head. Some few flat top fanciers worry about drones landing there but that rarely happens here in the States.

I shaved my head for the Cap Cancer fund raiser and kept it shaved until about November of that year. It gets cold in Vermont about September. I let my hair grow out a little for insulation and discovered I had enough to square it off. Woo hoo!

A real flat top, baby! No butch wax, though.

I don’t exactly want to fess up to thinning hair but I am 62 now and the hair atop my head is still fine but no longer black. In fact, my beard is white and most of the hair above it is steel gray. About the same color as the navy paints its carriers. Unfortunately, the hair at my very crown is finer and whiter than anywhere else. It is very hard to see. Especially when it’s just 1/8″ long.

My granddaughter says it looks like I’m bald down the middle with a row of fence posts down the sides.

Kids have no sense of history.

Posted in History, About Me, Random Access | 9 Comments »

Monday, March 5, 2012 by Dick.

No plastic garbage bag will open from the end you first try.
– Internet wisdom

Good to know.

I’ve never had that problem since I use plastic grocery bags in all the garbage cans.

Back in the dark ages, a grocery store bag boy carefully placed all your perishables in one proud paper bag and your canned goods in a double bag and your sundries in a third paper bag. The bags themselves were designed with folds to make them stack easily and flat bottoms to make them simple to fill. My mom could usually get a couple more uses out of a bag — carting books to the library or supplies down to the boat — before using it to line the trash can. And a paper bag full of trash could be burned easily or composted or left to rot away in days at the dump.

When the grocery chains stopped asking “paper or plastic,” I had to substitute a plastic bag for the paper bag in the trash can.

Now the Far Green wants us to stop using plastic grocery bags because they clog the landfills. Grocers are happy to go along because the grocery bags cost them money and because we now have to buy something to handle our trash.

Common sales wisdom is that the most effective marketing campaign ever was the addition of a single word to a label. The story isn’t true (a marketing executive becomes an industry legend by adding the word REPEAT to shampoo bottles in writer John Cheever’s son Benjamin’s novel The Plagiarist — shampoo sales doubled overnight) but that’s marketing.

I reckon the most effective marketing campaign ever was crafted when Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen, and Frank Plomp invented a product whose only purpose is to be thrown away.

Let’s examine that in light of our new, Far Green, sensibility.

“A bin bag, swag sack or bin liner or garbage bag or trash bag is a disposable bag used to contain rubbish or trash,” says Wikipedia. The only reason you buy a garbage bag is to throw it away.

Sheesh.

“Most commonly, the plastic used to make bin bags is the rather soft and flexible LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene) or, for strength, LLDPE (Linear Low Density Polyethylene) or HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) are sometimes used.

“Some bags are made of biodegradable polythene film. These will decompose when exposed to air, sun, and moisture or submitted for composting. They do not readily decompose in a sealed landfill. They are also considered a possible contaminant to plastic recycling operations.”

That’s good news. Not.

“Kind of makes you wonder what else the environmentalists got wrong,” Rufus muttered.

Anne and I both reuse grocery bags to cart books to and from the library. I’ve reused them to protect my cellphone in the rain and to carry a dripping towel from the beach. Rufus stores spent coffee grounds (which he figured is redundant) to use later as mulch. And we have never, ever had trouble opening a grocery bag to refill it with either stuff or trash.

For the record, no plastic produce bag will open from the end you first try, either, despite the HUGE green arrow printed onnit.

“Wet your fingertips first,” Rufus said. “It works much better.”

That’s exactly correct, as long as you actually try the end with the HUGE green arrow.

Posted in Business, Society, Random Access | 7 Comments »