Safira

The funniest sentence I have read in a while:

Since our world is currently under the iron grip of a consortium that includes 4chan and The Onion’s editorial board, the Nobel Peace Prize was just accepted by a man currently escalating a land war in Asia.

A workshop on government openness that is closed to public.

Explore the fabulous ruins of Detroit, a city that has lost half its population since the 1950s and used to have the highest median household income in the US (it now comes 66th out of 68). Visually. And also. The last is particularly powerful.

Do not donate any food with transfat to homeless shelters in New York, for the law requires them to throw it away.

A $100,000 Congressional earmark for a library in Jamestown South Carolina became $100,000 for Jamestown California which does not have a library.

About the politics of ressentiment:

Conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag.

Further elaborated:

What we’re seeing is the natural sentiment of people who think of themselves as quintessentially American looking at an American popular and public culture that presents them as marginal.

The Confederacy was not a good example of small government.

FDR in 1934, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Dubya in 2002 were the only times the Administration’s Party gained in both Houses of Congress in a midterm election.

Nice discussion of the role of corporations in US politics and this Administration in particular.

Suggesting there is a lot of misogyny on the American left. Further discussion here.

Senator Joe Lieberman is not cooperating on health care reform, so he’s stupid, wicked and his being a Jew matters. The polling numbers, of course, have nothing to do with it (and presumably show that a majority of the American public is wicked, stupid, etc).

Sarah Palin is more respected by the American public than Al Gore.

President Obama’s poll numbers continue to slide. So that Gov. Palin’s approval rating and his are very close.

I don't seem to be as broken this year as I have been other years. It's only 2 days since christmas and my mind is overflowing with the things I'd like to get done. Here are some of the things on the top. I'll use this whenever I get bored.

Repaint the hallway floor
Reorganise my books - get my authors together
Sort out my bedroom, throw out clothes, put away others and revise clothing storage so I don't have to throw them all in a pile
Finish sorting out Rose's room - organise better clothes storage and get rid of stuff that doesn't fit
Install new kitchen cabinets so I don't have to have cutlery in a drawer on a chair
Paint the wall above the stove
Finish assimilating stuff from giving Rose her own room and find more room in the Family room
Rearrange the television corner so it isn't
Justify buying a new TV that we can use to watch iview and photos from our laptops
Rearrange the backyard to fit more vegie garden and a chook run
Build a medieval kitchen shack with my friends
Finish the plumbing for sjkasabi
Spend an hour a day driving with MsNotaGoth in preparation for her driving test
Buy ceiling fans for our bedrooms
Resolve the lighting in the Family room so we can install ceiling fans without suffering from flicker but keep the room as a workroom (we have strip fluorescent lights, ugly but very functional)
Draw up sjkasabi 's existing kitchen and laundry to scale so she and martinlemechant can draw all over it
Arrange printing of the business cards that monstah so cleverly designed, but I never got to.
Make Mr-bassman's christmas present
Make Mrpeacock's christmas present
Take Sneetch shopping for his christmas present
Work out what to give MsNotaGoth for christmas
Have a faux christmas day with pancakes, a tree, a large lunch and all my children
Spend a day sewing with rain_and_snow
Organise/build composting toilets for Surveying

and, to make sure I can cross some things off this list in 17 days;

Read several books
Nap when necessary
Go to a New Years Eve party
Sleep in

I'm really sleepy, I think I'm having a much needed crash. It's not that Christmas was a big deal this year but it's a deal nonetheless.

And I think hobbling round on one foot since spraining one of the pair on Monday is taking its toll. Having said that, it's doing quite well. I've not got it strapped up today, nor am I using crutches. I'm just keeping off it and limping when I can't.

Also, Wednesday was infusion day at the hospital and instead of being out by noon, which is roughly when they expect you to be done, I was there until just before five. They had trouble finding a vein, then they had trouble finding a doctor who was willing to look for one. So at about 11:30AM one of the gastro doctors that I know came down and found a vein within moments and things finally got started.

Thursday was a lovely day here, friend over to celebrate the birthday of 10B and later to do a Christmas gift exchange. Yesterday was a very quiet Christmas with 10B and his Mum-In-Law.

We both got really glum last night. For me it was missing Mum and Dad and the general post-Chrissy blues.

I failed to make it to church again, but that was an unrealistic thought. This year I was quite well organised for the holiday, enough that even spraining my foot at the last moment really didn't mess things up. I also failed to give myself time to think about family and absent loved ones, which is why it felled me in the evening.

I do so miss Mum and Dad. And my siblings (in some ways) and my childhood. And I do bloody wish my family could get things sorted about having Mum and Dad's ashes interred somewhere other than in Eldest Brother's laundry on one of the Ikea storage shelves. I want somewhere where I can go and sit occasionally. It's not that I can't sit in his laundry, in fact I have often sat in his laundry when I visit - that's where the downstairs toilet is - but it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

My family's protestantism really does go too far sometimes, with it's total rejection of sacred space and ritual. Object really are just objects and are never to be infused with anything. I occasionally suspect that if left to my own devices long enough I'd wind up converting to Roman Catholicism, and probably going to the local RC church that does the full Latin mass just because I long for external signs of meaning that come with the trappings of Catholic space. And I love the way they can worship without really having to pay attention to each other and make nice all the fucking time.

Or it could just be that my family are shit at getting things organised. In my hankering for meaning and connection this summer, I pondered a visit to my grandparents grave, which isn't too far away, but Grandpa's name still isn't on the headstone and he died in 1974. I discovered this oversight about 15 years ago. I mentioned it to Dad at the time, he gave me his pretend-wise smile and said in his play-superior tone that we were not a family that worried about such temporal matters. And then he muttered something about how he'd mention it to one of my uncles who could probably sort it out, but it certainly hadn't happenned last time I looked.

Maybe I should do it.

And let's face it, my grandparents were buried rather than cremated because they believed in bodily resurrection on Judgement Day, which rather suggests that the rejection of all things temporal and worldy is a modern affectation and really just an excuse for being slack. Not to mention a recipe for a serious case of the glums on Christmas Day because if you want to go and commune with absent loved ones you have to stand at a grave with an incomplete list of occupants or sit on the toilet in your eldest brother's laundry.

~~~

In other news, Pachelbel Cat is eating well and generally doing a very good impression of a geriatric but lively enough cat. Way too thin, but very much herself nonetheless.

Outer atmosphere is apparently cooling significantly. (The interaction with CO2 emissions is complicated.)

Nice short discussion on the lack of any recent warming trend. There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995. Paper claiming Earth has a “saturated greenhouse effect”.

A new paper argues that CFC’s and cosmic rays are the main drivers of climate change and predicts 50 years of cooling. The paper.

Paper on the scientific literature and the global cooling scare of the 1970s:

Climate science as we know it today did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s.

Which should give us pause on several grounds.

About Greenland’s glaciers:

This positive feedback loop was a bad news surprise that our climate models did not predict. Now we have evidence of a good news surprise that no model predicted--a negative feedback loop that acts to keep the southeast portion of Greenland's Ice Sheet from runaway glacial acceleration. We can expect many more surprises--good and bad--over the coming decades, as our climate responds to the huge shove human activities are giving it.

James Randi has come out as an AGW sceptic: about that. A sceptical website that nails its colours to its URL. Bob Carter responds to Barry Jones about scepticism and science. Website that provides clickable surface temperature data.

A taxonomy of belief on climate change. Recharacterising the model. Characterising American public opinion into six categories from the alarmed to the dismissive. The full report (pdf).

Copenhagen is the sort of place where Hugo Chavez’s grievance and revolutionary rhetoric gets a standing ovation. Drawing conclusions from Hugo Chavez’s standing ovation.

The summit ends in anger and confusion:

Tempers flared during an all-night plenary session, held after most of 120 visiting world leaders had left.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese negotiator, said the draft text asked “Africa to sign a suicide pact”.
One Saudi delegate said it was without doubt “the worst plenary I have ever attended.”

A very limited agreement. At Copenhagen, the commas really, really matter. Suggesting Oz did not get such a good deal. The summit generated a great deal of plane travel and enormous amounts of paper. Noting there are a few definitional issues over what constitutes “climate aid”.

Defending the environmental impact of farm animals. More.

About the green movement’s “people problem”.

Answering objections to the nuclear option.

Reading through the 2,000 pages of the Climategate emails:

But as the email story unfolds over the years, it is clear that the history of climate and temperature change over the past 10,000 years remains mostly speculative and largely unknown. The emails also imply that, in part because the past is so unknown, any attempt at long-range forecasts is, at best, uncertain.
Also clear is that the official science on climate change as we know it today, looking backward and forward, has been developed and controlled by the relatively small collection of scientists who wrote most of the emails. Working directly or indirectly for the IPCC, the scientists seem to have become captive of that organization’s objectives, which was to find “the hand of man” in climate records to justify plans to change the climate in future. The scientists, in other words, became engaged in the all-too-familiar business of decision-based evidence making. …
If the emails show anything on the climate scenarios, it is that the 100-year science projections never really got settled. They were a product of climate and economic models that remained problematic all through the 13 -year email record. Equally uncertain were the attempts to reconstruct paleoclimate records going back 1,000 years.

Part two:

If temperature history is the “only” way to test climate models, the tests we have on hand — mainly the shaky temperature history of the last 1,000 or 2,000 years — suggest current climate models are not getting a proper scientific workout. …
Over the next 10 years, the emails become a zone of internal conflict and external battles to suppress criticism, ridicule critics and resist all outside interference with the official science story they had assembled: The late 20th century was the warmest in history, and the next 100 years could be a climate nightmare.
The Mann technique of aggressive intervention in the peer-review process over Mr. Briffa’s work sets the tone for what would become a major strategy as all the scientists within the IPCC loop waged war on any science and papers that contravened or questioned the official view. …
The emails reinforce the worst of suspicions that the official scientific community did all they could to smear Mr. McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick, prevent publication of the work of skeptics, manipulate the peer-review process and isolate all skeptics as cranks. …
Exactly who did what with which data requires a full investigation by competent scientists and official bodies.

A post with lots of Climategate links. Michael Mann insists the scientific case for CAGW is still solid. About William Connelley’s role in making sure Wikipedia™ kept to the agreed line:

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.

If you are trying to “save the planet” of course it is entirely legitimate to deny the “enemies of salvation” a forum. A case study of how the CRUtape crew manipulated the peer review process. Comment from a physicist experienced in the peer review process. Much of the “nothing to see here attitude” comes from people who take it for granted that you do whatever is required to ban “illegitimate” ideas from having any standing, for error has no rights.

Nice TED talk on how basic religious beliefs affect business (and other) practices.

A website on how gays and lesbians can be good Christians.

Poll finds that American liberals are far more likely to believe they are in touch with the dead, in ghosts, in fortune tellers, reincarnation, yoga, spiritual energy and astrology than American conservatives. They are equally likely to believe in the evil eye, however.

About the Christian origins of AA and the experience of going to AA in the US in the noughties.

Putting gun ownership in a Jewish religious context.

The Murphy Report on priestly child abuse which found that Church hierarchs spent four decades hiding evidence to protect the reputation of the Church appears to be ending political deference to the Catholic Church in Ireland. Saying it even more pithily.

Melbourne police reportedly angry over Church investigator tipping off a priest subject to investigation. Toowoomba magistrate scathing about Catholic Education Office handling of child abuse allegations.

About Bishop Ussher and the difficulties of biblical creationism.

How the Nazis tried to that the Christianity out of Christmas.

About the Islamic push for global blasphemy laws.

About the difficulties in translation and commentary of the Qur’an.

The remnant of Yemen’s Jews (one of the oldest Diaspora communities) is being quietly evacuated.

About anti-Semitism in the Muslim Middle East:

The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst.

An iman previously known for preaching hatred and violence has publicly forsworn violence in peaceful countries such as Germany. An abridged version of the letter. About jihadis walking away from the cause.

Arguing social conservatives should see Muslims as allies:

The overwhelming majority of Muslims, by contrast, are traditional. We need to work with them to fight against liberal cultural imperialism in their countries. I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.

About the difference between orthodoxy and traditionalism.

The Swiss vote to ban new minarets as a sign of rising anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe and the issue of reciprocity:

A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar's first-ever church, opened last year, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary's priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: "The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities." And when the Christians of a town in upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of "laborious negotiation, pleading and grappling with the authorities", won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

On the other hand. One Swiss engages in his own protest over the ban.

A personal remembrance and appreciation of Brittany Murphy.

A scene from The Matrix done as Lego™ stop motion.

A wonderful 70 minute takedown of Phantom Menace.

About an aid charity ad that is wrong on so many levels.

The BBC decides “should homosexuals be killed?’ is a question to put to viewers.

About Siouxsie and the Banshees and the origins of the Goth.

Why quality TV drama is booming in the US and fading in the UK. (It is the old story of vigorous competition versus stifling monopoly.)

About how graphic content sells less movies than the lack of it.

William Shatner interviews Rush Limbaugh: a fun interview.

Ideologically targeting a up-and-coming young (British) actor. About that.

Moves afoot in the UK to wind back the global use of English courts to sue for libel. Tiger Woods provides a splendid example of the problem.

The Lupe Velez story.

The film An Education as a study in anti-Semitic stereotypes:

My husband and the two friends with whom I went to see “An Education” did not initially recognize the stereotypes in the film. They had never experienced anti-Semitism; they had never felt like strangers in an inhospitable culture. They had never seen a Nazi propaganda film. The wandering Jew was unfamiliar to them — and perhaps meaningless in America, a land of immigrants, pioneers and vagabonds.
On the other hand, my close friend, Julia Ribak, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, found the movie deeply disturbing. Her mother had often described the hateful images of Jews that resulted in Auschwitz. “The movie is a magnificent and nasty creation of propaganda,” Julia e-mailed me. “The writer managed to include everything ... everything that would make the viewer of the film walk away hating Jews!”

And also.

Associated Press thought the Climategate emails were worth 5 reporters: Sarah Palin’s biography was worth 11. Pointing out that one AP reporter is, in reporting on the Climategate emails, reporting on himself. A Guardian blogger is unhappy that a BBC reporter is not holding the line properly. The creator of Not Evil Just Wrong has some fun at Copenhagen in a Polar Bear suit … A seasonal carol: the 12 days of global warming. A former BBC science populariser booed off stage at an audience of liberal atheists for doubting CAGW: it is OK to be sceptical about God but you shouldn’t insult religious beliefs like that.

The Tehran Times runs Fidel Castro on Copenhagen. So does the Sydney Morning Herald.

About hiding behind the mantra of “science” and patent double standards:

When a business accused of fraud begins shredding its memos and deleting its e-mails, the media are quick to proclaim these actions as signs of guilt. But, after the global warming advocates began a systematic destruction of evidence, the big television networks went for days without even reporting these facts, much less commenting on them. …
People who have in the past applauded whistleblowers in business, in the military, or in Republican administrations, and who lionized the New York Times for publishing the classified Pentagon papers, are now shocked and outraged that someone dared to expose massive evidence of manipulations, concealment and destruction of data — and deliberate cover-ups of all this — in the global warming establishment.

In Oz, The Age and the ABC had more coverage, more quickly, of the Quadrant footnote scam than they have had of the CRUtape letters: which says so much.

It's done. Application sent. Now I wait. And worry.

I have done the party shopping, some weeding and put the BBQ together. (next step is testing for gas leaks. I may wait for company 8->

It is officially TOO BLOODY HOT.

I am having a little rest before doing some backyard tidying. Time to turn on the spa!

Salami and parmesan cheese are apparently dangerous stuff when wielded by angry Germans.

About the false rumour that was the initial trigger of the Velvet Revolution.

The British Foreign Office as (Armenian) genocide denier.

News report on extensive “carousel fraud” in the EU carbon trading system. More fun and games with carbon trading scams.

Viscount Monckton gets knocked out by a Danish policeman at Copenhagen:

We must make reasonable allowance for the fact that the unspeakable security service of the UN, which is universally detested by those at this conference, was ordering the Danish police about. The tension between the alien force and the indigenous men on the ground had grown throughout the conference.
However, the Danish police were far too free with their hands when pushing us around, and that is not acceptable in a free society. But then, Europe is no longer a free society. It is, in effect, a tyranny ruled by the unelected Kommissars of the European Union. That is perhaps one reason why police forces throughout Europe, including that in the UK, have become far more brutal than was once acceptable in their treatment of the citizens they are sworn to serve.

Anti-terror regulations over use of cameras is causing angst in London:

Some fear that if the situation continues, a gradual process of attrition will mean that in a few years' time people will feel too nervous about what they are and are not allowed to do, and that they will stop taking photographs of public buildings altogether.
'There is a danger to journalism,' says the British Press Photographers Association's Jeff Moore, 'because this is impeding the way we can report. And what about our pictorial history?
'When we think of the past, we think of iconic images, like the one taken by Bert Hardy of two women sitting on railings on the seafront with their skirts blowing around their waist. But if things go on, we run the risk that the visual history of our country will not be recorded.
'We won't have anything like that in future. It will only be recorded by the state, through police pictures, or security firms, through CCTV cameras.'
Then Big Brother really will have triumphed.

Survivors of the WWII generation report feeling deeply alienated from modern Britain:

As a group, they feel furious at not being able to speak their minds.
They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech.

President Obama not going to the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall gets a bit of criticism. Part of a general pattern of European liberals/left becoming increasingly disenchanted with President Obama.

All the major Parties in the UK accept an active state, but how and to what ends? London Lord Mayor Boris Johnson takes a hands-on approach to crime reduction. An ex-soldier faces 5 years gaol for handing in a shotgun he found. Parents have been banned from playing with their children in parks because they have not been vetted by police. Mother fined for feeding ducks (but not her one-year old because he was too young to prosecute). Police reported a pregnant woman to social services because her house was half-decorated. It is proposed to give health inspectors powers to enter homes to check that parents are protecting their children from household accidents. Phone and email messages are to be stored for a year and made available to 653 UK government agencies without the need for any warrant. Almost 80% of Britons polled think their freedoms are being eroded.

About a dystopian German novel that predicted socialism banning immigration 70 years before the Wall went up. The SPD picks a new leader and worries about its future after its worst national vote in decades.

Brief observations on Ukraine:

Traveling from the eastern edge of the European Union into Ukraine is educational, to say the least. Romania, Hungary, Poland, and other formerly Eastern bloc countries have largely recovered from communism, but much of Ukraine outside Kiev is still ruined. It still hasn't fully recovered from Soviet collectivization, the genocidal terror-famine, the Stalinist purges, and dekulakization. Kiev is a magnificent city and Crimea is a jewel, but large parts of the countryside feel haunted and doomed.

Photos of Eastern European cities.

The effect of religious competition on Hannukah in the US.

Being positive about China’s prospects.

Israel is getting a toll way to cope with Tel Aviv traffic congestion.

Nice post and commentary on the problems (particularly wasteful bureaucratisation) and virtues of the UN.

Useful February 2009 speech by senior Bank of England official on why bank stress-testing failed (pdf). The European monetary union is having the sort of negative effects critics said it would. Symposium of views on whether central banks should target (pdf) asset prices. Suggesting that NZ Labour is mistaken in abandoning the inflation targeting it pioneered. Suggestions for reforming the Fed: it is not clear to me that the case for having central banks as money-supply-managers is actually cut-and-dried given their doubtful record over last 100 years.

For those who have not had the pleasure, a paper on (pdf) the Baptists and bootleggers theory of regulation by its originator. A relevant blog post with a great title. Pointing out that there is a fair bit of socialism in the American West. About the optimal size of government.

In contemporary Germany, even tax collection can be run at a loss:

Germany spent more than 30 times as much collecting taxes on coffee beans ordered online from abroad than it received in the tax revenues, the accounting office said on Tuesday.

Nice presentation of the context and operation of the Oz fiscal stimulus. The comparative data on public debt among Western countries is also useful. Tony Makin argues that the fiscal stimulus has driven the exchange rate up and discouraged exports. His paper (pdf). More. A Critiquing the Treasury case on the stimulus.

About evidence that foreign aid depresses export growth, probably through exchange rate effects. The paper (pdf).

The “demise” of US manufacturing is greatly exaggerated:

If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world's third largest economy. It would also be larger than the entire economies of India and Russia combined.

Now Ginnie Mae is doing its bit to corrupt the US mortgage market: when will they stop this nonsense?

The trouble signs surrounding Lend America had been building for years. A top executive was convicted of mortgage fraud but still helped run the company. Home loans made by its headquarters were defaulting at an extremely high rate. Federal prosecutors alleged in a civil suit that the company falsified loan documents and committed fraud.
Yet despite these red flags, a little-known federal agency continued giving its blessing to Lend America, allowing it to do business in the name of the U.S. government.

Comparing policy performance cross selected US States (pdf):

… policy changes also have unpredictable, unintended consequences. For example, policymakers never intended the War on Drugs to lead to a many-fold increase in the THC potency of marijuana, but that’s exactly what has happened. …
Over decades of research and dozens of studies, not one time did researchers find that limiting government reduces people’s income. This evidence is very strong. …
The evidence is very clear. States with the smallest growth in government experienced the best growth in desirable attributes. States with the largest growth in government experienced the worst growth in desirable attributes. States with middling growth in government experience middling growth in the desirable characteristics of societies.

San Francisco as a case of truly epic government failure:

Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.
It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short. …
This is a union town. You can't reform the city charter without winning an election; winning an election requires union support; and unions — almost by definition — don't want major reform. It would be a paradox — but that would contravene a number of union bylaws.
You can't get San Francisco running efficiently, because that would require large numbers of unionized city workers to willingly admit their redundancy and wastefulness. Inefficiency pays their salaries.

Study finds growth limits are elevating Auckland land prices:

… land just inside Auckland’s MUL, or growth limits, was valued at approximately 10 times land that is just outside the boundary.

The paper.

Kiwi Parliamentarians having a lot of fun during Question time.

Oz ranks in top 10 of gender-equal countries according to World Economic Forum.

About the Oz diaspora (many whom are in fact migrants who have returned to their original countries).

Australians have the world’s biggest houses.

Raising a few issues on the Rudd Government’s regulation of non-married couples.

Suuggesting that Federal involvement in urban planning will not improve matters. About the lack of evidence-based urban planning in Oz.

RBA Director suggests Rudd Government’s second stimulus package was too big, gets dropped from Science Council.

Tony Abbott is the new Opposition Leader. His ascension does not seem to have hurt the Liberal vote in the two by-elections. A hostile analysis of the politics of Clive Hamilton:

It's a sign of the decline of Left politics that a reactionary, pro-censorship sexual moraliser who hates the idea of working people enjoying a higher material standard of living could ever be considered left-wing.

In Bradfield, the Australian Sex Party did better than the 9(!) candidates for Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats combined while the Greens only picked up a little over half the ALP primary vote and the Libs had a small swing against them on primary votes. In Higgins, the Greens picked up about two-thirds of the ALP primary vote, with a much higher profile candidate but the Libs managed to maintain their primary vote.

About ideas in politics and the travails of the Liberal Party.

Calling for Federal intervention in the NSW ALP (basically on the grounds that the polling is so bad there is no downside).

The NZ Opposition Labour Party withdraws support for inflation targeting.

Premier Brumby and the Victorian ALP government are doing well in the polls: Brumby is rather keener on making decisions than his predecessor, it seems to be paying off.

Some observations about how Oz policy debate looks from the US:

Australia lacks America's bottomless think-tank and K Street resources for publicizing policy differences. Its parliamentary government puts all the policy levers, including a ready resort to secrecy, in the ruling party's hands. Australia is a small nation, with a small elite that tends to place limits on burn-the-bridges debate.
This may sound ideal to Americans, but the results aren't always good, says Mr. Burgess. Australia, like America, has its "wingnuts," he says, but they don't get a hearing. "There's no sharpening of issues. Policy ideas aren't fully vetted."
The NBN, a tremendously awful idea, is a case in point. The government wants to spend $39 billion to deliver 100 megabits to every household in the next decade, without the slightest idea how it might be done commercially or whether customers, who already can get 21 megabits through wireless in most of the country, would be willing to support NBN's huge costs.

Unions blamed Family First Chair (and H R Nicholls Society Board member) Bob Day for keeping the Construction Authority going: Bob will be proud.

Gggnnnnnhhhh.

I have hurt my left foot. According to my GP, something's torn ...possibly broken(but less likely). She has strapped it for me and told me to make sure the crutches 10B will be heading off to get for me this evening are small enough, because you're not supposed to actually have them up under your armpits. We're not worrying about x-rays on account of the treatment being the same regardless of what's happenned - keep it elevated and strapped to keep it comfortable. It's going to hurt a lot for a few days and then heal slowly over some weeks.

It's okay when it's elevated and when there's no pressure on it, and now the strapping is helping a bit too. It's pressure, but even pressure I guess and it makes sudden movement less likely,

But- blah! ( Swear words, quite a few. )

I can't even find a suitable way to limp! I can crawl and I can do a small amount of swivelling and furniture-walking/hopping, but none of these are ideal options for a grossly unfit person with ME/CFS, no matter how well I've been lately.

I'm in the front room, with the commode chair and all the other basics. Come to think of it, right now it's rather fortunate that I'm used to the couch based lifestyle or I'd be really flailing. Although it's also rather sucky to be wasting a good spell lying down.

I am assuming that I'll be able to manage the toilet and kitchen with crutches, and I do already own a wheelchair for Wednesday's appointment (I was going to try without it, but not now) and of course Bazza my trusted mobility scooter will be there as soon as I feel ready.

Ha! And with a bandage on my foot, for once I'll feel less awkward about being seen on him. Mind you, I'll also feel more vulnerable because in an emergency there's no chance I can do a sudden burst of energy to protect myself.

It happenned while I was doing was walking to the toilet. For reasons best known to itself, the front outside of my left foot decided to curl under the rest of me and down I went. Stupid foot. I'm sure you'll be pleased to know I still got there in time, because the profound anxiety about incontinence due to undue stress on toilet training during infancy force is strong in this one.


I'm dealing. Bloody annoyed, but dealing.


~~~

For once having the commode in the study with me isn't a horror to be avoided at all costs. Having it in here on account of ME/CFS was (and still is) too hard - I preferred to stay couped up in the bedroom (nearer to the toilet) for months rather than use it - but I feel quite okay about having it in here because I have an injury. For a while I had it in the bathroom near the bedroom because it was a few metres closer than the loo, and at that point that few metres was critical, but even that ended ASAP.

Fucked up attitude to chronic illness in here somewhere, do you think?

Damage analysis on the (pdf) battlecruiser IJS Kirishima, sunk by the USS Washington at close range off Guadacanal in 1942, whose underwater wreck has now been explored. Further details.

Study finds that Al Qaeda has killed eight times as many Muslims as non-Muslims. The study (pdf). Historian Michael Burleigh looks back on a decade of terrorism:

Intelligence experts reckon there are probably 120 core al-Qaeda operatives, their overriding concern being to get through each night still in one piece by day break.

Using drones to target Al-Qaeda and related insurgents in Pakistan. Yemeni forces strike at al-Qaeda militants. US special forces have been sent to Yemen to train local troops amid fears of the stability of the Yemeni state.

Paper on the effect of Pakistani possession of nuclear weapons in encouraging conventional conflict in South Asia.

About the misreading the Iranian regime and the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran:

if Iran achieves nuclear capability, transnational Islamic terrorism will be sheltered by a nuclear umbrella, a deterrence—military and diplomatic—that will shield them from any consequences of their terrorist outrages. Further, nuclear weapons—suitcase dirty bombs—will proliferate among non-state Islamic terrorists, and nuclear blackmail will become coin of the realm.

A former intelligence and nuclear affairs specialist for the French Government on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. Public opinion in Arab countries has shifted to seeing Iran as a great threat than Israel.

About the dangers that Obama’s realism might be read as weakness.

The destructive delusions of Hezbollah:

Hezbollah's new manifesto condemns the United States as the "root of all terror," and a "danger that threatens the whole world." The document also reiterates the call for the destruction of Israel, describing the need to "liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa" as a "religious duty" for all Muslims. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that these sentiments are intended for the printed page only. Indeed, recent visitors to Lebanon speak of a high, almost delusional state of morale among circles affiliated with Hezbollah. In the closed world around the movement, it is sincerely believed that the next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be part of a greater conflict in which Israel will be destroyed.

Discussing killing a bomb-armed terrorist in a crowded supermarket. About Israeli women with guns.

About the data-mess and entangling bureaucracy that Coalition forces face in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report (pdf). A case in point:

THE Taliban commander was back in the village. Our base roared to life as we prepared to capture him. Two Chinook helicopters spun their blades in anticipation in the dark. Fifty Afghan commandos brooded outside, pacing in the gravel. I was nearby, yelling into a phone: “Who else do we need approvals from? Another colonel? Why?”
A villager had come in that afternoon to tell us that a Taliban commander known for his deployment of suicide bombers was threatening the elders. The villager had come to my unit, a detachment of the United States Army stationed in eastern Afghanistan, for help.
Mindful of orders to protect the civilian population, we developed a plan with the Afghan commandos to arrest the Taliban commander that evening before he moved back into Pakistan. While the troops prepared, I spent hours on the phone trying to convince the 11 separate Afghan, American and international forces authorities who needed to sign off to agree on a plan.
Some couldn’t be found. Some liked the idea, others suggested revisions. The plan evolved. Hours passed. The cellphone in the corner rang. “Where are you?” the villager asked urgently. The Taliban commander was drinking tea, he said.
At 5 a.m. the Afghan commandos gave up on us and went home. The helicopters powered down. The sun rose. I was still on the phone trying to arrange approvals. Intelligence arrived indicating that the Taliban commander had moved on. The villagers were incredulous.
This incident is typical of what I saw during my six-month tour in Afghanistan this year. We were paralyzed by red tape, beaten by our own team. Our answer to Afghans seeking help was: “I can’t come today or tomorrow, but maybe next week. I have several bosses that I need to ask for permission.”

Seeing Afghanistan as a war that is itself, not through the prism of quite different conflicts:

Since the 2001 invasion, U.S. soldiers have come and gone from the Arghandab, but we’ve never had enough soldiers to sit still. More recently, the Canadians made jabs at Arghandab but did not get far. Some people believe the Canadians have been militarily defeated in their battlespace. No US officer has told me that the Canadians have been defeated, and none have denied it. There is no doubt that Canadian troops earned much respect, and that more that more than 130 paid the ultimate price.
On current course, Canada will have fully retreated by 2011. This is crucial: the enemy realizes that our greatest weakness is Coalition cohesion and they have defeated what was an important partner.

An ordinary ambush. About the work of a British bomb-disposal sergeant killed on his last day of his tour. Electrification effort that fails to come together.

So all that business about learning to use a soldering iron actually paid off.

I'm feeling quite pleased with my handiwork but I must confess Cylon Santa has been up and menacing the neighbourhood since Friday because I couldn't work out the video setting on my camera until today. (It turns out it's the red button. You press once to start, once to stop. Who'd've thunk it?)



The Cylon kit is from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. The ghastly Santa head is from one of the local two-dollar shops.

It is confirmed: all young men watch porn:

“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn't find any.”
Although hampered in its original aim, the study did examined the habits of those young men who used pornography – which would appear to be all of them.

Tool using among octopi: the footage of the octopus with the coconut shell is lots of fun.

Expensive running shoes do not appear to be a good investment. Via qamar.

How Climategate shows the CRU should have gone the open source way:

Once you’ve looked at a few code snippets you begin to understand that the guys at the CRU would have benefited from contracting it out to the free software community. We all know the mantra from the culture of the bazaar, that many eyes makes for shallow bugs. Pity the hubris of the scientists didn’t put out a call to the open source community for freely given expertise. It could have saved them grief.

The CERN super-collider as an example of how to use open source software in science.

Nice discussion of what Paul Samuelson called Milton Friedman’s “F-twist”: the notion that the plausibility of the assumptions of a theory do not matter, only whether it achieves empirical verification.

The expansion in human DNA data is likely to have ideological implications.

Poll data from the US on how scientist’s self-identification and public perception of scientists are quite different.

On not over-stating the power of peer review:

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability -- not the validity -- of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.

A review study of polar bear populations (pdf).

About changes in fertility:

Most of the developing countries where fertility rates have fallen sharply in the last 20 years are places like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Brazil, which have had relative political stability and solid economic growth. Because there are so many such countries, there's reason to be optimistic on the global population front. But in countries that aren't seeing political stability or sustainable economic growth, and where women are illiterate and repressed—countries like Afghanistan, or Yemen—fertility is running disastrously high.

The story of a African kid who decided to build a windmill …

The villagers have also stopped using kerosene, which means they no longer breathe in the toxic fumes and can use the money previously slated for fuel to buy other things. Kamkwamba’s example has now inspired other kids in the village to pursue science. Where previously they had no futures, Kamkwamba says they now see that if they put their mind to something, they can achieve.
“It has changed the way people think,” he says.

The US military is finding it has more data than it knows what to do with. About Google™Earth, military bases and using drones. Insurgents have been using cheap software to tap into the drone information feeds. And into US warplane data feeds. Claims that the problem has been fixed.

Arguing about how often to do mammograms.

About the US role in health innovation:

I three of the four general categories of innovation examined in this paper — basic science, diagnostics, and therapeutics — the United States has contributed more than any other country, and in some cases, more than all other countries combined.

About the growth in authorship:

We found that the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries. By 2000, there were 1 million book authors per year. One million authors is a lot, but they are only a tiny fraction, 0.01 percent, of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including books and new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. That’s 100 times faster. Authors, once a select minority, will soon be a majority.

About defining gender and the Caster Semenya case:

South Africans have been appalled by the idea of a person who thinks she is one thing suddenly being told that she is something else. The classification and reclassification of human beings has a haunted history in this country. …
Unfortunately for I.A.A.F. officials, they are faced with a question that no one has ever been able to answer: what is the ultimate difference between a man and a woman? “This is not a solvable problem,” Alice Dreger said. “People always press me: ‘Isn’t there one marker we can use?’ No. We couldn’t then and we can’t now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that’s what it means to be male.”
In 2000, Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology at Brown University, conducted what remains the study of record on the frequency of intersexuality, and concluded that 1.7 per cent of the population develops in a way that deviates from the standard definition of male or female. …
We depend on gender to make sense of sexuality, society, and ourselves. We do not wish to see it dissolve.

It is one to thing to create categories of the human, it is quite another to use them to define the human.

Today I went to an ACF rally about Climate Change, and a woman from Tuvulu talked about higher king tides washing away houses and farmland.  And then, as I was reading an article suggesting that the current cuts suggested at Copenhagen are still likely to result in a 3 degree temperature rise, I suddenly thought, "hey, the disaster's really going to happen this time".

When I thought about my response,  I realised that none of the worries of the future I had in my childhood and young adulthood have come to pass.  We have not had a nuclear war, the world didn't end on 1 Jan 2000, and the hole in the ozone layer is basically under control. 

Subconciously, my brain has been putting climate change into the same bucket, with the same likely conclusion.  I wonder how many other people have the same response going?

Edit: How many other people think that climate change will be resolved somehow, based on this erroneous thinking? 

Posting this quickly from work - where I arrived at 8.30am - a personal record for the last 4 months.

I thought I would post my wishlist now, hopefully in time to be of some use.

Small notebook for in my handbag.  The one I have is almost full and it's nice to have a new one each year.  Although without Midwinter, next years may not fill up like this one did.  The one I have is 9cm x 14cm and 1.5cm thick.  I really like the elastic to hold it closed.  I've noticed I do quite a lot of drawing in it, so if it had some pages with 5mm grids that would be awesome.

I use a diary at work and last year I consciously went out to buy one with interesting pictures every so often.  I like that.  I also like A5 size, with a week to a page (2 weeks to an opening)

Hair stuff.  I can't seem to keep them, so hair ties, clips and bun things would be great.  This would make a fantastic recurring present - at least while I have long hair.  Rose would probably enjoy this sort of gift/s too.

I need a compost turner.  One of those metal things with a handle and a spiral on the end that you can screw into your compost pile and then lift.

The watering can I have is dodgy.  The water rose keeps falling off.  Maybe I should have spent more money on it.  but I don't think I knew how much I would use it.

I plan to lie on the couch for at least 3 days over the holidays and I really need stuff to read while I do it.  Help.

About geo-engineering and the benefits of procrastination.

The CIA:

… warns of climate change that will lead to floods and starvation. ‘Leading climatologists’ speak of a ‘detrimental global climatic change’, threatening ‘the stability of most nations’. …: the ‘new climatic era’ was said to be bringing famine, starvation, refugee crises, floods, droughts, crop and monsoon failures, and all sorts of extreme weather phenomena. The Sahara would expand.

Except it was 1974 and global cooling was the problem. Now the CIA and Pentagon are worried about global warming, which will lead to …

About the way CO2 lags temperature in ice core data. If that is the core CAGW position, I am a bit bemused since it is such an ad hoc way to treat data and, if both upward and downward turning points lag CO2 increases, indicates clear negative feedbacks in how the atmosphere works (there needs to be significant positive feedbacks to make the catastrophist case work). Roy Spencer has a primer on what sceptics believe. A sceptic’s credo.

A biologist and his son demonstrate clear urban heat island effect from publicly available US data. A useful discussion of variability in global temperatures . NASA on why surface temperatures are adjusted. A nice presentation of temperature data from ice cores over varying time frames. Also here. A narrated version. Allegations from Russia that the CRU selectively excluded Russian temperature data. A practical suggestion:

The recent “Climategate” scandal in which hackers attacked the server used by the Climatic Research Unit in Britain clearly shows that it is necessary to fund and organize climate research in such a way that scientists are protected from the state’s political interference and even from their fellow scientists. For much less money than has been needed to combat the economic crisis, it would be possible to establish permanent climate-research centers at leading universities and provide them with all of the accumulated data that they require for their work. In that way, the political majority would have a more solid scientific foundation on which to base its decisions.

Al Gore gets himself into a minor bother over some Arctic ice science that is far from settled.

What we learn from the CRUtape letters:

It's being called Climategate, but more than one wit is calling them "the CRUtape Letters." …
As tempting as it is to indulge in Schadenfreude over the richly deserved travails of a gang that has heaped endless calumny on dissenting scientists (NASA's James Hansen, for instance, compared MIT's Richard Lindzen to a tobacco-industry scientist, and Al Gore and countless -others liken skeptics to "Holocaust deniers"), the meaning of the CRU documents should not be misconstrued. The emails do not in and of themselves reveal that catastrophic climate change scenarios are a hoax or without any foundation. …
Because the gap between observation and conclusion in this subfield is so dependent on statistical techniques rather than direct measurement, it was bound to be a matter of intense controversy and deserved the most searching review by outside scientists. It is exactly this kind of review that the CRU insiders acted to prevent or obscure. …
One of the things the CRU emails prove is that the oft-cited figure of 2,000 top scientists is misleading; the circle of genuinely active scientists in the work of CRU and related institutions in this country is very small. …
There have been rumors for years about political pressure being brought to bear on the process to deliver scarier numbers, because the effects of a 2-3 degree increase in temperatures just weren't going to be enough to justify the kind of emission reductions the greens want. …
One of the striking features of the CRU emails is how much time the CRU circle spent discussing with each other the myriad problems with processing these data and how to display them to a wider world. On the one hand, this is typical of what one might expect of an evolving scientific enterprise. On the other hand, these are the selfsame scientists who have insisted most vehemently that there is a settled consensus adhered to by all researchers of repute and that there is nothing left to debate. Another striking thing that emerges from the emails is that the climate modelers don't have a high regard for paleoclimatology, and the paleos have a palpable inferiority complex. Judging by the length of many of the email chains kvetching about their problems, it is a wonder this small group had time to do any actual research. …
Tempers got so out of hand that Tom Crowley of Duke University intervened: … Mann responded with his best imitation of Don Corleone: "This is ultimately about the science, it's not personal." If the CRU circle treat each other this way, it is no wonder they treat skeptics even more rudely. …
McIntyre is not a climate-science insider, with peer-reviewed articles in journals that the hockey team firmly controlled. He's an amateur with mathematical chops, with a serious track record for spotting statistical funny business. McIntyre, who spent decades in mineral exploration, was involved in exposing the Bre X fraud in Canada several years ago. Bre X was a gold mining company promising fat profits on a new proprietary technology for ore deposits in Borneo; McIntyre smelled a rat and demanded the raw data. Bre X collapsed shortly after. And McIntyre scored a major hit against NASA's chief climate alarmist James Hansen, discovering significant errors of overestimation in Hansen's temperature reconstruction of the 20th century. (NASA's Goddard Institute website publicly thanked McIntyre, no doubt through gritted cyber teeth, for pointing out their error.) The hockey stickers' obsession with McIntyre seems out of proportion if there was nothing amiss in their work. …
The NAS reported its findings in 2006, and the language was sufficiently hedged in diplomatic equivocations that Mann and the media claimed the hockey stick had been vindicated. But a close reading shows that the NAS report devastated the hockey stick. …
The HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, over 100,000 words long, paints a picture of haphazard data handling that would get almost any private sector researcher fired. …
No drug company could get through the FDA approval process with data handling this slapdash, yet the climate policy process contemplates trillions of dollars in costs to economies around the world based partially on this incompetent work. …
Scientists at top universities have been telling me privately for several years now that their best graduate students are avoiding climatology because they dislike how politicized it has become and consider it a dead-end field. Unfortunately this means many students who take up the field are second-raters or do so out of ideological motivation, which guarantees that the CRU scandal won't be the last. …
MIT's Kerry Emanuel, as "mainstream" as they come in climate science … nonetheless offers this warning to his field:

Scientists are most effective when they provide sound, impartial advice, but their reputation for impartiality is severely compromised by the shocking lack of political diversity among American academics, who suffer from the kind of group-think that develops in cloistered cultures. Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.

...
The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA's James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. … The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause. …
I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s--as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation).

Indeed, there is a direct line in the prescriptions for dealing with the “population bomb” that was not to dealing with the “climate crisis”.

Philosopher and environmentalist Martin Cohen on the distortion of debate involved and the propaganda principle of something stated often enough becomes the truth:

Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them (see box page 36)? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously? …
Policymakers seem not to be aware of what the modellers know: that the results of their climate simulations are "likely to remain speculative for some time to come" and that people should be "extremely wary of extrapolating results to longer periods".
This demonstrates that the present climate-change models aren't just useless - by offering spurious precision, they are worse than useless.
How, then, does a theory that is incomplete and missing essential data become orthodoxy? …
Today, global-warming "deniers" have all been told they must fall into line with "the science". But this is not science, this is propaganda. And we are not being asked to be more rational but to suspend our own judgment completely. That, not "runaway climate change", is the most dangerous threat to the world today. …

Not a conspiracy but confirmation bias. Not a conspiracy, but a conjunction of belief and incentives, as suggested by a comment on this post:

Paul Vaughan (07:53:54) :
norris hall (05:10:11) “[...] it is possible that this is just a big conspiracy by climate scientist around the world to boost their cause and make themselves more important. Though I find it hard to believe that thousands of scientists [...] all agreed to promote bogus science. [...] Pretty hard to do without being discovered.”
Actually not so hard.
Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:

Successful candidates will:

1) Demonstrate AGW.

2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.

3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.

Follow the money — perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.

Some further discussion and comment here. A criticism of the original post. A commenter with an academic science background explains the funding incentives. And there are huge sums of money involved. And also:

None of these outfits are per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Why past temperature numbers matter for the catastrophist case. Hammering the point about data availability. An example of why it matters. More on the data release/data lost issue. About the computer code and the data. More on the code:

I don’t think it resulted from any conscious fraud or deception on the part of the scientists. Instead, I think the problem arose from the simple fact that scientists do not know how to manage a large, long-term software project.

Worrying about the effects on the credibility of science. And also. An applied mathematician responds to the former worry. About the need for data openness.

But it is not easy being eco-righteous:

You can spot the problem long before you get to Copenhagen. I'm sitting in St Pancras station about to start a journey for which I have paid – deep breath - £480.
That's for a standard return journey from London to Copenhagen, with a bed in a six-berth compartment. It's not the most expensive ticket. I booked it over a month ago, which means I haven't had to re-mortgage my house (and I'm splitting the cost of the ticket 50:50 with the Guardian, for whom I'll be blogging most days).
I could have got there by plane for £18.

Pointing out how un-serious Oz governments are about climate change policy. Backing NASA’s Hansen over Krugman on a carbon tax rather than cap and trade.

Copenhagen summit has angry developing world delegates after the Danish text of the proposed agreement leaks. The leaked text. If one has not twigged to how much the green push is about keeping the developing world down, one has not been paying attention. Prof. Plimer the toast of the anti-Copenhagen conference. A professor of astrophysics is very unimpressed with Plimer’s book. About belief versus cold realities:

the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view.

As Copenhagen grinds to a halt with riots, deadlock and deepening divisions, a BBC interviewer asks whether 45,000 delegates are really necessary.

Suggesting the Russian secret service was behind the hacking of the CRU emails. The Russian admit it was via a Siberian server, but say they did not do it. (The article also has a nice discussion of the “hockey stick” problems and pressuring of journalists.) Suggesting internal evidence from the released emails and code indicates it was an internal leak.

Some physicists want the American Physics Society to rescind its AGW statement. More, including statements about funding incentives.

Noting the sheer humourlessness of the hacked emails, as part of the humourless of environmentalists generally. Or indicating True Belief (in the Eric Hoffer sense). Clive Hamilton displaying the moral viciousness of the True Believer. Wanting to save the world from the thermomaniacs.

A case of science has not failed, government has:

One is that the lack of scientific ethics exposed by the CRU whistle-blower is not really news. It has been obvious to those of us who were paying attention for a very long time. The leaked documents make it clear, however, to those who don’t understand the mathematical subtleties of regression analysis or program in Fortran. …
The fact that the U.N.’s climate gurus have destroyed data, hid inconvenient truths and subverted the peer-review process is not, by the way, proof that anthropogenic global warming could not possibly occur. Nor does it prove we are not in a natural period of cooling caused by solar cycles. The only thing it does prove is that models are junk and that the most powerful government-anointed climate scientists have no idea what’s going on — as the leaked e-mails stated over and over again. …
This is the big lesson. It isn’t science that has failed. … Real science is a process of discovering the truth through transparency, experimentation and verification. Look around you. You can see the fruits of real science in the increased length and quality of life that we all enjoy. Science is alive and well in the private sector.
Climategate is a failure of politicians and bureaucrats involving over $90 billion in tax-funded research grants. It is complicated by passionately cheerleading environmentalists who have turned their movement into a kind of religion.

Sceptic and catastrophist battle it out on NZ TV: according to the reader poll, the sceptic overwhelmingly won. A left-wing NZ commentator sets out the (politicised) stakes:

If, therefore, the battle against climate change has to become the moral equivalent of war, with all the sacrifice that war entails, then climate change denial must become the moral equivalent of treason.
Over the top? No. The stakes really are that high.

Lots of the commenters do not seem to quite agree. But it is the latest form of salvation politics on the left and, if you do agree, why you are an enemy of salvation! A particularly trenchant statement of “up yours!” resistance to the whole thing is here.

So, the received position seems to be that the CRUtape letters et al show that the core climatologists as less-than-ept at data management, management of software management or use of statistical methods; have models which do not explain current lack of warming; have refused to share data; have refused to share their data management algorithms but we should just trust they have the science fine and dandy and spend billions and billions of dollars on that basis. One can imagine the gales of laughter if some “right wing” group tried that one. But there seems to be little limit to the amount of cognitive blockage that “this is what good people believe” can generate.

Also, that the planet is warming does not demonstrate AGW: it is what AGW seeks to explain. That CO2 adds to warming, and humans have been adding to CO2, does not demonstrate that we have a problem: CO2 on its own (no matter how much we pile into the atmosphere) will only get about a degree Celsius of warming (since CO2 only blocks a small range of frequencies and once it has blocked those frequencies it has no further warming effect). The “we have a problem/are the problem” claim rests on the claim that anthropogenic CO2 will generate significant positive feedbacks in the atmosphere: that is not even close to being “settled science” and is something no amount of computer modelling will demonstrate since such models only display the consequences of your premises. Particularly when those same models cannot explain the current pause in warming.

I think I need to get someone in to look at our air-conditioning, at present it is doing a good fan impression.

However, I think I have broken the back of the christmas shopping. Just a couple of things left to sort out, and the wrapping to do. I am hoping that the postal strike doesn't mean that an express package posted tomorrow doesn't get to Adelaide by Monday but as a solid Union man Dad will understand if it does. 8->

I have also bought a BBQ, which I will collect on Saturday since they had stock but it was not at the top of the pile of pallets and I was there at 5 min to closing. They were still very nice to me. 8->

I have the bits to make Miss D's gift (not a surprise) I will get on to that sometime with saner weather.

Our EBA agreement came through so I got a bonus in today's pay. 2% isn't a fortune but backdated to August paid for the BBQ 8->

Had the christmas lunch for the downstairs department today, it appears to be tradition to take flex time and not go back to work so I followed the flow and got some shopping done. 8-> Jingle bells appear to be solidly in the 3+ category. Mrs_Brown, if I can steal those bells you mentioned, I think that will be the plan.

2 beers for dinner is bad for my typing. Yay for spell check. Time for extra water and a rest. Or knitting.

I thingk my next pair of socks are going to use this technique http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall06/FEATextreme2in1.html it is so crazy, I love it. Probably modified for toe up knitting, cos I like that better.

I think I want to put up a tree even if we are not going to be here christmas day. Just the fake one will do. Somewhere to put gifts as they are wrapped is good. Plus I like it. Also incentive to a bit of tidying around here. Need to tidy this weekend or I will end up spending my birthday doing housework and that is not how I want to spend it 8->

Now where is that cool change?

Sometimes, when I am indulging in breakfast out, I look at the pancakes on the menu and consider indulging. This morning, Seddon Deadly Sins has cinnamon apple pancakes. So I indulged.

Really, I should not. No reflection on Seddon Deadly Sins, but pancakes are simply too much starchy-stodge for how I eat nowadays.

Crepes, of course, are an entirely different matter.