...more recent posts
Saturday, Aug 27, 2005
Sometimes the Computers are Right
Friday, Aug 26, 2005
The Man Who's Irony Lobe Was Infarcted
Oxycontin Limbaugh
(paraphrased from memory)
Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005
Radical Fundamentalist Cleric Claims His Fatwah Endorsing State-Sponsered Terrorism Was "Misinterpreted"
Then ...
The Elements of Style
Creationism, a previous theory, gave credit to God. These folks insist that intelligent design is not creationism, but a completely new theory worthy of being taught in public schools. Therefore, Jehovah is off the short list of potential designers.
I suggest careful consideration be given to the great grandfather (raised to the 300th power) of Bill Blass. Bill had to inherit his talent from someone. He could not have gotten the idea for that great double-breasted blue blazer all by himself without some kind of genealogical assistance.
Those of us who want to give his ancestor credit as "the intelligent designer" could seek to have the Big Bang Theory renamed the "Big Blass Theory".
Why not? As long as there is no religious attribution being given to the designer of intelligent design, my choice of designer is as good as anybody's. Anyone who disagrees with me is free to promote the designer of his or her choice.
Tom Foley, Letters to the Editor
Maine Sunday Telegram
via Bill in Portland Maine
Friendly Fire
The current story of Cindy Sheehan reminds me of a book I read for a college history class, C.D.B. Bryan's Friendly Fire. This is a tale of a mother, Peg Mullen, trying to learn about the circumstances of her son's death in Viet Nam.
She starts on an earnest quest to fill in some blanks, to answer some questions, to deal with her loss by understanding her son's death. The Army responded with delays, obfuscations, half truths. In her struggle to seek the truth, her opinion about the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia turns.
Perhaps if the Army had simply told her that her son was killed by friendly fire in the confusion of a fire fight, she might not have gone through the transformation that she did. But if the Army couldn't tell her the simple truth of what happened that day, how could she trust anything that the Army had to say?
With Cindy Sheehan, I see parallels. What bothered her most deeply about her first meeting with Bush was that Bush would not say the name of her son. If Bush couldn't show that simple act of empathy, then what value does he place on any stranger's life?
While browsing for information about this book, I came across the the original review from the New York Review of Books, plus an interchange between the author and reviewer.
The review is cut short, with the remainder behind a subscription firewall, but this choice comment is visible:
Tuesday, Aug 23, 2005
Mendacity Has Permeated His Pathetic, Shriveled Soul
No, not Bush's. Well, yes, Bush's, but the immediate object of my disdain is someone else, a talk radio blowhard, a veteren of the Velvet Rope Tour of Iraq by a gaggle of talk radio blowhards, a liar who goes by the name of Mark Williams.
I caught a bit of his performance on MSNBC's Blow Hard Ball over at Crooks and Liars. His first lie: "I'm not anti-Sheehan". Then Mr. Talk Radio Blow Hard launches into an attack on Sheehan, calling her pathetic. The Blow Hard lies so much, he probably didn't notice that he started his segment with a lie.
A point that he reiterated (blew hard and blew harder) is that there was a "debate" three years ago, and that the anti-war crowd should shut up. Technically speaking, there was a debate. But only based on today's low bar for what passes for a debate.
The Mendacious Administration told lies over and over again, in an attempt to permeate the minds of American's with their mendacity. They told not just small lies, but huge, magnificent lies that will stand through the ages as monuments to their foul, disgusting, lie-filled minds. They compounded this by branding anyone who spoke the truth as a traitor, a co-conspirator with Saddam, a friend of bin Laden.
This charade may have passed for "debate" in the Politburo, but is a disgrace to the very concept of democracy. "Consent of the governed" my ass. The Mendacious Administration cares only about the accretion of partisan power, not the intangible called "truth".
The MSNBC Blow Hard Ball hostess harangued the anti-war guest about "what's the Democratic solution?" Well, la dee dah. The Mendacious Administration creates a world class clusterfuck, and now it's up to the Democrats to fix it? "Well if you can't give me a five second answer for how to un-clusterfuck to region, then your opinion doesn't count!"
Okay, here's your solution Blow Hard Ball hostess: ride those SOB's out of town on a rail. RIght, now. This afternoon. Tar and feather the worst of them, and drag their sorry asses down to that pig farm outside of Waco Then we'll start figuring out how to un-clusterfuck the region.
A Billion Here, A Billion There
The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been about a $300 B proposition, and counting. Extrapolating, let's say Operation Incomparable Clusterfuck runs about a trillion, all in.
Solar power, installed, runs under $10 per watt of capacity. A 5kW system, a pretty sweet residential situation, runs under $50k -- retail, including professional installation. So a million bucks would buy 20 very nice systems. A billion bucks would by 20 thousand systems. A trillion bucks would buy 20 million systems -- for a 100,000 MW of peak production capacity.
Suppose for each watt of capacity, one could expect 1.5 kWh of annual production. So that 100, 000 MW translates to 150 billion kW hours, or about 4% of US electrical production. That number may seem small, but consider this money deployed as a 50% subsidy to homeowners. The number jumps to 8%. Consider the economies of scale of tens of millions of home installations. Reaching $5 per watt seems realistic. With cost sharing and economies of scale, the trillion of federal green would buy solar power equal to 16% of US electrical consumption. We're getting close to the contribution made by nuclear power.
Solar power for 80 million houses, or Operation Incomparable Clusterfuck? By the way, 80 million would cover every owner-occupied housing unit in the country. You pays your money, and you makes your choices.
Saturday, Aug 20, 2005
Friday, Aug 19, 2005
The Medieval Church
I went to a Jesuit high school, so perhaps I developed a distorted image of the Roman Catholic Church. In my experience the Jesuit order was much more intellectual and much less superstitious than other orders with whom I had contact. I know there are orders fascinated with bones and relics, with faith healing, with visitations by the Virgin, but the Church also runs universities in which science and technology play a major role.
This background perhaps explains my shock at the Church's
pronouncement that acceptance of evolutionary theory is incompatible with Church teachings and, further, that evolutionary theory is not science. The first point is a bigoted stance against science, but the second point is downright medieval.
But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
Archbishop Christoph Schönborn
New York Times
Let's get to some specifics, to dismantle the Chuch's faith-based "science".
Consider the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, clearly an evolutionary process. Are we to assume that God hates tetracycline; that staph infections are the work of God's hand? By dispensing antibiotics are Catholic hospitals defying God's will by using medicine that God is trying to subvert, or are they acting in concert with God's will by hastening the end of the age of antibiotics? Or should we surmise that antibiotic resistance is the natural reaction of a natural system which is based on evolution? Being a fan of Occam's Razor, I'll go with plain, vanilla evolution, rather than a God who hates antibiotics.
The false analogy is embedded in the implication that living beings are designed for a particular purpose. Here's a simplified example:
The elbow is similar to a hinge.The problem is that we can easily observe things in nature which have a pattern, but that pattern is arrived at by random interactions rather than design. Here's a striking example that artist Sally McKay highlighted on her blog.
Hinges are designed for a particular purpose.
Therefore, the elbow is designed for a particular purpose.
In a spinning drum "an initially mixed distribution of grains sorts itself by size into almost periodic bands along the length of the drum." I selected this example, because it's visually interesting, but it's just one example from a plethora of self-organizing systems.
There is much chaos in nature, and much order in nature. One could argue that order in nature, any form of order, reveals design, underlying which is purpose. But chaos plays a role just as important. What's a river without turbulent flow? What's a wind without a gust? Are we to say that both order and chaos represent intrisic finality, and are in fact proof of a living designer who designed for a purpose? If so, then the existence of God is nothing more than an idee fixe.
But let me return to a point that appears throughout the editorial, and which first appears in the second paragraph.
This editorial is a declaration of irrationality by the Roman Catholic Church. The last time the Church attempted to define science and reason on this scale was a disagreement with Galileo about the nature of the solar system. It took the Church only three and a half centuries to express regret for its hubris.
Wednesday, Aug 17, 2005
Saturday, Aug 13, 2005
Dr. Hank v. Dr. Paul
Henry Kissinger, August 12, 2005, original unabridged version in the Washington Post
In the cold light of reality, Kissinger systematically disassembles Wolfowitz's pre-war fantasies. Here's another example.
Kissinger, August 12, 2005
Wolfowitz, February 25, 2003
Worst. President. Ever.
Thursday, Aug 11, 2005
The Dog Ate His Homework
Judging by snippets, Rush is on an extended rant this AM about the revelation that Atta was identified as al Qaeda in '99, Of course, this points to the culpability of Bubba Clinton and Jamie Gorelick's "fire walls". This gives Rush great fodder for a screed.
One caller had the temerity to ask El Gasbo about Our Dear Leader, and how he fit into the timeline. Wha ... ba ... um ... harrumph. Well, it's all Al Gore's fault! The debacle in Florida so upset the boy prince that he really hadn't settled into office until the summer of 2001. Oh, poor George. If only Al Gore hadn't been mean to him. If only Condoleezza had written "This one is important" on the cover of the PDB. If only the dog hadn't eaten his homework.
Idiot by Design
D. Chris Buttars in USA Today
via Balloon Juice
Sunday, Aug 07, 2005
Novak Remix
Bullshit