Pangloss

Here's the thing that I've never been able to understand, so maybe someone can explain it to me. Let's say you have a great big box full of air, and inside of that box you have, well let's say an electrical plant and 1,000 automobiles running leaded gasoline. Some time passes, and you begin to realize that lab rats inside the box are dying. So you impose pollution controls that cut back on the pollution from the cars and the electrical plant by 90%, and you also impose strict, 100% controls on certain pollutants known to cause death. ONLY those specific pollutants. Not others. The rats become healthy again. All is well. Then you decide to change the equation. Instead of 1,000 cars you put 15,000 cars in the box, and you quadruple the output of the electrical plant. You also have 4x as many rats, but the box is the same size as before. Does anyone here think the rats will be okay? Really? And isn't that more or less exactly what we've done?

I'm surprised nobody has questioned that statistic. It sure smells fishy to me.

Geoguy, I think you should refrain from participating on the politics board until you learn to start behaving in a more respectful and mature manner. That was just attrocious and if you'd said it to anybody other than me you'd be staring at a login prompt at this very moment.

This thread would make a great segment for The Daily Show. Intelligent discourse about Iraq, not so much. I agree with SkepticLance's post above that the fact that Bush refuses to see what happens is no reason for others to "put blinders on", and I'm not trying to pick on Geoguy (he did have a couple of interesting points), but some of these comments -- on a science board! -- defy basic logic and reason. The kind of tripe you usually find at places like DemocraticUnderground.com or Bill O'Reilly's forum. Yeesh. I feel like a network programmer rolling out "an exciting new reality-based game show". Unclean, unclean... must... wash... hands....

Yeah as I understand it he didn't spend much in Iowa for the straw poll. I'm not sure why, I'm not well-read on that, but I believe historically it's been a useful bellweather, but for some reason it's not seen as useful this time around. That doesn't mean Romney didn't get anything out of it, though -- just the fact that he came in first will gain him some useful PR going into the real primaries, beginning with the Iowa Caucus, where of course he's already done well. There's been some talk about the Caucus moving up to December. This is another area where I lack information, specifically as to what technical issues stop these various states from moving their primaries up to, say, tomorrow. I'm sure there are costs involved and plannings to do, but you'd think there would be enough time to plan and execute a November primary, for example, especially since this has been on every political functionary's front burner for over a year now. I suspect the real reason has to do with intangible opinions about the fickle public and its voting habits (e.g. "I have to vote during the Christmas holidays? Are you nuts?!").

SkepticLance posts a criticism of the surge based not on the evidence for or against the surge but rather (by his own statement) based solely on the history of American military involvements since WW2, and you don't see anything pessimistic or self-fulfilling about that? Really?

I can't answer to the specific figure, but that's the line that a number of media stories are taking over the last couple of days (states were provided with money from the gas tax revenue and spent it in a number of non-infrastructural ways). I'd like to know more specific information here as well. The story is essentially playing out as follows: House & Senate Democrats call a press conference and declare the Bush administration to be at fault for the problem, saying that the tax cuts and Iraq have robbed this funding (not true). The next day the White House holds a press conference and declares Congress to be at fault for the problem, saying that the money is already budgeted and collected, it just hasn't been spent (which as you pointed out above doesn't appear to be accurate either). By golly it's a good thing we got those Democrats into power, so they can fix everything Bush screwed up, huh?

Korea wasn't a failure, it made the South Korean success possible. But your point isn't even about the military, it's about political will. This country has always been like that. Shelby Foote (a famous civil war historian) used to say about the Civil War that the North fought with one hand behind its back and had it pulled out the other hand the war would have been over very quickly at any point in its length. WW2 is far more the exception than the rule. The kind of pessimism you're touting there is just self-fulfilling defeatism. You're not talking about making smart choices, you're talking about giving up and shooting ourselves in the head. Thanks, I'll pass. This country needs a kick in the pants, not a prescription for Zoloft.

Thanks for clarifying that. I wasn't quite sure what they meant. They must be talking about projected infrastructure needs as opposed to immediate needs. What I'm mainly annoyed about is that they're spending money on local pet projects and then telling us that they don't have enough money to pay for things we told them to pay for. The very same people who neglected these duties are the ones who are asking us for more money and promising to spend it correctly. We have two words for that in the private sector: "You're FIRED!"

Makes sense, right? Bridges collapse, people die, surely we need to raise money to pay for this? After all, engineers say we need to spend $9 billion/year for the next 20 years to pay for all the repairs. Holy cow, we'd better raise taxes! Well sure enough, Democrats in congress are already calling for a 5-cent/gallon tax hike on gasoline. But wait. We already collect $22 billion/year on gasoline. Oh, but that money is already spent on repairs, you say? Oh really? Turns out it's not. Minnesota, site of the I35W bridge collapse, had been allocated tens of millions of dollars for infrastructure repair. It decided to spend it instead on things like bike path studies, and postponed bridge repairs. And apparently this sort of thing happens all the time -- pet projects in congressional home districts get favored while key infrastructure components get ignored. All of this is a drop in the bucket compared with what we spend annually on road repair ($75 billion) and what we may need to spend, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (source), which is a whopping $155.5 billion. But that's only two years of normal spending. Do we really need to permanently raise taxes for something that will be solved in two years? And isn't the real problem that they're spending current money inappropriately, and want to keep doing that? Some additional reading: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1119213390

There's a broken link in the OP, just FYI. I agree with the first sentence in SkepticLance's post above, and disagree with every subsequent sentence in it. As far as whether the surge is working, I've no idea. My disposition towards the politics of George Bush hasn't directed me to prejudge a verdict here, so I'm forced to wait and see. Unlucky me.

Thanks.

Actually I thought what he meant was that the change in *data* (warming in that sense) was only off by 1-2%. But that would suggest that the difference is even less, would it not?

A DailyTech blog entry has been making the news & blogosphere rounds this week in which the author discusses a potential Y2K bug that has reportedly been found in NASA's data regarding global temperatures. The study is (or so it says here) the basis for ongoing media stories saying that 1998 is the warmest year on record, but the new information (if it's accurate) states that the corrected data shows 1934 to be warmest, and that it also disturbs the upward trend, instead showing half of the "warmest years" to be in the early part of the 20th century. But the article also goes on to say that this would only impact the overall warming trend by 1-2%. Which really begs the question of whether this is really an important piece of information, or just more ammunition for what Newsweek this week called the organized effort to deny global warming. http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm My opinion is that there have become evangelists on both sides of this issue and it's important that science remain vigilant to the truth, however inconvenient or messy or complex that happens to be. I think if we do that, eventually the world will come around and take the proper, necessary actions. If that means having to correct erroneous data from time to time, so be it. Best to be up front about these things. Transparency is key.

This seems to be different from what you were saying earlier in the thread, which was more along the lines that Harry Potter causes actual harm. This is the quintessential "freedom-loving" liberal argument of "you can't decide what's best for yourself, so I will decide for you and instruct you on how to live your life." Which is why I'm comparing you to christian conservative nazis who see HP as witchcraft. It's a valid comparison. The only difference being you haven't asked for a law. (Not all of them do either, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous.) But of course if you've changed your position then I'm glad to hear it.

People who read Harry Potter should be lined up and shot. Whether it's because it's making them devil worshipers or because it's stopping them from reading superior literature isn't important. The important thing is that they're shot. BTW, Harry Potter books burn at the same temperature as Proust books: 451 degrees Fahrenheit. No need for special fuel.

Cool. Now if I can just figure out how to use that thing on politicians at press conferences.

ROFL! Well I'll be happy to call you Master Albers! Thanks for all the replies. We had the function tonight and it was more informal than I thought it would be, and I called him "Mike" (which is, fortunately, his first name). Honestly I don't think he cared and was just happy that people came to show their support. That's cool. I think I have to agree with the replies suggesting that it's not a doctorate degree, that was what I got from that Wikipedia article as well. A bit embarassing, but these things happen. I've seen ABD (all but dissertation) professors put "Dr." in front of their names and that's just lame, IMO. Faculty ethics just ain't what they used to be.

Sure. The problem is getting a significant enough portion of the population to agree on positions outside of the box they're putting us in. With a lot of issues you can get people to agree only on generalities and not on specifics. So for example you might convince the majority of the country that Iraq has been handled poorly -- I think the polls clearly reflect that. But does that mean that the majority of the country wants to develop a losing strategy in the middle east? Surely not. It's the specifics that cause the heartburn. The devil is in the details. The real problem in this country isn't that we're divided, because I really don't think we are. The problem is that we're not paying attention, so we're being managed by a very small group of people who are very clever about giving us yesterday's garbage and convincing us it's a hearty and fulfilling meal.

This is one of those areas of pseudoscience that has become so ingrained into society that it's going to be almost impossible to ever ween it out. It's just too commonly accepted now.

Oh it's getting plenty of attention today, in spite of the fact that it was a blatant Take Out The Trash Day move. The bill didn't even come before the House until Saturday. Incidentally, both Obama and Clinton, knowing full well it would pass, voted against the bill on Friday. Neither spoke out against it. Too hard at work on the campaign trail, you know. Only now, after the bill has passed, are we starting to hear from opponents. Nancy Pelosi called it unacceptable and vowed to change it. In fairness, she did have a busy weekend, getting two promising new energy bills through the House (cancelling earlier tax breaks for the oil industry and forcing alternative fuels on power companies). But she allowed the bill onto the floor. As Speaker she could have stopped it if she'd wanted to, just as she could have stopped the Iraq spending bill. She made a choice. Paul Kane's writeup of the weekend's events in his Capital Briefing column in the Washington Post today is an interesting read. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2007/08/the_houses_last_call.html

Gotta love the political irony in this, especially coming just days after the Pakistan statement from Barrage Obomba. Just two years ago Democrats were OUTRAGED about warrantless wiretapping of American civilians placing overseas telephone calls to suspect terrorist nations. So much hay was made over that issue that it surely contributed to the mid-term elections that put Democrats in the legislative majority. My how times have changed. Over the weekend, carefully away from the prying eyes of the mass media, congress, for once, acted quickly and quietly. The new law signed by President Bush yesterday allows the federal government to wiretap any overseas call placed by American citizens... without even a FISA warrant! Senator Diane Feinstein was one of the most outspoken critics of the administration on this issue back in 2005. But yesterday she was one of the bill's most outspoken supporters! So quiet was the development that the press wasn't even aware of it until the president called a surprise signing session at the White House Monday afternoon. So much for public debate on important issues! Interestingly, the new law does allow Democrats to split hairs and try to save political face. Senator Feinstein, for example, said in 2005 that the president's actions "called into question the integrity and credibility of our nation's commitment to the rule of law". Well now warrantless wiretapping certainly has the "rule of law" behind it! So... can somebody tell me how Democrats are any different from Republicans on this issue? Anybody? <crickets chirp>

Thaenks, maete!!

A colleague of mine who just published a book is giving a public lecture and book signing tomorrow and I want to be supportive and attend. I also wrote up a few questions drawing from his book so I can help him out in that manner. But as I was looking over the book I noticed that he's addressed "Mr." on the flap and back cover, even though he has a J.D. degree. I've called him "doctor" before in person, but now I'm uncertain -- was I in error? I don't want to embarass him at the event, but I don't want to ask him either, especially since he's long since invited me to call him by his first name. It would just be too wierd to ask. What do you all think? Help me avoid a social faux pas!

BTW, is that one of those British-vs-American spelling things, with the AE dipthong instead of the E alone? Just curious.