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  • Ruminations – 27nov2009

    George Rebane

    PiratesExecuted Piracy on the high seas – another symptom of a dysfunctional society of nation-states.  Just heard SecState Clinton blather about working to develop “appropriate 21st century means of controlling piracy.”  Historically pirates were the original international terrorists – not criminals – and were summarily treated that way by every legitimate government.  Using Admiral Nelson’s tactic of “going straight at them”, civilized society showed them no quarter – when they were caught, they were executed.  With this response policy and advancing technology, piracy essentially disappeared in the 19th century from the world’s routes of commerce.  Now it’s back because politically correct nations are tying themselves in legal knots trying to figure out how to deal with pirates that is more … more what?  Another sign of coming totalitarianism or Mad Max anarchy – in both systems the law abiders are punished and the scum runs free.

    In this putative economic recovery lots of economic indicator numbers are being published, analyzed, and interpreted by mostly innumerate journalists.  Their reports are almost all suspect because most of them can’t tell the difference between a number as an attribute attached to something, and a number being used in or derived through a mathematical computation of a realworld process that itself is being reported.  To them all numbers are simply ‘math’, and therefore excusably foreign.  So if such a reporter writes that ‘recent sales tax receipts are down’, that is not math.  But the equivalent sentence – ‘recent sales tax receipts are down 10%’ – is considered ‘math’.  And these people are supposed to be our window to the world?  

    The Nevada County Library privatization dust-up is in full progress.  A RR reader who has been following this in The Union (here) emails a sentiment that, I suspect, many harbor but have yet to voice.  “I'd likely make this business decision in 5 minutes. But then government jobs are ‘above’ business.”  In any case, I invite readers to keep an eye on how all this develops through the (count them) three working committees now involved in resolving the issue.  For perspective, please refer to my workforce and public sector union columns here and here.

    And finally, here is a typical leftwing discounting of the recent climate change email fiasco by fraudulent scientists (a summary here and a lot more on NC Media Watch).  As an educated reader, see how many dots don't connect in this pithy dismissal from the liberal website truthout.com. 

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  • We continue holding our breath

    George Rebane

    NCARRA091127

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  • Thank You for This and More

    Thanksgiving

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  • Global Fraud, Round Two

    George Rebane

    Earth2 OK, by now most people not tied to the MSM mammary are aware of the global warming hockey stick hoax.  RR summarized the fraud issue here and offered links for those interested in more detail.  More detail has now started gushing on the thinking public, take a look at today’s (24no09) WSJ piece ‘Climate Science and Candor’ that serves up a collection of the hacked emails sent by the celebrated sleazebag scientists to each other.  And even the NYT and Washington Post (gasp!) have belatedly stuck their toe into this issue.

    In its lead editorial today’s WSJ said –

    Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a “unified” view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the “common cause”; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to “hide the decline” of temperature in certain inconvenient data. …

    Yet all of these nonresponses (from involved scientists) manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn’t have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

    But let’s take a step back and again see this fraud in terms of the politics of climate change and anthropogenic global warming (AGW), this is the part that will affect you, me, and all of us.  The True Believers are not yet daunted by this little fraud – no, no.  They argue that a few rogue scientists mangling the world’s historical temperature data and developing spectacular temperature curves is no big deal, and doesn’t affect the real conclusions about AGW and what must still be done.

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  • Annotated Global Fraud

    George Rebane

    WaxmanMarkey Britains’s Climate Research Unit hack, noted here and elsewhere on the blogs, is beginning to unravel the position of the True Believers more and more.  Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That) published the latest discoveries from the ‘global warming software’ that was made public against the years’ long efforts of the ‘scientists’ involved.  The short version is that they used their programs to generate crap.

    There are three distinct groups involved here – 1) scumbag ‘scientists’, 2) True Believers, 3) sleazebag politicians.  Groups 2 and 3 are ignorant of earth’s climatology and climate modeling.  I grant that Group 2 probably consists of good-hearted, well-meaning people concerned about humanity, but they possess neither the knowledge nor the tools to understand how the AGW issue is framed, let alone proved.  They just listen to Groups 1 and 3, and then join the damaging background chorus.  Group 3 doesn’t really care about the science or humanity.  For them it is all about power and control, starting with maintaining and/or advancing their own political careers.  These pols are mostly composed of but not limited to progressives and collectivists.

    And then there’s Group 1.  These guys have degrees, published papers, and positions that give cover to Groups 2 and 3.  They consist of technical types who don’t know what they don’t know and prattle on, and then the real scumbags are the ones who know what they don’t know and do ‘science’ with the intent to defraud – i.e. cook up pre-ordained results.

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  • Banana Squash – A Fond Farewell (updated 24nov2009)

    George Rebane

    BananaSquash Now I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert in cooking.  But over the years I have demonstrated that I can whip up a dish or two that requires more than a piece of dead cow and BBQ sauce.  Back in the 70s I accepted the challenge of coming up with a recipe for the cheapest (and least desired) vegetable in the grocery store.  Jo Ann informed me that this was banana squash selling for eight cents a pound – nobody much cared for the stuff.

    Well, I puzzled on that hard and uninviting piece of biomass sitting on the kitchen counter until a light bulb went off.  Soon I was grinding and chopping and slicing and baking.  Not long afterward, the house smelled good and out of the oven came the square Pyrex baking dish with something bright yellow(ish) in it with nicely oven-browned tips.  It was not all that unattractive, and when we threw a tastebud on it, everyone said ‘wow!’ – I had invented a tasty dish for the lowliest vegetable that many considered a notch above fodder.  In order not to divert the established momentum and thrust of this development, I will simply report that my bride promptly named it Santa Claus Squash.

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  • Ruminations – 21nov2009

    George Rebane

    PtolemyGore Science meddled, not settled.  The big buzz on the climate change is the hacking of Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).  If confirmed, it turns out that the much celebrated scientists behind the famous ‘hockey stick’ temperature curve committed fraud – they more than fiddled with the data, they substituted more politically favorable data to support the UN and Team Gore agendas.  For details, see Anthony Watts and my friend Russ Steele (NC Media Watch) who report regularly on the progress of the AGW fiasco (links on right sidebar).

    Why scientists sometimes do bad science is not hard to understand.  And the herd instinct applies here in spades.  In a recent email I explained it as follows –

    There is a certain class of scientists who can only work in foundation/state-funded institutions – i.e. they cannot get a private sector job that maintains their quality of life.   It is these scientists who are most prone to sell their souls and their science in chasing the available funding.  I witnessed the process for over twenty-five years as a defense contractor.  The political money has been allocated worldwide to this ‘perfect storm’ ushering in the new global era.  Follow the money, the funded conclusions are guaranteed to be compliant. … This CRU hack is a significant break, if it can be kept politically from being buried.

    The Senate’s version of ObamaCare comes up for a “procedural vote” tonight.  Majority Leader Harry Reid is working hallways and offices twisting arms and drumming up the needed 60 votes to bring the bill to the Senate floor for debate.  The ruse is that it’s only debate on the bill that will happen next, but that’s for consumption by the unwashed.  In this Senate, what reaches the floor now will be the version that will be voted on.  The Republicans, with their minority, have no hope of modifying the bill or attaching any of their amendments.

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  • New Study on States in Peril

    George Rebane

    The venerable Pew Charitable Trusts’ Center on the States has just released a new report ‘Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril’ (more summary material here and here.) 

    The report documents what students of the American scene (that includes the astute RR readers) have known for some years now – legislating un/underfunded programs of social engineering will lead to financial ruin.  Well that ruin is upon us now, and the Pew folks list the other states following California pell mell down the fiscal (then social) rat hole.

    CaliforniaCompared

    The “report released today by the Pew Center on the States shows that some of the same pressures that have pushed California toward economic disaster are wreaking havoc in a number of other states, with potentially damaging consequences for the entire country.  Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin join California as the 10 most troubled states”.

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  • Hitting a Flat Spot?

    George Rebane

    I think we may have hit a flat spot in all the “jobs created and saved” until election year.  It’s not called the American Re-election and Redistribution Act for nothing you know.

    NCARRA091120

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  • Time for a 28th Amendment

    George Rebane

    When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson

    The following was forwarded by an RR reader.  Please think about it, and do something.

    Amendment 28

    Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United
    States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives,
    and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or
    Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the
    United States.

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