Honestylog.com

Organic Enterprise Sales Team

Steve Jobs doesn't need a sales force because he already has one: employees like the ones in my company.

So, you tell me: is Steve Jobs ever going to screw up?

Solar Electric

Here's the electric and solar powered vehicle I want. Electric to get you there, solar to keep you there. Be sure and catch the short video.

Delicious

From Warren Meyer an absolutely delicious admission. This is tantamount to the "'scientist' tries to prove Bible false; is converted" baloney that gets trotted out by unsophisticated religious people. The difference, of course, is that climate, at least, is a scientific topic. But still; religious zealots will always appeal to "science" for credibility (since they're not credible otherwise), as will man-made catastrophe zealots develop religious overtones to their approach.

As an aside, it looks like that post took a while to get noticed. It's an interesting juxtaposition, the first few dozen comments and the last few dozen. By the way, I think Warren's use of the word "comments" in his blog post refer to the statements by Mark Seal on the blog post referenced, and not the comments to the post (I tell you because I was initially confused by that).

STOP YELLOWSTONE NOW!

A humorous look at what would happen with the super volcano under Yellowstone if enterprising pseudo-scientists and their media and politician-whore bedfellows could only come up with a plausible man-made scenario.

Read it. After all, it's for the children.

Dead Ringer

I'm not going to get into the underlying ethics and political implications of this. The purpose is merely to understand what's going on.

This is essential reading by Warren Meyer on how the Y2K hysteria prefigures the AGW hysteria. Read it. Understand it. Integrate it.

That is all.

Unraveling and Tumbling Down

Of course, nobody is ever really going to cop to having been a sucker and a fool, but I'll be satisfied if we can simply move on to the next global hobgoblin destined to wipe us out, requiring the  steady guiding hand of those who seek dominion over us.

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher.  He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

Meteor strike, maybe? Supervolcano? What's next? Any ideas?

(via a commenter at Art's place.)

Later: I hadn't browsed this PDF Art linked to at the time of posting. Now I have, and it's worth a look. I just skimmed, basically, now and then stopping to study. Worth it.

Attention

Jay wrote "Khmer Vert."

Earth Hour 2008: Arnold, CA

Sucker Bait

Will you take it?

Automatic Liars

I've know it about both her and Bill from that 60-Minutes interview way back when that really launched them. I am astounded at the ignorance or plain dishonesty in anyone who still refuses to acknowledge it.

Pots, Kettles, and Split Hairs

The really funny thing about something like this is you could tell it at your average church picnic and people would laugh at what morons those people must be.

Business as Usual

I blogged about this "quackumentary" before, and, well, it's not like this ought to be any great surprise.

If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.”

It figures, and I know from what I've seen from Dawkins' own productions that he is very frank with those he interviews. Then there's shows like Bullshit!, where Penn has several times remarked that in spite of it appearing that some people who get ridiculed mustn't of had a clue of what they were in for, the producers are perfectly upfront about what they are doing and even provide video of past shows for prospective interviewees. Of course, this would be standard behavior for honest people not trying to con anyone. "They just think they're bulletproof," says Penn.

But when you boil it down, isn't religion, as such, just a big con job? Just like the State. Both need your sanction, support, reverence, and submission. The State can just take it by force, as religious institutions used to do before weakened by human knowledge of reality, not to mention its deal -- its bedfellow relationship -- with the State itself. Religious institutions are masters of the con. It's the only means of their survival now that they're foreclosed from running people through the torture chambers and publicly burning them at the stake in order to keep everyone else in line. Now, they just need to make fools of you and their success at doing that is as unsurprising as it is phenomenal.

That film is just business as usual for them.

(via Balko and Bailey)

Oh, Jesus

Here we go again. Another presumably smart person lashing out, getting together with a bunch of other presumably smart people, all who feel threatened because their primitive superstitious beliefs make them look increasingly like fucking morons rather than...well..."presumably smart people." So, they're going to try to poke a hole or two in Natural Selection, which is then somehow, magically, supposed to make your imaginary friend more real. Either they are fucking morons, or they surely think you are.

Just deal with it (reality) and stop the silly nonsense in dressing up non-science with a nice pink ribbon. Religion is a pig when seen as anything other than fantasy. As fantasy, go ahead and knock yourselves out.

Jesus.

Later: And just to make it clear, the premise of the film, that you can't question Darwinism is a load of bullshit, not to mention a big fat lie. Real scientists are out questioning Darwin's hypothesis every single day. That's how science is done: you form a hypothesis that's falsifiable in the sense that it's formed in a way that allows it to be tested, so that if false, you can actually prove it false, and if true, you can't; in spite of your best efforts. "God" doesn't even qualify as a scientific hypothesis because there is no possible scientific test that could count against it ("well, god just created the Universe that way..." -- see?).

I watch something on Discovery or Science or National Geographic virtually everyday that has real scientists questioning and testing Darwin's hypothesis, trying to prove it wrong. Nobody even comes close, and that is science. It is not the process of trying to confirm, which is precisely how science has gone so awry in fields like nutrition. It is the continual, never-ending process of trying to falsify, and either doing so and moving on, or coming up short, which is what lends more and more credence to the hypothesis, but never complete certainty in a scientific context, i.e., as a discipline of logical procedure.

"A Brilliant Insight"

Hey, Art said it, not me.

Normally I wouldn't call attention to something like that, but coming from someone like Art De Vany, it means something to me. He's referring to one of my comments on this thread concerning anthropogenic global warming.

"Where did global warming go?"

I'd say it has been replaced by global hysteria, global stupidity, global time-lagged ignorance, and an overblown global arrogance as to man's ability to change the weather.

My brother emails a decent op-ed on the subject.

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

There's more. And...

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO₂ is the cause of climate change.

And that's because as the data demonstrates, CO2 will likely keep increasing for the first 800-1000 years that temperatures decrease, because that's the proper cause/effect relationship. Temperature fluctuations cause (lagging) CO2 fluctuations. It shouldn't be but a few more years until you can start laughing openly at the fools who ever bought into this. I do already; but then again, I took Brussels sprouts as a side dish to a potluck dinner at friends' the other night. I'm just outta control.

Please, Indeed

Lew says "oh please," but this for me would constitute my largest problem with Paul (follow the links, if you like). I don't mind that he has faith in a deity, for it's not really a scientific proposition, and so much of it is wrapped in family tradition anyway -- I love Christmas time, even though I consider literal belief absurd. But denying the scientific fact of evolution and natural selection -- especially using that ignorant "just a theory" line -- tells me that in some measure he places his faith above his perception, cognition, conceptualization, and reason. I simply cannot take anyone completely seriously who denies evolution and natural selection -- either because they're ignorant (excusable, but why take ignorant people seriously?) or explicitly places some degree of limitation on reason in favor of faith, which is really inexcusable, and you must therefore place great suspicion on their ability to honestly deal in facts.

I could have taken it a little easier if he'd waffled on the issue, simply stating that he's not well enough versed in the theories to judge one way or the other, and he doesn't consider it important that he does. Misrepresenting the word "theory," however, is a pretty serious offense, in my view. Ever heard of the theory of relativity, or the the theory of quantum mechanics, or the theory of a host of other things? How about this one: the theory of gravitation, which ultimately described the motion of solar systems.

I suppose you can look back to the time where it was outrageously suggested (and how dare they teach out kids!) that the sun, planets and other galaxies of stars didn't revolve around Earth each day and understand that it literally took centuries for the theory of gravitation and other clearly observable aspects to be accepted. And the reason it took so long, of course, was because of religious doctrine that was wrong -- just like it's always eventually wrong when it seeks to explain complex scientific phenomena from the perspective of people who haven't even figured out running water, forced air heating, or refrigeration. So, understandable, because I guess that's just the way people are. But that doesn't make any of those people any less ignorant or obstinate, indeed inexcusably stupid, once facts with clear logical implications were established. So, the question is: how stupid do you want to be? You can be as stupid as you like, you know.

That said, the hopeful thing about Paul is that he doesn't want to force his silly religious views down your throat or mandate they be taught in schools. He wishes to eliminate the Dept of Education, which should be done: education should take place at home, or at the authority and expense of a small local community, however they may decide to do it.

Update: Well, look at this. Turns out the original video was doctored. I don't know that it makes a huge difference, but I suppose it's more along the lines of the waffling I wrote about.

Pope Calls Kettle Black

It's sumthin' when the world's storyteller-in-chief has to come out against the telling of stories he apparently finds even more far fetched than the ones he tells.

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

Of course, it could be seen as just coming out against a competing faith. They both have all the essential elements: original sin, certain damnation, and a path to salvation.

(link: rockwell)

The Consensus is That There's a Consensus

Via Art De Vany, this WSJ Opinion Journal piece by Holman Jenkins Jr. The title, above, contemplates what can be taken to summarize the whole article:

What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

You should let that sink in, because, for better or worse, it's how the world operates; it's bad enough it does so in political philosophy and economics, but all the worse it's so too in science. Read the whole thing. Further attention is directed to Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. This is a good summary of the work so admired by the likes of Hitler and Mussolini.

This is essentially my touchstone for finding the very few smart people in a massive sea of mindless, blind-following-blind morons that have been breading for millenia. I instantly dismiss anyone who ever utters the phrase "most people think" in support of some [purported] "idea" they are trying to advance.

Experts

First, the bafflement. You can file this under the "nobody could have predicted," category.

"Everyone -- the staffers in the other campaigns, the bigwig political observers in the state -- is scratching their heads. They don't know what to make of this Ron Paul phenomenon," Smith said.

Next, the irony.

These "experts" were lopsided: on the occasions when they were right, they attributed it to their depth of understanding and expertise; when wrong, it was either the situation that was to blame, since it was unusual, or, worse, they did not recognize that they were wrong and spun stories around it. They found it difficult to accept that their grasp was a little short. But this attribute is universal to all our activities: there is something in us designed to protect our self-esteem.

We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perception of random events. We attribute our success to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control., namely to randomness. We feel responsible for the good stuff, but not for the bad.

-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Fundamental and Essential: Honesty

Ask yourself: whose counsel would you prefer, that of an honest man who was often proved wrong, or that of a dishonest man who virtually everyone thinks is right and a sage?

Back a week or so ago, Warren Meyer, in his new and excellent Climate Skeptic blog, alerted readers to what was not yet known to be a hoax, but which he nonetheless labeled as such -- in spite of the fact that the "study" came in on the side of anthropogenic global warming skeptics. Warren clearly saw that it was a hoax intended to expose skeptics as dishonest.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that this hoax is likely the work of global warming catastrophists.  My guess is that they wanted to make a point that skeptics were no such thing -- that skeptics would bite like a hungry bass at such a lure as long as it supported their position.  And certain folks in political circles did so, at least for a few hours.   My presumption is that if we had all trumpeted this fake study, then our judgment on other issues would get called into question.  My sense is that catastrophists have convinced themselves with their own propaganda that skeptics are all motivated by political and financial agendas.  But most skeptics are really interested in the science, and are motivated by the real fear that we are at the cusp of embarking on some really poor, near tragic, policy decisions.

More Gore

...and of such complexity that they would likely never get their due in history.

Billy Beck, commenting on something I read earlier today at Warren's other blog. What he's referring to, in my view, is the inherent conflict between truth and honesty. Complexity means: many facts. And many facts provides ample opportunity to tell a number of truths, all limited in context. But nobody is going to know the limitations of the context of the particular narrative they're exposed to unless they explicitly seek out additional knowledge on their own, think, and exercise their own honest judgment.

Honesty is a very high calling, and I daresay largely unpracticed by the majority of humanity.

Eleven Inconvenient Truths

Doubly so, seeing as how Gore managed to score his "Peace Prize" yesterday. Yea, well the Norwegians have become a parody of themselves for awhile, now.

Food for thought: Gore didn't call the film "Inconvenient Honesty." Can you imagine it being named that?

More food for thought: Why isn't the expression "the honest truth" considered redundant (and rightly so)?

Outrunning Socialism

Readers here know that while I don't hedge on matters of principle (theft is theft and murder is murder: notwithstanding fancy hats, titles, offices, uniforms, badges, flowing robes, marble columns or oak veneer), there' nonetheless a practical streak in me that acknowledges there's little option but to charge straight ahead and do one's very best to not be defeated by evil.

So in that vein, I'm happy to report that while not all it could have been, the body (human race) may perhaps be growing at a more rapid pace than the parasite (the state, worldwide) sucking away its life's blood.

I'm going to break down this article into two parts: predictions and actual observations.

The "Poverty" Swindle

Warren Meyer does his usual superb job in cataloging the mass of lies that always go into this sort of thing -- always. But be my guest; you're always welcome to keep being the leftists' fools. It's the only way they can possibly survive and operate. Without fools, both parties would cease to exist of course; by my bet is the democrats would collapse first.

To state it another way: that "99%" of politicians lie about "99%" of the time is not causal; not at all. It's not even necessarily harmful, taken alone. What's causal, and what makes it harmful is that you, dear American, believe it most of the time.

Are you one of their perfect fools; their very own useful idiot?

A Warm Note in Passing

This story has been around for a few days, but I've yet to see it in anything major. Perhaps not enough time has passed necessary to concoct the standard set of talking points, "explanations," equivocations, euphemisms, qualifications and so on that go hand-in-hand with maintaining propping up beliefs in illusions.

But let me ask you this, in light of all that you see, read, and hear surrounding global warming. What if you were suddenly told from a reliable scientific source (one you trust) that the hottest year on record in the U.S. was 1934? As in: nowhere near the time of your personal experience, where, now, every personal case of the prickly heat is confirmation of "global warming." Shit, even last weekend while standing on a hang-gliding launch north of Mt. Lassen, I was told that "global warming" was making for excellent flying this year. No, I didn't bother.

Maybe you're being fooled by randomness (see sidebar). I still say this is all part of a gigantic topping pattern, but we'll probably see some years of a "blowoff rally," where everyone goes even nuttier than they already are about this fantasy. They'll harbor all their silly illusions about how they "can help" by variously denying themselves things that people in 1934 could already take for granted. Then, either it starts getting colder on average (it tends to fluctuate, you know), people are affirmed in their delusion that they can forgo plastic water bottles and save the planet, or it'll get hotter and people will realize it's too hard and move on to the next hysteria. Either way, the insanity won't last; and anyway, all the major players will have gotten stinking rich off the con by then, so they'll be happy to get away with it, if they can.

Warren Meyer has up a good roundup with lots of updates. And here too.