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27 January 2004  

Fairly Unbalanced

A quiz. A heckler interrupts a Howard Dean speech and Al Franken handles this how?

1. By calmly negotiating with the heckler to find out the root causes of his anger?
2. By calling security or the police to handle the problem via the justice system?
3. By taking immediate and unilateral action to silence the heckler with force.

Bonus question: Is this behaviour consistsent with or at odds with left-wing principles?

Update: There's a less damning version of the Franken story on CNN's site.

02:15 PM |

26 January 2004  

Those Compassionate Leftists

Is the left getting more brazen or am I just noticing it more? John Pilger actively urges support for the Iraqi "resistance" (ugh) and The American Library Association's membership is apparently so far to the lunatic left that a majority of its voting members opposed a resolution calling for the release of 10 jailed Cuban librarians.

Sometimes, I wish Hell existed.

11:04 AM |

25 January 2004  

Shanghai Surprise

Sorry for the lack of posting this past week, but I'm sure you'll understand when I explain the reason. You see, I've moved to China. That's right, even though I speak nary a word of Chinese and had no job waiting for me here, I just knew this is where I was meant to be.

No, wait. That's not me, it's Ian Hamet! And Ian? What were you thinking?! No, seriously, I'm in awe of the spectacle of someone making such a bold move (literally) to pursue his values. I'll be following your exploits avidly.

07:35 PM |

18 January 2004  

Ms Nomer

From today's NYT Magazine Letters page:

I was struck by the Rev. Martyn Minns's remark "I'm trained as a mathematician. Either something is true or it isn't." He must know that the truth of a mathematical statement depends on the acceptance of the assumptions from which it is deduced. The same can be said of the truth of a theological statement, and this points up something common to theology and mathematics: both are constructs of the human mind and describe reality imperfectly at best.

10:10 AM |

14 January 2004  

That Statue Again

The subject of today's Daily Dose of Imagery at Iran-born Torontonian Sam Javanrouh's photoblog is a picture of that statue I mentioned the other day. Sam is a very talented photographer whose beautiful photos of scenes I pass every day make me very jealous. I mean inspired. OK, both. Anyway, you ought to check out his site, and vote for it if there's any justice and he's nominated for a Bloggie next week.

06:53 AM |

8 January 2004  

Guardian of the Litany

This sneering squib, which comes at the very end of a series of tidbits in the same sarcastic vein, appears to be what the Guardian has waited three full weeks to publish as their coverage of Lomborg's vindication by the "dishonesty" committee (compared to this when he was pronounced guilty last year):

Debatable decision. Belated congratulations to Bjorn Lomborg, eminent recipient of an Eco Sounding award for contrarian of the year. Just before Christmas, the author of the Sceptical Environmentalist, who last year had been found guilty of "scientific dishonesty" by a panel of Danish scientists, was cleared of the charge by a committee of Danish government scientists. "It has been hard, but I am happy that we now have confirmation that freedom of speech extends to environmental debate," says an emollient Lomborg.

10:22 AM |

7 January 2004  

A Little Dream

It's not that odd, really, to get shivers reading Agenda Bender but the little frisson of pleasure I just got from this post and the memory it evoked was a bit more intense than usual:

You are, I hope, aware of that sweetest movie of gay teenage romance, Beautiful Thing. It gets a good half its charm from the Cass Elliot songs (solo and with the Mamas and Papas) that power the soundtrack. The final dance in the housing project plaza at sunset is my sentimental favorite moment in movies. Or my favorite sentimental moment.

When a council flat becomes a palace.

09:07 PM |

4 January 2004  

Crichton Enlightens

I just got around to reading Michael Crichton's "Aliens Cause Global Warming" speech that's been making the blog rounds lately. It is excellent. Among the many good points he makes:

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

[W]e now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions.

It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?

10:21 PM |

Mrs. Black on the Greens

Barbara Amiel writes in the Telegraph:

Last December 17, the Guardian published its Eco gongs. The author of The Sceptical Environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg, won an award that cited his "scientific dishonesty" and described his book as "not comprehending science". That citation came from a report on Lomborg's book by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD). Their condemnation followed an 11-page trashing of Lomborg's book in the influential Scientific American.

In one of those coincidences that all journalists dread, the Guardian published its put-down of Lomborg on the very day that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation heavily criticised the DCSD's negative verdict as "completely void of argumentation". Unsurprisingly, the Guardian did not publish the news of Lomborg's reprieve.

08:56 PM |

Art for a Sunday Afternoon

Art historian Lee Sandstead has some excellent pictures of the South African War Memorial on University Ave. here in Toronto, the top of which is seen in the picture currently 2nd from the top over in the right-hand column. (Here's a closeup of the bit you can see in my picture.) He has lots of other pictures of sculpture, painting, and architecture, too. Seeing his photos reminded me that I took this picture of Bouguereau's The Young Sherpherdess when I was in San Diego last summer. The color is probably all wrong and it's not that sharp (cf. Lee's great pictures), but it's better than others I've managed to find with Google.

12:02 PM |

2 January 2004  

Glaciers Move Faster (Even without Global Warming)

It's now been 16 days since the Lomborg vindication and still no mention of it in the Guardian. However, in response to my badgering him, today's email brings news from their environment correspondent, Paul Brown, that a piece is in the works. John Vidal has even interviewed Lomborg for the story, Brown says, while blaming the long delay on the holidays. I think the InstaPundit might have had a point.

01:10 PM |

1 January 2004  

A Beautiful New Year's Eve All 'Round

Jeff Jarvis points to a stunning panorama of Times Square taken last night by Jook Leung. Make sure you look up. May 2004 see me taking pictures (with my new camera!) even a fraction as interesting.

10:37 PM |