Still playing catch up with work and my reading after Irene.
- A great divide holds back the relevance of economists | The Great Debate. by Mark Thoma
- and this article about Mark Thoma: The Importance of Mark Thoma « The Baseline Scenario
- Ron Paul and evolution, the sequal | The Zingularity As interesting as this post about Ron Paul is I thought Stephen Andrew’s description of Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul fits with my feeling about him too:
“…his son Rand Paul, a full on ignorant anti-government sociopath who seems hell bent on stealing the Social Security and Medicare I’ve paid into for almost 40 years and feeding it to Paris Hilton as tax cuts, and who claims to believe we can really run the world’s greatest super-power on a loosely confederated state government system that doesn’t work anywhere else in the world and didn’t work here for more than a few decades.”
- Case closed: “Climategate” was manufactured | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine Phil Plait delivers a thorough takedown of the climate change deniers who have hyped the wholly manufactured Climategate controversy. And he conlcludes with:
“…Here are the facts: the Earth is warming up. The rate of warming has increased in the past century or so. This corresponds to the time of the Industrial Revolution, when we started dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases warm the planet (hence the name) — if they didn’t we’d have an average temperature below the freezing point of water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which is dumped into the atmosphere by humans to the tune of 30 billion tons per year, 100 times the amount from volcanoes. And finally, approximately 97% of climatologists who actually study climate agree that global warming is real, and caused by humans.
Those are simply the facts. It’s not hard to connect them, as long as you stick to reality and don’t let ideology sway you.
Climate Change, it is what it is. Thanks Phil.
- Leo Behe On His Father | Camels With Hammers
- Month Passes With No U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq – NYTimes.com
- Never-Wrong Pundit Picks Obama to Win in 2012 – Washington Whispers (usnews.com) I wonder but I think I agree with the reasoning
- What Steve Jobs did really well | Pharyngula
- It’s Texas shootout! | The Zingularity
“…Someone help me understand what goes through the mind of a likely Republican voter with any critical thinking skills whatsoever? We tried conservative foreign policy in Iraq; it was a spectacular bloody failure costing a trillion dollars, thousands of lives and limbs, and still counting (And Obama’s efforts have been far more effective and literally magnitudes of order less expensive in every way measurable). We’ve tried conservative economic policy, slashing taxes and deregulating virtually every type of business. The end result of that was record deficits and the worst economic cluster-fuck since the days of Hoover.
What mental process is it that leads from those undisputed empirical facts of recent history above to the ineffable conclusion that the best way forward is to elect people promising to those very same things again and again?”
- Minimum Wage Laws and the Labor Market: What Have We Learned Since Card and Krueger’s Book Myth and Measurement? » New Deal 2.0
- Fox Business Host Accuses Bill Nye of ‘Confusing Viewers’ with Science | Video Cafe
- No, a new study does not show cosmic-rays are connected to global warming | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine“The way some of the media report on climate change can be simply stunning. For example, an opinion piece in The Financial Post has the headline “New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans”.There’s only one problem: that’s completely wrong. In reality the study shows nothing of the sort. The evidence, as far as the limitations of the experiment go (that’s important, see below), do not show any effect of cosmic rays on global warming, and say nothing at all about the effect humans are having on the environment. (read the full article)
- CapitalClimate: U.S. Heat Records Continue Crushing Cold: Incredible 22 to 1 Ratio in August
- Rick Perry and religion: Does the Texas governor believe his idiotic God talk, or is he just pandering for votes? – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine
- Texas Miracle: Can other states replicate Texas’ economic success? – By Annie Lowrey – Slate Magazine
- Rick Perry: Not a Libertarian | The Intersection | Discover Magazine
- Fox News Attacks Google As Anti-Church? – YouTube
Does “Fox and Friends” owe Google a correction for making 3 factual errors in under a minute to support the false claim that Google’s non-profit restrictions exclusively target religions and churches? - 9 Vital Points About The Public Relevance of Political Candidates’ Religious Beliefs | Camels With Hammers
- And Klem did you see this post Jason Thibeault wrote for specifically for you? Kirkby on cosmic rays and climate change | Lousy Canuck.