VD and me

I can't think why Jamsco didn't think to entitle his post thusly:

Ah, Junior High. The Golden Years. The Transition Years. Yes, Vox was a geek. Or maybe geek-ish. (Actually those words don’t really fit. How about ‘Not the pinacle of coolness’?) Now, obviously he didn’t rise near the level of awkwardness that Jamsco flew to. Here’s an illustrative story....

Allow me to set the record straight on a few things:

1. I was never a part of the cool crowd at church. We left it while I was still in junior high. And I never thought they were particularly cool anyhow. In retrospect, they struck me as future burnouts. Then again, perhaps Jamsco and I have different people in mind.

2. Inflation was already exceedingly high in 1980. What I actually said was that Reagan would increase the value of money, (not the quantity), by raising interest rates, which is what Paul Volcker subsequently did. Of course, Volcker didn't actually increase the value, he merely reduced the rate of the decline in value. Do cut me some slack. I was twelve.

3. It wasn't a comic book, it was Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, which was actually only The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, which completely mystified me at the time. My actual Tolkein paperbacks were far too precious to take on a canoe trip where they would get wet and warpy. All right, on second thought, I suppose it could be considered a comic book.

4. Jamsco is confused as to why he remembers the eight feet. One cliff was about 20 feet high, the other was eight feet higher. I wasn't afraid of the height, but I was definitely afraid of failing to clear a jutting tree branch below that one had to leap over from the higher cliff. I can remember wondering if you'd end up impaled there or if the branch would snap and you'd end up drowning in the water. The other cliff you could simply drop straight down. I don't actually remember many of the guys going off the higher one except for a few of the older guys, although Jamsco may well have done so. However, I was badly sunburned that day; I haven't been down the Apple River since.

5. Jamsco can relax. The "really neat" passage is an actual quote, but it wasn't him.

6. My sincere apologies about the comic book... if it was me. I tend to doubt it, though, as I didn't collect comic books - unless one counts the Bakshi - and I can't recall ever seeing a Superman comic or any other comic around our house at any time. That being said, it does sound like me. I am so notoriously bad about remembering to return books that I simply refuse to borrow them anymore even if they are actively pushed on me.

(Game for Nerds tangent. In college, I went out with a librarian who looked up my record with the county library, which dated back to when I was twelve. Her exact words: "Oh, you are BAAAAD." So, kids, that's how to impress that sexy librarian with the glasses and ponytail who sits there smoldering behind the desk with her nose buried in a book. Check out sufficiently interesting books and don't return them.. I doubt you even have to read them.)

I can't honestly say anything negative about Jamsco. He was invariably nice to me and to everyone else, and if he was as awkward as he was tall, I never thought that was a big deal. If I had to pick out one person from that time I always thought was a fundamentally decent human being, Jamsco would have been first on the list. Although, it occurs to me that I forgot to address one more thing.

7. Vox is occasionally wrong.

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Gauging interest

I've been hearing from a few people here and there that they would be interested in seeing me write a basic economics textbook that could be used as a homeschooling resource. I have to admit that while the idea is of some interest to me, it isn't something that I've ever contemplated too seriously in the past because most textbooks are written by academics with PhDs who sell them to captive college audiences. And, of course, there is no shortage of them, so why would the world need another one?

On the other hand, a look at Greg Mankiw's textbook, which is used at Harvard where he teaches, offers a very strong counterpoint to that argument. Consider what he declares to be the Ten Principles of Economics in his textbook entitled Principles of Economics:

1. People Face Tradeoffs.
2. The Cost of Something Is What You Give Up to Get It
3. Rational People Think at the Margin
4. People Respond to Incentives
5. Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off
6. Markets Are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity
7. Governments Can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes
8. A Country’s Standard of Living Depends on Its Ability to Produce Goods and Services
9. Prices Rise When the Government Prints Too Much Money
10. Society Faces a Short-Run Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment

Reading this, my first thought is that it is no wonder some of his students walked out of his class. My second one is that it is no mystery why Mankiw failed to see the 2008 crisis developing and still fails to recognize the current economic depression. My third thought is that perhaps a text on basic economic principles and history is in order after all.

When I look at Mankiw's principles, I see two reasonably solid ones, (1,2), four that are obviously incorrect or incomplete to the point of being misleading, (3,5,7,10), and four that are merely irrelevant due to being incomplete. (4,6,8,9).

Anyhow, I have to finish the current novel first, which will be sometime next summer, but it's not too early to start taking notes and looking at the deficiencies of current textbooks. So, the two things I'd be interested in knowing is how many people might be interested in an electronic econ textbook priced around $4.99 and what areas merit being covered. For example, Felsenburgh suggested that a proper economics education should begin with the School of Salamanca, but that is obviously insane to anyone who has actually read Rothbard's History of Economic Thought. I don't think even homeschooled students would be able to stay focused on an economics course that begins with a diverse group of people predominantly grouped together on the basis of their arguments for the legitimacy of usury.

This isn't to say that the Salamancans aren't important or denigrate their contributions to economic thought, only that they are not exactly the ideal point of entry to the field.

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WND column

Transfer or Tea Party?

Most Americans opposed TARP. They saw no reason to use taxpayer money for bailing out the very financial institutions that had been parasitically feeding off them for decades. But America is not a democracy. It is no longer even a representative democracy. The banking bailout, the GSE bailout and the subsequent automotive bailout were all rammed down the unwilling throats of the American public by the Goldman-controlled Treasury Department with the help of the Bush administration and congressional Democrats. It was rather like a doctor forcing a rape victim to pay for her own chemotherapy because it would benefit her rapist.*

Bipartisan support for the bailout made it clear to all and sundry that at the end of the day, the supposed divide between the Republican and Democratic parties is an imaginary one. Republicans and Democrats are nothing more than a unitary bank party.


*I know this makes no sense. That's the point. Neither did the bailouts.

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VPFL Week 9

86 Cranberry Rhyneauxs (3-5-0)
77 Greenfield Grizzlies (5-3-0)

49 GroverBeach Quixotes (4-4-0)
46 Moundsview Meerkats (5-3-0)

64 Green Reverends (4-3-1)
61 RR Redbeards (2-5-1)

67 MS Swamp Spartans (4-4-0)
61 Bailout Banksters (4-3-1)

86 Bane Sidhe (4-4-0)
80 Macau Marauders (3-4-1)

That was disappointing. I'd given up on Week 8 before the season even started, given that 4 of my starters were on a bye week. But a good performance from Foster and Turner and a solid one from Christian Ponder substituting for Aaron Rodgers would have sufficed to do the trick... if the doggone Dallas kicker had scored more than one of the 10 points projected. C'est le NFL.

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Mailvox: what am I missing here?

Speaking of interlocutors, one of my occasional atheist emailers sent this in response to yesterday's Mailvox. MD wrote:

' . . . the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets.'

Never has there been a greater endorsement of the 'new atheist' movement than that last sentence! You're cleverer than saying weak stuff like that.

I genuinely do not understand the point he is making here. The idea would appear to be that the New Atheism has made targets of Christians and other evangelical theists because they are incorrect. But I don't see that this is the observable case at all. It seems to me if that X is attempting to convince others he is correct and Y decides to make X a target in response, the onus is therefore on Y to show that X is incorrect.

So, where do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any of the New Atheists ever attempt to show that Billy Graham or John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas are incorrect? They very seldom attack anything that is even remotely recognizable as Christian theology, preferring instead to take on what appear to be poorly remembered Sunday School versions of it. The Courtier's Reply of PZ Myers - which, to be fair, other New Atheists besides Richard Dawkins cannot be assumed to endorse - outright attempts to justify atheists knowing nothing about what they are so ineptly criticizing.

I even remarked on this bizarre failure to actually address the most basic Christian theology in TIA: "While Harris doesn’t once cite minor Christian intellectual figures such as Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Wesley, G. K. Chesterton, or even C. S. Lewis, he does find it relevant to provide one reference to Tim LaHaye, thirteen references to Hitler, Himmler, and Hess, and six whole pages dedicated to Noam Chomsky. Because, after all, no one is more suited to explain the Christian faith quite so well as an elderly author of pop religious fantasies, a trio of dead Nazis, and a left-wing Jewish linguist."

Now Dawkins does mention Aquinas and the Five Proofs in The God Delusion, but he does little more than cry "infinite regress" and demonstrate that he has missed the point of them. (I did like his point about the natural terminator, although it doesn't actually serve to refute any of the Five Proofs since they concern beginnings rather than ends.) He also shows that he has never actually read the Summa Theologica; it is telling to note that Dawkins immediately proceeds from his cursory glance at the Five Proofs to the Ontological Argument without realizing that Aquinas rejected it more than 700 years ago in Part 1, Question 2, Article 1 of the Summa.

"OBJECTION 2: Further, those things are said to be self-evident which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher (1 Poster. iii) says is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognized that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word "God" is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word "God" is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition "God exists" is self-evident.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Perhaps not everyone who hears this word "God" understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word "God" is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist."

So, it seems to me that far from being the greatest endorsement of the New Atheist movement, my statement demonstrates its impotence, its ignorance, and its intellectual dishonesty.

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They're not all wrong

Harvard students walk out of Greg Mankiw's basis economics class:

Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society.

As Harvard undergraduates, we enrolled in Economics 10 hoping to gain a broad and introductory foundation of economic theory that would assist us in our various intellectual pursuits and diverse disciplines, which range from Economics, to Government, to Environmental Sciences and Public Policy, and beyond. Instead, we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.

A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.

On the one hand, this protest makes no sense. They'll get no shortage of Keynesianism from Mankiw, even if most of the explicit Keynesianism won't be provided until a subsequent macro class rather than in what is Harvard's equivalent of Econ 101. But whether you prefer to describe Mankiw as a neoclassical or a monetarist, he's still a Samuelsonian attempting to manage the economy in macroeconomics terms. He's a Keynesian heretic, and would be better described as a quasi-Keynesian than an anti-Keynesian, Steve Keen's opinion on the correct categorizations notwithstanding.

On the other, they're absolutely right. Contra most academic programs, including the one in which I received my degree, Adam Smith is neither basic or fundamental. A proper education in economics should begin with Cantillon and Turgot.

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Mailvox: it's not about the interlocutor

AA wonders why it's so hard to convince atheists of anything:

I've been debating atheists on message boards for about 5 years now and while I'm getting better at writing, I don't think I'm seeing a lot of results. I'm just wondering, do you think there's a place for people like me to debate on forums and then just read your blog to get ideas and material? Or is it better to carry out debates on blogs? Also --I don't know if you have an adderall habit or what but I'm amazed at how often you post -- do you do something for your attention span and work ethic?

The quote from Bartleby's sums it up:

"He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still."
~Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

It's a tautology. Most atheists don't believe in God because they don't believe in God. If you listen to their stories and read their books, it is readily apparent that most of them became atheists between the ages of 10 and 17. There are various theories concerning why this happens, but the observable fact of the matter is that their atheism is actually less rational and less based on any reasoning than the average college student's political party identification. All the appeals to science and so forth are nothing more than ex post facto rationalizations.

Hence all the false claims about Biblical knowledge and the attacks on Sunday School theology. What passes for their knowledge is usually the dimly remembered childhood church indoctrination. I can't think of a single atheist who has ever been able to tell me the structure of an argument from the Summa Theologica, much less the actual content of any of the 610 arguments contained within it. And the next atheist I meet to have read Tertullian or any of the Latin Fathers except Augustine will be the first. Their ignorance isn't merely limited to Christianity either, as they seldom know anything about the sacred works or theology of other religions except perhaps a little Greek and Norse mythology.

That being said, I am entirely open to hear other explanations for why an atheist remains an atheist after having his purported reasons for becoming an atheist destroyed from actual atheists.

The reason for combating atheism isn't to convert the atheist. You will never see any such results. That simply isn't going to happen because no atheist will ever cease being an atheist simply because all of his rationalizations have been shown to be factually incorrect, logically fallacious, or otherwise irrational. And that's completely fine. The reason for shooting them down over and over again is to neutralize and counteract their effect on the weak-minded, who are even less inclined to think than the average evangelical atheist. I seldom intentionally attack atheists who make no attempt to convince others that gods and the supernatural do not exist for precisely this reason; I don't care what they believe or do not believe. Their lack of belief has no effect on me or anyone else.

But the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets. So, my advice is to keep doing what you're doing, keep refining and improving your arguments, and you will likely prevent dozens, if not hundreds of people, from falling for the false arguments and incorrect logic being presented by evangelical atheists.

As for the frequency of my posting, I simply make a habit of it by sticking to a schedule. Two posts per day, period. Usually, that ends up meaning three or four on weekdays. It takes very little time; the average one probably takes between 10-15 minutes, so 2-3 posts is like watching one sitcom per day. That's not a lot of work. I've recently taken the same approach to my writing and it's been very effective. In 102 days since I started writing the first novel in the Arts of Dark and Light series, I've written 84,269 words, leaving me exactly 2.3 days ahead of an aggressive schedule. Only another 210,731 to go.... As for adderall, I've never heard of it. My only drugs of choice are cappucino and vino rosso. Three cups of the former and one or two glasses of the latter daily is my limit.

As Ecclesiastes reminds us, it's all vanity. But one hopes that even so, some of it may be useful to others and will ultimately prove to be to the glory of God.

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The week in Alpha

Monday: A method for distinguishing the gamma from the superficially sentimental player courtesy of the greatest rock band of all space and time.

Tuesday: Women often fall for liars, but are liars appealing or are women simply unable to distinguish between men who are lying from men who are telling the truth?

Wednesday: The nice guys write a letter.

Thursday: Which do women find less sexually appealing, decapitation and post-mortem sex or gooey gamma romantic gestures? It's a tough call.

Friday: Short hair is the equivalent of 30 extra pounds on a woman.

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Psychology is not science

And neither are many other pseudoscientific fields with scientific pretensions. Because the credibility of science depends upon its replicability, it naturally follows that any "scientist" who does not release his data for independent review and replication is not doing science:

In a recent survey, two-thirds of Dutch research psychologists said they did not make their raw data available for other researchers to see.

Then they are witch-doctors, propagandists, and grant-seekers, not scientists. Some years ago, I wrote about the need for Open Science. But the more that I think about it, that is redundant. Because if it isn't open, it isn't science. To paraphrase the OpenScience Project, if you're going to do science, you have to release the computer code too.

"Our view is that it is not healthy for scientific papers to be supported by computations that cannot be reproduced except by a few employees at a commercial software developer. Should this kind of work even be considered Science? It may be research, and it may be important, but unless enough details of the experimental methodology are made available so that it can be subjected to true reproducibility tests by skeptics, it isn’t Science."

This was also amusing to note in light of my contention that most scientists are completely untrained in statistics.

"Also common is a self-serving statistical sloppiness. In an analysis published this year, Dr. Wicherts and Marjan Bakker, also at the University of Amsterdam, searched a random sample of 281 psychology papers for statistical errors. They found that about half of the papers in high-end journals contained some statistical error."

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A society that deserves to die

I don't see how you could possibly reach any other conclusion:

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

Now, I don't believe in capital punishment by the state, for the obvious reason that it only encourages them. But I don't think anyone could reasonably disagree with the idea that if we're going to have capital punishment anyway, the decision to pursue a master's degree in puppetry should definitely qualify an individual for immediate hanging.

Mimes should be decapitated, of course. One can't be too careful when dealing with the nasty bastards.

At this point, I can't even find it within myself to feel the least bit sorry for Americans any longer. It would be one thing if they were foolishly going into debt while studying something useful instead of Sociology, Black Studies, Womyn's Studies, Business, and English. But a society where people are actually paid to teach puppetry, go into debt in order to obtain master's degrees in puppetry, and believe that what a pseudo-revolutionary movement needs is giant puppets, is quite clearly insane and should be put down at the earliest opportunity.

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Fruits of the Arab Spring

Remember this martyr for his faith when the neocons are celebrating the accomplishments of their World Democratic Revolution. And remember it when Republicans are explaining why it is necessary to export democracy to the savages of the third world while simultaneously importing them throughout the West:

Arab Spring, Egyptian edition: a 17 year old Christian in a high school in Mallawi was ordered by his teacher to cover up a tattoo of a cross on his wrist. True to his faith, he refused to do so and instead exposed a crucifix that he wore around his neck. He was then beaten to death by his teacher and two Muslim students:

And lest they mistakenly conclude that the enemy of their enemy is their friend, I note that neither Jews nor atheists have proven to be any better off under Sharia.

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The EU's democracy deficit widens

No referendum for you!

A statement from Prime Minister George Papandreou scrapping the referendum on the $178 billion European bailout package has been provided to the Associated Press. "The referendum was never an end in itself," Papandreou said. "We had a dilemma - either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum."

It won't make any difference. The question isn't whether it's all going to come crashing down, it's just a question of which of the many straws upon the camel's back will be that does the trick.

My expectation is that once people realize they are not only being railroaded, but don't even have the opportunity to protest, we're going to start seeing the revival of the Red Brigades soon. As I told the DC radio guy who interviewed me this afternoon, it's not the crash that concerns me, that's inevitable and I'm just hoping to stay buckled in and enjoy the ride. It is what comes after and how the popular fury will be channeled that is worrisome.

If I was an elite strategist, that's what I'd have focused on for the last two years, not wasting the time on playing King Canute.

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A skeptic shows he's a sucker

Whenever you encounter atheists claiming to be skeptical, rational, logical, and intelligent, you can be relatively confident that they will soon demonstrate that they are absolutely nothing of the sort. Consider these two contradictory claims from SkepticBlog:

1. "SkepticBlog is a collaboration among some of the most recognized names in promoting science, critical thinking, and skepticism."

2. "Why has no one from Wall Street gone to jail for the financial meltdown? Bill Maher has asked this question several times on his HBO show Real Time. I have asked many experts myself, including economists, lawyers, and Wall Street traders. Answer: no one went to jail because they didn’t break any laws."

Now, I rather liked Michael Shermer's "The Mind of the Market" when I reviewed it a while back, but this post is almost astonishingly stupid and is so demonstrably clueless that I very much doubt Shermer has genuinely asked a single expert about this. One need look no further than the mainstream media to know that the Obama administration broke the law. Ben Bernanke broke the law. Henry Paulson broke the law. Every single "too big to fail" bank broke the law. Every bank that registered a mortage with MERS broke the law and evaded county taxes. Karl Denninger has a little list of four of the most obvious and egregious examples.

Shermer then goes on to ask "What, exactly, did these Wall Street people do that was so wrong?" That's quite simple. Fraud, theft, forgery, money laundering, and tax evasion.

And after this preposterous demonstration of willful stupidity, the "skeptic" Shermer declares that "the government should regulate Wall Street more". Right, because the answer to government regulators failing to enforce the law is obviously more government regulation. That's some fine criticial thinking right there, isn't it?

Shermer should know better. I know for a fact that he's not as economically illiterate as this post makes him look, but it shows that he is demonstrably inept when it comes to logic. Keep this performance in mind when you consider the value of the science he is promoting and the legitimacy of his arguments concerning atheism.

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EU crackdown or crackup

Most likely the former followed by the latter. The EU leaders can blather about the sanctity of the euro and inviolate nature of the Union all they like, but neither threats nor promises can salvage the situation. Their problem is that they can't keep the Fourth ReichUnion together while continuing to drain the masses dry in order to bail out the bankers. To put the situation in context, imagine the various U.S. states had had the option to opt out of participating in TARP. Why would people in Texas ever choose to materially reduce their standard of living so that Washington could prop up Goldman Sachs and Bank of America and keep them in business? As usual, the bond yields tell a more informative story:

Greece 2-year 92.980% One year ago: 9.784%
Portugal 2-year 19.112% One year ago: 3.521%
Italy 2-year 5.455% One year ago: 1.966%
Spain 2-year 3.872 One year ago: 2.069%

In other words, the Greek default is certain regardless of what happens with the "bailout" or the proposed referendum. Portugal will probably default too, sooner or later. Italy is looking increasingly problematic, while Spain actually appears to be doing relatively well.

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Millenials vs Baby Boomers

Well, I certainly know whose side I am on. Keep this generational perspective in mind as you see the same people who are defending the systematic lawbreaking of banks, financial institutions, and government agencies over decades while waxing apocalyptic over a few weeks of a little littering and trespassing. Whatever the downside of Occupy Wall Street might be, as a phenomenon it is still VASTLY preferable to the poisonous activities of Wall Street:

The Occupy movement is being driven by the Millenial Generation. They have used their superior technological and social networking skills to organize, educate, and inspire people to their cause while befuddling and confusing the authorities. They continue to rally more young people to their fight against Wall Street and K Street tyranny. The generational lines of battle are being drawn. The Baby Boom Generation, who is at the point of maximum power in society, fears this movement. They control Wall Street, corporate America, Congress, the courts, academia and the media. They have reached their peak of influence and power, which will rapidly wane over the next fifteen years. They see the Occupy movement as a threat to their supremacy and control of the system. The cynical, alienated, pragmatic Generation X is caught between the Boomers and the Millenials in this escalating conflict. It is likely the majority of this generation will side with the Millenials, realizing the future of the country depends on them and not the elderly Boomers....

Over the last six weeks I’ve watched as the young protestors around the country have been called: filthy hippies, losers, lazy, coddled, socialists, communists, spoiled college kids, parasites, useful idiots, and tools of the left. Most of the wrath being heaped upon these young people for exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and freedom of assembly has been from the Baby Boom Generation, who are at the peak of their power in our society. Sixty percent of the Senate is made up of Baby Boomers, with the next closest generation being the Silent Generation with twenty five percent. Over 58% of the House of Representatives is made up of Baby Boomers, with the next closest generation being Gen Xers at 27%. They occupy the executive suites of the Wall Street banks (Blankfein, Dimon, Pandit, Moniyan) and the Federal Reserve (Bernanke). They make up the majority of judges, local politicians and school boards. They run the Federal government agencies.

And they dominate the airwaves as the high priced mouthpieces for their corporate bosses. This Prophet generation will lead the country through the trials and tribulations of this Fourth Turning.

The disdain and contempt for these Millenial protestors flies in the face of the facts about this generation. They use drugs at a lower rate than their parents did at the same age. Teen crime rates and teen pregnancies have declined. They will have the highest level of college education in U.S. history. They were protected during their youth as organized sports taught them teamwork. They are the most technologically savvy generation in history. They volunteer at higher level than previous generations. They have been more upbeat and engaged than their predecessors (Gen X). And they are much closer to their parents than Boomers were at the same age. They reject the negativism and cynicism of their parents and believe positive change is possible in our society.

They have shown respect for authority up until the last six weeks. They were primed to be led by Boomers that could articulate a positive vision of the future based on reality and a better tomorrow. They were ready to make sacrifices in order to create a brighter future. But a funny thing happened. The Boomer generation failed to deliver on their part of the bargain....

The youth of America listened to their parents and stayed in school. They’ve racked up over $1 trillion in student loan debt getting college educations. Meanwhile, our Baby Boomer leadership had an opportunity to address the country’s unsustainable fiscal path by accepting the consequences of a thirty year debt binge and liquidating the banks that took extreme risks with extreme leverage. An orderly liquidation (aka Washington Mutual) would have punished the stockholders, bondholders and management of the Wall Street banks, while leaving the depositors whole and purging the system of debt that can never be paid off. Our politicians could have ended our wars of choice in the Middle East and cut our war spending by hundreds of billions without sacrificing one iota of safety for the American people. The political leadership could have put the country on a deficit reduction path that would have insured the long-term viability of our republic.

Instead of doing the right thing, our Baby Boomer leaders did the exact opposite of the right thing.

We can't Logan's Run those bastard Boomers soon enough for me. Years ago, when all the magazines were full of "50 is the new 20" stories, I used to joke that it didn't matter how old the idiots got, they would still be insisting that it was cool to be geriatric. But I was joking... surely even the Baby Boomers couldn't possibly be that hopelessly, myopically, narcissistically stupid, right?

Wrong. I suppose this headline was always inevitable:

Life begins at 70!

Clearly we need to exterminate the monsters before they finish raping the planet in their never-ending voyage of self-importance.

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Mailvox: Exit the Harassinator

NB isn't buying Herman Cain's astoundingly inept attempt to deal with multiple historical accusations of sexual harassment:

I saw Herman Cain on Fox News this weekend, discussing the sexual harassment issue. He blew it.

He said he’d never sexually harassed anybody and that if the Restaurant Association settled a claim, he didn’t know about it and he hoped they didn’t pay anybody because he never did anything wrong. Now it appears there’s an out-of-court settlement involving two women who got a year’s pay each. It’s never the offense that sinks you, it’s always the cover-up.

He should have said: “I was accused of sexual harassment when I worked for the restaurant association 20 years ago. I denied I did anything wrong at that time, and I deny it today. We ended up settling out of court because it was cheaper to settle than continue paying the lawyers. Both sides agreed never to discuss the details of the settlement and I’m sticking to our agreement. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

That would have been honest and believable. Most people would said “huh” and moved on. Now, it’s not the accusation that troubles people – hell, lots of people get falsely accused of stuff and have to settle or take a plea to avoid losing everything in litigation - it’s the lying about it that troubles us. Next, he’ll play the race card and compare himself to Clarence Thomas. When that doesn’t work, he’ll probably enter sexual harassment training for a weekend and have Billy Graham pray for him. When his wife stands beside him on stage saying she’s always believed in him, that’s the death knell.

I have to admit, I simply do not understand these morons who appear to believe that the skeletons in their closet are not going to eventually come out... unless one resorts to conspiracy theory. My explanation for this seemingly stupid behavior is that most, if not all, politicians have some sort of past history that will render them political toast if outed; Cain was probably told by the Republican establishment to settle down and not get too carried away with his success in the polls, but he went cowboy and decided to buck the system in the hopes that they wouldn't air his dirty laundry.

On the one hand, the fact that the someone in the establishment wants to finish off his campaign tends to speak well for him. On the other hand, he is an incoherent bankster. America is probably better off with him out of the race, assuming this serves to finish him.

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Stupefying Stories 1.2

The Original Cyberpunk and team today released the November issue of Stupefying Stories, which features short fiction from various Friday Challenge stars and others, including Aaron Bradford Starr, Clare L. Deming, Anatoly Belilovsky, Sarah Frost, Rebecca Roland, and Henry Vogel.

I didn't contribute to this issue, but as keen observers of the reading list may have already discerned, I have been working on a story that will appear in a future issue. Or rather, giving the amazing number of stories from very recognizable names now being submitted every week to the fledgling e-publication, may appear in a future issue.

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Hiding the decline again

Richard Muller is the latest "scientist" to attempt to pass off another an AGW/CC fraud:

Last week, a research team at Berkeley led by a former climate change skeptic released a study of global temperatures that intended to set the record straight on controversial data collected by the East Anglia Project, NASA, and other organizations that have acted as advocates for action based on anthropogenic global warming. Professor Richard Muller put together a graph of the data that supposedly showed warming from 1800 (roughly the beginning of the Industrial Era in Europe) through 1975, and then a steeper rise in temperatures that appears unstopped. When this data was released, newspapers and other media proclaimed it the end of AGW skepticism and demanded capitulation from the “deniers.”...

A closer look at the data and a Daily Mail interview with one of Muller’s team shows that the chart hides the fact that no warming has occurred in the last 11 years, as has been repeatedly pointed out:

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis. Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago. …

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained. ‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’

Let’s take a look at Muller’s chart, and then compare it to the chart for the last 13 years — which the Daily Mail labels an “inconvenient truth”:

First, let’s look at the top chart. A closer reading of the top chart shows that, relative to the 1950-1980 average baseline BEST uses, temperatures didn’t actually warm at all until sometime during the Great Depression, so the entire first century of the Industrial Era apparently had no impact — in a period where the dirtiest of mass energy production processes was in widest use (coal). Temperatures then started to slowly rise during an era of significantly reduced industrial output, thanks to a lengthy economic depression that gripped the entire world. What we end up with is a 30-year spike that also includes a few years of reduced industrial output, starting in the stagnating 1970s where oil production also got restricted thanks to onerous government policies and trade wars.

In climate terms, a 30-year spike is as significant as a surprisingly warm afternoon in late October. Man, I wish we were going to have one of those today.

But then look what happens in the past 11 years in the bottom chart. Despite the fact that the world’s nations continue to spew CO2 with no significant decline (except perhaps in the Great Recession period of 2008-9), the temperature record is remarkably stable. In fact, it looks similar to the period between 1945 and 1970 on the top chart. If global temperature increases really correlated directly to CO2 emissions, we wouldn’t see this at all; we’d see ever-escalating rates of increase in global temperatures, which is exactly what the AGW climate models predicted at the turn of the century. They were proven wrong.

And in fact, Curry explains that the failure of those models finally has some scientists going back to the drawing board....

And what of Muller? When confronted by the Daily Mail about the data from the past 11 years, he denied that temperatures had plateaued, and then admitted that the data shows exactly that.

And yet the unthinking, unquestioning science fetishists still wonder why rational observers are deeply skeptical when scientists seeking huge quantities of money and global fame, and demanding massive societal change on the basis of what provides them with the aforementioned money and fame, are repeatedly caught out faking and misrepresenting the data.

The CO2 model is obviously wrong. It has completely failed as a predictive model. And, as I have been saying for years, global warming isn't even taking place and hasn't been for longer than I have been posting on this blog.

Richard Muller may have once been a climate skeptic, (his biography suggests he is either lying or being misrepresented by others), but if so, the evidence suggests that he was not so much convinced by the data as corrupted by the benefits of jumping aboard the AGW/CC gravy train. The increasingly inescapable conclusion, based on this and the increasing reports of scientific fraud, is that science should be considered intrinsically unreliable until it is successfully applied and is considered engineering.

And speaking of hiding the decline, Muller's fellow-in-fraud, Michael "hockey stick" Mann appears to be losing his battle to hide the data:

"Discredited global warming scientist, Michael Mann, sees his last-ditch efforts to hide data fall apart as legal experts reveal a mountain of legal precedents against him. In his recent papers (filed on September 2, 2011) Mann claims ‘academic freedom’ and ‘proprietary materials’ as his defense. But legal experts who have since reviewed Mann’s submission to the Circuit Court of Prince William County, Va., say they are so full of holes they are doomed to fail."

These "scientists" are all about the science and expanding human knowledge, aren't they! Let's revisit a few of my favorite global warming quotes, shall we?

1. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

2. "Yes, it is quite probable that global warming has a significant anthropogenic component. About as probable as the idea that HIV causes AIDS, species diversity is driven by evolutionary processes, and that the world is round." - PZ Myers

3. RT: Is global warming a threat to the human species?

Richard Dawkins: Yes.

4. "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. - American Physical Society

5. "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society." - American Association for the Advancement of Science

6. The Geological Society of America (GSA) supports the scientific conclusions that Earth’s climate is changing; the climate changes are due in part to human activities; and the probable consequences of the climate changes will be significant and blind to geopolitical boundaries. - The Geological Society of America

7. "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere." - U.S. National Academy of Sciences

8. Do you consider teaching someone about global warming, ozone holes, or ongoing extinctions, all established facts about our natural world, to be indoctrination?" - PZ Myers

Established facts... established scientific facts are indeed indoctrination. This means that we have no choice but to conclude that the definition of "established scientific fact" is sufficiently broad to include outright fiction and that appeals to "scientific consensus" possess no more legitimacy than appeals to reality TV.

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The three levels of science

The fundamental flaw in the common, but erroneous idea that science is an intrinsically superior form of obtaining knowledge is that it relies upon the same human element that various other forms of knowledge do. Notice that the amount of detected scientific fraud appears to be increasing as electronic communications provide greater access to non-scientists, and that even in this case, where the whistleblowing was done by scientists, it was not done as part of the scientific process.

Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in a study that claimed eating meat made people more aggressive. Soon after being confronted with the accusations, Stapel reportedly told university officials that some of his papers contained falsified data. The university launched an investigation, as did the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, where Stapel had worked previously. The Tilburg commission today released an interim report (in Dutch), which includes preliminary results from all three investigations. The investigators found "several dozens of publications" in which fictitious data has been used. Fourteen of the 21 Ph.D. theses Stapel supervised are also tainted, the committee concluded.

Stapel issued a statement today in which he apologizes to his colleagues and says he "failed as a scientist" and is ashamed of his actions. He has cooperated to an extent by identifying papers with suspect data, according to university officials. The investigation by the three universities is ongoing and should ultimately investigate more than 150 papers that Stapel has published since 2004, including a paper earlier this year in Science on the influence of a messy environment on prejudice. "People are in shock," says Gerben van Kleef, a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, who did not work directly with Stapel. "Everybody wonders how this could have happened and at this proportion."

Stapel's work encompassed a broad range of attention-catching topics, including the influence of power on moral thinking and the reaction of psychologists to a plagiarism scandal. The committee, which interviewed dozens of Stapel's former students, postdoctoral researchers, co-authors, and colleagues, found that Stapel alone was responsible for the fraud. The panel reported that he would discuss in detail experimental designs, including drafting questionnaires, and would then claim to conduct the experiments at high schools and universities with which he had special arrangements. The experiments, however, never took place, the universities concluded. Stapel made up the data sets, which he then gave the student or collaborator for analysis, investigators allege. In other instances, the report says, he told colleagues that he had an old data set lying around that he hadn't yet had a chance to analyze. When Stapel did conduct actual experiments, the committee found evidence that he manipulated the results.

Many of Stapel's students graduated without having ever run an experiment, the report says. Stapel told them that their time was better spent analyzing data and writing. The commission writes that Stapel was "lord of the data" in his collaborations. It says colleagues or students who asked to see raw data were given excuses or even threatened and insulted.

Now, keep in mind that science fetishists often claim that science is intrinsically superior because scientific evidence theoretically can be replicated. But this argument is fundamentally flawed; no one argues that eyewitness testimony that theoretically could be confirmed by physical evidence is intrinsically superior to eyewitness evidence that cannot be independently confirmed in the absence of actually bothering to verify the testimony.

Clearly, a bright line needs to be delineated between scientific evidence that has been independently replicated by experiment, scientific evidence that could be independently replicated but has not been, and scientific evidence that cannot be independently replicated by experiment. And furthermore, it is necessary to stop giving the latter two types of scientific evidence, or more properly, potential scientific evidence, the same level of credence that is given to actual scientific evidence that has been reliably and independently replicated.

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And why might that be?

The New York Times contemplates the mystery of how a Goldmanite - and former governor of New Jersey - could be responsible for one of the biggest bankruptcies in U.S. history:

He was from Goldman Sachs.

That is the refrain you hear over and over again when MF Global insiders try to explain why they went along with Jon Corzine’s risky trades — the same ones that caused a crisis of confidence at the firm and, ultimately, its bankruptcy on Monday....

Being a former Goldmanite has long been considered the ultimate calling card. But, in some cases, it has proved to be a liability: A series of blunders by former senior Goldman executives raises questions about whether Goldman’s secret sauce can actually be exported. Think John Thain. Or Robert Rubin. Or J. Chris Flowers.

Let's consider the possible explanations why there is a pattern of success at Goldman Sachs and failure elsewhere:

1. There is some sort of magic in the Goldman water cooler that permits these financial wunderkinder to outperform the rest of the financial markets.

2. There is a wise old Asian janitor, seemingly ageless, living in the basement of the Goldman building whose cryptic utterings are interpreted and applied by the Goldman executives, leading to astoundingly good results.

3. Goldman leverages its oversized influence in the federal government to secure government policies that ensure it reliable profits.

I don't know about you, but my money is on number two. I picked up an East Asian Studies major in college and studied Japanese in Tokyo on the off-chance that I might have the opportunity to speak to him one day.

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Speaking of Europe's "democratic deficit"

Europe's leaders are "horrified" that the Greeks might be permitted a voice in their own destiny:

Greek prime minister George Papandreou horrified other EU leaders by announcing that he will ask voters to approve a deal struck last week that would see 50 per cent of the country’s debts written off – but harsh austerity measures imposed for years to come. A ‘no’ vote would prove catastrophic for the EU and could prompt a disorderly default on the country’s debts and an exit from the euro.

Of course, as Iceland has already proven, a 'no' vote would be much, much better for the people of Greece themselves. Bad for the parasitical bankers and the EU elite, to be sure, but why should that be any concern of the Greek people?

Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament, puts it in context:

I wish I could convey the sheer writhing horror that George Papanderou's referendum proposal has provoked in Brussels. Eurocrats instinctively dislike referendums. They feel that their work is too important and complicated to be vulnerable to the prejudices of hoi polloi (or, to be truly pretentious about it, vulnerable to the των πολλων prejudices – for once, the Greek phrase seems apposite).

A referendum at any time would be regarded by European leaders as irresponsible. But a referendum when the euro is teetering on the brink is seen as the height of ingratitude, selfishness and recklessness.

Ingratitude... for what, one wonders?

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