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Original: (Saturday, October 15, 2005)Way long ago on a warm summer day when I was about 5 or 6, I was playing at a friends house. Sometime around the middle of the afternoon Benny's mom came out of the house with a contraption. She said "We're going to make some ice cream." Well, I was highly skeptical. I figured "making ice cream" was pretty much like "making potatoes", or "making milk". I was one of those who thought food came from the market. Anyway, we (she) poured some stuff into the middle part of this Ice Cream Maker,
and put ice and rock salt in the surrounding bucket. And told us to start cranking the handle. After what seemed like a long time (but probably wasn't) and a lot of work (and probably was), the cranking got difficult. We stopped; took the thing apart; opened the cannister in the middle, where we'd poured the cream, sugar, and things I don't have any idea about, and Voila'! Ice cream! Just as advertised. How? On a warm day, with the two of us sweating over the crank, and the ice melting; How? How did the liquid in the cannister freeze?
At last, the point - If you can't figure out how this happened, you shouldn't be allowed to talk about Global Warming. The simple answer is: heat transfer. You could look it up, to quote the late great Casey Stengel.
Now Steven Milloy, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, says HERE, global warming claims are contradicted by the fact that at one point on the Earth the temperature indicates we are making ice cream.
OOPS:
I mean, rather, that thermometers aren't indicating a temperature increase in that locale. Therefore, the heat content of the system is not increasing! An incredible and totally unbelievable argument. Such illogic is stunning in its scope! There are still a number of people who, like Mr. Milloy, are finding local cold spots that they can point to in order to support a claim that the energy (heat content) of the Ice Cream Maker - I mean the Earth - is not increasing. You would suppose that any sensible person would be embarrassed to make such a fool of himself, and in public too! I suspect Mr. Coal and Mr. Petroleum are spending a lot of money to ease the embarrassment of these people.
Of course it's simple logic that the Earth is always either warming or cooling, so it's about 50/50 that at any given time we are in a warming part of the cycle (epicycle, or epiepicycle, etc.). The science regarding the Greenhouse Effect is simple, well understood, and clear. It's been known for decades. Without the Greenhouse Effect, the Earth would be uninhabitable by creatures such as ourselves. It's also been known, since the '50's anyway, that the release of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and other greenhouse gases by humans increases the atmospheric concentration of these gases, magnifying the effect. Thus, the warming/cooling cycles are shifted toward increased warming. Can it get any simpler than that?
What seems toxic to me about the debate over this is that there are some who deny that warming is occuring, others who deny it could be a problem, and still others who say we really shouldn't pay any attention to the situation unless and until we are absolutely certain that there will be negative effects! OH!, I'll think about it tomorrow!, said Scarlett.
Now NOAA says that we are setting yet another record HERE.
I realize NOAA is a part of the US government, and therefore not to be trusted (heck, George W. Bush says not to trust a buncha bureaucrats), but I personally will take what the scientists there, using a lot of data, over what an "adjunct scholar" at a near-fanatical reactionary Cato Institute says, using his select subset of thermometers.
Once upon a time, the United States Government (and some local governments also) was preeminent in taking steps to reduce pollution, reduce impacts of human actvites on the environment, and generally led efforts to clean up and improve the health of the world environment. What Happened? Why is the government in a state of paralysis here? How do people (like the President) get away with claiming that reducing human impact on the Earth is A Bad Thing for the economy? This is belied by past experience; in general, reducing the release of industrial waste products has always been an economic boost, as well as improving the health of the population and the country (and the world) generally. I think we lost our compass.
Original: (Thursday, October 28, 2004)
Dick Cheney
seems to parse reality differently than most of us. When he hears what he wants to hear, like 'intelligence' from the well known fabulist Ahmad Chalabi, nothing in the world is more certain. When he is told something he doesn't want to hear, like news of another military bumble in Iraq, like the failure to sequester a large store of explosives (at the very location he claims Saddam Hussein was "reconstituting his nuclear program"), this information is "not at all certain". Thinking about it, I suppose most of us practice this sort of denial to some degree. When it reaches this level, and the practitioner is so happy to share his deeply felt skepticism (read:fantasies) with the world, well, any total sociopath would be proud. I guess the only certain knowledge he possesses is the data that fits his preconceptions. Sort of todays version of "All The News That Fits, We Print". Anything he doesn't want to believe, well, it's just "not at all certain".
And then the Vice president calls John Kerry an "Armchair General"? Come on! This is the man who had "other priorities" when it came his time to serve in the military. Some of us think his other priority was to nestle deep in his armchair, where he was much less likely to get his ass shot off. Or become a victim of the ever popular "friendly fire".
Besides, Mr. Vice-Commander-In-Chief, the phrase is Armchair Admiral! You're in Pensacola! Pensacola's been a Navy town for longer than you've been a crooked politician! And that's a long long time...
Original: (Thursday, August 05, 2004)I have spent the last several days in a kind of limbo. Or, if you prefer, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Its a sort of penance for having done something the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't like. Anyway, I've been walking a lot, rubbernecking, dodging motos and beggars (I notice that the Geckoes are active in the daytime too, here). I've also been watching a lot of teevee in the heat of the day. I just saw Shakespeare in Love earlier today. It really is a good movie, I am happy to report. The thing that got me to thinking though was the last scene, where Shakespeare is beginning to pen Twelfth Night.
Now, I have several computers, not counting the one I am currently typing on. This one is in an internet cafe next door to my hotel. Costs r2000/hour (50 cents). My primary computer, despite being a well-aged five years, is fully loaded with Productivity Software. With my computer I can Process Words; I can Spread Sheets; I can Base Data, in many wonderful ways. I can even Point with Power. Isn't the modern world amazing!
My point? Will Shakespeare wrote 55 plays, and a number of sonnets (78 is a number that comes to mind, but it's probably wrong), and the only productivity software he had was a blotter. Or perhaps they still used sand to blot the ink on the paper back at the beginning of the 17th century. I don't really know. At 55 plays, Master Will is approximately ummm, 55 plays ahead of my production. So much for Word Processors, Spell Checkers, Grammar Checkers, Plot Outliners, and all the assorted canned writing aids of today. Of course, I am no Shakespeare, you might say. You are correct. In fact, there are very few such. One is the correct count, I believe. Still, there are lots of other people in history, recent times, and today, who have created rather prodigious bodies of intellectual work. I haven't heard of any who can be said to have had their productivity improved by Productivity Software.
Of course, without such software, I wouldn't be writing this, so that's something, I guess.
The only other example of the utility of Productivity Software I can think of immediately is that when my secretary (this was in the early '80's) came into possession of a Word Processor, the monthly report she submitted from my group to the main office grew in a few months from a seven page document, on average, to a seventy page document, also on average. She stopped typing, and started cutting-pasting-inserting-overtyping. Nothing ever got taken out.
Sort of like the tax laws.
Oh: everything has been smoothed over with the Thai Ministry of etc., so I am returning to Bangkok tomorrow. All has been forgiven.
OOPS: 
