Why I Side With the Critics Pt 2

On may 19th I posted Pt 1 of why I usually side with the climate change critics. The reason was the fact that many pro-warmers have been advocating the censorship of the critics. I know of no critics that have tried to censure the warmers. For me, this places the edge of moral and scientific superiority with the critics. The respect for free speech seems to exist with the critics but barely so with the alarmists.

Today I want to present Pt. 2 of why I side with the critics: the obvious decline in credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding the first three Assessment Reports. On March 12th of 2005 I had the following op-ed printed at the website of The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and I post it here for your perusal.
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4. Has The IPCC Lost All Credibility?

The recent resignation of Dr. Christopher Landsea, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, has cast new doubt on the integrity of the IPCC's policies and procedures.

In an article at Tech Central Station (TCS 1/31/2005) titled "A Dishonest Broker?" writer Iain Murray reports that: "Most recently, IPCC Chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri publicly endorsed a particular policy agenda that contradicts the IPCC's role as 'policy relevant but not policy prescriptive'" Mr. Murray continues:

" Dr. Landsea's hand was forced by two factors: actions by Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research-who is the lead author of the IPCC's research climate change observations-and Dr. Pachauri's reaction to Dr. Landsea's complaints about those actions. At a news conference last October, Dr. Trenberth said that global warming had made last year's hurricane season worse. This view is contrary to the scientific consensus, represented by Dr. Landsea, that 'all previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin.'"

And:

"But the IPCC leadership dismissed his complaints out of hand, claiming variously that Dr. Trenberth had been misquoted-which Dr. Landsea's investigations showed was not the case-or that he was accurately reflecting IPCC science-which he clearly was not. To Dr. Landsea, this suggested that the IPCC process had become 'both…motivated by pre-conceived agenda and… scientifically unsound' and led directly to his resignation."

Clearly, the IPCC has become a political advocacy group rather than an impartial science group. It now seems the IPCC was a political advocacy group from its inception.

The first report of the IPCC was the 1990 Report and the Summary for Policymakers. The independent, research-analysis think tank Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)(www.sepp.org) studied the Report and determined that:

"The tone of the two documents, 1990 Summary and 1990 Report, is markedly different. While the IPCC Report proper is a useful compilation of then current knowledge-and filled with appropriate qualifying statements-the Policymakers Summary throws all caution to the winds. By selectively extracting from the often- conflicting statements in the Report that express existing doubts and uncertainties, the Summary's firm tone leads policymakers to believe that the existence of a climate problem has been confirmed by 'scientific consensus.'

The IPCC's action of binding the Policymakers Summary with the full Report gives the misleading impression that it arose out of the full Report. But the Summary is essentially a document of governments not of scientists."

The IPCC's 2nd assessment report was published in 1996. In this report the IPCC leadership made changes to the crucial chapter 8 after the scientists had signed off on it, going behind their backs so to speak. The SEPP website shows where chapter 8 was changed. Some changes were made for allegedly editorial clarity while others were obvious changes in meaning.

For example, in Section 8.2.5 the sentence "Current pattern-based detection work has not attempted to account for these forcing uncertainties." was changed to "Current pattern-based detection work is now beginning to account for these forcing uncertainties."

"(H)as not attempted" and "is now beginning" are different meanings. To change the meaning of someone else's writings without their consent is, I think, dishonest.


The third assessment report TAR, published in 2001 is even wilder. It relied heavily on a study done by Mann et al 1998 and 1999 which featured the now highly suspect "hockey stick" graph that purports to show our current global warming to be "unprecedented" --- which, of course, it isn't.

Still at the SEPP website I found an article by Richard Muller titled "Global Warming Bombshell: Hockeystick Broken" Feb 8th 2005. In it he reports:

"But now a shock: independent Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasn't so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but also it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called "Monte Carlo" analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!"

In sports a predetermined outcome is called a "fix" and is illegal. Evidently the IPCC thinks it's ok in climate science.

McIntyre and McKitrick have been gaining some prestigious supporters. In an article at Natuurwetenschap & Techniek ( a Dutch monthly science magazine) which was picked up by Canada's National Post (www.canada.com) titled Breaking the Hockey Stick, Marcel Crok, in a Special to the Financial Post, writes:

" Even Geophysical Research Letters, an eminent scientific journal, now acknowledges a serious problem with the prevailing climate reconstruction by Mann and his colleagues. This undercuts both Mann's supposed proof that human activity has been responsible for the warming of the earth's atmosphere in the 20th century and the ability to place confidence in the findings and recommendations of the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The political implication is a serious undermining of the Kyoto Protocol with its worldwide agreements on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."

According to the same article: "On Oct. 22, 2004, in Science, Dr. Zorita and his colleague Dr. Hans von Storch, a specialist in climate statistics at the same institute, published a critique of a completely different aspect of the 1998 hockey-stick article. After studying McIntyre's finding at our request, Von Storch agrees that 'simulations with red noise do lead to hockey sticks. McIntyre and McKitrick's criticism on the hockey stick from 1998 is entirely valid on this particular point.'"

I can't say whether the IPCC is suffering from dishonesty or incompetence or both. But the bottom line is; the IPCC can no longer be trusted. Mr. Murray calls for the IPCC Chairman, Dr. Pachauri, to step down. While I think that would help, I don't think there is much doubt that the IPCC has become politicized and no longer capable of objective scientific judgment.

As more and more reputable scientists distance themselves from or become critical of the IPCC, it's becoming ever clearer that the IPCC needs to be shut down and the study of global warming commissioned to an existing scientific agency whose existence does not depend on finding ever more life-threatening "scenarios" just to keep the grant money coming in. If we're giving grant money away, some should go to make public all those studies that show global warming to be a good thing. The studies are out there. Americans need to hear about them and they won't from the IPCC.

Sources:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/013105E.html
http://www.sepp.org/
http://www.sepp.org//ipcccont/Item02.htm
http://www.sepp.org//ipcccont/Item03.htm
http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/Muller.htm
canada.com here
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Obviously this does not include the just released AR4 and its Summary. Some pretty good criticisms of that report are all over the net on the critic's sites which I'll post on soon.

For now I want only to say that the IPCC has zero credibility with me. I don't see any critics trying to alter the words of other scientists behind their backs. I don't see any critics putting together charts with a computer program that can't fail to produce a hockey stick. That's like a pair of dice that always roll sevens. Nor do I see critics publishing summaries of reports that aren't done yet. The more establishment science I see, the more sloppyness, fog, evasion and outright dishonesty I see and that's why I side with the critics.

Roundup May 24th

Galileo Blogs has a good post on the ridiculousness and injustice of "price gouging" legislation recently passed by the U.S. House. Like he says, "price gouging" is an undefinable term. Actually, all it means is that the so-called gouger is charging a price some people would prefer not to pay. Politicians then cater to these whims by promising to punish the evil gougers by hitting them with a windfall profits tax (WPT) and giving some of it (crumbs) back to the whim worshipers. Of course the whim worshipers can't see they are being had by the politicians. Read the whole thing.

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Abandon Caution has a link to the Dennis Miller Show on which Dr. Yaron Brook was interviewed on the subject of environmentalism and Iraq on May 22nd. As usual, Mr. Brook was quite good.

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At a new site "The One Minute Case" is the one minute case for individual rights. I would urge readers not familiar with man's moral and political need of rights to take advantage of the recommended reading at the end of the post.

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Myhraf has a good post on an example why a picture is not an arguement. I remember that photo from the Vietnam days and I'm glad she's still alive and happily married in Canada.

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Diana at NoodleFood has a notice that

Thanks to an exclusive permission generously granted by the Estate of Ayn Rand, aynrand.org is now able to offer its registered users, free of charge, an expansive collection of Ayn Rand audio and video recordings. This unprecedented selection includes lectures, interviews, and the complete series of Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures.

She also has info on the ARI lecture series.

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Ed Cline has a guest editorial at Rule of Reason on recent attempts at censorship via so-called "hate speech" laws. Of course, hate is an emotion and emotions are the result of values held and values are acuired by a process of thought. Attempts to outlaw hate are attempts to outlaw thought and that is the goal and only possible outcome of hate speech laws.

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Lastly, I want to say thanks to all our military men and women all around the world for risking their lives in return for the continued safety of their loved ones and their country.

Univ. of Michigan's Disgraceful Military Policy

The May 23rd Detroit Free Press has a troubling article on University of Michigan's apparent policy of not giving Michigan residents the standard in-state discount if those students have parents in the military who have been transferred to another state by that military.

If U-M were a totally private university receiving no taxpayer money whatsoever, I would say they have a right to any policy they want. But U-M gets lots of taxpayer money and should not be displaying any kind of bias against students of military people. According to the article, a student's residence is determined by the residence of his or her parents until that student is 24 years of age. So, if a student has parents in the army say , and they get re-stationed to an out of state base, the student, even though he continues to reside and work in Michigan, loses his in-state discount.

Evidently, some Michigan colleges have policies like U-M but others don't. These others seem to understand that military families can and do get transferred but as long as the student remains in the state he gets the discount. I think this is a good policy. But I wonder how Michigan military families feel about having their tax dollars given to a University that is not very friendly to military families?

I think this is a disgraceful policy and U-M should abandon it post haste.

What? Al Gore Ignored?

I know this is about a week old but I had to comment. It looks like Al Gore is being totally ignored by his former bosses. The New York Post reports that the Clintons just bought beachfront property in the Dominican Republic. Seems like they're not at all worried about Alfie's dire divining that all such property will soon be under 20 meters of water. So why should anyone else "be worried, be very worried"?

Another reason I usually side with the global warming critics: the global warmers aren't even taken seriously by their own people.

Why I'm Usually Pro-Skeptic, Pt.1 of Many

Paul at Real Truth About Global Warming has a post on one kind of censorship:

Recently, another incident of man-made global warming ideologues suppressing the scientific facts about global warming occurred in Washington State. Associate State Climatologist and climate scientist Mark Albright was fired because he sent e-mails to other scientists containing the true scientific facts about the Cascade Mountain snow pack. These facts refuted the publications of his boss, State Climatologist Philip Mote and the speeches of Seattle’s Democrat Mayor Greg Nickels who claimed the Cascade Mountain snow pack declined 50% from 1950 to 2000 due to man-made global warming.

Before the firing, University of Washington atmospheric scientist Dennis Hartmann tried to referee and resolve the dispute between Albright and Mote by doing an objective analysis of the data, but this failed when Hartmann found that Albright was right and Mote was wrong. This led to Mote trying to censor Albright’s e-mails. When Albright refused to allow this censorship, he was fired.

Ayn Rand once said that "Government encouragement does not require men to believe the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood." We can clearly see there are at least two people, State Climatologist Philip Mote, and Mayor Greg Nickels, who share this indifference. Normally I wouldn't jump to this conclusion but when an outside, independent scientist (Mark Hartmann) confirms that Albright was right, I have no choice.

If Mr. Mote were devoted to the truth, I would think, he would never have issued papers that Mayor Nickels would be embarrassed about later because they turned out to be false. And if I were the Mayor I would be fuming at such embarrassment. I would call for an investigation into the office of State Climatologist with a view towards getting Mr. Mote fired and promoting Mr. Albright. This way I could at least demonstrate to my constituents that I'm still devoted to the truth.

This event illustrates on a mini scale what is happening nation wide and even globally regarding the relationship between Attila and the Witch Doctor so eloquently identified by Ayn Rand in the title essay of her book "For The New Intellectual." In this case, it is a politician wielding political force, a mini-Attila, who needs the State Climatologist, a mini-Witch Doctor, to provide him (the politician) with the justification for the continued looting of the people of Seattle. By looting I mean passing laws that force his constituents to give up this or that or to pay this or that new carbon tax or force them to obey this or that nutty regulation like exposing their kids to increased amounts of mercury using politically correct light bulbs because they'll allow people to live longer if the mercury doesn't get them first. Sigh.

To ignore the facts of reality that are contrary to one's own scientific findings is dishonest and I see a lot of it on the pro-global warming side of this controversy, a lot more of it than I see on the critic side. To me, a scientist must include an evaluation of all known data on his specific topic. This means that if there are 27 studies supporting one position and 10 against it, he must explain the contrary evidence in some way, either refute that evidence or show why it may be insignificant. But to ignore evidence as if it doesn't exist, or in this case to refuse to disclose to the public why 1950 was chosen as a baseline, to be indifferent to the truth, is wrong. That is why putting an end to government encouragement of science is so urgent.

News Slanting by Package Dealing

Back in Dec. of 05 I did a post on how the news media slants news reports. I used an article by AP reporter Terence Hunt on Bush responding to democratic critics. I pointed to the technique used by Mr. Hunt which was to use violent and negative adjectives and adverbs when referring to Bush and using peaceful and civilized terms when referring to Democrats.

Another came to my attention recently when Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science posted on a new government study which in fact reports mostly good news on dental health. Unfortunately, that's not how the MSM reported it in their headlines and lead paragraphs. She tells us:

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"Associated Press headlines proclaimed:

“Too much sugar putting too many cavities in baby teeth, study says”

“Cavities on rise in baby teeth; too much sugar, experts report”


Tooth decay in young children's baby teeth is on the rise, a worrying trend that signals the preschool crowd is eating too much sugar, according to the largest government study of the nation's dental health in more than 25 years....One reason is that parents are giving their children more processed snack foods than in the past and more bottled water or other drinks instead of fluoridated tap water, [Dr. Bruce Dye of the National Center for Health Statistics] said. “They're relying more on fruit snacks, juice boxes, candy and soda (for the sustenance of preschoolers)."

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There is only one problem with this media report says Ms. Szwarc:

"It is equally unbelievable that none of the reporters appear to have read the CDC report because if they had, they would have seen that sugar was never even mentioned in the 104-page report.

Not once.

Neither were processed foods, snacks, sugary juices or sodas"

I urge my readers to read the whole lengthy post. It is excellent in its own right. Although the reporter does cite some good news, my concern is mainly with the distorting of the facts by the media and mainly with the AP story even though she cites other media reports. Since that was my focus I decided to double check. I looked up the study and read all 104 pages myself. Ms. Szwarc is right: there are no references whatsoever to sugar or sugar-containing foods and beverages. None.

So, the technique being used here by the reporter, Mike Stobbe, is obfuscation, a blurring of what came from where. For example, The first AP headline in The Seattle Times "Too much sugar putting too many cavities in baby teeth, study says" is false. The study does not say that. In fact the study does not deal at all with specific causal connections.

The second AP headline at the AZ Central site "Cavities on rise in baby teeth; too much sugar, experts report" is true as far as the "experts report" notion is concerned. Experts did say that, even though the study didn't. Since the actual study says nothing about sugar, one has to conclude that Mr. Stobbe solicited these causal opinions from the scientists. He does quote the lead author as claiming that sugar is the culprit. Now that would normally be fine with me if he had put it in that context. If for example he had said something like "the study says cavities are increasing in babies but offers no reasons so I asked the lead author if he knew why and he offered sugar as a cause even though it was not addressed in the study."
There would be no misleading of the public had he done something like that.

But, you might object, reporters don't always do headlines, editors often do. True enough. However, editors don't make up headlines willy-nilly. They get them from the reporter's article. The first paragraph of Mr. Stobbe's article says:

Tooth decay in young children's baby teeth is on the rise, a worrying trend that signals the preschool crowd is eating too much sugar, according to the largest government study of the nation's dental health in more than 25 years.

Notice what's being packaged here. The true statement that cavities in baby teeth are rising and that a government study says so is packaged with the unsubstantiated opinion that sugar is the cause. The reader will then believe the study has found that sugar is the cause of these cavities when in fact no such determination was made.

(In fact, Ms. Szwarc points out that this study and others have found a correlation between increased dental problems and low economic status. Poor people often can't afford a continuous dental monitoring regimen and good insurance.)

Why would a reporter say that something is in a study when it is not? The only reason I can think of is slanting. The reporter has bought into the idea that sugar products are unhealthy and sees an oportunity to advance this idea by pretending a government study supports it. He is mixing the facts found in a study with the unsubstantiated opinion of that study's author and is pretending that both have equal credibility.

There is something even more troubling though. Why would the study's lead author, a Dr. Bruce Dye, allow a reporter to say that something is in his (Dye's) study when it was not? Why isn't he objecting to such an addition? I surely would. But I'll leave that up to my readers.

I mainly want readers to be aware of this method of slanting: of packaging arbitrary assertions with some truth. Half-truths like this are more evil than outright lies. Lies can be uncovered with checking but half-truths use the credibility of the true aspects of a phrase to smuggle a false idea into the mind of the reader. The reader then is disarmed by the true parts and is defenseless against that which is false. He now believes something to be true that is not.

Let the reader beware.

A Little Educational Good News

In the Tuesday, May 8th Detroit News is an article on how some Michigan "Schools bring back penmanship classes" by News writer Jennifer Mrozowski. The article starts out by identifying the new reality:

In the age of e-mails and text messages, penmanship may seem like a thing of the past, but students shouldn't throw away their pencils just yet. Handwriting is gaining new credibility as high-stakes exams, like the SAT college entrance test and the Michigan Merit Exam, couple impromptu writing and essay sections with multiple-choice questions. Michigan also spells out handwriting requirements, along with a greater emphasis on writing and reading, as part of the state's revamped content standards.

There is a problem however:

But despite a renewed spotlight on the subject, primary school teachers say they feel ill-equipped to teach handwriting -- whether it's cursive or printed -- and that could spell d-o-o-m for some students.

"It's something they don't teach you in college," said Jeanine Diener, a second-grade teacher at Eisenhower Elementary school in Fraser. "It's a skill, and it's something we should practice to learn."

So why aren't teachers taught how to teach handwriting?

Decades ago, schools devoted hours to teaching penmanship. Children diligently traced and then repeated letters on lined worksheets. Districts pulled back on handwriting in the 1970s, as state and federal mandates increasingly dictated what must be taught. The increase of computers, cell phones with text messaging capability and other electronic devices made handwriting take a back seat.

For me, the key phrase here is "federal mandates increasingly dictated what must be taught." This needs to be put on a banner on all schools in response to teachers who insist that it is the parents who decide what gets taught. I've heard this many times in the past and while it is true that if parents form a large enough gang and scream loudly, local boards can make some small changes to some curriculum, what gets taught is largely determined at the state level and in Washington by the Dept. of Ed and their chief lobbyists the NEA. Also, federal mandates by implication mandate what doesn't get taught. (I would have been willing to forgive Ronald Reagan a lot of things if only he would have followed through on his promise the abolish the Dept. of Ed.)

Before applauding the return of handwriting classes, the article gives us this hint as to how bad writing education actually became:

But some districts, like Birmingham and Northville, have revamped and updated their handwriting programs in the past two years as part of their overall English Language Arts curriculum. Like Fraser schools, the districts use a program called Handwriting Without Tears.

Now, does this mean that handwriting was so bad it drove students to tears? If so, how can teachers, their teachers, politicians and even parents claim to be concerned about the proper education of children? They can't be. They may have strong emotions but a rational concern would require a thought process, not just feelings.

Supposedly, this problem is now coming to an end and if so I'm glad of it. I'm not a teacher so I really don't know how much good this program will do for kids not taught any phonics. I've always believed that the ability to hand write is critical to not only communication but for the entire thought organizing process.

Now if we can only get education out of government hands there might be a chance to reincorporate phonics back into reading curriculum and devise a more structured math curriculum.

On The Lighter Side

Blogging has been light this week due to busy schedule. But I did force myself to take a few minutes to get caught up on my email and check out a few blogs. On one of them Pat Sajak has uncovered letters sent home from school to parents of kids who became famous. I especially like the one sent home to the parents of Harry Reid:

"We’re afraid we must ban Harry from all school sporting events. Every time one of our teams falls behind, he starts yelling, “It’s over! The game is lost!” It really is harming the morale of our players. I hope we can count on your cooperation."



(Blogging should resume Friday, hopefully.)

Ecosystems Must Be Permanent?

The Detroit Free Press of April 9th had a front page story titled "It's a wild, wild state of Warming" by Free Press writer Tina Lam. The whole article is a roundup of all the creatures in Michigan and elsewhere that are now enjoying an expansion of their habitat due to milder and somewhat shorter winters. Naturally, all of this is being framed as undesirable and blamed on man made global warming. The article makes a lot of unwarranted assumptions in my opinion and some of these by scientists.

Usually cautious scientists are using words like "dramatic" and "startling" to describe the changes.

"The speed of the change is provocative and somewhat frightening," said Myers, who has studied small mammals at the University of Michigan since the 1980s.

The assumption here is that climate is not supposed to change fast. According to this NAS 2005 report: "Large, abrupt climate changes have repeatedly affected much or all of the earth, locally reaching as much as 10*C change in 10 years. Available evidence suggests that abrupt climate changes are not only possible but likely in the future, potentially with large impacts on ecosystems and societies." They can happen in the future because they have happened in the past, i.e. they are a natural aspect of Earth's climate systems.

And, the same page (15) says: "We do not yet understand abrupt climate changes well enough to predict them." Are you listening Al Gore!

This idea that change should only happen slowly is repeated later in the article when the reporter says: "Creatures evolve over centuries as parts of complicated ecosystems. Take a link out of that system and bad things can happen." Bad? According to what standard? Droughts kill off lots of plant life as do floods and lightening burning down forests. Nature herself not only takes out links but destroys entire systems. To say that these events are "bad things" is to deny the most essential aspect of nature--change. That is irrational.

The expansion of species is in fact the creation of new and more ecosystems. This is not a bad thing. It is a very good thing, that is, if one really values life. Some may be long lasting but no ecosystem is permanent. The idea that all ecosystems that exist today should be preserved just as they are is unrealistic and immature.

It is true that some creatures take centuries to evolve. Why? Because they must learn how to survive sudden climate changes. Those that don't, perish.

This whole idea that ecosystems are some kind of super delicate idol that must be worshiped at all costs and that nothing must interfere with them is utter nonsense. Much hand wringing is made of creatures expanding their habitat and bringing disease with them. This is a dishonest statement since disease goes wherever other organisms go. It is condemning a species expansion on the grounds that it can't migrate disease free!

And what is disease? It is the existence of deadly pathogens which want to make an ecosystem of your and my bodies. This is not a good thing normally. It is the job of modern medicine to destroy such ecosystems.

Despite all the alarmism, about halfway through the article is this paragraph:

Most of the change is in winter and spring night temperatures, which have risen 3 to 5 degrees. Although the numbers are still within the range of natural variation, what has happened in Michigan matches changes globally. Researchers say they believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have led to the temperature change.

So the temperature changes are within natural variability and this article is supposed to be evidence that those numbers are not going to stay there. But no causal connection is demonstrated. They just "believe" man made global warming is the culprit.

There are other inanities in that article which I won't go into but there is one that demonstrates the level of scientific acumen of today's intellectuals.

Mice are food for larger animals; they distribute seeds and transport fungi that benefit trees and keep pests like gypsy moths and sawflies in check. If one species dies, the one that replaces it may have characteristics just different enough to throw the ecosystem out of whack.

One type of mouse could be a better distributor of maple seeds and the other may be better with acorns that produce oaks. One may carry diseases, like hantavirus and Lyme disease, more effectively than the other.

What is the scientific meaning of "out of whack"? What is in whack? What reporter Lam doesn't seem to understand is that these kind of alterations to ecosystems are happening all the time. They are natural. It is ludicrous to think that any given patch of nature must maintain the same number of Maples and Oaks all the time.

I also object to scientists and reporters who cater to the least educated of the public with sloppy unscientific phrases like "out of whack" and so on. If an educated public is a value, intellectuals should raise their own communication standards when addressing that public.

An article like this clearly shows why both science and education desperately need to be removed from the influence of government.


(Update 8pm, Lubos at The Reference Frame has a good post on global warming. In particular, a focus on Michael Mann's response to the claim that CO2 lags behind temperature increases by 800 years. I tend to agree with RF because I have heard of studies that show a 1900 and 2600 year lag.)

Ignorence of Capitalism

Another indication of how misunderstood capitalism is was observed when on Monday April 30th I turned on the Animal Planet station and saw a show called the Jeff Corwin Experience. I've never seen it before but he seems to have some enthusiasm for his work. Anyway, he was talking about a kill made by a Cheetah on the plain in Tanzania. He was explaining that the Cheetah and her cubs had to eat the kill as fast as they could because all around the fringe of the area were plenty of capitalistic predators coming in to steal the kill.

Mr. Corwin may know a lot about animals in general but he sure doesn't know much about the one at the top of the food chain, man, and his social requirements, laissez-faire capitalism. Stealing the property of another is not part of capitalism.

Too Much Time On His Hands

Evidently, Canadian Members of Parliament are getting bored. Yahoo News reports that MP Mike Lake has introduced legislation to put Bigfoot on the Canadian endangered species list. According to the article: (ht tip Junkscience.com)

"The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," reads a petition presented by Lake to parliament in March and due to be discussed next week.

"Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot," says the petition signed by almost 500 of Lake's constituents in Edmonton, Alberta.

A similar appeal has been made to the US Congress.

I predict that if a U.S. congressman takes up the cause he'll be not from Washington or Oregon but from California. Just a hunch.

Science Channel Announcement

The Science Channel has a week-long series starting this Sunday May 6th. called Space Week. Some photos and schedule are here. It will be on at 8PM ET and last three hours every night till 11PM. It looks like it'll be an in-depth look at space science.

You Tube has 2min videos here, here, here, and here.

When "A" Should Be "Non-A"?

When A should be non-A or, when things should be other than what they are. I have never burdened my readers with a list of things that irritate me but recent sightings have Mike's Eyes reaching for the Visene.

First, there is an awful commercial on TV right now for Chrysler vans which shows a school bus loaded with wild and unruly kids. The lady bus driver flops down the screen to a DVD player on the ceiling and all the kids shut up and watch. A voice-over then says "When the kids get what they want you will get what you want." I wanted to scream at the TV "WANNA BET? I'll get what I want or those little brats aren't going anywhere. You got it backwards idiots!"

The theme of the commercial is, adults should cater to the whims of children and the best way to do that is with a Chrysler van. Yuk! If I wrote that commercial it would show a bus full of well behaved, polite children sitting mannerly in their seats. The bus driver would observe the manners and say something like "Your good behavior will be rewarded by watching this video during the ride." The theme of the commercial would be, the best way to reward your kids is with a Chrysler van. Instead of a commercial which shows adults how to avoid something they don't want, riotous brats, it would appeal to their desire for something they do want, well behaved kids. But I suppose that's why I don't write commercials.

Second, I have seen this a few times while standing in line at retail establishments and thought "How rude." Mrs. Eyes who works in retail, says it drives her crazy. It is the practice of customers who want you to wait on them while they are talking on a cell phone! Mrs. Eyes says she intensely wants to tell them "Please step aside until you are done talking on the phone." Alas, she can't do that. Management would take a dim view of it. Instead, she must stand there, smile and pretend she is not looking at a crude, ill mannered, sniveling, groveling, unwashed, uneducated, mindless chunk of a worthless human being. In short, she must pretend that A is non-A. I have a renewed respect for retail workers.

Lastly, what do you think would be my chances of getting Major League Baseball to get rid of the concepts 'sacrifice bunt' and 'sacrifice fly' and start calling them trades or maybe even concessions? Neither concept is a sacrifice. Both are in fact trades.

In the case of a sacrifice bunt, a runner is on first base with less than 2 outs, the batter bunts the ball, a weak hit so the ball doesn't go out of the infield, forcing the infielders to field the ball and throw him out at first base. This usually enables the runner on first to get to second base which is considered scoring position. The transaction here is the trading of an out in return for a scoring opportunity. It is a trade, not a sacrifice. The greater value is the scoring opportunity. We must remember that a sacrifice is the surrender of a value in return for a non-value, i.e. nothing. If the batter, with no one on base, were to bunt the ball in order to get thrown out at first, that would be a sacrifice. (And a short career)

The same is true of the sacrifice fly. With a runner on third base and less than 2 outs, the batter wants to put the ball in play, preferably to the outfield not caring if the ball is caught because the runner on third will score. The transaction is trading an out for a run scored. The greater value here is the run scored. It is a trade, not a sacrifice. Besides, the batter gets an RBI (run batted in).

There is another similar play in baseball that is not called a sacrifice and properly so. It is when there is a runner on third with less than two outs and the infielders play back. It is said that the defensive team is conceding the run in order to get a valued out. The greater value here is the out. Also, this is just the other half of the fly out trade mentioned above. The defensive team is agreeing to accept the offensive teams' trade of an out for a run scored.

So, the sacrifice bunt should be recorded by scorekeepers and broadcast by announcers as conceding an out for a scoring opportunity. The sacrifice fly should be identified as conceding an out for a run scored.

But some people may object that the first part of the transaction is a sacrifice because the batter is hurting himself by lowering his batting average due to deliberately hitting into an out. Not true. He is trading a slightly lower average in return for playing on a winning team. It's a trade.

Besides, it is wrong to divorce half of a transaction from the other half. If I bought a nice shirt for $40.00, could I say honestly that I sacrificed $40.00? (never mind your taste might move you to do so). Could the shirt maker honestly say he sacrificed a $40.00 shirt? No, you would tell me that honesty requires that I identify the entire transaction as a trade of value for value and no sacrifice took place.

Well, MLB needs to be as honest.

Lil' Round Up April 29th.

Gus Van Horn has a tale of two cities, 1900 Galveston Texas and 2005 New Orleans and the different work and life ethics of the citizens of each city. To me it shows clearly the difference in behavior of people who live in one context where self-reliance is expected and those who live in a context where it is not.

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Lubos Motl has a post on the IPCC AR4 Working Group One and a link to the full text. I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Motl's evaluation of WG1. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit posts on it as well.

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L Graham Smith at Ecomyths reports on two stories in the Canadian press. It's the second one that interests me. It's about 39 sealing ships stuck in ice off Newfoundland. "Penney says these are the worst conditions he's seen in the last 15 years and have caused one of the most intensive coast guard rescue operations." I wonder if Al Gore gave one of his "Inconvenient Truth" presentations there recently causing the famous "Gore Effect."

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The folks at Canadian blog The London Fog ask "When do trousers go for $65 million? When they belong to a lawyer." I wonder if he'd be that much of a stickler at doing taxes? Amy at Advice Goddess posts on this too.

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Mike at Abandon Caution announces that Dr. Peikoff will be interviewed on Austin, Texas radio Monday evening April 30th and provides a link to the audio.

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Nicholas Provenzo at Rule of reason reports on a Wapo business reporter who wants to cut down another tall poppy, Google, because their sheer size makes them a threat. An obvious case of hating the good for being the good.

Take Back The Weather?

On Monday April 23rd the Detroit News carried an article titled "Warning Signs" in which a mom claims she got tired of having to explain to her 4yr old why there was no snow on which to go sledding. So the mom put up 5 giant billboards around Detroit with the picture of a child and the words "If not for you, then for them. Take back the weather."

So, we controlled the weather once and now we don't so that's why we have to take it back. Of course! In response to someone who told her that he was just as happy it's warmer in the winter these days she replied according to the article: "And I said, 'Well that might be fine now, but what about in summer when it's 140 degrees?"'

According to this USA Today article the highest temperature ever recorded on the planet was 136 deg. F. in El Azizia, Lybia, a desert, and this lady thinks it's going to be 140 deg. F. in Michigan! Obviously she hasn't looked up any facts or studied any climate history. The article continues:

All of the "Take Back the Weather" billboards showcase little kids (one is Lily), generally looking aggrieved that there's no snow. One shows two disconsolate children standing with a sled on brown grass.

Another features the line, "Snow was never meant to be just in storybooks."

Meant? By whom?

"My position is neither Democratic nor Republican," she says. "But when we were growing up, my sister remembers jumping off the roof into snow drifts.

"And now," she adds, "you can't even have a snowball fight here."

So the earth's climate when her sister was growing up is the climate the earth is supposed to have permanently?

Oh well, I give her credit for doing this on her own dime instead of the taxpayer's.

For the record, Detroit had a slight snowfall the first week of Nov 06 and no more until the last week of Jan 07, but then we got dumped on in Feb with about a foot of snow in my Detroit suburb. So you could still go sledding and have some snowball fights, I would have told my 4yr old that we were just having a mild winter and might have a few more but eventually the snow will come back.

How do I know this? Well, according to paleoclimatology, we are in a glacial epoch. Glacial epochs are heavily weighted in favor of glaciations which means lots of snow and ice over the northern hemisphere. The fact that we are in an inter-glacial period where the earth warms and life flourishes is a good thing to be welcomed, not prevented.

The Undercurrent Notice

I have been asked to post this notice for The Undercurrent, a college newsletter, written from an objectivist perspective. I recommend it to all of my college age readers.

Dear friend of Objectivism,

The Undercurrent is now welcoming orders for its upcoming issue. The issue will be mailed out at the end of April, and is intended for distribution from May through September. Orders can be placed at http://www.the-undercurrent.com/?s=distribute.

The issue will feature a penetrating interview on freedom of speech with Onkar Ghate, the Dean of the Objectivist Academic Center. The interview discusses, in depth, the nature and philosophic justification for the right to free speech.

In addition, the issue will include a campus commentary (by Kelly Cadenas) on recent free speech violations, an article arguing that capitalism is not only practical but moral, Peter Schwartz’s excellent ARI op-ed, “In Defense of Income Inequality”, and our regular ad for the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest. Please visit our website to preview this content.

Remember, distributing the Undercurrent is not a major time commitment. All you need to do is take a few minutes once or twice a week to drop off the paper at a campus newsstand or coffee shop. If cost is an issue, let us know and we will work with you to find a sponsor in your area to pay for your copies.

Because May is exam period at most schools, it is a time when students are spending more time on campus, studying, meeting professors, waiting before and after exams. For this reason, it is a time when they are more likely than ever to pick up and peruse a paper like the Undercurrent. Please help us maximize this opportunity.

Please help us bring Ayn Rand’s ideas to your campus,

-The Undercurrent

"Do Something"?

Every so often the Detroit Free Press puts on its Sunday editorial section a page devoted to "Young Voices". On Sunday April 22nd the Freep carried its "young voices" section on the subject of the genocide in Darfur. It begins with this introduction

Teacher Laura Roth gave her geography students at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor a simple assignment that yielded an outpouring of critical thought. Her seventh-graders wrote about the genocide in Darfur, as they were instructed. But they also became advocates to raise awareness about the crisis. They're proof that American teens, properly inspired, will gladly look beyond themselves to embrace the world. Below are excerpts from some of their essays.

Pursuant to my previous post in which I objected to 9 yr. olds being scared to death by environmentalism I wrote

These kids are way too young to be introduced to such complex subjects as planetary climate systems not to mention all the political and ethical and social issues involved. Young minds like this cannot cope with the higher level abstractions required to make any kind of rational judgement.

I also think that 12 and 13 year old kids are still too young to be trying to formulate judgements on such complex issues as government, justice, war, peace, society, and so on and like the 9yr olds, can only respond to such issues emotionally.

There were 21 quotes on the page and admittedly they are excerpts from longer essays so I can't really say if or how badly they were taken out of context. But let's look at a few. First,Younkyoung Lee writes:

Civil wars have added plenty of tension in Africa, but now a genocide in Darfur has caused an unnecessary number of deaths and more than 2 million people to flee their homes. It has been four years since the genocide began, and after 21 years of civil war in Sudan, how much more do people need to suffer?

Too many of us seem to care more about entertaining ourselves and making money than people who need our help. Which do you find more important, a child dying in Africa or a celebrity shaving off her hair?

His first two sentences are correct but his last two indicate the acceptance of an unearned guilt. There were one or two others that echoed similar sentiments. I hope they check their premises when they get older. Most however did not share that viewpoint near as I could tell.

There seemed to be several themes that ran through all of them. 1) That the tragedy in Darfur and the prosperity in America are the metaphysically causeless given. 2) That somebody needs to "Do Something" as the headline in the print edition shouted.

There were only a few that blamed the Sudanese government's support of the Janjaweed for the genocide and even these did not address why this is so. But there were a few that impressed me. One by Murphy Austin who wrote in part: "The power of the leaders of our country comes from the people they represent, and it is high time that those people demand representation." That he understands where the government gets its power from is a good sign. But I was really impressed by student Nick Shannon who said:

UN forces won't go in simply because the Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir (who tops the list of the world's worst dictators) is denying them access to Sudan. The United Nations says it needs permission to help. What do you think of that? Should we get a killer's permission to allow us to stop him from killing?

Well now, if he wrote this without any adult help, I would say that this youngster will become a very rational adult.

The thing I object to the most is the theme of Do Something then asking kids for suggestions. They are simply too young to properly conceptualize cause and effect in terms of principles that would guide them towards rational solutions. Some of the kids suggested things like donating to humanitarian agencies or giving new cots or putting pressure on the Sudanese government via sanctions and so on. But these are all concrete bound ideas.

These kids are being encouraged to think in terms of concretes instead of principles. Without principles, "Do Something" usually translates into "Do Anything". It has to since without principles there is no way of knowing what that "Do Something" should be, so "Do Anything" substitutes for "Do Something."
And "Do Anything" is the prescription for altruism, the morality of intentions over results. They will grow up believing that virtue consists of performing an altruistic ritual of "It's not for me but for others" and when no real results are forthcoming they will believe that more people need to perform the ritual and the need for forced sacrifices will of necessity brew in their minds.

In closing I have two more objections: that a geography teacher should be teaching something other than geography to her students. If my child were a student of hers I would insist that she stick to geography and leave the political science for later in high school. It is good that these kids think something should be done but they need the guidance of principles not feelings. Secondly, I also object to the Freep's characterization of this as kids who are "properly inspired." There is nothing proper about it.

In a future year I would like to see a teacher have these kids identify all the nations with capitalism and free markets and those without and then measure the degree of prosperity of each. Now that would be a priceless lesson in cause and effect.

New Animal Planet Series

As readers of my site may have guessed by now from my plugging of other nature series, I like nature shows. I have about 90 or so tapes from the 80s when people like Ben Wattenberg and George Page et al were narrating shows for PBS and others. So, for the benefit of the nature lovers among my readers, I want to announce that this coming Saturday April 21st, the Animal Planet network is doing a series on the arrival of spring. According to the email I received:

Beginning this Saturday, April 21, 2007, at 8 PM (ET/PT), Animal Planet debuts Spring Watch USA, a four-week, as-it-happens, multi-media, nationwide event. Filmed just prior to broadcast, this miniseries is a celebration of the arrival and beauty of spring across the nation. Hosted by Jeff Corwin (The Jeff Corwin Experience, Corwin’s Quest) and Vanessa Garnick (Caught In The Moment), viewers learn about the amazing mammals, birds and insects that herald the arrival of spring.

I don't know if there will be any climate change promos in this but the Animal Planet shows that I have watched have been pretty good about keeping nature and politics apart.

I am recommending this series because it looks initially like it could be a positive, uplifting, life-on-this-earth-is-good kind of documentary. There is promotional material here which includes 3 very short videos. (although I had some trouble with the sound I hope you don't.)

The Child Abusers

The Washington Post has a disturbing even angering article on how young kids are being indoctrinated into the global warming is all mans' fault propaganda. Hat tip to JunkSciecnce.com. of April 17th. It is titled "Global Warming Scenarios Scare, and Motivate, Kids" by Darragh Johnson. It starts with:

The boy has drawn, in his third-grade class, a global warming timeline that is his equivalent of the mushroom cloud.

"That's the Earth now," the 9-year-old says, pointing to a dark shape at the bottom. "And then," he says, tracing the progressively lighter stripes across the page, "it's just starting to fade away."

And continues with:

Alex Hendel of Arlington County is talking about the end of life on our beleaguered planet. Looking up to make sure his mother is following along, he taps the final stripe, which is so sparsely dotted it is almost invisible. "In 20 years," he pronounces, "there's no oxygen." Then, to dramatize the point, he collapses, "dead," to the floor.

For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today. Fears of an environmental crisis are defining their generation in ways that the Depression, World War II, Vietnam and the Cold War's lingering "War Games" etched souls in the 20th century.

Although the article talks about college age kids, which is where I think subjects like nature and environment can be introduced to students, it goes on about the very young:

Parents say they're searching for "productive" outlets for their 8-year-olds' obsessions with dying polar bears. Teachers say enrollment in high school and college environmental studies classes is doubling year after year. And psychologists say they're seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon

These kids are way too young to be introduced to such complex subjects as planetary climate systems not to mention all the political and ethical and social issues involved. Young minds like this cannot cope with the higher level abstractions required to make any kind of rational judgement. The only way a child can respond to this kind of indoctrination is emotionally. And that's exactly whats happening with "...an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon." And if any parent has a child obsessing about anything, it is the parent's job to be that "productive" outlet. What kind of parenting is going on today?

Sadly, there's more:

There was also last spring's effort by David Bronstein -- before he graduated and enrolled at St. John's -- to do 20-minute PowerPoint presentations on "the problem of global warming and how it's the challenge of our generation and what we need to do about it" to about 20 of Sherwood's government, English, social studies and philosophy classes.

"This message about global warming is so powerful," Bronstein says. "It gives me hope for the human race because people are responsive to it." He also encourages anxiety about the planet's future, comparing enviro-fears to "any suffering in your life: The first step is denial, and then there's a sense of doom, and then you have to get up and shake it off and change something."

But is it just the teachers who are destroying the kids minds? The article ends with:

Which is exactly what happened when 9-year-old Alyssa Luz-Ricca's mother returned from a business trip to Costa Rica with a T-shirt of a colorful frog and the words "Extinction is forever." Alyssa looked at the T-shirt and, she says, "I cried."

"She cried very hard," clarifies her mother, Karen Luz of Arlington.

"I don't like global warming," Alyssa continues, her eyes huge and serious behind her glasses, a stardust of freckles across her nose, "because it kills animals, and I like animals."

She dreams of solar-powered cars and has put a recycling basket for mail, office and school paper in the corner of her family's dining room. She made another recycling box for her third-grade English teacher's classroom at Key Elementary School and has persuaded her mother to start composting. At Key, she also organized an effort among her classmates to pick up playground trash at recess.

Marvel at any of her efforts, though, and she looks confused: Everyone should be doing all this -- and more -- to save the environment.

"I worry about it," says this girl who has yet to lose all her baby teeth, "because I don't want to die."

What kind of words can I use to describe the evil of scaring kids to death with a virtual non-problem? Unspeakable? Unthinkable? Even if GW were a problem, it would be the responsibility of adults to address it, not kids.

In the Jonestown mass sucide a mother was taped pouring poison down her child's throat. That mother was the naked essence of evil, the desire to destroy life. But destroying the minds of kids to form concepts and integrate them in an hierarchy, to know instead of believe, is to leave the kid's body alive while destroying the body's means of survival.

In closing I wonder if any of these teachers or parents know that the concepts nature and environment have two different meanings. I'll bet none. I hate to say this but I'm beginning to sympathize with those who are pessimistic of America's future.

Two New Anti-Concepts

Today's intellectuals are trying hard to create two new cognitive package deals, a form of anti-concept which perverts an existing concept by destroying its original meaning and substituting a new meaning. This new meaning is never defined explicitly and is always surrounded by some fog so that a listening member of the general public will say something like "Yeah, it could mean that." And that is all the intellectuals want from the public, the benefit of the doubt, because their goal is to change "It could mean that" to "It does mean that."

The two words are skeptic and denier. The use of these terms is intended to cast a negative image or light on a certain group of people, those who dissent or disagree with government funded, sanctioned and established agencies who declare a certain idea or theory to be true.

Both of these words, skeptic and denier, are valid concepts with valid meanings. Let's look at skeptic first. This I think is a word whose current usage lends itself to the corruption of package dealing. According to my Webster's New World College Dictionary a skeptic is "1) a member of any of the ancient Greek philosophical schools that denied the possibility of real knowledge of any kind, 2) any person who practices philosophical skepticism, 3) a person who habitually doubts, questions or suspends judgement on matters generally accepted, 4) a person who doubts religious doctrines especially those of Christianity."

Do you see what's missing here? According to this college dictionary there is no such thing as a rational skepticism, so any student who adopts these meanings will believe all forms of skepticism carry a negative connotation and implies an irrational doubting. So when this student grows into an adult and hears of say, global warming skeptics, the first image that pops into his mind will be that of an irrational (habitual) doubter, one who doubts regardless of evidence. (I suppose this is what happens when dictionaries are put together by people who don't know how to form an objective definition. But I digress, that might be material for a future post though.)

Of course there is such a thing as a rational skepticism. A skeptic can be one who doubts because of a lack of evidence or he may be aware of contrary evidence. This kind of skepticism is a healthy rational skepticism which every scientist, indeed every person, should cultivate.

(An irrational skepticism, ala the above Webster's definitions, is what is found in most colleges today where students are taught there is no truth, you can't be certain of anything, what was true yesterday may not be true today and on and on. This of course fits exactly the ancient Greek skeptics denial of the possibility of real knowledge.)

Since my Webster's is a 1968 edition, we can see that skeptic = irrational denier has had a long head start in our culture and that today's intellectuals are just cashing in on the ground work laid for them. The new meaning of skeptic is intended to be something on the order of "one who arbitrarily and habitually doubts the officially declared truth of the powers that be." Once accepted, the existence of a rational, justified skepticism will be lost to the culture. So when someone is labeled a skeptic, he will be considered a member of a lunatic fringe to be ignored and dismissed out of hand.

The same thing is happening with the word denier. According to my same dictionary a denier is 1)one who says no to a request, 2)a contradictor, 3) one who disowns a family member, 4)one who refuses to believe a doctrine, 5)one who refuses to give, and 6)one who indulges in self denial or abstinence. Another modern meaning not mentioned in my dictionary is one who is accused of error or fault who then denies the charge. This last carries the negative stigma of possible wrongdoing or erroneous behavior.

But if one looks at #4, one who refuses to believe in a doctrine, one can see that this is the correct identification of the global warming critics of today. This is the valid meaning that the intellectuals intend to obliterate by substituting the meaning conveyed by meaning #2, a contradictor, which implies the act of contradicting regardless of good or bad reasons. So the new meaning of denier is one who denies regardless of reasons, i.e. arbitrarily.

It looks to me like the liberal, secular left and the conservative, religious right have bought in to these package deals in an effort to destroy their common enemy, capitalism. Fortunately the general public hasn't bought it yet but there's no telling how long the public can hold up under the onslaught of the MSM who are some of the biggest package dealing pushers.

I'm somewhat optimistic because newspapers still present two sides of an issue in their editorial pages as pro vs con instead of fact vs denier or truth vs skeptic. On the other hand, modern thinking is so badly compartmentalized I can see where they could be cajoled into ascribing the new meaning to critics of global warming and the valid meaning to other forms of criticism. Thus the method of doing this could be, using the word critic when referring to other forms of dissent but using skeptic or denier when referring to global warming.

This attempt to give new meanings to those two words is ambitious because any success at all will put all related concepts under eventual attack.

GoodSearch is Good Find

To all my readers who may be Objectivists, students of Objectivism or friends of Objectivism, I want to urge all of you to make GoodSearch your primary search engine. Goodsearch donates about 1 penny for every search to your favorite charity. I have typed in "The Ayn Rand Institute the Center for the Advancement of Objectivism" as my favorite charity. (You only have to type in the name of your charity and hit verify as they have over 32,000 non-profits listed. You won't have to type it in again, as long as cookies are enabled.)

In all of 2006 GoodSearch donated $50.98 to ARI.

But through the first 3 months of 07 GoodSearch has surpassed all of 06 by donating $67.57. If this rate just holds steady, at the end of the year ARI will get a check for $270.28. And that's if the rate only holds steady. You can help swell that amount using Goodsearch as your primary search engine. GoodSearch is not a new inexperienced, fledgling operation. They are powered by Yahoo and I have found their search results comparable to Google.

So, if you have ever wondered what you as just one person can do to advance the spread of Objectivism, here is an opportunity to start helping out today, right now.

You can add GoodSearch to your bookmarks in your toolbars which is what I did. If you have a blog of your own you can put a GoodSearch logo like mine on your front page.

Or you can download their GoodSearch toolbar.

However you do it, making GoodSearch your main search engine will help ARI. Even if you just make it one of your engines it will help some. I for one am optimistic that GoodSearch can help a lot.

Idiocy? No, Altruism. & Some Thoughts

Rarely does the editorial staff of the Detroit News get downright irate. But Friday April 6th I smiled when I read this editorial headline: "An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?"

The first paragraph says:

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

No it's really not idiocy. It's altruism, the morality of intentions over results. If one says the magic words "It's not for me but for others" (especially "children"), then anything goes. One can safely ignore any and all consequences no matter how disasterous. This sentence however caught Mike's Eyes:

We wonder how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod.

Good point of course, but this sentence demonstrates that today's editors can think in terms of principles when they want to. The glaringly obvious next question is: why not apply that logic to education itself? In other words, just repeat that sentence with the word education in place of iPod? So why don't they? It has to be altruism.

In my efforts to understand such a method of thinking here is what I came up with. In order to integrate the anti-life principles of altruism with the pro-life principles of the rest of one's knowledge, one must compartmentalize all of one's knowledge. This means never being able to make integrations between principles so that one recognizes that the above principle should be applied to both iPods and education. To accomplish this misintegration, the mind must have seperate, that is unintegrated, file folders or compartments.

For example, the above sentence with the word iPod, would be drawn from a folder marked "rational self-interest" whereas that same sentence with the word education would be rejected as invalid because the word education is not allowed to be placed in that folder. Instead it would be placed in a folder titled "altruistic self-sacrifice for children." Or to put it another way, iPod is not allowed to be put into the folder of things for which one must sacrifice. This is why I believe that such a mind can utter a rational statement and be unable to connect the dots by relating to other concepts. In such a mind, there are no dots to connect. To comparmentalize then, is to severely limit integration. One can also see how this makes structuring a rational hierarchy almost impossible.

Anyway, I'm happy to see the News really gettng ticked off. Perhaps they will blurt out other rational statements with which some readers may be able to connect their own dots.

(To get a better handle on this, I am re-listening to Dr. Peikoff's excellent lecture series The D.I.M. Hypothesis--to which this post is already indebted--which can be heard for free here. Just register and go to the registered user page.)

The New Enron...New Jersey

In my last post I emphasized the incompetence of government control over services like roads and bridges that would be run much more efficiently by private enterprise, and how people just don't seem to notice or even care and continue to worship government control.

Well Amit Ghate at Thrutch has a post on the state of New Jersey's badly managed pension funds for state workers. Evidently, this mismanagement has been going on for some time. Mr. Ghate correctly says:

Imagine if any business were to practice this type of behavior. The government and the public would call for their necks -- and probably get them. Yet no such calls go forth when the actors are government bureaucrats.

Yes, you can bet there will be no Sarbanes-Oxley type laws being brought to bear on these government officials. Why? Because they are government officials who automatically have pure motives and therefore, anything goes. He links to a NYT article with all the Enronish details. It's my guess we won't even hear a peep out of sirs Sarbanes-Oxley about these shady accounting practices.

Mr. Ghate nails it when he says:

The sad truth is that under altruism results don't matter, only motivation counts. So private businessmen who are pursuing their own values are evil by definition while conversely every bureaucrat can simply wave his "for the public good" wand to avoid any further questions.

To right this wrong requires nothing less than challenging the morality of altruism.

For sure.

Government Control Concretized?

Examples of why government control of the economy is not better than market control are becoming more plentiful all the time. In the April 2nd edition in the Detroit News is the front page article titled "Crumbling bridges tied to bad concrete." The story states:

The material was used for eight years in the 1970s before officials concluded it's prone to falling apart, said Richard M. Smith, manager of the agency's bridge inspection program.

The repair bill isn't cheap: $500,000 per bridge. Smith estimated as many as 1,300 bridges may be vulnerable. That would cost $650 million that a state in a budget crisis can't afford, and Smith said stopgap measures are the only option.

Had roads been privately owned it is highly unlikely the private owner would have used a new cement mixture without testing it for a number of years and only on a small number of bridges to make sure it holds up. His incentive of course would be the profit motive. Standing to lose a lot of money in law suits over crumbling cement not to mention higher insurance cost and the loss of subscribers to his roads due to bad press, there is no way he would use an untried mixture for 8 years on 1300 bridges.

But the state? No one in government stands to lose a nickel so the incentive to do it right isn't there. And yet we will always be told that providing roads is a natural and required function of government because private enterprise can't be trusted to do it right.

What's The Point? Money?

In Monday's Mar. 26th. Detroit News is this NY Times report by Benedict Carey titled "Day care linked to rowdy behavior."

It starts with:

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class -- and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

I give the reporter credit though for puting this caveat in the second paragraph. Usually such things are in the second-last paragraph:

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents' guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

This caveat plus the fact that there were no numbers regarding relative risk or any other risk factor in the article means that the "link" they found was not statistically significant. In other words, don't worry, your kids in day care likely won't grow up to be thugs. Good news, I suppose. But if the finding is within natural variability, then we're not even talking about an anomaly here, so why publish the study and run the headline as if the "link" to rowdeyness were significant?

Well, I'm just guessing here of course but I can see where it might happen that if a study were to have a finding of "No problem here" it could, maybe, possibly mean an end to grant money. On the other hand, if a problem could be found, even an insignificant one, there just might be a plausable argument to be made for more grant money.

If what Ayn Rand said is true, "Government encouragement does not require that men believe the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.", then wouldn't it also make them indifferent to concepts related to truth and falsehood, like "statistical significance"? I would think so.



Update, fixed a typo.

Atlas Shrugging in Michigan

With Michigan's economy getting worse daily, Wednesday's March 28 Detroit News had the front page headline "UAW warns: We'll shut down Delphi" with a photo of UAW president Ron Gettlefinger sporting a raised, clenched fist. Yep, I thought, this is the way to attract jobs to Michigan alright.

Delphi is trying to get the courts to void wage and pension contracts so the company can pull itself out of chapter 11. It almost makes one feel sorry for Governor Jennifer Granholm who recently came back from running around Europe trying to beg companies to invest in Michigan. Almost.

Of course the governor, a Democrat, isn't getting any help from the state's two Democrat Senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, because they both declared last year that they would support a windfall profits tax (WPT) on oil companies. Consider the image projected by these two Senators: "You can set up shop in Michigan but don't you dare be too successful or we'll bash you over the head with a WPT." This coupled with Mr. Gettlefinger's clenched fist presents a very hostile image to all prospective investors. This image needs to change.

I sent this LTE to the News:

I was greatly disappointed to see the front page headline "UAW warns: We'll shut down Delphi." Mar/28th. with a photo of UAW president Ron Gettlefinger holding up a clenched fist. This adversarial attitude needs to be abandoned by today's unions and corporations.

If unions are to survive they need to offer a value not only to workers but to companies as well. First, unions themselves need to get the compulsory unionism laws repealed on the premise that if unionism is a value there is no need for it to be compulsory. Once unions are voluntary, they can then ask the companies and workers "What do you want?" or "What can we do for you?" There are many ways in which unions can be of value to workers and companies. These ways need to be explored now.

Unions don't create jobs. Corporations do by investing millions in new technologies and improving older ones. Unions need to be their friends not their enemies. A clenched fist is the wrong image to project.

I don't know if they'll print it but unions do need to change and become value-offering entities to both workers and companies. How? I'm not sure but these are the things lawyers should be working on instead of trying to find someone to sue. Meanwhile, Atlas just keeps on shrugging here in Michigan.

Where Have All The Pioneers Gone?

In case some of my readers don't know it, Michigan's economy is in the tank big time. After Governor Jennifer Granholm made cuts to services, Michigan still faces an $800 million debt. The governor's latest round of intended cuts was just defeated by the state legislature. So now what? Local papers have been asking readers for ideas on how to revive the state's economy. Those of course run the entire political spectrum. But what caught Mike's Eyes today was an editorial in the liberal leaning Detroit Free Press by editorial editor Ron Dzwonkowski titled "State needs pioneers". (March 25th 2007)

The editorial starts with:

At a meeting of a half-dozen smart people with a deep concern for Michigan's future, one member of the group said that the state needs, figuratively at least, to go back in time.

"This place was built by pioneers. Then came the settlers," he said. "Now it's all settlers. We need some new pioneers."

What a concept. And a nice capsule, too, of where we came from and where we are, leaving open the big question of where we are going.

Michigan was explored a long time ago so we don't need any more of that kind of pioneer. Obviously the terms pioneer and settler are metaphors. To what do they refer?

The first wave was trappers, lumberjacks and miners. Then came the automotive and industrial innovators, whose factories drew Southerners and foreigners chasing the American dream for $5 a day, followed by the union pioneers and the early leaders of the civil rights movement. There was a spirit of adventure in this place, from the Copper Country to the Rouge. It was a land of possibilities, a place where a good idea and hard work were tickets to a better life than your mother and father had back where they came from.

And,

Pioneers take chances. But they also make changes.

Obviously then, pioneer refers to entrepreneurs and inventors who "take chances" and "make changes." But the editorial never asks the questions "What is the nature of a pioneer and what are the social requirements for his survival and prosperity? It simply says:

Pioneers attract other pioneers, who are always chasing dreams. And then pioneers move on. It's what makes them pioneers.

In other words, pioneers are not attracted by freedom or opportunity to profit from a challenge, but by other pioneers without whom there would be no attraction. But what attracted the first pioneers? It looks like the answer is dreams. And when these dreams are somehow turned into reality, the pioneers just "move on.' Well, this last is not true. Henry Ford, the Kellogs, Lionel trains and many others didn't go anywhere. They stayed here and provided jobs for millions of people. But the editorial never says this explicitly. Even though it states "...whose factories drew Southerners and foreigners chasing the American dream for $5 a day..." it never points out that it was the mind of the producers that is the real draw. Failure to point this out allows Mr. Dzwonkowski to tell us that it is the factories that are the cause of the draw. What causes factories? Pioneers. What causes pioneers? Blank out.

So now that the pioneers are all gone, whose responsibility is it to save Michigan? Why it's the settlers of course. How did they come by this responsibility?

In Michigan's case, they (the pioneers-ME) ceded the place to settlers, who also prospered but became vested in things as they were, not spending too much energy on what they could be. When the present is good, why worry about the future?

In other words, the previously hard working settlers became lazy and unconcerned about their future. This is another blatant falsehood. Sure some people will always be unconcerned about their future. But most are concerned as evidenced by the flood of settlers leaving Michigan precisely because they are concerned for their future.

I could be wrong but I think the phrase "vested in things as they are" is a veiled slap at the welfare and entitlement state that is Michigan, but why veil it? If one is serious about correcting a big problem, it is crucial that one identify it as explicitly as possible. A feeble attempt follows:

Is it not stunning that polls of state residents show a substantial majority of adults do not see much value in a college education? After all, they didn't need one to get a house, two cars and a boat. They don't seem to get the global shift to a knowledge-based economy, where what you know is what you're worth -- and knowing how to make the machinery more efficient is worth a lot more than just knowing how to operate it.

It's the "substantial majority of adults" who don't get it. So, why don't they get it? What is the school system for? No answer. This is just a complaint that the settlers aren't rising up to become the new pioneers of tomorrow. And why aren't they?

A place needs settlers to make it stable and build its institutions, but those institutions -- whether business or labor or government or education -- should be developing the next generation of pioneers. Now in Michigan, we are too settled. Not willing enough to change, even as the economy crumbles around us.

So it's "we" who are too settled that is the problem.

This editorial reminds me of the song "Where have all the flowers gone?" by the Kingston Trio. In that song we are told that the flowers were picked by girls who then went to husbands who in turn went to war and then to graveyards where they produced more flowers and the cycle repeats itself.

This editorial is singing a similar lament but one it doesn't want to identify explicitly, thus the metaphors, obfuscations and false claims. The unidentified truth is that pioneers came to Michigan attracted by the freedom and opportunity for self-profit. But self-profit was deemed by altruism as evil. Profit as evil led to duty to others as a virtue (altruism). Duty to others became enforced by governments via controls and regulations. Controls and regulations violate the rights of pioneers to think and act on those thoughts freely. The lack of such freedom and opportunity equals no pioneers. No pioneers leads to a stagnant economy and demands that we somehow create more pioneers and the cycle just keeps going.

In the song, after every verse are sung the words "When will they ever learn?"
Good question. Perhaps when they learn that rational selfishness is not evil but is the highest moral virtue.

Another Environmental Head Shaker

Persuant to this post where I linked to a story on how an environmentalist openly declared truth to be irrelevant, comes this story via junkscience.com:

"Berlin's polar bear cub Knut is more famous than ever. Even star photographer Annie Leibovitz has been to take his picture. But not everyone loves the little bear. Animal rights activists want him put to sleep because he has been raised on a bottle." (Der Spiegel) WOW!

How many times have we seen animal rights people trying to rescue wounded or otherwise periled wildlife? But Zoos aren't allowed to?

How many times have we been told animals have rights--by the same people who want to kill Knut?

And what with all the hysteria over the polar bears going extinct in the Arctic, you'd think that saving one would be hailed as a noble and virtuous deed. Nope! He was tainted by humans. Kill him. Whatever their motives, concern for wildlife cannot be one of them.

There are 5 pictures of the little guy. I agree however, that no matter how cute he looks now, when he reaches puberty his natural instincts will take over and he will have to be returned to the wild where he should do just fine.

But I'm still shaking my head.

Discovery Channel Series Reminder

I have been asked to post a reminder to watch the new Discovery Channel series Planet Earth which starts Sunday March 25th at 8pm ET. You can go here to see a trailor. And you can go here to see 4 new very short videos but for some reason the sound doesn't seem to work. No matter, the pictures are impressive. I especially like the one where the man parachutes into a super deep cave.

Here is a photo Gallery with credits.

For even more info you can go to my original announcement of Feb. 8th. 2007.

A WOW for the Horrer File

Once again I link to Lubos Motl's Reference Frame where he posts a memo on a nightmarish but open confession that truth just doesn't matter which also provides concrete proof that: "Government encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood."--Ayn Rand

Lubos tells us: "Hulme tells us that if the scientists are going to be listened to in the future, they must "recognize the social limits of their truth seeking" - WOW. ;-) They must thus "trade truth for influence" - WOW. He also says that the "climate change is too important to be left to scientists" - WOW - "least of all the normal ones" - WOW. Hulme promotes the idea that the climate science should become a "post-normal science" - WOW. He says that the "danger" of the "normal science" is that it assumes that the truth is found before the policies are created - WOW."

Wow is an understatement. This kind of thing could keep one awake at night. Evidently, Mike Hulme is a professor of environmental sciences at the university of East Anglia. The memo links to a Gaurdian article where you can read all the gruesome details.

Comments on the "Swindle" documentary

Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame posts links to the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which was shown in the UK on Thursday Mar 8th/07. I watched it yesterday and thought it was well done.

While they did talk about how unreliable computer models are at predicting the future, I would have liked to see them point out more aggressively how the whole idea of impending disaster exists only in those computers and not in the historical record; that the historical record shows that every time the earth has warmed it has generally been good for most life forms. They did mention it but, to me, lightly.

I then went over to some pro-global warming sites to see what they had to say about "Swindle." First I went to Real Climate, the website of Michael Mann and company. There I found a so called response to Swindle by a William and Gavin. In response to Swindle's contention that CO2 does not match the temperature record of the 20th century, sirs William and Gavin (W&G) claim "True but not relevant, because it isn't supposed to." So the more CO2 we put into the air is not going to match any rise in temperature? That's good to know. But why did the planet cool from 1940 till 1975? Sirs W&G have a reason: Sulfate aerosols. They claim that these aerosols blocked sunlight and caused some cooling and they further claim that because the doc. didn't mention aerosols "...they are lying to us by omission."

There is only one problem with this picture: Sulfate aerosols are largely confined to the northern hemisphere, which means that the southern hemisphere should have been warming significantly more than the NH. But according to Fred Singer here the SH only warmed at a rate of half that of the NH. (Scroll down half-way to figure #9 to begin reading about Sulfate aerosols.) W&G didn't mention this in their rebuttal. Now who is "lying to us by omission"?

In response to the documentary's claim that the troposphere would warm faster than the surface temps, they claim it is--now. Now that the previous "discrepancies" have been fixed. Translation: global warming alarmists have recalibrated the satellites and weather balloons to give data that match their surface readings. I have to do more research on this but it sure smells fishy to me. I mean the National Weather Service has been sending up weather balloons since 1957 and NASA has been launching weather satellites since 1979 and now we're to believe they were doing it all wrong, that warming scientists have to step in and show these two agencies how to get it right? That when 2 technologies, balloons and satellites, say one thing and a third, surface temps, say another, it is the two that must be wrong? How come "consensus" didn't apply in that case?

The documentary shows how environmental groups are acting to prevent energy growth in Africa by blocking the development of power plants that would provide electricity to the masses stuck in absolute poverty. Sirs W&G reply that Kyoto exempts third world nations. Obviously, Kyoto is a strawman and has nothing to do with green NGOs fighting against the building of dams for hydro power and fossil fuel plants.

In any event, all this pro and con debate is mostly pointless. If the globe is warming it is a very good thing. There isn't a shred of evidence in the historical record showing that warming will result in catastrophe for life on earth.

Some warmers say that the sun's influence on climate change is negligible. But new reports show that Pluto, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune's moon Triton are all warming. These bodies are a lot farther from the sun than is the Earth so why are they affected by the sun while the Earth isn't?

Heh, one last note:
Ice Age Now reports that an Arctic expedition to draw attention to global warming had to be cancelled when one of its members suffered frost bite. They just don't get it!

Special Announcement U of M Lecture

I am pleased to make the following announcement:



"The Rise and Fall of Property in America"

Who: Professor Adam Mossoff, Michigan State University College of Law

What: A talk on the rise and fall of property rights in America, discussing the intellectual history of the right to property and how early twentieth-century Progressives destroyed property rights.

When: Wednesday, March 14 at 7:30pm

Where: University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Angell Hall Auditorium D

The public and media are invited. Admission is FREE.

Summary: What happened to property rights in America? Our laws today do little to protect property owners from either the dictator abroad or the bureaucrat in D.C. How did this come to pass in a country founded on the principle that all men have the inalienable right to life, liberty and property? In this lecture, Professor Adam Mossoff explains the rise and fall of property rights in America. He first discusses the intellectual history of the right to property and how the Founding Fathers turned 17th-century theory into 18th-century practice. He then explains how early twentieth-century Progressives destroyed property in order to remove this fundamental obstacle to the implementation of their socialist programs.

The effects of this assault are still felt today, which he illustrates with examples from famous and recent court cases in which judges disintegrated basic property protections, such as the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kelo v. City of New London. Ultimately, the lesson to be learned is that a renaissance in the protection of property rights will not occur through politics or law, but rather in the proper justification of property as a fundamental moral right.

For more information on this talk, please email sardone@umich.edu.

A sharp looking flyer can be seen here.

Lil' Round Up Mar. 6th Global Cooling, Sloppy Statistics, Radio Regulators, Fired Lawyers and NAACP

Lubos Motl is again posting on record low temperatures around North America as well as a notice that the BBC will be airing a new documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" this Thursday at 9PM. I would like to see it but I agree with Lubos that it probably won't get any coverage in the American press.

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Sandy Szwarc at JunkfoodScience goes in depth in part one of "Flip Flopping Headlines" in which she examines how many headlines from one study failed to accurately report what was actually in the study thus misleading a lot of people.

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Myrhaf links to Dismuke who has a scary comment on how the gov is raising the royalty rates on internet radio stations in order to put them out of business. The more I see stuff like this the more I'm convinced these regulators are not just misguided people who don't understand capitalism, they know exactly what they are doing. They are indeed evil people.

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A Little late to be learning things?

Tuesday's Detroit Free Press has a Cox News Service article by Rebecca Carr titled "Dems cry foul over firings of U.S. attorneys." Evidently, 7 U.S. attorneys were fired by the Justice Dept. without warning or explanation. All 7 were appointed by Bush. And according to the article: "Administration officials said they were unhappy with policy decisions made by the ousted attorneys. And they suggested the dismissals were 'performance related'". One has to wonder why he appointed them in the first place.
The article adds that Michael Battle "...director of the executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, who dismissed the prosecuters, would leave his job March 16th." The article didn't say which decisions the Bush administration didn't approve of but I sure would like to know. In any event, it seems to me that Bush is maybe, possibly learning that he cannot trust moderates and liberals. A little too late if you ask me.

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Stuck in the past.

The Detroit News has an analysis by Erin Texeira of the AP titled "Top NAACP departure shows clash on mission." It states:

**NEW YORK -- Bruce S. Gordon's decision to quit as NAACP president after clashing with the board over the group's mission highlights a stubborn problem for activists: how to do civil rights work in an era decades after the movement's peak.

Should the NAACP have allowed Gordon, as Chairman Julian Bond put it, to "pull (them) into the post-civil rights period?"

Bond firmly rejected the idea.

"We're not post civil rights," he said. "The struggle continues."**

And a little later in the article:

**Gordon is leaving, Bond said, because the organization is "resisting philosophical change. We're staying the course."**

That's too bad. They're stuck in the 60s and philosophical change is what is needed more now than before. Objectivism would help out a lot.

Gore's Fans and Investments

Saturday March 3rd the Detroit Free Press had 5 LTEs praising an article in Friday's Mar. 2nd paper showing how Al Gore's house is actually run on green power. One letter writer even said that Al bought "only green energy, which is carbon neutral. It is generated from hydroelectric plants, solar energy and wind power."

Notice how the writer uses the word it. He is speaking of green energy not Gore's actual usage. A casual reader could easily be misled into thinking those forms of energy are what Gore is actually using. Another point is that suddenly, hydroelectric power is green. I guess all those law suits by all those green groups to stop the building of dams for--you know, hydroelectric power--must be a figment of my imagination. I mean, green groups couldn't possibly be against green energy now could they?

The Friday article quoted Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider as saying "...the Gores fugure out how much global warming carbon dioxide is emitted from making the electricity for their house, and then invest an equivelent amount in renewable energy projects.
They also use energy-saving light bulbs, drive a Lexus hybrid SUV and are having solar-energy panels installed on the home, she said."

It's nice that Gore can make up for the energy he uses. I don't care how much he wastes as long as he is paying for it. But what about other Americans who can't afford to make up for their foot print? How can Gore demand everyone reduce their usage when his is so huge?

And what is the nature of Mr. Gore's green investments? In an interesting article by Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times (hat tip to Matt May) Mark says:

"Al buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management LLP, which is "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C.," that, for a fee, will invest your money in "high-quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns." Generation is a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3. And who's the chairman and founding partner? Al Gore."

So Al is buying his special permissions (carbon offsets) from himself. No wonder he's so gung-ho on global warming! He wants others to reduce their emissions by sacrificing their lifestyles so he can buy their offerings (offsets). I am reminded of Ayn Rand's advice that we shouldn't bother to examine a folly, but ask who stands to gain? Now we know.

Update:
Fred Singer at SEPP has a post on Gore's investments. It's long but as Fred says "meaty."