Month: August 2005

From Michael Crichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

Michael Crichton offers an excerpt from his new book, A State of Fear as an introduction to his argument that making policy based on “science” dominated by political ideology is harmful.

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

Read it and think about its application to today’s public policy dustups based on ideology-driven “science”.

Read and consider:

State of Fear

edited to include a more direct link to State of Fear and bumped to top.

I stole this in its entirety from Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Mail.  I hope he, and the author of the piece, Greg Brewer, will forgive the theft…

The Telemarketer

The phone rang as we were sitting down to dinner. I answered it and was greeted with, “Is this William Wagenhoss?”

This didn’t sound anything like my name, so I asked, “Who is calling?” The telemarketer said he was with The Rubberband-Powered Freezer Company or something like that. I asked him if he knew William personally and why was he was calling this number. I then said, off to the side, “Get really good pictures of the body and all the blood.”

I turned back to the phone and advised the caller that he had called a murder scene and must stay on the line because we had already traced this call and he would be receiving a summons to appear at the local courthouse to testify in this murder case.

I questioned the caller at great length as to his name, address, phone number at home, at work, who he worked for, how he knew the dead guy and could he prove where he had been about one hour before he made this call. The telemarketer was getting very concerned and his answers were given in a shaky voice.

I proceeded to tell him we had located his position at his work place and the police were entering the building to take him into custody. At this point, I heard the phone fall and the scurrying of his running away.

My wife asked me as I returned to our table, why I had tears streaming down my face and so help me, I couldn’t tell her for about fifteen minutes. My food was cold, but oh-so-very enjoyable.

As Dr. Pournelle says, “Pity we can’t do that to spammers.”

A Precision Guided Humor Assignment from The Alliance of Free Blogs:

What happened to all the oil that President Bush stole from Iraq?

Well, due to the Bush administration’s complete incompetence, that oil has been put to many nefarious (and sometimes nearly unbelievable) purposes…

1.) Hillary used some to grease the skids under the sKerry candidacy.
2.) White House had 33,967,893,281 bottles of “Special Saudi Hand-holding Lotion”  manufactured for meetings between GWB and Prince Abdullah…
3.) Teh-RAY-zha Heinz is using it to fuel her (and hubby’s) SUVs and the Heinz private jet.
4.) Upcoming: Chainsaws. Crawford. Midnight visit to Sindytown by outraged troops home from Iraq?
5.) The Bush twins.  (Well, they’re always to blame, aren’t they?)
6.) 6 billion barrels went toward maintaining Harry Reid’s oily personality, Nancy Peolosi’s nightcream supply and some was sold to maintain Teddy Kennedy’s  water wings (it is a base canard that TK keeps his water wings filled with booze.  Only half are filled at any one time.  The other half are back at the warehouse being refilled.). Some was traded outright to Muslims in Sudan for slaves to provide a supply of blood for Hillary to suck.
7.) U.N. diplomats and Peacekeepers (the “kinder, gentler” diplomats and Peacekeepers) using some to grease rape victims and to provide fuel for their Land Rovers. Kofi’s family now an order of magnitude richer.
8.) The Eeeevil Jooooos.
10.) Much of it is on the moon, now, in the hands of “friendly” aliens from the Crab Nebula. Got a pretty penny for it, too, thank you very much. I think it was a 1943 Steel Wheat uncirculated. (BTW, they got screwed on the deal: they also got Jean Fraud sKerry’s brain and a certificate ceding them 40% of his non-existent soul; a coupon for free treatment from Teddy Kennedy’s fav substance abuse center—with free swimming lessons included; a CD of “The Best of Howard Dean”; a picture of Barbara Streisand.  But the thing that made most of them walk outa the airlock without their helmets was a DVD featuring Cindy Sheehan. The screeching drove them mad. Both of the remaining “Crabs” are now blind and deaf.  Fortunately, they can still frell.)

Unfortunately, those are but a few of the places all that oil from Iraq has disappeared to, instead of going to make gasoline for my gas tank…

Saw this over at The Conservative UAW Guy and I thought, “Hmmm, anyone whose patriotism can’t stand up to a challenge or two probably has none.”

Think about that the next time someone starts whining about their “support for the troops” while denigrating those same troops.  Think about it the next time someone blames the U.S. for 9/11 and still claims to be a patriot.  Think about it the next time someone tells lies about atrocities our military is supposedly committing (“in the manner of Genghis Kahn”—a la Jean Fraud sKerry) in Vietnam Iraq and still claims to be a patriot.

Thanks to iHillary for the image.

Anyone whose patriotism can’t stand up to a challenge or two probably has none.

Small edits to aid those who missed the Swift Boat Vets’ reproduction of sKerry’s scurrilous lies in his 1971 Congressional Testimony. What a patriot!

Fiona Apple’s “first third studio album” (whatever that means) is due out in October
 
Extraordinary Machine to be released from durance vile.  Sony’s dungeon won’t be the same w/o it.
 
I have to admit to a kind of strange fascination with Fiona Apple’s singing.  Her songs and her voice.  Both juuust on the edge of being whiny without quite getting there.  Maybe it’s the dark undertones of her music and her voice that holds her performances just shy of whiny.
 
Whatever, I find I can take greater doses of her singing than most other current pop singers.  In fact, I even actually like some of her stuff! Some of it has to do with the fact that though she bends pitches, she obviously can tell what the pitches  are that she’s bending. And her voice has a complexity that nearly every other popular “artist” I’ve heard in the past 5-10 years lacks. I could wish for more blending of her head and chest voices, but she uses the break between them effectively.
 
All told, an intriguing performer/songwriter. And I may just break a longstanding rule and buy a popular artist’s (no scare quotes this time, cos—although I can’t quite figure her out—she does have some chops) album.  (Don’t get me wrong: I do occasionally buy CDs, just not usually of someone well-known in the current milieu.)
 
h.t. Lovely Daughter for pointing out that Sony’s giving us another bite of the Apple.

Caltech Girl has us all going back to school for Carnival of the Recipes #54

Ah, man! And all I wanna do is hang out at the pool eating Javascript Cookieâ„¢ Ice Cream Sandwiches!  Oh. Well.  At least if I have-ta go back to classes, she’s got some classy recipes to take with me, including Homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette, Freezer Coleslaw, Fried Tofu with Spicy Sauce (Tofu!?!?! Yeh, well, cos it’s from R’Cat, I guess I’ll give it a try… ).  Heck, if I’m gonna give tofu another chance, I’ll even try Army Wife’s Hummus recipe, I guess.

Tons of the good stuff! Just go!

I don’t know whether this is cool or annoying as all get-out…

And I know I need more coffee, anyway, cos I can’t recall where I ran across this annoyingly cool thingy-whopper:  Blogger for Word.

Yeh: a M$ Word plugin for editing/posting blogger posts. OK, confession time: I’m juuust lazy enough that I don’t write the code for my blogposts. And I HATE the stupid lil box blogger has in its crappy lil builtin wywsiwyg editor. So, I’ve been using Blogwriter, a not-quite-ready-for-primetime blog editor beta.  Oh, it doesn’t introduce as many errors as blogger’s builtin wywsiwyg editor does on its own, but between it and blogger, it does a good enough job of scrambling what I write to give me an excuse to use blogger’s builtin to edit the messy html a tad, about 50% of the time.

So, trying out this lil plugin for Word 2000.

And that’s my gripe with this plugin.  I had to actually install Word 2000 on this computer. Yeh, yeh, I know. Who cares? Well, I have a perfectly fine office suite in Open Office that I can use for everything else, so having to install an extra copy of Word 2000 I had sitting around was a pain.  Bloated MessySoft software… *grumble, grumble, gripe, complain*

Well, at least the lowest cersion of Word the thing will work with is Word 2000, which is bad enough but at least not as bad as having to install later versions.  I swear, M$ must think that “improving” software simply means adding code bloat through bling-bling addons.

*Sigh*

Here’s the installation file for the Blogger for Word plugin, if ya wanna try it out (and don’t mind—too much—having to have Word installed).

Oh, I see one thing that’s NOT gonna save me any time. I’ll still have to edit the posts manually to add “open in new window” to links. No biggie.

UPDATE: BTW, can edit the raw html easily using this plugin, cos when ya hit “publish” and chose the blog to publish to, etc., a window pops up with the editable html to edit/approve, whatever.  Makes it kinda easy.

Banning the “W” word

Believe it or don’t. The Yelm WA city council had banned speech about Wal-Mart in city council meetings.  Seems council members tired of hearing citizens views (one way or the other) about the possibility of a Wal-Mart being built in their town of around 5,000. The council apparently set a date for a meeting on the issue and has cut off all comment on it in council meetings—by council members or the public—until that date

Whatever. They’d never get away with that sort of high handedness here in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢.
    

Amazing.  No other words.

As far as I’m concerned, LTC Erik Kurilla of the Deuce-Four (Mosul, Iraq) IS Superman. Seriously.

Mosul.

Read The WHOLE Thing.

LTC Kurilla is wounded, but doing well. Pray for his swift recovery.

(Go ahead, make Michael Yon’s blog a regular stop. The stories he relates blow me away.)

(Trying to help Michelle Malkin out by promoting this post/story at Whizbang and Outside the Beltway, too.  *LOL*)

Edited to include the links to Malkin’s flog of the story and the Whizbang and OTB linkfests.

        

Drive-by posting.

Over at Random Rambling, Richard discovers he’s attending school with royalty. Riiiggghht…

NIF has a typical roundup of News, Interesting, Funny *and weird
:-).

The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson is available from Baen Books in hardback or ebook. (Also available from Amazon.com.)

Kris has a couple of off-the-wall stories she’s linked to today.

Instapundit dethroned by Michelle Malkin.

Well, that’s all for now. Lots more good stuff on my blogroll.