Knuckleball News

Personal Privacy

It's bad form for the Kerry team to keep mentioning Cheney's daughter. That's a personal issue that obviously must cause his family distress, at least when she came out. The Democrats don't have any more justification for raising this like it's an issue than the Republicans did for getting into Clinton's sex life. We shouldn't care if the president gets head from a girl in the oval office any more than we should care that the vp's daughter gets head from a girl in the privacy of her own home.

It's not like there's a lack of poor judgement on the part of Cheney to attack.... think accounting changes to jack up apparent earning at halliburton; wmd in iraq; iraq - al qaida connection; calif. energy crisis management; or even the dead-on-arrival gay marriage ammendment.

Flawed Analysis of Global Warming Trend

The Spoons Experience has pointed out an analysis by the MIT Technology Review that finds a significant error in the global warming analysis conducted by Mann that is used to support the idea of global warming. The jist of things is that Mann used all kinds of temperature data over about 5 centuries to look at the significance of recent waming trends. Because 20th century data were actual measurements, while preceding data were less certain tree-ring stuff, a type of statistical analysis was used to evaluate the trends. The error essentially underestimates the variance in the data, leading the model to over-weight recent temperature fluctuations. The error with the model was demonstrated by using random data input to show the same biased results. Probably an honest mistake, but the original researcher should have checked the model with random data. The conclusion: we know a lot less about the perceived warming trend than we thought we knew a month ago.

It has always seemed silly that we put much faith in these long term climate predictions when the weatherman can't give me any more accurate forecast 5 days out than the Farmer's almanac. While it is a noble exercise to continually improve the models to account for as many known mechanisms as possible using the best possible supercomputers, we should take the results with a grain of salt. I'll bet there are pretty big 'tunable' parameters regarding positive or negative feedback mechanisms that can dramatically affect the results. (i.e. if it's hotter --> more water evaporation --> more cloud coverage --> more light reflected to space..... giving a stabilizing or negative feedback vs. hotter --> less snow --> less bright white snow to reflect light.... giving a reinforcing or positive feedback). And my cynical side recalls the personal motivation most such researchers probably have for results to show global warming to be a problem ..... it makes it the next research proposal that much easier of a sell.

Plus global warming is somewhat of a red herring for environmentalists.... I mean they put a lot of political capital into these predictions that few people truly understand when there are so many other more tangible reasons for the country to get more energy efficient and self sufficient. Then when articles like this come out, they've got a weakened argument when NOTHING real has changed, only predictions and imaginations of researchers and the pundits who like to spin these predictions.

Smart Growth

Jane Galt of Assymetrical Information has a popular thread going about smart growth that is interesting. to summarize:

city living is great, especially if you can afford it. most people can't afford it or just plain prefer their cars/yards. it's cheaper for everyone to drive (vs. mass transit) except for the mega-cities. to get dense growth that makes mass transit feasible you'll need to force it on people. forcing anything on people sucks - it's arrogant to impose your wishes over other peoples's free will in their own lives. instead she proposes to alter the market equation to discourage driving with (significantly) higher gasoline taxes.

I agree with the analysis. I would propose increasing mileage standards is a more direct solution with more benefits. many people will keep driving anyhow with higher gas taxes. some will stop due to higher costs. similarly, higher mileage standards will raise the cost of cars leading many people to keep driving and exluding a minority due to higher cost burden. the second alternative 1. reduces the gas consumed by persistent drivers 2. forces US car industry into the inevitable market (which is important industry for taxpayers to babysit due to the huge poetential unfunded pension liability that they'll drop on the taxpayer if the car companies go bankrupt). the reasonable counterpoint is that higher gas prices will indirectly raise fuel standards through market forces, but only a look at continuing truck sales in the face of sharp rise in gasoline prices shows how inefficient this link is.

Quote

"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere."

—Abraham Lincoln

KH4K

Kerry Haters for Kerry

I thought it was clever...

a link from Southern Appeal

Purpose in Iraq

In the not-so-recent presidential debate, almost as an afterthought, trying to get in a key point that didn't naturally come up in the debate... Kerry mentioned the U.S. intent to build 14 bases in Iraq. I don't think that Bush directly disputed or corroborated this statement (does anyone else know if it's true/). Kerry seemed to be trying to establish a link between this alleged fact and the lack of international support for the U.S. effort. His line of reasoning presumably is that by having alterior motives for the Iraq invasion, i.e. effectively conquer/settle/occupy Iraq, the U.S. has trouble convincing its allies of our noble, spread-freedom&democracy style motives. I think that this is a slippery slope of an international policy, as it would put us in the position of being a permenant occupying force, reminiscent of the quagmire in Isreal. Although we clearly aren't settling the country with U.S. citizens, I don't think that we want to get ourselves in any kind of forced occupation of the country via U.S. military bases. Maybe Germany, Japan, or S. Korea are the prototypes that the U.S. planners have in mind, but the propoganda of the enemy in Iraq is most likely filled with analogies to Isreal's occupation/settlement or whatever you call that situation in the 'land of milk and honey'.

Any feedback or comments are also appreciated.

Electronic Nickel

About a week ago, there was some controversy regarding Paypal dumping a Bill Quick of Daily Pundit for the content on his website. Paypal is a subsidiary of eBay that is a means of making internet payments... effectively electronic money, and being a private company they have the right to stop doing business with whomever they please. this is fine, except only private 'currency' is available online, and that's not a very good thing. my idea:

From section 8 of the first article of our esteemed Constitution...

The Congress shall have Power to .... coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

I'm not a big fan of government, but it seems to me that a key job of the U.S. government is to mint money. couldn't an "e-nickel" be produced by the government? i'm envisioning something that would have the features of cash:
-unique serial number
-no commisions on the transfer of $ (unlike paypal, etc.)
-can be handed over anonymously

obvisouly there are some technological hurdles, such as how do you avoid conterfeiting. maybe some sort of huge encrypted serial number unique to every e-coin, whose authenticity can be checked against a gov't website.

think about the possibilities this would open up... a simple nickel donation from occasion visitors, no personal info to be swiped when doing online transactions, and best of all any paypal-esque, big-brother shit would have to clear the hurdles of the bill of rights unlike a large company that is prone to suffer from delusions of grandeur and self-righteousness when approaching a dominant market status

any thoughts?

Welcome

Welcome new reader.... this is my first attempt at a weblog. I've only recently begun reading other people's weblogs, and decided that I should publish my ideas at my own site. This should be considered a temporary experiment, unless I continue to enjoy writing. Some of my favorite blogs are Assymetrical Information, samizdata, amongst others.

The name of my blog is my oh-so-clever response to 'Hardball News' on some crap cable news channel. Most news media has such a biased opinion that is spun towards an average viewer who doesn't spend much time analyzing these crap opinions. I will attempt to take a rational, unbiased look at news and supplement it with my opinions and ideas. For the record I don't like either party so much. I like the supposed fiscal discipline of Republicans and the civil libertarian views generally attributed to Democrats. I suppose I'm libertarian, although whenever I read about Libertarian candidates, they always seem like wackos. Overall I support rational, practical and fair solutions to most issues and dislike most special interest positions.

Along these lines, I recently read Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America by Morris Fiorina, et. al., which is a political book that quantitatively evaluates the apparent political division in the US - red states vs. blue states - and concludes that most people are more similar in political opinions than different. This was found to extend to such dicisive issues as abortion, the first such issue assessed.

Feedback is encouraged.