There’s your problem right there.

Thoughts on Challenging the Climate Orthodoxy

The most important answer is that what the “experts” are saying and what the media and the general public are saying the experts are saying is completely different. There is a bait and switch going on, where the majority (though maybe not the most vocal) of the experts are very careful and conservative (little c) in their claims, but they are portrayed as being all-in en masse on the most outrageous and spectacular of the claims by activists.

More importantly, it is clear that the public message of global warming (of major impending disasters ranging from crime rates (murder, rape, robbery) to soar to the start of the Syrian civil war) differs from the more conservative claims being made by the scientists themselves. Worse, we are being sold a range of unscientific “tipping-point” disasters, ranging from the Arctic sea melting to sea level rises. “Tipping points” are inherently unscientific because they require the presumption that at some point in the future we will see a previously unobserved event which cannot be reversed. Remember: science is about observation–so any pronouncement of an unobserved event based on an untested hypothesis is not a scientific theory by definition.

And it is very clear from the public message (rather than the scientific journals on climate) that as we caused global warming, we must combat global warming–and do so with a wide variety of large scale political changes ranging from giving up single-unit family homes to changing our diet to giving up children (by law if necessary). On the economic front, activists suggests economic freedom is causing climate change, so we must curtail economic expansion and restrict economic choice in order to achieve some sort of climate-driven social justice.

Beyond that, it’s clear that in some corners, we can only fight global warming through abolishing capitalism itself. For every article suggesting that “conservatives are paranoid to think global warming is a trojan horse”, there are dozens suggesting that capitalism is indeed the problem and must be curtailed. (And even the alternet.org story goes on to suggest that while conservatives are paranoid, we can only fight global warming “radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their ‘free market’ belief system.”)

That is, global warming (today, “climate change”, because we just received a record-breaking snowfall in Raleigh just a few days ago) is being sold by activists to the public more than a scientific curiosity that may have implications on future development patterns.

It is being sold as an existential threat to our very existence.

And anyone who suggests otherwise–either suggesting that perhaps temperature trends are not what is being reported, or by suggesting that while global warming is indeed taking place and is indeed man-made, the ramifications are not as bad as reported–are being called “deniers” (with echoes of Holocaust Denial).

God help you if you point out that if you follow the discussions of some observations on economic expansion (see map at link), you can’t help but notice that the ares in deepest red, the areas which may have the largest effect on future global warming, the areas where we may just have to impose economic restrictions in order to ‘save the world’–are all areas where people happen to have darker skin color than those who are the strongest believers in the “global warming as social justice” orthodoxy.

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In that gap between what the experts are actually saying in scientific papers (and in the debate over the data being presented), and what the media, the politicians and the activists are saying (in their desire to craft legislation that seeks to fight global warming by massively altering how we live our lives–though never theirs; they never want to cut their own lifestyles–comes doubt.

Not doubt that the climate is changing. But doubt in the package of solutions being sold to us as a cure to global warming–a package of solutions that look a lot less like trying to heal the planet, and a lot more like giving up power to a handful of technocrats while we all become apartment dwelling childless vegetarians, giving up on dreams of a quiet home in the suburbs with two kids, a car in the garage, and a steak on the barbecue in the back.

Because you don’t hate Mother Gaia, do you?

Brevity is the soul of wit.

A recent scientific paper with a one-word abstract:

(Source)

A dusting of snow can even make a utility shed look pretty.

It’s a trap!

If you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi, this contains spoilers. You may wish to stop.

‘The Last Jedi’ Ending Almost Cut the Mysterious Broom Boy”

Ultimately, though, he stuck with Broom Boy. With this final moment, Johnson is expanding the Star Wars universe in a clever, concise way. As he says in the quote above, “we now have a galaxy that has seen this beacon of hope and is getting inspired to fight the good fight.”

That said, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before there is an entire spin-off comic book about Broom Boy, and his many sweeping adventures.

Do you know why “Broom Boy” as the person at the very last scene worked?

Because he represented the idea of hope: the hope of a young boy (or girl) looking up at the stars and seeing all the potential of the universe. He’s the younger version of us: of when we were young and we daydreamed of distant shores, and had all the potential in the world in front of us. And he’s special–but special in a way which we all can be, if we just stop paying attention to how we grab the broom.

Which is why I think it would be a serious mistake to develop him as a character in the Star Wars universe.

Because when he stops being that “every child with a dream” and becomes a specific person with specific powers and specific adventures–he stops representing that hope and those dreams of all of us.

And he becomes special–separate from you and I, no longer representing our hope and dreams. And his power stops being the power of faith and becomes a high midichlorian count: a genetic aberration which makes him one of the “chosen few”, a Bodhisattva by right of birth rather than what we all can become if we just believed.

Bad User Interfaces

Hawaii missile alert: How one employee ‘pushed the wrong button’ and caused a wave of panic

Around 8:05 a.m., the Hawaii emergency employee initiated the internal test, according to a timeline released by the state. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: “Test missile alert” and “Missile alert.” He was supposed to choose the former; as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter, an initiation of a real-life missile alert.

Well, there’s your problem right there.

Can we require more user interface designers to read Designing with the Mind in Mind before building interfaces like this one?

Raleigh has some great restaurants.

It’s that time of year when Raleigh holds “restaurant week”, when participating restaurants create a fixed-priced “taste” menu so you can try out new restaurants.

It’s how we found Irregardless Cafe.

I’m amazed at just how many good restaurants Raleigh has. (And those are just the participating restaurants; Raleigh has more than just these.)

A comment about the “shallowness of consumer choice.”

Left in response to a comment by someone else:

And, although this initially sounds shallow, the freedom to make endless consumer choices is great.

I don’t think this is shallow.

If you look at Lockean philosophy, he discusses property in both the broad sense (of human aspirations) and in the narrow sense (in terms of material goods) in a way which suggests they overlap, and provides a justification for the idea that for us to reach our highest aspirations, we work–and use the fruits of our labors to obtain those material goods which both make us comfortable and which allow us to seek our higher aspirations.

If you consider Adam Smith’s “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”–arguably a prequel to “Wealth of Nations”, Smith takes this further–and ascribes a moral dimension to our willingness to work and to use the money we earn from our labors in order to improve our own lot in life. In fact, if you read Smith’s description of the “invisible hand”, and his description of individuals being allotted by God the responsibility for their own happiness:

The administration of the great system of the universe … the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country….

It is easy to what Smith’s invisible hand is:

They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

That is, Smith’s “invisible hand” that arises from our drive to improve our lives–to satisfy our hunger and thirst, satiate our passions and avoid our pains, and to act with prudence, fortitude and charity towards those around us–is in fact the invisible hand of God.

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So this notion that somehow the wealth of consumer choice around us, driven by people who are trying to understand your desires and better cater to them, is somehow “shallow consumerism”–frankly, I reject that notion completely. I think those who try to tell us consumerism is terrible are, quite frankly, fucking idiots. And the fact that they’ve managed to make the rest of us embarrassed at our riches (derived from our collective hard work) is really very sad.

Consumerism–really, the drive by society to cater to our desires in an effort to improve our lives–gives rise to the very values which are at odds with racism and sexism (since pissing off your consumer base is not good for business), forces you to work with strangers (since shopkeepers need to be able to sell their wares to anyone walking through the doors), requires you to consider your consumers (and understand what they want and need).

The flip side of that–that we are free to work as we wish and spend our money on the things that bring us happiness–is to me a cornerstone of American society. We trust ourselves and our neighbors to take care of themselves and to attend to their own happiness, and we bare a personal responsibility for aiding the poor and suffering around us. (I’m reminded of the quote from the show Rick and Morty floating around elsewhere on Reddit:

Beth: “Do you want homeless people to have homes?”

Jerry: “Yes”

Beth: “Are you going to build them?”

Jerry: “No.”

Beth: “Then what good was the ‘yes’?”

And all of this–God’s appointment to us the more meager responsibility suited our limited abilities to manage our own happiness, the happiness of our family, and the wellbeing of those we see around us–and all that we have built from this: I see this as a perfect example of the “highest in the lowest”, that cornerstone of Christian philosophy, which provides the highest visions of heaven can be reflected in the lowest of our own actions.

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As an aside, to say I have no fucking patience with Communists and Socialists and those who would restrict personal choice is a God Damned understatement.

And when Bernie Sanders was quoted as saying:

“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”

To say he missed the point is like saying a mentally retarded adult with an IQ of 40 doesn’t quite understand the calculus of quantum mechanics.

You know what the reducto-ad-absurdum of this is, right?

Free speech is nearly absolute in the United States: unless you’re engaged in defamation (which is narrowly defined in the United States as requiring actual damage), or you’re actively calling for violence, you can pretty much say or write what you wish.

This is not true in Europe, which provides for a “hate speech” exception. But the problem, of course, is that “hate” is in the eye of the beholder: one person’s reasonable expression of solidarity is another person’s “hateful speech”, for which you need to be arrested.

Like this: Austrian Police Book Activists for Waving Israeli Flag

Vienna Police have booked criminal charges against three pro-Israeli activists for waving an Israeli flag to a group of anti-Israel demonstrators. They have been accused of waving the Israeli flag “in an extremely provocative way” causing “considerable offense among the Palestinian protesters,” Austrian media reported, citing the police statement. If found guilty, they could face up to hundred euros in fine or two days in prison.

The incident took place in early December when Europe was hit by a wave of anti-Israel protests following President Trump’s decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

You know where this is going, right?

Eventually it’ll be hate speech for a Jewish person to, well, breathe, because breathing is provocative and hateful to Palestinian protesters.

And in order to help those sad, frustrated Palestinians who are confronted with all this hateful Jewish existence, great trains will be set up to round up those provocateurs of hate speech, carrying them to camps where they can have this hateful expression of existence terminated, in order to eliminate that ‘hate speech’ from the fragile eyes of those same Palestinians.

But don’t call them ‘concentration camps.’ That’d be hateful.

It’s cold. (How cold is it?)

It’s cold enough that a nearby lake froze solid, and people are out ice skating on it.

But be careful, because it’s not frozen solid everywhere. Watch out for cracks in the ice:

It makes fishing a little harder, ‘natch.

I tossed a rock out on the lake and it bounced.

Though it does make a very cool sound.

A comment left elsewhere.

In response to the comment: “And here I thought Republicans were for States rights.”

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Nonsense. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are strict Constitutional Textualists, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either an idiot or is trying to sell you something.

Worse, since the 1930’s when we saw a massive growth of the regulatory state at the hands of FDR (under the “New Deal” umbrella), not only is textualism dead, but even the very idea of the U.S. Constitution as embodying a particular economic theory (as espoused by the likes of Adam Smith or John Loche) was taken out back and shot in the head with Justice Holmes dissent in Lochner:

But a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire.

(Here is an older critique of the state of affairs by California Justice Janice Brown.)

Since then our very understanding of the notion of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” has fundamentally changed: our notion of “the pursuit of Happiness” has shifted away from Loche’s very specific understanding of what happiness is (the ability to work, save and make one’s own life in a state of relative economic freedom) into a more fuzzy “feel good” notion devoid of any sociological or political consequence. (Our founding fathers would recoil in horror at the idea of a pill that makes you happy, but today a number of us would think it the ultimate cumulation of that foundational statement in the Declaration of Independence. Even those who read Brave New World and should know better.)

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So if you think Republicans or Democrats stand for anything actually outlined in a strict textual understanding of the Constitution (such as “states rights”, which was dead and buried under the dead of the Civil War, or “free markets”, which at best has been sold by certain Republicans as a shibboleth against “Democratic overreach”), you’ve been sold a bill of goods for an idea nearly a century dead.