The Catholic Cricket

I like science.  I’ve always liked science.  I have great respect for the scientific process.  Which is why I find the “stolen” CRU documents to be so disturbing.  It’s not just the fact that scientists appear to have cooked the data to fit their preconceived notions, as bad as that is.  It’s not just that those same scientists appear to have put pressure on scientific journals to not publish opposing work.  Nor that they used the lack of published work to detract from the weight of anti-AGW arguments.  All of that is bad, and I think it hurts all of science.

What bothers me the most is the lack of outrage among other scientists.  There should be all sorts of complaints out there about how the scientific process has been undermined.  There should be people calling for the resignation or suspension of involved scientists pending review.  Scientists, corrupting science to drive a policy agenda?  It strikes at the very heart of what’s supposed to make science such a good tool: objective evaluation of collected data to explain what is observed and predict, again objectively, what will happen.

Good science relies on quite a few important legs.  One is objectivity.  Others include openness and repeatability.  The processes involved in adjusting the raw data to account for various factors (urban heat islands, movement of surface stations, etc.) should be clear and understandable.  It must be repeatable and reasonable.  Quality controls need to exist for any algorithms used to make those adjustments.  All of these things seem to be lacking in the case of AGW.

Without those things in place, it’s not science.  It’s just a bunch of self-proclaimed experts saying “trust us”.  Why should we trust them?  They’re not acting as scientists, they’re acting like magicians.  Their incantations are secret, not meant for the ears of mere mortals.  We are supposed to just accept their declarations without question.

And while I’m upset with the media’s poor coverage of this, and with the scientists involved, I’m even more upset with other scientists who should be raising integrity issues instead of defending this as “normal”.  They should be defending science, not scientists.  They should expect and demand that all scientists who put forth hypotheses give full disclosure of all relevant data needed to reproduce the results.

Where is the integrity in science?

Thank you.

A lot of the Catholic blogs I read are up in arms (figuratively, obviously) over Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama to be the commencement speaker at this years graduation ceremony.  While I understand and share their dislike of this situation, I have a slightly different perspective I’ve not seen brought up anywhere.

It is no surprise that Dame issued the invitation.  The administration there has wandered all over the place with regards to the Catholic faith, doing some good things but also doing some incredibly stupid things, things that are out of alignment with Catholic values (at least, from my perspective).

No, it was no surprise at all.  They’ve issued such invitations to Presidents regularly (from what I recall and have read).  Not all in the recent past have accepted.  Carter did, Reagan did, Bush did, Clinton didn’t, Bush did.

What I question is why the President accepted. 

The charitable side of me says that President Obama was truly honored to be asked to speak at the ceremony, and delightedly accepted such an honor.  The cynical side of me, the side that is currently winning in my evaluation of the reasons, laughs at this idea.  My inner cynic thinks that it is another attempt to pander to Catholics.  To me, it is an attempt to placate his Catholic supporters, to say “I care about my Catholic friends” while doing so much that is so completely contrary to Catholic teaching.

I don’t think he expected the response he got…at least, not the amount.  But it’s all directed at Notre Dame, and not Obama.  He is not the target of the anger.  If it keeps up as is, directed almost entirely at Notre Dame, liberals will be able to paint this as just a bunch of ultraconservative kooks who are out of touch with America.  Their accomplices in the press will help push this concept.  And because the driving force is Obama’s stance on life issues, they’ll be able to use this to harm the pro-life movement.

Instead of simply railing at Notre Dame, this needs to be used to drive home why Obama is bad for America.  Yes, he shouldn’t be speaking at a Catholic commencement ceremony, he shouldn’t be receiving an honorary law degree from the premier US Catholic university.  These events are a travesty.  But they’re a travesty because of Obama’s stance and actions with regards to abortion and ESCR. 

He has written a death sentence for millions of innocent babies.  He’s made you and me pay for those deaths.  He’s done it in the name of scientific advancement and personal freedom and privacy, as if any of those justify killing another human being.  And now he’s trying to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of many Catholics by making them feel good because he paid attention to a Catholic university.

The sad thing is…it’ll work.  After all, a school as prestigious as Notre Dame wouldn’t give an honorary degree to someone unless they really deserved it, would they?

There’s all this hoopla surrounding the faux Congressional outrage (and media-generated public outrage).  While I agree in essence with my brother’s take on it, I have a slightly different response.

I’m outraged.

I’m not outraged that public money was used to pay the $165 million in bonuses.  Those were contractually-required bonuses, from what I understand.  No, I’m outraged that public money was given to AIG in the first place.  I’m outraged that $170 Billion of taxpayer money was given to AIG with no strings attached, no oversight, no direction on how it was to be used, and seemingly no planning.

I’m further outraged that some Congressional Democrats are now calling for a retroactive tax on those bonuses (and bonuses paid out to people working at other companies that took bailout money).  Excuse me?  Who do you think you are, to change the rules in place after the event has taken place, and penalizing people for something that was fine at the time of the action?  The action is complete, the transaction finalized, the taxes taken out and paid (at current rates), the bonuses delivered.  If you want to change the rules now, then the new rules apply from here on out.

I’m trying to find a good analogy, but I just can’t.  Changing a golfer’s handicap after the round and declaring the loser a winner?  Not quite.

Ahh…I think I have it.  You go out to a restaurant for a meal.  You order the meal, eat the meal, pay for the meal, and go home.  Two weeks later you get a bill from the restaurant saying that they had raised prices on their entrees and you owed them another $20 for that meal from two weeks ago.

That’s still not quite right.  Let’s try another.

Robin Hood robs from the townsfolk and gives to the nobility, to help them out of a bind they got themselves into through bad decisions (shouldn’t have sunk all that money into new expensive villages where the villagers couldn’t afford to stay there).  The nobility then pay some townsfolk some extra money for being loyal workers.  Robin Hood gets pissed, gets a list of those so paid, and steals the money away from them again, even though he had originally required the nobility to give those townsfolk that extra money.

Man, Robin Hood is a jerk.

Well, that’s about the best I can do.  Maybe someone else out there can come up with a better analogy.

This is really well done:

The proposed stimulus package keeps growing and growing, and is now (if I recall correctly) over $900 billion.

$900,000,000,000, spent on what?  All sorts of weird things that won’t do diddly to stimulate the economy.  Well, here’s my own idea.  Since the government is going to go into debt by nearly another trillion dollars, they should just give it to the people.

According to the US POPClock Projection, there are currently 305,770,596 people in the US.  Giving each person $3000 would cost $917,311,788,000.  Mind you, that’s $3000 per person, so a family of four would get $12,000, while a family of 7 (mine) would get $21,000.

If that money is used responsibly (ha!), people would be able to get current with outstanding bills, and wipe out a significant amount of debt.  For example, I would pay off several medical bills, pay off the car, and wipe out most of my wife’s student loan.  My doctors and hospitals would have additional money, instead of receivables.  The loan holder for my car would have more money they could then turn around and loan out again.  My single credit card company would get a little bit of money which would help them as well.  Banks would get an influx of money as people (hopefully) wipe out unsecured debt.  For other people, they could catch up on mortgage payments, helping to stabilize the housing market.

On top of all of that, it would free up regular income that is currently going to feed these loans and outstanding bills.  I’d be able to spend money on other things, instead of paying for interest.  (I’d be smart about it, and much of it would go into savings so I can get a down-payment ready for the house we’re in now.)  I could buy some much-needed new shoes instead of dragging out the repayment of medical bills.  I could spend money on new things instead of still paying for things that were new a year ago.

Unemployed people would get an additional buffer to give them a little additional time to find a new job.

Sure, a bunch of people would be irresponsible with a sudden influx of money like that, but come on…would they really be doing worse than the heap of government pork currently in the bill?

Please pray for Amy Welborn and her family.  Her husband Michael Dubruiel passed away today.  They have a daughter and two sons.

Senator Kent Conrad, speaking on the vote to confirm Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, offered the following rationale:

One committee member, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a former tax commissioner, said in normal times, Geithner’s failure to pay his taxes would have led Conrad to oppose the nomination. 

“But these are not normal times,” Conrad said. He said the economy’s not “out of the woods” and touted Geithner’s extensive experience at a time when the country needs a treasury secretary imminently. 

What poppycock.  What makes now abnormal?  Housing slumps?  Economic changes?  Rising unemployment?  That’s all typical stuff for any country.  There are ups and downs in life.  That’s normal.

Think about what Conrad’s logic allows for.  In “normal” times, I wouldn’t  want a bank robber to run Citigroup, but since he has so much experience with money we have to hire this one.  In “normal” times, I wouldn’t want a homicidal maniac in a key leadership position at the DoD, but given the state of the world, we really need this homicidal maniac in place.

We are always in “normal” times.  There are always critical events occurring in the world, and we need to react to them.  That’s a part of living.  Using such a rationale in justifying the appointment of an unfit person to the position of Treasury Secretary is disingenuous at best.

What Conrad is saying is that ethics don’t really matter when times are tough.  Except that’s when they really matter.

Maybe Geithner will do a really good job as Treasury Secretary.  I hope so.  Maybe it was an honest mistake (doubtful, in my mind), or Geithner is truly repentant for his past actions.  But I don’t buy Conrad’s implied argument that it would take too long to find a suitable alternative (surely the Obama transition team had a list of possible nominees), or that Geithner is the only person who can fix things, and that therefore one must

This time I’m using iBlogger, which looks much better so far. I need to play with it more to see how well it works, but it’s not bad. It supports multiple blogs, which is nice.

If it worked, there should be a picture of Evelyn holding a drawing of the new baby in mommy’s tummy (”she’s crying”, according to E). I’d like to be able to move that picture within my post, but it doesn’t look possible right now.

And this post should also include my current location.

Looks good, although it’s a bit cumbersome switching between edit text mode and the preview/extras screen that adds images, location, and links.

And to test the links, let’s add one:
Loudest Cricket
Yeah, it probably would have been faster to type the HTML code.

Well, I’ll give it a chance since I spent $0.99 on it. It’s definitely a steal at that price, if everything works the way it’s supposed to.

Edit: Well, it mostly worked. It used the wrong location in the Google Maps link. There must be a way to update it, otherwise the Location feature is pretty much useless.

Steve Skojec over at Inside Catholic made an interesting point in an article a couple of days ago.  The estimates for the number of people expected (at the time) to attend the inauguration of (then) President-Elect Obama was 1.5 million people (I haven’t seen “official” estimates of the actual number yet).  This is really close to the number of unborn babies killed each year through abortion.

Go look at pictures of how crowded the Mall was.  That’s how many babies were killed last year.

For another perspective of what abortion has done since 1973, look at the total.  Say there have been around 50 million abortions since unrestricted access to abortion was discovered in the Constitution (it’s hard to know for sure, since reporting is sketchy at best).  That’s the population of the west coast of the US.  Eliminate all of the people in California, Oregon, and Washington.  Or it’s the entire population of Canada one and a half times.  Or it’s half of Mexico.  Or it’s more than the populations of the 50 most populous cities in the US combined.  And that’s just abortions performed in the US.

This country has said for the past 36 years that it’s ok that we’ve killed about 25% of our children each year.

Pray for an end to this horror.