This news is not new: George Will is a jackass. This news also isn't really new: George Will twists data in order to support his Global Warming denial. But, he's at it again. Sez Ezra Klein:
[G]lobal warming is not shorthand for “every day will be hotter than the next everywhere on the planet.” It is shorthand for for the observation that an "anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is amplifying the natural radiative forcing of the troposphere’s temperature," thus creating a general trend toward higher temperatures. The year-to-year variability that forms the basis of Will's column is not a challenge to this theory. It is built into it.
Now, I could let dedicate more of life debunking George Will's column without even knowing much about Climate Science. But, I just got up, and I've only had one cup of coffee, so let me just say this: Either George Will is confused about the most basic ways of interpreting the data given to us by science, or he's intentionally being a horse's ass; either way, he doesn't deserve a column.
Even though I know that this is the way the world works, I hope I never lose my awe and amazement that people who are so consistantly, and empirically, wrong get to keep their jobs as pundits. Seriously, if you're a conservative, what do you have to say in order to get fired? Yes, yes, I'm looking at you, MSNBC's Pat Buchanan.
And this is awesome. A contest from Crooked Timber:
So your job, this Reality Thursday, is to write a song – or poem – expressing as clearly as you can, with extra style points for keeping it intelligible to an 8-year old – your favored philosophy of science. Does it consist of sentences, or does it consist of reality? You decide! The only thing I can think of that rhymes with ‘paradigm’ is ‘spare a dime’.
And for the winner, in my opinion (no winner was announced): Jim Harrison!
We think the scientists do science
And nature just sits there and poses
In fact, without a firm alliance
Of man and thing there’d be no gnosis.
The line between the S and O
Is dotted and moves to and fro.
It’s like what happens on a date
If you get lucky and you mate.
We get inside of nature’s pants
Because the lady wants to dance.
Or to make the selfsame point
Without alluding to your joint:
Science happens
As much in things as in the mind
Else the naked eyeball of our pride
Would be definitively blind.
I should note that, being one of those ever-unfashionable realists, I disagree with this guy's take, but his poem is awesome.
Lastly, I have no sympathy whatsoever for Roman Polanski. He drugged and raped a thirteen year old. If you're a fan of Herr Wittgenstein, here's a fascinating look at the way in which we distinguish between the concepts "statutory rape" and "rape" and why it's unhealthy and detrimental. Sez Neddy Merrill:
One of the interesting features of the Polanski conversations around the internet is the way the director’s defenders emphasize that he pled guilty to statutory rape while the prosecutorial-minded among us emphasize that he is guilty of rape. And if the victim’s grand jury testimony is accurate, this was a case of rape regardless of her age. (That she kept saying no was one clue.) This leads to some thinking about statutory rape and why people tend to find it…if not exculpatory, at least a mitigating factor, not-quite-real-rape.
Intruiged? Go, read.
And, I'm off to class. Posting to resume later tonight.
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