IF YR NOT ARGUING, IT’S NOT SCIENCE

I hadn’t planned on coming back to the Climate Change Email Hack, as I’d considered the matter basically closed. Granted, the “Global Warming Is A Big Conspiracy For No Good Reason Except Al Gore Is Evil” crowd will never let it go. But I figure that’s their problem.

But seeing as how Congressional Republicans have decided to probe the email hack to find out how much these scientists contributed to a widely cited UN report on climate change on which Obama bases his policies (see what they did there?), the story is going to have a lot more legs – and it’s going to be argued and played out on national television mainly by people who know dick about science and the science community.

So I thought I’d better pass on this nice piece from a PhD biologist adding some context to the whole “scientists arguing = no consensus on global warming = HOAX!” meme.

ABSTRACT

Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process. Haven’t any of these guys ever heard of “peer review”?

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries.

Too bad politics doesn't work the same way. Not these days, anyway.

Yes, I know. This won’t make a scrap of difference in the “probe”, and will make even less of a difference in the cable TV news arena.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be just as uninformed.

Queen of de Nile,

This is dF

BLACK COFFEE BLUES

I’ve always been a night person. But while everyone else would spend their nights at the clubs and bars, you’d be more likely to find me in a coffee house full of beatniks in Hermosa Beach.



[Via Like ... Dreamsville]

Okay, I made that up. I’ve never been to Hermosa Beach, and by the time I discovered night life, coffee houses were way out of fashion.

Still, I never really took to the American bar scene (unless there was a decent band playing that night). I was more at home in all-night diners – which by 1990 in the mid-South meant mainly IHOP, Waffle House or Denny’s. Not exactly a Tom Waits song waiting to happen, but you know, you take what you can get.

Then I moved to Carbondale and discovered the Longbranch Coffeehouse, which worked hard to revive the old coffee-house vibe – not hard in a college town (unless the college town is Clarksville, TN, in which case you’ll get bars and strip joints and you’ll like it), but it was still a great place to get strung out on caffeine until midnight or so, when they kicked you out and you fled either to the Corner Diner or (last resort) Denny’s.

I liked it. I’d have moved in if they’d let me.

So yeah. Coffeehouses and all-night short order joints are my idea of nightlife. Sure, you miss out on fights and wet t-shirt contests. On the other hand, no one ever woke up hungover next to a horrid stranger after a late-night espresso binge. Sure, that’s probably because you never went to sleep in the first place. But you see what I’m saying.

Night owl,

This is dF

SINGING UNDER OATH

A little slice of metal history for you: Rob Halford of Judas Priest – on trial for using subliminal messages to convince fans to kill themselves – testifies by singing a lyric from the song "Better By You, Better Than Me".

"Eddie Floyd - Knock On Wood" (Watch on YouTube)

The subsequent questioning (from his own lawyer) gives you an idea of just how bizarre the entire idea of the trial was – so much so that you wonder how it ever got to the trial phase in the first place.

But hey, that was 1990, which is practically the Stone Age when we all believed that thunderstorms were angry gods. Here in 2009, no one would ever believe that famous people speak in a way that contains Satanic evil messages if you were to hear it backwards –

Oh snap.

Anyway, here’s the best write-up you’ll find on the trial, if you’ve got about 30 minutes to kill.

Breakin’ the law,

This is dF