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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Friday, January 07, 2005
What A Moron George Bush Is Back in February of 2004: WASHINGTON — The Bush administration predicted Monday that the U.S. economy will create 2.6 million jobs this year, despite sluggish growth so far.A lot of people thought this was just evidence of what a moron Bush really was. This report asks, "Was the Bush 'Job Boom' Merely Hype?" Also in 2004 (no date on the web page), the AFL-CIO observed: President George W. Bush is on his way to one of the worst records for job growth for any president in more than half a century. Nearly 1.2 million private-sector jobs have been lost since Bush became president. So what's today's news? 2004 Job Creation Is Best in Five YearsWith the tremendously bad track record that the Democrats have on this economic prediction thing, you would think that they would start to question their fundamental assumptions. Dave Barry No Longer Writing His Humor Column You can see his announcement here. I'm rather disappointed, having just finished reading his latest collection of columns, Boogers Are My Beat--a book that I was not allowed to read while my wife was reading serious books about World War I, because my laughter was too much of a distraction (even in another room). Shocking Admission of Sexual Perversion By Actress Yes, that's sarcasm. This guy described the article as: some shocking, disturbing, and, ultimately, depressing news. Apparently, the whole world is in fact upside down. “Senseless underutilization of crucial natural resources,” indeed.The article headline reveals the shocking truth: Teri Hatcher hasn't had sex in four yearsMy, how the world has turned upside down. Long, long ago, actresses used to pretend to at least faithful monogamy on screen regardless of what they actually did in private. Now we find an actress who is actually much wilder on screen than in private life. Hybrid Car Technology I guess I'm too much of a techie to be sufficiently skeptical of new technologies. I am, however, skeptical of "something for nothing" schemes, and the new hybrid automotive technology in which a gasoline engine charges the batteries, while the batteries operate electric motors sounded just a little too good to be true. This article makes the claim (which I find very plausible) that hybrids are far less advantageous for the environment than many enthusiasts would like to think: Buyers pay a large premium for a hybrid Escape or a Prius, presuming that the increased fuel mileage makes them a better environmental citizen. While there’s no question that the Toyota, Honda and Ford hybrids are more fuel efficient than their conventionally powered equivalents, the difference is nowhere near as great as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) numbers suggest.The article goes on to point out that battery recycling represents a substantial environmental issue as well--and there's a lot more batteries involved in one of these hybrids than a conventional automobile. One of my pet peeves about a lot of what calls itself environmentalism is an unwillingness to submit their enthusiasms to market pricing. If the only way that you can make a wonderful, Mother Earth technology succeed in the market is with very heavy subsidies, you should start asking if those subsidies are covering up an energy or resource intensive part of the process. For example, many years ago, I made the mistake of asking a simple question at Southern California Edison's Solar One demonstration plant, "How do you know that, over the life of this power plant, you are getting more power out of this solar boiler than you put into all the mirrors, refining aluminum, aluminizing the mirrors, building all the motors, the current required to aim the mirrors, run the computers, etc.?" A few weeks later, I received a written response that basically admitted that they had no idea what the lifecycle net energy production of their project was. Similarly, many years ago my wife worked for a company that sold solar water heaters out in California. The tactics that the company used to sell these systems were pretty reprehensible, and she quickly moved from sales to clerical. (She's a bit lacking in the "go for the jugular" ethic, which is part of why I love her.) One evening, out of curiosity, I ran some numbers to see how long it took their products to pay for themselves, and even with the very heavily tax credits of both federal and California tax codes at the time, it was frighteningly close to the warranty period. Now, in Southern California, many parts of the Southwestern U.S., or Florida, this particular technology probably made a lot of sense. It is significant that even without subsidies or environmental cheerleading, the United States used to have a significant industry producing solar water heaters (and this was from the 1890s to the 1940s). I've read (although I'm not sure if it is true) that Day & Night Manufacturing, formerly of Southern California, owes its name to having originally been in the solar water heater business back at the close of the nineteenth century. These systems sold well in Southern California and Florida, generally falling into disrepair after World War II when federal price controls on natural gas made it cheaper to switch to natural gas instead. Market pricing, while not perfect, often gives you a clue as to the level of energy input required. I find it significant that GM's electric vehicle of a few years ago was only available for leasing--not for purchase. It makes me wonder if exposing their little sop to the Greens that dominate California politics to the cold glare of market pricing might have made the whole project seem just a bit less impressive. The Telescope Parts Business Is Slowly Growing I made ten sets of these initially, hoping that they would sell out immediately, and justify going into large scale production. The first couple of weeks were a bit disappointing (no sales), but I think Christmas shopping may have played a part--I've received three orders so far, and I've shipped two sets this morning. (Still waiting for a check from Canada on the third order.) Labels: telescopes Advantages of Being a Hunter/Gatherer Hunter/gatherer cultures don't have to balance the checkbook every month. Thursday, January 06, 2005
More Leftist Explanations Of The Tsunami I mentioned yesterday how the crowd at Indymedia have decided that the Bushitler Administration caused the tsunami. Even more amazing how much energy and time this other leftist page has in it (and there is quite a bit), explaining how the United States and its master, Israel, caused the tsunami: I will be circumspect as to exactly how a large American thermonuclear weapon managed to arrive at the bottom of the Sumatran Trench, though all of the seismic evidence and preparedness for the resulting mission indicates strongly that this is the case. After all, we are back to the age-old question of "who benefits?", and in this particular case, "Who is insane enough to kill more than 150,000 civilians just to hang on to power?' Based on their past performance in Iraq and other luckless countries, it would seem that the only realistic candidates are Wolfowitz and company, striving as always to create a "One World Government".He's begging for money to keep his intelligence gathering efforts going. I'm sure that he's getting plenty from rich leftists. Blaming Alexander's Failure On Fundamentalists Oliver Stone is blaming fundamentalists for the commercial failure of his movie Alexander: Stone said the commercial failure of "Alexander" in the United States could be linked to "a raging fundamentalism in morality."Gee, you don't suppose that it might have had more to do with the fact that he made a bad movie? From the CNN review: Unfortunately, when you have voice-over and flashback carrying this much of the basic narrative, it usually means trouble with the script.This collection of criticisms from reviews suggets that Alexander was a ponderous and clumsy turkey--trying to blame fundamentalist morality for this is just absurd. "Puerile writing, confused plotting and shockingly off-note performances make Oliver Stone's epic film a disappointment." Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Humor This came off a mailing list that my mother receives: TALKING DOG FOR SALE Labels: humor Reasons To Take Science Classes In School... so you don't ended up a leftist. Over at portland.indymedia.org there is this amazing thread of conversation going on, started with this: It seems very convenient that the epicenter of the earthquake was in war torn Aceh. Could a bomb or series of bombs on the faultline have caused this huge earthquake/tsunami?Okay, one moron who doesn't know anything about earthquakes, the very limited power of nuclear weapons compared to earthquakes--but then gobs and gobs of fellow dimbulbs discussing it seriously before a leftist with two neurons to rub together points out that they are completely off their rockers. It is just painful to realize how many of the people posting there get their knowledge of science from reading comic books. California Gun Club Being Pushed Out They should just everyone that they are running a very noisy S&M "bare back" sex club, and the neighbors would probably stop objecting: AZUSA, Calif. — For the past 60 years, gun enthusiasts have been firing rounds at the San Gabriel Valley Gun Club (search), the largest shooting range in Southern California.That was a cheap shot, I admit. Southern California isn't anywhere near as perverse as Northern California, and generally, Southern California, in my experience, is a bit more tolerant of diversity than the Politically Correct Bay Area. Lipitor I mentioned recently that Lipitor, among other statins, has been implicated in a rare but worrisome memory loss problem. (You do remember reading this blog entry, right?) Anyway, I went to my doctor today to see if it was time to re-evaluate my need for Lipitor. He agreed, based on my dramatic reduction in blood pressure, that it was time to cut down from 20 mg to 10 mg--and perhaps cut it out completely as an experiment, depending on the cholesterol results from the blood he drew today. The good news was blood pressure 124/80; pulse 68. This page would indicate that I am at the very high end of a healthy blood pressure. (They claim "normal," but I would be surprised if, in a nation with so many obese people, that 120/80 is in any way average or typical for an adult. This web site indicates that I am now in the "normal" range and below 120/80 is "optimal.) A normal adult male pulse is 72, so I feel pretty good about that, although I've got a long ways to go before I have the 45 beats per minute resting pulse rate of a highly trained athlete like George W. Bush. Do Drug Dealers Support Legalization of Drugs? Some people seem to think that people engaged in large scale trafficking of drugs would want to keep them illegal. Interesting theory, and pretty logical, but an ounce of experience beats a pound of theory. In a Washington Post article about the retirement of Keith Stroup, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), there is this description of who funded the organization in its early days: He picks up a picture frame that contains a typed letter. It's the note that accompanied $10,000 in cash left on the doorstep of NORML's office in the summer of 1976.The rest of the article is a reminder that for all the theory about "victimless crimes," you have to wonder about the sense of these people: It seemed like high times for NORML. Publicly, Stroup predicted that pot would be legal in a couple of years. Privately, he and his NORML pals joked about forming an advocacy group for another drug they'd begun to enjoy -- cocaine.The article goes on to talk about how Stroup decided to get revenge on President Carter's drug adviser, who had refused to take their side in the Paraquat fiasco: Seeking revenge, Stroup leaked a secret to newspaper columnist Jack Anderson in July 1978: Bourne had snorted cocaine at NORML's 1977 Christmas party. And Stroup revealed the names of a couple of witnesses.I think the best way to deal with the druge problem is to encourage rehab, discourage use through media campaigns, and private companies voluntarily imposing drug testing requirements on employees. Interdiction of drugs makes them expensive, encouraging manufacture and smuggling, and results in absurd penalties against users, considering that they are primarily injuring themselves. But I do think that a lot of people who don't see drug abuse as a serious problem need to spend more time around the underclass who actually have serious drug problems. A lot of their charming fantasies would go away. Those Who Reproduce Will Decide The Future Mohammed has now entered the top 20 boys' names in which country? Yup! Britain! I wonder how much longer the left can continue its adulation of everything Islamic, if it has to wonder what the legal status will be of much of Hollywood's output in another thirty years. Shows What I Get For Not Knowing Who The In Performers Are I saw this headline and thought, "They're taking this 'marriage is whatever we want it to be' thing too far!" Supermodel Heidi Klum, Seal EngagedBut no, "Seal" is not one of those cute sea mammals, but a singer that I've never heard of before. Sounds Like Racial Profiling To Me From the Boston Globe: WASHINGTON (AP) Federal authorities searched Wednesday for a man using a Middle Eastern name and possible bogus construction credentials to try to purchase large quantities of the same explosive used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building.Obviously, the BATF should also be out looking for at least 95 native-born Americans who have recently tried to buy ammonium nitrate--just to be fair about this. More About the Supposed 100,000 Civilian Deaths in Iraq I mentioned yesterday this study that claims that there have been 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion. Even those who are not friends of the United States were skeptical: Previous independent estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq were far lower, never exceeding 16,000. Other experts immediately challenged the new estimate, saying the small number of documented deaths upon which it was based make the conclusions suspect.I notice that the Washington Post coverage of this study gives some more detail about the nature of those deaths: When the researchers examined the causes of the 73 violent deaths collected in the study, 84 percent were due to the actions of coalition forces, although the researchers stressed that none was the result of what would have been considered misconduct. Ninety-five percent were due to airstrikes by helicopter gunships, rockets or other types of aerial weaponry.This is completely consistent with the evidence that terrorists in Iraq are using non-combatants as human shields. I guess the right solution is to let the terrorists have their way. Forty-six percent of the violent deaths involving coalition forces were men ages 15 to 60, but 46 percent were children younger than 15, and 7 percent were women, the researchers reported.Gee, what do you suppose the chances are that the 46%, "men ages 15 to 60" were largely terrorists engaged in warfare? The researchers and the Lancet editors acknowledged that the study has clear limitations, including a relatively small sample of violent deaths that were examined directly and the researchers' reliance on individual memories for some information. But the researchers said the findings represent the most reliable estimate to date.Let's see: a total of 73 violent deaths. What do you suppose the chances are that former Baathists might be telling lies? The sample was 988 Iraqi households. If even 2% (or 20 households) lied about a death, that would be enough to explain one quarter of the supposed 100,000 extra deaths. (I don't dispute that there has been a large number of civilians killed.) I can't seem to find the actual study online (at least for free), but as someone pointed out, when you do a survey like this, and then project national numbers, you are relying on both representative sampling, and a confidence interval. Is this 100,000 number the middle of the confidence interval? As an example, the Kleck/Gertz survey of civilian defensive gun uses done several years back came up with a range; Kleck suggested that the number of annual civilian defensive gun uses in the U.S. was in the range 830,000 to 2.45 million. Unsurprisingly, gun rights activists tended to use the 2.45 million number, because it suited their political needs. Is this study's 100,000 number similarly the high end of the confidence interval? Chrenkoff's Tsunami News Collection As usual, Mr. Chrenkoff manages to bring together an interesting collection of items about the tsunami relief efforts. Tuesday, January 04, 2005
How Do I Hate Korn Shell? Let Me Count The Ways I have spent the last week and a half at home, porting a C application to Java. Now, the winter break is over, and I am back at my day job, trying to debug a 4000 line ksh script that someone else wrote, and many people have altered over the years, with no particularly consistent style. Why do I hate ksh so much? 1. It has no debugger, other than print statements scattered throughout the script, which inevitably, I forget to remove a few of when I am done debugging. 2. It has effectively no error checking. Use an undefined variable? It's automatically zero, unless it's a string, in which case it is just an empty string. 3. The script, unfortunately, is recursive, and as much as I would have preferred otherwise, there was no realistic alternative, which simply adds to the experience. It is unfortunate that Microsoft decided to strangle Java in its crib. Java has at least a rudimentary debugger included for free (jdb), and it has such strong type checking that I found myself often debugging by inspecting compiler errors, and most of that time, that was sufficient to get code working. By comparison, going back to ksh debugging is strictly: 
Increased Solar Output I saw mention of this a few days ago, and it confirms a variety of pieces of evidence that I have previously discussed here: In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s. Previous items by me about this: Cosmic Rays, Cloud Formation, & Global Warming Increased Solar Output Mars and Earth Both Between Ice Ages At The Moment Changes In Solar Cycle & Output Armagh Observatory Finds Solar Records From 1795 Forward Evidence of Temperatures in Middle Ages Europe Global Warming on Mars Labels: global warming Humor Some of these I've seen before--others are new. It was forwarded by an old lawyer friend: Q: Are you sexually active? Labels: humor Why I Don't Take British Pretensions Of Sophistication Seriously This recent survey of Britons found that Israel is ranked among the least democratic countries--right alongside Egypt. Now, I have my areas of disapproval of how Israel works, but to suggest that it is even roughly equivalent to Egypt in being a functioning democracy--or that it should be among a "least democratic countries" list--tells me how tremendously effectively the left is in propagandizing. Even worse, that the United States is at the top of the "least safe" countries list, handily beating out South Africa and Russia--tells me that reality has little to do with what the propaganda campaign that the left runs from their positions of control in Britain. Statins and Memory Loss A reader mentioned that the various cholesterol-reduction drugs, such as Lipitor and Zocor, have been associated with memory loss problems. This concerns me, because I'm taking Lipitor, and some of these memory loss problems may involve losing decades of memory--perhaps permanently. I did a little searching, and while I wouldn't exactly call the reports alarming, they are a reminder that you don't want to take these drugs unless absolutely necessary. This abstract from Current Pharmaceutical Design mentions "Reports show possible adverse effects of statins on nervous system function including mood alterations...." The full article (which you have to pay for) apparently mentions memory loss problems as well. More worrisome is this paper from Reviews of Therapeutics: Conclusion. Current literature is conflicting with regard to the effects of statins on memory loss. Experimental studies support links between cholesterol intake and amyloid synthesis; observational studies indicate that patients receiving statins have a reduced risk of dementia. However, available prospective studies show no cognitive or antiamyloid benefits for any statin. In addition, case reports raise the possibility that statins, in rare cases, may be associated with cognitive impairment, though causality is notThis study from Biochemical Society Transactions of Alzheimer's plaques suggests that statins might be of some benefit (at least, if you are a mouse): Plaque load in these mice is sensitive to cholesterol treatments. Feeding the mice high-cholesterol diets increases production of neuritic plaques, while treating the mice with the statin atorvastatin (Lipitor) reduces production of neuritic plaques by approx. 50% [ 16, 17]. The ability of atorvastatin to reduce plaque load is particularly interesting because this compound does not cross the blood–brain barrier to a significant degree, which raises the possibility that atorvastatin, and statins in general, might protect against AD via a peripheral mechanism. Understanding the specific mechanism by which statins protect against AD, be it via inhibition of Ab production or via another mechanism, remains a key question in the field.Not surprisingly, since I have spent the last six months working out five days a week, with substantial improvements in waistline and blood pressure, I am headed back to the doctor tomorrow to see if it's time to give some blood, and see if Lipitor is still necessary and wise. Civilian Deaths in Iraq The latest set of excuses that the left is making for why Saddam Hussein should have been left in power is that, in the words of an acquaintance, "Bush has caused more Iraqi deaths in 18 months than Hussein did in 30 years." Since the Iraqi government murdered at least 300,000 of its own people under Hussein, as well as causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers in the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), I found this such an astonishing claim that I decided to do some digging. It turns out that even the fiercely antiwar crowd at Iraq Body Count only claims between 15,000 and 17,250 civilian deaths, and even then, they use the term "Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq." This includes civilians killed by Coalition forces, civilians killed by terrorist groups (of which I can think of several highly publicized incidents where many dozens were killed by car bombs, and today's mass murder), or "civilians" who are actually terrorists. (For some odd reason, I have a hard time considering a person who is attacking Coalition or Iraqi forces to be a civilian.) The description of their data base also includes this astonishing statement: In the current occupation phase the database includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.This means that even ordinary criminal acts qualify as civilian deaths for which the Coalition can be blamed. How would the Coalition prevent all civilian murders? Well, a big police state would do the job. Of course, police states such as Hussein's Iraq tend not to have much in the way of serious crime, since the criminals are usually part of the state security forces. This BBC report discusses a recent survey that claims that there have been 100,000 excess deaths since the war, largely because of air strikes and violence, based on surveys done in a relatively small number of areas: The sample included randomly selected households in Baghdad, Basra, Arbil, Najaf and Karbala, as well as Falluja.Oddly enough, even the various experts quoted in the report seemed more comfortable with the Iraq Body Count numbers. The BBC report does quote a Pentagon spokesman: "Former regime elements and insurgents have made it a practice of using civilians as human shields, operating and conducting attacks against coalition forces from within areas inhabited by civilians."This, of course, means that much of the problem is the terrorists. My acquaintance, of course, sees the terrorist actions as the fault of the United States. The core problem here is that the left's hatred of Bush and America is so overpowering that they prefer to believe that a guy who committed genocide is preferable to cleaning up the mess. What I find really interesting is how every criminal act committed by terrorists is our fault. I sometimes wonder how much of this is driven by hatred for Bush, and how much is driven by support for terrorism, since terrorism is a fundamental part of how the left has historically operated, once it is in power. UPDATE: More examination of this supposed study here. |
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