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[ Wednesday, September 10, 2008 06:02 ]

Legacy Journal: Wednesday Time to Weed out the Word Wars.

Section:
Commentary

Summary:
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” --- George Orwell

* If it is Wednesday, it is time to be clear as to your message by weeding out the weasel words and the demeaning metaphors. ”Implied Racism” and “lipstick on pigs” come immediately to mind. Meanwhile, Per Diem Gate is percolating and whose kids attend the fight kind of schools is the stuff of watercooler chatter.

Tuesday night at WXXI PBS Rochester,NY, featured a repeat of the Frontline production on “Bush’s War” and the second night of a pledge drive. The first team of phone bank volunteers included members from RIT OLLI. WXXI President and CEO, Norm Silverstein was also aboard. There is a connection, in that the CEO of the Bernard Osher Foundation is Mary Bitterman, formerly of KQED, San Francisco.

* Sarah Palin is now under the lights and on the dissecting table. Apparently, while serving as mayor, she asked The City librarian about her general guidelines use to expend public funds including the purchase of new books. The former librarian is not currently making comments except to confirm that no specific book titles or topics were discussed with her boss. However, the community has a history of public comments about books by and for “ the gay community.

Main:
: Now, now boys and girls, it is time for the campaigns to cut the crap and talk straight. Orwell ( Erik Blair) had it right.

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Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 09/10 at 06:02 AM
Backgrounder: • Basics: • Biography: • Bright Lights: • Calendar: • Wednesday: • Culture Clash: • Deadly Sins: • Fact vs Fiction: • IT3 Tech: • Internet Tech: • Google: • Calendar: • Language: • Rhetoric: • Metaphors: • Speaking Out: • Straight Talk: • Talking Points: • Weasel Words: • suggests: • Well Reasoned: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Tuesday, September 09, 2008 06:55 ]

Legacy Journal: Tuesday Tipoff

Section:
Columns

Summary:
* Palin continues to redefine the conventional copycat wisdom

The 4th installment of 8 years covering the Bush Administration from inside the White House, Bob Woodward’s latest book “The War Within: ---” is thin gruel.

* So why all the concern about summer time melting around the sea ice cap in the Arctic Ocean?

Main:
: According to the latest polls, the presidential candidates are running dead even among those most likely to vote in November. The reason seem to be the Palin effect on what the media continues to mischaracterize as working class Wal-Mart mom like, well, a “hit them where it hurts” westerner like the Alaska Governor. So, Palin is not a solid middle class college graduate who lives in the suburbs? Think again ----- Please!

Meanwhile, voter registration and turnout in the 3-5 key battleground states appears to be on the front burner for both campaign camps. who are counting their new cash accounts and pressuring their contributors

:: What has Bob Woodard, the assistant editor of the Washington Post, told us that we do not already know in his Simon and Schuster/CBS/Redfield book? We have long known that there was a internal National Security debate as to the deployment of US power across the globe, and that the U.S. has advance technology that supports the intelligence gathering institutions, operatives, and analysts.

::: We are informed by Dot Earth, nytimes blogger, Andrew Revkin that as of this fall “theoretically, the Northwest Passage in now open to shipping.” To the best of our knowledge, no commercial shipper has taken the risk to vessel, cargo, or crew at risk to test the “Revkin Theory” in fact. Having recently visited the submarine base, Submarine Force Museum and the docked Nautilus in New London Connecticut, one thought comes easily to mind: What nuclear submarines have done, what reporters and some scientist theorize can be done, if far from what prudent engineers, investors, and businessmen are willing to chance on the high seas.

While the summer ice melt numbers make good quotes, the amount of Arctic sea ice that remains is many fold larger and formidable to sobering to open minds. Remember, as we learned in the fifth grade, for every numerator, there is a denominator. And beware of the numerator quoter who attempts to make it a free standing argument. Resently, data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) indicates that Arctic summer sea ice melt season is over and that 6 million square kilometers was the summer average inventory. 12 million square kilometers was the number at the state of summer That is 16% over the average in 2007. Is there a trend here? Stay tuned if you have the time. The current trend has been underway since the end of the last Ice Age.

BTW the average thickness of a single modern era winter Arctic sea water freeze is about 3 feet, according to the experts.

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Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 09/09 at 06:55 AM
Biography: • Burden of Proof: • Business and Trade: • Calendar: • Tuesday: • Characterization: • Cherry Picking: • Climate: • Climate Noise: • Forecasting: • Northern Exposure: • Culture Clash: • Middle Brow: • Fact vs Fiction: • Google: • IT3 Tech: • Internet Tech: • Google: • Calendar: • Language: • Spin: • Greenwash: • Media Watch: • Print Journalism: • Smarter than a 5th Grader?: • News: • Global: • Polls & Preferences: • Polls & Public Opinion: • Statistics: • Tools of the Trade: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:27 ]

Legacy Journal: Toxic Planet or Better Living thru Chemistry?

Section:
Environment

Summary:
It may be my imagination, but it seems that the number of narrowly focused research PhD’s in search of projects and funding is driving the explosion of PhD thesis, grant proposals, funding requests, committee meeting, international conferences, popular press articles, and journal publications. One example is environmental endocrine dysfunction, a kind of mini-movement with vocal advocacy hot spots in northern California and New York. Politics and public policy is part of the mix. A staff person for Senator Boxer of California and Marin Country is “connected”

Environmental Endocrine Disruptors (EED) is the title of this week’s GRC group’ retreat at the Waterville Valley Resort in New Hampshire for their 6th annual meeting. Shanna Swan of URMC is the Chairwoman.

Main:
This community of environmental toxicologists, biologists and epidemiologists focusing on a wide range of “reproductive failures”. Among the failures are a variety of animal and human gross anatomy and microscopic tissue finding that are associated with maternal or egg exposure to environmental chemicals. Some of the chemicals are pharmaceutics like diethyl stilbestrol, but most are petro-chemicals like agricultural pesticides and herbicides.

More:

Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 06/12 at 12:27 PM
Calendar: • Thursday: • Caveat Emptor: • Chances are ---: • Cause & Effect: • Cherry Picking: • Data: • Dollars and Cents: • Follow the Money: • Environment: • Advocacy: • Policy: • Studies: • Fact vs Fiction: • Going Green: • IT3 Tech: • Internet Tech: • Google: • Calendar: • Medicine: • Voice: • Demonization: • Dooms Day: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Saturday, April 05, 2008 05:25 ]

Legacy Journal: Saturday Science Session

Section:
Science and Technology

Summary:

“I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.” - From a letter to Asa Gray, Harvard biology professor, cited in Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, N.C. Gillespie, p.2)

“A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections,—a mere heart of stone”

“How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children”

--------- Charles Darwin

The preserved collection of the voluminous correspondence of Charles Darwin fills volumes and is the source of much of the current spate of publications on the man, his methods and his motives. Part of that legacy can be found in the UK at the Darwin Correspondence Project.

Main:
: Asa Gray, Born 1810 in Oneida C. NY ,Fisher Professor of natural history, and Herbarium Director, Harvard University, 1842–88. Wrote numerous botanical textbooks and works on North American flora. President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1863–73; president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1872; a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, 1874–88. Foreign member, Royal Society of London, 1873. One of his collectors was John C. Fremont.

The Herbarium is part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History which shares its site with the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. The botany department, museum and medical school have graduated the drug culture cult hero, Andrew Weil of Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Arizona.

Recently, part of the Gray Darwin correspondence, quote #2) has been lifted from Gillespie and used to attack the scientific (hypothesis, theory) of evolution and elevate the “theory of Creation Science”.

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Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 04/05 at 05:25 AM
Biography: • Calendar: • Saturday: • Corrections and Clarifications: • Fact vs Fiction: • IT3 Tech: • Internet Tech: • Google: • Calendar: • Nature: • Personalities: • Religion: • Christian: • Science and Technology: • Natural Sciences: • Biology: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Tuesday, March 18, 2008 07:17 ]

Legacy Journal: Economic Moral Hazard

Section:
Politics

Summary:
* “Moral Hazard” is the current term of ART among the political and economic crisis oriented media pundits. What does it mean? Perhaps we should attempt to define the idea behind the phrase.

Main:
It seems to be an insurance term that began in England. One can imagine the talk in the early coffee houses of London where Lloyds of London syndicates were pooling investors stakes to insure the nations trading ships, their cargos, and maybe event the lives of their crews against accidents and piracy as they sailed at sea to the edges of the known world. The talk among these sober risk takers may have incluced the possibility of some imprudent risks. like overloading, if insurance was inforce and playable if the ship, cargo and crew capsized and all were lost. London, the west’s first metropolis, had long been supplied with coal via coast carriers, before they were replaced by canals and railroads. Captain James Cook learned his hazardous trade aboard vessels of just this type.

Today, the term moral hazard has a similarly negative connotation ---- imprudent risk taking without a penalty or price like bankruptcy or insolvency of a business or loss of a house. Bear Stearn’s most valued asset, trust, was lost, liquidity evaporated and its partners and customers would not trade. Insurance can not cover or restore loss of trust.

Currently, the economic good news is that not all Wall Street investment firms took the same risks in low quality mortgage backed derivative instruments at Bear Stearns. Today Lehman Bros. profit report excessed expectations. The nation’s unemployment rate is low and stable. Productive is good. Exports are Strong. Technology, transportation and services sectors are growing. Biotechnology and genomics are red hot. Agricultural incomes and land prices are a boom for the heartland and the national balance sheet. The stock market continues to contain safe and sure value. Pension and Truct funds are performing well.

Yes, New York and other states are facing budget deficits. Inflation rate outpaces Treasury returns. Discretionary consumer spending may continue to contract. Housing construction continues to contract in California and Florida. Decreasing defense spending is not currently an option. Health care and medical insurance costs are rapidly rising to fund patient expections, institutional and professional liabilty protection ,applied documentation imaging technology, and nursing shortages.

The weaking dollor and low interest rates are a double edged sword,

Meanwhile, in the wild and wonderful worlds of evolutionary biology and genetic molecular biology, guarantees of individual and species perfection and survival are hard to come by.

More:

Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 03/18 at 07:17 AM
Basics: • Black and White: • Bottom Line: • Business and Trade: • Calendar: • Tuesday: • Caveat Emptor: • Chances are ---: • Roll of the Dice: • Chronicles: • Culture Clash: • High Brow: • Data: • By the Numbers: • Dollars and Cents: • Follow the Money: • Deal: • Fact vs Fiction: • Finance: • Heartland: • IT3 Tech: • Internet Tech: • Google: • Calendar: • Language: • Rhetoric: • Metaphors: • New York: • Cities: • News: • Retrospect: • Personal Pearls: • Insurance: • Sign of the Times: • Word Play: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Friday, January 25, 2008 12:59 ]

Legacy Journal: Science on the Run, Media Muddle, and the Local Weather

Section:
Environment

Summary:
* New junkies are getting whiplash. First ABC evening news nice guy, Charlie Gibson, polishes his exit with a pretty picture of the first sign of spring. It is a brief view of the sun peaking over the horizon at Pt Barrow Alaska. Then the ABC GMA sunrise crew chirps in with a full light clip on the use of mobile Arctic Norwhales being tagged by a research team with temperatures sensors. The sensors record realtime water temperatures as the pod cruises for food in the open Arctic channels off the west coast of Greenland. The team is assisted by noble and knowledgeable native kayak builders, paddlers, and hunters. Franz Boas of Baffin Bay fame must be smiling. Yet another early morning weekend crew the recent California rain, snow and avalanche deaths to yet further evidence of AGW . They almost came unglued over pictures of a cute Zoo born Polar bear cub.

The disconnect is the light. Most fifth graders know that the Arctic regions are cold and dark in winter. Yet, the GMA report fails to date and time their picture. Is there a problem here?

Meanwhile, primary politics is piling up and piling on. It is five men standing on the Republican side. One woman, two men and one proxy standing on the
Democrat side. The good news is that one field of candidates appear to be serious about civility and putting their best public faces, feet, and voices forward. The controversy focused media is not pleased, but voters are ecstatic.

* Today the D&C and ABC WHAM, weather guy, Glenn Johnson explains that space satellites can report images, infrared date, and atmospheric water vapor information. That data can report on jet engine contrails and open ocean water channels through the summer Arctic Ocean ice packs. Apparently, satellites are not able to accurately report the temperature on the earth side of clouds. Nor are they able to take photographs of the North Pole in the dark of winter.

Main:

: Meanwhile, Revkin of the nytimes Dot Earth blog has a piece that outlines the scientific framework of his views. His lead is begins, The world’s largest group of earth scientists says “the human footprint on Earth is apparent.” The UGS, incorporated in Washington, D.C., and its active 12 subgroup leadership including the Atmosphere group are examples. Revkin also mentions the AGS and includes part of their October 2006 policy statement.

“The Geological Society of America (GSA) supports the scientific conclusions that Earth’s climate is changing; the climate changes are due in part to human activities; and the probable consequences of the climate changes will be significant and blind to geopolitical boundaries. Furthermore, the potential implications of global climate change and the time scale over which such changes will likely occur require active, effective, long-term planning. GSA also supports statements on the global climate change issue made by the joint national academies of science (June 2005), American Geophysical Union (December, 2003), and American Chemical Society (2004). GSA strongly encourages that the following efforts be undertaken internationally:

(1) adequately research climate change at all time scales,
(2) develop thoughtful, science-based policy appropriate for the multifaceted issues of global climate change,
(3) organize global planning to recognize, prepare for, and adapt to the causes and consequences of global climate change,
(4) organize and develop comprehensive, long-term strategies for sustainable energy, particularly focused on minimizing impacts on global climate.”

:: TimeInc has a Climate Change piece called Winds of Change. It is not serious science. Sadly, the article is sophomoric in style, superficial in analysis, and scant in originality. Here is an example.

“You have Republicans and Democrats getting on board with this,” says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “and the reason why is because the public is increasingly there already.” Think about the logic and the grammar: “ increasingly there already”. As Mrs Van taught in the fourth grade, “ Either we have arrived at the station, or we have not.” End of story.

::: Finally, a very cool blog. Snow biking in Alaska. Now there is something that Californians transplanted to western upstate New York can identify with.

More:

Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 01/25 at 12:59 PM
Bright Lights: • Calendar: • Friday: • Chances are ---: • Certainty: • Cherry Picking: • Climate: • Climate Change: • Critical Questions: • Northern Exposure: • Counter Currents: • Data: • Numbers: • Earth Sciences:: • Environment: • Advocacy: • Studies: • Fact vs Fiction: • Features: • Graphic: • Image: • Have a Good Day!: • Hot and Cold: • Lights Out: • Media Watch: • Smarter than a 5th Grader?: • TV Journalism: • Missing Parts: • Nature: • News: • Good News: • Northern Lights: • Political Watch: • Really? A Reality Check: • Science and Technology: • Natural Sciences: • Physical Sciences: • Show and Tell: • Snow Flakes: • Tall Tales: • Filling in the Blanks: • Tenure: • Truth Telling: • Winter Watch: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

[ Wednesday, January 09, 2008 06:41 ]

Legacy Journal: Minority Report: Polls, Elections, and Climate Policy

Section:
Commentary

Summary:
* Today, we again learn from New Hampshire that political polls are poor forecasts of election results. Why? Clearly many polls are badly done, many at intended to influence the results, and many voters and consumers disconnect their thoughts, from their verbal reports, and from their actions. The easy analysis is that Granite state voters are independent and make there decisions in the secrecy of the voting booth.

It is not widely reported, but Mitt Romney corralled one third of the New Hampshire Republican vote in a five candidate field led by a maverick hero. That is not a loss. The contest moves on.

* Bjorn Lomborg , the climate change maverick from Denmark is interviewed in the Canadian press. His analysis is worth reading.

Main:
* The national presidential campaign is a marathon race. The 71 year old McCain is impressive, but youth must be put into service in the international area.

Put the pollsters and pundits on the sidelines.

* Meanwhile, Lomborg , a young and thoughtful social scientist, is not pandering to backyard gardeners when is come to policy. He is numbers and data focused.

More:

Footnotes:

Posted by: webscribe2 on 01/09 at 06:41 AM
Black and White: • Burden of Proof: • Calendar: • Wednesday: • Chances are ---: • Cause & Effect: • Climate: • Climate Change: • Climate Control: • Forecasting: • Conventional Wisdom: • Data: • Numbers: • Fact vs Fiction: • Features: • Permalinks: • Q & A: • Herd Mentality: • Language: • Spin: • Leading Indicators: • Synthetic: • Media Watch: • Print Journalism: • News: • Regional: • Personalities: • Political Watch: • Polls & Preferences: • PostMorteum: • Tall Tales: • Exaggerations: • Voice: • Chatter Box: • Hired Guns: • Punditry: • Reactions: • Zinger: • Weasel Words: • Worrisome: • Word Play: • Young at Heart: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:

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