Missing Link Daily

A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill

Politics

Australian

Should we be worried? (via Boing Boing)

Lauredhel and Fiona Reynolds discuss the absurd import restrictions on RU486.

Apathetic Sarah and clarencegirl think it’s a bit rich awarding John Howard an Aussie Gong so soon after he became a Companion of the Order of the Boot. Niall Cook thinks it’s a bit rich awarding a gong to, apparently, anyone who has achieved anything without total altruism in mind.

Harry Clarke works through the reasons Kevin Rudd is a disappointing PM.

International

Darryl Mason notes that most Iraqis would like to know when the US military plans to bugger off home again.

Tim Dunlop looks at the claimed emergence of a military junta pulling the strings of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, while Norman geras focuses on Human Rights Watch documentation of systematic regime torture and intimidation of voters, and the increasingly self-caricaturing Christopher Hitchens demands to know why Nelson Mandela isn’t condemning Mugabe.((Possibly because he’s retired and almost 90 and figures it’s time others stood up. ~ KP))

Kim at LP compares Obama’s victory speech and Clinton’s concession speech.

At openDemocracy, John Casey sketches Syrian politics and society in the context of current peace talks with Israel. 

Hilzoy is markedly unimpressed by RWDB columnist Thomas Sowell’s evaluation of Obama and McCain.


Law

amsiegel posts on a stoush between US Supreme Court Justices Stevens and Scalia over the legitimacy of constitutional opposition to the death penalty.

Helen “skepticlawyer” Dale has more on the Mark Steyn “hate speech” case, looking at the role of some third party urgers.


love a line

Dr Who

on the rack

ain’t life grand!

Issues analysis

Peter Martin gives voice to Ross Garnaut and his current woes. Also reports research that giving money away makes people happy. ((I’m offering a happiness service, just drop me a line and much happiness can be yours.~gilmae))

Tim Lambert ably defends himself on scientific grounds against a concerted attack by anti-science RWDB “heavyweights”.

Robin Hanson wonders how honest you should be with your kids about your own past peccadilloes.


Arts

Decomposing Trees considers the wonderous beauty that is the music of The Triffids

The Happy Antipodean considers Peter Stewart’s Demons at Dusk a chronicle of the Myall Creek massacre of 1838 tying it in with a recent episode of the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club.

The Monthly’s Slow TV offers a panel focused upon the practice of contemporary journalism with David Marr and Gideon Haigh

The Art Life provides a list of the Queens Day honours list bestoyed upon those who offered services to the arts, which apparently includes a luvvee John Howard

The only other arts related award of note was to one John Winston Howard , a solicitor from Wollstonecraft who, with his mate Arthur, ran a shop. He’s been given top honours 1 for many things including “development of significant philanthropic links between the business sector, arts and charitable organisations.” We can’t remember seeing Mr. Howard at any arts functions over the years but also realise he and his wife have been very active in Rotary for yonks. Must have been an art raffle.

Colin Wicking offers tribute to James Hensley probably best known for his illustrations of Ginger Megs comics, who was awarded a posthumous Order of Australia.

Marcellous gives a qualified thumbs up to the new Narnia movie Prince Caspian.

 


Sport

The second half of the V8 supercars round.

Tony Tannous and Richard Markus preview Euro 2008 in soccer, while Jody Rosen at Slate recommends the best websites for Euro 2008 coverage.

Matt at Green and Gold Rugby reviews Australia A v Japan properly (he hadn’t actually seen the game before writing yesterday’s post).


Snark, strangeness and charm

Tim Sterne implicitly explains why he doesn’t give a rat’s if the boss reads his blog post about last week’s sickie.

By popular demand, another one of the Worst Album Covers of all time.

TroppoSphere, in case Missing Link email subscribers haven’t noticed, is now available as a convenient gateway to a world of news and expert opinion and analysis for those with feed reader phobia. It contains feeds to most of the blogs and other sources whose best/selected content we most regularly feature in Missing Link, as well as general news feeds and those from selected online magazines like openDemocracy, Reason, Slate, Spiked, New Matilda, Australian Opinion Online and Online Opinion.
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About Ken Parish

Ken Parish is a legal academic, with research areas in public law (constitutional and administrative law), civil procedure and teaching & learning theory and practice. He has been a legal academic for almost 20 years. Before that he ran a legal practice in Darwin for 15 years and was a Member of the NT Legislative Assembly for almost 4 years in the early 1990s.
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Yobbo
15 years ago

anti-science RWDB heavyweights.

Jealous Much?

You don’t need to put “heavyweights” in scare quotes because Bolt and Blair at least really are. Not sure who wrote this link but that’s really petty.

FDB
FDB
15 years ago

“You dont need to put heavyweights in scare quotes because Bolt and Blair at least really are.”

When’s the title fight? That I would pay to see.

JC
JC
15 years ago

But this wilful RWDB stupidity applies equally to other scientific issues like DDT

1. What issue is there with DDT that’s earned your scorn, Ken? I can’t think of one right winger that suggests careless spraying should re-introduced. The real argument has always been if DDT was covertly banned from use through strong arm tactics from some (note, not all) environmental organizations.

2. The real debate about passive smoking occurred in the early 90’s and there were real questions then if the issue was overblown (pun intended). Some people continue to use those debates in a present day context ignoring what we knew then.

Some of this came out as a result of the giant tobacco lawsuit and eventual settlement during the Clinton administration. The result of the settlement was:

a. the awarded damages were really no more than a tax.

b. it protected big tobacco from competition by wrapping the award around future sales (so the tobacco firms were happy) as it really protected their profits.

c. it screwed the smoker… particularly the smoker, as they are mostly from the lower economic classes in the US by forcing already addicted to pay more.

d. the Feds and states basically lied about the cost smokers put on the health system. Smokers don’t dawdle around once they get sick as they die younger usually as a result of incurable fatal diseases that really place little pressure on the system. Lung cancer is a cheap way to go for the heath system, believe it or not.

So yea, there are people who are more than a little skeptical.

tim
tim
15 years ago

Ken’s recent low opinion of me is a direct result of Club Troppo not being linked at my new site. What a sad fellow.

Yobbo
15 years ago

Aww

/handkerchief

Yobbo
15 years ago

I find it amusing that you quote Harry Clarke in your defense in a thread about “heavyweights” seeing that Harry doesn’t even believe his own blog, he is in fact significantly more liberal but has to blog that way because it’s his job to support regulation.

In other words, he is a government shill.

gilmae
15 years ago

Still, it’s cute how grown men like Tim are still stuck in primary school. You should have at least obliged him with a rubber/glue rhyme, Ken.

Yobbo
15 years ago

I cant think of one right winger that suggests careless spraying should re-introduced. The real argument has always been if DDT was covertly banned from use through strong arm tactics from some (note, not all) environmental organizations.

Exactly, the only reason RWDB’s care about DDT at all is because it makes greenpeace and the sierra club look bad. Unless of course you deny their involvement in having it banned, which is the usual path taken by people like Lambert in their attempt to put Greenpeace on a pedestal.

Niall
15 years ago

LOL…..really nice comeback, Ken. Author! Author!

Yobbo
15 years ago

Harry Clarke:

Joint holder with Professor Peter Bardsley (University of Melbourne) of a large Australian Research Council Grant (2005 – 2007): Harm Minimisation Policies and the Economics of Controlling Illicit Drug Use. Please visit the Project’s website at: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~efdrgs/.

Jason Soon
Jason Soon
15 years ago

Be fair, Yobs.

From what I can see, Harry unfortunately sincerely believes in all the prohibitionist stuff he writes about. He’s a small c conservative.

Or were you merely demonstrating how Lamberting works?

Yobbo
15 years ago

I’ve met Harry and I assure you he doesn’t.

Yobbo
15 years ago

What he does believe in is the good old Australian practice of bullshitting your way through it to hold on to a cushy job. Can’t blame him for that I suppose.

hc
hc
15 years ago

I remember the conversation I had with you Yobbo and it was along the lines that my job involves assessing economic policies for dealing with issues. That’s true I work in public economics. Its my job.

I also have views on the world which sometimes question the whole basis for policies I work at analysing.

But Jason is right. I am no libertarian. I am an inconsistent conservative who supports the widespread role of markets and favours free trade but who favours redistributive policies that favour the disadvantaged. I also oppose the liberalisation of illicit drug markets and favour hefty restrictions on smokes and alcohol.

And as a non-science specialist called on to make judgements about climate change I defer to the views of the vast majority of climate scientists that anthropogenic climate change is a fearful reality that threatens us all.

Yobbo
15 years ago

I also oppose the liberalisation of illicit drug markets and favour hefty restrictions on smokes and alcohol.

But not on yourself? Only the unwashed masses amiright?

JC
JC
15 years ago

On other comment about this

But this wilful RWDB stupidity applies equally to other scientific issues like DDT, passive smoking and the hole in the ozone layer.

Ken, one last thing: weve had over 200 years of anti-science coming from the left. The west advance since the industrial revolution has been all about science an the ways we can harness the new knowledge. So you have to excuse some people when theyre a little skeptical that lefties have suddenly embraced science. Most of western science is at the coal face..

-BHP hitting a record by finding a new way to drill for oil kilometers below the sea surface.

-Rockefeller laboring and discovering a new way to refine gasoline that brings cheap gas to the market.

-Henry Ford finding a new process that makes cars attainable to the average person

-Steve Jobs creating amazing new gadgets.

-The Google guys using math that allows us an easy time to search the web.

-Vanderbilt revolutionizing Shipping

-Containerization

-super tankers

This isnt science in the Uni lab, but it sure is science at its best.

———-

How about the anti-science against about GW crops.

The Australian Greens wanting to ban nuclear medicine and nuke waste dumps that we use to bury nuke medical waste (they quietly removed that from their website)

I recall that in the 80s the union movement wanted to stop the importation and manufacture of computers, as they wanted the Hawke government to study the effects on jobs.

And earlier how about the Luddites?

People like Rockefeller and Ford have been branded as evil robber barons because of their great wealth. Yet they are scientists-inventors that changed the world for the better.

gilmae
15 years ago

You might want to excise the Google one; it was originally a research project in the Uni lab.

gilmae
15 years ago

I suppose it might also have been nice if you had said Samuel Andrews, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, the guys at PARC, a variety of early employees at Ford, &c &c instead of the marketers. Marketers always get the fucking credit. God I hate marketing.

Pavlov's Cat
15 years ago

Is there anyone who can be bothered wasting a bit of time explaining to Yobbo about academic independence and the ARC grant processes?

If there is, maybe they could also explain, while they’re there, that being a senior (or, even more so, a junior) academic is not and never has been ‘a cushy job’.

JC
JC
15 years ago

You might want to excise the Google one; it was originally a research project in the Uni lab.

I’m willing to bet the current set up is nothing like the lab experiment.

I suppose it might also have been nice if you had said Samuel Andrews, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, the guys at PARC, a variety of early employees at Ford

You know they used to close the factory for a few weeks when they were trying out a new idea. That’s amusing.

gilmae
15 years ago

Using backlinks to determine a site’s relevancy on a subject? I’ll bet you PageRank is largely quite similar indeed to BackRub, even if the implementation has moved on in the last dozen years. And anyway, the math is entirely born from the university.

JC
JC
15 years ago

And anyway, the math is entirely born from the university.

Sure. Weren’t the boys from MIT?

the point I’m making is that the most of our science is application science that gets seen in a different way such as a new product or innovation in an existing product. We don’t call that science though in the strict sense we use it now.

I’d also bet that some of the math they use in the climate models were probably developed at bell labs. Just a hunch.

JC
JC
15 years ago

These are my concerns with the AGW debate, Ken

International statists have got hold of the policy levers and it would take a crowbar to make them share the platform because the only solutions statists see to the very real problem of AGW is even more choking statism. The only result I see from this more Kyoto type bubbling around that achieves very little and in some cases does more harm than good as it gives people false sense of security that signing that ridiculous piece of paper somehow means were on our way to low carbon economies.

So you really need to understand what sceptics are concerned about as it tends to be thrown around in some generic way to brand everyone as Luddites. Mentioning skepticism about Kyoto at some sites automatically brands you as a denialist , which is really a way equating people as Nazis.

Look a this characterization of sceptics at a well known site by one of his commenters:

Y

ou are all, with no exceptions, creepy little death cultists. You live and die by the feudal model where the CEO is Gods chosen royalty and you may get some perks or treats by being a particulary obsequious and bullying henchman – a paradigm kiss up, kick down sociopath.

The people whose water you carry and whose coats you hold are the ones, if any, who killed hundreds of thousands, or millions, with malaria. This is simply their usual defensive strike of projection to hide their own psycopathic behavior. In order to save a few pennies per hundred acres of crops, they decided to breed resistant strains of malaria. And you are their goons, their thugs, their lynch mob.

Very similar people decided to breed resistant strains of bacteria and kill thousands of people all over the developed world with them. This enabled their meat factories to produce water-weighted animals in unsanitary conditions. They even chose to sue a powerful celebrity simply for saying the words Ive eaten my last hamburger on her own TV show.

Its very interesting that you are willing to be the brownshirts for people creating resistant malaria (and even denying that evolution itself is possible) AS LONG AS they take species like the national bird of the United States down with the people they kill.

Im not sure Satans lapdogs quite covers it, really.

Pretty impressive hey? Imagine this guy holding political power in any capacity. Scepticism to Kyoto gets you branded this way there.

Then lets take the Garnaut Report.

For all intents and purposes the Garnaut report was bumbling mess. He had the golden opportunity to present a great report and give Rudd the cover needed to soften up the electorate and his party to the idea of nuke power. Instead it did nothing to restore faith in the government doing the right thing.

Garnaut was supposed to use the best available science which in this case is the IPCC best (likely) estimates and report back about how we organize ourselves in a way that promotes human welfare and maintains rising living standards. Economics is supposed to be about the bigger cake, right? Instead, he showed up with a report that carries the tail end of the bell curve in terms of the science and what we need to do to meet Garnaut the economists scientific concerns. So we have an economist spouting about science and thoroughly screwing up the economics. Meanwhile Garnaut is doing a great impersonation of Wheres Waldo by showing up in the media every other day talking about really illuminating things such as why he applied a zero discount rate (its because he values his grand children as highly as his kids). Spare us. You cant do a long-term economic report without applying the cost of capital as it simply becomes meaningless in evaluation.

Seeing the report was about science he suddenly became weak at the knees when he saw the giant elephant in the bathtub. His silence about nuke power was deafening and consequently we missed a terrific opportunity in softening up perceptions with the punters.

And what do we end up with? Possibly one of the most draconian policies sets in the world relating to AGW. One that creates the perverse incentives where we give up our Aluminum smelters to places like China or India that will use even potentially dirtier energy sources. Great job. Not only that but it does nothing to stop the big problem with China cranking up its power production by building one power plant to two new coal fired plants a week.

So when you brand people as skeptical its important to really understand what they are skeptical about. For instance bring up the issue of Kyoto at some sites and youre basically a Nazi.

As for those who have a lot of faith in technology making headway lets take a look at whats been going on in Europe. The UK sells petrol at about $us8 a gallon (as does most of Europe). What major technological advances have they made since the introduction of cap and trade? I think zero is close to the mark. So its not as easy as it sounds to obtain cheap and abundant electricity.

Look AGW is a real big friggen problem from a libertarian perspective it’s a real issue because and it’s a really hard to assign property rights to air. However doing this with bullshit polices is only going to make it worse.

Tim Lambert
15 years ago

I see that Jason Soon is up to his usual sleazy tricks. Earlier he equated me to Graeme Bird, and now he’s trying to associate me with Yobbo’s disgraceful attack on Harry Clarke.

trackback
15 years ago

The Pinata Strikes Back…

On the essential Missing Link, Ken Parish links to my post of yesterday: Tim Lambert ably defends himself on scientific grounds against a concerted attack by anti-science RWDB “heavyweights”. And explains the scare quotes: I wrote that extract. Blai…

NPOV
NPOV
15 years ago

JC, I spent at least 6 months arguing black and blue with a number of AGW denialists that if they focused their efforts on arguing against the bad solutions proposed for dealing with rising emissions they could actually make a real contribution to the debate, but no-one of them were the slightest bit interested, and stuck entirely to finding obscure scientists making obscure claims that apparently proved that the IPCC’s conclusions were entirely bunkum.

FWIW, from what I’ve seen of the sorts of ideas governments have about energy policy in recent years, I would happily concede that global warming would be far less of a problem if we had no governments at all. But we do, and governments are never going to stop trying to impose “solutions”, so realistically the best anyone can do is work to convince them to impose the least harmful ones, and hopefully some that will actually be helpful. Certainly the “gradually replace income/payroll/transactional taxes with carbon (and other environmental externality) taxes” idea is one whose time has surely come*, and global warming could be the perfect vehicle for pushing it through. I would have thought libertarians would have been at the forefront of such a move, but instead seem to generally believe that any attempt to address environmental concerns necessarily leads to bigger government, therefore prefer to stick to bagging environmentalists and any scientific research that appears to demonstrate that maybe we should be looking after our planet a bit better.
But good solutions to environmental issues, whether it be more Pigouvian-style taxes, or better property rights, or giving voters more say in the issues, should logically lead to *smaller* government, as there’ll be less need for it to continually step in attempting to protect the environment.

* Krugman once made a prediction of sorts that income taxes could be abolished entirely by mid-century.

Helen
15 years ago

Could someone also please explain to Yobbo and others that the idea that the environmentalist movement “banned” DDT and that this is traceable to Rachel Carson is a load of old hooey. Keeps getting resurrected, though, like a brain-eating zombie.

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/22/defending-rachel-carson/

gilmae
15 years ago

Sure. Werent the boys from MIT?

Stanford. Time was thems would have been fightin’ words. Or at least Sarcastic Trek Referencing Words.

JC
JC
15 years ago

Earlier he equated me to Graeme Bird, and now hes trying to associate me with Yobbos disgraceful attack on Harry Clarke.

Tim, not for nothing, but you , yourself attacked harry at his blog. And it was John Humphreys who first coined the term Lambird. It’s actually very funny how you both hate the association. Humphreys can be very amusing at times.

N

Krugman once made a prediction of sorts that income taxes could be abolished entirely by mid-century.

Great, N. I hope I can take use that in the after life because I’ll be dead.

I would have thought libertarians would have been at the forefront of such a move, but instead seem to generally believe that any attempt to address environmental concerns necessarily leads to bigger government, therefore prefer to stick to bagging environmentalists and any scientific research that appears to demonstrate that maybe we should be looking after our planet a bit better.

Interesting that it was Thatcher who was about the first major politician that became concerned about AGW.

The surprise to me is how the statist solutions so far haven’t been totally discredited.

Kyoto was a joke while Europe’s attempt at a cap and trade had the sad ironic effect of carbon credit prices going to zero because the governments there issued too many credits and cheated.

Yobbo
15 years ago

Can somone please explain to Helen that the Sierra Club is still opposed to the use of DDT despite WHO clearing it for use in combatting Malaria.

http://www.sierraclub.org/toxics/ddt/

I’m sure their own website has been hacked by lying RWDBs though.

FDB
FDB
15 years ago

Nice side-step, Yobbo.

Helen
15 years ago

Can someone please explain to Yobbo the difference between the widespread agricultural use of DDT (ceased largely due to buildup of resistance, nothing to do with environmentalist agitation) and domestic use (not 100% opposed except where resistance will render it useless). Apparently Yobbo’s distate for those dreadful greenies prevented him from reading the linked material properly:

Sierra Club agrees that DDT should only be used in accordance with limiting provisions agreed to by more than 150 nations in the Stockholm Convention. Further, many effective non-toxic and less toxic alternatives are available and affordable, such as cleaning mosquito breeding areas, use of treated nets …

“Should only be used in accordance”…”treated nets”… hmmm, doesn’t look anything like a blanket ban to me.

Tim Lambert
15 years ago

I would also add that the Sierra Club does not actually have the power to ban DDT. Does Yobbo think that the Bush administration takes orders from the Sierra Club?

NPOV
NPOV
15 years ago

I suspect if RWDBs got to it they would have actually said that the Sierra Club supports banning all use of DDT, and that they expressly thank Rachel Carson for being responsible for determining its deathly toxicity to all lifeforms, and that the Sierra Club speaks on behalf of the entire environmental movement.

Never mind the fact that the Sierra Club website says none of those things, and that the Sierra Club almost certainly continues its skepticism of DDT because it’s essentially a fairly conservative organisation.

JC
JC
15 years ago

Tim
Why are they still opposed to it when careful spraying has finally been cleared by the WHO?

Does Yobbo think that the Bush administration takes orders from the Sierra Club?

No, but isn’t it an interesting rear view mirror reflection to what happened in the past? What do you reckon, are they anti-science?

Yobbo’s link:

The Sierra Club strongly disagrees with the WHO’s denial of the potential health and environmental risks of using DDT. Sierra Club is deeply concerned that WHO’s new position statement on “indoor residual spraying” increases the potential for widespread misuse and accidents due to the continued manufacture, storage and applications of DDT.

So these guys are even against indoor spraying. Amazing.

1. You can’t spray inside to protect people.

2. You shouldn’t manufacture it

3. You shouldn’t store it

4. You shouldn’t apply it.

5. it causes accidents.

But hey, they’re not calling for a ban. LOL

John Mashey
John Mashey
15 years ago

re: #20

“This isnt science in the Uni lab, but it sure is science at its best…

People like Rockefeller and Ford have been branded as evil robber barons because of their great wealth. Yet they are scientists-inventors…”

Actually, *not one* of the examples given is science. They’re all technology, process, or business developments, or combinations thereof.

Rockefeller was neither a scientist nor inventor; Ford was an inventor, but not a scientist. Steve Jobs is neither, although a great marketeer and quite able to recognize good ideas. He can still generate a great “reality distortion field.” [An old XEROX PARC friend is *still* peeved at having been ordered to give Steve demoes in 1979, knowing quite well he’d go run with the ideas.]

GM food is science-based technology, akin to genetics-based plant breeding.

While this is over-generalizing, at least in the US (where most of the examples originated):

– denial of science, or exaggeration of uncertainty has tended to come more often from rightist extremes.
– exaggeration of science, or getting ahead of it, or minimizing uncertainty seems more common to the left extreme.

– protests against new technologies have tended to come from leftist extreme, although established commercial interests also often pooh-pooh them. for obvious reasons.

Of course, by and large, if you take the people who actually do 1) science or 2) build technology or spread it through business, as group:

– there are a lot who are naturally apolitical [it took Silicon valley a long time before being seriously willing to bother with Washington].

– there are a lot of centrists, whether registered Democrat, Republican, Or Independent, who often support candidates of different parties, sometimes in the same year. Or you get people like Norm Mineta, a VP of Lockheed, a Democratic Congressman for 20 years, and served in both Clinton and Bush cabinets.

– There are of course, passionate Democrats & Republicans, and at least one well-known Libertarian … who has done very well investing in solar power.

– In Silicon Valley, home of 2 of the companies mentioned, and of all-out entrepreneurialism, world center of venture capitalists, business-building, and many scientists and engineers:

Democrats have lately (last few years) out-fundraised Republicans about 2:1 or 3:1 in most towns, higher or lower in a few. Some of that is an artifact of the last 7 years, as it’s normally slightly more balanced.
To see current state:
Google: fundrace

*Science* ought to be apolitical, and it mostly used to be (in the US). In 1989, George H. W. Bush wrote:

“President Bush announced today that the United States has agreed with other industrialized nations that stabilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions should be achieved as soon as possible.”

in

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=17765

NPOV
NPOV
15 years ago

“Sierra Club agrees that DDT should only be used in accordance with limiting provisions agreed to by more than 150 nations in the Stockholm Convention… Sierra Club believes that DDT should be considered as the option of last resort only, when all feasible non-toxic and less toxic alternatives have been tried and proven ineffective.”

So what exactly was their “involvement in having it banned” anyway, Yobbo?

JC
JC
15 years ago

Actually, *not one* of the examples given is science. Theyre all technology, process, or business developments, or combinations thereof.

One definition of science is:

The ability to produce solutions in some problem domain.

Let me ask you john, the engineers at who figured increasing efficiency in latest Dreamliner aircraft engines by 25% are not being scientific under even a broad definition? It used to be that an engine overall meant a plane would be in the hanger for a few days when overhauling aircraft engines. Now it will take a few hours as aircraft mechanics will be able to slip engines on and off. That’s what exactly… It’s not producing solutions in some problem domain.

I think the term science is actually a very big umbrella.

Financial markets:

In the 80’s financial engineers developed swap markets allowing for firms to swap there debt obligations from short to long terms and opposite. That has no grounding in science? None?

Rockefeller was neither a scientist nor inventor;

Call him what you want, he revolutionized the way in which gasoline was refined and lowered costs by 1/2 or more. Would i call him a scientist? Dunno, but what he caused to happen easily fits into the definition.

The point I’m making is that we shouldn’t be just looking at what happens in a uni lab when looking at what people do to advance human living standards or human knowledge.

JC
JC
15 years ago

Okay

Here are some definitions of the term To ban.

1) Forbid public distribution
2) prohibit especially by legal means or social pressure
3) ban from a place of residence
4) an official edict against something
5) strict control of a substances usage.

Which points/actions (above) against DDT didnt apply until the WHO came out with its clarification regarding DDT use? And why did the WHO need to come out with its clarification.

There were strong implicit actions to prevent the use of DDT after the US senate hearings in the 70s and that pressure continued for decades after across the western world.

If the Sierra Club dont/cant influence policy why are they being funded? You must therefore be implying that Sierra club donors dont expect result based accounting from Sierra Club over the longer term. That would apply to any organization by the way.

Yobbo
15 years ago

And yet so many lefties are into homeopathy, acupuncture and other kinds of alternative medicine AKA snake oil. Why are they so anti-science?

Using “The Precautionary Principle” to justify a ban on anything and everything you don’t like is not science, it’s politics. The left claim to be in love with science but the only kind of science they like is science that can’t be used to turn a profit.

That’s why they love AGW science but hate GMO and Nuclear Power. Because nobody is going to make any money out of AGW.

JC
JC
15 years ago

45 fair enough.

financial derivatives you are surely extending the definition to be so wide and all embracing that it becomes meaningless.

I mentioned the innovation of the interest rate swaps market in the 80’s as that seems to me to be up there with the best of them in terms of its effects on human welfare. For the first time we actually had a way to swap timing differences and the benefits of that flexibility has possibly been enormous.

But , yes financial derivatives don’t rank up there with splitting the atom.

Yobbo
15 years ago

Can someone please explain to Yobbo the difference between the widespread agricultural use of DDT (ceased largely due to buildup of resistance, nothing to do with environmentalist agitation) and domestic use (not 100% opposed except where resistance will render it useless).

Can someone please explain to Helen that the Sierra club is opposed to both uses of DDT, stating quite clearly that it should only be used in domestic applications as a “Last Resort” when all other treatments have already been tried.

FDB
FDB
15 years ago

Still manfully resisting the actual argument I see Sam.