Paddy Melt Wagon’s Cheesy blog

arguments with the unconscious

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:24:20 -0800

Just watched Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner, William Hurt, and Dane Cook. I enjoyed Costner’s and Hurt’s characters (Costner is the thumbprint killer, Hurt is his conscious I’m guessing. He could also have been a separate personality.) Dane Cook’s character was Dane Cook trying to act, which was incredibly annoying.

I liked the movie in that there is a running dialogue between Costner and Hurt, and seeing a character discuss and argue his own thought processes is always interesting (rather than just the usual voice-over dialogue to let the audience in on it.) The storyline with the daughter was okay, though I don’t really feel it added anything overall. He made a mistake at the end though, in that the phone he dropped had his fingerprints on it.

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scientists run amok, Congress demands science be abolished!!!

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:36:31 -0800

Overpopulation. Global cooling. Global warming. Ozone hole. Gas supplies disappearing. What is wrong with the scientific community when everyone just loves to panic in a 'the sky is falling' mentality? Every decade over the past 50 years has had its "the world will end within 100 years because of x' story fed by zealot scientists. I wonder if its because they just want their name in press. I think the recent decade has taken it from some innate need to want to do good, to profiteering by companies wanting to feed on the panic (ahem, carbon credits?? Really?!?) Look dolts. It’s intellectual arrogance to believe we have a huge impact on the planet. The planet survived through whatever killed all the dinosaurs, it survived it just fine. Nothing we are doing is NEARLY on the scale required to wipe out a species completely like that. I suppose if we indiscriminantly started tossing many nuclear weapons around or high scale biological weapons we COULD wipe out entire species, but until we are doing that, STOP PANICING. If you want to practice greener methods, super. STOP imposing what you think is right on everyone else. If you honestly believe it, change it legislatively like you are supposed to. Belief that something is right doesn’t give you license to say it is CORRECT for everyone. If it is correct, convince ALL the scientists with your evidence. Then ALL of us will believe it, and all of us will decide what to do. STOP dictating how people should behave. I don’t make you smoke, you don’t make me stop buying bottled water (which I do not, but that’s because I believe bottled water is BS anyways.) Christ almighty, there are 100 different brands of soda in plastic bottles. I don’t see you enviros going after Coke, umm why not??? SAME PROBLEM, but you are only going after bottled water.

Climate Change Forecasters on the Hot Seat

Brief Analysis

No. 609

February 18, 2008

Read Article as PDF | Get Adobe Reader

by H. Sterling Burnett

More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to sound the alarm over the possibility that global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to study and better understand this potential threat. The IPCC’s mission was to provide a “comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socio-economic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

IPCC reports have predicted that average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. Congress is considering proposals to slow rising temperatures by joining international agreements or by implementing policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

However, several assessments have shown that the techniques and methods used to derive and verify the IPCC’s climate predictions are fundamentally flawed. They indicate that the IPCC’s central claims — that the present warming trend is unusual, caused by human activities and will result in serious harm — are not supported by scientific forecasts. Rather, these claims are opinions that are no more likely to be right than wrong.

Taking the Temperature of the IPCC. In its Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the “hockey stick.” [See the figure.] This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 (and in later versions from A.D. 200) to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and various public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the past 100 years has caused a rise in global temperatures.

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of the calculations on which the graph was based. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University found significant problems with the statistical methods used by the researchers and with the IPCC’s peer review process. For example, in reconstructing temperatures for previous centuries from such physical evidence as tree rings, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the past century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed both unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered by the authors or during peer review — in part because statisticians were never consulted.

Furthermore, peer reviewers are supposed to be experts who independently examine research findings prior to publication to check the logic and accuracy of the methods used. However, the community of specialists in ancient climates from which the peer reviewers were drawn was small and many of them had ties to the original authors — 43 paleoclimatologists had previously coauthored papers with Michael Mann, the lead researcher in constructing the hockey stick.

These problems led Wegman’s team to conclude that the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming “cannot be supported” by the reconstruction.

Warmed-over IPCC Errors. With much fanfare, the IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007. It predicted that global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if it is left unmitigated. Yet, the report failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. The IPCC measures global temperature by averaging readings from thermometers at ground stations throughout the world. There are a number of potential errors in these readings:

Temperature-recording stations are absent from large areas of the Earth’s surface.
Weather stations that were once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures — and due to the urban-heat-island effect, give high and inaccurate temperature data.
Temperature data has been further distorted as the locations and number of measuring stations have changed, contributing to inconsistent measurements over time.

Expert Opinion versus Scientific Forecasting. Even using accurate, consistent temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics. In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report:

They found that 127 principles were relevant in assessing the process the IPCC used to project climate change.
The IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles.
Twelve additional principles appeared to be violated.
Another 38 could not be assessed because there was insufficient information.

For example, a principle clearly violated is: “Make sure forecasts are independent of politics.” Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the leading IPCC scientists. Those scientists then select the authors of the reports. The summary and final draft of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval. David Henderson, former head of Economics and Statistics at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, contends that “political considerations influence all stages of the IPCC process.”

Green and Armstrong found no evidence that the IPCC was even aware of the vast amount of literature concerning scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles, which are available from the International Institute of Forecasters.

Just Ask the Experts. Instead of scientific forecasting methods, the IPCC reports depend on expert opinion. Expert opinion — otherwise known as judgmental forecasting — lacks scientific objectivity and accuracy. Green and Armstrong note that expert opinion is among the “least accurate of the methods available to make forecasts.” For instance, a study that asked 284 political and economic consultants to make predictions on events “within and outside their areas of expertise” found that, of over 82,000 forecasts collected, the experts were no more accurate than nonexperts. Both groups were less accurate than simple forecasting procedures that “extrapolate from the past to predict the future.”

The Inconvenient Truth about Climate Models. The IPCC has attempted to back up expert opinion with computer climate models. However, the IPCC’s climate models are nothing more than mathematical representations of expert opinion.

Bob Carter, of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, tested the ability of the general circulation models (GCMs) developed by IPCC scientists to predict global warming. Carter found that the GCMs did incorporate “some basic principles of physics,” but relied too heavily on “educated guesses” because knowledge of climate change is incomplete. He determined that:

“The GCMs failed to predict recent global average temperatures as accurately as fitting a simple curve to the historical data and extending it into the future.”
“The models forecast greater warming at higher altitudes in the tropics, when the greatest warming has occurred at lower altitudes and at the poles.”
“Furthermore, individual models have produced widely different forecasts from the same initial conditions, and minor changes in their assumptions can produce forecasts of global cooling.”

Conclusion. The IPCC and its defenders often argue that critics who are not climate scientists are unqualified to judge the validity of their work and should not be taken seriously. Basically, they argue that only climate experts can judge claims made by climate scientists. However, climate predictions rely on methods, data and evidence from other fields of expertise, including statistical analysis and forecasting. Thus, the work of the IPCC is open to analysis and criticism from other disciplines.

The IPCC’s policy recommendations are based on flawed statistical analyses and unscientific expert opinions that violate general forecasting principles. Policymakers should take this into account before attempting to counter global warming by enacting laws that could have severe economic consequences. To date, no scientific forecasts have verified a causal link between humans and climate change. Before their predictions are used to craft public policy, climate scientists should consult forecasting experts.

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biddy biddy bop

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:59:02 -0800

01-Koyaanisqatsi

Philip Glass

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infinite rider on the big dogma

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:39:57 -0800

Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun

Soundgarden

Overcoming the mis-indoctrination and thought processes instilled by my family is a major concern of mine. There is so MUCH to undo, and unfortunately once those patterns of cognition are habit, it’s hard to break them.

In a nutshell:

· My family enjoys dwelling on the negative

· My family actively diminishes any sort of accomplishment

· My family actively discourages examining life outside of their comfort zone and extolls the virtues of conforming to their belief structure

· My family assumes christianity to be ‘the norm’ for everyone without thought.

· My family takes little joy in things which the majority of the U.S. population deems fun. In fact, the fun things are actively shunned.

Fun is a good thing. All people lie. If it feels good it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. I won’t live my life under threat of punishment from a daddy-figure imposed by some organized religion. Believing this does NOT make me a bad person – it makes me a NORMAL person.

You, my dear family, are NOT the norm, though you enjoy living your life as if it were so. Your beliefs are in the minority. Mine are in the majority. In our society, the majority defines what is the norm. And while it might be noble to try to live beyond the norm to some higher level you believe in, IMPOSING that upon your relatives is NOT noble and in fact is completely damaging and disrespectful of their own choices.

I would not dream of imposing my lifechoices on someone. If they were interested in it I would offer my insight. If they are not interested I would NOT dismiss their lifestyle. And moreso than that, I would NEVER ask them to live all the years of their life on earth under the assumption they are going to eternal damnation. How archaic and barbaric a concept that is, and how in good conscience can you knowingly perpetrate that attitude? It is very inhumane.

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groove

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:10:51 -0800

Happy Valentine's Day to all. It's a phony holiday, but hey anything that makes people like each other more, I'm in favor of. It’s snowing here which is a drag – supposed to snow all day. How can I go get a bigmac when it is snowing out? My car does okay in the snow but not great.

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buhbye

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:49:49 -0800

Hillary is done, byebye. No Clintons in the whitehouse, your legacy is one of disgrace. Byebye. No honor for you. Live in disgrace and disappear. You hoped for significance, your reality is disgrace. Live in apathy til you are gone, and that all your bad decisions earned you disgrace.

Clemens, you are lying to Congress and I hope they throw the book at you.

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poppycock

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:30:07 -0800

Superdelegates: the barbaric face of the Democratic party

Back in early January pendulumpolitics predicted the crucial role the superdelegates would play in the outcome of the Democratic race. Specifically, we predicted that Hillary and Obama would be neck and neck for the entire race until the superdelegates made up the difference down the stretch:

"The numbers in the first two primaries as well as the general polls seems to indicate that the race will be tight, which will give the advantage to Hillary...My early guess is Hillary and Obama will be neck and neck for much of the race until the super-delegates push Hillary ahead down the stretch run."

On the eve of Super Tuesday, once again pendulumpolitics reiterated this key role superdelegates would play:

"Expect the superdelegates to sort the Democratic race out. Hillary and Obama will continue to race neck and neck, and it is a strong possibility that whoever the majority of superdelegates endorse will win by a photo finish."

Now that our prediction has held its water, the issue of superdelegates is gaining massive airplay on both television and radio. So, what is a superdelegate exactly, and why the controversy?

Briefly, superdelegates consist of prominent members of the Democratic National Convention, Democratic governors, US Congressman, and other former Democratic politicians. Each superdelegate's endorsement is equivalent to one typical delegate except they are not pledged votes, which is to say, the Democratic party has an odd, undemocratic element of oligarchy intertwined within its voting system.

Despite justifiable calls to return the nomination process back to the people, Democrats persist in such elitism. In fact, over the years the Democratic party has proliferated the number of superdelegates to the extent that 20% of the votes cast at the Democratic convention this July will be by superdelegates. While that's a significant number, take a look it from another vantage point. Superdelegtes comprise 40% of the total number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination!?! Forty-percent!!

Place those numbers into the context of the current race and its easy to see why a controversy of this undemocratic element of the Democrats primary system is brewing. Hillary and Obama are separated by a total of just nine pledged delegates, 840 to 831. That's a difference of just over 1%. However, when including superdelegates, and with a near 2:1 advantage in superdelegates, Hillary's lead increases to 10%, 1033 to 937. The controversy of course is that the difference right now between the two candidates is not being determined by voters, but a select few elitists within the party itself.

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has attempted to defend the use of superdelegates:

"These superdelegates are all part of their state delegation, so that state will speak. Superdelegates work out their preference, working with the people of their state. So, again, I don't think that members of Congress, governors and senators are not attuned to what's happening in their states and in their districts."

Pelosi's point is to argue that superdelegates base their endorsement or vote on the preferences of their states and districts. Unfortunately, this is far from the case, and merely an attempt by Pelosi to skirt the issue without ever addressing it. The fact of the matter is that superdelegates do not have to give any consideration to the preferences of their home state or district. If this were the case, then why give them unpledged status in the first place?

The truth is there is no means of justifying such elitism, and Pelosi knows it. And just how elitist are these superdelegates? Well, on Super Tuesday over 14 million votes were cast in the Democratic primary, and over 1,500 delegates awarded. This is to say, then, each superdelegates vote is equivalent to over 9,000 normal American votes!?!

So, to answer my own question, this is absurdly elitist. Do the elites within the Democratic party really think that their own opinion is worth the opinion of over 9,000 American voters? This is a relevant question that needs answering by the Pelosis of the Democratic party. And let's be frank, the power that superdelegates wield in this election is a crude violation of the basic element of democracy, that being equality regardless of merit, and certainly, it leaves a foul stench of elitism wherever it reveals its barbaric face.

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hypocrite Hillaton

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:41:22 -0800

Hillary is mad because a newsanchor said she is pimping her daughter out. So much so that she wrote to the network to complain. Huh. So you are demanding an apology at the least from a newsperson who said a questionable phrase, and yet I’ve never heard you even ask for an apology from your husband. Your husband who committed adultery. Multiple times. And now you are USING him to assist in your campaign. I’m sorry Hillary, I just can’t get your value system. It appears to me that you are just willing to win at any cost and have no core values. Someone without core values cannot run this country, because you will end up pandering to the rest of the planet like the U.N. does. The U.N. accomplishes little and just discusses things ad nauseum.

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memories like the corner of my haunted house

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:02:49 -0800

Area 36-Year-Old Still Has Occasional Lidsville Nightmare

BOWLING GREEN, KY–Though their frequency has decreased since childhood, 36-year-old graphic designer Pete Meijer still suffers from occasional nightmares related to Lidsville, the early-'70s Sid and Marty Krofft-produced Saturday-morning program featuring Charles Nelson Reilly cavorting with a frightening assemblage of sentient headgear.

Evil magician Hoo-Doo, played by Charles Nelson Reilly, hatches a scheme with a giant foam gangster hat.

"It happened again last night," Meijer said. "I dreamed I was driving to work, in my father's car for some reason, and the sky started getting darker and darker. Then, from out of nowhere, the giant cowboy hat that talked like John Wayne jumped in front of my windshield and started peering into the car with a look of murderous hate."

"That was when I woke up with a jolt," Meijer continued. "I never got back to sleep."

The still-creeped-out Meijer.

In the program, a boy named Mark becomes trapped in a nightmarish, Technicolor parallel universe populated by anthropomorphic talking hats. The central villain is Hoo-Doo, an evil magician played by Reilly in horrifying makeup and facial prosthetics. Poor puppetry and cheap special effects contributed to the show's queasy, disorienting feel, as did the presence of dwarf actors inside the hat costumes.

Though still haunted by images from the program, Meijer has made great progress since childhood.

"From about 1972 to 1978, I had Lidsville nightmares pretty much every night," Meijer said. "In one of the more frequent ones, I'd go downstairs for breakfast, but my mother wouldn't be in the kitchen. Instead, that cone-shaped party hat with the giggly voice would be there, as though she had replaced my mother. I also had a lot of dreams where the football helmet locks me in a cage and pushes it into the ocean. And, needless to say, I often dreamed I was falling into the giant hat in the opening credits."

Enlarge Image

Pete Meijer's Lidsville Nightmares, 1972-2000

Eventually, through therapy and medication, Meijer was able to largely control the traumatizing effects of the program. But the nightmares return from time to time.

"I still have one or two a year," Meijer said. "A few months ago, I dreamed that Hoo-Doo was chasing me around, trying to tie me down and give me an enema. Still, I'm much better than before. Almost normal."

"You know," he added, "there were supposedly good hats and evil hats on the show, but in my dreams they're all equally disturbing."

Plaguing Meijer perhaps worst of all is the character "Weenie Genie," a boy genie inexplicably played by middle-aged actress Billie Burke–the woman who played Witchiepoo in the equally traumatic Krofft series H.R. Pufnstuf–wearing ghoulish makeup.

"I'd definitely say Weenie Genie is in my nightmares more than any of the others," Meijer said. "Weenie's supposed to be a boy, but he's played by someone who's obviously a woman. I think seeing that as an 8-year-old boy seriously damaged my still-developing sense of gender identity."

According to psychologist Dr. Deborah Kreutz, Meijer is far from alone in his fear of Lidsville.

"To this day, the scars of Lidsville run deep through American society," Kreutz said. "Remember, approximately 40 million Americans were exposed to this show as children, so we're talking about a mass, televised trauma whose psychological ramifications continue to weigh heavily on our collective national psyche."

In 1999, a team of UCLA psychologists compiled a ranking of lingering childhood traumas among Americans between the ages of 30 and 40. Lidsville ranked second overall, just ahead of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Sigmund & The Sea Monsters, another Krofft program. Ranked first were the Oompa-Loompas from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

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auuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

nobody@vox.com(Paddy Melt Wagon) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:26:18 -0800

Never try to explain politics to anyone over 70. It is TOO frustrating.

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