His great favourite is the second century Roman Emperor and Stoic Marcus Aurelius. I think you’d agree that stoicism is a great attribute for a premier, especially one in New South Wales.
Bob has said that the meditations of Marcus Aurelius are as good a guide to practical politics as he’s come across.
and yet get a response of "haw, haw, you're convincing no one; give it up, you've lost"? I mean, it sure sounds like dumb.There is no such thing as an honest climate sceptic. Those who reject mainstream science are either conscious frauds or gullible believers.....While many low-information “sceptics” have simply been misled by reading the wrong material on the Internet, or trusting the wrong sources, the great majority of active opponents of climate science are complicit in their own deception, preferring to believe obvious lies because it suits their cultural and political prejudices.Is he overstating the case there when he uses "conscious frauds", particularly when you look at what passes for commentary on climate change by economists at Catallaxy?
Me: Which leads me to a fundamental Catallaxy and Coalition bit of nonsense: you are (mostly) dead keen on nuclear, but totally against a carbon price that would actually make implementing it competitive.
Rafe:
5. Blair's Law on the Right. I'm still on Tim Blair's blog roll, and I see the occasional visitor still drops in here via that. Not sure how much longer that will last, though, when I note here how Andrew Bolt's blog, Blair's blog and Catallaxy are increasingly inter-related and referring each other to stories, and it all makes a pretty convincing case of Blair's Law ("the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force") applying just as much to the Right as to the Left.Not enough attention is paid to the ‘why’ of Obama’s Hitlerian attack on Christianity, specificially in relation to contraception.It's all because Obama and the Democrats and "homosexualists" have a "passionate hatred and fear of human sexuality and fecundity," according to the 1950's style Catholic conservative CL, which seems a bit odd to me because most conservatives feel the Left's fondness for non-interference in sex lives indicates they are generally pretty keen on sex.
Fruit flies infected with a blood-borne parasite consume alcohol to self-medicate, a behavior that greatly increases their survival rate, an Emory University study finds.
By the mid-18th century sexual mores in England (and in much of Europe, too) had undergone a revolution, writes Faramerz Dabhoiwala, an Oxford historian who has spent much of the last 20 years researching the subject. This rupture was far more dramatic than anything that happened in 1963 when, according to the poet Philip Larkin, “sexual intercourse began”. Less than 100 years after the execution for adultery of Mary Latham, a young woman in Puritan New England, many people were thinking about sex in ways that would make some contemporary readers blush. The wealthy and powerful proudly and openly displayed their mistresses. A public agog for salacious gossip followed the lives of courtesans and high-society prostitutes (such as the oft-painted Kitty Fisher), and pornography was widely available.
...as Mr Dabhoiwala persuasively argues, the reasons for the first sexual revolution were complex and varied. The migration of people to big cities had made the bonds of traditional morality much harder to enforce, while the explosion of mass-printed media both spread ideas and exploited prurient interest in sexual shenanigans. Exploration also had an influence, as travellers returned with tales of very different sexual cultures. But the key driver, Mr Dabhoiwala believes, was the spread of religious tolerance and nonconformity, which eroded the church’s authority and let people define morality more personally.But for salacious, somewhat unpleasant detail, you can't go past this:
The upper-middle-class members of the Beggar’s Benison club in Scotland, founded in 1732, apparently thought nothing of arranging meetings where they could drink, sing and fondle naked women. Such evenings were brought to a fitting climax, as it were, when they would communally ejaculate into a ceremonial pewter platter.I hope they didn't use it for the haggis the next day.
It gets worse (the hypocrisy, that is):Professor Carter added: “The details of any of these payments are private to me. I can’t imagine that Heartland has released this document – so the question is, how this document was released.”
“Scientists are paid not to have agendas or opinions, but to summarise the scientific evidence.”
Now I have to say I found this last statement pretty rich, coming from someone who is continually writing opinion pieces for newspapers and websites.
For example, during the carbon tax debate of last year, Professor Carter collectively described Chief Scientist Ian Chubb, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, now Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery and former Australian Government climate adviser Professor Ross Garnaut as the “four horsemen of the climate apocalypse”.
Was this his opinion, I wonder? The kind of opinion he says scientists aren’t allowed to have?
“I’m a senior scientist and I speak in public on climate change. My scientific authority has nothing to do with who is paying me. I’m not implying a threat here, but I would advise you to be very cautious about what you impute. “
He said he “emphatically denies” any suggestion that his opinion on climate change was swayed by funders, but then stated this would not matter in any case.
Of course, Carter has been noteworthy in the Institute of Public Affairs, which refuses to disclose funding too.
“Professional scientists cannot have their opinion bought,” he said, adding it was not important who funded research, but whether or not it was correct.
This is an odd assertion for Professor Carter to make, given that he has regularly over the years attempted to suggest that mainstream climate scientists are motivated by research dollars.
As far back as 2006, in the UK’s The Daily Telegraph, Professor Carter wrote: “scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research.”
Oddly, on Professor Carter’s webpage he chooses to state that he receives no research funding from “special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments”.
Yet, if this funding doesn’t matter, then why make this statement? If he takes no interest in who funds his projects, then how would he know if he is receiving funding from “special interest groups” like those he describes.
I pointed out to Professor Carter that it was standard practice for scientists to disclose the funders of research when they publish in peer-reviewed journals. This, said Professor Carter, was “a very quaint and old fashioned practice”.
As always, Stephen Colbert captures the heart of the issue: “A woman’s health decisions are a private matter between her priest and her husband!!!”There is the matter of how "self insured" institutions can work with this compromise deal. But if that can be sorted, I don't see either the Bishops or the Republicans benefiting from trying to keep this a live issue.
It's always worth asking whether this type of research is only finding something novel, or just something no one had previously looked for. But a 50 year survey of plankton seems a pretty good basis for saying significant changes have happened.The study, published in Nature Climate Change found there has been a dramatic switch between the prevalence of dinoflagellates to diatoms – two groups which include many of the microscopic planktonic plants forming the base of the ocean’s food chain.
The patterns show shifts in the distribution of species known to cause harmful effect through toxin poisoning.
The researchers, from Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science and the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth said the effects of the shift could already be impacting UK waters, with shellfish harvesting sites off the Scottish west coast closing.
“Imagine looking at your garden one morning and finding that the grass had suddenly been replaced by bushes,” said Professor Graeme Hays, one of the paper’s authors from Swansea University.
“This may sound far-fetched but we have found changes of this magnitude in the biology of the North Atlantic, with a dramatic switch in the prevalence of dinoflagellates to diatoms.”
Using over 92,000 samples spanning 50 years from the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey, the team found that increases in temperature – a key element of climate change – had helped to drive this shift.
A 53-year-old woman, Janet Appiagyei, went berserk and stripped an 18-year-old sales boy, Godfred Darko, and beat him to pulp by pulling and squeezing his genitals until they turned livid.I like the bit about "sole importer of Mama Honey mackerel" thrown in the middle.
Janet Appiagyei, who is the wife of Apostle Daniel Boateng of Joyful Life Ministry International, a charismatic church at Kwashieman, and the sole importer of Mama Honey mackerel at Okaishie, accused Godfred of stealing GH¢1,600 from the sales they made on Friday, January 27 and Saturday January 28, 2012.
According to a source close to the Striking Force Unit of the Ghana Police Service, the woman stripped the boy after subjecting him to severe beatings and began to pull his manhood until it was bruised.
“I take [an] exception to what he said that I don’t even attend meetings. As a chairman as he is, even [when we were discussing the budget] how many times did he come with a clean face. You go and smoke your wee. .. He is a wee smoker, he goes out there, he doesn’t even do anything, please, please, I am not scared of that id***.”Oh wait a minute. The lurid nature of the reporting includes a graphic photo of a dead alleged thief with a bullet hole in the chest. I won't link to that, but of the comments following the story (many doubting the police version of how they shot the guy), no one seems concerned about the photo.
The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania argued that science has been hijacked by politicians on the left, and that climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life,” Santorum said.Funnily enough, the relatively cautious and moderate climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon had a post out this past week entitled "Three Simple Facts About Carbon Dioxide" which begins:
“I for one never bought the hoax. I for one understand just from science that there are one hundred factors that influence the climate. To suggest that one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor in the minor factor is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face. And yet we have politicians running to the ramparts — unfortunately politicians who happen to be running for the Republican nomination for president — who bought into man-made global warming and bought into cap and trade,” he said, before criticizing presidential rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney by name for their previous positions on cap and trade and climate change.
Some things about carbon dioxide in the climate system are so firmly established and fundamentally important, you can use them as litmus tests to determine whether the person you are listening to is honest and knowledgeable. Note that somebody contradicting these facts may be dishonest or ignorant or both, but it’s usually not possible to tell which.Rick should read.
Fact #1: A small concentration of CO2 is a big deal.
In his report released last night, the hydrologist found that "although hindsight indicates a better flood mitigation result could have been obtained ... it would have been unjustifiably risky using the information available at the time".
"The primary factor when forming this view is that there would generally be no grounds to release large flows from Wivenhoe Dam during a flood event that are greater than the inflows so far received," the report says.
The strategies would have relied on operators releasing large flows from Wivenhoe in anticipation of drastic inflows.
"Between 11am on January 8 and 1pm on January 9, both of these strategies would have involved dam outflows significantly in excess [almost double] the peak dam inflow observed until that point," the report says.
"During this period, the above scenarios would have required Wivenhoe Dam to operate as a flood amplification dam rather than a flood mitigation dam.
"The only reason to increase flows so dramatically at such an early stage would have been if there was a sure indication that future inflows [would] exceed the remaining flood mitigation space in the dam, and that storage capacity should be 'created' for later."
Earlier, the Australian owner of Big Pictures photo agency, Darryn Lyons, told the inquiry that photographers "didn’t know where they stand" when taking images of celebrities.
"We do not know from one day to the next whether they are going to want it or not," he said, speaking via video link from Australia.
"It is so ambiguous - we do not know what is right and what is wrong.
"Fifty per cent of celebrities want to be photographed and they love it but others will pick and choose their terms."
Great idea Steve, intervene to make an existing service more expensive to help an alternative to get up.
R&D will take care of the greater cost of nuclear power, if it is allowed to proceed instead of being brought to a halt as occurred in the US (under Carter?).