Buy

Books
Click images for more details

Twitter
Support

 

Recent comments
Recent posts
Currently discussing
Links

A few sites I've stumbled across recently....

Powered by Squarespace

Unthreaded

I feel that the "public sector" has gone way beyond the concept of public service into tail-wag-dog territory and onwards, firmly into the "conspiracist" arena.

A NALOPKT comment wrt the "legitimising" of Just Stop Oil had me go look at "influence peddling"

There are many examples out there and I'll only pick this one outlet publishing sympathetic stuff about the street circus of eco protestors . "The Londonist" web site is part of the Gothamist network – rather easy to be paranoid about who is the hand inside these muppet-puppets….

The piece: https://londonist.com/london/features/just-stop-oil-interview

Twitter UK's skewed distribution of eco-nuttery to their 19 million UK users is another case where I think I see the administrative state's finger on the scales - just look at the UK Army infowar bods who work there....

Public sector (politically lefty) players contribute to just about every "campaigner coalition" in the global eco circus and shedloads of public money facilitates the antics.

Looks to pay the actors pretty well....

Someone is paying for all ths: https://www.copi.org.uk/

Mar 13, 2024 at 12:23 PM | Registered Commentertomo

DaveS,
I think the public sector is inherently unstable. Politicians, by nature, are corruptible. You take the curse off that by having highly skilled and impartial civil servents to carry out their instructions while staying within legal boundaries. But it's inevitable that the highly skilled and impartial will be ousted by the incompetents and the partisans. The voters get to punish the politicians, which probably serves little more purpose than to entertain the bureaucrats.

It goes unstable the other way when heads roll. La Terreur and all that.

I only very occasionally comment at Judith Curry's. It is nice that threads last a long time there (at Jo Nova's they're all dead within two days, no matter how interesting), but the regulars at JC's seem to be doing a perpetual argument sketch.

A while back I wrote a lttle perl script to count the comments there. Here's how the top few are going in that thread (401 total comments):

  18: David Appell
  18: Ireneusz Palmowski
  21: joethenonclimatescientist
  22: Jungletrunks
  23: DanB
  27: Christos Vournas
  29: jim2
  86: BA Bushaw (ganon1950)

20% by one zealot, and daylight between him and the next. Strange he didn't respond to my point...


In other news, a Boeing whistleblower turns up dead. Bit suss.

On a lighter note, this image does capture central elements of the recent evolution of medicine.

Mar 12, 2024 at 11:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterRobert Swan

"The most pernicious rot is in the permanent bureaucracy."

Spot on. As an example, I don't think it's a coincidence that a succession of UK Home Secretaries have talked the talk but achieved next to nothing on securing borders and deporting illegal and/or undesirable immigrants. And if a politician does try to shake things up, some senior civil servant or other puts in a bullying accusation. I guess they've become accustomed to not being told what to do.

Your "we don't consider natural causes because..." link had a certain entertainment value, true believers were certainly out in force on that thread.

Mar 12, 2024 at 12:33 PM | Unregistered CommenterDaveS

tomo,
Agree with your qotd. Not a great distance from things I've said here in the past.

The pharmaceutical companies certainly don't have their customers' best interests as top prioity. A common element in most medical fads (e..g. blood pressure, cholesterol, osteoporosis) is that the treatment involves taking a medication regularly from diagnosis till the end of your life. Small margins × zillions of people = big profits. They will never support a one-time cure for any of these problems (that's allowing that they're problems at all). It's much like that MS charity fighting hard against people who might be on a track to curing MS.

(Reminds me of one of the despair.com captions: If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.)


Ross Lea,
Thanks for the tips. A couple of politically incorrect second-tier comedies come to mind too: Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language. I don't suppose we'll see them screened again. Maybe the first casualty of political correctness was Me Mammy from the late '60s. It was very popular in Ireland, but I believe the BBC cancelled it because of English people being offended on behalf of the Irish.

I was musing over why television is so dismal these days (I mean the entertainment part; the "journalism" is a lost cause). In the '70s and '80s, the commercial channels would run day and night, and fill the hours with old movies and repeats of older shows, all interspersed with ads of course. It wasn't spectacular, but you had a chance of seeing a few different things. I have a feeling that the old material has largely been bought up by the likes of Netflix, but they don't offer it for viewing; they've just buried it. I suppose it wouldn't look good to have people switching off The Americans in favour of Mind Your Language.


Was listening to an ABC radio show yesterday where they were talking with a few officials about our new NACC (National Anti-Corruption Commission). Hopeless. It appears their mission is all about countering politicians having undue influence over the bureaucrats, as if *all* corruption was down to politicians. Yes, the political process naturally attracts the ruthless and corruptable, but that's always been the case. The most pernicious rot is in the permanent bureaucracy. It seems our NACC will just add to it.

Mar 11, 2024 at 11:21 PM | Unregistered CommenterRobert Swan

Robert Swan, I note your allusion to "Dad's Army" can I also recommend "Last of the Summer Wine" and "it an't alf hot mum" thought the latter is deemed not PC by the BBC; I have a box set. The Goon shows are still broadcast by the BBC but are preceeded with " The Goons Show reflects some of the attitudes and language of the time" (1950's) I maged to get a couple disc of poor quality as well as "Beyond our Ken" and "Round the Horne" also iffy quality but cheap !.

Mar 11, 2024 at 10:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterRoss Lea

The true figures from that satellite will probably do more to exonerate than to damn. It's called natural gas for a reason after all, and natural sources are surely plentiful.

yes, GISS NASA CO2 GCM was eviscerated by OCO-2 data aiui - but that didn't stop Gavin et al from flogging a dead horse for a few years.....

qotd from Sunday

'Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.'

and... Pfizer roll onwards - cure or cause I wonder?

Mar 11, 2024 at 6:16 AM | Registered Commentertomo

tomo,
That does look to be rubbing it in. We'll have to fill in the blanks for ourselves I suppose.

Pretty sure the guy's right about it being a fault with that particular Tesla. There are plenty of very low temperatures in the USA (not so much in California).

The true figures from that satellite will probably do more to exonerate than to damn. It's called natural gas for a reason after all, and natural sources are surely plentiful.

Overlaps with a comment I made at Judith Curry's recently in response to this:

we don’t consider natural causes because the increase in co2 is not due to natural causes.
which is a silly rationale. If the problem truly were greenhouse gases, you'd look at all sources. If you want to cut them, it would make sense to cut them where they are most concentrated, to devise a gadget of some sort to sit near a fumarole spewing out tons per day instead of some ludicrous outfit to stick on a dairy cow to capture a kg or two of its belches.

That's if you truly want to cut greenhouse gases. That they only consider greenhouse gases generated by western industry suggests that western industry is their real target.


Recent EconTalk on weak training in statistics was pretty good (preaching to the converted of course). Quite liked the analogy of chainsaw training. You get trained in fuelling, starting the engine, sharpening the chain, etc., but are expected to work out for yourself what to do with it when faced with a tree. I think that strikes about the right balance on what's missing from statistical training.

Struck me the unfortunate part of that analogy is that using a chainsaw, the art is to get the tree to fall the way *you* intend. You'd hope that the art with statistics is to get at the truth... I'll continue with Rutherford's scepticism.

Mar 10, 2024 at 10:41 PM | Unregistered CommenterRobert Swan

Dim Damian pleasures himself with a fresh snooping gadget.

Will it go the same way as OCO-2?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/04/satellite-to-name-and-shame-worst-oil-and-gas-methane-polluters

We already know that most reporting from Earth observation satellites is absurdly skewed.

Mar 10, 2024 at 1:21 AM | Registered Commentertomo
Mar 9, 2024 at 8:54 AM | Registered Commentertomo

Talking about rubbing it in.... CDC releases myocarditis report with every page redacted...

https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1765852724606726557

PJW is onto the Fire Stick story

https://youtu.be/4ROJcvBs2yI

Mar 8, 2024 at 7:59 AM | Registered Commentertomo

PostCreate a New Post

Enter your information below to create a new post.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>