So there are about a million and one variations on "All Wired Up" or "Bare Wire" that are each a little less clever than the last. So I gave up.
Secondly, season 4 of The Wire is back On Demand. It's so good, it can sweeten your coffee. The fourth season of The Wire is of such high quality, it can paint your car and steal your girlfriend.
So, I like it.
I also like Jonah Goldberg. I think this
article made my day. While I'm unconvinced that global warming is largely the fault of man, I don't
know that it isn't. I'm no scientist...but my dad is.
OK,
ok. I give you, environmental and climate research is well outside his
area of
expertise.
But he's very familiar with activist groups, the media, politicians, and just about everyone else under the sun being worried about what he's doing in that lab...
because they didn't understand it. Lots of scientists on both sides have all sorts of math and charts that I don't understand claiming we are, or aren't the primary blame for the warming. Fine.
I asked my dad his opinion, and he essentially agrees with Goldberg, but because he says it happens all the time.
Basically, while we've learned a lot about how our bodies, disease, the world, matter, you name it, all function, we create more new questions for every one we answer. In short, we're still learning new things in almost every field of science that exists.
Our love of science from the 50's came with plenty of
cautionary tales from Hollywood. They reflected a healthy respect for what we
didn't' yet know. However, they certainly weren't
anti-progress.
One of the fastest tracks in the history of science is the creation of the atom bomb. It went from theory to exploding in basically a few years. But this isn't how things usually work. For the sake of argument, let's say every single
claim, every
boogieman attributed to global warming is true. We're still quite a few years from figuring out how to realistically and effectively fixing it.
I'll be very interested to see where we stand on global warming in 8-10 years. Will we be swimming in a giant pool of our own sweat with displaced polar bears? Maybe. Or maybe
rain forests, the hole in the ozone, genetically-altered foods, a rogue
asteroid, breast implants,
alar, overpopulation, or
Al Gore's adrenal gland will be the reason we're all going to die.
But I digress.
I really wanted to talk about people who are qualified to talk about x or y. I think people get very caught up in saying somebody is arguing by authority when they're really citing a credible source.
Also, I don't really see the big problem with arguing by authority. For example, if the topic of philosophy came up, I'd rather have the opinion of the vilified Kurt
Mosser than that of, say, the guy trimming the hedges that doesn't speak
English. This assumes, of course, that Robert isn't around. (
Hahaa! Got you good
Mosser!) ;)
Just as I'd rather have that guy's (translated) opinion of how to fix a leaf blower rather than Kurt's advice on the matter.
I remember being about 11 or 12 years old, and there was a person gathering petition signatures at the door. The complex where my dad works had just had a minor accident, the first in over 20 years. They vented some toxic gas into the air that shouldn't have been. The petition was in protest of the research done at the Mound.
My dad stood there listening to the guy's speech, thanked him but said that he couldn't sign.
I asked why that guy wanted to shut down where dad worked, he replied "because he failed science".
