So, How's That Civility Thing Working Out?

Hollywood Liberal to Bristol Palin: ‘Your Mother’s a Whore. She’s the Devil.’ 

Oh, the wonderful Civility™ of liberals! Bristol Palin went to a cowboy-themed restaurant/bar in West Hollywood, where she rode a mechanical bull while a reality-show camera crew shot video. Some guy at the bar shouted: “Did you ride Levi like that? Your mother’s a whore!” And when someone asked him, “What was that about?” the dude replied, “Her mother’s a f–king whore. She’s the devil.” It got worse from there. The action begins at about the 1:40 mark:

I'm really glad that Bristol took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and challanged the guy on his own ground. Too many of us, and I include myself in this, as I am often faced at work with people making slurs against anyone they consider conservative. Only in the relatively rare event that it is someone I know well will I speak up in defense.

I'm waiting for the usual suspects in the MSM to decry this public act of incivility; but I'm certainly not holding my breath.

Obsolete Satellite Falls, No One Notices

NASA satellite breaks up, plunges back to Earth

A six-ton NASA science satellite pierced the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and fell back to Earth, the U.S. space agency said on Saturday, but it was not yet known where the remains landed.

NASA said its decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, which took an unpredictable course as it tumbled through the upper atmosphere, fell to Earth sometime between 11:23 p.m. EDT on Friday and 1:09 a.m. EDT on Saturday.

"The precise re-entry time and location are not yet known with certainty," NASA said of the 20-year-old satellite.

There were reports on Twitter of debris falling over Okotoks, a town south of Calgary in western Canada, most likely satellite remains.

Why do I have the sneaky feeling NASA would have preferred something showier?

UPDATE:  A great post from "Three Beers Later":

If NASA's Falling Satellite Had Hit Los Angeles...

If it had landed in Beverly Hills, it would have been towed...

If it had landed in MacArthur Park, it would have got a fake green card and driver's license...

If it had landed in South Central or East LA, it would have have at least four sets of gang sign tagged, and at least two bodies in the trunk...

As they say, go see the rest.

And Winning Today's Grammar Award

Eugene Volokh concludes that starting sentences with "and" or "but" is OK

I occasionally run across people — including law review editors — who seem to take the view that there’s something wrong with starting a sentence with “and,” “but,” or “or.” I don’t see any basis for that view. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage notes, this doesn’t violate any established usage or grammar practices. It’s commonplace in edited writing, including in legal writing; for instance, a Lexis search for caps(but) and date(> 1/1/2000) in the Supreme Court database found over 900 results since 2000, and a Lexis search for caps(but) and date(> 9/16/2011) in the New York Times database found over 1100 results in just the last week. Nor is this just something new; the Constitution contains sentences that begin with “and” and “but,” as do the works of Dickens and many others.

Moreover, starting a sentence this way is useful: An initial “and,” “but,” or “or” is a good transition that shows the relationship of this sentence to the previous one, with as little formality and complexity as possible. The usual alternatives, such as “however” or “moreover” strike me as stuffier, though sometimes “moreover” adds an emphasis that “and” doesn’t.

And I thank you...

Rule 5 Saturday - Keira Knightley - Pict and Pirate?

I must be stuck in a rut, a good rut maybe, but a rut.  After watching one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies on cable, I was inspired to pick Kiera Knightley as the subject of the Saturday Rule 5 post.  Not only another "K" girl (two weeks ago was Kate Beckinsale), but also English, the child of a theatrical family, and, oh yes, good looking (I guess that goes with out saying).









Probably best known for "Pirates" Kiera has starred in numerous movies including a unique version of "King Arthur" in which (probably closer to historical truth than most Arthurs), he was Roman Legion commander, and she starred as Guinevere as a Pict, a painted half-savage native Briton, fitting in that her mother is Scottish and Welsh.

There does seem to be some debate whether the Picts were actually painted in the way that history suggests, with designs as shown above, or with the blue dye woad.

She started acting as a child, getting her first agent (does she stuff them and hang them on the wall?) at 6.  She started college at Esher, but dropped out after a year to pursue acting.  Good, we scared another one away from the high life of academe...

She had a role in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) , where she played Princess Amidala's decoy.  Unfortunately, her speaking lines were dubbed over by a previous Rule Fiver, Natalie Portman, who played Amidala.  Apparently, even their mothers had a hard time telling them apart under the makeup.

In 2001, she starred in "The Hole" a direct-to-video thriller that got her nominated for and Empire Award for "Best Debut".

In 2003, she starred in the first "Pirate" movie, starting her prolonged stint as the third corner of the "Eternal Triangle", to hark back to Tom Lehrer.

She has also starred in the theater ("The Misanthrope" and "The Children's Hour") and several TV appearances, including "The Treasure Seeker", "Oliver Twist", "Dr. Zhivago", "Prince of Thieves" and "Gajin".

She has been accused of being anorexic in the press, and indeed, some of her public photos look a mite thin.   But she denies it.

Although she is reputed to get along well with the press, she has expressed a longing for "the Private Life."

"It frightens me when kids go, 'I want to be famous.'" In a 2007 interview with the BBC Knightley said that she feels "de-humanised." She also said that when a person becomes a celebrity, the public doesn't care that the person's life is constantly watched.

 I guess she should have thought about that before becoming a world renowned actress...

As for charity work, she has supported Amnesty International, and WaterAid, as well as visiting Ethiopia to see the effects of government imposed anorexia.

She has three new movies pending "A Dangerous Method", "Seeking a Friend for the End of the Word", and "Anna Karenina."

In July 2006, Knightley said she has become a workaholic, detailing that "the last five years have blended into one.

I can't tell you what was last year and what was the year before" and specifying that she was "working too much" and was "quite frightened that if I continue at this rate I will start to hate what I love,"

Horse Back Blonde Saves Boy From Bear

Gutsy wrangler, huge horse save boy from charging grizzly

“It was a pleasant ride until we came around a corner on the trail and my horse stopped firm and wouldn’t move,” Bolster said. “He never refuses to go, so that caught my attention quick.”

But not fast enough to avoid the spike white-tailed deer that burst out of the brush and glanced off Tonk’s left front shoulder.

As Tonk spun from the impact, Bolster saw a huge grizzly bear crashing through the forest right at the group in pursuit of the deer. Horses panicked and guests grabbed saddle horns for the ride of their lives.

“No amount of training could keep a horse from running from a 700-pound charging bear,” she said.

Seven of the horses sensed the danger, scrambled around and galloped back on the trail toward the barn.

But Scout bolted perpendicular to the trail into the timber packing the 8-year-old boy.

“The deer peeled off and joined the horses sprinting down the trail,” Bolster said. “So the bear just continued running right past me. I’m not sure the bear even knew the roles had changed, but now it was chasing a horse instead of a deer.”

The grizzly was zeroed in on Scout and the boy – the isolated prey in the woods.

Adding to the drama, the boy’s father, an experienced rider, could not convince his horse that it was a good plan to ride to his son’s rescue.

“The last thing he saw over his shoulder as his horse ran away was the grizzly chasing his boy,” Bolster said.

With the bear on Scout’s heels, Tonk’s instinct was to flee with the group of horses. But Tonk responded to Bolster’s heels in his ribs as she spun the big fella around. They wheeled out of a 360 and bolted into the trees to wedge between the predator and the prey.

“The boy was bent over, feet out of the stirrups, clutching the saddle horn and the horse’s neck,” she said. “That kept him from hitting a tree limb.

“But all I could think about was the boy falling off in the path of that grizzly.

“I bent down, screamed and yelled, but the bear was growling and snarling and staying very focused on Scout.

“As it tried to circle back toward Scout, I realized I had to get Tonk to square off and face the bear. We had to get the bear to acknowledge us.

“We did. We got its attention – and the bear charged.

“So I charged at the bear.”

Did she think twice about that?

“I had no hesitation, honestly,” Bolster said. “Nothing in my body was going to let that little boy get hurt by that bear. That wasn’t an option.”

Tonk was on the same page.

With a ton of horse, boulder-size hooves and a fire-breathing blonde thundering at it, the bear came within about 10 feet before skittering off to the side.

But it quickly angled to make yet another stab at getting to Scout and the boy – who had just fallen to the ground.

“Tonk and I had to go at the bear a third time before we finally hazed him away,” she said.

“The boy had landed in some beargrass and was OK. Scout was standing nearby.”

Bolster gathered the boy up with her on Tonk, grabbed Scout’s lead and trotted down the trail.

“The boy was in shock,” she said. “I looked back and could see the bear had continued to go away through he woods, but I had another five or 10 minutes of riding before I got back with the group.”

 As for the horse:

Tonk isn’t the typical trail mount. Best anyone knows, he’s the result of cross-breeding a quarter horse with a Percheron – a draft horse. Bolster is 5-foot-10, yet she relies on her athleticism to climb into the saddle aboard Tonk.

“He was one of the horses we lease from Wyoming and bring in every year,” Bolster said, noting that she’d picked him from the stable in May to be hers for the season.

“He’s a very large horse – 18 hands high. That intimidates a lot of riders. But I’ve always loved big horses. He’s kind of high-strung and spooky, the largest of our wrangling horses. I like a horse with a lot of spirit, and I was really glad to be on him that day.”

EPA to Asthmatics - Suck It Up!

OTC inhalers to be phased out to protect ozone layer

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

In the interests of full disclosure, I had asthma as a child, and used such an inhaler regularly for quite some time.  It pisses me off for the government to restrict such a valuable and life saving product to stop a small fraction of the chlorofluorocarbon production. 

And anyway, the ozone hole is starting to recover without restrictions on asthma inhalers.

In an old post, econo-blogger Megan McArdle asks (and answers): "Why Don't We Have More Green Products?"

...when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version. In some cases, the problem could be overcome by buying a top-of-the-line model that costs, at the very least, several times what the basic models do. In other cases, as with my asthma inhalers, we were just stuck.

I would think the answer would be obvious to such an economics type.  If a product was already the best, cheapest and greenest product for a particular application; it would be universally adopted for the first two reasons, and we would take its green properties for granted.  Only when a "green" product is not as cheap and as good do we need to be forced by government or guilted by the environmental movement into adopting it.

Counties Don't Want to Save the Bay, Either

Counties bristling at projected Bay cleanup costs

The state of Maryland’s plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay not only will cost billions of dollars, but it continues to frustrate local officials who have to implement it.

“This plan will require significant efforts at significant costs,” said Leslie Knapp, associate director for the Maryland Association of Counties [MACo]. “Our biggest concern is simply, how are we going to pay to do what needs to be done?”

As part of a federal mandate to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay by 2025, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) determined how much counties must reduce the amount of pollution they contribute to the Bay, and local officials have to figure out how to reach those goals.

So, it seems those farmers and industrial polluters aren't the only ones not wild about paying their "fair share" of cleaning up the Bay.  But how big is the bill they're balking at?

In Anne Arundel County, the projected cost of instituting the plan was $2 billion, Knapp said.

“It’s a monumental investment,” said Matt Diehl, a spokesman for the county’s Department of Public Works. “These costs far exceed our current budget.”

The department’s overall budget is about $1 billion...Caroline County was faced with a cost estimate of $70 million, almost twice its annual budget of $40 million, according to Kathleen Freeman, director of the county’s planning and codes department.

But Freeman said while the initial cost projection was daunting enough, MDE released new targets for pollution reduction this week that could triple or quadruple the cost.

But it's your $#!*.  You should be responsible for it!

How Do We Save the Bay?

Chesapeake cleanup effort murky, says GAO

States in the Chesapeake Bay watershed aren't complying with federal regulations dictating the cleanup of the Bay, and many aren't even aware what the requirements are, according to a congressional watchdog report.

In May 2009, President Obama directed eleven federal agencies, led by the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with a strategy to bring the Chesapeake Bay into compliance with the Clean Waters Act.

The resulting Strategy for Protecting and Restoring the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, referenced in the report as the strategy, includes four broad goals, 12 specific measurable goals and 116 actions aimed at restoring the Bay by 2025.

 One hundred and sixteen actions?  How can anyone hope to keep track of them all?

"state officials told GAO that they are not working toward the strategy goals, in part because they view the Strategy as a federal document."

Even worse, the report continues, is that "most watershed state officials told us that they are generally unaware of what federal agencies may require of them to implement the strategy."

Last night I asked what would be the single best use of a billion dollars annually on the Bay.  It's pretty clear they don't have an answer.

Assessing progress is further complicated by the fact that the Chesapeake Bay Program and the collection of federal agencies that crafted the strategy will perform separate assessments, which "could result in confusion," the report states. "Assessments based on different indicators could draw different, and possibly contradictory, conclusions about progress."

Every agency has their own axe to grind, and so it will be almost impossible to achieve the kind of cooperation they propose.

Neutrinos Shatter Universal Speed Record

Faster Than Light Particles Could Wreck Einstein’s Relativity Theory

Einstein's theory says that there's nothing in the universe that could travel faster than light. Now, CERN scientists believe this may be wrong according to their latest experiment.

The 3-year experiment timed about 16,000 neutrino packets launched from CERN facilities in Geneva, travelling through Earth and arriving 2.43 milliseconds later to the subterranean facilities of Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory. There, the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (the OPERA particle detector) recorded the hits.

When scientists discovered that the particles were arriving 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light—with only a 10 nanosecond error margin—they freaked out. I don't blame them. Imagine someone comes to you to tell you that a new observation shows that planet Earth is actually flat.

But University of Bern's Antonio Ereditato—spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA team—says that the experiment is "a straightforward time-of-flight measurement." It was repeatable, so they couldn't ignore it because that would be dishonest: "[T]he consequences can be very serious [...] We are forced to say something [...] We have high confidence in our results. But we need other colleagues to do their tests and confirm them."

Remember Fritz's Rule:  Half of all Science is wrong, and the most of the other half is exaggerated.  At this point, I suspect that this falls in the wrong category. There's probably a systematic error in their measurement system that results in the discrepancy. Nanoseconds aren't very long, really. Einstein's theories have held up so well through so many tests that it's hard to imagine that this will prove out in the long run.  If it does, there will have to be a very clever theory written to include the new facts.

Your Friday Monkey Dacker Catnapper

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The Worlds Smartest Zombie

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Chesapeake Bay Programs - "Grossly Inadequate"

Says Virginia delegate Harvey Morgan

Virginia’s second-most senior delegate called on fellow lawmakers Wednesday to invest more money in Chesapeake Bay restoration, saying current programs are “grossly inadequate.”

Virginia has spent on average $68 million annually since 1997 to improve the bay’s health, said outgoing Del. Harvey B. Morgan, R-Gloucester. In a statement, he noted that is less than 1 percent of the state’s $15.4 billion general fund.

“That won’t save the bay and won’t protect one of Virginia’s greatest ecological and economic resources,” Morgan said.

The bay’s watershed, which stretches from Virginia Beach to upstate New York, has been subject to numerous cleanup efforts since 1983. Progress has been made but scientists say industry, farms and suburbanization continue to threaten the ecosystem.

Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources, Morgan has staunchly supported bay restoration since being elected in 1979. He announced in May he would not seek re-election.

It's interesting that a Republican legislator is making these comments. He does represent a district on the Bay, so his district is more likely than an inland district to directly benefit from Bay cleanup, or he might well think that more of the money spent on a cleanup will land in his district.  But my guess is that he simply wants to see the Bay cleaned up after all.  He's old enough to remember when the Bay was better off, and my wish for his children and grandchildren to experience it that way again.

I guess my question would be how to best spend money on the Bay to clean it up.  If someone were to give you a billion dollars for the Bay cleanup, to be spent this year (with the promise of similar funds to continue) how would you use it?

From my perspective, nutrients are the greatest current problem in the Bay, and the best way to spend a buck to stop them from getting into the Bay would be to go after the most concentrated source, municipal sewage.

Mom's Prius Problem

When Mom got back to California after her trip out here to Alex's wedding, she found her Prius dead in the parking lot.  Apparently, the Prius uses a standard 12 V auxiliary battery to "start" (or at least operate many systems).  However, there is such a constant drain on the system that "starting" battery can be drained in a few days of being parked:

A call to Toyota Agency in Stockton revealed a STUPID FLAW in the Prius.

It has only a 12 volt auxiliary battery which starts the car, then the big battery takes over. It is not uncommon for people leaving a Prius at an airport to come back and find it dead! To me, the solution is do not take it to the Airport. But if you leave it home, you should have someone disconnect the battery, otherwise it will die at home...was the advice of the Service Manager. If not driven 3 - 5 days, it is not uncommon for this to happen...it can also be jump start by another car.

Bottom line is that I do feel much better...I do not have to be afraid of driving it around here.

That seems like a pretty important flaw.  If nothing else, they should provide a "cut-off" for the small battery so that you can easily leave it shut off over an extended period of inactivity and then easily reconnect it later.

Feds Promise Not to Persecute Guitar Owners

Feds won't target unwitting owners of illegal wood

Federal officials say that people who unknowingly possess musical instruments made with illegal wood products do not face prosecution.

In a letter to Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, officials with the U.S. Justice Department and the Interior Department say enforcement efforts are focused on those "removing protected species from the wild and making a profit by trafficking in them."

The letter responds to correspondence from Blackburn raising concerns over recent raids on Gibson Guitar Corp. factories in Memphis and Nashville.

1976 Gibson J-45

Epiphone G-400

I was a little worried about my 1976 Gibson J-45 and my mid-90s Epiphone G-400 (Epiphone is made by Gibson).  But then I looked at the Lacey Act, and found that while it was originally passed in 1900, the provisions on foreign plants were added in 2008, so my guitars should be grandfathered.

Curiously, the former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (the head boss, not the clerical worker) Larry Small, got into a little trouble over the the possession of illegal foreign animal parts.  It seems he had some Amazonian Indian artifacts made with genuine feathers as decorations in his office, a violation of several laws including the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) and ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor.

Previous posts on the Federal raid on Gibson Guitars here and here.

Figures Don't Lie, But Liars Figure

Debris Disagreement

Two articles today (well, yesterday and today really) about the giant wave of debris moving down the Bay that I predicted, and reported on Monday:


Debris Mostly Gone, Muddy Water Remains In Bay

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) — Tropical Storm Lee is now a memory but the storm is proving to have a lasting and very negative impact on the health of the Chesapeake Bay.
...
Dirt, trash and debris is in the Bay right now, thanks to Lee. A lot of it has moved on, but dirt and sediment are still in the bay. How much is unknown.

“We need to determine what the impact of this particular event had on the Chesapeake Bay,” said Bruce Michael, Department of Natural Resources.

Officials are on a three-day mission to sample the water quality from the surface to the bottom, from Virginia to the mouth of the bay. They’ve been doing this since the mid-80s.

“Is it still going to have as bad of an effect as Hurricane Agnes? [Agnes basically] wiped out all the underwater grasses,” Michael said.

Watermen and state scientists won’t know about the impact on crabs and oysters until spring.

It looks a lot cleaner than it did even last week, which is good news.

That debris field from the storm is now in Virginia waters, nearing the mouth of the bay.

Debris still in Bay, but conditions improving 

STEVENSVILLE Floating debris triggered by Tropical Storm Lee is still being found in the Chesapeake Bay, but the situation appears to be slowly improving.

Moochie Gilmer, the head of the Queen Anne's County Watermen's Association, said while the debris has caused problems for area watermen, he hopes the fall crabbing season may be "close to normal."

Gilmer, speaking by telephone at mid-day Tuesday from his boat in Eastern Bay, said conditions are "looking a little better," although workboats still have to watch for floating trees and other debris that washed into the Bay following the storms.

Most of the debris came from the Susquehanna River, the Bay's largest source of fresh water, when 44 of 53 floodgates at the Conowingo Dam upstream from Havre de Grace and Port Deposit were opened following Lee's heavy rains.

I'm closer to the second view than the first.  There's still a lot of trash, out there, some of stranded but easily refloated by winds and tides.

That's Just Rude

Barack Obama joins Open Government Partnership for group photo.

Peer Review - A Paradigm in Peril

The story of two peer-reviewed papers:

In January 2009, Nature splashed its front cover with the results of a new study titled 'Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year'.

The article was accompanied by a glowing editorial from Nature and was widely reported on in the media. A very short time after the paper was published, a number of factual errors were found in the paper, along with significant issues with the methodology used to obtain the surprising results. The errors and the methodological problems were reported and discussed by climate change blogs Watts Up With That, The Air Vent, Climate Audit and Real Climate.

Imagine if at this stage Nature's editor in chief looked at the reported blog commentary and decided the journal had published a paper, which while it had gone through the normal peer review processes, based on some of the blog commentary, was basically fundamentally flawed and should not have been published.

Furthermore, the original reviewers may have shared some of the climate alarm notions of the authors, bringing the veracity of the original review into question. Media coverage also sensationalised aspects of the results. The editor in chief is so embarrassed by the publication of the erroneous paper, he decides to resign. as a peer reviewed paper, by Ryan O'Donnell, Nicolas Lewis, Steve McIntyre and Jeff Condon, in the

Sounds farcical? In fact Nature's editor did not resign. Indeed there was no need to resign, there was no expectation on the part of the scientific community that a resignation was called for, regardless of the issues with the paper.

Subsequently Nature published a correction by the authors that dealt with some of the factual errors. And later, the blog commentary dealing with the methodological problems, ended up being published in the Journal of Climate.

Unlike the original paper however, this received very little media attention. Perhaps the long time the paper spent in peer review (10 months) and the less sensational results dulled the media's interest.

And the second paper?

To some astonishment the scenario outlined above, in which a journal editor resigns over the publication of a controversial paper, has recently occurred. It involves a paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell published just last month in the journal, Remote Sensing titled 'On the Misdiagnosis of Climate Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance'. Like the Antarctic paper in Nature, the paper by Spencer and Braswell went through the normal peer review process. It was promoted by the authors' university through a press release and received a few mentions in the media.

Like the Antarctic paper, some of the media coverage sensationalised the results. The paper also came in for favourable and harsh criticism on the internet, and it appears the paper is not free from error, or methodological issues.

However, rather than allow the peer reviewed system to take care of the issues in the normal manner, the journal's editor, Wolfgang Wagner, took the unprecedented step of resigning over it. In his editorial comment in Remote Sensing, Professor Wagner explains how he, remarkably, relied not on the peer reviewed literature to back his decision, but on comments on an internet blog. He states:

Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science. Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published. After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.

In the process the editor has also broke the trust of the reviewers, deriding them in the process by stating in his editorial:

The editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.

God forbid that a paper ever be reviewed by scientists who may have similar opinions to the author. On this basis will we now see "sceptical" reviewers invited to provide critical input into the next IPCC report?

Professor Wagner, who has no expertise in the relevant area of climate science and hence cannot judge the value of the paper on his own the merits (that's why expert reviewers are used), relied on the commentary of a non-peer reviewed climate blog in order to justify his resignation. The resignation was not expected, or required and is highly unusual. The paper by Spencer and Braswell has not been retracted, however a number of formal critiques of the paper have very rapidly appeared. One in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and one in Remote Sensing. Commentary about both has also been quick on the internet (eg, at Climate Audit - here and here), but no resignations are expected from the issues uncovered.

The commentary in Remote Sensing was received and accepted at warp speed, all in the space of 24 hours; and oddly, against convention, it does not appear with a reply by the original authors. It is anticipated that this will be published in the near future.

In comparison, criticism of Nature's Antarctic warming paper sat in peer review at the Journal of Climate for an amazing 10 months. It seems an expressway exists through the peer review system for papers and comments that support a particular view, while others are considered and reviewed at a snail's pace. Nevertheless ,the system works in slowly advancing knowledge, even if sometimes we go back a few steps in order to progress further in the future.

Peer review is a dying paradigm.  It made sense in an era when journals were strictly dead-tree, slowly produced, slowly edited and extremely expensive source of research material by and for scholars.  In an era when a paper can be written, edited, graphs created, and the final product made available to the world on free platforms (heck, Google blogger is probably a permanent as the average research library) with the push of a button, there's simply no excuse for having such a laborious and error prone mechanism.  If you're going to make errors anyway, you might as well make them fast.

At it's best, peer review is a way to keep the volume of scholarly literature down to an acceptable minimum. I would say it has been largely unsuccessful at that mission; scholars have a strong motivation to publish, the phrase "Publish or Perish" is not an idle comment.While quality is desirable, quantity is a must, so scholars are adept at getting papers of minimal value through the system to publishers who produce the product for a profit (not that there's anything wrong with that).  At it worst, peer review is a system that can be manipulated by the scholars to help their friends and colleagues.  You don't even have to deny a paper publication; just slow it down long enough that your own student's thesis on the topic can be published first, and the thunder is largely stolen.  Despite belief that repeatability is a hallmark of solid science, getting there second or third doesn't win any prizes.

I have come to the conclusion that peer review is like the proverbial Vietnamese village, it must be destroyed to be saved.  Let papers, or more like electronic manuscripts, be published willy-nilly.  Let the authors publicize it by whatever means they deem appropriate, and let commentary and criticism flow freely.  In such a system I would expect most papers to do what most papers do now; sink like a stone and leave few ripples behind.  But the important and controversial ones, like the ones discussed above would still be read, discussed and evaluated.  And that's what counts.

More Anti-Ginger Discrimination!

World’s Largest Sperm Bank Says They Don’t Want Ginger Sperm

Cryos, a Danish network of international sperm banks and the largest one of its kind, has officially stopped taking sperm from redheaded guys. Despite an overall increase in donations, the demand for ginger sperm just isn't that high. Sorry, Matt.

Essentially, no one loves redheads sterile couples by and large don't want to make redhead babies. Cryos director Ole Schou even went on record to state that, unless a woman's partner was a ginger or she had a preference for red hair, he didn't see many people choosing red hair over other hair types. In fact, the only country where the specimens were running off the shelves was Ireland.

My personal guess is not that people would rather not have a child that looks less like either of the parents, but rather that they fear having a child without a soul.  Being married to a ginger, of course, the only particular drawback I've noticed is a lack of appreciation for James Brown and Aretha Franklin.

But I would think the possibility of having a cute red headed girl at least balances out the possibility of having a soulless ginger boy.

Never mind that the red hair gene is recessive, and the chance of the child being a ginger is fairly small.  My wife, in fact, had two parents of normal hair color.  Her mother was blond and her father was black haired (from Italian descent).





I thank Jake Finnegan for his link; go check out his Burklesque Girl of the Week, Cheryl Cole!

Sturgeons Rebounding in James River

A sea monster swims into focus in the James

A decade ago, some experts said the sturgeon was virtually extinct in the James. But in recent years, scientists have found evidence, including baby sturgeons, showing that a remnant population is not only surviving in the James but, against all odds, reproducing.

That's a huge discovery, because no one knows of another spot in the Chesapeake Bay region where sturgeons spawn. If the fish ever return to the bay, they will most likely come from the James.

To aid a sturgeon resurgence, scientists and conservationists from VCU, the James River Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other offices have been working on a shoestring budget the past few years to learn the habits of those in the James. Where do they spawn? Where do they spend time?

Answers could lead to protections such as restrictions on dredging or shipping during the spawning season.

One of the top researchers in the effort is Balazik, a tan, soft-spoken man with a Mohawk-and-ponytail-style haircut his wife gave him.

Balazik is a first-rate biologist who combines book learning with fishing skills he got by spending time with watermen, said Greg Garman, director of VCU's Center for Environmental Studies.

"He's VCU's sturgeon guy," Garman said. "He lives and breathes them."

Waterman Kelly Place calls Balazik "the Sturgeon Whisperer." Balazik "seems to have an uncanny ability to discover large numbers of big James River sturgeons unknown to scientists."

This is great.  Sturgeon were an important food fish for early colonists all around the Cheapeake Bay, and their prolonged absence, and failure to rebound in most areas suggests that profound problems remain.  If we can find out what makes the James an acceptable habitat and duplicate that elsewhere, we would go a long way towards Bay restoration.