It's open season, once again, for those who love to yell "Hypocrite!"

They don't understand much about christians... or the real meaning of the word, ably elucidated by Neal Stephenson, in Diamond Age in the mouth of one of his more interesting characters:

You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticize others - after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds are there for criticism? Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticize one another's shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticize another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behavior - you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.

The truth of the matter is simple: a hypocrite is someone who advocates a standard in which he himself does not believe -- not one who advocates a standard and fails to live up to it. (There is a good case to be made that one who upholds a standard for himself and others while occasionally violating it is acting heroically, not badly.) Yet all the current accusations of hypocrisy lie in the latter arena, pretending to have evidence of the former in the curious thought that "actions reveal true beliefs", which would be anathema to a traditional understanding of people, in which "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" is a much more common thought. In other words, an accusation of hypocrisy pretends to an understanding of motivation and intention that only God could have, and use.

Which is why most of us, upon hearing someone assert that someone else is a hypocrite, assume that the accuser is the devil.

UPDATE: And, for extremists, acting consistently with your values is a sign of hypocrisy, which means that they are mentally challenged.

It's interesting to note the things for which there is a demand, even a large demand, and few to no products. As with many such inspirations, I don't have the requisite credentials, so I'll pass it up again.

You have to take a moment and read some really bad poetry. You'll feel better for it.

If you HAVE to have a taste first, read:

"O people of Chicago, why do you shun me so?" he lamented.
"I have a bachelor's degree and I am here to organize you."

And THEN go there.

As it turns out, the models they use are very unreliable, even on their own terms.

Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.

In other words, while large computer models might be interesting as exercises in extended logic, they are not useful in the "real world" where we don't understand what we are modelling all that well. It's similar to a finding in another discipline taking advantage of math as a way to extend logic: papers that use "lemmas" rarely establish anything worth citing. Models of argument that rely primarily on logic have been consistently rejected by audiences: everyone is aware that logic is a cute way to organize a presentation, but no guarantee that the conclusion is worth listening to.

• 16:06 Finishing outline to new business plan. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

This site has not been approved by any campaign for any office whatsoever, and Arnold Williams paid for it.

And if you're wondering why anyone would bother posting something so self-evident, check out this ridiculous story. The setting? A typical small town, where the citizens think they can speak freely about their political thoughts:

For example, in 2000, FEC investigators descended on Muleshoe, Texas, a small farming town of just under 5,000 inhabitants west of Lubbock. They were looking into a complaint filed against local citizens who made the horrible mistake of putting up competing signs alternately supporting Al Gore or George Bush. This political rivalry started when Harvey Bass, the owner of the local furniture store, took an empty refrigerator box, painted “Save Our Nation, Vote Democrat, Al Gore for President” on the side, and placed the box on the porch of his store.

Two other local citizens, Bill Liles and Mark Morton, got tired of looking at this sign. With the help of some of their friends, they had a bigger sign painted that read, in part, “Vote for George W. Bush for President … Not Al Gore Socialism.” They hung it on a borrowed cotton trailer and parked it across the street so that Bass “would have to look at it every time he walked out the front door of his business.”

And then the FEC gets involved:

After subjecting Liles, Morton, and two other locals to an extensive investigation, the lawyers for the FEC found that they had violated federal law because their homemade sign did not have a disclaimer. In other words, it did not say who had paid for the sign and whether or not it was approved by the candidate ....

According to the gay community's behavior, no. As one of the most affected groups, surely we should take their word for it.

Oh, you say they say there is? I believe people's beliefs are important if those beliefs affect their behavior, and here I see no effect. (While taken in a public street, these are NOT SAFE FOR WORK, or safe for me, for that matter)

So, while there are people who say this is important, and should be the subject of heavy research spending, I'd point out that heart attacks are more frequent, and hence more important for research, and that AIDS is not on the list.

Hysteria. That's the word for this. A quick flavor:

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

And the author, who has written a book on this subject, which probably has the same flavor, would like us to panic wildly into doing whatever it is he advocates.

Meanwhile, I'd remind you of the first bit of advice you need whenever you face something threatening: "Don't Panic." Panicky people die. And columnists running around with their hands in the air saying "oh, oh, oh, we're all going to die" are doing the very thing that helps kill people. All with, as I'm sure he'd reassure us, the best of intentions. For those of us who look at actions and judge their probable results, however, his intentions matter less than his irresponsible silliness.

As demonstrated in this article, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with how you experience the world.

Which brings me to the most useful note on listening to public speakers: if the word "quantum" is used, get up and leave, turning over tables if necessary. Some kinds of madness are contagious. What they are doing is creating an analogy to something that neither they nor you have spent long enough with to be comfortable, and attempting by that analogy to describe aspects of something that you can personally experience. A good friend of mine from Ohio called it "the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius -- explaining the unknown by means of the still more unknown".

Courthouse Confessions is the recommended blog for this month. Take a moment and listen to the voices of those who were arrested in New York. Wonder a little about when you will hear from them again at this blog.

A Sample:

My name is Craig Lewis. Somebody had gave me a dollar that they owed me for two weeks on 125th. Street and Lexington Avenue and the police they seen it and talk about observed me doing sale. I never sold the dude a bag. The dude told them I never sold a bag of weed. They let him go and kept me. They give me time served for no apparent reason. For a dollar, for a dollar bill. The 25th. Precent is corrupt. man. The Manhattan North Squad this is corrupt, this is corrupt. For no reason they just locking everybody up. They got a thousand people downstairs that's in there for no reason. Cause they think they saw something or they just standing around for no reason. And there charging them for bullshit charges. You know and it's wrong. It's really wrong. And I don't know what else to say. I'm just pissed off. I got another charge for no reason.

He had a bag of weed in his pocket, they didn't catch me with no drugs in my pocket, they caught me with one dollar, one dollar, it's the same dollar that they seen him give him. Was the only dollar I had in my pocket. It's right here, it's right here, thats it. And I'm going through the system for no apparent reason. And this is wrong, you know this dude got let out with no charges against him. I'm the one that's holding the charges and I never sold no marijuana in my life. That hurts my feeling and I don't know what else to say. This wrong, you know. This is wrong, injustice. Somebody needs to do something about that. If you can help make a change. I'll start a rally with you. I'll start a march with you. I'll do something with you. This is serious. They're going all over Harlem picking up people for no apparent reason. Randomly, stopping you. Ay up you looking like you're doing something wrong, well we are going to take you downtown. No reason. Undercovers. These are all undercover cops. They'll sit there and see you from a mile away, talking about they see you doing sale. But how could you seeing me doing sale when I only have a dollar in my pocket. How is that? No drugs no nothing was found on me. He gave me the dollar. No drugs no nothing was found. No nothing. They stripped searched me. No nothing was found. And nobody is helping me. You know. This is wrong. This is wrong. I just wanna go home.

The accusation:


Part of the Islamic belief-system is the proposition that one who insults Muhammad should be killed. That is why Muslims so easily resort to threats of violence against those who say things about Muhammad that they don't like. No sect of Christianity teaches that the one who insults Jesus should be killed. In fact, they all teach that one should be patient and charitable with opponents. That is why Christians do not generally resort to threats of violence against those who say things about Jesus that they don't like. There are nuts in every group, of course, and that's why I say "generally," but there is no sanction in the core teachings of the religion for such behavior. And that's why Reynolds's earlier assertion that "sooner or later, you know, fundamentalist Christians are going to pick up on this lesson, engage in similar behavior, and make similar demands" is almost certainly false. The most virulently fundamentalist Christian can find no sanction in Jesus' teaching for the murder of his opponents any more than anyone else can.

It does not make every Muslim a terrorist to point this out, and it isn't bigoted to do so, either. It is simply to state a series of facts -- and if anyone wishes to try to prove that the facts I have asserted here are false, I welcome the challenge. Meanwhile, the relativism of Glenn Reynolds and so many others continues to hinder our response to the jihad threat.



His answer:

Well, I believe in evolution, memetic as well as physical, and I think that if violence works, more people will use it, and the religious doctrine to justify that will follow. Am I right, or is Robert Spencer right? The world had better hope that Spencer is, since our spineless powers-that-be seem determined to conduct the experiment. . . .



And mine:

Mr. Reynolds, and you, are demonstrating the inferiority of Muslim culture: he ironically, you with all the earnest alarm at your command. Sadly, both of you have a good point.

Defamation of religion is the new attempt to restrict speech, this time coming from the Muslim countries.

I propose a test to see if they are serious: after the first thousand or so Mullahs are beheaded for defaming Christianity and Judaism, we'll see if we want to agree with them. I'm hoping we still don't, but the idea is that they should take the rule of law seriously before they are entitled to propose laws in addition.

• 19:11 Wilson, WY -- the Vice President is back in town, so Secret service cars are about. Happy he's back. not wild about SecSvc. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 08:41 off to errands in Atlanta, left message with Kathryn. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 19:45 Waiting for a cab so I don't have to drive or park. Sometimes, it's worth it . #
• 21:16 Delta Crown Room is the place to be when your flight is "pushed back" an hour. Though I'd prefer a dry martini to the coffee and soft d ... #
• 21:20 Joy discovered Nutella. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Everyone who listens to classical music knows the richness of it. But it is hard to introduce people to.

Here's my formula:

1. Do not do so in a concert setting. All that does is tell them that people can write ridiculously obscure stuff in concert notes and that classical music is expensive.

2. Use a parodist to convince them that they really know how good music should go first. Whether it's Allen Sherman's brilliant work for the Boston Pops or it is Peter Schickle's presentation of "PDQ Bach", music done badly is laughable, and points out that they ALREADY KNOW BETTER how it should have gone.

3. Then introduce the really popular classical music: the chase scenes from the William Tell Overture come to mind (not the beginning piccolo foolishness), along with many of the other pieces in this collection.

Serve beer. Encourage comment. The parodists are really good at getting things going (and "Variations on How Dry I Am" by Sherman is priceless).

It only encourages them to continue. And continuing in this vein can get people killed.

I recognize that they want to make money and sell newspapers. I'm just not sure that causing crime is a good way to do that.

There's been some bewailing of the fact that few debates in the blogosphere are civil, and Patterico has decided to do something about it. The link spells out the rules and history: the debate is here, and will be updated.

I'm mightily impressed. These are certainly better rules than most debaters get.

We are doing well for where we are. Nice news for someone who got us into the situation.

Next, of course, comes the problem we are still working on: how to get the mired millions out of thinking that progress is going forward to the seventh century.

This is the key to the success of a man who mainly votes "present" and who does not work on major legislation: the appearance of experience without actually accomplishing anything.

Inspired by this brillant post in AJ Strata's journal.

That was the question in the email.

Good question. The answer, for those in LA and are interested in local public affairs, is Patterico, which covers many of those moments one of the local papers screw up on (the LA Times, like many papers, hasn't figured out that "news analysis" and withholding information are not the competitive strengths of the news business). He does some original reporting, a lot of fact checking, and is a good, well-written commenter.

For those who occasionally point out that China is determined to expand its influence, and hungry for influence far beyond its current state: China is not the threat you think it is.

Check out The Powerless Dragon for a short summary of why:

He offers a fine rehearsal of various problems China faces and/or is causing: it copies Western products rather than innovating; it then mass produces goods by paying exploitative wages; the quality of the goods is horrendous and often deadly; it lacks the natural resources to sustain the sort of growth it would require to become a developed nation; it pollutes at nearly suicidal levels, like Eastern Europe used to; it's running out of water as well as oil and metals and has built shoddy dams that imperil its own people; it has internal ethnic tensions, worker unrest, population imbalances that make a welfare system untenable; it exploits African and other workers abroad as it seeks to extract the raw materials it needs back home, making it the ugliest sort of imperialist power; the Communist Party has to ruthlessly repress free speech, the press, the Internet, religion, etc.; and so on and so forth.

And this list is from someone who believes in the Chinese military threat. I am not convinced: the USSR, too, was bellicose beyond its capacity, counting on its ability to cow others into acting well toward it.

Many remember the cover of TIME magazine and its "scare" stories about heterosexual AIDS. Some of my friends remember Michael Fumento and his determined fact checking that demonstrated that there was no danger of such an epidemic in the US. This week, the news is officially in: there is no such epidemic. There is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases: any time "one in four" is a good statistical description, you have a serious problem.

And, for those following James Taranto, who enquires about apologies: just because the facts are against them, don't expect "experts" to change their tune. After all, the point of expertise is that no one questions you, and everybody believes you.

It's interesting to me how thoroughly the prime divider ethos is built into society, and what bizarre forms it takes once it is out of its natural habitat.

Check out, for example, the venti snooty latte that Micky Kaus came across, or the political spouse entitlement (no, it's not about Hillary), or, finally and most hilariously, the idea of "making ends meet" on a salary north of $400,000/year.

"We're entitled to not have to worry about that stuff, to have it all taken care of by retainers, dammit."

OK, I use Google a lot. It's a shortcut that enables me to do stuff without having to remember everything about where I found things before.

And now, someone has come up with a shortcut to the shortcut: the Goosh (GOOgleSHell). Hit "h" for a list of google related shell commands, and feel free to set up shell scripts to handle them.

Quite a tool.