Thursday, August 1, 2013
Our Daily Entertainment...
While we were on vacation, catching up with the “Filthy” Filner news was our daily entertainment. When we wandered into an area that had cell phone coverage (usually at least once a day), we'd jump on our cell phones and get the latest scoop. Good old Filthy never let us down.
I'm pretty sure that if someone submitted a Hollywood script that followed the course of this saga, that script would be rejected for implausibility. The latest bit (Filthy's lawyer claiming he's entitled to city-paid legal costs because the city never sent Filthy to sexual harassment training) fits the pattern very well. Real life beats Hollywood in this case :)
Most of my readers will know that while we live in the County of San Diego, we do not live in the City of San Diego (in fact, it's borders are 25 or 30 miles from us). So Filthy is not our mayor; in fact, we live in an unincorporated area, so we have no mayor at all. So we have no horse in this race, except by dint of being residents of a nearby area. But for Debbie and I, the whole Filthy affair is emblematic of problems faced by all of California: ludicrously, improbably incompetent government with a twist of perversion. This government happens to come with the label of “Democrat”, though I don't personally believe that the Republicans, were they in power, would be significantly different. The problem really is the electorate. Any electorate that would, for example, keep re-electing Nancy Pelosi (whatever her party affiliation) is asking for the government they've got. Perhaps the re-election of Governor Moonbeam is an even better illustration of this.
So, to answer some reader's questions, we're not upset by FilthyGate at all. We think of it as entertaining reaffirmation of our decision to leave California for a more sane state (which, by our reckoning, gives us about 45 states to choose from)...
I'm pretty sure that if someone submitted a Hollywood script that followed the course of this saga, that script would be rejected for implausibility. The latest bit (Filthy's lawyer claiming he's entitled to city-paid legal costs because the city never sent Filthy to sexual harassment training) fits the pattern very well. Real life beats Hollywood in this case :)
Most of my readers will know that while we live in the County of San Diego, we do not live in the City of San Diego (in fact, it's borders are 25 or 30 miles from us). So Filthy is not our mayor; in fact, we live in an unincorporated area, so we have no mayor at all. So we have no horse in this race, except by dint of being residents of a nearby area. But for Debbie and I, the whole Filthy affair is emblematic of problems faced by all of California: ludicrously, improbably incompetent government with a twist of perversion. This government happens to come with the label of “Democrat”, though I don't personally believe that the Republicans, were they in power, would be significantly different. The problem really is the electorate. Any electorate that would, for example, keep re-electing Nancy Pelosi (whatever her party affiliation) is asking for the government they've got. Perhaps the re-election of Governor Moonbeam is an even better illustration of this.
So, to answer some reader's questions, we're not upset by FilthyGate at all. We think of it as entertaining reaffirmation of our decision to leave California for a more sane state (which, by our reckoning, gives us about 45 states to choose from)...
So Much for the Models...
The climate models that predict global warming all rely on something seldom seen in nature: a positive feedback loop. In particular, the models all assume that a great deal of heat captured by man-made CO2 will be trapped in the Earth's atmosphere.
But when NASA actually measured that heat trapping, it turns out to be not so much...
Oops.
Well, now that global warming turns out to be a hoax, let's all get agitated about that global cooling again!
Or, maybe, just maybe, we could all concentrate on, like, actual science (you know, the kind with observations, hypotheses testing, and other boring stuff) instead of this endless climate model masturbation?
I can dream, can't I?
But when NASA actually measured that heat trapping, it turns out to be not so much...
Oops.
Well, now that global warming turns out to be a hoax, let's all get agitated about that global cooling again!
Or, maybe, just maybe, we could all concentrate on, like, actual science (you know, the kind with observations, hypotheses testing, and other boring stuff) instead of this endless climate model masturbation?
I can dream, can't I?