Blaming Obama

It should be no mistery that I have little simpathy for the Obama administration*, but there are statements that I cannot agree with at all. Things like this, I mean:

11 dead workers from Deepwater Horizon who were killed by Ken Salazar's negligence

And this:

You believe that BP is culpable for the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, but those whose job it was to inspect the rig and make sure it was safe, and chose not to do so, are not culpable at all.

I also have this engineer's habit of wanting to know what factually went wrong before blaming someone, so I went and read the accident reports. Not only the "official version" but also the internal report form BP and the indipendent one from Berkeley University.

And all of them agree on one important aspect: the blowout originated from the bottom section of the well and most likely from the poor cementing of the production casing.

Who was in charge of the cementing job? BP and Transocean, that's who.
Not any governmental agency (their job was to review the designs, but there was no government officer out in the field supervising, nor there was supposed to be any).

I leave out Halliburton because from the reports it appears that they ran the proper tests and gave BP all the relevant information on how to correctly cement that last part of the well.

It was also BP men who decided to consider the well as stable despite contradictory test results and who decided to save time performing various activities at once: that made monitoring of mud returns difficult and generally distracted the rig crew from paying attention to the well. So the incoming blowout went undetected for many precious minutes.

Then the escaping gas from the well met insufficient or deactivated safety systems on the rig and that resulted in two explosions and a large fire; compounded with malfunctioning BOP control systems, the fire consumed Deepwater Horizon until it sank.

Taking care of the rig systems was, if I am not mistaken, prerogative of its owner: Transocean.

Statements like those above also contain the assumption that business need a controller breathing down their necks all the time or they will screw up and cause disasters.
Which is curious for someone who seems to believe in classic liberalism.

This looks a lot like a case of blaming Obama for anything that happened under his watch without consideration for how things actually went. Which is fine if you want to do anti-Obama propaganda, but not much else.

*I don't know enough of Obama the man to form a judgment on him.

Ostracizing in the XXI Century

This is a rather unusual post for me, because I've been away from blogosphere politics a long time - and I don't miss it one bit.

Yet, Jeff Goldstein wrote a long piece about how he turned from a respected and appreciated voice in the "conservative" blogosphere to a pariah with only a handful of loyal followers left:

All of which I note just to provide some context to my now three-years long dismay at what I’ve come to see as a kind of coordinated attempt to keep marginalized among right wing opinion leaders. My marginalization, the point being, has nothing to do, I don’t think, with my output or the quality of my writing or thought. Instead, something else led to it. And that something else is what has me so upset, and so willing, today, to write this post — knowing full well the response it’s likely to receive from many who even bother to read it.

Now, granted, Jeff is stubborn and tenacious and he has a very clear idea of what a "line in the sand" is: cross his line at your own peril.
But a probably bigger problem is that his pieces are not easy-reading, and not paying the maximum attention will leave the reader with the wrong impression.

In this case, the idea that he was out to ruin someone personally rather than debating - even if forcefully, and with a peculiar sense of humor - his ideas.

Add to that the big ego of someone in an important public office (the person thinking Goldstein was out to destroy him) and you have a recipe for persecution.

Do I believe this campaign to ostracize Jeff did occur? Yes, I do - I am convinced, actually. I have read about similar things happening in the USA, and seen vicious personal attacks in Italy (and in Indonesia you don't even need to be subtle when doing these things if you have connections); what happened to Jeff would be nothing new or exceptional.

Read the whole piece if you have will and time, and make up your minds, I'm not here to preach. Or just ignore this whole thing, as you please.

For one thing I have to be grateful to Jeff Goldstein, and it is demonstrating that intentionalism is the only correct way for the interpretation of a text.

Davvero

Splinder ha davvero chiuso bottega?

Am I So Good

Really, am I so good that someone from India decided to use my blog for his/her thesis project?

This student from New Delhi is using this blog's archive of Jan - Feb 2007 for a thesis "on flares".

I'm not offended or anything, but if someone wants to use my work for academic purposes, I'd like to be informed by e-mail.

Service Communication

If some users experience a redirect to the blogrolling.com domain, that problem has been fixed (by getting rid of that piece of code).

Blogrolling was hot some years ago, then it shut down and now the domain is for sale, even. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Still not much enthusiasm for writing on my side, I have to add.

Devo Citare

Late Think rivela una verità sconfortante ma che molti già sospettavano:

Un vecchio modo di dire sostiene che se milioni di scimmie battessero tasti a caso su milioni di tastiere per milioni di anni, alla fine verrebbe prodotto anche tutto il lavoro di Shakespeare.

Ora, grazie all'esistenza della blogsfera, sappiamo che questo non è vero.

Esaminate anche la mia categoria "Machimelofafare" per altri esempi.

Blogrolling Down

Since yesterday, the blogroll on my sidebar is not visible.

Trying to access another blog via the Blogrolling link brings up an error page - provided by Google - saying that 0n 15/09/10 the website tried to install malicious software on the users' computers.

You have been warned.

Update 21:00 CET: In fact, www.blogrolling.com was fine. It is the domain rpc.blogrolling.com that got blacklisted.

Meta-discussion on Gun Control

There has been a fresh wave debate of gun control issues at some blogs, and I have some sparse idea about the dabate itself. Do not expect a structured article but rather a collection of more or less loose thoughts.

• Comparing rates of homicide-by-gun between different countries is tricky (and this is valid for all sides) because those countries have different history and at any given time present a spread of cultural and socio-economic conditions. I think, but I am not sure, that crime statistics tell more about a country's cultural and socio-economic conditions than about the tightness of its gun control.
• Aggregate crime statistics for whole countries also hide a lot of useful information because they group together areas with a wide range of factors as population density, average income, type of employment etc. Not to mention cultural and eventually ethnic differences.
• The police officer with such a developed training to make him fundamentally different from common citizens is basically a myth. At least in Italy your average cop shoots a few rounds at the range from time to time; only the equivalent of SWAT teams have serious combat training. Guns are stored quite safely in police stations, true, but terrorists and maybe also criminals have attacked cops, police stations and army barracks to obtain firearms.
• While guns are rather efficient at killing people, true mass-murder is accomplished even more quickly with explosives and incendiaries. In fact, when enough motivated manpower is available, even machetes did the job. Anyway, on September 11 and on July 2005 in London, groups of islamic extremists have used machines never intended to kill and homemade explosives to cause massive destruction and loss of life.
• People who are determined to terminate their lives seem able to find a way to do so regardless of the availability of firearms. Some kill themselves via cooking gas asphyxiation, which poses a serious risk of explosion. And while I do not recommend suicide, I think that people are the owners of their own life and can end if they choose so.
• Discussions between pragmatists and people arguing from faith are pointless because facts cannot bring down a belief by themselves. Something that hits at a deep emotional level is required.

Psicanalisi Spicciola

Un commento di Lemming sul blog di Uriel:

Io questo discorso l'ho sempre fatto quando mi tiravano fuori l'argomento caccia (oh, devo avere la calamita, oppure la mia faccia quando vedo un cinghiale sanguinolento legato sul cofano di una macchina è un po' tanto esplicativa): ogni volta che lascio stare il discorso 'ma io mangio quello che caccio, e raccolgo i bossoli, e il cane lo faccio dormire con me sotto le coperte, e sparo soltanto agli esemplari deboli e brutti, e comunque solo quelli che cercano di uccidermi per primo' e lo porto su 'ma dimmi un po', quale compulsione ossessiva ti spinge a girare armato in cerca di esseri viventi da ammazzare in maniera orrenda?' ammutoliscono tutti.
Mi sa che non lo sanno, quale compulsione ossessiva li spinge.

Invece, è probabile che "tutti" decidano che non ha senso continuare a discutere con chi a priori ti ritiene un maniaco omicida sessualmente frustrato, e sono troppo civilizzati per dargli la risposta che si merita - la raffica di calci nel culo.

E ci si mette anche Uriel stesso:

Le loro mogli si'. Ma dove lo trovi, pero', un marito che ti lascia sola con l'idraulico negro per andare a sparare ad un fagiano?

Freud per la clientela del bar sport, mi sembra: porti in giro un fucile e ci spari alle prede? E' ovvio e lampante che hai delle frustrazioni sessuali. Ecco, questa è una delle cose che non mi piacciono, l'attitudine "Io ho chiavato più di voi, quindi sono l'arbitro ultimo e definitivo di tutto quello che riguarda il sesso".

Si potrebbero portare altri argomenti, ma non serve. Ho giudicato Lemming, e lui non si è salvato.

Curiosamente, questo commento arriva pochi giorni dopo un articolo del Corriere sempre sulla caccia. Nei commenti vediamo la solita umanità perennemente indignata, schiumante di rabbia ed incapace di leggere lo stesso articolo che stanno commentando, visto le assurdità che scrivono.

Cose tipo "Liberalizzando il periodo di caccia, l'Italia sta uscendo dal consesso delle nazioni civili" sono di una stupidità che si commenta da sola.

CJ Tries Again, Sorta Rewrites History

Nice to know that there's still an automatic content generator out there. Via Dennis:

When I read in Vanity Fair that he [Barrett Brown, ed.] was going to hook up with Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs to create a "loose network of bloggers" that will "coordinate on exposing the failures of certain news outlets", the first thing that went through my head was, "Hey, that's brilliant. Why the fuck didn't I think of that!" It's the story of my life... Somebody always comes up with that Next Big Thing idea before I do. The bastards.

I admit I've never given a lot of attention to the fates of these bloggers' network launched with great expectations, but one thing I know: they didn't shatter the Earth. An neither chenged the world or made millions; at best they gave a comfortable life to their top contributors.

I am under the impression that these things will not work. Everything seemed possible with "loose networks" a few years ago when blogging was new and fresh, but now it seems clear that there isn't so much to be accomplished and more traditional models of business and organizing people remain more effective.

Anyway...

From the 'He Only Lies When His Lips Move' Department of the Charles Johnson Files: The story Charles gave of his departure from Pajamas Media back then seems to be a bit different from the story he's peddling right now. Here's the announcement he posted December 1, 2007 on Little Green Footballs:

Announcement time: I am no longer affiliated with Pajamas Media in a management position. There's nothing gossip-worthy here, though; I enjoyed helping to found and start PJ Media, and this is a completely amicable departure. We mutually decided that my energy and resources are best focused right here on Little Green Footballs. LGF will continue to be part of the Pajamas Media network, and we'll continue to run PJ Media's well-monitored advertisements.

Sorry, but if there's a denunciation of a "right-wing parrot organization" in there, I must have missed it.

However, later another version of these events emerged:

Here's what he [Barrett, ed.] says:

Johnson referred to Pajamas Media as a “right-wing parrot organization” in a conversation with me a few weeks ago. My article did not claim, nor did he, that he made any such characterization about the company at the time when he left; rather, that seems to be his opinion of it today.

Well if that is the case, why didn't you make that clear? What is implied by the sentence as it is written is that Fearless Charles Johnson loudly denounced the Rovians at Pajamas Media and then walked away in search of The Truth. I simply pointed out that such a sequence of events was complete bullshit. Tighten up your writing and there won't be these sorts of misunderstandings.

To me instrad it sounds like typical Charles: say something outrageous but maintain a plausible deniability.

He did it all the time when LGF was "Kill all the Muslims and Europeans AAARRRGGGGHHHHH!" territory: Charles provided inspiration and OUTRAGE! material , then left his commenters to develop intricate genocidal fantasies and rancid pseudo-theological bigotry. But if called to the task for hosting such vileness, his typical answer was: "I didn't say that, it's just one of my thousands of commenters I cannot control. And you're a dirty cherrypicker!"

And Now For Something funny

The commenters at Belmont Club are usually of above-average quality, but there is one particular nutcase that always cracks me up. One of his latest... elucubrations, for lack of a better term.

Women and homosexuals need to be loved so they can expose themselves to the will of men. This need to be loved is pushed by both parties and imposed upon men as a passive aggressive attack on the male gender. I think gender studies and climate studies are rightfully taken together. Energy is power and men have always sought it. The AGW crowd wants you filthy men to put a condom on and stop breathing. They want us to bend-over to their will. Regardless of their motivations their tactics would not work at all if we were not worried what a bunch of euro-fhags thought. Caring is a social disease that one gets from fine young cannibals. Why should they try to compete when they can turn their advisories compassion against them.

The Russians and the Chinese are secretly laughing at us and will promise to get on their all-fours and arch their backs waiting to be mounted by the girly men of the effete western elite, but only after WE humiliate ourselves. I would like to live in a country where euro’s are not allowed visas, perhaps in the post-apocalyptic Texas, until then, you’re all owed a very bloody nose.

“Can’t we all get along? “ No sir, we can’t.

Ain't this so cute? He never contributes anything useful except this type of comments.

Charles and AGW

Charles and his merry band of groupies are at it again. No, thi isn't a particularly notable thread, but just one I bothered to browse.

The LGF community has been a good one only for a brief period of time, but these days it's just dreadful. Suffocating, abusive and intellectually shallow enforced uniformity of views is the best description I can give.

There, anyone dissenting from the Charles' position on AGW is labelled denier, troll, bigot and automatically, even preemtpively, associated with intelligent designers, anti vaccination folks and the like. Even if the commenter has never touched those subjects.

All skeptical arguments are dismissed as canards and talking points, if not outright lies. Then denigrated as not being real science - without any real explanation of why, for example, the data butchery of Mann's Hockey Stick is more scientific than rebuttals to it.

The global level of discussion is generally abysmal, with only a few commenters reaching nothing better than a good level. Critics to the unending support for AGW are generally so bad to look like cartoonish, caricatural versions of what a knowledgeable skeptic would say.

But enough with the Little Green Groupies. It's nice to pile scorn on them, however there's a much bigger world out there.

It's been all around the blogs from some time, Steve McIntyre has found yet another serious flaw in another of the main ingredients of hockey sticks - the famous Yamal series by Briffa. Other people have exposed the whole story better, so go there if you please.

Charles instead thinks that McIntyre's point is disproven by the fact that he had all the data but took a few years to discover the problem. An intellectual giant that man is.

What I want to add is that falsifying the hockey stick has far-reaching implications. It is not just the most famous piece of evidence of AGW, neither a personal obsession.

To exist, the AGW hypothesis requires a rather stable global temperature followed by a sharp increase with rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere during the 20th century. A more variable temperature before that time, and even more so no sharp rise mean the death of the AGW hypothesis.

And not just that. No hockey stick temperature pattern also means that CO2 emissions are not the main temperature driver and that there is little need to worry about catastrophic or runaway global warming. No need to happily submit to carbon rationing, either.

The impact of Yamal's implosion on IPCC's own hypothesis is explained in more detail in this other blog post.

I'd like to close my piece with the quote from Lucia, another climate blogger:

One of the issues that gets lost in the whole “should we trust peer review” articles is this: Peer review is a first pass. In the full peer review process, people read articles. Then the ones who can think for themselves form their own opinions about the articles. They, they tell other people what they think.

Qualcosa

Perchè un blogger deve scrivere qualcosa ogni giorno, o quasi.

Internet Groupies

Still pretty fresh, from LGF:

That we Lizards are somehow mindless rubes waiting for marching orders. I think what's really going on here is jealousy. LGF has one of the most intelligent comment sections of any blog. That LGF would appeal to the intelligent, and we would desire to comment here. It's not enough to smear Charles, they have to further it by smearing his audience, because if word got out LGF was the place for intelligent debate- people might come look and see for themselves, only to discover it's true.

Yes, so intelligent that you may see for yourself. Only to discover that in the very thread from where the comment is excerpted the two or three dissenters from Charles' party line the consensus received only snark, condenscending replies and massive negative ratings.

No, the dissenters were not ranting white supremacists, but only people who respectfully disagreed with the label "racist" being applied to anyone not meeting Charles' standards of perfection. A comment was deleted and the user banned without appeal for narrating unpleasant experiences with black kids on the public transport of Washington DC.

Many call today's members of LGF sycophants, but I think they're even lower that that. Most of them today are no more than groupies.

Robinik Defunto?

Oggi ho cliccato sul link a Robinik, uno dei blogger della prima Tocqueville (per chi non è addentro a queste cose), e mi sono trovato sulla pagina di un sito di hosting secondo il quale robinik.net è un nome di dominio libero.

Che è successo a Robinik? So che da parecchio tempo avevo perso interesse al blog e scriveva qualcosa solo sporadicamente, ma non mi sembrava volesse cancellare tutto e sparire.

Mi dispiacerebbe se gli fosse capitato qualcosa di brutto.

Sunday Night Gloating

Thanks to Ace:

It's amazing to me that this guy can sit here all day talking around the subject without actually addressing it squarely.

You got pwned, man. Gulled. Rooked.

And I don't mean by me. I mean by your ego.

You continue quoting Truthers as character witnesses for Van Jones despite the Charles Johnson Axiom "Truthers Lie."

The intellectual shallowness of the petty Lizard King was already known to those paying attention, but now it's displayed openly for everyone to see.

Excpet for the herd of groupies populating LGF these days, that is.

And So It Came

What, Charles Johnson's ban hammer...

I'm so crushed, really, about being banned by a whiny, petulant, passive-aggressive and intellectually dishonest little blog tyrant.

More later, if I feel like it. Now I'll get ready to cure my sorrows at a babrbecue with my family.

The Hard Slog of Knowledge

The recent oublication of the discovery of an exceptionally well-preserved fossil, which could be a transitional species between lemurs and monkeys (speaking in non-rigorous terms) and thus an early ancestor of humans, has ignited a new round of controversy.

Radical Darwinists (if there can be such a thing) like Charles Johnson and his clique are nearly ecstatic; Allahpundit instead is between skeptic and dismissive while many christian fundamentalist commenters crap all over the place (but comment threads there are sewer pits pretty much like those on YouTube, only with better grammar and ortography).

In the middle, the scientist who studied the fossil apparently want to capitalize as much as they can on the discovery with a slick public relations & marketing campaign. And they toss around the nonsensical idea of "missing link" like any bible-thumper, jeez.

A lot of the debate seems to be misinformed if not dishonest, and the creationist side is the worst offender in this regard.

But instead of going on to debunking specific claims or exposing some particular aspect of evolution, I will talk about the big picture.

Evolution is a vast and complex theory - it should come as no surprise, considering how widespread and diverse life is. A very large amount of literature has been written on it since Darwin's work, probably more than to last for a lifetime of fast reading. I could say that quite a few books are necessary only to take a brief look at the various aspects of evolution.

Evolution is also multidisciplinary: it takes notions and concepts from biology, ethology, ecology, anatomy, phisiology, and archeology, geography, geology, physics, chemistry, climatology... and probably some other discipline.

It is a hard and long slog to learn even just enough of those. It takes years of study on ponderous and often dull tomes and arid journals. Not much going out to party, not much of blogging or twittering. And no, there's no shortcuts; no condensed versions, no explanatory VHS or Youtube videos (except for some divulgative ones, but divulgation is not study).

You have to walk all the hard way to the destination, and this is something not everyone is willing or able to do.

Evolution as it's taught in high schools is in many cases an extremely condensed and simplified version - simplified to meet the requirements of pupils too often barely literate above the instant message level - so much that it bears only a passing resemblance to the real thing.

Another point is that evidence has to be evaluated fairly and with as little prejudices as possible. But if someone starts from a position of strong belief in a God that created the world more or less as we see it today, it will become inpossible to accept evidence to the contrary. Some creationists would rather believe that God tricked man placing the correct fossils in the correct strata, than to consider that the biblical account of creation may be wrong, or just an allegory.

However, different ideas of God - like God as the one that merely set the universe in motion - are not in conflict with evolution.

An Indirect Answer

Yeah, more ragging on the green lizards. But bear with me, because that community is exhibiting an interesting evolutive behaviour.

A member asks:

[...]I have a serious question: in the face of these deep divisions between the various factions of conservatives, demi-conservatives, neo-Nazis in conservative clothing, etc., how will it ever be possible to create a coalition to stand up against appeasers and unilateral disarmament advocates on the Left?

Who is kosher to be in that coalition, who is too dangerous to legitimize by including in that coalition, and who do you have to hold your nose and tolerate in order to have enough support for the coalition to be effective in defending the global war against Islamofascism?

The answer is pretty easy, really: Charles Johnson himself and those, only those, who get his Seal of Approval.

I think that Charles is trying to propose himself as leader or at least important figure of a renewed and reformed Republican party - one reformed to adhere closely with his own views - if not a third party.

But it takes much more than a blog to do that. First, CJ lacks leadership: at first, he allowed the crazies to run unchecked; then he realized that a community of genocidal maniacs and code-talking religious nutcases cannot propel you to glory and fame. So the purges began and now on LGF dissent is only allowed within extremely strict limits and erasure of history (as deleted comments) is common. Allowances are made only for Jews and a few selected individuals.

Second, in order to become in important figure of a political movement one has to go out there, engage people directly in speeches and rallies and all those forms of old-fashioned political activity. Running a blog, even if popular (and places like DailyKos are more popular) is not enough. Besides the odd TV and radio apparition, CJ has done nothing in that sense.

Third, CJ has a big ego but a thin skin; his typical reaction to critics is to point out what bad persons they are, excommunicate them and find solace in a LGF thread full of "Charles you ROCK!" comments.

Monolingual Void

What self-respecting computer technician cannot tweak his own machine? So, today I undertook the long-deferred job of replacing the 2x512 MB modules of DDR2-266 in my computer with a single 1 GB module of DDR2-333 (Kingston brand); there is no noticeable difference in performance, but now I have one free slot and two RAM modules to use as spares or sell.

In the meantime I also brushed and vacuumed some dust off the system fan, CPU heatsink and fan, chipset heatsinks and video card fan. A nice spring cleanup for my PC.

All this geekiness only to introduce the main point of this post: I am quite out of inspiration for posts in English - while I have quite a few ideas in Italian. This is strange because since the beginning of my blogging adventure I have been bilingual - perhaps it's because living in Italy now I have lost contact with the English language?

Yes, there's a couple of English posts almost ready in my mind, but they're about trans-atlantic issues and unlikely to give me much popularity in the States.