Posts in: 2013s

AGW panic ending with a whimper

I shall look forward to the future progress of this with considerable interest; many people from across the spectrum have taken notice of the Economist piece. AGW panic ending with a whimper - Eric S. Raymond The Economist, which (despite a recent decline) remains probably the best news magazine in the English language, now admits that (a) global average temperature has been flat for 15 years even as CO2 levels have been rising rapidly, (b) surface temperatures are at the lowest edge of the range predicted by IPCC climate models, (c) on current trends, they will soon fall clean outside and below the model predictions, (c) estimates of climate sensitivity need revising downwards, and (d) something, probably multiple things, is badly wrong with AGW climate models.

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Moral Tastebuds and Culture War

Jonathan Haidt’s theory of moral foundations is one of the most interesting approaches to the ongoing social strife that I can remember. Here’s a basic explanation; read the whole article for an application as the battle space of the culture war shifts from the social to the economic. There’s even a fascinating WWII analogy! To make sense of these cultural variations, I created a theory in 2003 called “moral-foundations theory.

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An Ignatian papacy

John Thavis on the pope’s ‘reform’ project Pope Francis came into the Vatican with a mandate to change the way its bureaucracy functions (or disfunctions), in the wake of scandals, leaks and power struggles that have embarrassed the church. It seems to me that he’s taking that task seriously, by laying the spiritual groundwork for change. He’s approaching the various Vatican environments not so much as the new boss, but as the new pastor.

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Raindrops Keep Falling

Blogging is light, now that we're rehearsing for As You Like It. On top of that, @viola_illyria had her computer blow up on her so there's serious geekery afoot redoing the household infrastructure. Hoping to get a few things lined up, though, and there's a serious academic workflow post hovering in the ether.

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Google loses, Samsung wins

Tightwind.net has it right: Google makes relatively little from Android while one company—Samsung—makes more operating income from Android than Google as a whole. Think about that! Google is doing the hard work of developing the operating system and applications, but Samsung is capturing all of the revenue and income. Google’s Android strategy failed. The only problem with the notion that Google's exit from the trap is selling devices (Glass, Chromebooks, Motorola-made Google-branded phones) is that we have very little evidence that Google will be any good at it.

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Evangelicals and Catholics Together, Pope Francis-style

Luis Palau: Why It Matters that Pope Francis Drinks Maté with Evangelicals: "One day I said to him, 'You seem to love the Bible a lot,' and he said, 'You know, my financial manager [for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires] … is an evangelical Christian.' I said, 'Why would that be?' And he said, 'Well, I can trust him, and we spend hours reading the Bible and praying and drinking maté [an Argentine green tea].

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Pope Francis - Ross Douthat

Pope Francis I - Ross Douthat: "First, whatever correlations of factions and forces within the conclave produced this result, Bergoglio won relatively swiftly, which — joined to his runner-up status last time, in a conclave that had a very different slate of cardinal electors — suggests a man with deep reservoirs of support and goodwill among his fellow prelates. Even if he was a compromise choice of some sort, his fellow electors were clearly quite happy to make it.

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Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) wins theology discussion with Piers Morgan

Something more rare than rubies... Penn Jillette provides a sterling example of intellectual integrity. He's an atheist, but he's more capable of taking people at their word and respecting the content of beliefs he does not share than Piers Morgan could ever be. There's a few theological bobbles here and there, but that would be nitpicking. Well worth three minutes of life to watch it. http://www.cato.org/longtail-iframe/node/45125/field_longtail_player/0

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