Further to the recent Dog Bites Man Headlines on AGW

Via Christopher Mims at Grist, Gavin Schmidt does a victory dance on the heads of those who thought a “real” scientist would sort out all that climate change nonsense: Anybody expecting earthshaking news from Berkeley, now that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group being led by Richard Muller has released its results, had to be [...]

Real Americans Don’t Slop Hogs

Apropos of Doug’s post over at Balloon-Juice — on Fox’s latest defense of addiction, lung cancer and related afflictions as badges of Real ‘Murkin-ness — here’s a completely pointless appeal to actual data.  I know that this won’t make a dent in the public discourse, but I get so damn sick of being told that [...]

Have a Way With Words?

Know any folks out there interested in rhetoric?  Communications pedagogy? Research into professional communication and/or literacies across media? Well, some of my colleagues are looking to hire a senior (aka tenured/tenurable) scholar/teacher in this area, with MIT hiring its first (in a long time, certainly, if not ever) professor of rhetoric.  Here’s the description: MIT’s [...]

What We Say; What We Mean

There is a table has been making the rounds of the science blogosphere for the last couple of weeks — and I thought it’s the kind of thing that the B-J crowd enjoys: Blog friend Southern Fried Science is extending the list, and you can add your own gems on his public Google Docs spreadsheet. [...]

“Who is the worst science writer?” “Gregg Easterbrook” “Who is second?” “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”*

[Fair warning:  this post is merely the scratching of a pet peeve.  No grand significance here.  You have been warned.] I don’t know why, but I still, more or less as a reflex, skim Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column over at ESPN.  (No linky, ’cause I’m kind — but it’s easy enough to find [...]

Programming Note, Naomi Oreskes edition

Shuffling my feet a bit at the self-promotion involved, I’d like to invite anyone interested to tune in to a conversation I’m going to have with Naomi Oreskes tonight. Oreskes, for those of you who may not know, is a professor of history and science studies at UC San Diego.  Our chat will center on [...]

It Really Is A Village

Via Bloomberg (h/t TPM): Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show. The key fact to extract from the data: In recent years Washington has attracted more lobbyists and firms with an interest [...]

Pretty Boy Floyd Had Nothing On These Guys

Towards the end of last week, John pointed out the clueless sociopathy of Jay John Carney’s view of insider trading as a victimless crime.  (Here, the string “Jay John Carney” should be read as “your liberal media at work.”) [Update:  oops.  Apologies to the distinguished White House press sect'y.  How do you spell brain bubbles, [...]

“Precedent? Megan McArdle keeps using that word …”

Jim Bales here, and my thanks to Tom for the loan of the soap box! Ms McArdle has a piece in which she claims that the Republican obstructionism in Congress to the Obama Administration has a precedent in Democratic obstructionism in Congress to the Hoover Administration. Sadly, Ms McArdle presents no evidence to support her [...]

You Don’t Need A Weatherman…

…to tell which which way the wind blows.  Not when even Marty Feldstein marches in with a more aggressive mortgage forgiveness plan than we’ve seen out of either Congress or the administration. I don’t love the plan as offered, to the extent that an 800 word op-ed. offers much in the way of a fine-grained [...]