Lindy

Lindy loves freedom, and Lindy makes great music.

Do you need any other reasons to be at Phog Lounge on February 24?

(If you do, come for the beer.)

The Horror, The Horror

Being left-brain impaired I have a tendency to go into the fetal position at the sight of long division. But somehow I managed to make it through this video (H/T: Society for Quality Education) makes the case for a return to traditional math learning.

Which method is best? Well, I'm the last person who should be giving anyone advice how to learn math, but why not encourage competition and let the results speak for themselves?

Happy Anniversary!

Despite Andrew Coyne's pessimistic writings there's some good news from the Hill one year (and on hour) after the glorious revolution.

Repeat after me; broad-based tax relief...

The Beer Keg Registry

Every now and then I see a news story which that just has to be joke. Sadly, when it comes to government control over our lives it never is.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard about a movement start up a registry for beer kegs. I guess they figured a party registry would be too hard to keep track of.

I'm really sure what's more disturbing: the idea of armed officers of the state making a pre-emptive visit to my house, or the fact that of 5 people quoted 4 are in favour and none make the obvious point that this is just a dumb idea.

Why not a banana over Texas?

Good question. Why not indeed. After all a giant floating banana is just the kind of artistic whimsy that brings a smile to people's faces. The gesture free of the complications of everyday life like lawyers, engineers, scientists, mathmeticians, and so forth.

Surprise! Floating a banana balloon over Texas requires all those people and about a $1-million.

Well, I guess that makes it kinda weird, but if he wants to spend his million dollars that way...

Err, not quite! It seems Cesar Saez doesn't really have a million to spare, so he wants to spend your million dollars that way.

Hah! Tough luck buddy. There's a new sherrif in town. Our government isn't just gonna fork over our hard-earned money for this hare-brained scheme.

Umm, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec kinda had some money sitting around so they told Cesar he could use that.

But without the arts our society is diminished!

I agree. And when the statist elites determine the public can't be trusted to decide what artistic endeavours to support our society is equally diminished.

Al Gore Doesn't Exhale or: How The Elitists Should Stop Worrying and Be the Change

So, as promised to a co-worker I watched An Inconvenient Truth tonight (what a way to spend a Friday night!). Since I didn't feel like paying for the priviledge I managed to optain a copy of Al Gore's movie thanks to another one of Al Gore's creations - the Interweb!

Because this ended up being a long blog I'm putting my feeling on climate change at the top rather than buried at the back. I'm skeptical about global warming, which doesn't mean I deny it exists, it means I'm a skeptic. Both about the consequences and the solutions. The earth is heating up and, for the most part, has been for thousands of years. Is this a result of greenhoue gases? I'm waiting to be convinced. Are we facing an armageddon than requires trillions of (tax) dollars to fix? I think not. My main objection is that most people who profess to be deeply concerned by global warming suggest solutions involving a high degree of central planning. Should we reduce our emissions, not just of CO2, but of everything? Yes, and we are in terms of using more efficient applicances, driving more efficient cars, and generaly polluting less. All without any help from the government. If you think the 1 Tonne Challenge is the reason I bought a Civic instead of a Malibu think again, it was the $1,000 a year in gas money I saved.

And in case you're wondering about the title of this post, just watch the credits of the movie. Apparently, you can decrease your CO2 emissions to 0. Personally, I'm not holding breath.

And so, largely because I want to have notes for the Monday morning water cooler conversation, here are my thoughts:

- Around the 20 min mark Gore presents a graph comparing CO2 and global temperature over the last 650,000 years. The two lines follow each other for most of that time, then the CO2 emissions jump dramatically so naturally the temperature... actually, he never shows what happened to temperature at the time the CO2 content jumped. Probably an editing error.

- Around 54 mins in Gore lists diseases which are increasing, suggesting this is a result of climate change. Among those listed, Multi-drug Resistant TB. Huh. All this time I thought drug resistant diseases were caused by diseases adapting to the drugs we used to fight them. He also mentions the rapid spread of West Nile. A disease the seems to be causing about 100 deaths annually in the US. Pretty close to the number of people killed by lightning in the US each year. Surely there's a better example of our imminent doom out there.

- Many people who argue the threat of climate change respond to my point that earth has been warming since the last ice age with "it's never happened this fast before." Gore helps me out here by pointing out that when an inland glacial sea spilled into the Atlantic the earth went from present day temperatures to an ice age in ten years. I owe you one Al.

- Gore also brings up many times when the scientific models predicting effects of climate change turned out to be wrong. His examples are always of underestimation. But if the scientists are wrong so often, how do we know which parts they're right about?

- Gore also tells the story of a scientist that NASA tried to silence about global warming. I guess big brother doesn't always know best.

- Gore tells a lot of stories about areas that will be flooded, animals that will be killed by rising sea leves. Where's the law of averages here? What about the deserts that will become arable? The species that will flourish. My point is that significant change will have negative and positive consequences, who are we to dictate that things should never change.

- At another point Gore mentions that out of 900+ scientific articles on global warming not a single one disputes it. First of all, this seems pretty fishy, surely there's someone out there with a dissenting opinion. If I asked 900 peole if they liked chocolate I doubt everyone would be on the same page. My suspicion is that included in the 900+ are those who said "Yes, the earth is warming up, but..." And, to quote Dennis Miller, dissent is good the last time 60 million people were all on the same page was Germany in 1935 and the results weren't pretty."

- Finally, the movie waits right until the end and uses the credits to offer a few suggestions. According to ClimateChange.net my carbon footprint is average, according to the Competitive Entreprise Institute my friend Al's carbon footprint is about 180 times mine.

Maybe if he chose to set an example instead of pumping out more CO2 in a year than I will in my life I'd take Al Gore more serially. Until then, I'll be busy keeping a watch out for Manbearpig!