Survivor: South Pacific, Ep. 1 - Bananas!

While this season's Survivor pays homage to the legendary musical, South Pacific, the first episode actually reminded me of the 1971 film, Bananas - where Woody Allen is mistaken for a Latin American dictator. In this season of Survivor, Cochran will play the Woody Allen role, and see if he can be mistaken for a Survivor contestant.  

Cochran's mannerisms, vocabulary, and speaking style are so Allen-esque, I simply can not take any of his dilemmas seriously. It's too comedic. But, that doesn't mean it can't be entertaining, so I'm glad he's still around.

Brandon is not Russell. Brandon can never be Russell. And the producers can't convince me otherwise. I don't care about his "Hantz" tattoo, and I don't care what anyone's reaction will be when they discover the tattoo. Sorry, producers: no sale. It is not a compelling storyline.

Ozzie beat Coach in the first challenge because he's a better listener, and was getting better advice (mostly from Keith, who wasn't shown much in the first episode, but is someone to watch).

For a second, I though Ozzie was really going to make a stand for Semhar, but Jim shot down ALL of his arguments, and Ozzie went with the group. He had to do it, and they made the correct decision.

As for Jim rolling his eyes behind Semhar's back, I don't blame her for being annoyed. This guy was a poker player? Jim, keep the cartoon faces to yourself.

Christine makes me wish I was born without ears. After the chopping stage of the immunity challenge, she said to Rick, "You went through that like but-tah!" Uggggghhhh! Where are my earmuffs? Jersey accents, Brooklyn accents, Staten Island accents - I can tolerate those. But, Long Island accents make me lunge for the mute button.

Overall, this looks like a weak cast. I think only half the people can win. I'll speak more about that in later re-caps. Let's see it play out for a bit first.

Obamanomics

"The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra." - Barack Obama, May 26, 2010

"Solyndra files for bankruptcy, lays off 1,100 workers." - headline, ABC News, KGO-TV San Francisco, CA, August 31, 2011 

This is after the U.S. government made over $500 million worth of loan guarantees. The government should not be picking winners and losers.

Gender Selection Is Getting Easier

From the New York Times:

Test Can Tell Fetal Sex at 7 Weeks, Study Says

A simple blood test that can determine a baby’s sex as early as seven weeks into pregnancy is highly accurate if used correctly, a finding that experts say is likely to lead to more widespread use by parents concerned about gender-linked diseases, those who are merely curious and people considering the more ethically controversial step of selecting the sex of their children.

I've never fully understood why sex selection is ethically complicated for otherwise adamant abortion rights advocates. It's the only reason for an abortion where they cite discomfort, but they never fully explain why.  If the pregnant woman is a married, 25-year-old law student who wants to delay motherhood until graduation, it's her choice. I've never heard any abortion advocate suggest it isn't, even though the reason for the abortion seems pretty frivolous in such a case. However, if she introduces the baby's sex into the decision, all of a sudden the word "ethics" is included.

How To End Tax Increases? Stop Calling Them Tax Increases

Tax increases are incredibly unpopular, so, those who support them are loathe to call them as such. Newsbusters has the video of an absolutely astounding example of this phenomena. While interviewing former Governor George Pataki, columnist Mike Barnicle said the following:

Governor, let me ask you a question off of Gene's answer. There's a certain wing of the Republican Party that claims that the Bush tax cuts, that if you go back to the tax rate prior to the Bush tax cut, that that's a tax increase. Is that your view?

... [Pataki answers yes]

I understand that, but, I mean the idea that reverting back to a tax rate that existed that people paid into, calling it now a tax increase, I just think that's politics at its worst.

The top federal income tax rate was 70% before the Reagan tax cuts and over 90% before JFK cut taxes. According to Barnicle's thesis, raising the top tax rate to 90% would still not be a tax increase because we would be reverting to a tax rate that once existed. In fact, the only way to raise taxes would be to pass the WWII peak of 94%. Anything short of that is not a tax increase.

I think Barnicle's bosses should cut his salary to an entry-level wage and tell him it's not a pay cut - they are simply rescinding his years of pay raises and reverting to the rate Barnicle once earned when he first started.

 

I wonder what Barnicle's answer would be? 

Just the Facts, Sir

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones is warning his readers that climate change is worse than they think. It seems a buddy of his developed a model that shows a doubling of CO2 will lead to twice as much warming as earlier models have predicted. Drum offers this caveat (emphasis added):

This is just one model. There are lots of parameters to fit, there are only two glacial intervals to test, and the error bars are fairly large. In other words, it might be wrong. But it's one more data point in an increasing series of data points suggesting that climate change is worse than we thought—though "worse" is something of an understatement.

Models are NOT data points. Data points are facts. An example of a fact in climate science would be a temperature reading or something else a person or scientific instrument has observed and recorded. Models are NOT facts. Models are predictions based on the assumptions of the person who designed the model. A model examines past events, and uses that information and tries to anticipate future scenarios. And, they are very poor at it. The reason they are poor is because thousands of variables affect the climate, not all of which are well understood. It's difficult to write a computer model accounting for thousands of variables that are not well understood.

Climate science is one of the weaker sciences because there isn't much quality data from the past, and experimentation is nearly impossible. Drum's solution is to call the model predictions "data." Models are not facts, and when you don't have facts, you shouldn't make them up. But, climate science is so dependent on models, I guess calling them facts was inevitable.

One last note: in 2007 Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for his work on climate change. However, he wasn't alone. The scientists who run the IPCC (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) also won the award. Of course, they didn't win it in any of the sciences. Along worth Gore, they received the Nobel Prize for Peace. They weren't eligible for any of the science awards, because the Nobel Committee won't give the prize for work dependent on computer models.  

Models are the weakest form of science, and even Oslo knows it.

Just Asking

I think this is an appropriate question on a day like today: Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?

Blogging While Angry

For an example of smug self-righteousness wrapped up in historical illiteracy, John Nichols has a fine example in the Nation. Mr. Nichols does not like Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, and has devoted a recent blog post to attacking her. For example:

Bachmann has for some time peddled the notion that the nation’s founding fathers worked “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” She is simply wrong about this. The last of the revolutionaries generally recognized by historians as the founders—signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and their chief political and military comrades—passed in 1836, with the death of James Madison. That was twenty-seven years before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and twenty-nine years before the finish of the Civil War.

First, slavery still existed in the United States AFTER the Emancipation Proclamation and the finish of the Civil War. It didn't end until when the 13th Amendment was enacted in December 1865. It's a nitpick, but if you are going to excoriate Bachmann for getting historical details wrong, you need to get that right.

Second, James Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence. Very few people signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. Nichols' definition of a founder is very narrow (Jefferson can't meet it).

Bachman had called John Quincy Adams a founder, which is why Nichols is attacking her. I personally wouldn't call Adams a founder, but he was alive during this period, so it's not implausible. More importantly, Nichols' definition isn't any better. Here's how he explains the issue:

Noting that many of the founders were slaveholders, George Stephanopoulos asked Bachmann the other day on ABC News’s Good Morning America to explain how she came to her distinctive view of the nation’s founding. “Well, if you look at one of our founding fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true,” the Minnesota congresswoman chirped. “He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery…”

In fact, John Quincy Adams was just 8 when the Declaration of Independence was signed and just 20 when the Constitution was being cobbled together at a convention that agreed to a “compromise” that identified a slave as three-fifths of a human being. He did not sign either document. Nor did he participate in any significant manner in the debates regarding those documents—or the compromises contained in them—until the last years of his life.

Just so we're clear, Adams was an adult when the Constitution was written, and did not "participate in any significant manner in the debates regarding those documents", which means he might have participated a little bit. Is Bachmann's inclusion of him really outlandish?

More importantly, the three-fifths compromise is evidence that at least some of the founders were trying to diminish the political impact of slavery. Nichols doesn't mention that it was slaveholders who wanted slaves counted as full human beings because it would earn them more Congressional seats. The anti-slavery position was not to count slaves at all, in order to diminish the representation of slave states. Frankly, I don't know what point Nichols is trying to make, but the three-fifths compromise shows that some people were working against slavery. Nichols would acknowledge this later:

There were, indeed, founders who objected to slavery.

Indeed. So, what was Bachman's crime here? Should she have said some founders fought against slavery? Would that satisfy Nichols?

Nichols' post is one long mess. He would have been better off simply writing: "I hate Michele Bachmann." It would have saved everyone a lot of time.