Re Global Warming, Be Reasonable

Sixteen scientists in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal argue, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy”.  Selected excerpts (emphasis added):

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

SOPA and PIPA: Or, Why Web Sites Have Black-out “Censorship” Bars Today

You may have noticed big Web sites like Google or Wikipedia (which Jonah Goldberg thinks is hilarious) or WordPress wearing dramatic black-out bars today and wondered what was going on.

Federal Government Told Gun Dealers to Sell Guns to Drug Cartels to Justify More Gun Control

You’ve heard of the “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal?  The federal government encouraged gun dealers to sell guns to Mexican drug gangs, in theory in order to track the guns and take down drug kingpins, but the program “put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.”  

Probably

From “Time Will End in Five Billion Years, Physicists Predict”, National Geographic Daily News:

The problem with a multiverse is that anything that can happen will happen an infinite number of times, and that makes calculating probabilities . . . seemingly impossible.

Prize Fight: Santorum vs. Gingrich?

Actual dream I had last night:  The country had somehow decided that, after narrowing the field down to two candidates, the final Republican nominee for president would be determined by a boxing match between them.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011, R. I. P.

Christopher Hitchens, one of the New Atheists and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has died.  He learned last year that he had esophageal cancer.  He died earlier this month.  He was 62.

His brother, Peter Hitchens, author of The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, has written a first eulogy for his brother.

Occupy Protesters Want to Belong

Occupy protesters are motivated not so much by policy goals as by a need for community and a desire for personal validation, according to new research by the Frontier Lab.  

Further Reading on Light-bulb Reprieve

National Review has an editorial on the subject.

Spending Ceiling

Here’s an idea for structural reform (though not structural in the same sense as, say, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment), prompted by the discussion generated by a past post: a spending ceiling.

The idea is simple:  Congress would enact a limit on the annual federal budget, similar to the total limit on national debt (the “debt ceiling”).  Any time Congress wants to spend more money than it did the previous year (or rather, more than the existing statutory limit), it has to pass a law (duly agreed by both houses and signed by the president) raising the spending limit.  

Breaking News: Light Bulbs Ambiguously Not Banned Yet

This just in:  In a spending-bill deal finally worked out last night between congressional Republicans and Democrats, the light-bulb ban will still not be repealed (yet), but the government will be prohibited from using any money to enforce it.  See news story from Bloomberg (longer), Newsmax, or the Chicago Tribune (shorter).  

Supply and Demand

Glenn Beck this morning: “All I want for Christmas: Edison’s light bulb.”

It’s true, it will be illegal to sell 100-watt incandescent bulbs in the United States starting in 2012—i.e., two weeks from now.  You will be able to get them only at great expense, if at all.  (Hoard them while you can, if you like.)

I suppose the coming blackout is fitting accompaniment to the coming of the new dark ages.

Chrismahanukwanzakah

I just heard a radio ad use the term “holiday elves”.  People have been arguing for years about whether it’s OK reflexively to substitute “happy holidays” for “merry Christmas” everywhere out of some concern for “political correctness”, but when retailers or other big companies do that, at least I think I can understand where they’re coming from.  If they go further and say “holiday elves”, it almost seems to me like unthinking self-parody at that point—what other holiday has any tradition of elves, or what elves are associated with “holidays” generically, outside of the Christmas traditions?  

Why the Welfare State Seems like a Good Idea; Trump; Roosevelt; Gingrich

Robert Tracinski explains a structural problem with (and leading to) Obamacare, and the welfare state generally:

. . . when the government bestows its largess, we tend [to] see only the benefits coming down from above: there are press releases and newspaper articles and a lady writes an op-ed in the LA Times. What we don’t see is where that money came from and who it came from, and what else we might have done with that money.  

National Interest

As usual, Mark Steyn is must-read material.

Romney May Already Be a Winner!

From an actual unsolicited e-mail solicitation:

[Chillingworth],

I’ve had the privilege of meeting thousands of you in your diners, town halls, and homes as I travel from state to state. I wish there were more hours in the day to spend more time with each and every one of you.

That’s why I wanted to grab a bite with a supporter like you to hear your questions and thoughts on how to fix this country.  

Tax Revenues 15-20% of GDP, Regardless of Tax Increases or Cuts

Far-flung Fancies is talking about something I had never heard of until recently: “Hauser’s Law”.

As Mr. Hauser explains,

Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). . . .

Coverage of Climategate and Climategate 2, Respectively

From a liberal perspective: “Climategate: What Really Happened?”, Mother Jones, April 21st, 2011.

From a conservative perspective: “Scientists Behaving Badly”, National Review Online, November 28th, 2011.

Bonus: “Nothing Has Changed Post-Climategate”, the Corner, National Review Online, October 28th, 2010.

Hat tip to the Reformed Pastor.

Guns Mainstream?

I heard an ad for a gun Web site on the radio this morning.  (They’re having their “cyber-Monday” sale.)  I’ve never heard an ad for a gun Web site on the radio before.  I wonder whether it’s a sign of a changing culture.

Certainly the different states’ laws have become much more congenial to concealed carry over the course of the last twenty-five years, as shown dramatically in this animated-GIF map from the Wikipedia article on the subject.  Ohio’s own concealed-carry law was passed so recently that I remember when it happened.  

Correlation ≠ Causation

In light of past conversations in the comments section of this blog, I have to share this:  Via the Swiss Economist, I give you Web comic XKCD’s meta-humor about the limits of human knowledge.

What’s Wrong with the Welfare State

Eternity Matters discusses (with illustrations) why the welfare state is bad, not just in any particular execution of the idea, but intrinsically.  It’s short; read it—if not to believe and understand the world better, then at least to understand conservatives’ point of view a little bit better.