Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Per some website the popularity of my name peaked sometime before I was born. It is now virtually non-existant for new births. I guess that will keep me original for the rest of my life.

PS - Nobrainer doesn’t even register.

So I just picked up a couple copies of The Cavalier Daily. Apparently the VA state legislature is trying to pass a bill that will let local schools prohibit any club that “encourages or promotes sexual activity by unmarried minor students.” Well let’s certainly get rid of the marching band, we all know about the band camp stories.

It’s a stupid law. It’s too easy to interpret, or mis-interpret, etc. According to the op-ed, the clearly understood unstated goal is to keep GSA’s from forming. GSA’s, of course, are gay-straight alliances. I don’t remember who initially said it, (maybe the Onion?) but it went something like this: “The gay-straight alliance is neither straight, nor an alliance, discuss.” I think that’s funny enough as it is.

The op-ed then goes on to suggest that GSAs do not promote sexual activity. Good, problem solved. The legislation does not apply. They also try to state that GSAs are inclusive, but offer no evidence to the “straightness” of the clubs.

Anyway, these authors go on and on attempting to link the believed motives to the clearly stated text of the bill. They don’t seem to intersect. As the bill’s author said, “All the bill does is it gives local school boards the power to ban clubs that promote sexual activity… that’s it.”

It’s a stupid bill. Even if the authors are homophobes, the wording of the bill says nothing about sexual orientation. Cav Daily staff, I am not impressed.

UC sucks.

I don’t know how I missed this earlier. I love news like this. From Brit Hume’s Grapevine:

Thirty-five Greenpeace (search) protesters got more than they may have bargained for when they stormed the International Petroleum Exchange in London on Wednesday. According to “The Times” of London, they slipped into a closing door and then roared onto the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding foghorns.

They were hoping to paralyze oil trading at the exchange. But the traders, most of them under 25 years old, rushed the protesters, pushing filing cabinets on top of them and kicking and punching them until they retreated. Twenty-seven protesters were arrested. Two were hospitalized, one with a broken jaw and the other with a concussion. One protester says, “I have never seen anyone less amenable to listening our point of view.”

Boy, that really makes me laugh.

But that’s not the only thing I got a kick out of from Fox News. I haven’t said much about the Junk Science opinion pieces lately. I was expecting a Kyoto related entry, and I was not disappointed.

On a more serious note, we also installed two counters at JunkScience.com to estimate the costs and benefits of the Kyoto Protocol.

Similar to the famed National Debt Clock (search) near Times Square in New York City, one counter racks up the immense compliance costs of the Kyoto Protocol, conservatively estimated for the counter’s purpose at $150 billion per year.

If the astronomical compliance costs don’t impress you, we’ve got another counter — one that shows an estimated running total of the potential “warming” avoided by the treaty’s restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Both global warming skeptics and advocates agree that the potential amount of warming that hypothetically might be avoided through Kyoto Protocol implementation is roughly 0.07 degrees centigrade by the year 2050.

So to be able to show any activity on the clock, we had to go out nine places to the right of the decimal point — that would be potential temperature changes on the order of a billionth of one degree Centigrade.

Combined, the two counters indicate that the Kyoto Protocol costs roughly $100,000 to “prevent” just one-billionth of a degree of warming. So at the bargain price of just $100 trillion, the average global temperature could theoretically be lowered by 1 degree Centigrade.

Well that was entertaining enough. I think I’ll go out my way to pick up a copy of today’s campus newspaper. Surely there must be some reaction to the Kyoto thing. How many op-eds will state something like “if it costs every penny have, we must save the environment”? Actually, if that appears in the paper in any serious manner, look for me on the news tonight. I will snap.

Hold on, I’m not done bad-mouthing my employer yet.

Fortunately, the good news keeps going. Apparently there’s some graph of global temperatures over the last 1000 years. Because it stays pretty flat then spikes at the end, it’s known as the hockey stick. Not surprisingly, it’s often used as evidence of global warming.

It’s also not surprising then, that people in the general public want to examine the widely cited work.

Stephen McIntyre, a Canadian minerals consultant who has spent a great deal of time and (his own) money studying the graph says that, for one thing, the mathematical technique used to draw the graph is prone to generating hockey stick-like graphs even when applied to random data. So the hockey stick graph data proves nothing according to McIntyre.

McIntyre would like to do more research on the hockey stick, but the graph’s author, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, is blocking that effort.

This guy, or Mann I should say, is nearly my colleague. I actually hope I run into this guy so I can get his word on the situation.

McIntyre requested the raw data Mann used to construct the hockey stick. But after initially providing some information, Mann refused further cooperation, claiming he doesn’t have time to respond to “every frivolous note” from nonscientists, according to the Journal.

While McIntyre thinks there are more errors in the method used to develop the hockey stick, Mann refuses to release the requested computer code claiming that, “Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in,” reported the Journal.

But asking for a scientist’s data and methods for purposes of evaluating scientific conclusions is part-and-parcel of the time-honored traditions known as the scientific method and peer review — it’s hardly “intimidation.”

Moreover, Mann’s research was funded by U.S. taxpayers through the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It’s simply unfathomable that Mann thinks he can secrete his publicly-financed data and methodology from independent review by interested members of the public — particularly when he and other global warming promoters are trying to use his results to change public policy.

Maybe we should add a third counter — one representing the number of days Mann hides his dubious data from the public that paid for it.

It’s quite well summed up in the opinion piece. If Mann was working for a private company, I would in no way expect him to release his algorithm. I would also not expect the work to be taken as seriously.

However, the point of being a publicly funded researcher is to provide knowledge for the public. Any published result should be published in a way that will allow for the reproducability of results. That’s how crackpots are removed from the field of science.

I wonder if UVA will put any pressure on him to fully disclose his work.

This post has gotten way to long. I’ve already lost interest in it. Oh well, I killed a lot of time.

UC still sucks.

Update: After rereading the post, I looked at Mann’s words [emphasis mine]: “giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in”. Let’s see, he’s produced evidence loved by liberal politicians for supporting global warming. He won’t accept challenges to his work. A potential bias? What does fundrace say about this?
Michael Mann
Professor
University Of Virginia
John Kerry $650

After considering my anti-UC post, I wondered how many other people believe that UC Sucks. It’s not enough, in my opinion. UC is probably not really worth my hatred, but I believe my blog may become the biggest google UC hating site available.

I did run across this site. It’s plenty funny by itself, and there is one “UC sucks” reference.

So do yourself a favor. Read the above link for comedy’s sake. Then agree with me that “UC sucks”.

Well Nobrainer lucked out. Due to some recent good fortune, I get to visit a nice bar in DC and drink completely free for 3 hours. All my buddies, and their buddies, and their buddies’ buddies, et cetera, can join in for the low, low price of a $20 all you can consume cover.

I have a strong belief that this will lead to at least one good password protected post. Yes, I’m setting the bar that high (or low depending on what’s available) for the sake of your entertainment.

So, if you’re up for cutting loose this weekend, let me know. You must arrive in Charlottesville by 2PM this Saturday. All my readers are welcome to join in, unless of course you know that you specifically are not welcome.

- Nobrainer

Well, there are still some idiots from the U. of Cincinnati who check my old blog. Aside from a post I made last night, it has not received new posts in over a month. The lone remaining post stated “moved” and provided a link to “here”.

So, my new post:

129.137.###.### Sucks
To be more specific, since you probably don’t understand, I am stating that I hate the University of Cincinnati with a passion. I hate it nearly as much as the University of South Carolina which I feel is the worst school in the nation.

That is all.
-nobrainer

In the spirit of Drew Curtis, he who operates Fark.com with an anti-Duke passion, I will henceforth end any college related post with “UC sucks” or “UC still sucks”.

UC sucks