It started easily enough. Someone on the Shoes mailing list had a gem install problem. Been there done that, so I shared my wisdom but then I thought “you know maybe you ought to like test your wisdom before spouting off”. My advice is was still good but I opened a can of worms when I went to test it, you know just in case I was blowing smoke.

My version of Shoes (r1157) is a long ways from current (r1314) and I’ve upgraded Linux once or twice since then. Not to mention the Shoes developer (_why) chose to vanish and people like me are hoping to keep it going. Not that I’ve done a lot.

First I had to do some apt-get installs before the old 1157 code would compile (git, curl-config, and gif-lib) and portaudio had the wrong gem name. Not really hard. Tedious. I got the old version of shoes to compile on x86_64 linux. Tested with gem installs and my own Shoes script (SplitWXR) and the packaging of that script. All works. Except the old packaging uses _why’s dead site so that’s a fail for anyone that downloads the script. Rather than fix the old shoes code to download from the proper place, I decided to put my efforts into testing the new version (r1314) which does download from the proper place.

There is a purgatory level for that choice. It wasn’t a huge problem compiling the new version (r1314) and it mostly worked – there is a serious bug with packaging and binject – I need to dive deep into that. I tried my SplitWXR script. Turns out, there’s a serious version issue in my SplitWXR script too. It used some undocumented “features” of the older shoes. I knew it was a fragile thing to do when I wrote it. I spent a few hours getting it modified for what r1314 likes (although I can’t package it because of binject bug). The new script fails when run on r1137 Which would package but nobody could run it. Catch-22 (oh freaking joy – I’m in version number hell)

Actually I could fix the old version problem. A pain to test and frankly, what’s the point? Might as well dive deep into the binject problem on the newest version. I suspect it’s more of a Ruby 1,8.7 vs 1.9.1 problem in a rake or make file. Might not be but I suspect that’s were the cure will be once I find the problem.

It appears they think rotten meat can become palatable if their party has the magic wand after the election. It appears both sides are fighting for control of Tinkerbell’s wand of “When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you”

Kudos to the songwriter for intended consequences of a children’s song. The children who heard that growing up are now running the damn country and collectively seem to believe that you only have to believe harder and then Tinkerbell’s wand will be theirs to command.

Like Dorothy, just click your heels to go back to the past you want. The little engine that could can get up the hill and home by trying harder. Puffa puffa up the hill. I think can, I think I can.

I know we sent adults to Washington but collectively they seem to believe in magic thoughts and which school girl cliques of dreams they are accepted into is more important than what they said on campaign.

We get to eat their “confinement loaf” spiced by the left hand or spice by the right hand. Frank Zappa left us too soon.

Did you know that Spain,Germany and Denmark have spent fortunes on green incentives and stimulus yet the alternative energy of wind and solar has done nothing to lower CO2 or even make a noticeable dent in their fossil fuel consumption. Their new green subsided jobs? Fully loaded salary would make an evil Wall Street trader blush in shame for getting so much for so little. Green might not be where the money is but Government Green is really lucrative

Perhaps you noticed that the average US government employee makes more than the average private sector employee. Just working for the man to save man from being man.

Perhaps there’s been a diplomatic success of the Obama administration that diplomats don’t really want to brag on yet? Perhaps they need to write their memoirs, find a publisher and get re-elected in 2012 before we hear about success. When it comes to cleaning out a den of vipers though, all hands are welcome.

There’s a lot of waving little red flags in the Times story, starting with their FOIA request and no mention or what that request was really for, or when the time period in which this allegedly happened. It’s suspicious to me. However, if true, there is a real gem of a quote at the end of page 2.

“We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths,” he wrote.

Facts are good. We like facts. We like testable predications from computer models. Those would be evidence the hypothesis might be correct. How are we doing with those predictions?

Appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths. The way this reads to me is that this scientist thinks that 99.99% of the world that isn’t a climate scientist of high regard should bow down to their ” assertions and data are obvious truths”.

That’s how I read it and I haven’t begun to get snarky. Does any one else smell the sulfur of elitism? Scientists must save the poor uninformed masses. Please Sir, save us! Please! We’ll do do whatever you say, Master. Should we go back to the stone age for atonement and salvation? Should we sacrifice virgins to you? Just tell us what to believe, Master of High Regard.

Then again, maybe the Wa Time quoted that out of context.

NOTE to Washington Times. If you have the results of a FOIA request, you could post the whole thing and let the uniformed blogosphere and citizen journalist sort through it for context. Oh, sorry, we have to pay professional journalists to do that for us.

To paraphrase an old blues tune:

Everywhere you go,
pretty gatekeepers are all around

[Update Mar 6 2001]
I knew it smelled wrong. Not really a FOIA. Most likely an publicly accessible mailing list archive. You just have to know where to look. Seems the Washington Times found it first. Here’s the pdf of the emails (with dates). Then again some of it is redacted so maybe it is a FOIA request

If you thought the smack talk of the first set of leaked emails showed a “progressive” political bias in climate science or tribalism, hold onto to your seat cushions. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

[Update #2]
I can’t decide whether to laugh or giggle as they evolve their strategy to fight the blogosphere (the MSM in the US has been their back pocket for a decade, so no worries there, mates). I’m leaning towards laughing out load. I may have to dust of that old post of mine about why the smartest people do the dumbest things. Individually brilliant “in their narrow field” yet incomplete in the world at large. They mistake the apple on the desk for the real world.

Aha, my little rant of elitism was taken out of context. See, it pays to read the whole thing. (they’re still being elitists mind you, but that quote was about appearing to be elitist wasn’t a good idea)

O NOES, I was right after all! It was just a backhand slap to his climate crew to get some elitist, save the world sized cajones. It just gets more weird as these activist scientists get more paranoid. Yeah, Sen Inohofe is over the top but thats the political theater game. Don’t enter that game. He knows the rules of that game and you don’t. Or maybe that’s the price to pay for practicing post-normal politically correct activist science. I’m still suspicious of the email circumstances and missing replies that might not be in that record, but the words available for the unwashed suggest I’m not the nutter to worry about.

Let’s just say I had a come to Jesus moment over the last 10 years and I have a handful of black swan droppings, if you want them, at the right price. That’s the risk with investing and I’m 100% accountable. I can’t blame anybody else. No floor and no ceiling. My problem to deal with. I should have sold back in 2000/2001. That was my error – I believed for too long. A lot of folks got there late and believed even longer. Sorry, I share your pain.

I was most likely very wrong about those WMD’s in Saddam’s Iraq. Some bloggers warned me and so far they were correct. If the “Nation Building” (aka force Democracy down there cultural throats) turns out to work, then I’ll get the last laugh. I don’t expect that to happen. But it could.

Count your wins but count your losses too and see how they balance out. I voted for Obama “the centrist, the no new taxes, the lobbyists won’t control me”. I’m guessing I made another boo boo.

Then we had to name the damn box which took a lot more time and effort than you might think. Logan came up with ‘Charon’. Staff agreed that didn’t suck and so it was and still is. For historians, our first usenet/internet gateway was named ‘riscy’ which was my pun on the CISC/RISC wars of the time and the idea of connecting to the tubes. Ultrix DecStation 3100, if memory serves. Gopher was the big dog protocol then and VMS couldn’t do all the IP stuff back then. The 3100 had plenty of cycles left over for some to learn the Unix command line (and FSF). That’s another story about who did what when, but Charon was Logan’s name, it lives on.

IT as a competitive advantage? Jobs were lost, careers disgraced, money and time wasted on that dream. Then it came to pass. Suddenly those skunk works connections to the lab rats of the world gained the mass we call the web. I’d used up my “tolerated rouge” political capital by then. I still remember the new boss driving the SUV in Houston after a night of Compaq dinner and glad handing and I was explaining how my home network (Slackware Linux 2.0.35) could serve files to Windows and Apple boxes. Brian asked me a question about Appletalk support (sucked then) and I said I just had to download patches when I found a problem or I could fix them myself. It’s all free and open. I remember the silence in the car after I expounded. I fucked up my last chance to be relevant and employed. Standing up to the quiet IBM drone in the drivers seat. They didn’t want to assimilate me in their new world order of Microsoft and IBM. I hear Oracle has deep hooks into the company. Somehow they found the way into the mouth of all the serious predators. Wasn’t on my watch.

Charon was.

Then look at it from a left leaning Politician’s point of view: Tame scientists that think the facts are subordinate to policy. Truth is for losers that aren’t part of the UN. Politically Correct physical Science!?! OMFG.

The mankind may be doomed after all. Doomed by a political correctness to do what our “betters” tell us to do. Betters that have the same human frailties as all other humans include an oversize helping of arrogance with the letters PHD, IPCC, UN near their name.

On the bright side, it does explain why the Democrats still believe and the US media won’t report the story. It would be inconvenient to their agenda to admit this. Their agenda is all that matters to them. By any means possible.

I really hate getting radicalized to the right. Scientists leave a paper trail a mile wide and decades long. As do politicians.It’s right there in the open when you look for it. At least it’s not a kook conspiracy with cranky old men believing in secret carburetors the oil companies are hiding, or faked NASA moon landings or a bunch of homeopaths, psychics, truthers or birthers. Too close to be comfortable but distinct.

H/T to James Delingpole.

Of course I will proceed to do that. Artistic creativity has a complex context. Physical or technology barriers and constraints that shift. Social acceptance would be another constraint. There’s even biological and evolutionary constraints to creativity. When I say “social” some would say “religious”.

How would this insight apply to the crumbling Cult of Global Warming? The wave of recent events is destroying their context. They blame the well funded denial machine but thats just lashing out at the ever present bogey men at the edges of their internal context. There is an unlimited supply of invisible opponents in the hive mind of liberal academia. Remember that Pew poll of scientists? 5% conservative, 14% very liberal, 42% liberal (or is it 54%, like that mistake would change anything). It’s easy to see why they think their bogey man is some right wing conspiracy because that’s what they believe about everything they don’t like.

Dr. Curry has made several attempts to cross the divide between cults to restore science to it’s glorious roots of dispassionate search for the truth. Well written and well argued.

Except what if the context of science (creativity) was never the dispassionate “seeker of truth” but was only a seeker of truth as they contextually define it? That would be the realm of religion and politics.

You didn’t think I could tie those threads together, did you? Me either and I’d don’t like the knot at the end. Just as religious faithful believe in their deity, I want to believe in science. It’s my clut of choice. The Bible and Churches have changed a lot to fit new social contexts. That eternal truth has varied a lot to fit the political and social context of the times. It’s not the first or last time the dogma of science has been bent for contextual purposes.

ALSOES, the internets claim there is a vast conspiracy to “attack” the scientists of the world and destroy science (right wing, red, fly over states) so that mean’s I’m not getting paid for ‘conspiracy’ duty either.

I’m reading Freakonomics which is a fine book (no formulas, no supply/demand curves so you can read it too) and they gently introduce the concept of “incentives” and then “Information Asymmetry” with some real life examples. SouthPark’s Cartmann would call it “Respect My Authority”. In the context of science, getting published is the incentive (further grants will flow). The incentive of the publisher is selling expensive subscriptions to the journal to (the scientists who are published and those who want to be). Looks like a zero sum game waiting for an implosion, but that’s just me not thinking the incentive idea through. You need 3 or so other scientists to agree with you to get published. That’s called peer review. If the reviewers are published scientists too, that ups your chances of getting published. I don’t know that much about medieval guilds, and how that might relate to unions and secret societies. You should look into the connection. No doubt social scientists and historians have done it for you if you care to look for it.

End result. Those Scientists are respected Authorities (in their eco-system) The Asymmetric Information principle, writ large. You can put “journalists” in place of where I said scientists but the incentive and asymmetry still apply. They know more, so respect their authority. Except journalists don’t know shit about climate science so they quote the nearest authority that they emote with and that’s what you get for “all the news, fair and balanced”.

Then the internet and blogs and forums arrived. A serious leveling of asymmetrical information (in economic terms). Why pay stockbrokers $200 a trade for a crappy idea when you can do it your self for $7.00? In business consultant speak, it’s called “distermediation” or something like that. It’s means your information advantage and authority are vanishing fast so find a new business or do business in a different way. Media got hit first as did a lot of mail order businesses. Amazon (and anyone still alive on the net) did the brilliant customer feedback. A lot of customer comments of “this product” sucks is far more powerful than a celebrity endorsement.

Main Stream Media has been suffering. Every journalism major than didn’t get a job in the “biz” can have a web site. Every wannabe pundit or rejected TV weather girl can have a website and a fan club. They write for the love of writing or their subject or to improve their weather presentation wiggles. Hobbyists.

That motivation – “because I can”, is completely foreign to the gatekeepers, the authoritarians mind set. You used to trust me, come back, don’t look away!. Politics in the US is going through a similar “disconnect”. Sure, you can find fan clubs for your party or PAC to join on the internet. Give them money and your welcome to continue their old world order That’s not what the world is doing, IMO. Think about “incentives” when the incentive isn’t monetary.

Science has always been a secretive priesthood that has never been seriously challenged, socially or politically. Priests we pay for to divine the unknown. Often, they do a bang up job of discovery and we love to see what they discovered and what the engineers build with that new knowledge. Like feeding a billion or two or three more people than previous doomsayer scientists claimed the planet could sustain. Evolution is a brilliant discovery and so far, it works “up and pretty walking good”. Science is good.

Now we have a new batch of doomsayers, climate scientist Priests and journalist sycophants and politicians ready to suck money dick where, don’t bother to clean first. Their leftist, socialist, global government desires got in the way of the science facts. Back to past again, when priests told us who to pray too.

Oddly enough, equally smart people with no “authority” granted from on high spoke up. Laymen. Smart laymen. They realized that information asymmetry no longer exists in journalism, and it doesn’t have to exist in science. Ivory tower? Meet the future.

The gnashing of teeth of the scientists in the ivory tower of climate science and their political agenda was proceeded by the gnashing of teeth of journalists and MSM as they were marginalized. Their screams of Internet conspiracy against them drift across the moors like the banshee wails in the night. Did you hear that? Nope, not me.