Vietnam; The Worm Turns...

Orin Judd runs a website that appears to be heavily weighted toward reviewing various media.  One of the blogs I read linked to this review of Lewis Sorley's A Better War.  I'm highlighting it because it dovetails with the views of many Vietnam-era vets that I've come to respect over the years.

Namely, we had the war won, and a series of stupid and/or malicious actions threw that win away.

Why MoDo? Here's why...

Maureen Dowd is one of the many NY Times columnists whose seeming specialty is driving the sane crazy.  However, every once in a while, when she has the truth at her back and bellyful of righteous rage, it’s a joy to read her work, as in this piece demolishing the Obama Nobel Prize.  When she’s on, there are few finer, and it makes sense for the Graying Lady to have her.  And for all the grief she puts us through, that’s why we pay attention.

I just wish she could see reality as well as she can write about it.

Note: cross-posted at Don Surber's fine blog...

Ultimate Wii Controller?

Wow...

Just a thought...

It occurred to me that when we recommend a new experience to someone - a restaurant, movie, or what-have-you, we're also subtly hyping our own insightfulness...

LGF Post-Mortem

Steve McIntyre is a retired statistician who decided to fact-check the claims of the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) crowd. What he found was a disturbing lack of openness compounded by a one-way error pattern that suggested something else besides science was afoot. Recently, however, he was able to get his mitts on the key data behind the infamous, and debunked, hockey-stick graph. In this post, he lays out a case demolishing the claim.

Over the weekend, the 'good folks' at RealClimate posted a snarky, ad-hominem -laced counterattack on their website. A few things struck me, to whit:

• They signed it "group". Hey, if it's so definitive, why not put your names / handles on it?
• The worship of Al Gore struck me as odd; can't seem to remember why, though...
• I counted ten graphs in their post. If those scientists release data at the rate Keith Briffa did we should see this data by oh, 2045 or so.
• Given the well-documented underhandedness involved in getting the hockey-stick graph into the public-consciousness, why shouldn't we be very skeptical of this crowd?
• I noticed that they devoted exactly one, three sentence paragraph to directly refuting Steve's allegations. They then switched over to a ten-graph fusillade to refute Steve's post. They try to make this look like an attack from strength, but in finessing his reply they tacitly admit to Briffa's very weak hand.
  
• Q: Again, where's the data behind those graphs?

I was going to post this over on this post at LGF, but given the darkness that's descended there, I reconsidered. Given that I don't post here very often, I doubt anyone will see this or care, but I think it needs to be said. Maybe I should blog a little more often...