More from Charles W. Cooke.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Fossil Record
…doesn’t have a daily box score.
This is something that creationists don’t understand.
What Is Life?
This is an interesting interview, but Beck seems to be confusing “life” and “consciousness.” The appropriate answer to his question is something that self replicates using local resources, but that has nothing to do with AI, or uploading.
Seven Unhealthy Foods
…that turn out to be good for you. It’s hard to reconcile this, though:
…he scientific consensus on whether saturated fats are bad for us is changing. Now researchers are stressing that saturated fats like coconut oil actually lower bad cholesterol in our bodies.
With this:
If you consider popcorn something to douse with “butter-flavored topping” and shovel in your mouth at the multiplex, then keep it on the “bad” list. A study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest has concluded that movie theater popcorn—a medium tub, mind you—has 1,200 calories and 60 grams of the worst kind of saturated fat.
So what is the “worst kind of saturated fat”? I see nothing wrong with butter on popcorn (and to the degree there is, it’s the popcorn, not the butter).
She also reinforces the myth that “low calories” = “healthy.”
Mann Update
Professor Mann libeled Andrew Bolt, who demanded and got an apology. Mark Steyn has the details, along with some discussion on Mann’s colleagues’ apparent discomfiture with him and the hockey stick.
Peer Review
Over a hundred published papers have had to be withdrawn because they turned out to be computer generated:
Labbé emphasizes that the nonsense computer science papers all appeared in subscription offerings. In his view, there is little evidence that open-access publishers — which charge fees to publish manuscripts — necessarily have less stringent peer review than subscription publishers.
This sort of thing is why I pay no attention to warm mongers who tell me to publish in a peer reviewed journal. Peer review, to the degree that it’s done with any rigor at all, turned out to be “pal review” in climate science, as revealed by the CRU emails.
The EPA’s Greenhouse Regs
They had a tough day in court. I wonder if any administration has lost as many court cases as this one?
Whole Foods
It’s part of the upscale left’s war on science.
(Libertarian) John Mackey is getting rich satisfying a niche.
The Farmer’s Almanac
…is more reliable than the climate models.
No surprise here. The climate models are crap.
Judith Curry
…tells her colleagues to stop circling the climate wagons around Michael Mann.
If she does want to counter sue, I suspect she’d have no problem raising funds.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems to be the nut graf:
For the past decade, scientists have come to the defense of Michael Mann, somehow thinking that defending Michael Mann is fighting against the ‘war on science’ and is standing up for academic freedom. Its time to let Michael Mann sink or swim on his own. Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann’s science, critical of Mann’s professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann’s behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.
Yup.
[Update early afternoon]
Ken White at Popehat says that Mark has a fool for a client.
I have no comment, obviously.