Stones Cry Out

Anthony Watts calls attention to a new study on the famed/infamous "hockey stick" graph purporting to show a huge uptick in global temperatures in the 20th century.

There is a new and important study on temperature proxy reconstructions (McShane and Wyner 2010) submitted into the Annals of Applied Statistics and is listed to be published in the next issue. According to Steve McIntyre, this is one of the “top statistical journals”. This paper is a direct and serious rebuttal to the proxy reconstructions of Mann.

Proxies are things like tree rings and ice core measurements, rather than actual thermometer readings.  From the paper’s abstract:

We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts. Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago.

The first sentence says essentially that proxy data does not predict future temperatures any better than picking temperature numbers at random. 

Wow.

I imagine this study will get a good looking-over by those on both sides of the issue, but if it stands scrutiny it would be a huge blow to the anthropogenic global warming theory.  Stay tuned.

First there was the "morning after" pill, and now there’s the "five mornings after" pill.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a controversial new form of emergency contraception Friday that can prevent a pregnancy as many as five days after sex.

The decision to allow the sale of the pill, which will be marketed under the brand name "ella," was welcomed by family-planning proponents as a crucial new option to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But critics condemned the decision, arguing that it was misleading to approve ella as a contraceptive because the drug could also be used to induce an abortion.

Ella can cut the chances of becoming pregnant by about two-thirds for at least 120 hours after a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex, studies have shown. The only other emergency contraceptive on the market, the so-called morning-after pill sold as Plan B, is significantly less effective, becomes less effectual with each passing day and will not work after 72 hours.

Supporters and opponents both said the decision marked the clearest evidence of a shift in the influence of political ideology at the FDA. The last time the FDA considered an emergency contraceptive — making Plan B available without a prescription — the decision was mired in controversy amid similar concerns voiced by antiabortion activists. After repeated delays, Plan B was approved for sale to women 17 and older without a prescription.

We are being desensitized to the cheapening of life.  Abortion is significant surgery, but we can reduce it to the size of a pill.  The culture of death, and those peddling sex without consequences make a further advancement.

Good morning.

1. Stupid union tricks.
2. On the Mosque kerfuffle, our President leads the way, and his leadership has an effect, commentary from an Arabic media figure,  and a representative of the left wing media response. 
3. I have a question for those who offer that zoning should be blind to particularities of faith? What then of St. Nicholas (the Greek Orthodox church) which was an pre-existing church prior to 9/11 but which was damaged. The Greek diocese offered plans to rebuild the church but was rebuffed with the note that the height of their church should not be higher than the buildings planned for the Trade Center memorial. Oddly enough the plans for the Mosque in question are also higher than the buildings planned. It seems to me the left in their responses has a definite religious bias in their stance.
4. Statistics and preschool(ers).
5. Rockets and your toilet, two things you wouldn’t normally associate.
6. In praise of Mr Ryan.
7. Mr Geithner, on housing. Oddly enough what he said is just about exactly the same thing I wrote on Fan/Fred and their effect on the recession.
8. The Fed and the failure of monetary policy.
9. How not to do conservation.
10. Obama and the M1 Garand.

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

 #2.  Billy Graham. The Godfather  b. 1918 

Billy Graham has been the best known and most admired evangelical Christian in the world for decades. Through his early flamboyance, his clear and public Gospel preaching, his non-partisan access to the powerful, his move beyond fundamentalism, and his life of personal and ministry integrity, Billy Graham set the standard not only for evangelistic fidelity, but also as a figure admired all over the world, by believers and unbelievers alike.

While most would recognize Graham as the most visible and influential evangelical of the modern era, his shaping of the movement came primarily in the mid-20^th century. Together with Carl Henry and Harold J. Ockenga, Billy Graham was a 1950’s bridge from fundamentalist separatism to evangelical engagement. Henry rallied evangelicals to engage politics, academia, and other cultural spheres with The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in 1947. He delivered a stinging rebuke to fundamentalists who had withdrawn from these public arenas. Billy Graham delivered the decisive break between evangelicals and fundamentalists in 1957. Graham turned down invitations to preach in New York City under the sponsorship of fundamentalist churches before accepting one from the liberal Protestant Council. [1]

Graham’s actions were strategic, not careless:

“For years, Billy Graham was lambasted for inviting theological liberals — as well as people unpopular in the Evangelical South, like Martin Luther King, Jr. — to his crusades. He invariably responded that the attendees were endorsing his cause, not the other way around. Graham knew that he would alienate some co-believers, but they were people he was happy to alienate. He was in the business of leading evangelicalism back into the American mainstream by distinguishing it from hard-core fundamentalism, one of whose most irritating characteristics was “second-degree separation,” a philosophy of ostracizing other Christians simply for dealing with people considered less spiritually pure. Graham’s national reputation flourished while that of his opponents suffered.” [2]

To guard his personal life, Graham famously had a policy that he would never be alone with a woman, other than his wife Ruth. This has come to be known as the Billy Graham Rule. Rev. Rick Warren and NFL quarterback Kurt Warner have claimed to follow the rule. Warner wrote in his book that he first applied the Billy Graham Rule in his marriage by not driving the babysitter home alone.

Graham has been a spiritual adviser to twelve United States presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama (some, such as Richard Nixon, more than others). He is number seven on Gallup’s list of admired people in the 20th century.[3] It is said that Graham has preached in person to more people around the world than any other preacher in history. As of 2008, Graham’s lifetime audience, including radio and television broadcasts, topped 2.2 billion. More than 2.5 million people have come forward at his crusades to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

Although Graham has had little involvement in activities beyond his own for many years, his early accomplishments, his commitment to the singular cause of evangelism, and his long life (he has outlived most of his contemporaries and his wife, Ruth) have made him the face of evangelicals for more than a generation. Although now retired and nearly immobilized by Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, he remains the iconic figure of the movement.

 [2] TIME, Dec. 1, 2006

 [3] http://www.pollingreport.com/20th.htm

Under the state-run health plan in Massachusetts, emergency room usage has gone up, the costs to the state and to patients has gone up, and many doctors are now refusing new patient that are only covered by the state plan.  In addition, business is booming for brokers that help other firms dump their current plan for the state-run one.  "Keep your current plan"?  Not likely.

As Bruce McQuain of Q&O notes, this epic is coming to a government near you.

MassCare is almost identical to ObamaCare – many of the same people who authored it were instrumental in putting the federal monstrosity together.  Reviewing the above 4 items, I’d say they’re 0 for 4 in their promises.  The sad thing is we had this example at a state level there to study and as usual, the media wasn’t able to manage the comparison during the weeks of hype surrounding the bill before its passage.

This is you life on ObamaCare.  More money, fewer choices, less care.

That’s what happens when the gullible buy into the “something for nothing” political promises of a pack of charlatans and snake oil salesmen.

None of this should be news, especially if the media had been doing its job, but Democrats will simply, once again, come up with excuses why it won’t happen this time, and, when it fails on cue to deliver the promises they made, will convince their blind followers that indeed what we wind up with is "better" than if they’d done nothing.

I’ve seen this movie before, and it always ends badly.

Good morning.

1. Radical Islam and malaria and an argument from analogy.
2. I liked the 2nd poster.
3. Guns from the left.
4. And two from the right in response to Mr Obama’s twin statements on the Mosque near ground zero, here and here.
5. Beauty and the bike-shop.
6. Yes, that’s right “web polls” are less accurate than professional opinion polls, which for themselves are as valuable as a bucket of spit.
7. Work and the bike.
8. A little religious freedom comes to Turkey.
9. Vaccinations.
10. Talking about quantum gravity.
11. Higher education.
12. On Mr Hitchens.

Recently I was asked my opinion on anthropogenic global warming. In the ensuing discussion, there was criticism of my rejection of “the majority opinion of ‘experts'” as a good or valid method to base my position. Having rejected that, I was asked by what means, if not the majority of experts, would I personal espouse as how to base your belief or understanding of the truth behind a matter which is in contention. In the following, first I lay out a number of different methods that people use to form opinions, next I briefly describe the two methods I try to follow.  Read the rest of this entry

That’s what happens when I take a Friday vacation day.

Democrats are in a struggle with Republicans to see who can repeal portions of ObamaCare first.  And now that Harry Reid has actually read the bill, he’s finally realized that this is going to hurt the hospitals in his state more than it’s going to help them.  As much as Democrats complained about the delays in getting the thing passed, you’d think they’d have read it by the time it did.

Put Obama in the Oval Office, and he’ll repair our standing with the world…or so went the campaign thought.  A poll of Arab public opinion, supposedly an area where Bush had destroyed our credibility, shows that little had changed.  In fact, some indicators are even worse than under the eeevil Bush.

A very interesting article suggesting that Evangelical Churches are the new “Mainline” Christian churches, and that the traditionally “mainline” denominations, as they have become more liberal, shrink and thus have less influence on society (spiritually speaking).  A very good interview of Rodney Stark, who’s been following this a long time.

I’ve been asked, regarding the Tea Partier’s wish to reduce government spending, why now?  Why not during Bush or Clinton or even Reagan.  I keep saying that the spending going on now is unprecedented, and Bruce McQuain explains some of the reasons and ramifications of this spend-fest.

How’s that stimulus stimulating the economy?  Not so well, actually.

The “classy” Left, taking its usual name-calling tact against the Tea Party.  And lest you dismiss this as some loner in a basement, it’s got huge funding partners.

And finally, a study in religious tolerance from Chuck Asay.  (Click for a larger image.)

Good morning.

1. More antisemitism noted.
2. English usage corrected … or not.
3. “More” border security.
4. On that flight attendant.
5. How long will that candidate last?
6. A pair of books noted.
7. An evolutionary ethics (?!) scholar. Heh.
8. Climate and the Russian heat wave.
9. Of suffering and truth.
10. Some photo-essays.
11. Is outrage!
12. Keynesian angst.
13. The gospel is not limited to a social accomplishment, or something like that.

Good morning.

1. So you know.
2. Healthcare news.
3. An logical rhetorical fallacy can occasionally be apt. 
4. A lesson for the day.
5. Liberals and stupid numbers tricks. When chiding one news source for not being demographically “flat” noting without comment that the other similar sources are likewise not flat is just silly.
6. More on recession and supply and a reply.
7. Taxes and graphs.
8. Ooooh, GM pulls a profit, not mentioned is that they did so primarily selling SUVs and … if the Feds dump $50billion in your lap and you can’t pull a profit … well, give it up.
9. Children and dignity, fail.
10. Antisemitism.
11. Prop 8 news from a neutral corner.
12. On Eat, Pray, Love.

Good morning.

1. Parables about plagiarism.
2. Contra the latest bailout/stimulus bill.
3. A left handed defense of Mr Bloom.
4. Stirring up fear.
5. Soteriology and praxis.
6. Debt and growth.
7. A challenge for the Keynsian.
8. Nuclear weapons and the Administration.
9. On Market … hey, that gives me an idea … when businesses fail they cease to exist, maybe we should have a policy of “failing” and terminating, say, three government agencies every year based on their effectiveness.
10. This is not unrelated to the above.
11. Hmm, I don’t think I’ve heard a dumber idea in a long time.

Paul Krugman has often touted the wonders of the information coming out of the Congressional Budge Office (CBO).  This was especially true during the health care bill and stimulus debates.  James Taranto hits some of the highlights.

“The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the future of American health insurance, and it works. . . . Last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news–which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis–was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care.”–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 6, 2009

“Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded, the proposed legislation would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. And by giving us a chance, finally, to rein in the ever-growing spending of Medicare, it would greatly improve our long-run fiscal prospects.”–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2009

“The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2050 the emissions limits in recent proposed legislation would reduce real G.D.P. by between 1 percent and 3.5 percent from what it would otherwise have been. If we split the difference, that says that emissions limits would slow the economy’s annual growth over the next 40 years by around one-twentieth of a percentage point–from 2.37 percent to 2.32 percent. That’s not much.”–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 7, 2009

“Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the roadmap [for cutting Medicare costs, offered by Rep. Paul Ryan], offers a translation: ‘Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.’ In short, there would be Medicare cuts.”–Krugman, New York Times, Feb. 12, 2010

“And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform [ObamaCare] will look better in its second decade than it did in its first.”–Krugman, New York Times, March 12, 2010

“As Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently put it, ‘There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.’ “–Krugman, New York Times, July 2, 2010

“That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus.”–Krugman, New York Times, July 5, 2010

But as soon as a Republican starts to use CBO numbers to show how his plan for overhauling federal spending and taxes, well suddenly it is simplicity itself to game the system.

“What you need to realize is that the CBO is the servant of members of Congress, which means that if a Congressman asks it to analyze a plan under certain assumptions, it will do just that–no matter how unrealistic the assumptions may be.”–Krugman, NYTimes.com, Aug. 6, 2010

This bit of information would have been good to give to his readers back in the day.  You know, those readers who take everything he says at face value.

Good morning.

1. Morning … in photo.
2. A response to a liberal charge of bigotry.
3. Problems with the standard story on Hiroshima.
4. Uhm, they need to add the “new” adjective to that post. For example, I bought a used Insight and economy wise I think I did pretty good compared to that Mercedes, e.g., driving from Chicago to Atlanta on less than 10 gallons of gas.
5. Zapp.
6. Ethnicity and church.
7. Climate.
8. An economic prescription for future growth and prosperity, which doesn’t involved more and more failing debt and stimulus.
9. A lawyer looks at case-law involving birthplace and citizenship.
10. Laffer curve and a poll (for myself I think the guy whose link I followed to get there was right).
11. The descent of cute.
12. Euro debt.
13. On the Ryan thing, here and the related Krugman stupidity here.

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#6.  Charles Colson. Statesman  b. 1931 

Chuck Colson (painting by Tim Chambers)

It is no exaggeration to say that that the Christian conversion of Charles Colson in 1973 stands in stature and impact among the modern era’s most visible and consequential. The startling front-page news that Colson had found Christ raised eyebrows throughout the country and struck fear in a White House besieged by Watergate and not anxious to see one of its defendants find the confession booth. But the enduring impact of Colson is not only the public conversion of a political scoundrel, but his lifelong ministry to the imprisoned, the evidence of intellectual support for the leap of faith, his pioneering analysis of daily news in light of ancient Scripture, his surprising emphasis on church unity, and as a senior leader his behind-the-scenes influence in the halls of power.

One could easily make the case that Colson is the central evangelical figure in the last generation. He was not the most visible, popular, best-selling, controversial, quoted, or cited—but he is among the leaders in all of those categories. At the same time, much of his influence is behind the scenes and through his profound influence on influencers.

I saw much of this unfold as an associate, aide, and consultant to Colson over nearly two decades, from the early 80s into the new millenium, serving for part of that time as his chief of staff, and—as he would occasionally say with a chuckle—his hatchet man. 

Chuck Colson’s life and work has had an enormous impact in at least these five areas:

Conversion

Colson was known as the White House “hatchet man,” a man feared by even the most powerful politicos during his four years of service to President Nixon. When news of Colson’s conversion to Christianity leaked to the press in 1973, the Boston Globe reported, “If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody.” Colson would agree. He admits he was guilty of political “dirty tricks” and willing to do almost anything for the cause of his president and his party.

“My conversion kept the political cartoonists of America clothed and fed for months. The cartoons were all somewhat the same: a picture of me in a monk’s habit, standing outside the White House fence, with a sign that read: Repent!

“But before my conversion I wasn’t nearly as bad as I was made out to be,” Colson told me, “And I’m not nearly as good as a Christian as I’m made out to be. But it makes for a great testimony!”

 That testimony is usually confused in the re-telling, with the story including a Watergate conviction that resulted in a prison sentence for Colson, and while in prison sentence he turned to God. The facts are that Colson, in the midst of the Watergate hearings, dramatically came to faith in Christ in 1973, and as a result of his new faith and life, he decided, in 1974, to plead guilty to a charge that was related to Nixonian dirty tricks (but not directed related to the Watergate break-in or cover-up). Colson was sentenced to prison on the basis of the guilty plea and he entered prison as a Christian and began his conversion memoir, Born Again, during his seven months in prison. Born Again was one of the nation’s best-selling books of all genres in 1976 and was made into a feature-length film.

His heavily publicized commitment to Jesus Christ as a highly visible public figure has been instrumental in many conversions among, for the lack of a better word, the elite in this nation and around the world. 

 Prison Ministry

Because Chuck Colson began his Christian life in prison, the needs of prisoners and the failures of the criminal justice system were among the first problems that God brought to his attention, the commitment he made to help those prisoners is a promise he has never broken. The attention he brought to prison ministry has changed the church.

 Upon his release Colson founded Prison Fellowship (in 1976), which has become the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families. Christians had been ministering to people in prison throughout the history of the church, but it had never had scale and visibility; neither was it well-funded. As a result of Chuck Colson’s intelligence, notoriety, communications skills, organizing ability, and fundraising prowess, Prison Fellowship has grown to unimaginable proportions (for a prison ministry), and prison outreach has become a prominent part of church programming. [Many of Prison Fellowship’s largest donors had only marginal interest in prison work. As one major contributor told me: “If Chuck asked me to support a basket-weaving ministry, I’d do it.” We called this part of the donor base “Colson groupies.”

 Applying a Christian Worldview to Secular Culture

It wasn’t long after he began Prison Fellowship, that Colson sensed God’s calling to comment on the culture and the church’s interaction with the culture through the written and spoken word. It was clear immediately his knowledge and life experiences were unique among Christian leaders. Colson called on Christians to begin each day “with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” After his two autobiographic books that described his conversion (Born Again) and the beginning of the prison ministry (Life Sentence), he moved markedly toward a critique of church and culture, beginning with Loving God in 1983, often using illustrations from the rough world of prison ministry to make his larger points.

 In later years, perhaps sensing his own mortality, Colson began a center to train a new generation of leaders to renew the church and revitalize the culture. Colson describes this as a new effort “to be salt and light, rubbed into the culture in such a way that the people and institutions around us slowly begin to understand that they have embraced the Lie, and to replace it with the Truth of a biblical understanding of all of reality.”

 Colson has written 20 books, which have collectively sold more than five million copies, and his 4-minute daily radio commentary, BreakPoint, has been a popular daily word for Christians.

 Influence in the Political Arena

His 1987 his book Kingdoms in Conflict (updated in 2007 as God and Government) was a best-selling directive to the Christian community on the proper relationships of church and state, and it positioned Colson as a centrist evangelical voice for balanced Christian political activism. (Pat Robertson’s presidential run made the original release of Kingdoms) a big hit. That influence continued over the next 20 years, often behind the scenes. 

 In Faith in the Halls of Power, Michael Lindsay writes that Colson is the evangelical “movement leader who seemed to have the greatest influence” in Washington. More than a quarter of the senior political leaders he interviewed mentioned Colson by name when asked about the “most influential” evangelical leaders, more than the SBC’s Richard Land or Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins (no one mentioned James Dobson).[1]

 Seeking Christian Unity

Colson’s commitment to the unity of the Church led to his co-authorship (with Father Richard John Neuhaus) of a cutting-edge document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” that significantly helped to build an important bridge between Protestants and Catholics.  Seeking  commonality with the orthodox Christian faith and working to bring the church together is perhaps Colson’s most courageous and controversial act, with a number of conservative evangelicals at least privately critical of his actions, and many publicly dismissive of the ECT initiative. Colson’s book The Faith was a remarkable effort to identify the common tenets of the Christian faith. 

 In recognition of his work, Colson received the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993, donating the $1 million prize to Prison Fellowship. Colson’s other awards have included the Humanitarian Award, Dominos Pizza Corporation (1991); The Others Award, The Salvation Army (1990); several honorary doctorates from various colleges and universities (1982-2000); and the Outstanding Young Man of Boston, Chamber of Commerce (1960).