Two news items

Two recent items caught my attention yesterday.  The first can be seen here, where the band and their crew denied any responsibility for the stage collapse caused by a downburst during the Indiana State Fair.  In effect, they said the victims were at fault and the construction of the stage was not responsible for the tragedy.  I discussed this event in an earlier blog posting, considering things from a different viewpoint.  It's my understanding that there's a code covering the construction of outdoor stages that, if followed, would mitigate the chances for such events as what occurred at the Indiana State Fair - but there is no substantive enforcement of that code.  Hence, I suppose the construction of the stage was formally done legally, but it evidently didn't follow the (unenforced) construction code.  To put the blame for the event on the fans is not entirely without some substance, but certainly it seems like a pretty weak defense that I suspect won't stand up in court.  Not only is it a weak defense, but I find it personally repugnant that the band and crew have chosen to wash their hands of any responsibility for what happened.

Of course, the whole process of severe weather warnings and emergency preparedness had some serious deficiencies during the event, so Sugarland should not have to shoulder the entire burden of responsibility for the fatalities and injuries.  There's plenty of folks with whom they can share that blame.  But the blame game is a matter for the courts to work out.  What I'm mostly concerned about is learning the lessons from this and similar recent events.  If the band and crew walk away without having to accept some part of the responsibility for what happened, will any other band and crew be encouraged to take the extra effort and cost to construct an outdoor stage meeting the industry's (unenforced) code?  Shouldn't there be a move in the industry to accept enforcement of this code, for the safety of those attending outdoor events? 

The second news item concerns the discovery of the source for leaked documents that were confidential information regarding the misinformation campaign on global warming by the Heartland Institute, funded by the big oil companies and other right-wing "business as usual" groups/individuals.  It seems that Peter Gleick, in seeking confirmation regarding the authenticity of documents he'd seen, obtained them directly from the Heartland Institute by posing in an email as one of the members of the institute's inner circle.  Thus, he obtained his copies by what has to be considered as an unethical process, and the climate change deniers are all up in arms about this, howling for Gleick's blood.  I certainly don't condone the unethical process by which Gleick received copies of the documents, but ...

I want to remind the climate change deniers, now in a self-righteous rage over this incident, that some of them used even less ethical methods when they hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Centre (the so-called "Climategate" affair), and obtained private emails of the scientists working at the Centre.  The deniers were dismissive at the time about any concerns regarding the ethics of how the confidential emails were obtained - instead, they were howling for answers to the charges made against the scientists associated with the research.  As it turned out, all of the scientists accused of wrongdoing were subjected to multiple investigations by various groups, and eventually were exonerated of any serious ethical breaches.  The deniers have denied the validity of those investigations, of course!  And the climate change deniers are still dismissive of any concerns about how the information leading to the "scandal" was obtained.

If the scientists associated with "climategate" were forced to answer the charges associated with revelations derived from illegally-obtained emails, then it seems to me that the Heartland Institute should be forced similarly to submit to investigations and answer to any charges derived from unethically-obtained documents.  What's good for the goose should be good for the gander!  If the ethics of obtaining information are irrelevant when considering the revelations in that information for one side of this controversy, then they should be equally irrelevant for the other side.

Congress blocks a NOAA Climate Service

Evidently, I've been living in some sort of insulated box lately, because for some reason I was amazed to learn only today -  from a colleague's tip - that Congress acted in November to prevent NOAA from establishing a climate service!  The reasons given for this decision are astonishing!  Almost as astonishing are some of the comments about NOAA's data following the story - one apparently popular comment was that NOAA's data are "science fiction"!  On what possible basis could such a statement be made by some nonscientist?  It must be the result of the colossal misinformation campaign regarding anthropogenic global climate change being conducted by such propaganda machines as the Heartland Institute - advocates of right-wing "business as usual" policies that have been instrumental in delaying any meaningful response to the potential problems associated with human-induced changes to the climate.  The climate change deniers have succeeded in this delaying tactic by using cynical political machinations, instead of providing scientifically-valid research in support of their blatant and unwarranted denial of the scientific consensus on this topic.

Months ago, I was aware that the establishment of a national climate service was being proposed by NOAA management in a rare case where management apparently was acting to provide a new service that would be helpful to the nation at a time when information about climate and climate change is critical for making important national policy decisions.  Apparently, our Congress critters have come under the sway of the influence peddlers seeking to maintain the status quo.  The decision by NOAA management to reprogram agency funds, rather than seeking new funding for this new service meant, of course, that some other NOAA services would have to be cut back or even eliminated.  While I worried about the details of how NOAA management might wish to play this zero-sum game, I still believed strongly that establishing a national climate service in NOAA was a high enough national priority to accept sacrifices in other programs in order to have this new program.

It seems that the Congress critters see it differently - even as their campaign coffers bulge with funds provided by the influence peddlers.  This must be a new low in Congressional behavior - for them to imply that NOAA is some sort of political animal can only be an example of narcissistic projection of their own faults onto this highly-respected agency.  The people who work in NOAA's constituent agencies (like the National Weather Service, the National Climate Data Center, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, etc.) are human beings and have their own political views but they also have a deep commitment to serve the needs of the nation and have no significant history of letting their political opinions affect the integrity of their work in their agencies.  It's outrageous to question the integrity of this service and, by implication, all of its employees.  Of course, no agency is populated entirely by hard-working, ethical saints, but by far the majority of people I worked with in NOAA are quite far from the widely-accepted stereotype of the bureaucratic civil service parasite.  Impugning their commitment to accurate, truthful data collection and analysis is simply an unacceptable insult to the good people I know (and the numerous good NOAA employees I don't know!)

I believe my stance regarding the administrative management of NOAA is well-known.  If you're unaware of it, you can read about it here.  When I worked for them, and since my retirement from NOAA, I've never hesitated to be critical of their management decisions when I felt those decisions were not supportive of the important work the agency needs to accomplish in order to provide the services mandated for NOAA.  I'm certainly not a NOAA shill!  I stand to gain precisely nothing from any decision by Congress regarding NOAA and its priorities.  But I still know many people in NOAA who work very hard to provide accurate data and scientific analysis of those data to help the nation make decisions regarding the weather and climate.  When NOAA management actually makes what I believe to be a good decision - creating a national climate service within NOAA - it's infuriating to learn that our elected representatives are blocking that decision for reasons that clearly are driven by right-wing political influence peddling!

We so much need to vote these bastards out of office!  Any Congress critter who supported this decision to block the formation of NOAA's climate service has shown compelling evidence of being unfit for representing the public interest and needs to be put back on the street.  They simply don't deserve the privilege of "serving" this nation!

Theocracy means misogyny

Recently, the religious right-wing has used the hot-button issue of abortion and contraception to push forward assorted legislative efforts in several red states (including Oklahoma) designed to prohibit the use of contraception and to make all forms of abortion illegal, down to spontaneous abortions!  This is a move I see as obviously motivated by those who seek to have christian theocracy in the USA.  Somewhat ironically, these "christians" want to emulate the islamic way of reducing women to mere slaves of men, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, subject to whatever their men choose to inflict on them.

The decades since women's liberation began in the 1920s apparently have been targeted by the theocratic agenda.  The hard-won gains of the women's movement are under attack, and the vehicle - the excuse - for this assault on women is religious dogma.   The religious reich has employed the usual "right to life" argument to push such extreme legislation.  The smokescreen is to limit the discussion by reducing it to the essentially endless "debate" regarding the arbitrary definition of when life begins, even as the real issue at stake here is whether or not women can maintain control over their own bodies.  Should the government even be involved in this?  I think not, but in this apparently "special" case, the religious right-wing is actually seeking government intrusion:  the control of women's bodies.  They seek to make any form of abortion illegal, including many methods of contraception.  This intended government intrusion is another ironic situation, given the right-wing's usual insistence on reducing government control.  Of course, right-wing hypocrisy includes its unswerving support of welfare for the rich, even as it seeks to eliminate welfare for the poor.  It seems this contraception-abortion conflict is in some sense consistent with other forms of right-wing logical chicanery.

I suspect the catholic church has been ecstatic to find an issue (insurance coverage including contraception for employees of catholic businesses) to distract attention from the continuing appalling revelations of child abuse by their "celibate" clergy.  They choose to characterize this contraception issue as "war" on the catholic church to try to galvanize the believers to support the clergy.  Personally, I think there should be a war-like commitment:  to an effort preventing the catholic church from trivializing the awful crimes their priesthood has perpetuated on the children who look to the priesthood for guidance and support, many of whom have gotten instead only molestation and shame in return for their trust.  The priests should be figuring out  how to reestablish trust in a meaningful way before they even consider such things as counseling women how to control their bodies - a task for which a celibate, wholly-male priesthood is pretty poorly-qualified except in theological "theory".  Of course, 90+% of catholic women are already using some form of contraception unapproved by their church.  They've already spoken on behalf of themselves by their actions.  There's a war going on here - it's that being waged by the catholic church against their own women, for the terrible "sin" of seeking to control their own bodies!

It's my sincere hope that the women of America will demonstrate their concerns regarding these issues in November - in the ballot box.  Supporters of religiously-motivated misogynist legislation need to be voted out of office, and not even given the nomination of their party for the November elections.  It's time for women to show their real power and their determination not to surrender the hard-won gains they've achieved so far.  Not all men support the subjugation of women to a "morality" that has lived on from the brutal, primitive age of scriptural times, long after it should have become mere history.  Perhaps together, we can fight for women's rights against the attack by the religious right-wing.

Wild animal issues

Some programs recently aired about wild animals ... one on 60 Minutes about wild African species being raised for hunting in Texas, one about commercial fishing pressure (I forget the station), and one on NPR about keeping wild animals as pets.  Zoos with captive wild animals have always struck me as rather sad.  The animals seem either despondent or deeply traumatized by their captive condition.  Modern zoos are better at this than they used to be, but wild animals in zoos have been taken from the environments where they belong and put into very different circumstances.  Imagine if we were captured and put on display in some alien zoo!  It's likely inappropriate to project our human feelings on animals, but watching caged animals has a very unpleasant effect on me.

The exotic African species being raised in Texas for the financial gain of the landowners via hunting permits is a troubling clash of ideals.  I'm not a fan of hunting - the idea of killing animals for sport is simply absurd to me - but if it's true that these species are becoming extinct in their native habitats, this sort of "use" may be the only way to keep the species from vanishing entirely.  Of course, the herds in Texas are very limited gene pools and so don't necessarily represent the best chance they would have for survival, which inevitably would be to allow them to roam free in the environment in which they evolved.  What's truly sad isn't the debate about African antelopes in Texas;  it's the process(es) by which these creatures are being swept from their native lands.  Loss of habitat associated with the growth of human populations and their increasing impact on the land, exploitation of the land (including the native wild animals) for human gain, killing of animals for their "medicinal" value (often in folk remedies for impotence) ... all of these are manifestations of the assumption that humans are entitled to do whatever they want to other species.  This is a kind of "species-ism" comparable to other prejudices we humans exhibit.  

Yes, I realize that humans must kill something living in order to eat, even if someone eats no animals at all.  A friend recently shared an image of wild goose carcasses pulled from a dumpster - slaughtered only for their breast meat.  That's not the behavior of someone killing to survive - it's murder for greed.  How many times is this sort of thoughtless act repeated around the world every day?  We have domestic animals we raise for the sole purpose of providing us with meat.  Is it really necessary to kill wild animals?  I know that a few people in the USA have to supplement their diet with wild game, hunted legally during the appropriate season.  I have no real problem with that.  But when our population is allowed to grow (arguably as a result of agriculture, which can have the effect of destroying habitat, as well), and urban sprawl gobbles up more and more land, hunting pressure can become threatening to wild species.  It makes no sense to me to hunt only for sport and not for survival.  If it's a beautiful animal, does it make sense for us to kill it to satisfy primitive urges that have their origins in a time when we were hunter-gatherers?

Hunting has been justified also as a way to keep populations in check.  Nevertheless, I think the animals would be better off if we returned their natural predators to the environment.  We humans kill the trophy animals, not the sick and old and crippled and unfit.  What does that do to the overall health of the prey species?  I would think it provides negative selection pressure on the strongest, healthiest members of the population.  But of course I'm not a wildlife ecologist, so I have to be cautious in any conclusion here.

It now is becoming apparent that commercial fishing is threatening many different wild fish species around the world.  New technologies not only sweep the sea clear of target species but have the side effect of sweeping up and destroying any associated non-targeted species, as well.  The commercial fishing industry seems bound and determined to put itself out of business by killing off their own livelihood in the name of big profits.  I doubt it's sustainable.

Keeping wild animals as pets is generally pretty foolish.  It has several problems:  wild animals may attack humans even if they were hand-raised by humans, wild animals have requirements for their health and well-being that can be difficult and expensive for humans to meet, the pressure to supply pet owners with wild animal captives puts a great deal of stress on native populations, and exotic imported pet species captives can escape (or even be let go!) into the wild, where they can make it hard for the native species to survive because they have no natural predators to keep them under control.  There have been attempts to make keeping wild animals as pets illegal but if there's money to be made catering to those who want to have a wild animal for a pet, the trade will continue even if it's made illegal.

I can't offer much in the way of solutions, but I feel very uncomfortable about how we behave with respect to wild animals.  Wild animals have a role to play in their native ecologies that can create big problems for us when that role is not fulfilled because the animals aren't there.  Like it or not, all species are in this together!

An evaluation of the abrahamic god hypothesis

Sorry folks, this is going to be longer than usual.  In what follows, I'm going to assume that all three major abrahamic religions (christianity, judaism, and islam) believe in what amounts to the same deity.  They differ with regard to some details about prophets and other trivia, but they all buy into the basic notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent deity.

On the one hand, we have the "god hypothesis" of the believers, and on the other hand, we have the rejection of that hypothesis by atheists (of various flavors).  I want first to consider the case on behalf of the god hypothesis in terms of evidence.

There are extensive accounts of god in the scriptures of these abrahamic religions.  These scriptures were written many centuries ago, long before the rise of empirical science as we now know it.  It's not entirely clear just who the authors of these accounts actually are and it's quite likely that they were not actual witnesses to the events in those scriptures, so their chronicles are what now would be considered hearsay.  In fact, many of the characters and events within the scriptures have not been validated in the historical record, despite their obvious importance, which should have been evident at that time, if the accounts are to be believed.  Within these scriptural accounts (which include outright factual errors about the world and its creation, historical errors, contradictions, and logical dilemmas of all sorts), the case is made that a supernatural deity long ago made his will known directly, at least to his chosen prophets and through them to "his" people, and who performed a variety of acts we would consider to be supernatural by today's scientific standards concerning how the natural world works.  The supernatural deity has not performed similar acts since the time chronicled in scripture, nor is there any credible evidence that this deity has made his wishes known to humans, directly or indirectly, since those times.  There's no scientific evidence for the efficacy of intercessory prayers.  This deity has not intervened in any evident and verifiable way in the affairs of humans over the centuries since the scriptures were written, notwithstanding the claims of those who believe the deity is "on their side" in a large number of wars, often between opposing religions.

There are various other arguments alleging to rationalize the faith believers have in the deity described within those scriptural accounts.  Some of them focus on arguments for the development of order out of apparent chaos, claiming that it simply couldn't have happened by chance.  There had to be a "designer" to explain the complexity of the natural world, by this argument.  A similar argument is based on the "beauty" of the natural world.  Beauty is a concept notorious for being relative to the eye of the beholder.  Both of these arguments (and any related derivatives thereof) are fallacious and depend on the scientific ignorance of believers.  The fact that science as yet cannot explain many aspects of the natural world doesn't mean logically that this creates a "gap" within which a creator must be inserted.  Science makes no claim to know everything, but it already has replaced many of the deity-based myths proposed in the pre-scientific era as "explanations".

So the primary case for belief in this deity is based almost totally on an uncritical acceptance of the contents of ancient documents - hearsay accounts apparently plagiarized from earlier religious myths that have precious little historical credibility - and the extremely dubious claims of latter-day charlatans.

The case on behalf of atheism is entirely a negative one:  the total absence of tangible, credible evidence for the existence of a deity as described in the abrahamic religions.  It's fundamentally impossible to prove a negative by logic alone - and there's no need to, since logic puts the burden of proof on the believer, not the skeptic.  It's up to the believer to make a case for accepting the god hypothesis.  An atheist is under no obligation to prove that god does not exist.  In fact, not all atheists actually think they know for absolute certain that god doesn't exist, so asking some atheists to prove this is to require them to prove something to which they don't subscribe.

Understand that rejection of the god hypothesis is not absolute proof there is no god.  Rather, it's based on the notion of the preponderance of evidence, or in this case, the absence of evidence.  Rejecting the god hypothesis is simply a provisional conclusion, forced on us when faced with a gaping hole in the very places where compelling evidence to accept the god hypothesis should be found.  Atheists may be able to reject the god hypothesis with extremely high confidence, but many of them are willing to acknowledge they don’t have absolute proof.  To be a freethinker, one first must accept our human fallibility and the limits on what science can do.  Believers are admitting straightaway they're not freethinkers, but rather are shackled by their faith to an irrational belief.  The god hypothesis has no explanatory power whatsoever and can’t be validated by rational thinking in the absence of evidence.

If this hypothesized deity is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then believers should be enormously advantaged in this world, and their intercessory prayers should mitigate any harm being visited on them.  That this is not the case should be compellingly obvious - I don’t need to list the vast number of counterexamples.  This then requires apologists to explain away the obvious failures of this aspect of the god hypothesis.  There are various ways to do this but they all boil down to some form of "Our god has his own reasons and we must accept this sorrow as his will, despite the clear failure of our intercessory prayers, because we can’t possibly understand his reasons."  This is nothing more than a convenient way to "save the appearances" of a failed hypothesis - a desperate attempt to explain the otherwise inexplicable contradiction of the evidence, when compared to the hypothesis.  It's a rationalization that explains nothing, if by "explanation" we mean understanding the reasons for something.

What would a universe look like if there was no god?  I propose that it would look exactly as it now looks!  The preponderance of evidence is consistent with the rejection of the god hypothesis.   

There could be another universe somewhere in which a supernatural deity intervenes in the affairs of humans on a routine basis.  Presumably, in such a universe, there would be abundant, tangible evidence of the interference of said deity.  One would need no faith to accept the hypothesis of the existence of this god because the evidence would be all around, all the time.  Intercessory prayers would work or we'd know why not!  Physical laws would be violated on a routine basis wherever and whenever the deity saw fit to interfere with those laws, and it would be clear to all that this was the result of the deity's interference, not a problem with those physical laws that necessitated revising our scientific understanding.  Presumably, in such a universe, we would understand why the omnibenevolent creator did things, because he would explain things to us in terms we could understand, like any good parent would do.  And the deity wouldn't use intermediaries (prophets) to relay information to all of us, so we'd all know exactly and directly what's going on and why.  There would be no reason to threaten us with eternal damnation because believing in him would be a trivial issue, as we now believe in gravity.  There wouldn't be thousands of different religions because it would be clear who the deity is and he would tell us clearly and directly what, if anything, he wants from us, his creations.  And this deity wouldn't be so insecure as to need our worship - if we chose to venerate him for his gifts, it would be in gratitude for his kindness rather than being compelled to do so under the threat of his punishment.  In such a universe, the deity would make sense and be worthy of veneration!

In our universe, the hypothesized "god" of abrahamic religion doesn't make any sense at all.  This supposed deity is not substantially different from all the other mythical gods created by humans before the abrahamic revolution in the Middle East.  The abrahamic deity has a number of human problems: "god" is psychotic (a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder), vengeful, bigoted (against his own creations!), a bully and a mass murderer, unworthy of the worship of a single human being.  If a deity worthy of the name "god" exists in this universe, it surely doesn't resemble the abrahamic god-figure at all!

The same old sad story

The news broke last night that Whitney Houston has died at the age of 48 years, a career cut short; apparently it was drug- and/or alchohol-related.  This is, unfortunately, just another sad tale in what has seemed to me to be an endless series of sad tales about successful entertainers, especially those in the music business.  The list is long and the names are legendary: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, John Belushi, John Candy, Jim Morrison, Len Bias, Mike Bloomfield, Lennie Bruce, Kurt Cobain, Jon Entwistle, Chris Farley, on and on and on.  The news always is shocking when it breaks, but with such a long list, perhaps no one should be astounded when a popular entertainer dies under such circumstances.  Being successful in the entertainment business can bring sorrow and death.

To seek fame and fortune is a component of the American dream, and the question of "Why?" is often asked when news of the untimely death of an entertainer breaks, even as they have achieved the fame and fortune they sought.  They seemingly have it all, and yet throw away their talent and their life.  No one becomes famous by accident, although luck clearly has a lot to do with who is selected on the path to becoming a "star".  People become famous because they seek fame, with their actions along the way the reflection of a sometimes desperate compulsion for recognition.  Most of us at least can understand this drive, as I suspect many of us envy the rich and famous precisely because of that public recognition and that seemingly endless wealth.

But the seemingly endless string of entertainer deaths as a result of drugs and alcohol is strong evidence that fame and fortune are not what we "ordinary" people think they are.  When achieved, fame doesn't seem inevitably to bring happiness and contentment for the famous.  The associated wealth can represent for some a path to a limitless drug supply with which to blot out the unhappiness they've discovered at the end of the fame rainbow.  I've always loved the line from the movie Krull: 

Prince Colwyn: The reward is freedom... and fame!
Torquil : Freedom? We have it! And fame? Nah. It's an empty purse. Count it, go broke. Eat it, go hungry. Seek it, go mad! 

Perhaps we should be grateful when fame and fortune pass us by!  They might well be the grim reaper in an attractive disguise!  Are wealth and recognition such blessings we should envy those who have them?  For some, they surely are not blessings - if they were, these rich, famous people wouldn't be so eager to drown themselves in drugs and alcohol.  A life spent in middle class anonymity, caring for loved ones, enjoying time with friends, and trying to contribute something positive to the world into which we were born, isn't a life without meaning or happiness just because we don't receive widespread public recognition and vast financial rewards for it.

I've never had a moment's temptation to try heroin or cocaine or methamphetamine, for the simple reason that the evidence is there for anyone to see: almost no one can avoid becoming addicted to these drugs, and the reward for that addiction is degradation and death.  Whitney Houston's untimely death should be a warning to those of us who feel a strong compulsion to possess fame and fortune - be careful what you wish for!

The dangers of chasing

The recent tragic and untimely death of Andy Gabrielson adds his name to the growing list of storm chasers who have died.  I didn't know Andy and what I want to say herein doesn't depend on that.  His loss is terrible for his friends and family, and painful to me, despite our never having met.  We had two other vehicle accidents claim chasers while not actually chasing, and many of us were devastated with the suicide death of another chaser.

But Andy Gabrielson's loss underscores something I long have said about chasing ... the greatest danger to chasers has been the danger we all face whenever we get in our vehicles and set out on the road to any destination.  This primary danger is not associated at all with the destination.  We lose 40,000 Americans on the road every year, but somehow most of us, including chasers, drive under the assumption that it won't happen to us!  The evidence is that with a population of roughly 300 million souls, the odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident in a year are 40,000/300,000,000 = 0.00013, or 1.3 chances in 10,000.  Pretty low probability, right?   In 2011, a terrible year for tornadoes, around 550 people died as a direct result of tornadoes.  In 2011, an anomalous year for tornado fatalities, the chances of an American dying in a tornado that year were 550/300,000,000 = 0.00000183, or 1.8 chances in a million!  No chasers died as a result of tornadoes in 2011, nor in any other year ... so far.

Storm chasing has been going on since the mid-1950s, although chasing has experienced surges of participation since then, and it now has many more participants than I ever imagined possible when I started chasing in 1972.  2012 is my 40th year of chasing.  Some of the things I've thought about chasing have proven to be pretty much wrong.  Unfortunately, my concern with the dangers of the road has proven to be justified.  You don't have to be an irresponsible "yahoo" chaser to put yourself at risk.  Any chaser on the road is at risk!

Many people are now doing this, and so we have the prospect of having more chasers killed as time passes.  Given that there may be more than 1000 storm chasers nowadays, with an ever increasing number of "extreme" chasers who are ready to flirt with the danger of being within a tornado, it seems likely that a storm eventually will claim the life of a chaser for the first time.  In my essay about chasing with responsibility and safety, I listed the primary dangers associated with chasing - in order of importance according to my essay, they are:

1. Being on the road
2. Lightning
3. The storm

We have yet to have a chaser killed by lightning.  Anyone who has chased likely has stories of near-misses by lightning strikes.  I know I have several.  Eventually, it seems inevitable that our luck will run out.  It seems that lightning inevitably will claim its first chaser life.  To me, the only question is whether or not the risks being taken by "extreme" chasers will result in the storm claiming its first fatality before lightning claims its first victim among chasers.  Apparently, based on 40+ years of storm chasing, dangers from the storm associated with storm chasing are sufficiently low that we have yet to see the first storm-related chaser fatality, despite the proliferation of what I see as stupid risks being taken by storm chasers.  I hope our luck continues.  I have no wish to see such a thing happen in my lifetime.

More on polarization

The justice system in the USA is predicated on a couple of major foundation stones:  the accused are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and a willingness to let the guilty go free to prevent the innocent from being unjustly punished for a crime.  This automatically creates a conflict between those willing to run roughshod over American judicial requirements in order to punish those guilty of crimes and those willing to run roughshod over the rights of crime victims in order to free those who may be guilty.  This has been a difficult tightrope to walk along and has become a very divisive issue in our society.

We have a huge population of people in prison today, with overcrowded jails and a massive bill to our society for warehousing all those imprisoned.  The cost of their medical care included that for catastrophic illness that may require very expensive procedures (e.g., heart transplants).  Many in our prisons have been convicted for drug offenses - victimless crimes - in the ridiculous and wasteful "war on drugs" in America.  Some fraction of our prisoners in jail for violent crime are, in fact, innocent - perhaps because the police and prosecuting attorneys are more interested in "solving" crimes than they are in justice.  Even at that, we find ourselves in a nation where violent criminals are freed routinely after serving only a fraction of their sentences (overcrowding plays a role), and they go on to commit more violent crimes, including on those seen as responsible for sending them to prison (i.e., victims).  Politically polarized debates on "law and order" versus "rights of the accused" strike me as perpetuating a system that serves justice only coincidentally.

When I was on jury duty some years ago, it became clear to me that the biggest barriers to justice are the lawyers and the judges, as well as the legislators who create the laws.  I was surprised and very pleased by my fellow jurors, who uniformly tried to do as good a job as possible within the confines of the system.  At the time, it seemed to me that the legal system was designed to thwart justice, not serve it!  I don't know of any simple fixes for this problem that I can recommend, but becoming increasingly polarized into "tough on crime" and "easy on crime" camps isn't very useful in our national struggle to achieve a criminal justice system that works for everyone, including the accused as well as the victims.

A similar problem exists regarding the social welfare system in the USA.  There are those who would eliminate the whole system in order to prevent even a single instance of welfare cheating, and they clash with those who would make eligibility easier to qualify for and expand the eligibility list.  This argument has been cast by some in terms of the futility of eliminating poverty.  It's true that there will always be poor people, and some of them choose to remain poor because they get support from the social welfare system.  But the real purpose of the welfare system is not to eliminate poverty - rather, it's to provide humanitarian support to those who would otherwise find themselves unable even to survive for lack of sufficient income.  Characterizing welfare as a program to eliminate poverty is simply a straw man argument that only serves to polarize, not solve the problem.

This debate has become increasingly ugly in the "conservative" and "liberal" camps.  It has become entangled with the whole range of issues that describe the collective platforms of these opposing points of view.  I find it really bothersome that anyone would adopt wholesale the array of policies spouted by pseudo-pundits and politicians identified with the conservative and liberal positions.  The very words conservative and liberal have become hopelessly ambiguous and, in my view, increasingly irrelevant to today's politics.  There's no political party candidate that coincides precisely with my views on a variety of issues, and neither of the two major parties have ever entertained the candidacy of a person who seems even remotely acceptable to me.  Is this a path to solving our problems?  Can we resolve the clash over social welfare by each side labeling the other with emotional epithets?  Is it "socialist" to support the notion that our society should provide for the welfare of the inevitable disadvanted part of our population?  Is it "fascism" to seek to reduce the role for government support of those disadvantaged?  Is it realistic to expect candidates to match us as individuals, point by point and issue by issue?  We can never resolve this issue in a reasonable way without compromise - a historic cornerstone of American democracy in the past.

Now we collectively seem to have lost our commitment to compromise as a political solution.  From where I sit, both parties engage in legislative and executive activities primarily as partisans, not elected officials serving the needs of all their constituents.  We traditionally have been a pluralistic society, treasuring freedom of expression for the reason that no one has a stranglehold on truth and understanding.  The GOP seems especially inclined to create a monolithic society, not a diverse one.  If you have a different viewpoint, you're accused of being a socialist and marginalized.

I'm not whining about "Why can't we just get along?" - the point is that it's becoming more important than ever to embrace the idea that not everyone agrees about things.  If the majority accept position A, that doesn't mean that position B supporters get nothing and are pushed to the edge of extinction, to say nothing of supporters of positions C, D, E, and F!  Our two-party, bipolar system, which is not constitutionally-mandated, seems to be increasingly destructive and useless.  Americans need more alternatives than what we're being offered by the two-party system!

Are we responsible for whatever happens to us?

All human beings have some measure of control over their lives.  We make a big deal of accepting personal responsibility for our lives.  I happen to be one who often has made a point of selling the notion of personal responsibility for what happens to us.  But things of late have conspired to make me reconsider what I've been saying.  There's a famous saying that appears frequently in self-help groups:

God (as I understand him) grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The significance of this, as I see it, is that many of us suffer needlessly by accepting the blame for what happens to us as a result of things that are outside of our control.  When I started smoking cigarettes many years ago, I rapidly developed a 2 pack per day habit.  I knew that cigarettes weren't good for me, but nicotine is an insidious, addictive drug and I found it difficult to break the habit.  Eventually, I quit for good, but after my years of dependency, I realized that I couldn't control the drug at all.  If I smoked one cigarette, I would smoke 40+ per day.  I know people who can smoke one or two cigarettes per day (or even less).  For me, though, I know just what would happen if I picked up another, so I've remained cigarette-free (since 1972).  My only way to control it was to abstain completely.  For some reason, having utterly nothing to do with my personal responsibility, I'm unable to control a nicotine addiction.  It's apparently an affliction with which I was born. Similar things can be said for drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling addiction, and so on.  Some people can drink or gamble in a controlled way.  Others can't.  There likely is some genetic explanation for that difference that would be outside of anyone's control.  It's not simply a lack of personal responsibility!  Almost anyone who tries cocaine or methamphetamine becomes addicted, so I understood clearly that I should never, ever try it (or a number of other things), even once.

There are other things that happen to us (or fail to happen, as the case may be) that are outside our control.  Many people can't control their weight properly, for instance.  Some of those who are able to do so often look with undisguised contempt at overweight people, thereby reinforcing the overweight person's perception that being overweight is simply a matter of laziness or revealing a lack of personal responsibility.  This attitude reinforces the self-loathing that many such people feel, almost certainly making it even more difficult to take steps to fix the situation.

And some of us, through no fault of our own, have found we have a debilitating physical condition (such as cerebral palsy - CP) that many people find disturbing or even disgusting.  As it turns out, I know a number of people with CP and have come to recognize their outward manifestation is very different from the person trapped inside that damaged body.  Aphasia resulting from various problems can create the impression that someone is stupid or ignorant.  It turns out there are many debilitating disorders, such as fibromyalgia, that have been seen in the past by many in the medical profession as a form of self-delusional weakness, but which slowly are coming to be recognized as real disorders and very much physical, not mental.  However, the sufferers still are viewed by many with that undeserved contempt.

It's been my observation that many women see themselves as ugly or even repulsive because their bodies don't match the "cover girl"/"Barbie doll" look.  They engage in all sorts of complex treatments to improve their self-image (botox, breast implants, etc.) and spend a fortune to buy a seemingly endless array of products to cover over their "imperfections".   Whole businesses have sprung up to prey on this self-imposed lack of self-acceptance.  And body image discomfort is not restricted to women!  Many men have an obsession about their penis size whenever it's not big enough to qualify as a porn movie star!  They cover up for this with puerile false boasts about the size of their "tool".  Just for the record, I don't have a particularly large penis - porn movie producers won't be beating a path to my door.  It seemed to work just fine for the specific tasks it was intended to serve, though.  Why should I be reluctant to admit a condition that was entirely outside of my control?  Does it diminish my image?  As time has passed, I've come to recognize the foolishness of being concerned about such things.

We humans seem inclined to fail to follow the wisdom of the old saying I mentioned above.  We should absolve ourselves for the responsibility for things we don't control, while at the same time working to do something about the few things over which we do exercise control.  It's not our fault but we have a personal responsibility to ourselves to make the most of what we do have, rather than dwelling on what we don't have.  There are people who can and will love us and appreciate us for what we are, not caring about what we're not, if we just let them.  Learning how to recognize the difference between what we can and can't control usually takes time and experience, unfortunately.  We shouldn't let the negative attitudes of the ignorant cause us to doubt ourselves.  Whatever our failings and inadequacies, we each have something valuable to contribute, and that we can control!

OK folks ... One more time

If you offer comments about any of my blogs, you must include your full, real name (e.g., Bill Murray).  I will not publish comments from people using incomplete names (e.g., BillM), or pseudonyms (e.g., GroundHogDay)!  If you're not willing to abide by this rule, don't waste your time and mine by sending comments on my blog entries.  I won't publish them!  If you use a false full name and I find out about it, your comments will be deleted immediately.  I have no use for "keyboard warriors" hiding behind anonymity to say whatever.  If you're not willing to own your own words, why are you bothering me?

The big American educational lie

I clearly have been the beneficiary of a lot of good fortune ... it definitely could be called "luck".  For many years, I congratulated myself because the educational process I went through culminated in my obtaining what was for me a dream job right out of graduate school.  I like to think I used that opportunity productively and became a contributor to science as a result.  At the time it happened I realized how fortunate I was - in fact, it was hard to believe things worked out that way.  But the notion that "luck is the combination of opportunity and preparedness" is only valid when there's an opportunity!  As time has passed, I've reflected on that good fortune and I've become aware of several stories of people who have not been so fortunate as I.

The big American educational lie often is part of what is spouted by the right-wing conservatives and their sycophants who oppose vehemently any social welfare program (unless it's for the benefit of rich people and corporations).  They portray the recipients of social welfare as cynical parasites, feeding at the trough of governmental largess at the expense of the rest of "hard-working Americans".  They've produced extended arguments that are little more than stereotyping of welfare recipients.  I've seen within my circle of friends some of the people who like others are unable to find good jobs and so would be included in the right-wing category of lazy layabouts.  Some of them refuse to accept welfare, in fact!  They just keep on struggling, too proud to take what they could receive from government programs.

As an example, I know one young man who went to extraordinary lengths to obtain his diploma from a university program of national repute.  In order to pay for this, since he had no financial assistance - no one to pay his academic bills (to say nothing of the cost of living) - he has had to work at menial jobs after school to pay for his education and support his family.  These jobs are far below his intellectual capability, and his wife had to help support the family by working as well.  His earlier diploma from a lesser university wasn't enough to satisfy him - he felt he had to earn a diploma that carried more clout!  So he stayed the course and graduated from this more challenging program, in a process that demanded years of sacrifices from him and his wife.  So what does he have to show for all that effort and sacrifice?  He must be living the American dream by now, right?  Actually, he has precisely ... nothing!  His diploma guaranteed him absolutely zero, of course, and he's been unable to find work in the discipline for which he worked so hard and sacrificed so much.  Seeing his plight makes me very sad, but it also makes me very much aware of the good fortune that worked in my favor during better economic times.  And to think the right-wing ideologues would unhesitatingly classify him as a parasite if he accepted welfare makes me furious!

This young man surely deserves something for all his hard work and, according to the mantra of the right-wing advocates I know, it should be his reward for all the effort he put out.  He isn't shiftless and lazy in any way - far from it!  But the big lie is that hard work and education are the keys to success in America.  The reality is that they aren't much of a guarantee of anything.  I'm not so arrogant as to infer that my good fortune was due only to my efforts - I worked hard to be prepared but I'm also willing to admit that I was the beneficiary of luck.  My young friend has not been lucky - he worked hard to obtain an education and his reward is nothing more than an empty promise.

It's infuriating to hear all this patronizing crap from the right wing about how the jobless need to get a job and earn their place in the American paradise.  It's outright rubbish to paint everyone in need of welfare as some sort of social parasite, and to preach the mantra of "Get an education and get a job!"  Even if they can somehow manage to pay the educational system what it costs to receive the "benefits" of a diploma, those institutions who were delighted to take that tuition money from their students, will shrug their shoulders when that diploma doesn't land their graduates a good-paying job in the subject area of their academic degree.  The universities hire only a small fraction of university graduates - the rest must look elsewhere.  In hard times, many graduates have a tough time finding that good job the universities seem to promise, but which is actually beyond their capability to give.  They take in that tuition money but it's no guarantee of anything!

Many welfare recipients are ashamed and embarrassed to be forced to depend on social welfare programs to survive.  Must we make needy people be ashamed of their condition, even when they did all the right things and by bad fortune, were not rewarded with their share of the American dream?

My love affair with the Great Plains

When I began storm chasing, I was obsessed with seeing tornadic storms.  As it turned out, I wasn't often successful at seeing a tornado.  Therefore, I had two simple choices:  give up storm chasing, or persist in the effort.  Giving up was not an option.  No matter what the outcome, I was going to be on the Great Plains every spring, with the purpose of chasing storms in hopes of seeing tornadoes.  It still is not clear to me why I had this passion, but what was very evident was that my success or failure on any given chase day was not important.  I felt a compulsion that simply couldn't be denied.  Failure couldn't discourage me.

What few successes I had in those early years (beginning in 1972) made it obvious that the reality of storms far exceeded my dreams!  The few successes I had in pursuing my goal to see tornadic storms far outweighed my frustrations over not seeing such on most chase days.  If this was the price of success, then I was more than willing to pay that price!  Failure became both my constant companion and an incentive to succeed.  The rest is history, now.  But what's more important even than those occasional successes is what happened in the process of not giving up in the face of frequent failure.

Storm chasing in the nominal peak of the storm chase "season" puts me on the Great Plains.  And given the likely failure of my hopes to see a tornadic storm on most chase days, this meant that I had a lot of days when I was not going to see a tornado.  If storm chasing was only about seeing tornadoes, this was not going to be a process that rewarded me frequently!  With the prospect of a lot of days when I was going to "fail" to see a tornado, I was faced with the inevitability of frequent failure.  What was I going to do with that time when I did not see a tornadic storm?

Eventually, something else began to intrude in my consciousness:  there was more to the experience than tornadic storms!  I found that by being immersed in the Great Plains, something wonderful began to happen: I was falling in love with the place!  Upon my arrival in Oklahoma for graduate school in the late 1960s, I had the odd experience of feeling "at home" in a place where I'd never lived.  Somehow, it felt as if I'd arrived "home" in a place that had never been my home.  The sights, the sounds, the smells, the "feel" of the place made it evident to me that I never wanted to be separated from it again.   To this day, I can't explain that.  I can only bow to the inevitable:  I love it here!

The powerful storms of the Great Plains are an important part of the region's attraction to me - but it's become far more than just the storms.  It includes the people of the Great Plains, the history of the place, the oceans of emptiness, the infinite skies, the sensory experiences of being there - the total experience has become what keeps me here.

For me, a storm chase involves far more than just the potential for seeing a tornadic storm.  The chance to be on the Great Plains is an opportunity to experience something special in its own right.  If that experience includes a tornadic storm, so much the better, but it's become important to me just to be there.  The chance to see a tornadic storm adds another layer of significance to the experience, but it's no longer necessary to me.

Thus, it concerns me that the plains are under threat from those who would exploit them for monetary gain.  The Great Plains are far more than simply a dumping ground, or some sort of cash cow that can be exploited for monetary gain.  I wasn't an "environmentalist" before I became a storm chaser, but I now have become one, arguing that the plains have their own beauty and value that needs to be preserved, not destroyed for the sake of profit.  They have a beauty that may not meet the eye so aggressively as the beauty of the mountains or the ocean, but they are beautiful, nonetheless.  They're no more deserving of destruction in the name of profit than the Rocky Mountains, the national wetlands, or the coastal zones.  Unfortunately, champions for the Great Plains are few.

The economic viability of the Plains is declining rapidly.  Much of the land is absentee-owned now; the owners want to make their investments pay, without regard for the damage to the ecosystems this might cause.  The small towns that have characterized the plains are dying, and so the people who characterize the best of American human values are being squeezed out by the economics.  Corporate owners care little or nothing for the Plains, per se.  Only profits matter to them.  Anything, no matter how unsustainable it might be, that creates short-term profit is acceptable.  And the small towns increasingly have only empty storefronts and abandoned farm homes to show for a once-thriving local agricultural economy.

My chase images necessarily merge the storms with the environment in which they occur.  The two are inseparable.  If you like severe storms, you must also champion the Great Plains!  To appreciate the Great Plains, you have to slow down and feel in your soul the pulse of the land.  If you can't or won't feel that pulse, then I feel sorry for you. And you don't truly appreciate severe weather.

What to do with chaser images?

I've had this conversation with several veteran chasers, and it's a vexing dilemma.  The passage of time means that some veteran storm chasers soon will be passing on (dying).  A few chasers have died already and the issue of what to do with their images remains problematic.  The question arises:  what can be done to preserve the legacy of their chasing?  There's no central  place to save the still and video imagery from their many years of chasing.  Part of the problem is that each veteran chaser may have a different wish for their imagery: they may see it as a legacy for their families, or as a source of educational material, or as a collection of commercially valuable photos/video.  Our personal wishes surely would be relevant, but - just what do we want to see happen with regard to our imagery?

Speaking only for myself, my imagery formally belongs to the corporation I formed and, as such, could be an asset that I pass on to my family to do with as they wish.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the most they could do with it would be to try to sell it for whatever they might be able to get for it.  How much might a collection of still and video images of storms (and other subjects) be worth?  I have no idea, but I'm guessing my family would have no idea of the value of my imagery, or how to obtain a reasonable price for the legacy I would leave.  Fact is, I don't know myself!  It might be a large value or it might be worth little or nothing.  Families are unlikely to know what the worth and significance of chase imagery is.  It's just "stuff" we've left behind.

The challenge I see is this:  the real value of these images likely would be associated with the context in which the images were obtained.  Some are simply cloud photographs, some represent documentation of important severe weather events, some are just interesting imagery I captured during my long career of storm chasing (40 years as of 2012).  It would be nice to have them sorted in some systematic way, but the best I can do now is to identify them by date.  It would be great to have some sort of narrative to associate with them, but to do so would be an enormous task, and my memory of them is fading with each passing year.

It might be good to have some sort of central collection point where veteran chasers could deposit their imagery in an archive.  The cost of such a "Museum of Storm Chasing" could become large.  My imagery includes film, video, and digital content.  The digital content alone, which represents only a fraction of the total, occupies almost a terabyte of storage.  The 35 mm and medium format film transparencies have mostly not been scanned into digital form.  Film must be stored in an appropriate environment and even then it deteriorates with time.  Images stored on digital media become unreadable as those media become obsolete, and they also deteriorate with time.  We have no digital media that can outlast properly stored film images right now.   Digital media are changing constantly, so images would need to be transferred to new media as the technology changes.

I'd guess I have at least another terabyte of uscanned images that, and it's likely that I actually have  several times that.  I have neither the time nor the inclination to convert all my imagery to digital format.  Let's just say for the sake of argument that I have 5 terabytes of imagery - I'm just guessing about that of course.  With the cost of digital storage devices, that's not a lot of expense these days, but organizing and managing such a database would not be a trivial, inexpensive exercise! 

If we consider the pioneers of storm chasing - Al Moller, Dave Hoadley, Gene Moore, Jim Leonard Tim Marshall, and so on - to say nothing of more recent chasers - Roger Hill, Bill Reid, Charles Edwards, and so on - this likely represents many, many terabytes of material.  What's going to happen to all of that amazing imagery as these chasers pass on?  Will it be lost or preserved as an important legacy?  I wish I knew. 

This blog isn't going to offer a solution, unfortunately.  The best I can do is open up the topic for discussion.  We all need to think about this and ask ourselves what we would like to see happen to our personal legacies of storm chasing imagery.  Do we want a central archive?  Is that even realistic?  What about commercial uses for our images?  What about scientific and/or educational uses?  Do we want them rat-holed away in some dusty archive, or do we want them actively marketed for commercial use, or what?  I just don't know.  I'm wide open to suggestions.

A passion for facts?

Of late, I've run into a lot of what I consider to be either outright factual errors, or misinterpretations of the facts.  Facts are the foundation upon which scientists base their work;  they are the observations and other evidence that provide the basis for a scientific interpretation.  Hopefully, the facts behind such an interpretation don't include errors of one sort or another.  Many different sources for errors are possible and it's widely understood in science that our facts may not be so unshakable as we hope.  The possibility of factual errors needs to be recognized in any scientific work, and efforts expended to reduce the chances for such errors to creep into the facts we use as evidence for or against our hypotheses.

We've recently seen an example of journalistic factual errors with regards to the tornadoes in Alabama - it was reported by Diane Sawyer on ABC's World News Tonight that the tornadoes "struck without warning" when the fact is that there were excellent warnings for the tornadoes, at least in terms of the current state of the science.  And information included in the story recommended that the viewers consider taking advantage of a FEMA service that, in fact, doesn't exist!  Nothing was said about weather radios and other means of obtaining weather information that people should be using to keep themselves up to date with developing hazardous weather - facts that would have been of service to the public.  Saying "It struck without warning!" is an outright factual error in this case, and no responsible journalist should ever make such an error.  But it seems we've come to accept, for the most part, that journalistic standards in the USA have deteriorated substantially.  Fact-checking has become optional, in the haste to get the story out.  Journalists should have a deep-seated passion for facts, just as scientists should, but - fact is, most journalists and even some scientists seem unconcerned about factual errors anymore.

Even if you have your facts correct, unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily mean that your interpretation of them is correct.  You may have overlooked other, mitigating facts (intentionally or otherwise) that would obviate your hypothesis, or reduce the probability that it's a correct interpretation.  In my experience with journalists these days, many of them are not only unconcerned about facts - they've also made up their minds before their research is even fairly begun.  The "story" is already written, and they're simply seeking confirmation of their story during their "research" into the story.  They have an "angle" on the story that represents a powerful bias when they should be as unbiased as is humanly  possible.  Journalists should let the facts speak for themselves, rather than imposing their will on the facts.  This is just as wrong as it is for scientists who are busy trying to confirm their interpretations, when in fact, they should be trying instead as hard as they can to refute their interpretations!  Scientists should pursue vigorously any avenue by which their ideas could be refuted, without having to be told not to overlook such things!  Anyone can overlook something, but we should try as hard as we can not to do so.  We scientists tend to be fond of our own ideas and not so fond of the ideas of our colleagues.  That is, we tend to have a "confirmation bias" - we want to accept facts that confirm our ideas and to explain away facts that refute them.  Only by being aware of this tendency and seeking actively to overcome it can good science be done.  The same can be said for journalists, who should make a professional re-commitment to fact-checking.

Confirmation bias is rampant in the political polarization that characterizes the USA right now.  Many citizens seem unaware of the fact that all humans are biased and so by default fail to work hard to overcome their personal biases. Those who give free rein to their biases allow those biases to reinforce themselves into hardened positions that can't be overcome by any rational argument, no matter how fact-based.  Journalists have a serious responsibility to help the public obtain accurate factual information and to offer as unbiased an interpretation of those facts as possible.  Unfortunately, in my experience, the facts suggest many journalists fail in this obligation.  The facts are not represented by two polar opposites having a confrontational debate, either - the shades of gray in between bipolar positions are simply not being represented.  The two sides of a polarized debate may not be equal, as is the case in the global warming "controversy".  Presenting them as equals is a factual error!

Ignorance of the facts is just as dangerous as an outright factual error.  In some discussions with which I'm familiar, various people engage in a sort of revisionist view of historical facts (such as those who claim US law is directly descended from biblical law).  A journalist who's unaware of the history of ideas and their underlying facts is ill-equipped to do interviews with people concerning those ideas.  Such journalists are easily bullied by adroit politicians, for example, as seen in most of the recent GOP debates among the candidates for President.

I'm told by some that my concern for the facts in crockumentaries is just my nerdishness showing.  Who really cares if the facts are all screwed up?  It's my belief that we all need to have a passion for the facts, and to act on recognition of our own biases and ignorance during discourse about how facts are to be interpreted.

Shifting sands of meteorology research

It's likely that most non-scientists have very little knowledge of how research gets funded and how the process works.  For many years, I was a research scientist working in the Federal Civil Service (CS) system for various agencies.  Then, when I retired from Civil Service more than 10 years ago, I began the process of research in a state-supported university.  Thus, I've seen how research gets done from two very different perspectives.

Of late, however, things have been changing.  When I was with NOAA, researchers were paid as CS employees, and were expected to pursue research topics relevant to their respective agencies.  If the research required resources beyond the salaries of the researchers, it was up to agency management to allocate whatever research funding to support those activities they might (or might not) have available.  The process of getting additional research funding was mostly aimed at your own management.  If you didn't get resources to do a particular project, then either those tasks weren't done or you did them as opportunity permitted.  As I was leaving NOAA, the process was changing, however.  The process was beginning to resemble university-based research:  projects running over a more or less fixed time scale of about 3 years, lists of deliverables, formal proposals being written to obtain funding support, with peer review, and so on.  I can't speak to what is now going on in NOAA from my own experience, but my friends suggest that the evolution of how research gets funded has continued along the lines I could see beginning as I was retiring.

Frankly, I don't think this is a particularly good development, but the process of transforming the CS research system seems irreversible.  I liked the old system, but I must admit that it permitted some folks within it to survive for decades without being very productive.  I wonder if productivity has improved under the new processes?  Some of the drones I knew personally are still employed!

In the university system, the primary funding agency has been the National Science Foundation.  I've had several NSF proposals funded and it's been very satisfying to see those projects reach fruition.  NSF has been changing its procedures to reflect pressures being brought on them as a result of the climate change controversies (among other things).  There also has been a greater emphasis on applications of NSF-sponsored research, compared to even the recent past, when basic research was the primary activity that NSF sought to support.  Things do seem to be changing.

The public surely knows very little about how NSF support for research works, so the myth perpetuated by climate change deniers that researchers are enriching themselves at public expense persists.  That such nonsense is given any credibility at all leaves me frustrated with the extent of public ignorance of reality in research.  If we expect the public to support our research, we need to be able to inform them about how it actually works.

There's some reasonable chance I'll be able to get a few more years of NSF funding support for my research. But the economic crisis underscores the reality that nothing is guaranteed.  When I was in NOAA, my own income was the only thing "guaranteed" - and even that was vulnerable to economic conditions.  The times, they are a-changing and it remains to be seen how things will evolve, of course.  As my research career winds down, it will be interesting to see just what will survive ...

On the Tebow phenomenon

I thought I'd add my two cents to the widespread discussion about Tim Tebow's football success and his personality.  Not that I have any particularly deep insight into his character - I can only react to the public persona he puts on display.

It's pretty evident that Tebow is passionate about his football and he understands two important aspects of football:  (1) it's a team game, and (2) the quarterback position demands leadership.  Tebow's public statements indicate that he wants to deflect the attention from himself to his teammates, which I have to believe plays well in the locker room, as well as on the air.  I can't possibly know the extent to which he actually believes that he doesn't rate the attention being showered upon him - but I hope his comments reflect accurately what he thinks.  Surely at least a few people in sports (and elsewhere) exist who are not all about calling attention to themselves and ignoring the necessary support from their team.  Many players, including what seems to be an inordinate percentage among wide receivers in the NFL, seem to need the attention desperately, rather than being satisfied with being successful in their team roles and helping the team win games.  It's very refreshing to hear Tebow giving praise to his teammates and not playing to the hype about him.

It's also very clear that Tebow has assumed the role of team leader, as any good quarterback should.  He isn't the best at the position the league has ever seen, at least in terms of raw quarterbacking skills, but he's proven he can carry the team to win.  In team sports, that's all that really counts.  Quarterbacks win when they can elevate the play of those around themselves - Super Bowl champion quarterbacks include some of the great quarterbacks of all time, but their ranks also include some rather midde-of-the-road quarterback talent.  Some great quarterbacks have never won a champtionship.  It remains to be seen what Tebow's future will be in that regard, of course.

It's amusing to see how the notion of a quarterback who is a threat to run the ball seems to be a new phenomenon in the NFL.  Tebow joins a long tradition of quarterbacks who can make plays by running, as well as dropping back in the pocket to throw.  It always has created problems for the defense to have to account for the quarterback as a ball carrier.  Why is this aspect of Tebow's game such a big deal in the media?  Frankly, I don't understand why it's being hyped as a new sort of quarterback play.  His size and power add a particular intensity to his running, but this is hardly the dawning of a new style of play.

If there's anything about Tebow I don't like (other than leading his Florida Gators to a win over my Oklahoma Sooners in the BCS National Championship game a few years back), it's when he pushes his religious beliefs while he's got media attention as a football player.  I have no problem with him believing whatever he wants, and pushing his religion on people in his private life, but ... he should keep his faith out of his football.  When he says he wants to thank his lord and savior jesus christ for all his success, this seems to be another aspect of his modesty.  However, it also suggests that a supernatural deity has picked sides and is helping Tebow beat other teams.  Would a supernatural deity do such a thing?  Is the almighty creator of the universe a Broncos football fan?  Frankly, the idea that Tebow's success follows from the intervention of an all-powerful deity on his behalf strikes me as arrogant, not modest.  Why should the creator of the universe want Tebow to succeed, thereby causing the failure of other players and their teams?  Doesn't that seem to suggest Tebow believes himself to be one of the omnipotent and omniscient creator's favorites?

When football players thank their deity for their success, and Tebow is only the most visible among many athletes who do this, it overlooks their mistakes and screw-ups.  Do they point to the sky on bended knee when they throw interceptions or fumble the ball?  "That one's on you, lord - my screw-up was your fault!"??

Why do I have such a problem with Tebow's open declarations of his faith?  I have no issue with him doing so in his private life to whatever extent he wishes.  But when he's granted an opportunity to gain media access to the public because of his football, then his remarks should be confined to football.  I don't turn on football games in order to hear religious proselytizing!  

To understand how utterly inappropriate this behavior is, imagine that I'm attending an international scientific conference to present a scientific paper on which I collaborated with several colleagues.  After offering acknowledgments to my colleagues, I then declare, "The same sort of rational analysis of objective evidence I've presented here, when applied to religious beliefs, provides a substantial argument against the existence of any mythical supernatural deity, often given by believers the name of god, jesus christ, or allah!"  Such a clearly irrelevant and discordant note would be an inappropriate intrusion of my personal spiritual perspective while on the stage in my role as a scientist.  I'd be pushing my opinions on people who, after all, didn't gather there to learn about my atheism.  By the same token, I find it disturbing that Tebow feels he can preach his religious beliefs from his platform as a football star.

I respect Tim Tebow as a football player, but I have no need to hear constantly about his religion.  Nor does anyone else.  He should keep that confined to his private life.

Thoughts on NCAA BCS football - part 2

Continuing where I left off ...

So I'm a fan of NCAA BCS football, for whatever reason, with the Oklahoma Sooners at the top of my short list of favorite teams.  With all the brouhaha about the post-season and the mythical national champion of BCS football being chosen primarily by polls that rank the teams subjectively and/or objectively via various arbitrary formulae, I've been forced to consider the possibility of an eventual playoff format.  I have mixed feelings about that, now.

All the other divisions of NCAA football already run playoffs to determine a national champion on the field of play, rather than being based primarily on polls.  There's no plausible logical reason why the former Division 1A couldn't or shouldn't have a playoff, other than the greed of the universities because of the money generated by post-season bowl games.  Presumably the bowl games have an inherent need to survive in any future post-season scenario involving playoffs.  This is, of course, all about the money.

And the same goes for the frantic re-alignment of the BCS conferences, with some teams now leaving one conference to join another.  Yet another case of it all being about the money.  The money drives the programs and the programs generate the money, in a nice case of the snake swallowing its own tail ...

At some point in the past, I had the naive notion that athletic competition in colleges was about sports and, for lower-level sports (referred to as "non revenue-generating" sports) like wrestling or gymnastics, or even college baseball, that's mostly what it's still about.  The student-athlete is not a myth in collegiate sports, but it is truly a vanishing species in NCAA BCS football.  The football players on NCAA BCS teams are recruited first and foremost as football athletes, not as students.  We don't care about your SAT scores, so long as they meet the minimum requirement.

In thinking about things going on with BCS football of late, I was forced to recollect my past experiences.  Thinking back, what I truly enjoyed were the traditional rivalries between teams that had long histories, going back in some cases a loooooooong ways:  OU-Texas, Michigan-Ohio State, Notre Dame-Southern California, Auburn-Alabama, and so on.  There were also lesser rivalries among teams that historically have had few aspirations to be national champions:  Minnesota-Wisconsin for the Paul Bunyan Trophy, Purdue-Indiana for the Old Oaken Bucket, Oregon-Oregon State in the "Civil War", and so on. With the ongoing demolition of conference team lineups, some old rivalries have been ended with no apparent concern for the loss of tradition.  College football with its regional rivalries had an aura of fun and friendly competition, that only marginally were related to pulling in tubs of cash.  This is being destroyed in the NCAA BCS.

In college, individual teams of the past didn't copy relentlessly the strategies used by winning teams.  College teams had personalities of various sorts and part of the fun was when teams with vastly different strategies clashed on the field.  College football had diversity in the style of play.  This is changing as the need to train NFL rookies seems to be a primary goal.  And it seems everyone must copy the style of football played in the SEC to have a chance to win a national championship.

The bowl games used to be mostly a reward for a successful season and a chance for some teams to play each other that ordinarily would not meet very often during the regular season because they were in different regions.  When the bowl games became a process increasingly focused on deciding the mythical national championship and the final rankings for the year, this fun-focused perspective on bowl games changed into something dark and filled with emotional meanings:  vindication and joy for the winners, but also humiliation and sorrow for the losers.  And the BCS formula has given us a rematch this year of a game between teams that have already met.

If NCAA BCS football eventually goes to playoff with 4 or more teams, which seems inevitable, then a champion of sorts will be determined on the field, but something else will have died.  College football will have become nearly indistinguishable from NFL football, except for the salaries paid to the players and the overall average talent level.  Most collegiate football players don't go on to play in the NFL - some play for "minor league" professional teams like arena league football, or american-style football in Europe or Canada.  But for most collegiate athletes, even at the BCS level, the end of their college playing days is the end of competitive football for them.  Interestingly, the NFL continues to draw many players from schools in the "lesser" divisions;  NFL-quality athletes are not found exclusively in the BCS.

For those not destined to become professional football players, these athletes remain mostly students and are football players only secondarily.  If their football careers are terminated prematurely by an injury, no big payoff is lost - they just get to focus their attention on academic issues, not athletic performance.

In some ways, I'd like to see a playoff for the NCAA Division 1A national championship - to see the issue settled on the playing field rather than some arbitrary process other than athletic competition.  But in other ways, I'll probably lose interest in the process.  The NCAA football game will be entirely about the money, and  the rich will likely get richer at the expense of the poor.  Another microcosm of our society, I suppose.

Thoughts on NCAA BCS football - part 1

I don't resemble an athlete in any way, and never have.  My athletic prowess is minimal and I've never had much involvement with sports on a competitive basis at any level.  I played at various sports as a boy and realized I had no talent for it.  But over the years, I became something of a sports fan - not a true fanatic, but definitely a willing spectator.  My two favorite sports are NCAA football and NCAA wrestling.  These are two very different athletic competitions:  football is one of the ultimate team sports, whereas wrestling is one of the ultimate individual sports.

Anyway, we're now in the process of winding down the NCAA football season for another year.  My favorite team, the Oklahoma Sooners, finished the year 10-3, having won the Insight Bowl game.  But it was a year that began with high expectations for a BCS national championship.  The team played really poorly in the three games they lost, including a thorough beatdown in Stillwater.  I'm among the many fans disappointed at how this year's team performed.  But a friend recently drew my attention to the long period of consistent football mediocrity at the University of Minnesota, and I regained my perspective on the Sooners.  Oklahoma football has had an incredibly long run of football success, with occasional short spans of relatively poor performance on the field.  We Sooner fans are terribly spoiled, like those of other "top tier" NCAA football teams:  Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Texas, Southern California, and so on.  To not be competing for the national championship is to fail.

It's obvious that the main result of being consistently competitive at that level is a huge fan base that essentially pays for the program's success with their ticket purchases, game concessions, purchases of team memorabilia from the university-sanctioned franchises, and huge donations from rich alumni.  The fans want their teams to be competitive at the highest possible level and are willing to pay the price to make that happen.  In fact, some fans go beyond the legal limits on what they should be doing in order to help their favorite team become successful.  This corruption is but one of the downsides to the transformation of NCAA top-tier football into a business, rather than a mere sporting event. [This transformation mirrors the transformation of universities from being educational institutions into businesses!]  As with any business, success breed more success - just as failure breeds more failure.  Big-time NCAA football schools tend to remain successful for long periods and the next tier can only hope for occasional flashes of moderate success that aren't sustained.

The BCS system emerged from the legacy of the old Division 1A within the NCAA.  But the BCS has become a huge cash cow for the universities that manage to make it to the top levels in the sport.  The bowls that form the post-season for good teams mostly are big money-makers for the sponsors.  The fans spend their money on travel as well as tickets, concessions, parking, and memorabilia.  Successful coaches command enormous salaries before they even win a game at the institution that's buying their services.  Some of the players themselves are corrupted by the vast amount of money flowing into the university coffers, wanting to get a piece of the action in exchange for their services to the success of the program.  After all, they get little or nothing in return for their contribution - except a free education, and room and board  [for which non-scholarship students (or their parents) pay many tens of thousands of dollars], which isn't valued very highly by some of these athletes who believe, with some reason, that they aren't ordinary students.  Sports agents hover around the top athletes, hoping to convince the players to buy their services and command the largest possible salaries as NFL rookies.  To many of the athletes, the university is mostly a path to the big NFL payoff to come, not an education.  In turn, the university regards their athletes as expendable assets.

I enjoyed NCAA football most at OU because the four years I spent following football at the University of Wisconsin were characterized by declining football success on their way to an extended period of mediocrity.  Of late, things have changed for Wisconsin and, although I still root for them as an alumnus, I don't have the same emotional involvement with them as I now have with OU.  Why is that?  My very first year at OU, the fall of 1967, the Sooners had a 10-1 season, winning the Orange Bowl.  Being at the games in Owen field was tremendously exciting and I was hooked as a Sooner fan.  Everyone likes a winner, of course.  When the team is winning, it's "we" are winning - when losing, it's "they" who are losing!  Clearly, I loved being associated with a winning team, like any fan, after the blah feelings I experienced in Camp Randall.

More to come in Part 2

More crockumentaries ...

I just watched an awful show on Discovery Channel:  2011:  The year the Earth went wild.  It was a long litany of distortions and outright hogwash, including blaming La Niña for all the weather events.  I also got to watch the sound bites contributed by my friends offered in support for all the terribly distorted conclusions mandated by the show's producers.  I feel for them.  I've been there, done that.  I, too have had my name associated with more than one TV "documentary" laced liberally with lies and distortions.  My sympathies to them.

The idea that the natural disasters of 2011, of which there certainly have been many, are the result of the Earth "going wild" is perhaps the most ridiculous notion of the entire program.  The premise is apparently that when bad things happen, the planet is somehow going insane.   I can't even begin to imagine what such a concept might entail.  How can a planet go insane?  It's pure nonsense.

The very idea of what is "normal" has been distorted by the producers of these crockumentaries - in reality, it's normal for the geophysical hazards of the Earth to occur at irregular intervals.  It's normal for earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, tsunamis, and so on to happen.  It's normal that in some years, more of these disasters happen than in other years.  In some years, these hazards happen normally, by bad luck, to occur in places where loss of life and vast property damage is possible.  Obviously, 2011 has had more than its "normal" share of bad geophysical disasters if you believe that every year is exactly like every other year.  But what happened in 2011 is actually part of normal geophysical processes!  Every year is not just like every other year.  It's normal for the occurrence of disasters to be variable!  It's normal for some years to have more disasters than other years!

The fact is that the Earth has been "going wild" from time to time, in one place or another, all along, for its entire history.  This is actually what is normal!  It's normal planetary geophysical behavior.  Yes, the disasters caused by geophysical hazards create immense social impacts, and people seem to feel comforted, somehow (for reasons that escape me entirely) with the reassurance that this is the planet "going wild" rather than accepting the unpleasant reality that geophysically-created disasters are not freak events.  They're normal!! The Earth is not always benign and friendly to humans - never has been and never will be - in fact, it can be downright hostile to human life and well-being from time to time.

So the show blames La Niña for all the bad weather - pure fabricated baloney!!  La Niña is but one element in a complex tapestry of processes that produce the actual weather.  To assign blame for weather disasters solely to La Niña or El Niño, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or whatever, is scientifically unjustifiable.  It's offering a pseudo-explanation to the great unwashed viewing public, rather than meaningful scientific content.  If we assign blame to some process, does this make the victims feel any better?  "Oh well, what could we expect?  It was the evil La Niña that devastated us!  Just knowing that makes it all better.  And we certainly understand it so well, now."

Makes me want to puke!!  We continue to fill the American public's mind with massive doses of bullshit!

Disbelief is not a belief!

I just saw a YouTube posting about Sam Harris taking on a believer.  But the post is not so interesting to me as the comments to follow, in which both sides offer some pretty sorry dialog on the topic.  It starts off with a comment:

Like, I'm not even a believer. I'm just comfortable saying I don't know. But even this to many atheists is morally Wrong so there have been times where I've mentioned this off hand and been accused by atheists of being soft on religion or something of that sort. They can't keep their beliefs to themselves anymore than religious people can - they have to shove it down the throats of all the rest of us.

and he goes on to say:

A lot of the atheists I've met NEED to believe in atheism in the same way that some Christians NEED to believe in Christ. Its part of their psychological anatomy. Anything that diverts from atheism represents sin (or I guess "backwardness", "obscuratsm" [sic], etc.) to them. When one feels the need to prostelyze [sic] about their beliefs at EVERY available opportunity that person is DEPENDENT on their beliefs. 

 I see this sort of nonsense all the time in Internet forums.  First of all, I have to say that it's not possible for atheism to be a belief system.  Atheism is disbelief in a deity!  Disbelief - the absence of belief - cannot logically be a belief!  If this person is, as he says, not a believer, then he's an atheist whether he realizes it or not!  The argument here seems to be a common one against atheists who choose to be open and "aggressive" about their atheism.  Just what is "aggressive" atheism?

Consider the accusation in this comment that atheists are shoving their atheism down everyone's throat.  I think what's happening is the following.  If an atheist calls the logic of religious beliefs into question, this is perceived as shoving their atheism down everyone's throat.  If atheists pursue litigation against government sponsorship of religion on the basis of the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state, this is seen as shoving atheism down everyone's throat.  If atheists respond in any way to the open advocacy of religious beliefs that appears in every possible medium all the time, then they're shoving atheism down everyone's throat.  Believers can pour out their beliefs repeatedly in every possible way but atheists can't respond in any way, it seems.

I'm probably wasting my time with this blog, but I hope at least a few readers might grasp the utter absurdity and hypocrisy of such claims about "aggressive" atheism.

Just how is questioning the logic of something forcing anything on anyone?  Yes, of course, if someone questions someone else's religious beliefs, it's common for that to be perceived as a personal attack.  Religious believers often are so deeply attached to their belief system that any logical criticism is interpreted as a personal attack on them.  Almost always, the atheist has no such intent.  The atheist  isn't even attempting to convert the believer to a belief system (which atheism logically cannot be!), but rather is attempting to get the believer to see and acknowledge the illogic of their beliefs.  It's usually the case that the believer brought the subject up in the first place and the atheist is simply responding to this.

In such discourse, believers usually resort to comments like the one in the Sam Harris video - to the effect that they're not making a scientific, logical, or evidence-based statement, but simply accepting their religious beliefs on faith.  As an atheist, I have no problem with anyone believing whatever they want on faith or evidence or whatever but, as Sam Harris suggests in the video, some belief systems are considered generally to be completely illogical and worthy only of derisive laughter, such as his example of believing that Elvis is still alive.   For the most part, atheists see most religious beliefs as in that category.  You may be offended by that contention, but using logic to question religion is not shoving anything down your throat - unless you choose to reject logic as the basis for any argument whatsoever.  If you categorically reject logic and evidence, then of course there's no point to further discourse.  Your beliefs are logically unassailable because you reject logic!  If you accept logic in, for example, scientific arguments, isn't it being consistent to apply logic to religion, as well?

People who support such things as teaching creationism in public education or putting religious icons on government property are the ones doing the shoving!  They are the ones forcing their beliefs on everyone else.  They cry "persecution" when atheists lead campaigns to oppose state sanctioning of any particular religion.  They rewrite history to create the absurd notion that the basis for our US legal system is based on religious tradition, when it is quite clear that the very opposite is true.  The religious right-wing projects their own aggressive behavior regarding their theocratic agenda onto atheists whenever those atheists speak up and oppose the destruction of the wall of separation between church and state here in the USA.  The intrusion of religion into government is fast becoming one of the serious threats to Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom in the USA.  But many believers feel that any protest against this gathering storm is "aggressive" atheism.  Apparently, they're offended by any contrary viewpoint.

The commenter I mentioned at the top of this blog is typical of some atheists, who seem to think that atheists should keep their opinions to themselves and never question anyone's beliefs.  Of course, they're entitled to their opinion.  Perhaps they feel threatened by possible reprisals against anyone who isn't a believer wearing their belief on their sleeve.  This isn't just a paranoid fantasy, of course - it's a fear backed up by reality!  Atheists are discriminated against around the world and even in the USA - that's an undeniable fact.  So for some timid atheists, the correct reaction is to shut up and quit trying to say or do anything about it.  Most atheists aren't at all focused on shoving our disbelief down anyone's throat.  You can believe anything you want, but don't force us to do so!  For the time being, we have the Constitutionally-guaranteed right and we're free to exercise that right!