Jim’s Random Notes

Spalting is discoloration of wood caused by fungus, most often during decay.  It can happen to diseased or stressed trees, and rarely in live, healthy trees.  Spalting can create some very beautiful colorations in the wood, as it did in the piece of maple where I found this little dog hiding.

As I said, spalting occurs during decay.  Another side effect of decay is that the wood often becomes softer (sometimes a good thing) and more likely to splinter (not a good thing).  This piece was quite prone to splinter, causing me to lose the tail, half of the left foot, and part of an ear.  Still, I love the color and I think this is the best face I’ve done yet.

The President unveiled his new budget today: 3.83 trillion dollars. The numbers fairly boggle the mind. The total budget works out to just about $12,500 per person in the United States, or about $47,500 per family. Or $34,800 for each of the 110 million taxpayers in the country. Of course, 41% (about $1.56 trillion) is deficit spending, meaning that 41 cents of every dollar the government spends in fiscal year 2011 will be paid for (supposedly) in the future. But with an existing debt of $12.5 trillion, this year’s budget will push the accumulated national debt past $14 trillion: about the same as the U.S. Gross Domestic Produce. Interest on the debt alone amounts to about $175 billion per year, or about $2,200 per family, 25% of which ends up in the treasuries of other countries that hold U.S. debt securities.

This year, total government debt will exceed total income for the entire country. The White House budget office says that debt will remain at that level through 2019 (that is, debt will roughly equal GDP), but those projections rely on GDP growing faster than most analysts say it can. At $14 trillion, national debt is almost 20% of all household and business assets in the entire country. If government spending continues at this rate, the accumulated federal debt alone will exceed total assets in 20 years or so. That doesn’t include the approximately $40 trillion (currently) in debt owed by local and state governments, corporations, and individuals.

I won’t try to lay the blame for this situation on the President. Not on the current President, and not on the former Presidents. Undoubtedly, they all have contributed to it by proposing budgets that fund pet projects or further their own agendas, but that’s to be expected. No, the real blame lies with Congress for approving such outrageous spending over the decades, and with us–the American voter and taxpayer–for continuing to allow it.

The President on Wednesday announced a proposed spending freeze on domestic discretionary spending as a way of trying to get the deficit under control. As laudable as that is (any freeze or decrease in government spending gets my vote), it’s pretty difficult to take it seriously. He’s talking about a projected “savings” of about $250 billion over the next 10 years. That’s less than 3% of the total debt expected to accumulate over that period, or about 1% of total spending. And it’s highly unlikely that Congress will approve even that miniscule spending reduction.

The President is in a tough spot because there are programs he positively cannot touch. Even if he were willing to forego re-election, there’s no way Congress would approve cuts in those programs. Doing so is tantamount to political suicide. What programs? I’m so glad you asked.

The following numbers are from the FY 2010 budget

• Social Security is 19.63% of the budget. 13% of the people in this country are over 65 years of age, and a very large percentage of them vote. Need I say more?
• Medicare is 12.79% of the budget. See above.
• Unemployment, welfare, and other “mandatory spending” is 16.13% of the budget. Almost untouchable, regardless of which party controls Congress.
• Medicaid and associated programs: 8.19%. Ditto.
• Interest on the national debt: 4.63%.  Can’t have us defaulting on our debt.

When you throw in the Department of Defense share of 18.74%, the total comes to 80.11% of the budget that the President has almost no control over. The budget is 20% over revenue before the President even gets to attempt spending reduction. Think of that: if you cut out military and all government spending other than the programs I mentioned above, we’d still have a budget deficit.

This is nothing new, by the way. I remember the same math being presented to me in 1981 or 1982. If anything, the President has fewer options today than Reagan did back then.

I see three ways out of this mess: Reduce spending, raise taxes, or somehow increase GDP by about 50% so that current tax rates will cover the deficit. In the current climate, spending reductions and tax increases are political suicide, and a 50% increase in GDP is impossible. Tax increases are less suicidal in most cases, and they have the “benefit” (in political terms) of pissing off fewer people, so that’s the route Congress will likely take in an attempt to prevent the inevitable. Even so, there’s no way they can make up a 40% budget deficit (or even a 20% deficit) with tax increases.

No. I guess I don’t see any way out of this mess. Our spending is out of control and there isn’t anybody in a position to slow or stop it.  It’s a frightening thought.

Yesterday, a friend of mine trotted out that old urban legend about using WD-40 to ease the pain of arthritis.  I tried to tell him it was a myth, but he didn’t believe me.  His argument:  fish oil is known to help relieve arthritis pain, and WD-40 contains fish oil.  Oh, boy.

First, the manufacturer of WD-40 recommends against putting their product on your skin.  In addition, WD-40 does not contain fish oil, as you can see by reading their Material Safety Data Sheet.  It’s mostly petroleum distillates, and I certainly wouldn’t want those passing through my skin and into the joints.  Now there’s a thought.  Can they?  We’ll get back to that.

So what about fish oil, anyway?  It turns out that there is some evidence that fish oil can reduce the swelling associated with rheumatoid arthritis.  That is, fish oil that’s taken as a dietary supplement.  There is no evidence that rubbing fish oil on your skin will have any measurable effect other than that provided by the act of massaging.  The fish oil can’t pass through the skin in sufficient quantity to have any effect.

Along the same lines, there are countless sites pushing “natural” skin care products that warn of the dangers your cosmetics pose.  A popular myth seems to be that a woman will absorb between 5 and 20 pounds of skin care chemicals through her skin per year.  If you believe those claims, a woman’s body is a veritable toxic waste dump.  That claim is more absurd than the colon cleansing sites’ claim that I have 5 to 20 pounds of stuff stuck to my colon, “like spackle or paste.”  But I digress.

Back to the point.  Is it even possible for WD-40 to pass through the skin?

There are some chemicals that do pass through the skin very easily.  Probably the best known is DMSO.  Although not toxic itself, DMSO is a very powerful solvent that can carry through the skin the things that it dissolves.  Unfortunately, I’ve not found a list of other chemicals that are as easily absorbed.

The primary ingredients in WD-40 are petroleum distillates, specifically alphatic hydrocarbons and petroleum based oil.  Everything I’ve been able to find shows that the danger of absorbing these chemicals through the skin is very low, provided you don’t have any cuts or open sores.  I suppose if you bathed in it for an hour every day you might get some under the skin.  It’s unlikely, however, that the effects would be good.  It almost certainly wouldn’t relieve the aching joints.

I’ve found it rather difficult to find good information about the permeability of skin to different substances.  What I’d really like to see is a list of chemicals (including common names, where applicable) that gives an indication of the danger of skin absorption.  It’d be difficult to do that in a single list, though.  Some chemicals will pass through the skin readily, but pose no real health hazard.  Others might have more difficulty passing through the skin, but pose an extreme hazard if they get into the bloodstream.

 I did run across a couple of interesting links having to do with the dangers of absorbing jet fuel and gasoline.  The article Assessment of Skin Absorption and Penetration of JP-8 Jet Fuel and Its Components, published in Toxicology Sciences, says in its abstract:

These results suggest: (1) that JP-8 penetration will not cause systemic toxicity because of low fluxes of all the components; and (2) the absorption of aliphatic components into the skin may be a cause of skin irritation.

In other words, you might absorb a bit of it and it might irritate your skin, but it’s unlikely to cause major problems.

According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety’s Health Effects of Gasoline:

When gasoline is NOT trapped against the skin and can freely evaporate, it is probably only mildly irritating or not irritating. However, case reports indicate that when gasoline is trapped against the skin (clothing is soaked in gasoline, skin is in contact with a puddle) for a long period (probably more than 30 minutes), serious burns and skin loss may occur. Absorption through the skin occurs, but is normally not significant.

All the research I’ve found about the dangers of gasoline and diesel indicates that the real dangers are in inhaling, ingesting, or getting it into the body through a tear in the skin.  I wouldn’t soak my hand in gasoline, but I wouldn’t worry too much about a few splashes on the skin.

Some friends who work in auto repair report sometimes using brake fluid as a hand cleaner.  This is probably a bad idea, but not disastrous.  Most brake fluids are glycol-ether based.  I’m not certain, but it looks like all of these solvents are quite toxic if ingested.  There is some evidence of skin absorption through lesions, but I wasn’t able to find any solid information on absorption through intact skin.  Again, I doubt that there’s much danger if you’re not soaking in it.

An interesting resource for the more technically minded is the Skin Permeation Calculator available from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.  You’ll need to know the CAS Number  for a particular chemical, or have its molecular weight and a number called the LOGKOW.  Given those two numbers, the calculator will give you some numbers that indicate how easily the chemical will pass through the skin.  I don’t yet know enough to make good use of that information, though.

You can find the CAS Number for lots of different chemicals from the NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. Unfortunately, the Skin Permeation Calculator doesn’t recognize all of the CAS Numbers and the NIOSH data lists the molecular weight, but not the log K_OW.  So you end up having to find the CAS and use it to search the LOGKOW database.

I’d be interested in hearing about any list like the one I described above:  substances listed by danger of absorbing them through the skin.  Anybody have a link?  I’d hate to have to download those databases and run the numbers myself.

A lot of wood carvers have tried their hands at Rufus and Sadie from Harold Enlow’s book, Carving Figure Caricatures in the Ozark Style.  This, perhaps, isn’t the best rendition ever, but I had fun with it.  The little dog is from a piece of cedar.

We should see some small measure of sanity emerge from the election of Republican Scott Brown to fill the vacant Senate seat left by the death of Senator Kennedy.  I think it’s dangerous for any single party to control the White House and both houses of Congress.  We only have to go back to the first of G.W. Bush’s terms to see the kind of excesses such power can lead to.

I’m also happy to see that Democrats have decided not to do something rash like try to jam the health care bill through before the new Senator can be seated.  I doubt that they’d have the votes to do it, but just trying would almost certainly lead to a huge defeat for incumbent Democrats in this November’s election, giving Republicans total control of both houses:  another bad thing.  We’re much safer when neither party has an overwhelming majority in Congress.  We’re safest, of course, when Congress is out of session, but if we must have them mucking things up it’s best if we make it difficult for them.

Congress very often makes what amount to irrevocable decisions.  They’re not technically irrevocable, but they’re usually hard enough to change as to be permanent.  Such things should be done judiciously, not primarily to fit the controlling party’s agenda or to garner votes or to show the public that Congress is “Doing Something”, but rather because in the considered opinion of our Senators and Representatives, it’s the right thing to do for the good of the country.  I see very little of that rationality in Washington, and even less when one of the two major parties has a virtual stranglehold on the lawmaking process.

Unfortunately, I fear that both parties will misinterpret the results of yesterday’s election.  Republicans will call it a “mandate for change” (how often have I heard that one?) or a repudiation of the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda.  Democrats will call it reactionary, blame the tea party movement for hijacking the election, or think that the problem is that they haven’t done enough soon enough.

I think the message is quite a bit simpler:  large numbers of people who normally don’t vote are fed up.  They want want smaller and less intrusive government.  This is their first step in making their voices heard.  They’re neither Democrat nor Republican, but rather people who are tired of “business as usual.”  I’d like to think that others will make their voices heard come November, but if incumbents have any brains (and I’ve never accused them of being stupid), they’ll lay low and not make any waves so that 10 months from now people will have forgotten and won’t have anything recent to complain about.

The story is told of a man who becomes convinced that he’s dead.  At first, his family tries to logic:  “Look, you’re walking and breathing and talking.  You can’t possibly be dead!”  Failing that, they referred him to a psychiatrist who tried the same line of reasoning, again to no avail.  The man is eventually committed to a mental institution, still firmly convinced that he is dead, and daily visits with the doctors have no effect on changing his mind.

After some time, a new psychiatrist is assigned his case.  The new doctor has a new idea, and walks his patient through the medical texts to convince the man of one fact:  dead men don’t bleed.  After weeks of poring over the texts and other relevant information, the man concedes the point:  dead men do not bleed.

The doctor then takes a pin and pricks the man’s finger.  As you would expect, a drop of blood begins to well up in the tip of the patient’s finger.  Looking at it, astounded, the man exclaims, “Hey, Doc!  Dead men do bleed!”

How often do you run into people who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, continue clinging to their own preconceived notions in much the same way as the man who was convinced that he was dead?

Better yet, have you ever found yourself holding tightly to a particular belief long after you have seen sufficient evidence to prove that you’re dead wrong?

The ability to re-examine and modify (or discard) your beliefs in the face of contrary evidence and admit it is perhaps the most important mark of intellectual maturity.

This carving is my rendition of Mike Shipley’s “Barry the Bear” from his book Woodcarving the Country Bear & His Friends.  I deviated from the pattern quite a bit on the details, but it’s pretty clear where the original idea came from.

Barry is about 4 inches tall.  It was another project for my carving class.

Last summer, I signed up to participate in the Christmas ornament swap organized by some members of the Woodcarving Illustrated message board.  I ended up sending out 22 ornaments and getting 16 or 18 back.  The other four went to people who were involved, but not participating.  I didn’t get pictures of all the ornaments I received because I failed to do that before Debra packed them away.  But I did get a pretty good picture of the little tree filled with hand carved ornaments.  A few are mine, but most I received from others.  Click on the image below for a full sized view.

In a thinly reported move the other day, House and Senate Democratic leaders decided to “fast track” coming up with a compromise health care bill.  Rather than forming the usual conference committee that includes members from both parties, the fast track approach will be held behind closed doors and include only the Democratic leadership from both houses, along with representatives from the Obama administration.  The plan is for the House to amend the Senate’s health care bill and then pass the result to the Senate for ratification.

The President, who a year ago said that his approach would involve “bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are,”  is now meeting in secret to force through unpopular legislation?  So much for campaign promises, bipartisanship, and open government.

I believe that the proposed health care finance legislation being considered is a bad idea, in large part due to the reasons I pointed out in my January 2003 blog entry, The Fallacy of Affordable Health Insurance.  The Administration and its Democratic lackies pay lip service to those arguments, but there’s little in the way of effective cost containment in the proposed legislation.  There are, however, plenty of instances of filling dissenters’ mouths with gold, the most egregious being the part that has the Federal government pay for the expansion of Medicaid in Nebraska.  Forever.  Funny how Sen. Nelson of Nebraska changed his vote after that bit was added.

The Democratic Congressional leadership and the Obama administration should not be taking this behind closed doors approach to the health care legislation.  Or any legislation, come to think of it.  They promised us open government, only to revert to business as usual whenever it looks like things aren’t going their way.  I know that the President wants health care legislation passed before his State of the Union speech, but doing it this way goes against everything he said he holds dear.

I said that I’d give President Obama a chance to see if he really does live up to the standards that he set forth.  If he continues on this course, I’ll know that he’s no better than any other politician who puts his and his party’s agenda ahead of the good of the nation.  I’m not terribly surprised, and I suppose I shouldn’t be disappointed.

Updated.  See below.

I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to get the Malware Defense “anti-spyware” program on my system at home.  Fortunately for me, it doesn’t do anything malicious like delete files or install botnet sofware.  It just continually pops up virus warnings and giving opportunities to install.  For a price, of course.  If you pay, they go away.

The removal instructions I came across weren’t complete, as I completed those steps, rebooted the system, and the thing came right back.  I finally tracked down and eliminated the richtx64.exe trojan, which I think is what was re-running Malware Defense.

I’ve been running my computer for years without any kind of active anti-virus or such, and this is the first time I’ve ever been infected.  Now I’m not sure what to do.  I certainly won’t go back to Norton after the troubles I’ve had with them, and I don’t hear good reports about McAfee’s offering, either.  Is there a good anti-virus, anti-malware package that works, is inexpensive, and doesn’t take inordinate amounts of CPU time?

Update 12/28:

It took a while, but with some research and downloading and running a few cleanup utilities, it looks like I was successful in disinfecting the computer.  The thing kept getting re-infected whenever I’d reboot, and it would prevent me from installing or running common anti-malware utilities.  I found a program called rkill that kills common malware processes, and then I could install and run cleanup software.  This morning, a complete scan with Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware reported zero problems.  I then installed Microsoft Security Essentials from a file that I downloaded from a different (uninfected) computer.  It reports no problems.

Darrin Chandler brings up an interesting point in the comments:  it’s all a matter of weighing the risks.  I’ve gone years without any kind of malware problems.  Even when I had anti-malware applications installed, they never reported that they’d blocked anything.  And those programs are very quick to notify whenever they see anything even vaguely suspicious.  So, as Darrin points out, my risk of being infected is pretty small.  However, the cost of being infected is fairly high.  It cost me most of a day to get rid of it.  And I was fortunate that it doesn’t seem to have deleted any files.  I have no idea if it copied anything from me.  I’m not too worried since I don’t keep financial information on this machine.

I’m hoping that Microsoft Security Essentials works well and doesn’t cause problems by being too chatty or sucking down too many resources.  We’ll see how it goes.

One of the dubious benefits of owning a swimming pool is that I don’t really have to rake the leaves in my back yard.  I just have to wait for a good wind storm to blow them into the pool, where I can then skim them out.  This convenience doesn’t come for free, though.  They sink if I let them stay in the pool too long, and removing them from the bottom is much more difficult.  Also, they have a tendency to clog up the filter trap, which then causes the pump to suck air.  And, of course, this tends to happen on the coldest night of the year so I can’t just turn off the pump because if I do it might freeze.

Actually, I do rake the leaves.  I cleaned the yard last weekend, but a couple of the oak trees hadn’t yet dropped all their leaves.  They dropped over the week, and Thursday’s cold and high winds put them into the pool.  I spent a cold 30 minutes on Thursday evening cleaning them out.

Debra and I went to an early showing of the movie Avatar yesterday.  I was seriously impressed.  It was somewhat predictable, but other than that I loved it.  Some people I know complained that it was a heavy-handed “tree hugger” movie, but I didn’t see it that way.  I can see where one could make that argument, but then you can make that argument about a large number of movies made over the last 50 years or more.  It’s an underdog movie.  In any event, it’s very well done.  I loved that hammerhead rhino.

While I’m on the subject of Avatar…  The MPAA rating is PG-13 “intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking.”  There are indeed “intense epic battle sequences and warfare.’  There is vanishingly little sensuality and even less “language.”  Whatever.  But smoking?  What is that all about?  We have to warn parents ’cause their kids might see somebody smoking?

Christmas was relaxing.  Other than going to the movie, Debra and I stayed at home, took Charlie for a walk, and generally just enjoyed time together.  A wonderful way to spend a day off.

Until recently, all of my carving “instruction” was through books, web sites, and YouTube videos.  I guess you could say that I was “self taught” in that I didn’t have the benefit of personal instruction, but I have to give credit for my improvement to the authors and especially those who made the carving videos.

Back in the summer I stumbled across a picture tutorial for carving a hillbilly in the flat plane style.  With step by step instructions and almost 60 pictures, it walks you through turning a 6″x1″x1″ block of wood into this:

I did most of the carving last summer, but hadn’t finished texturing the beard.  Last week I saw it sitting unfinished on my shelf and decided to complete it.

I started taking a beginning carving class from a member of my woodcarving club (Central Texas Woodcarvers Association) about four weeks ago.  The second project we did was a snake, carved from a piece of aromatic cedar:

The primary purpose of the exercise was to introduce the concept of “reading” the wood and working with grain changes.  I sanded it smooth and left it unfinished because I didn’t want to mask that nice cedar smell.

And I keep carving these little dogs.  I carved a dozen or more from basswood, and at least a dozen from other woods:  oak, maple, mesquite, cherry, and walnut.  In the picture below, the small one is cherry and the larger one is walnut.  Both are finished with a mixture of oil and wax.  The only coloring is on the face:  ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.

Several people have commented that it looks like the little dog is leaning away from the big dog, perhaps because the big dog has done something objectionable.  The little dog’s surprised expression and the big dog rolling its eyes as if to say, “It wasn’t me” seem to bear that out.  I wish I could say that I planned it that way.

I guess it was to be expected.  It’s nearly impossible to find reasoned discussion of the “Climategate” issue.  For example, Curtis Brainard’s Hacked E-mails and “Journalistic Tribalism” in Columbia Journalism Review is a pretty even handed look at the major issues that are being discussed in the online debate.  It strikes me as particularly amusing that most of the comments to that article are about as tribal as you can imagine.  We have rabid conspiracy theorists on both sides, an ongoing “Yeah?  Sez who?” shouting match, an argument over a fairly minor matter that the two parties involved are using in order to prove their “green” creds, and a few other sideshows that have little or nothing to do with the actual content of the article.  Picking the signal from the noise in the comments is almost impossible.

In short, it’s business as usual.

I’ll admit to being a skeptic when it comes to anthropogenic global warming (AGW).    There is enough dissent among people who I regard as credible sources that I doubt that the science is as settled as some would have me believe.  There are enough questions about historical reconstructions and the use of current data to project long term trends that I remain unconvinced.  That may make me a “denier” in some people’s eyes.  So be it.  But I’m willing to look at the data and re-evaluate my position.  All too many people on either side of the controversy are unwilling to entertain any view that might conflict with their preconceived notions.

I mentioned the other day that it’d be nice to see the raw data.  Perhaps I should have kept my big mouth shut, because at least some of the raw data is available.  RealClimate.org has started a Data Sources page that has links to more data than I’ll be able to digest any time soon. I don’t know enough yet to say how complete or reliable this list of sources is, and it’s only part of the equation.  Unless there are notes about how the data are gathered and whether the “raw” data is preprocessed before being presented, it’s almost as useless as no data.  But it’s a good start.  Now what we need is for those who have used the data to be fully open and honest about the methods they used to reach any conclusions.

I regret that I failed to include RealClimate.org in my list of sources in my previous post.  The other sources I posted links to would all fall into the “skeptic” camp.  Some would call them deniers.  RealClimate was started by a group of climate researchers with the intent of spreading the word about climate change.  The postings there seem invariably to support the notion of global warming, but there is good information to be gleaned from them.

Another resource, this time decidedly not supportive of the AGW hypothesis, is Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit.

I’m thinking I need to post a Dramatis personæ so I can keep track of all the players in this bit of politico-science.  I worry, though, that it will get out of hand.  There are lots of players.

Eric Raymond, a well respected figure in the open source community, has commented on a particularly egregious bit of code revealed, in which a “fudge factor” is applied to some data used in the production of a temperature graph.  If you have trouble appreciating the seriousness of this, it’s summed up pretty well below in one of the comments:

Wait just a second. Explain this to me like I’m 12. They didn’t even bother to fudge the data? They hard-coded a hockey stick carrier right into the program?!!

ESR says: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what they did.

I haven’t seen that particular transgression addressed in any of the apologists explanations.  To be fair, it’s talking about computer code, which has an eye-roll index of about 9.998 among the general populace.

And another quote, just because I found it very amusing whether or not it turns out to be true:

They didn’t just cook the data; they marinated it for a week, put on a rub, laid it in the smoker for a day and a half, sliced it up, wrapped it in bacon, dipped it in batter, rolled it around in flour, and deep fried it.

It turns out that the code referencing the fudged value is commented out.  That makes one wonder, though, if it was ever used.  In my experience as a programmer, code that’s commented out was used at some point and is left there either to be used again, or for documentation to show what was tried.

Of course, we could answer the question if we could get the actual raw data that the program was intended to process.  Then we could run the program with and without the artificial adjustment and see the results.  It’d also help to compare the two outputs with whatever graph or report the resulting data was used for.

There’s quite a bit of discussion in that thread about the validity of the data in question, and the appropriateness of “adjusting” tree ring data to fit the observed temperature data.  This is all in an attempt to address a well known and widely studied (by climate researchers) divergence problem.  The basic issue is that tree ring data seems to correspond pretty well with observed temperature from the late 1800s (the start of reliable temperature data), but then diverge.  Where thermometers show warming, the tree ring data do not.  As yet, there is no widely accepted explanation for the divergence problem.  What we don’t know, since we don’t have reliable temperature data before 1880 or so, is whether the tree ring data diverges from actual temperature at points in the past.  It seems to me that, until we can explain the divergence, any information based on tree ring data is less than reliable.

The more I read, the more convinced I am that each side is overstating its case.  Those who firmly believe in AGW are misrepresenting their conclusions as definitive proof when there does appear to be significant doubt, and the deniers wouldn’t be convinced by a boiling Baltic.  It’s tribalism at its best.

The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle, and there are plenty of people calling for some sanity in the discussion.  Unfortunately, the firm believers have the upper hand at the moment, and any calls for more reasoned discussion are met with accusations of “denier!”  The truth is out there, but it’s lost in the unthinking religious zealotry.

A few more comments about “Climategate”:

• The released files in question were not “hacked” from the CRU’s computers. Somebody (still anonymous) who worked there collected that information and posted it on a public bulletin board site where it was picked up. Interestingly, it appears that he first sent it to news organizations who just sat on it. Could it be that the media have a vested interest in keeping the global warming hoax alive?
• The global temperature data that the CRU was supposedly maintaining is a work of fiction, with perhaps some fact thrown in when it happens to fit the desired outcome. Examinations of the computer code that collates temperature data from multiple sources is rife with adjustments that the programmers describe in comments as “arbitrary,” “artificial,” and in at least one case, “fudge factor.” The data that comes out bears very little relationship to the data that goes in.
• One of the fundamental principles of collaborative science is that when you publish a result you also publish the raw data and the methods that you used to arrive at your result. That typically includes computer code. CRU went to great lengths to avoid releasing their raw data and their programs. We now know why: their methods weren’t scientific at all, but rather constructed to arrive at a predetermined result.
• For a very good, if somewhat heavy-handed, discussion of the information revealed by the released emails and other documents, you should definitely read Climategate: Caught Green-Handed. A link on that page will take you to the PDF.
• The Climate Research Unit website is being served from the CUR Emergency Webserver. I don’t know why. I am unable to find anything on the site regarding the leaked emails and documents. The IPCC site doesn’t appear to have anything about it, either.
• Phil Jones, director of the CRU, will step down until the completion of an independent review. If he had any integrity left, he’d resign completely. Of course, if there was any integrity in that system, his ass would have been fired a week ago.
• Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at Pennsylvania State University who is prominently featured in the released emails, maintains that he did nothing wrong and that nothing untoward went on. Mann, if you recall, is the primary person behind the controversial hockey stick graph that, among other things, tries to remove the Medieval Warm Period from the historical record.
• Did I mention that the global temperature data provided by the CRU, and upon which governments worldwide base important policy decisions is essentially made up? Any decision based on data provided by the CRU is now suspect.
• The malefactors at the CRU and their accomplices in government, academia, and industry have done a grave disservice to the field of climate science in particular, and all science in general. Anybody reading about what went on here is bound to wonder if all scientific research is carried out in a similar manner. In one sense, this is probably a good thing in that it should force an independent review of all government funded scientific research.
• If you realize now that you got sucked in by the global warming hype and you want to get a more balanced view of the real science, a good place to start is Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That?. Also take a look at JunkScience.com, and the Science & Public Policy Institute.

You’ve probably heard by now about what the press is calling “Climategate”:  the release of internal emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University that reveal some questionable practices on the part of climate researchers.  Those questionable practices are bad enough in any case, but particularly unforgivable when the reports and data are being used by governments throughout the world to make important decisions.

I’ve long been skeptical of the entire “global warming” debate, and especially skeptical of those so-called scientists who claim that the science behind the dire warnings is solid and irrefutable.  The information revealed recently shows that I was right to be skeptical.

When I first read reports of the released documents, I thought that the press was taking things out of context and making things look much worse than they actually are.  But then I came across the raw data.  The quotes in the media are not at all out of context.  The researchers really did say that they can’t account for the recent decrease in global temperatures, that they intentionally altered data, deleted emails, and actively suppressed information that did not fit the pre-determined outcome.  They also attempted to suppress dissenting views by manipulating the peer review process.  In short, they weren’t doing science, but rather corrupting science to further their own agendas.

It’s difficult to say what those agendas are.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that money is high on the list.  The amount of money distributed in grants for climate research is staggering, and that gravy train will continue as long as there’s a perceived threat.  The more dire the warnings, the more money pours in for research into determining the extent of the problem and finding possible solutions.  A researcher who concludes that there is no problem will find that his funding is not renewed.

This case is a very good example, too, of what happens all too often when government funds scientific research.  In this case, the government agencies funding the research existed in large part because of the perceived problem.  As long as the research they were funding continued to support the existence of the problem, the government agency would receive more funding.

The fundamental problem with the whole global warming debate is that nobody really knows whether or not the temperature is rising.  I’ve seen data that indicates a decrease in global temperatures, some that shows essentially no increase, and some that shows a marked increase.  And that’s just from readings of supposedly accurate instruments since 1885 or so.  Prior to that we only have reconstructions that use various methods like dendrochronology (tree ring dating), ice core sampling, lake sediment core sampling, and many others.  Each of those methods has a certain margin of error and some of them (dendrochronology in particular) might not even be appropriate for the purpose of estimating historical temperatures.

There are very large disagreements among the many global temperature reconstructions I’ve seen, to the point that I can’t imagine how any researcher can say that his method is correct.  Most of them don’t even come close to agreeing with the observed values for the last 130 years, meaning that either the reconstruction method is unreliable or the observed values are in error.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the Contemporary Time Series and Historical Proxies charts at JunkScience.com.  Understand, JunkScience doesn’t make those charts:  they get the charts from reports published by other researchers.

Any honest researcher looking at the data has to say, “I don’t know.”  There just isn’t any credible data to show a significant (if any) long-term warming trend.  There might be one, but the data doesn’t show it.  Certainly not to my satisfaction, and anybody trying to convince me otherwise better be prepared to support their interpretation with hard data, and explain why conflicting data is irrelevant.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not out-of-hand dismissals and ad hominem arguments.

It’ll be interesting if the recent revelations of questionable practices at the CRU result in similar revelations at other climate research facilities.  I’ll also be interested in what effect these revelations have on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week.

Our friends Mike and Kristi invited us to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with them at their ranch in Ranger, TX.  We’ve visited there the past two years on my birthday, and I went up there with Mike back in September.  But this time we had most of four days to enjoy.

Mike and Kristi bought the place–50 acres–in the summer of 2007 as a weekend getaway, a hunting area, and with the idea of eventually moving up there.  They’ve been slowly improving the property.  The first year we visited, we slept in a pop-up camp trailer.  Now they have a 400 square foot cabin complete with a toilet and “almost running” water:  you fill a bucket from the rain barrel and pour the water into the tank.  Believe me, that’s much better than going out behind the cabin when it’s 40 degrees (or colder) outside.

The primary goal of the long weekend was to relax.  But with four days to kill, I couldn’t spend all that time just carving by the campfire.  Mike’s been slowly removing a lot of the underbrush and dead trees near the front of the property, chopping firewood, and taking the smaller stuff to the burn pile.  So I grabbed a chainsaw and joined in.  We had a grand old time on Friday and Saturday, and by the time we left the view to the south had been much improved.

While Debra and Kristi were cooking on Thanksgiving day, I decided to try my hand at something I’ve been wanting to do:  carve a sweet potato.  The photo at left is “Yaman” (yam man).  The sweet potato carves very easily, but it’s important to have a sharp knife or you’ll end up breaking the potato.  This isn’t the best face I’ve ever carved, but I’m betting it’ll be okay.  Now I just have to wait six weeks or so for the thing to dry before I can paint highlights.  The drying process will introduce wrinkles, and it will turn brown.  I’ll update here when it’s sufficiently dried.

I didn’t do as much carving as I had envisioned, but I did manage to complete a few projects:  another little dog, this one from a piece of cherry wood that a friend gave me, a small bowl for Debra, carved from a piece of ashe juniper (what they call cedar around here), and a little drink stir stick from a piece of oak whiskey barrel.  The last has a wizard face on the top and a finger at the other end.  I wish I had a picture of that thing, because I’m pretty happy with the wizard face carved in a piece of oak that’s about an inch tall and 1/4″ square.

I also learned of a new art form:  beer bottle art.  I idly wondered whether I could melt a beer bottle by throwing it in the fire, and Mike assured me that it’s possible.  So I put a few bottles in the coals (after consuming the bottles’ contents, of course), and left them overnight.  Of the half dozen bottles we put in the fire, only these two survived mostly intact.

They give some idea of what’s possible, but they’re flawed because they have cracks and holes.  The key seems to be having the patience to let them cool very slowly.  I’m thinking that I’ll have to experiment with this art form.

Even with the hard work on Friday and Saturday, it was a very relaxing time up at the ranch.  The food was excellent, we very much enjoyed spending time with Mike and Kristi, and I really needed the time away to recharge.  It’s hard to worry about too much when you’re sitting in the sun whittling on a stick and laughing at the Guinea fowl running around.  Noisy dang birds, though.

Still, as relaxing as the time was, it was good to get home Sunday afternoon, take a hot shower, and sleep in our own bed.  Wouldn’t want too much of a good thing.

Last week I thought I’d see if I could get a little more detail in my dog carvings.  Maple (on the left) was the first experiment, carved from a piece of maple (at least, I think it’s maple) that I found in the discard pile at Woodcraft.  That turned out so well that I tried something similar with a piece of mesquite that I picked up at Mike’s ranch back in September.  Both carvings are two inches tall.

I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of maple, “soft” and “hard”.  But I was told that even the “soft” maple was incredibly hard.  I found it to be quite nice to carve, certainly easier than the oak whiskey barrel.

Mesquite, too, is said to be hard to carve.  This piece wasn’t terribly difficult to cut, but it did have a tendency to splinter a bit.  Getting clean cuts requires a very sharp knife, and perhaps a bit better technique than I currently possess.  Still, I think it turned out quite nicely.

I’ve cut one of these dog patterns from a piece of black walnut (same stuff as the whale).  I’m hoping to carve on it sometime this week.

As I mentioned the other day, I have a lot of oak to carve.  I typically carve small things, so those whiskey barrels are going to last me a really long time.  A few months ago, somebody posted a neat little reindeer carving on the message board, so I thought I’d give it a try in oak.

The resulting reindeer is about 4 inches tall.  Unfortunately, that makes it slightly too wide for the oak board, and cutting it out on the bandsaw was quite difficult.  I managed not to break anything, but one side of the reindeer is flat rather than rounded.  Still, I figured I could use the pattern in its original size (9/16″ thickness rather than 3/4″) and create Christmas tree ornaments for family and friends.

The thinner piece makes it impossible to cut out on my bandsaw.  So I found a friend with a scroll saw and tried it on Saturday.  I managed to get one reindeer cut out without breaking anything, but it was very difficult.  The scroll saw didn’t like the oak.  Perhaps I could do it with a better blade, or maybe somebody with more experience using the scroll saw  could do a better job.

So now I have 18 pieces of oak, 3 inches by 2 inches, and 3/4″ thick, all with reindeer patterns taped to them.  Some of those blocks will undoubtedly become little dog carvings, and I’ll have to find something else to do with the rest.

I sometimes wonder if newspaper reporters and editors actually think about their use of language.  I’m not talking about obscure grammar or punctuation rules, but larger issues like what words actually mean.  Nowhere is this more evident than in newspaper articles that mention “risk of death” when reporting on health studies.

A good example is a two year old Seattle Times article titled, Getting in Shape Reduces Death Risk.  The headline itself sets off a big warning bell in my brain.  After all, it’s a given (Ray Kurzweil’s predictions notwithstanding) that the risk of death is 100%.  You are going to die.  So I immediately look with suspicion upon any report that talks about reducing my risk of death.  I give newspaper headlines the benefit of the doubt, though, because they have limited space and need to make a bold statement to attract eyeballs.  But I expect the article to be more explicit.

A newspaper article that has such a bold statement in the headline should make it clear in the first paragraph exactly from what.  That is, if the headline says, “Vitamin C Reduces Risk of Death,” then the first paragraph better say, “…from scurvy.”  Otherwise I’m going to think that I’ll live forever if I take enough Vitamin C.  Wouldn’t the snake oil nutritional supplement industry love that?

Not only does the Seattle Times article fail to point out from what in the first paragraph, it fails almost entirely to qualify the statement about reducing the “risk of death.”  The risk being mitigated by being “in shape” is never explicitly identified.  But there are plenty of statements implying that being “in shape” means that you’ll live forever.  Here’s the first paragraph:

The more fit you are, the longer you’re likely to live, according to a large study of veterans that applies to black men as well as white men. The Veterans Affairs researchers found that the “highly fit” men in the study had half the risk of death as those who were the least fit. Being “very highly fit” cut the risk even more, by 70 percent.

[This is sounding good.  If I'm 'very highly fit,' my risk of dying is 70% less.]

Third paragraph:

“A little bit of exercise goes a long way,” said Peter Kokkinos, lead author of the study. “Thirty minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking is likely to reduce the risk of mortality by 50 percent if not more.”

[Oh, wow.  I just have to take a walk every day and there's a 50% chance that I'll live forever?]

Halfway through the article, there is this paragraph:

A treadmill test was used to determine the fitness level of the veterans at facilities in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, Calif. The men _ who had an average age of 60 _ were then put into four categories ranging from “low fit” to “very highly fit.” Researchers followed up for an average of eight years to see who was still alive.

Aha!  So the risk being mitigated is … what, exactly?  That if you’re “in shape” at 60, you have a higher probability of living to 68 than if you’re not “in shape” at 60.  What a let down.  That’s the only paragraph in the entire article that even comes close to identifying what risk is mitigated by physical fitness.

The rest of the article is full of statements that, taken literally, are totally misleading.

The study also sets itself apart by looking at how exercise affects blacks, whose death rates are higher than whites. 

The study showed that as fitness levels went up, the risk of death dropped for both blacks and whites.

The researchers themselves didn’t even know the cause of death of those who died.  Nor did they know how physically active any of the participants were.  All they knew is how well the person scored (”low fit”, “moderately fit”, “highly fit”, or “very highly fit”) on the treadmill test, and whether that person was still alive eight years later.  In other words, it shows a correlation between fitness and lifespan.  But hardly conclusive evidence.

Normally I’d call an article like this shoddy reporting and an indication of laziness on the part of the reporter and the editor.  But with the “risk of death” silliness, I’m forced to conclude that the reporter and/or editor decided to sensationalize the report, forgetting entirely that words have meaning.

The New Zealand national rugby team, called the All Blacks, performs a traditional Maori war dance (a haka) prior to international matches.  They first did this in 1884 during the team’s first trip overseas, and they’ve been doing it ever since.  It’s something of a rugby tradition.

Today I ran across an animated version with gingerbread men doing the haka. It was apparently an ad for the New Zealand bakery challenge. Quite funny. Assuming, of course, you’re familiar with the whole haka thing.