These days I’m getting that feeling at the back of the skull that the news and what I see in everyday life just don’t fit. Part of it might be that we’re just not getting decent information about things that might affect us.
Look, presumably there was a time in the past of our breed where each person could get the information they needed through their senses. Maybe. I mean, you still had to sort of trust (or not) the kid who came running into the village and said there was a lion/tiger/beast of prey outside. Because when you saw the animal with your own eyes it would be too late.
However those were limited circumstances. I very much doubt grandma M’Ogg read the morning paper to see how the berry crop was doing. No, she’d go out to her favorite berry patch, and if the berries were blooming, she’d drag them home. (And depending on whether she knew how to dry them/preserve them everyone ate until they had the runs, of course.)
Those days are far behind us. Which is a very good thing if you think about it, because that method of gathering food – and data – could support maybe a million humans across the world. And it might have been worse than that, since we know from our genetics that at some point human population went down to maybe 100 individuals.
So, we’re not going to mourn them, but we can complain about these extensions of our sensory organs that we call the press.
Because the problem is when the kid came into the village screaming there was a tiger outside, presumably you knew the kid and how trustworthy he was. Or not.
But with the press all most people have is “is everyone saying more or less the same” and “is this a big, mainstream news?”
And then they follow that. Because if everyone is saying it, monkey sense says it’s likely to be true. Which might have been right, at some time. Not sure about that, since I keep hearing about corruption of the press as far back as the early twentieth century. Maybe the industrial model of concentrated newssources was a bad idea to begin with. It gave us too few sources and all of them likely to know each other and want the other to think well of them.
But we know that in the age of Jourlolistism they actually confer behind the scenes to make the news fit, regardless of their merit or lack thereof. They decide what news to promote and what news to bury, and how to slant the news they tell, all without any attention to how credible those news are, but mostly to what they want to be true.
This is a problem, because if people don’t know the truth they make bad decisions at the low-level of grandma M’Ogg picking berries. If grandma M’Ogg has to rely on the paper to tell her where the berries are, and the paper, who wants to hide the fact that Big Chief’s prayer didn’t make the berries multiply, says that while the bushes near the village are stripped of berries because the tigers have turned vegetarian, but the bushes three miles away are loaded down with berries, Grandma is going to hike three miles, and even if she doesn’t collapse because of her bad hip, she might get eaten by the non vegetarian tiger.
Arguably this is what happened in 12. Employment and other economic statistics were fudged or outright fabricated (another rogue employee. I bet you his disk drive is unreadable, too.) and so even smart people thought we were on the verge of an up turn, the administration’s policies were working, and we should give it another try. I’m not saying that was enough for them to win, but it was enough to allow them to cheat to victory.
I’ve talked about this in the past. It’s a serious problem, of course. It’s not just that nobody knows anything, but that the things they think they know just aren’t so.
For instance, after predicting that our economy was going to come roaring – roaring – out the gate this second quarter, they are reporting growth of 4%. Which is just enough to put us in positive territory after the minus 3.9 of last time. The zero edge guys aren’t impressed, though and – whatever you think – They’re usually on target for economics.
Also, I’m not seeing the effects of this er… roar on my sales.
No one is, I think. Talking to other indies, this is not QUITE the Summer of Death, but it’s pretty bad. Most of us have seen our income from indie cut in half. Lately, if I want to shake the coin tree, I have to do something in the way of a sale. I don’t mind that, but it shows something: most people are at the limit of what they can afford.
And I just made a killing-buy at the grocery store because a pile of ground beef was at discount to 2.70, which is less than half the normal price. Think what you will, but in the really good times, the discount shelf is lean, because people buy it out very fast. Instead it was piled there and I got enough for meatloaves and meatballs and all sorts of dishes for a month or so.
But it goes beyond that. I’m not seeing the signs of a roaring economy around us. Limping maybe.
The plural of anecdote isn’t data, granted, but most people I know are hoping to make it one more month on groceries and one more year on a car (me. D*mn it. Almost cost us 1k for repairs, but I was afraid the ball joint was going to give while on the highway) that should have been replaced five years ago. Most of us are hanging by the fingernails and those are starting to bleed.
The indie stuff came through for me this last trimester in the sense of taking my fat out of the fire (yes, yes, I need to have the sequels to Witchfinder – well the first one – out in August sometime. That has settled into “The Haunted Air” as a title and involves Michael and a young lady who is called Albinia but goes by Al. Think of it as Have Spacesuit with fantasy and their being closer in age, and you’re not far wrong.)
Perhaps the people I know are just exceptionally bad at finances. I don’t think so. Not all the people I know. But there we are.
My friend Charlie says that it’s not that, it’s that the “growth” was people buying the car that wouldn’t limp another year, the fridge that quit, whatever.
This is possibly a part of it. I’m not putting it past the rest being “just made up out of clear air.”
I’ve noticed an odd trend in the spam I get. It used to be “you won a million” or “you won a free dinner at Ruth’s Chris.” Now it’s stuff like “You have just been hired by google.” (Since when is a job the dream prize?) and “you won a free dinner at Applebys” – like these normal everyday things (well, six years ago, we used to have dinner at applebys about twice a month, when I was too busy or whatever. Now, only in emergencies or we’re caught out of the house at 8 or 9 pm. BUT if you order carefully, it’s still not a dream dinner, or crazy expensive.) Spammers make their living hooking the marks, and they seem to think the marks are all running tight and lean. Which would dispute the booming economy. Even the “qualified/limited booming.”
The problem with this beyond affecting our personal decisions, is that it affects the people who make decisions on how to deform the economy with laws and regulations.
The problem is that even if they influence the media that gives them data points, they don’t get the news from elsewhere. Not in a convenient format.
I’m not making much sense. Let me try to explain. Someone who works in foreign affairs for the administration might get the raw data on that – before it’s either buried or spun by the press – and know that it’s a real mess and that Al Qaeda is a danger again. A big one.
They might be able to make sensible decisions on that – maybe. But the chances are that they don’t get the up-to-the-minute news on Russia and for that they believe what they read in the papers and the smart people in the magazines. Yeah, sure, they know that the journalists spin the bullshit for them, but they don’t think about it while evaluating those other news. And hey, all the smart people agree…
Then there’s the various areas of the economy. Mostly they drink their own ink. They believe what the papers tell them, even though they influence the papers.
And there is enough ink flowing to drown all of the administration and all of the intellectuals catering to the administration with analysis and opinion.
You see, each person might know what he’s saying is the end product of a bull’s digestion — or at least that it’s inflated/spun/glossified (totally a word) — but he or she won’t know that his/her colleagues are doing the same to EVERY single, small, specialized bit of information.
Everyone knows it’s real hard to see through a fog of ink, even if you’re the one operating the ink-hose. It’s much harder to remember that the ink is just ink if you’re not directly operating the ink-hose and it’s your buddies in journalism doing you a favor.
At which point, nobody knows anything, but everyone thinks he does.
And we go Forward! Off the cliff.
According To Hoyt 
The truth is, journalism has been corrupt since the first broadsheets were handcranked out. John Peter Zenger was tried for the principle that you have the right to speak your piece, not for his unflinching honesty and accuracy.
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And I so love it when people speak so disparaging of FoxNews (fauxnews, foxsnooze, etc).
Disagree with them if you want. But you’re getting less spin overall.
Anymore, I only believe the news I make, not what I read.
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Foxsnooze *chuckle* I like that one, hadn’t heard that one before. I find there is less stoopid too.
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I know so many people are intelligent and well-informed . . . except where it comes to politics. They trust all the media outlets that do nothing but tell them what they want to hear, never challenging their beliefs.
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Whatever happened to the idea of believing only 10% of what you hear? And even less of what you read in the newspapers?
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They were taught not to accept that anymore. As a means of Sticking It to the Man, or something. Seriously, somehow statist collectivism is predicated upon the rebellion of the 60s. “Come, Tovarich! Stick it to the Man by becoming the Man and continuing his failed policies!”
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At the time we were also urged to reject conformity and mass market consumerism by all dressing in blue jeans and T-shirts.
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Reject conformity by conforming to this new standard.
Wait… What the…???
;)
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This is, of course, all compounded by the complexity of the various subjects, the ignorance of so very many journalists, and the dumbing down of the information for mass consumption. A process I loathe. I really don’t need a journo major who missed a fair chunk of the info and didn’t understand the bits he did get deciding he needs to simplify the topic since the rubes are so stupid.
I’m minded of this by the latest o’care or let people die on the margins commenter on yesterday’s post. The drafters of o’care prove your point nicely, of course. A massive pile of legislation designed to address the problems as reported by the people who wanted to draft a massive pile of legislation, filtered through the ‘I haz a degree’ journos. Joy.
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For my degree, I actually had to take some journalism classes. Any respect I had for the profession was pretty much killed there. (Mind you, there were a couple of students in there who actually had the drive and skills to become excellent journalists, but the vast majority preferred to frame stories based on information that was all but fed to them. Blech.)
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When I was studying art, the journo building was in the same neighborhood. The art students held the journos in contempt. Low standards of academic rigidity, you see.
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*shudder*
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The one anecdote I like to trot out was the class on how to write for various forms of media (some of which is useful in a limited fashion, but which honestly could be relegated to on-the-job training in most cases.) The teacher gave us a list of sentences and told us to find the problem with each one. Easy except for one, which I could not figure out. She said, “The word ‘epicenter’ is too hard; you should say ‘The earthquake was centered at…'”
I informed her that, as someone who grew up in California, I had heard the word “epicenter” in the news all the time. She still insisted she was right. *headdesk*
(Note that no news organization in the world has a problem with that word.)
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Apologies to any journalists reading this, but: after working at several different newspapers, I’m astonished at how little journalists actually know. They’re usually well-versed in local political gossip and have some fun crime and courthouse anecdotes, but that’s it. Of science, economics, or history they are as innocent as babes. What particularly shocked me (as a proofreader) is how bad so many of them are at actually writing. You’d think that sheer practice would bring that up to a reasonable standard.
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I am eternally shocked and outraged that journalism in all its forms never corrects misuse of language and pronunciation of words that however briefly are currently in common use. Style books must be limited to any firearm is properly an assault weapon and Israel bad, Hamas good.
One of the many reasons I withhold support for NPR is that I regard any medium that repeats One of the only is a force for evil. Granted that I haven’t observed an instance of disinterested behavior in the wild for many years, I still object to the many writers and public speakers who seem to think disinterested is a superlative for uninterested.
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What about the people in society that get all their news from Jon Stewart? (And I wish I were kidding about that.)
It’s also interesting that the MSM and the White House PR machine seem to have interchangeable employees.
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is Jon Stewart really any more biased of a news source than the evening news from ABC, CBS, or NBC? Certainly he can’t be any worse than MSNBC. Does he really apply any more spin, or any more blatant partisanship than, say, Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow?
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The problem with Stewart is that he is very very good at snark and drive by sound bites. To his credit, he does occasionally turn his sights on particularly egregious administration foul ups, but on balance still is more than willing to snipe and demean all sorts of either libertarian or conservative positions.
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Stewart also gets to hide behind his claim of “I’m just a comedian; I’m not a journalist.” When he appeared on Crossfire, he used that one to shame the show personalities. At the time, it may well have been true, but when you engage in satire, you’re making a statement in addition to a joke, and you are responsible for both. At this point, when so many people are proud of the claim that they get their news from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, he should no longer get that option. But he does, because rules are for conservatives, libertarians and other
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Correlation not causality but there’s a strong case that people who watch the comedy shows are better informed than people who don’t.
I tend to look for an admission against interest in my news sources to validate my sense of what’s happening. Anything by Jacques Barzun is worth the time but his The Modern Researcher ( buy a used copy no need to pay current text book prices for a revision that exists to justify prices of $106 and up to poor students) applies as well to studying the present as to studying the past.
It’s long been true and still is that the medium is the message – something can be more properly newsworthy because of who said it where – the WSJ can still move markets while the same news elsewhere won’t.
I and some of my friends were both amused and gratified to see the NYT give so many column inches to Andrew Cuomo and corruption – both to see the approach to Cuomo in the news and in the [New York] Times and to suspect the intent is to clear a path for another New Yorker to the presidency. Who said it where is part of the news.
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Exactly my point. He’s a comedian. You’re getting your NEWS from a guy who writes JOKES. And people trust him not to twist things (or just accept it because he twists it their way). And then they say Fox news is lying.
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When Stewart criticizes and mocks a Liberal foul-up it is with the tone of “C’mon, guys, you’re making us look bad.” He is what, in sports reporting, is called a “homer”, always rooting for his team and only criticizing them when they muff a play.
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Problem is that his goal is “humor”– it’s vicious, and not to my taste, and I really should make an argument that it’s inherently corrosive to caritas/Christian love/human dignity on a better forum– and if you make someone laugh, you can change their mind in a way that reason would never work.
This is good if your goal is to build up, or at least neutral. It’s bad if your goal is destructive. It’s always easy to mock the ant in high summer, especially if you’re a grasshopper that will be provided for in the winter in payment for mocking. Not so good for those who believe you….
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Stewart does not purport to be performing journalism (in fact, he denies it.) While his bias is no less (and more overt) than actual journalists the salient point is that we have people proclaiming they willingly, deliberately, opt to get their news from Television’s equivalent of The Onion.
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I’ve been thinking about this subject, after being subjected to the show accidentally. The problem is not so much what Stewart says, but the tone in which he says it. For many people, the urge to join the “cool” group is very strong, and regardless of what Stewart says, the message is that conservatives/libertarians are “uncool”. When he hits leftists, the tone is more “still cool, but a bone-headed move”. Even when he makes a more libertarian argument, the tone is “I can’t believe any cool person has to agree with this idiot?”. People who pay no attention to the arguments just pick up the tone and won’t even consider conservatism. That’s where the harm is.
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Exactly – that is how the message is turned – and it’s incredibly subtle, sometimes; the tone of the narrators’ voice, even in the descriptive words chosen … it’s all in play. I used to marvel at the experts who were chosen to speak on various special topics. Obviously, they were “chosen” and I used to wonder how – and by what method – they were “chosen”. Because they would stand up like good little trained monkeys and say what the correspondent wished/expected them to say, of course.
I was bitterly amused, when the Tea Party bubbled to the top of the national news-provider’s consciousness – that NPR’s reporters first seemed to go to their Golden Rolodex of Expert Political Commentators for information regarding the Tea Party – rather than go to the various Tea Party representatives. Tea Party public affairs reps and leadership people were all readily available, for any reporter who wanted to go looking. But no – they chose to go to their Golden Rolodex Collection of Approved and Credentialed Experts.
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Journalists are the laziest “profession” in existence, and the easiest to corrupt. Tell them you’ll give them “access” and they’ll cover up war crimes.
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“Journalists are the laziest “profession” in existence”
Just wanted to highlight this phrase, because it is so very, very true. (Exceptions are people who became journalists because they wanted to find out what was really going on in the world, and actually went to the source to find out, such as Michael Totten. Note that he’s doing journalism as a crowd funded effort.)
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You can not hope to bribe or twist
The noble British journalist.
But seeing what he, unbribed, will do
There’s no occasion to.
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Lovely allusion to the boy who cried wolf. :-)
Of course, nowadays, the boy is in collusion with the wolf.
Which is worse than putting the fox in control of the henhouse.
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If they hadn’t put out a good report this quarter they would have had to declare a recession. Can’t have that. Wait for the revisions…
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That’s what I was thinking, while reading the part about the growth rate.
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When the last quarter report came out, my husband said, “next quarter will be +3.9%. Gotta make it balance” He was close.
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He forgot to account for the downward revision.
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I used to assume integrity on the part of mainstream journos – a hold-over from naive youth and growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I suppose – and the fact that I was a sort-of journo myself, courtesy of a ‘shake-and-bake’ course at the Defense Information School. There was a whole lot of trust in the correspondents who came up in the old way, before it was a college major. Edward R. Murrow – the soul of journalistic integrity and non-partisanship, setting aside personal partisanship and bias as much as is humanly possible, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted … all of that.
I think the final dagger in the heart of my belief in a non-partisan press (and there had been a lot damage incurred to it before that point) was the revelation of JournoList – that a large percentage of the working press weenies were conspiring with each other to deliberately slant stories and to bury others. I had often wondered, rather casually, why certain stories were never pursued during the 2008 primaries – and now I knew why. That wasn’t journalism as I had always assumed it to be; that was just being the vile prog’s public affairs office.
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It’s been pretty clear that the press wasn’t interested in the truth for quite a while. Look at the ‘Fake but Accurate’ memos regarding Bush – or the massive effort to discredit Palin while completely avoiding examining Obama’s background and accomplishments. (Heh, we know about Bush’s ANG attendance – how about releasing Obama’s college transcripts?)
I don’t know what the next few months hold – but we certainly live in interesting times.
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It’s only clear if you don’t have a “background” of trust.
This is something it took me years to figure out with my family and doctors– my parents were pretty old for their generation when they got married, and were both almost-youngest kids, but basically the thing is that Doctors Are Experts to my folks’ folks. They just don’t say random @#$@#, if they say something, they KNOW. One of my grandma’s pregnancies was supposed to result in twin boys, and was actually one girl– and the automatic trust of doctors was so strong that it hit her as hard as if the two boys had died at the hospital, and they’d adopted an orphan girl.
Contrast with me, where I go through the “things you must do” pregnancy sheet and can mark them as absolute lies, misleading, questionable and oh-Lord-please-ignore-this. I think I’ve inflicted the fish guideline rant on folks here a few times– basically, they started as a recommendation for high-risk fish from high-risk areas, were cut by a tenth and put out…and then five or ten more levels of folks put out “eat no more than” halves, fourths or tenths so that my sister’s friend thought she’d given her baby mercury poisoning from eating creek fish for a weekend in Oregon.
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Credentialism; one of the key tenets of statist thought. Because an “expert” said it, it must be so. Never mind that the supposed expert is a mechanical engineer who has no more experience with climatology than I do. Or a physicist with bags of charisma who likes to play around in politics. “Ohhhh, he’s got an advanced degree; maybe he’ll tell us how Things Oughtta Be.”
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Like most problems, it’s a perversion.
It’s important to listen to folks who know what they’re talking about. At one point, that was highly correlated to “has studied it for years.”
Now EVERYONE spends the better part of 20 years studying stuff, usually without managing to catch a third of it.
The supply was inflated, but the quality dropped.
See prior days’ comments about confusing cause and effect. (The cause of the trust was that folks knew what they were up to, adn that’s also why they had the title; we now have three generations of the title being assumed to confer ability.)
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Worse, credentialism serves to protect the staus quo, regardless of whether it is correct. You earn your credentials by mastering the conventional wisdom. Which would, in past instances, mean rejecting the insane theories of that crazed crackpot Pasteur.
Credentialism is handy for controlling who gets access to valuable platforms (for example, it helps keep anti-abortion adherents out of the medical profession and if you want to get a climate science degree you better bend the knee to the altar of
Anthroprogenic Global WarmingMan-Caused Climate Change.)An official expert is merely someone who has learned how to parrot the CW, certified by those who have based their professional careers on the inviolability of that CW.
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Dave,
You do realize that thermodynamics and heat transfer is a fairly significant chunk of the discipline of mechanical engineering? That one trained recently is likely to have at least some background in mathematical modeling, the issues with same, and the limits to how far it should be trusted? That engineering may have a stronger background for choices impacting human welfare than science?
Why should I trust a climatologist to have a better idea than a mechanical engineer of the risk of AGW and how it should be managed versus the human misery and suffering caused by raping the economy?
Why must the approved discipline and accepted method be the correct ones?
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For a slight perspective shift from a geologist. Civil Engineers (building a bridge in this example) understand materials and understand that limestone is a good, strong rock in which to anchor their bridge. They may not recognize that the limestone is karsted and fractured. A geologist, being familiar with the rock and not so much so bridges beyond ‘rock falls so does bridge’, can say ‘yeah those surface flaws you see, they’re not so surface and under the right conditions of stress (which your bridge will add a lot of) the whole cliff side you want to anchor to would go.’ (Summary of an actual consult one of my father’s co-workers gave. Both of them are also a geologists.)
A mechanical engineer understands thermodynamics. Geologists understand big changes in climate. Climatologists are supposed to be studying the nit picky details of the climate so they can talk to the engineers to improve the nit picky little pieces that are going to influence those thermodynamic models and get better resolution than the geologists. Things start getting weird for us at increments of less than 1,000 years, sometimes less than 10,000 or a million depending on how far back we have to go and the kind of evidence left behind. (Plate tectonics has no respect for the evidence it’s chewing up. ;) ) The problem with experts is not when they comment within their expertise, but when they comment outside it or don’t admit the LIMITS of their expertise and when those listening to them do not realize the boundaries inherent within the field of claimed expertise. A Mechanical Engineer might miss a factor that throws his model off because he simply is not familiar enough with the system he is modeling. (My inner jury is still out on how big a blip humans are on the climate change radar. I have a great deal of evidence that there has always been climate change. My research continues, rabbit trails abound.)
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A conversation between specialists may need to be simplified for the consumption of nonspecialists.
This can be a problem when jargon and precise definitions are important. (Which is often.)
The use of the term ‘global warming’, for example. A reasonable man might understand the word global refers to the whole volume of a sphere, including the interior.
The Earth is big, and the measurement of temperature is not magic. Past a certain point, measurement becomes estimate, with an ever larger uncertainty the deeper one goes.
If the fraction of depth one has an acceptable measurement for is n, then the volume fraction with uncertainty beyond that is (1-n)^3.
For n as small as I suspect is likely, it seems laughable to talk about both average global temperature and changes of a few degrees.
And engineers can have a useless model of a system they understand well, if the model is so complicated that it can go off the reservation without telling them.
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My main point was to offer a situation where a simple factor, unknown to an expert acting in good faith, can dramatically change the validity of their assessment. You were saying, as I understood it, that a Mechanical Engeneer’s opinion on climate change would be as valid as a climatologist’s. I wanted to point out that it depended a bit more on circumstance. There are readily things that both could miss. In an ideal world such things would be openly acknowledged. Alas, like the frictionless system, I do not think any such thing exists this side of eternity. We may be saying the same thing.
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Oh, there are absolutely mechanical engineers who haven’t the thermo and the modeling to give the problem a really rigorous examination. The best guy in the world for say, prefab radio towers, might be so specialized that one should seek elsewhere for an opinion on AGW.
Where we may differ in our statements might be reduced to three questions.
Could climatology be so poorly founded that the right mechanical engineer would tend to be better than most climatologists?
A climatologist is necessarily a scientist, but not necessarily a trained engineer. Is the talk of remedies enough out of the realm of science and into the realm of engineering that a climatologist is necessarily outside of their specialty when they discuss such?
Does the loss of precision alone from translating to ‘layman’ make statements about thermodynamic modeling of the Earth meaningless?
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Question 1) Hard to say. I’m a geologist not an engineer nor a climatologist. I see some indications both ways. The atmosphere is a system like any other system and can be studied. The people who study it, and specifically it’s impact on surface conditions on our planet are called Climatologists. From a straight conceptual level, I’m not seeing anything fishy about this. On the other hand, Climatologists that aren’t on the news are rare and elusive beasties in my neck of the woods. Certainly Climatology by news media is poorly founded but given how they mangle geology, I’m not inclined to blame the science.
Question 2) This brings us to the geologist and the engineer and the Big Bridge Project. I think any actual solutions (if they are needed) require multiple experts not just one. Who would be best to present the data to the media? that’s rarely the same guy as the best number cruncher, who may not have been the guy with the best grasp on the practicalities and what to DO with the numbers. So yes, whoever is speaking will likely be out side of their specialty, but if they prepare correctly, they should have the information from the others to hand and be able to discuss it thoroughly and accurately. Unfortunately, this is not happening.
Question 3) Depends on the statements and the modeling. Modeling the interior of the earth is very different than the exterior. The atmosphere has different constraints than the crust and the mantle. I can and have explained basic thermodynamic modeling of the interior of the earth to 12-16 year old boys. The full details were not there, but there was enough to be understandable and we covered the concept behind geothermal energy and geothermal heat sinks. I can’t run the math, unfortunately, but again, it can be done and done well. Few people seem interested in actually trying it. It takes more effort and is less sensational.
It’s an interesting questions and I’m not trying to propose that there’s an easy answer. I just hesitate to arbitrarily discard an entire field based on appearances in the news media.
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My background and experience isn’t so strong that I’d be comfortable tossing an entire discipline purely off what I have so far either. Specific conclusions from specific practitioners, maybe, depending on what questions they inspire.
I’m simply not familiar with every climatologist and every model. It has not been where I put my time.
I can ask questions if there is something I am curious about, and am under no obligation to endorse someone else’s conclusions purely on the strength of their credentials.
My understanding is that the first step of thermodynamic modeling is defining the system. ‘Earth’ or ‘global’ seems so fuzzy as to be potentially problematic. The error bars for the Earth’s interior, I gather, are large enough that a whole volume average might have an uncertainty in the tens of degrees or larger, which would be a problem if one is trying to model things as subtle as the human impact may be.
Which is why the material closer to the actual scientists uses the term surface temperature.
It may make sense to have the system as a spherical shell, (or perhaps I should say oblate spheroidical shell) defined as some height and some depth. Average temperature of such a volume will of course be very different depending on what definition one picks.
Then apparently is the matter of net work, net heat, and net mass transfer across each boundary.
If we focus purely on temperature measurements, we probably do not have enough direct temperature measurements across the whole volume to get the desired resolution for any significant period of geological time.
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My research covers a snapshot – 150 years, 100 of which are sort of kinda decently documented (or were before NCAR started changing the data). I can talk about the end of the little Ice Age and changing precipitation patterns – in one small area. Beyond that I have to fall back on ” I’ve read” and “geologists have found” and “Spanish reports from the Rio Grande Valley say that . . .” And I’m still waiting for someone to find all the gasoline engines, diesel engines, and factories that contributed to the Altithermal/ Atlantic Climate Period back 7000-5000 years ago, when the High Plains got so hot and dry that even the buffalo said, “Forget this, we’re going to Breckenridge or the Ozarks!”
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*shifty eyes* Ice dam, though in seriousness I’ll have to check the timing. The Ice dam was, IIRC, 13,000 years ago. Dump the great lakes worth of ice water into one of the biggest warm water currents in the world and see what happens. There’s also roughly 30 meters of sea level that mysteriously vanished somewhere around the last ice age. (My sed-strat professor was ecstactic to get a trip to Antarctica so he could see if he could track down where it all went. Antarctica is the current thought since it’s the only place on the planet you can hide 30 meters of global sea level worth of ice. They’r also looking into potential techtonic/rebound causes. “did sea level go down or did the continent go up?”)
But much of that is why I’m on the ‘it is foolish to think that we can operate within the system and have no impact, but what kind of impact are we having? Are we in the ‘lost in the background noise’ or ‘perceptible radar blip’ category? And what causes about the interesting wierdnesses of 3rd order sea level changes? Might something in there have an impact? Unfortunately we’ve only been, as you observe, studying climate for a very limited time, geologically speaking and climate change has been going on for a VERY long time. For me, it’s an interesting thing to look into while I clean up and process seismic data so we can model the rocks.
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…so we can model the rocks.
Are we talking sportswear for the hard-bodies?
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Not my fault! Do you really want to get a geologist started on cleavage? ;)
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Now that you mention it.
Yes.
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Because geologists probably know the best lines.
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Well, geologists can at least point out all the faults.
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http://xkcd.com/1082/
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:D
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Ancient jets.
If I don’t turn off the inner analyst, I eventually start to get complaints about all sorts of things.
When you asked about that pocket dimension thing I was messing around with, I ended up having to find a way make them thermodynamically compliant enough.
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Hollywood’s trying to make a movie about the memoes. From Mapes’s claims.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-24/ex-60-minutes-producer-is-no-hollywood-hero
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Mapes… a mind to be treasured. I pulled this little snippet, because it makes me chuckle.
Ah, those New Yawkers. Funny.
Emma Watson* is worth somewhere around 27 times her weight in gold. A smart rancher can make lots of money and contribute a valuable commodity to the economy with bull semen. I’m not sure what a smart rancher would do with Emma Watson.
But, by God, In Texas, anything could happen!
*I have nothing against Emma Watson, she was just a handy celeb.
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Not going to make suggestions, just so not going to make suggestions about what could be done with Emma Watson. Wouldn’t be prudent.
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Ditto.
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I’m confident there’s nothing Ms. Watson could do on a ranch that’d mark her value at 27 times her weight in gold.
In any event, I wouldn’t speculate.
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She’s not that heavy, I can think of a couple of things. Most of them don’t require a ranch, but aren’t precluded by one.
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perhaps ranch dressing…
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eww
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yeah, I know. I don’t like it either. Blue cheese? (Runs.)
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I cut you some slack on American slang, but …
Blue traditionally meant cuss words or dirty language. As in a comedian “working blue” by incorporating four letter words not commonly heard on TV, or as in “cussing a blue streak.”
Cheese, or cheesy, has a number of different applications. Commonly used to imply chintzy or cut-rate, tacky and dated, as in “Ed Wood’s films had cheesy SFX.” Cheese also is used in baseball to describe a very good fastball, as in “He caught me looking with the high cheese.”
So, in the context, blue cheese would imply she’s a dirty fast ball?
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Ranch dressing? You mean like a cute pair of cowboy boots, denim miniskirt, calico shirt knotted at the diaphragm and a 5-gallon hat?
She could probably carry it off — it’s a very forgiving look, if you match your male-up to it properly.
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With regards to Miss Watson, I’d prefer *un*-dressing…:-P
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That depends on how much the pictures would sell for… *runs*
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Every time I see that quote I marvel at the provincialism of someone who doesn’t understand why bull semen would be valuable, why you would want it and not the bull, and that the people who collect it deserve a reward commensurate with the risks they undertake to do so.
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Yeah, the logistics of one bull servicing the number of cows that are routinely inseminated artificially — boggling. Leaving aside injuries to expensive breeding stock, timing issues, etc. Oh, and selective breeding programs, and…
They’re special folk, those New Yawkers. They don’t need to understand the details to understand we’re stupid out here in the wastelands of Texas.
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It’s truly an offense to their refinement and gentility to be shackled to such a backward and ignorant state as Texas. They should cut loose, so as not to demean themselves. Perhaps California would join them.
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I’d be sad. So terribly sad.
For all the normal folk stuck up there with ’em.
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:) I remember well the trips where the manifest read “cow-in-a-can.” No passengers complaining about the ride, no one asking if we’re there yet, and the “bull” rode in the forward baggage compartment because it was cooler (and because liquid N is hazmat.)
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Bet that “bull” was easier to load/unload than he otherwise might have been.
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It was 102 here today, makes me remember when on the dairy farm on days like this we step in the ‘office’ off the milking parlor, grab a pop out of the fridge, and pull the top off the “can” and waft the liquid N “smoke” across us for a quick cool down.
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That forgery re Bush (revealed as such by a curious blogger, natch) was what shook me into paying attention to politics and journolism. If *** the great and respected *** Dan Rather could be a stubbornly loyal party to a frackin’ forgery fergawdsake … well, there was no longer anything unthinkable nor admirable about that so-called profession. My political awakening, I guess.
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My distrust and dislike of the news media resulted from a teenage trauma. In the late 1970s I was innocently attending a suburban Junior High School, when the nearby Big City Newspaper published a front page hit piece on my father. He was till then and since then an unknown college professor. The only relevant piece of information the newspaper story got right was my father’s name. Other than that the newspaper story consisted of distortions and fiction.
As a result I have a higher opinion of Congressmen than I do of Journalists. Of course on a scale of 1 to 100, 10 > 9 .
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During George W’s administration, there was a Liberal on Baen’s Bar got bothered by some stories in the New York Times. It seems that the stories were making George W look good (or at least better than his opinion of George W). He started talking about somebody pushing/making the Times publish those stories. [Evil Grin]
Oh, he wasn’t as bad as some Liberals and he usually didn’t get into “conspiracy thinking” so the Bar Flies were slightly amused. [Smile]
Unfortunately, another Bar-Fly provoked a Bar Fight with him later on and he got booted. Oh, everybody knew the other Bar-Fly started the fight and tried to calm things down but it didn’t work.
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Well, it’s all part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
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Once upon a time, everyone knew the media was biased, and which outlet had what bias, and anyone who didn’t exclusively drink any of the offered KoolAid flavors (a minority even then) knew they had to get all of the multiple POV’s and exercise their gray matter a bit if they wanted to know what was really going on, or even have a clue. .
Every town in America had at least two newspapers — the Democrat one and the Republican one. Then along came radio and TV and WW2-fostered “standardized” reporting (in no small part due to war security and such) after which the national networks really got rolling and media consolidation happened and most places devolved to just one paper at best and started relying on network news for national affairs. And for a couple of generations journalism “enjoyed” a standardized national POV, a bit left of center using “standards” set by the elitist network and J-school honchos.
And thus the illusion of the impartial media was born, and ruled for a couple of generations, even though the real objective was, as always, the harvesting of the almighty dollar.
Then along came cable and the internet and an explosion of media info choices and the subsequent re-segmenting of the news market, with niche exploitations for market share in a much more competitive marketplace. But people were so used to having a standardized POV from all media that they were shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the assorted outlets actually had BIASES!!!! Except their favored outlet, of course, which was Always Impartial and Accurate.
And … here we are.
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Tully, in a way we have something of that, still. There’s the MSM for nigh all flavors of lefty. Some internet and talk radio for the righties. And a smart cookie still has gotta use their noggin’ to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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Journolist is not dead; like Sauron it has been destroyed and been reborn
THE DEEP STATE: Secretive Leftwing Network Discovered through Wisconsin Records Law.
A low-profile Google Group used by over 1,000 state and national leftwing leaders and activists has been discovered thanks to Wisconsin’s open records law. A Media Trackers inquiry into the actions of a University of Wisconsin professor turned up records and communications from “Gamechanger Salon,” an online community that provides a forum for leftwing activists and leaders to share tactics, strategies and opinions.
Operating as a closed Google Group, much of what the network does is unavailable for public review. However, a document listing the network’s membership and a policy manual describing the mission and ground rules for the entity were accessible when Media Trackers discovered a non-password protected link in the emails obtained through an open records request of a University of Wisconsin professor. . . .
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/192545/
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thank you, thank you, thank you; this is the first time I’ve seen acknowledged that this “impartial” journalism is a new thing; that reporting was intrinsically biased in the past and, as you said, you filtered through it yourself; people lost that and have no concept of being able to do anything like that anymore
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Regarding economic news, its data manipulated to the point of “lies,damm lies, and government reports” For all intents and purposes I believe we are in a depression and as we draw down our military its only going to get worse. I think indie writing will flourish because its cheap entertainment, especially when the weather closes in.
As for general journalism, some of this is the shrinking news cycle. A century ago, the outlets were newspapers and magazines and you had several accounts of an incident, and books to get an in depth view. Now the media outlets are concentrated and few if any have foreign bureaus. So you have stringers of varying skill and bias. You also have social media and blogs, which again may well have an ax to grind. The news consumer is left to sort all that out for themselves. Antithetical thinking skills I submit are lacking due to a a lack of emphasis on teaching them either by design or negligence..
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The 4% “estimate” for annualized GDP growth for 2Q does not match the monthly consumer spending numbers – which is 3/4trs of GDP. So this “estimate” is nonsense. I expect it to be revised downward multiple times just like how 1Q when from plus 0.1% to minus 2.9% in three stages.
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I’ve personally always been a skeptic when it comes to media reporting, as from an early age I had observed events in real life and then seen the news reports and found they never quite matched, at best. Over the last twenty years I’ve given over to being a complete cynic thanks to my own interactions with the media.
Simply put, in that period I was interviewed quite a number of times, and what was published as being what I said was invariably misquoted, or ripped entirely out of context, or simply made up to some degree, all to fit whatever narrative the reporter or outlet was pushing. Including very short written statements, about which there really shouldn’t be the opportunity to misrepresent without flat-out mangling.
And this is why I quit talking to “the press” unless absolutely necessary, or when I knew the reporter was already on board and dedicated friendly.
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Simply put, in that period I was interviewed quite a number of times, and what was published as being what I said was invariably misquoted, or ripped entirely out of context, or simply made up to some degree, all to fit whatever narrative the reporter or outlet was pushing.
My mom stopped writing to the local newspaper when they started “editing” her stuff to say the exact opposite.
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Journalistic malpractice should either be a felony or have a civil liability attached outside of libel and slander. As I understand it, you have to show damage to win libel or slander. Editing a letter to the editor such that the meaning of the letter is the opposite of the original should win the newspaper a huge fine, whether the original writer can show harm or not.
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I still remember starting a book in which a leftist got huffy about how people don’t realize that journalism is a profession with professional standards.
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But it is a profession with standards but reporting the facts is no longer part of the standards. [Sad Smile]
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Journalists shouldn’t be permitted to vote. Their choice of “profession” is as much as an admission of aiding in any number of felonies.
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Journalists have standards… they’re just lower than a prostitutes.
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Record all interviews and warn the interviewer that you will put it online if the published interview is inaccurate.
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This seems to me to be the only rational way to give an interview. The ubiquity and relative low cost of technology allows an interviewee to mimic the assets of the interviewer.
All that remains is access to the audience, which might be stipulated in the interview, depending on situation.
In any event, I can’t see handing a potentially hostile media access with no backstop. Not today.
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Just remember if it’s a phone conversation that you have to let the other person know you’re recording. Wouldn’t want to get popped for an illegal wire tap.
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Check your state laws. IIRC in some states, you don’t have to let the person you’re talking to know it’s being recorded.
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I, personally, would be disinclined to give a phone interview. But I’m not a major personality someone might call up for an opinion on a nationally syndicated news program.
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Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt makes such interviews a part of his program: any MSM journalist who wants to interview Hewitt is invited on the show to do it in public. The listening audience is invited to compare the article with the interview transcript.
Hewitt has also been known to interview the journalist before starting, establishing a knowledge and viewpoint baseline. On more than one occasion the journalist has hung up before asking a single question.
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Whoot, thanks for reminding me– Townhall Radio has HH from three to six, with Mark Stein and James Lileks doing a bit in the first two hours! (as much as I like Mark, Lileks is better)
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??? You say that and you no give the link?
http://saleminteractivemedia.com/ListenLive/Player/HEWIIR
ALL of Salem Radio’s hosts are available online, each day’s show repeating in full on a three hour cycle, thus Hewitt’s show plays at 1800 EDT, replaying at 2100, Midnight, 0300, 0600, 0900 and so on until the next show commences at 1800. If for some reason you miss a portion you merely need note the time and return after the appropriate interval.
The Bennett, Medved and whoever else shows are available at the same root site, with extensions */ListenLive/Player/BENNIR, */Player/MEDVIR or whoever.
I don’t know what they do on weekends — play Friday’s show until Monday or replay the week’s shows in cycle.
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But then I wouldn’t be able to plug his podcastS at ricochet.com, and his blogging at last name dot com.
I’m not so much of a fan of everyone else, but part of the lure of a “smart phone” was listening. to streaming anywhere I had wifi.
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We began suggesting (when I was a media rep for the local Tea Party) that anyone who got interviewed by ANY media org (large and small) have their own camera rolling for the length of the interview. Just … for the record, ya know.
Yes, I got wise and wily, knowing how easy it is to cut and edit recordings to support the established media narrative. And it was a positive education to me, being interviewed by the locals and being all earnest, reasonable and educational (Yes, I usually came off like the principal of an old-fashioned girl’s school in the English tradition … that was my schtick and I did it very well!) I’d do the usual explanation of what we were all about … but the footage of me would most always be ditched in favor of footage of the most outrageous screamers at the event.
News cameras always gravitate to the screamers … and the anonymous editors always go for the most dramatic 5-second bite.
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“News cameras always gravitate to the screamers … and the anonymous editors always go for the most dramatic 5-second bite.”
Not always. Occupy Wall Street or pretty much any Pro-Choice rally. They’ve even been known to edit out fairly amazing statements by political candidates speaking to events. (“Clinging to their guns and religion”)
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The “peace” rallies were always “reported” on with photos of people pushing strollers and looking serious. You had to look in the blogs for the photos of most of the marchers — the screaming ANSWER drones, the Jew-haters, etc.
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I considered that, Mary, but the old maxim that it’s a bad idea to get in a word fight with people who buy ink by the tanker-truck still has some traction. If I was being abused personally in/by the press, I’d go for blood. Notice I mentioned that short (two or three sentences) written statements have also been mangled — just having the exact record isn’t necessarily much use unless there’s something actionable going on.
But this has all been in the context of working for organizations, and that’s another matter. I can’t make a personal issue out of it without involving the org, and there’s definitely a big dose of “pick your battles” involved with that. Generally speaking, trying to correct the damage done can be more much damaging than the original press-mangling, and there’s no internal support for picking that fight.
I’ve ended up at the point where about the ONLY press contact I bother with is releasing written statements directly to the outlet, instead of to the reporter. Editorial boards tend to go with the actual verbatim statement rather than twisting it about. Especially if you keep it short enough to quote in full. Everyday stuff I let the PR staffers handle, as they can say so much without saying anything at all …
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Oh, one time earlier this year I did protest directly to a newspaper, because it was personal. Cornered while leaving [oublic body] chambers after a public hearing I had given a carefully crafted thirty-second non-statement to the reporter instead of just refusing to comment at all. He shut off his recorder and moved on to the next victim when he figured out he was getting nothing but empty sound bites from me, word-for-word the prepared statement.
But when the story went online well in advance of the print version, the reporter said in it “[Tully] stopped short of accusing the [public body] of [corrupt practice] …”
“Stopped short” meaning I never at any time said nor suggested that to the reporter — my guess is that the reporter had heard rumors of [corrupt practice] and was trying to wiggle them into the story while implying I was the source, probably to cover for their actual source. I caught the article as it came online that afternoon, and two minutes later I was on the phone blistering the ears of the editor. Five minutes later the offending phrase had disappeared from the online version, and it was not in the morning print version.
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I can’t help but chime in here. I agree. Every time I read or hear news report that’s about an event I know something about, the news is wrong. I spent nearly 2 years in Southeast Asia, ’62 – ’63, and I was appalled at the way what I saw got distorted by the news media. I now see the same thing in reporting of scientific and technical issues (I’m now retired, but I worked for over 40 years as an engineer). I agree with Mark Twain. If you don’t read the papers, you’re uninformed. If you do read the papers, you’re misinformed.
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In America, the press have always been biased, and often blatantly partisan. There was a reason that newspapers were often known as the Someplace Democrat or the Elsewhere Republican. This was not really a problem until the second half of the 20th century, when the bias began to turn rather consistently in one direction even as the number of news outlets declined.
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I laughed when I visited the Lincoln museum in Springfield IL a few years back. They had an exhibit where they showed Lincoln’s first election as it would have been shown “today”. They missed the big difference between the news coverage of Lincoln’s time and the news coverage of today. They only had the “big three” television networks covering the story of Lincoln’s election without having “Southern” TV networks and “Northern” TV networks with the regional bias. [Sad Smile]
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Did they have Dan Rather calling for secession? Or was that left to MSNBC?
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Big Name News Stars siding with the South? No Way. [Wink]
Seriously, when I saw how silly the “coverage” was I walked out of the exhibit.
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The economy appears to be limping, and it isn’t just a USA thing, though Obama’s policies aren’t helping any there. My employer just put out a press release saying our company is doing relatively well despite potential clients’ “delays in investment decisions in a number of markets.”
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When I was much younger I used to listen every day for the stock market reports, for movement in the Dow Jones Index. Eventually it dawned on me that I did not give a good gawddamn how “the stock market” was performing; all that matters to me is how my stocks were doing. If the market zoomed but Acme Amalgamated Antimatter tanked, my retirement plans required re-thinking.
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Agreed.
I think I can understand why all the delivery is opinion rather than data. TV news sells the personality in much the same way as late night TV. And of course a news source selling viewer eyeballs is very likely giving the public what the public wants. Johnny Carson or Oprah Winfrey earned the money by delivering the eyeballs.
It seems hardwired that we buy personality over expertise – though expertise in one area will build a personality who delivers eyeballs on subjects he or she knows little or nothing about.
It’s certainly cheaper to deliver opinion than a good job of investigative reporting. In some part because there is a lot of pick one false starts and unproductive or wasted expense or learning curve and bad timing in developing a story that may or may not make money for the news source.
What I don’t understand why the public doesn’t ask for and get dirt cheap Kindle/Nook/epub versions of such things as the Economic Report of the President. Should be part of Project Gutenberg if nothing else but it isn’t.
In the language of the post we still rely on a dubious reporter crying wolf with varying veracity rather than public access to a feed from surveillance cameras and ground sensors.
We should be drowning in a flow of big data. We should all be trying to drink from a fire hose of data but we aren’t.
When I was a teaching assistant in economics I sat through a freshman orientation session where the paid advisor addressed herself to the math phobic saying take journalism it has no particular requirements. Maybe 10% of my classes could learn economics while the rest were quite willing to settle for high school civics filled with all the opinions from on high of contemporary education.
Maybe it’s like teachers who allegedly know how to teach but don’t know the subject. Reporters have learned to write self indulgent opinion pieces but don’t know the story.
Sad to think we are all every single one of us numbered among The Marching Morons going off the cliff.
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“we still rely on a dubious reporter crying wolf with varying veracity rather than public access to a feed from surveillance cameras and ground sensors.”
If only.
In many cases it has turned out that we are relying on a naive reporter relying on dubious stringers relying on unidentified local contacts, each with an agenda carefully secreted from view.
By which means we arrive at the absurdity of the CNN Baghdad Bureau where in order to protect the safety of
reporterscorrespondentspersonnel and the ability to relay government press releases CNN had to tacitly avow to report no (as in zero, nada, zilch, borsticht) news. Anybody asking why we needed a news bureau in a place which would not allow reporting would meet a blank stare and muttering about “just not understanding journalism.We don’t even want to open the can of rant that constitutes informed opinion on the “journalism” coming out of Gaza.
As for “It’s certainly cheaper to deliver opinion than a good job of investigative reporting.” —
Opinion is easily manufactured to fit commercial requirements, requires neither research nor facts and is a more consistent, uniform and reliable product for public consumption.
When you report actual news there is always the risk that it will be unpalatable to your public and thus engender complaints, regulation, oversight and legal expense.
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But with the press all most people have is “is everyone saying more or less the same” and “is this a big, mainstream news?
And if they’re lucky, their mom teaches them to look for a byline to the effect of “by AP.” (It’s really depressing to read 498 articles on a subject that are really bad rephrasing of the exact same, mistaken, Associated Press story.
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An AP story that is itself a minor abridgment of a press release.
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I started reading foreign news sources to get a better view of what is going on internationally. for various reasons I focus on S. America, and read from Colombia, Paraguay and Argentina, (Buenos Aires Herald http://www.buenosairesherald.com and Mercopress out of Uruguay are in English)
Granted a lot of their international news comes from EFE which is a private news bureau in Spain, but it is something different than straight AP.
My big thing now is the editorials. Once upon a time in America the editorial was the towering construct of fury, scorn and insight: Lucius Beebe, syndicated columnists like Mike Royko, even Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain were towering masters. Now the editors have these mealy mouthed comments and seem afraid of being accused sometime in the future of actually having an opinion.
But in one of the S.American papers I have been reading there is an editor on a tear about (his) national government’s corruption and recently he finished one editorial saying that such functionaries guilty of such crimes should be brought before the court, tried and put in jail. I would add that this is in a country where 30 years ago they were shooting dissenters in the street, so there is a certain amount of bravery here, too.
I don’t know what the difference is, but I am floored by the decay in simple opinion and the language used to describe it in the American papers I have access to.
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And I just made a killing-buy at the grocery store because a pile of ground beef was at discount to 2.70, which is less than half the normal price. Think what you will, but in the really good times, the discount shelf is lean, because people buy it out very fast. Instead it was piled there and I got enough for meatloaves and meatballs and all sorts of dishes for a month or so.
We just got a great sale on chicken thighs, 88c a pound with coupon. A different store is having hams on sale for $1.40 a pound.
Both are pretty solidly picked over, but yeah– there’s not the kind of fighting over it as if things were dire.
Possibly related, if you go through the deli area there’s lots if the cold take-out food with ELIGIBLE FOR EBT stamps on them, so food signals might be confused. The heat-and-eat rice sells out quick, too, but normal rice and beans don’t.
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My daughter and I make a trip once a month to a very excellent old-fashioned meat market in New Braunfels (Granzins’ – it used to be right at the edge of the local stockyard – talk about fresh meat!) , and load up; we spend about $30-40 each and take full advantage of whatever specials they are running. The prices there are great, and the quality is fantastically good. They even have fresh beef bones – for making broth, of course – and then the dogs get what’s left. We scored a vacuum-sealer at a yard sale at the beginning of the year, so the meat gets divvied out, sealed, labeled and frozen. We have a nice surplus built up now. All we have to fear now is a prolonged electrical outage…
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I haunt the day-old and reduced shelves right after big BBQ weekends. The cheap cuts and ground meats get really cheap. I can sometime score whole chickens for $.85/lb. That means a nice big batch of broth for the freezer, and meat for quick meals.
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That was last week. Two got roasted immediately so the kids have lunches.
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If you’ve got a chest freezer, make sure your emergency water supply is the kind that can freeze and thaw without breaking and put those in for extra chilling.
Freezerbags of water work, too, if you’re moving the freezer for a couple of days. (tape the lid shut and then wrap it in tarps, lasts a couple of days without power)
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Milk jugs, I grew up always having frozen milk jugs in the freezer. Although a few years they were filled with cider rather than water. But I had a friend that lived off grid and being around his place really brought home to me how effective that was at keeping stuff frozen for long periods of time instead of simply helping your monthly electric bill. He always kept his freezer completely full, as he took meat out of it as soon as there was room for another milk jug he put a jug of water in, come fall before hunting season he might have fifty gallons of frozen water in the freezer. But he only ran his generator for 45 minutes to an hour, every couple of days, through the summer. That was enough to keep a chest freezer that was full, frozen solid.
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well, the feeling I got is that it didn’t move at full price. As in at all. And this is not expensive stuff.
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The folks who know how to cook hamburger are standing next to me having fits over it being more expensive than boneless chicken.
(I get my beef from my parents, or I’d be next to you buying the least expensive hunks of cow I could find.)
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One notes that drumsticks are cheaper than white meat. Personally, I would buy them anyway.
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The grocery where I shop carries 10lb bags of chicken leg quarters for about $7. I just never get organized enough to separate them into smaller bags before putting them in the freezer, so wind up with big hunks of frozen meat that are hard to separate.
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Ours are eight at the start and five at the end, mechanically separated; bought them a lot when Elf didn’t have a job. Sometimes go as low as four bucks for ten pounds in the sale isle.
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Now and again chicken quarters (legs and thighs) at Granzins for less than $1 a pound. I don’t like the ones that they sell marinated, though – but bake them in BBQ sauce, they’re tasty enough.
And the chicken breasts are … well, I am trying to imagine the chickens, staggering around trying to support that development. They must be the size of turkeys, I think. A half-breast makes three servings, easily.
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There’s a breed that gets freakishly large. Yes, as large as a small turkey.
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me too. Favorite part of chicken.
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The thighs are the same price per pound, and my kids aren’t old enough to think drumsticks are awesome, yet. (It’s a minor defect in our othewise perfect 4 year old.)
Part of why I really need to get a cookbook written. It’s insanely easy to bake good drumbsticks– lay bacon on them, bake for an hour. (for fancy, wrap in bacon; for cheap, lay a chunk of the “bacon ends” on each piece)
Yet I can’t get my sister to even try it, although she’ll gobble it down if I do it.
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Put drumsticks on pan. Spread some olive oil on them. Put in oven for 30 minute at 400 degrees, then 15 at 375. Check temperature and bake more if needed. Then put aside the drumsticks, put the pan on a burner, add enough flour to turn the fat into a uniform paste, cook a bit (bubbles in the paste show it’s done), add water, mix it up and cook it together until it’s gravy.
Alternatively, put in a pan that’s just big enough to hold them on a layer of BBQ sauce. Then smoother in BBQ sauce. Bake at 400 for an hour. Check temperature and bake more as needed.
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It’s on the back of the individually-frozen-things, too:
bake at 375 for 45-60 minutes, or until juice runs clear.
Even without a squirt of olive oil and a sprinkle of garlic salt and lemon pepper, it’s good.
If you’re really not sure, crumble a handful of potato chips on top of each frozen chunk and bake.
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Whoops!
Add some salt with that water. To add flavor
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This reminds me, I need to post the dish I whipped up last night over at my place. Mostly so I can remember what I did. (I’m a TTAR cook most of the time – that tastes about right.)
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I’m a “That’s close enough” cook. I often start with a recipe, find I am missing ingredients, and start figuring out how to use substitutes to come close to what I’m shooting for.
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That means you are a real cook. I am not, sure I can make tasty food, but then I can’t comprehend people who are too stupid to follow a recipe. Following a recipe is pretty dang basic, cooking by eyeball and adding a pinch or so of that, takes talent.
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I rarely follow a recipe and I AM a good cook. Problem is, when I make something especially tasty, I rarely can do it again.
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Folks buy white meat because it’s “healthy,” and then they have to add all sorts of flavoring– sometimes also healthy, but more often not– to make it enjoyable.
Dear Husband likes dark meat because I’m a little… er… paranoid about overcooking, and dark meat is very forgiving.
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I like the dark meat on chicken because, you know, “fat is flavor”.
Interestingly, this is a concept that most, if not all, of the cooking shows get, yet everyone else is on the low-fat bandwagon, which means they have to add alternative flavors.
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It’s been interesting to watch that turning around. There’ve been articles in the NYT and Time about it, of all places. The biology work has been out for about a decade, and I’ve been reading about it for about half of that, and eating much better for it.
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Fat is also filling, so you need to eat less of your dish to feel full. And don’t forget the second half of the equation (said by a chef on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives): “and acid is life.” Get your fat in and your acid (such as lemon juice) and you’ve got more than half the flavor profile.
Since we’re digressing onto food, I’m going to throw in a plug for the Northwest spice blend from Penzey’s spices. It’s the one thing we’ve found to make tilapia (a blank slate if ever we found one) tasty on a reliable basis. It also works well on chicken, though that’s less necessary.
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“Dear Husband likes dark meat ”
I would hesitate to admit that, seeing as you are Irish.
/runs/
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Ah, but I’m black Irish, and his ancestors are roughly the ones that thought dark hair and hazel eyes warranted the title “black”…..
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were they really Welsh, cause the whole “black Irish” thing is what I was always told my ancestors were as well and my dad had the black hair and I got the hazel eyes
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I ran a cross this Essay/Article and found it of interest, so I’m sharing.
http://www.darkfiber.com/blackirish/
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We don’t think so, but there was much drama involved and… well, in two thousand years folks can move a LOT!
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(sigh) Allergic to fowl. I can eat eggs alllllll day long, but give me chicken or turkey, or something even cooked in a pan after chicken, and my mouth and throat start swelling shut. The upside is that I like piggie, and cow, and bison, and venison, and…:)
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My husband’s childhood best friend has the opposite problem– he can have a little bit of white meat, but slip some beef broth in (let alone good red meat) and he’s sick as a dog.
Got an in-law who has a similar issue, too. (Been tested by her husband, who feels very sorry.)
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For those that may be in flyover country, or near anyplace that has a farm…
Couple of the local cattle ranchers (small time stuff) usually save one for slaughtering for themselves, and often cannot eat it all. So they sell, oh, say a quarter or whatever cut of fine quality beef. Usually pretty cheap, locally. Definitely worth it. Chest freezer highly recommended.
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Talk to the local 4H, or someone you trust, to find the good ones.
Some of the “buy local” stuff is total bunk; some is really good stuff.
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Aye, you’ve got to be careful there. 4H are usually good folks around here. Some of the folks at the “upscale” farmer’s market… not so much. Bit excessive on the greenie politics and “organic” nonsense. I won’t say “couldn’t find their own arse with both hands and a map,” but…
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But they do know their bovine excrement, right?
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And they pay top dollar for it. [Searchengine] “Buffalo Loam” and try not to laugh and the thought of paying for gently used, pre-processed native grasses.
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The things one learns reading this blog. *shakes head* Amazing.
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According to Hoyt is CULTURE.
(and insanity, cookies, ammo-talk, puns and carp, but CULTURE too.)
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CULTURE!!!!!
I’m leaving I didn’t come here for boring old culture. I came for the fun stuff. [Very Big Kidding Grin]
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Pfui. Have a fish.
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That’s even better than “steer manure”. Seriously, does castrating them really improve the quality of fertilizer? Do they test and certify that all the manure comes from castrated male bovines?
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(my folks have three kids and a lot of random relatives that get a few hundred dollars of beef, instead)
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People keep talking about food. Fresh food. Fresh beefy food.
Now I’m hungry.
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Fresh, juicy, beefy goodness. Grilled, two inches thick. Side of roasted taters. Good beer.
These things are what paychecks are for. *grin*
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I’ll have to settle for putting a pizza in the oven. Which I’m about to do. [Grin]
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I appreciate your moderation of the descriptors in deference to my belly-grumbling state. :|
At the BBQ? You get yours last. No teasers, no nibbles, no exceptions.
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I’m usually the cook. Eating last is kind of a tradition. *grin*
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Hmph. Guess I’ll amend ‘last’ to ‘last night’s leftovers.’
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*has mild fits about three bucks a pound being “normal price”*
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no. six bucks a pound is normal price here in town.
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I believe it, I just don’t want to.
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I know. In my head that SHOULD be the price for decent steak.
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I can (regularly) get london broil for $2.67/lb around here. People wonder why i want a meatgrinder…
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Sheesh, I just paid $5+ a pound for london broil (I’m insane, I make beef jerky out of it. But it’s very good beef jerky.) and that was at the cheap supermarket.
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here it would run seven and up. :/
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Here, the local store brand of ground beef (73%/27%) is about four bucks a pound, and so is chuck steak. Higher quality brands naturally cost more. Ribeye steak typically runs $12-$14/lb. I splurged and bought a few once when they were marked down to half price…
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And the flappers live on.
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You see, each person might know what he’s saying is the end product of a bull’s digestion — or at least that it’s inflated/spun/glossified (totally a word) — but he or she won’t know that his/her colleagues are doing the same to EVERY single, small, specialized bit of information.
Actually, I have an even greater fear: they realize that all the data they see is bunk and thus go on gut feelings on areas they have no expertise in. Given my job I do worry that many of the inputs our modeling uses are just made up. If that’s true no matter how well I do my job or how honest my direct collection of data I’m reduced to garbage in/garbage out.
If that is the case no matter the quality of work you do how long before you question the value of effort in doing quality of work. Lying is a poison. After Journalist I can no longer even given a modest amount of trust to the press even after I think I’ve filtered for their bias. After various IRS scandals I have no choice but to at least consider any future negative IRS action a reflection on my political giving/speech and so on.
The worst danger is not that we filter for BS in our field but not in others but decide no matter what it is all BS and quit caring.
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I tend to see my ‘boring freelancing’ as a leading indicator. Good paying jobs for freelance copywriters start drying up right before everything tanks, because web copy and business writing are one of the places companies cut when they’re trying not to cut important stuff.
So…. expect another dip in the ‘recession’ up ahead. How many dips are we up to now?
There’s still work out there, of course, but… it’s getting more competitive and pay rates are going down. (Because freelancers are one group where you CAN cut pay.)
Lean times ahead, folks.
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Now stuck in my head….
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Lean times ahead, folks.
Unless you are an engineer/I&C technician or work the oil patch it is tough.
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Even so, an engineering degree does not automatically amount to a job.
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Well, EEs are in relatively strong demand again out here in Silicon Valley these days, but there are EEs and EEs – the RF design engineers are back on demand for cell phone work after they were out for a while when the military RF/radar work went away, but the number one, never-out-of-work-unless-they-want-to-be flavor of electrical engineering across my entire career in this roller coaster tech economy are the analog design engineers. Most EEs only do digital design these days, so the analog work is pure voodoo from which they run screaming into the night. To a digital designer, analog is noise, to be avoided and designed out. To an analog designer, everything is signal.
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My brother is a production supervisor for a mid-size oil company in West Texas and he cannot keep skilled craft and even has a tough time keeping general laborers even when he pays them $20-$25/hr. I guess having to live and work in the area from Sierra Blanca to Monahans has something to do with that.
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I read that and wish that had been a choice when I was a 19 year old college drop out. I wound up in the Navy.
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I’ve noticed an odd trend in the spam I get. It used to be “you won a million” or “you won a free dinner at Ruth’s Chris.” Now it’s stuff like “You have just been hired by google.” (Since when is a job the dream prize?) and “you won a free dinner at Applebys” – like these normal everyday things (well, six years ago, we used to have dinner at applebys about twice a month, when I was too busy or whatever. Now, only in emergencies or we’re caught out of the house at 8 or 9 pm. BUT if you order carefully, it’s still not a dream dinner, or crazy expensive.) Spammers make their living hooking the marks, and they seem to think the marks are all running tight and lean. Which would dispute the booming economy. Even the “qualified/limited booming.”
Now I’m worried in two years the spam will be saying, “You have just been hired by Applebee’s”.
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I got spam this week claiming to be from the head of consumer protection and fraud investigation in Nigeria, trying to contact me to let me know that a completely legitimate, really this is legal, business needed to pay me my mining company dividend and I just need to send the following information . . . With a .ru return addy, no less. I’ll give them a few points for creativity.
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How was the spelling/grammar/etc?
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Better than usual, actually. I was mildly surprised. Much better than the one from the missionary’s window in Singapore who wanted to give me money.
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Anyone ever read “The Good the Spam and the Ugly” by Steve Graham?
Guy had fun playing mind games with spammers and wrote about some of the episodes.
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Sarah Hoyt I just woke up with this thought running through my head, “We live in a fantasy world…”
———
A world based in faulty perception; on how we feel or think it should be vs how it actualy is.
We do not teach our kids what is need to thrive as adults.
What is lacking IMO are:
1) Dispute resolution & Conflict resolution. How to deal with those around us positively.
2) How to deal with our own emotions and disappointments.
3) How to learn. (Our education system focusses teaching specific info instead of on teaching the skill of how to learn.)
4) How to make positive decisions based on an accurate perception of the world. (How do we know if our perception are accurite? It closely predicts the future. It has good perdictive ability.)
5) How to be self-reliant, how take personal responsibility, and how to work together.
More?
———-
I think some of this is response to an earlier post on education and then I notice check the site and here is this post. I see this problem as not to much info (in the media), but a lack of teaching our kids the skills, and it is a skill, of how to perceive the world accurately and to make positive decisions for themselves based on that perception. What we ended up teaching our kids instead at “school” is our own faulty perceptions and ideologies and not how to think for themselves. So it’s no wonder we are easily confused by the Lame Stream Media.
I’m just waking up so is there anything else that I’m missing?
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To number 4:
Click to access PsychofIntelNew.pdf
Worth reading.
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Books in general may not be selling well, but my book, RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY, a primer on how to conduct an armed revolt, is doing nicely, thank you. As an author, I’m pleased. As a citizen, I’m not so sure.
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There are a great many help-wanted signs up around my town. However: these are the sort of businesses (fast food and retail) that wouldn’t put up signs except for minimum-wage part-time hires, and high school goes back into session in less than a month.
Full-time jobs for people with training and experience seem to be awful scarce and paying very little, judging by the usual sources. I keep saying we’ll know the recession is really over when the help-wanteds in the classifieds take up more space than the foreclosures.
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OT, it has nothing to do with nothing:
I’m a sap, I admit. And I’m okay with this. Here’s a video (if the embed code works):
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Speaking of comedians, but well-informed ones, Here’s Evan Sayet.
http://youtu.be/peRUTroIuNs
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“But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.” George Orwell, 1984
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These days I use a variety of online news sources (both here and abroad) and then play ‘try to find the thread of truth’ while filtering it all through a very fine mesh. We used to watch Megyn Kelly when she was on in the daytime, but she’s got her own biases (fewer than most, but still) and now they moved her to nights when I’m doing my best to stay away from news. I have a tough enough time sleeping without all that crap getting into my head before it hits the pillow.
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There are days when I just want to ignore the world, live inside my head, and emerge only for meals (OK, and to clean the cat box). I can see why other people work so hard to avoid all traces of current events and politics – it’s scary and after a while, if you are not careful, you start to think that there’s nothing you can do.
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Once upon a time people thought that was the government’s JOB.
“First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,a for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. “
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May the Lord bless and keep the Tsar . . . far away from us.
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Amen!
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Good Lord yes. But you might not be interested in politics, they are most surely interested in you.
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I often hear radio commercials that use what sounds to me like Dan Rather’s voice. I am astonished that a company thinks this is a good idea. Rather is a lying, misleading, ….well insert your own ugly metaphor here.
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Syphilitic son of a whoring emu?
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