bemusedoutsider's lj

Some people seem to be arguing that each ebook copy of a book sold (or not sold?) costs the publisher as much as each paper copy?

If that's in any way true, then something is very wrong with the publishing industry.

Well, there's a simple move Obama could make to counter the rumours of horrors in the HC bill (death panels, cuts to medicare, mandates/fines, no more Canada imports, etc etc). He could promise to veto any bill which included any of those things.

Oh, wait a minute....

I've seen people saying Obama should have done more, done less, gone further right, gone further left, campaigned more in MA, campaigned less in MA....

Imo, he and the Dems should have done things that people want, not things that people dislike.

Dislikable things:
mandates to buy insurance; fines if you don't; cutting medicare; forbidding buying drugs from Canada ... approving mountaintop removals ... TARP to speculators ... etc ... etc

It's not the pace, it's the content.

This week I spent a lot of time arguing for Coakley on leftist and center-left blogs such as Riverdaughter's Confluence, Pumapac.org, etc. A lot of those people have always attacked Obamacare from the Left. On Jan 19 many of them voted for Brown as a punishment to the Dems.

Kind of the same thinking as those Dems/Liberals who voted for Nader in 2000 -- or for McCain in 2008, as a protest against Obama.

Many of these people had supported Coakley in the primary when she was opposing the Obama/Kennedy candidate and criticizing Obamacare. When she won the primary and the O/K people endorsed her, that was a kiss of death for many of her supporters. They accused her of selling out and they voted for Brown in protest.

I haven't seen exit polls to find out how many votes this actually added up to. But it's a factor I think should be looked into. Not all Brown's votes came from GOP/Conservatives nor from people who disliked Coakley before she accepted the O/K endorsement; till then she was well liked and successful, sfiak; it was only after the O/K endorsement that her numbers went down.

Of course Brown hadn't had much of a campaign till then either. In some states the primary settles the general election, and everyone thought MA would be one of those states this year.

 Because of a discussion elsewhere, I'd like to know....

If you were (sorry) raped and beaten such that you spent several days in hospital, much of it under morphine, and with no one to speak for your wishes, would you assume [give all that apply]

1. that of course they gave you emergency contraceptive immediately

2. that of course they did not

3. that when you revived they would ask you if you wanted some thing against pregnancy

4. that they would not give contraceptive and  never bring up the subject unless you inquired

5. that if they did not give contraceptive and you got pregnant they would offer to 'terminate' the pregnancy

What else?


If anyone feels like signal-boosting on this poll I'd appreciate it. Hope I've got this set for anon ok and no screening.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hockey-sticks-unprecedented-warming-and-past-climate-change.html

A good site with many readable techy comments, but cherry-pickable.

Some good sense on 'Climategate':

http://firedoglake.com/2009/12/06/lies-and-the-lying-lies-about-science-and-also-the-lies/

http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/26/and-now-for-a-moment-of-thanksgiving-sanity-regarding-the-stolen-climate-change-emails/

http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/27/the-wsjs-kim-strassel-cru-emails-prove-global-warming-is-fake/

RealClimate.org
scroll down a few screens

Also here are statements from Michael Mann of RealClimate

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/26/807934/-Michael-Mann-Responds-to-CRU-Hack?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+dailykos/index+(Daily+Kos)

Silobreaker links to a variety of perspectives:

http://www.silobreaker.com/michael-mann-responds-to-cru-hack-5_2262765687745282048

Boosting this signal from dbang. Some of these words are links at dbang's site, http://dbang.livejournal.com/468870.html

To my MA friends only: Remember to vote tomorrow
MA citizens: remember to vote tomorrow in the Democratic special primary to select the dem candidate to take over the remainder of the late Ted Kennedy's senate term. (Remember that whoever wins the Dem primary is almost certain to win the general election, so tomorrow's vote is the one that counts.)

I'm voting for Attorney General Martha Coakley because she's taken a hard, unequivocol, take-no-prisoners stand on the issues I care most about: gay rights/marriage, reproductive freedom and labor law.
- she's filed suit against the federal government against the dreaded DOMA
- as DA and GA she's worked for and defended "buffer zone" laws around abortion provider clinics
- she didn't pussyfoot around her decision to run for senate, while other candidates were waiting to see if Joe K was going to run for the seat
- she's got endorsements from Mass Equality, Bill Clinton and random other politicos I support, not to mention striker1957
- it would be nice to have MA represented by a woman on the national stage

Found a good discussion on the climate change emails etc. Apparently I and others have been too quick to accept charges that CRU 'fudged' their chart. Actually they understated the case!

This is a good discussion of many of the points in 'climategate', from several different positions. Good number of well informed posts, all concise and readable.

Here's one sample from

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/febrile_nitwits_and_the_hacked.php#commentsArea

Posted by: Ed Darrell | December 5, 2009 3:58 PM

They didn't try to "fudge" any data. [....] In an attempt to list several lines of concurring data on a chart, there's a difficulty with the tree-ring stuff. After about 1960 it shows temperatures declining. Now, there were thermometers in 1960, and every year since, and so we know what the the temperatures were.

Temperatures actually rose after 1960. [....] So, rather than post known-to-be-incorrect data, they "fudged" by substituting in actual temperature measurements. You know, the accurate, known stuff.

Here's the funny part: The resulting chart, with the "fudged" data, [....] showed global warming to be less serious than it really is.

Much good info and links here:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/another-round-the-cru-e-mails
Another Round With The CRU E-mails...
CRU isn't the only group in the world tracking global temperature trends. As Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois, points out, there are at least three other groups, including NASA, NOAA, and the Japan Meteorological Agency, that have been analyzing surface temperature data for well over a century (there's a fair bit of overlap in what raw data they use, but they all have their own ways of analyzing it). Here's how they all stack up.
All very similar, all showing the same clear upward trend. (If anything, note that CRU readings have been on the low side in recent years, largely because they don't include temps from the Arctic, where the Earth is warming most rapidly.)

More worth reading on the cuts to Medicare here:

riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/not-much-left-they-want-that-too/

huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/03/bernanke-channels-willie_n_378963.html

Democrats Vote to Cut Half a Trillion Dollars From Medicare
The AP reported:
( Read more... )

Re climate change research, lifted from http://davidjwilliams.livejournal.com/66928.html

the science beneath all of it remains fundamentally sound [http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/ ]. Marine biologist and SF maestro Peter Watts provides good context in this regard [ http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886 ].

Here's the case for the prosecution, which boils down to: there was a party in 1621 and Indians did join and bring food; a generation later, 1637, there was a fight. http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html

Here's a more balanced, realistic account (search for Englishmen to skip to the key events of 1621)
http://xiphias.livejournal.com/544757.html?style=mine#cutid1 Massasoit's expert political manipulation maintained peace in the region for at least fifty years. [....] Maybe not very many generations -- but nonetheless, an accomplishment to be celebrated.

Here's the original British account, which sounds like a prospectus, but isn't that far off in the facts of the 1621 event it describes. Behind the cut for length.
( Read more... )

Signal boost for Cat Valente's page:
http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/546905.html

Fairyland is eligible for the Andre Norton Award.

[W]ouldn't it be cool for something this independent, this unique and tribal and viral, to be nominated for one of the big awards in the field? Wouldn't it be cool to shake things up, to show that this kind of thing, if the quality is good enough, can be considered alongside shiny hardback bestsellers?

The book is complete and can be read in its entirety [at
http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/fairyland/ ] for free.

( Read more... )

Personally I'm a Whole Foods Nation tree-hugging leftist, but I admire Sarah Palin. What she offers is not liberal policy (more center-right) but she has DONE very worthwhile things:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574537882681089404.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments

For her center-right policies, see USA Today, "Palin governed from the center"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-11-palin-cover_N.htm

Another version same story
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=5786203&page=1

OECD data (UK and USA):

- The UK has 2.5 physicians per 1000 people, 10 nurses per 1000, 2.6 acute care beds per 1000, a life of expectancy of 79.1 years, and an infant mortality rate of 4.8 per 1000.
- The US has 2.4 physicians per 1000, 10.6 nurses per 1000, 2.7 acute beds per 1000,life expectancy was 78.1 years, and an infant mortality rate of 6.7 per 1000.

[ US spends twice as much: 16% of GDP. UK spends 8.4% of GDP. ]