There is nothing in this world that I hate more than contrarianism. Say what you will about Villagers, but their predictive powers are probably only marginally worse than those of a coin flip. The predictions Mickey Kaus makes are always wrong. I defy any of you to name a single thing that Mickey Kaus predicted that actually happened.

And that’s why I’ve always hated the guys who wrote Freakonomics. It seemed to me they were lending an undeserved intellectual respectability to the most childish of pursuits. So I was glad to see their new book get torched by Matt Yglesias and others:

As misleading as the Superfreakonomics chapter on climate change seemed to me yesterday, the email that Steven Dubner sent to Brad DeLong really compounds the sin. Dubner whines that Joe Romm “makes it sound as if we somehow twisted and abused Caldeira’s research; nothing could be further from the truth.”

[....]

Of course it’s possible that the UCS is mistaken about some matters. And it’s possible that Ken Caldeira is mistaken about some things. But it’s not possible that Levitt and Dubner are correctly representing the views of Caldeira or climate scientists in general. Nor is it possible that Levitt and Dubner are correct when they assert that photovoltaic cells are black (they’re usually blue) nor is it correct to say that black PV cells lead to net increases in global temperature. These mistakes. A mixture of bad science and bad reportage on a crucial public policy issue, done by a writing duo who became famous for clever statistical analysis of trivial matters.

Of course, none of this will prevent George Will, David Brooks, and Ross Douthat from claiming that these jackasses have thoroughly debunked modern climate science.

Woke up, accidentally put ground red pepper in my coffee instead of cinnamon, did not notice until I took a swig. Tunch ate so much he threw up what can only be described as a cat food cud on the futon. Went to the kitchen to get a damp rag to clean it up, came back and it was gone and Lily was smacking her lips, and then the toilet overflowed.

If I had not had so much coffee (sans red pepper) I would just go back to bed and start over.

Every now and then some journalism breaks out across this fair nation:

As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody’s Investors Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

A McClatchy investigation has found that Moody’s punished executives who questioned why the company was risking its reputation by putting its profits ahead of providing trustworthy ratings for investment offerings.

Instead, Moody’s promoted executives who headed its “structured finance” division, which assisted Wall Street in packaging loans into securities for sale to investors. It also stacked its compliance department with the people who awarded the highest ratings to pools of mortgages that soon were downgraded to junk. Such products have another name now: “toxic assets.”

Read the whole damning report. And can I say it is about damned time. There is a pulitzer here.

Have at it.

...in that people criticized MLK too.

That’s some quality hoekstroika right there.

I thought I’d sneak a nice catch-all open threader in before John drops the dreaded “CBS Sunday Morning” open thread on us.

Here’s a question I’d like someone to answer for me: When people say there are no atheists in foxholes does that mean that no atheist would get into a foxhole in the first place or that the experience of being in a foxhole would make you turn religious?

And in keeping with a recent theme, here’s one of my favorite 70s videos.

Coke’s a hell of a drug.

IMO several problems make me question the brackets that Gamespot ran here. First of all, they ran Snake against Gordon Freeman way too early. That matchup is clearly final four material at least. Master Chief’s freak upset in the first round makes me question the entire competition, and Jack Carver had way more personality than some of the one-hit wonders who made the cut. Parappa? Seriously?

Also, your favorite game system sucks. Also.

Since this site never has enough nerds arguing.

***Update***

We don’t bow to peer pressure around here, so you don’t get Tunch until the next time John logs in.

Meet Whiskey. There will not be many Whiskey photos because the E-P1 is not exactly a fast camera and this hypercaffeinated teenager of a setter can’t sit still for two consecutive seconds.

Technical details: photographer held a medium sized pine cone over his head and acted like he might throw it. This worked just long enough for the E-P1 to find its focus. Whiskey then gave up on the pine cone and resumed barking and running in circles.

The superlight sub-notebook computer format has interested me since at least the mid-90’s, but for the most part tiny, portable computers seemed like a half thought-through niche product. Starting about a year ago, it appears that Asus and now pretty much everyone have hit on a winning formula that deservedly opened a huge new segment of the computer market.

Like most professional scientists Dr. Mrs. Dr. F and I usually arrange our talks at the last minute, often on the plane on the way to a conference. Given the bulk of most laptops and their life support systems, it is hard to ignore the appeal of a super-battery life computer the size of a day planner. Too bad for me, when I walked into Best Buy today they had just cleaned out their PC shelves to make room for new models that run Windows 7. For travel reasons we need one of these things pretty soon, so I am turning to you guys for help.

Has anyone tried Windows 7? I could wait until Monday and buy a new model, but past experience makes me skeptical. I had the dubious pleasure of managing digital microscopes separately controlled by Windows ME and Vista , the two biggest mistakes in the history of operating system rollouts and I fucking dare you to convince me otherwise. Plus I’m still coping with post-clippy stress syndrome. I like the idea of a portable computer running a minimal necessary OS*. Should I find an XP-powered netbook online and hope that it ships in time? Maybe you guys can convince me that Win 7 will not crash and burn like Windows f*cking ME.

If you have a netbook and want to let others know how great it is, or if you want to warn others away, feel free to share. Any and all advice will be appreciated.

(*) One other baffling point – as I recall Windows XP is just a prettier and memory-intensive graphics upgrade of Windows 2000. So why not ship netbooks with Win2K? That should free up the minimal processor and the RAM to work on computing tasks rather than unnecessary microsoft crapware. Apparently I don’t know anything about computers.

No More Mister Nice Guy blog outlines what may well be the worst article ever to appear in the New York Times, an extended whine by Paul Sullivan about all the angry email he got for his piece “A Thousand Violins, Playing Just For the Rich People“. Here’s a sample:

“That’s so stupid that you ought to be slapped for it,” one woman wrote. My favorite began: “Bowties and Reaganomics are for losers. You can cry for the rich all you want, the rest of us will be happy to see them get taxed.”

The vehemence in these e-mail messages made me wonder why so many people were furious at those who had more than they did. And why are the rich shouldering the blame for a collective run of bad decision-making? After all, many of the rich got there through hard work. And plenty of not-so-rich people bought homes, cars and electronics they could not afford and then defaulted on the debt, contributing to the crash last year.

Sullivan goes on to suggest mass psychotherapy for everyone who didn’t like the piece, because, you see, if you don’t like reading about the travails of the ultra-wealthy, that means you have an unhealthy level of anger towards rich people.

Personally, I don’t resent rich people at all. Maybe I should, but I don’t. What I do resent is the New York Times wasting space discussing the economic “problems” of the rich when there are people out there who have real economic problems. I am not one of those people, by the grace of God, but you know the drill: 45 million without health insurance, 10% unemployment, wave after wave of foreclosures. Those are real economic problems. A 30% dip in your hundred million dollar trust fund is not.

If there were some terrible disease that was only affecting rich people and Paul Sullivan asked us to feel sorry for them, I would do so. In fact, I’m willing to admit right now that there may be all kinds of psychological problems that afflict the rich disproportionately and, if so, I have sympathy for those afflicted.

But Sullivan is not asking us to feel sorry for the rich because of any of those things, he’s asking us to feel sorry for the rich because they aren’t quite as rich as they used to be. And, that my friends, is total bullshit.

It’s one thing for Sullivan to write some sob piece about the rich because one of his editors told him to do so. That’s understandable. But when you write an entire column whining about the email you got and accusing your readers of psychological problems, you’re an asshole. It’s that simple.

There are days when I wish the New York Times would hurry up and go bankrupt.

I don’t normally like to make things this personal, but this picture of the reporter is worth at least a thousand words.

Have at it.

Vote Bitsy, also too.

Interesting analysis by Democracy Corps about what motivates the conservative fringe which included this paragraph:

A central part of the collective identity built by conservative Republicans in the current political environment is their belief that they possess knowledge and insight that the majority of Americans – whether too lazy or too misguided to find it for themselves – do not possess. A combination of conservative media outlets are the means by which they have gained this knowledge, led by FOX News (“the truth tellers“), and to a lesser degree conservative talk radio. Their antipathy and distrust toward the mainstream media could not be stronger, and they fiercely defend FOX as the only truly objective news outlet.

This goes along with what DougJ has been talking about for months- that these folks really are speaking their own language, and have a complete different language, reality, and collective understanding. It really is to the point that the echo chamber is reverberating so loudly that when you hear these guys speak, it almost seems like they are from a different planet.

Only they know the real truth. The rest of us are just sheeples.

The NY Times reports:

President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of airing “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to push back against industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

Rather than trying to curb costs and help patients, he said the industry is busy “figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

I’m wondering if when this is all over, people will look back to the BS report from Price Waterhouse Coopers as the turning point in the debate.

I understand he really wanted an NFL team, but I can’t imagine that spending a couple weeks trashing the NFL brand is really working in his favor.

The last of this summer’s paltry tomato plants are well & truly frost-withered, and the final hastily-gathered bowlful of green fruits don’t look very promising either. But next week, the weatherpodperson promises, more 60-degree days!

Happy Friday night, y’all…

There have been a number of requests for an open thread. This video seems appropriate given the events of the last few days and my own musical predilections:

If you want to complain, please scan in the appropriate documents.