Paul M. Jones

Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn’t work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

A key point:

"Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

Just because you have a model that fits the *past*, does not indicate it will fit the *future*. This also applies to stock markets. Via Hurricane experts admit they can’t predict hurricanes early; December forecasts too unreliable.

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptics Position (studio version) from Warren Meyer on Vimeo.

VIa Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptic’s Position | Climate Skeptic.

One of the hardest things for men to understand or even recognize its significance is female solipsism. What this means is that most women view everything from their own perspective. And by everything, I don't mean everything that directly or indirectly involves them, I mean everything. This, for example, is where the Team Woman concept comes from. As most observant individuals recognize, women aren't team players and habitually sabotage their female friends and relatives.

(No, you're not fat, in fact, you're TOO skinny... have another piece of cake! It would look so cute if you cut all your hair off. And definitely break up with your CEO husband who used to be a pro athlete, you can do so much better than him!)

And yet, a man can't make a negative comment about lesbian Finnish women with PhDs in Mongolian Horse Milking without straight American women who never went to college leaping to their defense and taking great personal umbrage that anyone might dare to suggest that Dr. Piia-Noora Kiviniemi-Damdinsüren could be anything less than fabulous. This is because even though a woman has absolutely nothing in common with Dr. Kiviniemi-Damdinsüren and possesses absolutely no opinion whatsoever on Mongolian Mare Milking, she nevertheless identifies with the other woman and therefore feels that your negativity towards the doctor is actually somehow an attack on her.

This is, of course, insane.

via Alpha Game: The utility of solipsism.

Since this regulatory role of insulin in fat metabolism was established in the 1960s, a viable alternative explanation for the cause of obesity has been that it is caused by a dysregulation of insulin signaling.  By this logic, the way to treat obesity is not by eating less and exercising more, as Ms. Parker-Pope implies, but by reducing insulin levels, perhaps as low as possible. That is accomplished most efficiently by severely restricting the carbohydrate content of the diet and removing, in particular, refined grains and sugars that have the greatest effect in stimulating insulin secretion.

The implication of this basic endocrinology is that obesity is caused not by eating too much and sedentary behavior, but by a disruption of the hormonal and enzymatic regulation of fat tissue caused by the easily digestible, refined carbohydrates and sugars that we do eat. Indeed, by this logic, calorie-restricted diets – starvation and semi-starvation diets as used in the studies Ms. Parker-Pope discusses – can be thought of as particularly counterproductive ways to reduce carbohydrate consumption and so insulin levels, starving the body, as they do, of the energy required to effectively run metabolic processes. 

In the past decade, clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated that when obese and overweight individuals consciously restrict the carbohydrates they eat, but not calories, they not only lose weight, on average, but their heart disease and diabetes risk factors improve significantly.  Their insulin resistance, in effect, resolves. Those of us who have lost weight ourselves and witnessed the effect of these diets on our patients can confirm that this is exactly what happens. 

Emphasis mine. Via Petition Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, in response to "The Fat Trap" (Jan 1, 2012).

Given my interest in health economics and graphic novels, I was initially hopeful about Jonathan Gruber's graphic novel, entitled Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works. But in all honesty, the book is awful. Gruber crafts his argument like a salesman, not an economic educator. He's careful to avoid outright mistakes, and makes a couple of awkward disclosures. Yet he omits a long list of crucial, damaging points.

via Sins of Omission: What's Wrong With Gruber's Health Care Reform , Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

A young Oklahoma mother shot and killed an intruder to protect her 3-month-old baby on New Year's Eve, less than a week after the baby's father died of cancer.

...

... McKinley was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.

When Martin kicked in the door and came after her with the knife, the teen mom shot and killed the 24-year-old. Police are calling the shooting justified.

"You're allowed to shoot an unauthorized person that is in your home. The law provides you the remedy, and sanctions the use of deadly force," Det. Dan Huff of the Blanchard police said.

Note that she was in the house and on the phone with 911 for 21 minutes while these aggressors were trying to break in. One keeps a weapon because the police are not there to protect you; they are there to catch bad guys after-the-fact. Via Okla. Woman Shoots, Kills Intruder: 911 Operators Say It's OK to Shoot - ABC News.

More exercise of civil rights:

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.

It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.

The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

via Americans buy record numbers of guns for Christmas - Telegraph.

Civil rights progress:

Wisconsin residents have overwhelmed the state Justice Department with so many concealed weapon permit applications agency officials say they probably won't meet deadlines for issuing approvals this month despite pulling dozens of employees from other tasks to help.

A state law that allows Wisconsin residents to carry concealed weapons went into effect Nov. 1. Under the law, state residents 21 or older who submit $50 to the Justice Department, pass an agency background check and prove they have received some firearms training can obtain a permit to carry. The law requires the agency to process applications received before Nov. 30 within 45 days. Any applications received after that date must be processed within 21 days.

via Wisconsin swamped by concealed-carry applications - chicagotribune.com.

Everything we know “based on evidence” is actually based on evidence together with appropriate theory.

via It’s a Fact that the Facts of the Social Sciences are Known Only Through Theories.

"Regulatory capture" means this: When you want government to regulate a complex system, you need people who know enough to do the regulating. Politicians and bureaucrats don't know enough, so they hire people from that system to do the regulating. Those people have a natural tendency to favor the system as it is, so they legislate in a way that is favorable to the system as it it. Thus, the system that was to be regulated "captures" the regulatory regime. Here's an example of what it looks like:

This chart of Venn Diagrams (New Year’s Day links) is a nifty visualization[1] that shows how many, many people, through the operations of Washington’s revolving door, have held high-level positions both in the Federal government and in major corporations. To take but one example, the set of all Treasury Secretaries includes Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, which overlaps with the set of all Goldman Sachs COOs. The overlapping is pervasive. Political scientists and the rest of us have names for such cozy arrangements -- oligarchy, corporatism, fascism, “crony capitalism” -- but one name that doesn’t apply is democracy. On the flip, you’ll find a larger version of the chart (and a discussion of its provenance).

(This shows only Democrats; I guarantee the Republicans are just as bad.) Via Crowd-sourcing the revolving door « naked capitalism.