Politblogo

The scientist as actor

My Canadian readers may be familiar with this common phenomenon: I have a few American readers of this blog, and even among them, it is not uncommon to hear frustrated expressions of desire to become Canadian when their politics adds another razor-wire loop to the loopiness that it is.  My Canadian readers will also be familiar with the both the feeling of flattery tinged with a small amount of guilt: justified guilt that it is not deserved.

Via ReWind.it at Bread'n'Roses, we find this charming bit of news in the Notional Pest:

Until now, Environment Canada has been one of most open and accessible departments in the federal government, which the executive committee says is a problem that needs to be remedied.

It says all media queries must now be routed through Ottawa where "media relations will work with individual staff to decide how to best handle the call; this could include: Asking the program expert to respond with approved lines; having media relations respond; referring the call to the minister's office; referring the call to another department," the presentation says.

Gregory Jack, acting director of Environment Canada's ministerial and executive services, says scientists and "subject matter experts" will still be made available to speak to the media "on complex and technical issues." He would not explain how "approved lines" are being written and who is approving them.

This sort of thing will be no surprise to anyone following the saga of the frankly excellent Linda Keen, the Canadian nuclear regulator who stood up to a Canadian government presently dominated by an unadulterated Bushian neocon.  (Her total smackdown testimony linked from here.) And by dint of that, these tactics should be highly familiar to American readers, as they were learned from You Know Where.

Next year's baked goods are going to suck anyway

The Cookie Fascists have struck again!  Instead of recognizing my greatness and giving me my rightful due (a full supply of cookies next December), they have seen fit to give the Cookie Crown to another, another who was willing to pander to their narrow-minded definitions of "cookie."  I mean OATMEAL COOKIES???  Anybody can do that.

So now I know how it goes: assuming I don't go on strike and boycott next year, I will endeavour to make the most boring, blandest dough-disks imaginable, perhaps even ready-made, rather than the startlingly awesome confections that I made this year.  And I shall no longer listen to blandishments and praise, because these promises of greatness-recognition did not bear fruit.  Fie!

The Cookie Sultanate will have to wait another day because of the infidels.  Infidels, I say.  Infidels who gave out at least five prizes out of NINE contestants, and the name of Námo Mandos not among the winners.  Even the cookies that (might have) had interesting effects on canine digestion won a prize (judging a second-string contest).

One last thing: a big shout-out to the folks and loyal fans at Bread'n'Roses, especially GDK for the brownie recipe.  Y'all get to be sore losers along with me.

Be grateful you aren't starving

For some reason, I decided today to punish myself by reading redstate.com.  RedState, for my Canadian readers, is a wannabe Daily Kos for the right-wing.  The people who run it are the sort of Republicans who give off a sort of normal, less freepish aroma, but do not be fooled: they are actually completely loopy neocons and the like with the thinnest veneer of erudition. 
The difference between them and the freepers is the recognition that you have to put on a suit to get the creamier fraction of wingnut welfare.

So anyway, token funny-name* dude Pejman Yousefzadeh approvingly quotes this stunning piece of Jonah Goldberg-ian sophistry from some nobody writer in the NYT.

 

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?

Um, no. Even if you've just lost your job, there's something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that's elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?

This is, in a nutshell, why capitalism---whatever its merits---exists in deep opposition to democracy. What is this guy really telling the victims of trade and, indeed, the rest of us?  What is the moral corollary of this logic, logic that the writer quite correctly identifies as emanating from capitalist ideology?

Be grateful that we allow you to survive.

I don't normally go after right-wing ideologues directly myself, happily preferring, as I do, what others call the circular firing squad; I have generally preferred to go after intellectually dishonest people who profess to be, in some way or another, on my side.  And I can't help but feel that this sort of logic also underlies those people as well, especially the well-meaning economists and the like. 

But when someone tells me, "Congrats!  We are not going to kick you onto the street today," I may indeed count my blessings for myself.  But I am not obliged to express any gratitude for it.   If I believe that I owe gratitude for survival to something, then I believe that it is my master.

*I can say this because in real life, I have a funny name like his.

Blogroll reform: your chance for glory

So it has come to my attention that the blogroll on the side has become very stale, as I no longer read the majority of the blogs mentioned there.  For instance, I added the "Catallarchy" when I decided to waste my time on a few weeks stint as resident troll for the annoying glibertarians that inhabit the place, but as glibertarians have approximately only one thing to say, it got old fast. 

Thus, in the near* future, I plan to completely overhaul it, eliminating most of what's there and adding a small number of things.  But, YOU---yes, YOU---have the chance to obtain a sublime honour from me: being added to my blogroll.  Just post a comment in this thread if you want to be on it and are not an offensive chunderloaf**.  This is my way of winnowing out the most worthy among you---because how often you obsessively check this rarely-updated blog is a telling measure of your worth as a human being.

*I haven't mentioned whereto*** "near" is relative.

**No offense to innocent chunderloaves.

***I love adverbial compounds.

The second day of Oilmas

Yesterday was Oilmas! $100 NYMEX, baby!