Es usted la mujer más bella que he visto en mi vida... lo cual no dice mucho en mi favor. (Groucho Marx)

Who Are These Guys? We see on TV and read about experts. Often, University Experts. Then we hear whatever it is they pontificate about. But does anyone really know who these people are? Does anyone really scrutinize their work or do we just accept that they did things properly and correctly? Does anyone look to see if there is fraud? Typically, that sort of fact checking is done by other scholars. But, if there is a dissenting voice, will the media give that voice any credence or airtime? Often researchers have students do the dirty work for them...collect the data. There have been a couple of famous historians who were nailed for plagiarism when it was found that work done by others showed up in their books.  The two historians I am thinking of got off the hook by claiming the work was done by graduate students on their behalf and the items inadvertantly got into their published work without citation. So...just exactly who is collecting the data for these big global warming studies? Do you really think that the person who writes the analysis and gets credit for the work is actually doing the collecting?

Consider This Regarding Data Collection and Global Warming Statistics:

First off, read the following article from the Sydney World Herald that is about how in 1917 the movement of a weather station by a very short distance resulted in the skewing of data. The old site, which had been in use for a number of years was in a micro-meteorological environment that resulted in much cooler conditions than the new site. The result was a jump in temperatures. In 1972, because the data collection point was inconsistent, it was determined that the data collection point had to be disregarded when making climate studies.

Sydney World Herald-Hot Heads Cause Climate Change

Now, in spite of the fact that the inconsistency of the data made it no good for usage in long term climate studies, Anthony Watts claims that noted "global warming expert", Dr. James Hanson used the data when making one of his surveys. Hanson has been sounding alarms and been quite popular on Capital Hill and in the press. Watts even provides a graph that he says Hanson presented for Sydney that uses the corrupted data.

Here is Dr. Hanson's site that provides a whole lot of stuff on him including his recent papers and presentations and even provides his email address. Here is an article that is critical of Hanson for his recent call to Congress that oil company executives should be tried for crimes against humanity which is interesting because I bet Dr. Hanson didn't ride a bike to the halls of Congress.

Okay, let's assume that Dr. Hanson and others have indeed used Sydney. So, using one data point that is corrupt will not alter significantly global findings. But, it raises the question about the quality of data collection. I mean, if it is bad at one place, what about others? Could it be that there are a bunch of bad data sets that may corrupt climate studies? Well, I know potentially of one more and it's right here in Louisville.

We were told that the official site for Louisville was the National Weather Service office, which is staffed 24 hours by professional meteorologists. Well, a few years ago it was determined that NWS guidelines required that all official collection sites be ASOS sites, or automated and the NWS office is not automated; they use real humans who are trained professionals. So, the official site got moved a few miles away to the airport where there is an ASOS and the observers are in the control tower who have other duties besides weather collection. Though not as dramatic as Sydney, the data collected can be quite different between the sites. Here is an example from June 2008.

LOUISVILLE ASOS MONTH: JUNE YEAR: 2008 DPTR FM NORMAL: 4.3 DPTR FM NORMAL:

LOUISVILLE WEATHER OFFICE MONTH: JUNE YEAR: 2008 DPTR FM NORMAL: 0.9

The airport is influenced by lots of concrete and the aircraft engines and heat and such. Officially Louisville was 4.3 degrees warmer than the 30 year average this year. Alarming! But, at the NWS office, Louisville was less than one degree warmer than the 30 year average. in 2004, this would not be startling because the official high would have been less than a degree but today it may sound alarm bells in the global warming community and the reason is only because they moved the site.

Other examples can be found in the recent past. August 2007 was considered to be the hottest of all time in Louisville by a wide margin. Had they used the data at the NWS, like had been done for something close to the past 30 years, then it would have been the 6th warmest. (Climate records) The average temperature in Louisville officially was 8 degrees above average...had this occurred in 2004, Louisville it would have been only 4 degrees warmer than average. The only difference? They moved the site.

I suspect that it will be very difficult for Louisville to break any record lows but will consistently break records for highs simply because the data being collected today is from a site not consistent with previous collection points. The averages that they are comparing today's collection with were largely made at the National Weather Service.

So...now we have Sydney Australia and Louisville KY as examples of corrupted data points. I had always thought that researchers are pretty thorough and they would know to be consistent and careful with their data collection. However, if Hanson was using Sydney, who is using the new Louisville records. And how many researchers take into account the effects of urbanization? In Houston, the official data collection was moved from Hobby Airport(HOU) to the then new Intercontinental Airport(IAH). Hobby is closer to the ocean and is way warmer than the 25 miles farther north IAH. That made IAH cooler, especially at night. At that time, there was nothing but fields around IAH...now there is all sorts of development around it. how has this altered the data? Are these changes taken into account? I don't know but Anthony Watts says we have at least one example in which a noted scientist used bad data.

Sites have been moved and surroundings have changed. The question is how many of these sites are there and how many have been used in climate studies? How much data is used when it supports one agenda or another and how much is discarded?

As I had asked before...what is the matter with honesty in reporting and in research. It's hard to know who to believe these days.

Last Thursday was a big day. Little Addison turned 5 years old. Addison had a very eventful birthday "week". As mentioned in the previous post, we had a little party at Grandpa's in Michigan the weekend before. On Tuesday, I took her to the Cubs game so Mommy could go shopping to get her presents since they are together 24/7. Unfortunately, they broke their home winning streak and we were both pretty bummed, but it was still fun. There was a man in front of us that Addison, for some reason, really took a liking to. After she was flirting with him, I said to him that I'm sure that when he hoped a girl hit on him, this probably isn't what he had in mind.

There is a five year old sleeping. Everyday she is more like her mother. She actually wasn't too excited to wake up. Mommy let her sleep in a little bit and she then sauntered out ready to start her special day.

On TV, Addison saw many commercials for the "Pancake Puff". It is some silly little thing that you can only by from TV (i.e. Chia Pet) and it's was the thing that she wanted the most. Basically all it does is turn pancakes into little puff-like donut things. So, needless to say, she was very excited at this. Check out the website, it's kinda cool, I guess.

After breakfast, Mommy, Ruby, and birthday girl picked me up from work for the second thing that Addison wanted to do. Have lunch at Rainforest Cafe. Wow. What a wonderful rip-off that place is. I don't think you could drop $100 faster in Vegas than we did in that tourist trap. No wonder people think Chicago is expensive if that's the type of places that out of towners go. Yeesh!

For dinner, we had a few friends over for pizza and cupcakes. Addison received her other birthday wish. A little robotic baby duck that quacks when it's hungry. Yes, that's right, a little robotic baby duck that quacks when it's hungry. The toys kids have nowadays.

Coincidentally, Addison had her 5 year check up on Monday. She weighs 34 and a half pounds and is 41 inches long. Only a few more inches and she'll be taller than Grandma Nancy.

A link has been posted in the comments section of my first post that I just have to flag up here in a post of its own. Dave Corey disects all the cultural references in the great, great Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg song Lydia the Tattooed Lady. For years I have listened to the song without questioning who Nijinsky was and now I know! Well worth checking out.

http://davecory2.blogspot.com/2008/06/lydia-tattooed-lady-revealed.html

1. A sequel to "The Big Lebowski."  The Dude is inadvertently hired to cover the Republican National Convention.  The script would draw inspiration from the Gonzo journalism of "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail."  Although I'm certainly not suggesting the Dude should take on any characteristics of the Duke.  They are polar opposites after all.  And that's why it would be so damned funny.
2. Star Wars Episode 0.  "The Adventures of Young Yoda."  Two reasons--I want to see Yoda fight in his prime.  And I want to see who and how bad his mentor is.
3. A Michael Moore documentary on John McCain.  We desperately need anything that helps stop the Cons before they can do any more damage.  And I bet Moore could make it funny.
4. A Marx Brothers remake.  Actually, just remake the funniest parts of all their movies.  Plot is incidental.  Jerry Seinfeld plays Groucho, Jack Black is Chico, Will Ferrell is Harpo and Kate Blanchett plays Zeppo (to give it Oscar eligibility).  Meryl Streep plays Margaret Dumond (could get the flick nominated on this post alone).
5. An adaptation of any of Hemingway's books.  Better yet, how about just "The Story of Ernest Hemingway?"  Young Ernest is Shia Lebouf (I am not looking up the correct spelling) and old Ernest is DeNiro.  Smoking, drinking, sex, fishing, skiing, and fighting...this movie could have it all.  
6. The "Autobiography of Travellinbaen."  Why self written, you ask?  I don't see anybody knocking in my door looking for the job do I?  And why should I want this movie made?  For the money, of course. And I want it in advance.  I never said anything about all these movies having to be worth a damn after all.
7. You want ten don't you?  Everything tied up all nice and tidy.  Well genius doesn't work that way. These ideas take a lot out of a man.  Go on and make up your own list and leave me the hell alone. (Sorry, I was channelling Bogey there for a minute).   

forchunatly dada gave me a kloo on how to proseed i just borrowd his ajility trial disgize and then walla the stores thawt i wuz a person and let me in

"Don't be silly.  If I were a dog, would I have this lovely moustache?"

but then i ran into my sekund problum wich is the managers at all the stores i went too told me that my caveear stuf isnt caveear at all they sed its just fluf from inside a dog toy i ashoord them that it came from inside a fish toy but apparintly caveear only comes from inside a reel fish and its akchooly their eggs ewwwwww sticky slimy gross fish eggs hoo wood want to eet those bleah!!!!!!  i wood eet them tho just becuz their their

ennyway now im left with all these krates of top notch caveear stuf that nobuddy wants to by wot can i do hmmmm maybe i can sel it in the mithical town of ebay i heer peepul will by ennything from that playse ok bye

p.s. to all my investors sorry i spent all yore munny on r and d but perhaps i can perswayd yoo to aksept a luvly jar of top notch caveear stuf in loo of a return on yore investment????

Nos asustamos un poco, pero ya hemos vuelto a emitir a diario en nuestra página porque... bueno, aquí lo explica un poco mejor el Vecino, que es el culpable de todo:

Algo parecido le pasó a Groucho Marx cuando estrenaron "Una noche en Casablanca". Él también se dio cuenta del truco y ésta es la carta que Groucho le envió a los Hermanos Warner.

(Groucho Marx, quién si no..)

The premise is this: If you finance a house, you can take the money that you would have spent in buying it and invest it and earn more money from your investments than you would have paid in interest. And I'm sure this is correct, assuming that you haven't sunk everything into a formerly hot stock like Bear Stearns or its future equivalent. One thing you can depend on money people to know is how to get and make money. They're very good at that, except when they are wrong. When they do err, it tends to be with a bang rather than a whimper, and fortunes piled up over a period of years are wiped out in an afternoon. This is what happened on an October day in 1929, a day on Wall Street, when it was almost literally raining men.

However, that millionaires and billionaires would deign to sit in a conference room with the people from the bank and the lawyers for the sellers and the sellers and the lawyers for the millionaire or billionaire just because it makes financial sense has to carry some weight. You don't get to be rich by being inept at the collection and collation of cash unless you're born into it, and even then the habits of being rich are passed along from generation to generation just as the value of college and the need for a steady job are passed down through generations of the middle class. The possession of mounds of moolah is the defining characteristic of the rich, which is why so many of them are so proud of their philanthropy. Philanthropy is to the rich what camouflage garments are to hunters: a way of hiding what you really are.

However, after having pondered the argument of the wealthy concerning mortgages for several days, I have decided that I would, given the opportunity, still pay for a house in cash. It may not be the right thing from a financial point of view, but it would be the right thing for me. Let me explain.

The difference between what I would do and what a financier would is based in a difference of viewpoint. What matters most to the financier is wrenching as many dollars out of this life as possible, and that is not my main concern. My main concern is protecting my family. Samuel Johnson said that "[t]he only use of money is in the parting of it," and I couldn't agree more. Society is based on the getting and spending of it, and debating the wisdom or folly of that system is pointless because that is the world that we live in. One could no more change that than one could recolor the sky or reposition the stars in heaven.

However, the getting and keeping of money does not have to be the entire focus of one's life. Money can be looked on as a tool rather than as a treasure, as a means rather than an end. I have lived through enough to know that life has an ebb and a flow and that the ebb tide often happens when you least expect it. And this is why I would still pay cash for a house if I had the cash to spend. If things ever went horribly, terribly wrong, at least we would have a roof over our heads, a place that no one could take away from us as long as we could scrape together the taxes.

Which is what Groucho was on about. In 1929, he lost a quarter of a million dollars in one day*, the equivalent of over $3 million today. He was fortunate to have a large steady income at the time, but he determined then that nothing was ever going to threaten him or his family again. He owned three houses in his life, and for all three he paid cash. I've always admired that and I always will.

* Just by the way, many years later, Groucho visited the stock exchange on Wall Street and was given the grand tour. The tour ended up on the little platform over the exchange from which the bell is rung each morning to start trading. Groucho stood at the railing and started singing "My Wild Irish Rose" as loudly as he could. As he went through the song, the tumult on the floor slowly came to a halt and everyone in the room looked up astonished at the little man with the moustache and glasses. When he was finished with the song, Groucho looked out over the crowd and said, "In one day here in 1929, I lost a quarter of a million dollars. I think that gives me the right to stand here and sing 'My Wild Irish Rose.'"

After getting the lovely new Kubrick box set with all the lovely new documentaries and commentaries, I stumbled across this entertaining film discussion programme from I'm guessing 1971, the year that 'A Clockwork Orange' was released. Watching Anthony Burgess and Malcolm McDowell smoke like troopers is quite amusing, as is the host William Everson's observation that the soundtrack and nadsat language (which for some elusive reason makes me think about lolcats language now) give the film a timeless quality which will 'make it stand up to viewings in say, the year 2000.' 2000 was the year that the film was re-released in the UK, oooooh, spooky eh? No, er, well OK, moving on...

EDIT - Looks like I missed a trick here, this week was the 40th anniversary of the release of 2001 and here is a nice link to all sorts of stuff about it. Enjoy.

I've caught a few of the old Marx Brothers movies recently, the less famous ones such as 'Horse Feathers' as opposed to 'A Day at the Races' or 'A Night At The Opera' which I all caught years ago. My favourite repeated sequence that they included in most of their films were the brief musical interludes, specifically Chico playing the piano which never fails to delight, as well as Groucho's wisecracks of course.

Lying in bed, plagued by my perennial insomnia recently my mind turned to inappropriate film double bills, prompted by a recent discussion on the Mark Kermode Radio 5 film podcast and a conversation I had with my brother's girlfriend. She explained that when she was a teenager and had sleepovers with her friends, one of the rules was that you had to watch a 'girly' film and a 'scary' film. 'Ah, you mean like 'Dirty Dancing' and 'Make Them Die Slowly?' I enquired. Or 'Ghost' and 'SS Experimentation Camp'? my brother chipped in. London cinema legend 'The Scala' apparently used to host amusing double bills for the pleasure of the dubious patrons and residents of Kings Cross so I thought what would I suggest curating were I in the enviable position of managing my own independent and financially secure cinema. So here goes:

Can you think of any more?

Well, good question - what did happen to John Hughes? Anyone growing up in the eighties loves at least one of his teenage epics. I will always remember one Christmas at school when our entire year was filed into the Assembly Hall and shown 'Ferris Buller's Day Off' which on reflection is a ridiculous thing to do - hey, let's show kids how cool it is to ditch school and skive off? I reckon it was a way to get all the kids together whilst the teachers had their own Christmas 'party' in the staff room whilst a couple of teachers who took the short straw had to chaperone us. I'm sure Mr. Bardrick was uncharacteristically friendly when he passed me at the school gates later on and he was weaving from side to side on the pavement - strange.....

One of my all time favourite film makers is the great John Carpenter. He is probably more responsible for my love of cinema than anyone else (Kubrick included) as I'm sure he was the first director I actually recognised as having a identifiable style which lead to me actively seek out his other films.  I think the first video I ever bought was either 'Escape from New York' (check out the deleted opening sequence here) or 'The Fog' (Spoliers) and I recall very clearly the very first DVD I got - 'The Thing' (Spoliers again) which had that most remarkable of things, a directors commentary. It's a shame he quite honestly lost the plot after 'They Live' although I can actually see qualities I like in 'In The Mouth of Madness' and at the very strong risk to any credability I may have acquired over the past 18 months, 'Escape from LA'. I did have a reason to bang on about Carpenter but you know what - I'm fucked if I can remember what is was. Oh well, sweet dreams....

¿Qué importancia real tiene la política, la religión y todas las absurdas soluciones 'garrulas' a las preocupaciones generales del ser humano? Groucho Marx supo separarse por completo de esos pensamientos eruditos. ¡Qué grande eres Groucho! (me niego a utilizar el pasado imperfecto, Groucho nunca morirá)

Algunos fragmentos de la entrevista realizada a Groucho Marx por la periodista Charlotte Chandler para la revista Playboy (1974):

“-Cuando aún era pobre, ¿qué creía que significaba ser rico?
-Solía pensar que ser rico significaba tener un montón de dinero. Ahora creo que significa tener un montón de dinero.
-¿Tu dinero proviene de ganancias o también hiciste algunas buenas inversiones?
-Siempre le he prestado atención a la Bolsa. Especialmente cuando sube.”

“-¿Alguna vez fuiste víctima de antisemitismo?
-Claro que sí. Hace algunos años decidí asociarme a un club de playa de Long Island. Llené el formulario y vino el gerente a decirme que no podíamos ser socios porque yo era judío. Así que le dije: ‘Mi hijo es solamente mitad judío. ¿Puede ser que le permitan entrar al agua hasta las rodillas?”

“-¿Qué es lo más satisfactorio que ha hecho en su vida?
-Fui a Alemania, y mientras estaba allí, me mostraron la tumba de Hitler y bailé sobre ella. Nunca he sido un gran bailarín, pero Dios, ¡ese día estuve sublime!”

“-¿Qué se siente al tener 83 años?
-Sigo vivo. Eso es todo. Sé que aún sigo vivo porque me despierto por las mañanas. Si no me despertara, eso significaría que estaría muerto.”

“-¿Cuál es su historia favorita?
-Pues verá, una mujer casada pilla a un tipo, se lo lleva a su apartamento y se van a la cama. Cuando están en plena faena, el hombre dice: ‘Nunca me había acostado con una mujer como tú. Eres la mujer más extraordinaria en la cama que jamás haya conocido. No soy un hombre religioso, pero cuando muera, si existe el más allá, pienso volver a buscarte, no importa en qué parte del mundo estés’. Y ella le dice: ‘Bueno, si es que vuelves, procura hacerlo por las tardes.”

“-Aparte de los cigarros baratos, ¿qué es lo que más le irrita?
-Esta entrevista.”

“-Una última pregunta: ¿Qué haría si pudiera volver a vivir toda su vida?
-Probar más posiciones.”

"Fuera del perro, el libro es el mejor amigo del hombre. Dentro del perro, quizá esté muy oscuro para leer".

Groucho Marx

-La política es el arte de buscar problemas, encontrarlos, hacer un diagnóstico falso y aplicar después los remedios equivocados.

- Hijo mío, la felicidad está hecha de pequeñas cosas: Un pequeño yate, una pequeña mansión, una pequeña fortuna…

-Fuera del perro, un libro es probablemente el mejor amigo del hombre, y dentro del perro probablemente está demasiado oscuro para leer.

-¡Hay tantas cosas en la vida más importantes que el dinero! ¡Pero cuestan tanto!

-Lo malo del amor es que muchos lo confunden con la gastritis y, cuando se han curado de la indisposición, se encuentran con que se han casado.

-El secreto de la vida es la honestidad y el juego limpio, si puedes simular eso, lo has conseguido.

-Detrás de un gran hombre hay una gran mujer y detrás de ésta su esposa.

-Nunca olvido una cara pero con la suya voy a hacer una excepción.

-¿Por qué lo llaman amor cuando quieren decir sexo?

Biografia.