Rebane's Ruminations

Where is the moral fiber?

George Rebane

Where indeed?  In responding to my Christmas post, a reader emailed me about a grocery store incident in which a man, with daughter watching, helped himself to some mixed nuts from a bin.  She reminded him that that was stealing, and he reminded her that it wasn’t stealing at all since he was a regular customer of that store.  There was more to the conversation, but that was the gist of it.

In her email she asked where is the moral fiber today that permits us to ignore or define away stealing.  This may be a question of our age, and it applies to a broader category of social infractions.

We are now an enforced, non-assimilating, multi-cultural society.  A mono-cultural society teaches its young rules of social behavior much of which need not be codified into law since they are understood by almost all the population.  And if that culture also teaches the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent god, then correct social behavior stands on the divine dictates of morality.  You don’t mess with a god who knows your heart and can hold you to account if you persist in going against the rules he has laid down.

But in a multi-cultural society, where behavior is enforced by the state’s ‘power of the bayonet’, things are very different, especially if the state religion turns out to be secular humanism.  The secular humanist worships complex combinations of atoms.  And since the constituent atoms are the fundamental material elements of this universe, they cannot represent any absolute good or bad, no matter in what combinations they may occur.  What can one say in an absolute sense about the progress of one particular dynamic path of such a collection of atoms versus, say, another dynamic path?  Can one such path be intrinsically ‘better’ than any other?

Christmas 2009

George Rebane

The two main events in the Christian calendar are celebrations of the Promise and the Fulfillment.  Christmas calls on us to reflect on the Promise delivered - the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us, that made real what had long been promised.  By His appearance among us, the Promise of the good news and a new covenant of salvation between Man and God became an historical event.  He had come.

As Christians, we take great joy in the remembrance of that little noticed event two thousand years ago, an event that would alter the course of Man and his empires.  Today, in our own country and around the world, Christians again stand battered and confused by forces and events we scarcely understand.  But Christmas reminds us once more of the real hope for a better world in which we, in His image, will all have the freedom to grow and give according to the talents and opportunities afforded us.

Jo Ann and I wish all of you a joyous Christmas, and a new year where ‘Better!’ will properly respond to every ‘How are you?’ coming your way.
  
 

Christmas in Stettin, 1944

George Rebane

Sixty-five years ago we celebrated Christmas 1944 in a small uninsulated cabin the Germans called a Behelfsheim, a ‘temporary accommodation’.  The Third Reich built these to house the tide of refugees fleeing the Red Army then rapidly advancing from the east.  Our cabin was in a long row of such cabins next to a large empty lot (it seemed like a field to me) near the edge of Stettin.  I remember a howling snowstorm outside was trying to force its way in through the thin walls.  That Christmas we had a little green bush with lit candles on the table but no presents.

My great-aunt Alvi (Alvina) had come to visit with some small hard-to-get delectable that we had shared for the Christmas Eve meal, and then we huddled around the wood stove to hear Herr Goebbels’ evening radio talk to the nation.  Every night he informed us of the great victories the Germans were winning.  After the war my father told me that the German propaganda minister was not fooling anyone because the victories were constantly being won closer to Germany.

Leading up to this Christmas the big news had come from the west.  The Germans had launched a major offensive designed to stop the Allies advance in France and set up conditions for a negotiated peace – or so everyone thought.  History would lump all these battles together as the Battle of the Bulge, and recognize it as a speed bump on the march to the Rhine.  Nevertheless, it was the season of hope and all of Germany was hoping that the terrible five-year war would soon be over.  

My mom, dad, and I had arrived in Stettin the previous spring.  We were part of the growing wave of east Europeans fleeing the Red Army as it began its final offensive on Nazi Germany.  Our native country of Estonia had fallen to the Soviets that September, and it later turned out that almost one hundred thousand or 10% of the population had fled.  Those who stayed believed that after the war the Red Army would quietly go back across the USSR border and Estonia would again be free.

Surprise! Copenhagen ends with a deal

George Rebane

Well, it was touch and go there for almost two weeks and that prepared us for the cliff hanger.  The legions of naifs around the world wondered how it would all end.  Of course, it ended with a “meaningful agreement” precisely as scripted.  RR readers should be issuing a collective yawn tinged with a bit of relief that the light from one end of the tunnel seems to have slowed a bit.  WSJ’s full story of this theatrical production is here.

 

Lest we relax too much, the Brits’ Daily Telegraph concludes its report on Copenhagen with –

If there were not $45trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons. Not since Neville Chamberlain tugged a Claridge’s luncheon bill from his pocket and flourished it on the steps of the aircraft that brought him back from Munich has a worthless scrap of paper been so audaciously hyped. There was one good moment at Copenhagen, though: some seriously professional truncheon work by Danish Plod on the smellies. Otherwise, this event is strictly for Hans Christian Andersen.

Now our attention should focus on the cascade of evidence about the politicized ‘science’, aka Climategate, that the globalists are firmly ignoring.  (Russ Steele of NC Media Watch reports regularly on that.)  My suggestion is that we all now start following the money.  Al Gore’s outlandish take should be high on your list to scrutinize, followed by the late great capitalistic corporations hoping to cash in big after government mangles the markets along with their pesky competition.  Recall that companies too big to fail will always tout and reach for the government crutch.

2010 may be the real watershed year for our Republic, there is not a dull day on the horizon.  Hope everyone is ready to fast draw their electeds' phone numbers and email addresses as the need arises.

Ruminations - 30nov2009 (updated 1dec2009)

George Rebane

- raw Earth temperature data destroyed intentionally
- another view of the White House security fiasco

The 29nov09 London Times now confirms (here) that the original (raw) temperature data that was collected from thousands of realworld sources has been permanently lost.  This invaluable data was processed to yield a modified dataset which in turn was processed with all kinds of corrections, adjustments, and normalizations to give the final temperature graph in the shape of the famous ‘hockey stick’.  It is this hockey stick graph which purports to show a recent calamitous rise in earth’s temperature history.

Then up popped ClimateGate – the revelation of the massive fraud from the CRU emails recently hacked and made public. This was reported here and over the rest of unblinded world.  The Climate Research Unit of Britain’s University of East Anglia is the mother temple of earth’s temperature history, and the basis for the UN’s IPCC reports that set off the political palpitations in the hearts of Team Gore and the global warmists.  Which palpitations, by the way, have yet to miss a beat on their way to the upcoming Copenhagen conference that will attempt another revival of the insane Kyoto greenhouse gas protocols, which no one ever implemented and/or lived up to.

But the bottom line of the Times article is that the ‘scientists’ destroyed the raw temperature data that started all this.  This is something you NEVER do in science; raw data is sacrosanct, because from it all subsequent datasets are generated.  The permanent archiving of such raw data allows follow-on investigators to confirm or not the correctness of the revised dataset(s)’ production pathway.  Now all such work is conveniently no longer possible.  Like Hillary’s law firm billing records of yore, they have disappeared, and the CRU admits that they were destroyed.  Now that would be an inconvenient truth.

[1dec09 update] Dr Richard Lindzen of MIT is one of the world's most respected meterologists and climate scientists.  He and many of his peers have spent the last ten years publishing research and reasoned articles in the world's press that point out the foibles, fantasies, and fiascos of the AGW hysteria mongers.  In today's WSJ (here) he has again summarized the science that counters the politicized arguments which form the basis of the upcoming Copenhagen conference where Obama will try to promote his cap and tax legislation, or worse.  The worse part is the Copenhagen treaty on global warming that has been kept under wraps and may surface there for a surprise signing.  The voluminous treaty portends a Marxist world government with teeth to enforce the destruction of economies, and the transfer of wealth from the richer to the poorer countries.  Lord Christopher Monckton gave a recent talk on the subject (video here) in which he warns Americans about the loss of our sovereignty.  The leftwing promoters of our socialist future simply ignore all this and bet that so will you. 

Thank You for This and More

Annotated Global Fraud

George Rebane

Britains’s Climate Research Unit hack, noted here and elsewhere on the blogs, is beginning to unravel the position of the True Believers more and more.  Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That) published the latest discoveries from the ‘global warming software’ that was made public against the years’ long efforts of the ‘scientists’ involved.  The short version is that they used their programs to generate crap.

There are three distinct groups involved here – 1) scumbag ‘scientists’, 2) True Believers, 3) sleazebag politicians.  Groups 2 and 3 are ignorant of earth’s climatology and climate modeling.  I grant that Group 2 probably consists of good-hearted, well-meaning people concerned about humanity, but they possess neither the knowledge nor the tools to understand how the AGW issue is framed, let alone proved.  They just listen to Groups 1 and 3, and then join the damaging background chorus.  Group 3 doesn’t really care about the science or humanity.  For them it is all about power and control, starting with maintaining and/or advancing their own political careers.  These pols are mostly composed of but not limited to progressives and collectivists.

And then there’s Group 1.  These guys have degrees, published papers, and positions that give cover to Groups 2 and 3.  They consist of technical types who don’t know what they don’t know and prattle on, and then the real scumbags are the ones who know what they don’t know and do ‘science’ with the intent to defraud – i.e. cook up pre-ordained results.

Banana Squash - A Fond Farewell (updated 24nov2009)

George Rebane

Now I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert in cooking.  But over the years I have demonstrated that I can whip up a dish or two that requires more than a piece of dead cow and BBQ sauce.  Back in the 70s I accepted the challenge of coming up with a recipe for the cheapest (and least desired) vegetable in the grocery store.  Jo Ann informed me that this was banana squash selling for eight cents a pound – nobody much cared for the stuff.

Well, I puzzled on that hard and uninviting piece of biomass sitting on the kitchen counter until a light bulb went off.  Soon I was grinding and chopping and slicing and baking.  Not long afterward, the house smelled good and out of the oven came the square Pyrex baking dish with something bright yellow(ish) in it with nicely oven-browned tips.  It was not all that unattractive, and when we threw a tastebud on it, everyone said ‘wow!’ – I had invented a tasty dish for the lowliest vegetable that many considered a notch above fodder.  In order not to divert the established momentum and thrust of this development, I will simply report that my bride promptly named it Santa Claus Squash.

Ruminations - 21nov2009

George Rebane

Science meddled, not settled.  The big buzz on the climate change is the hacking of Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).  If confirmed, it turns out that the much celebrated scientists behind the famous ‘hockey stick’ temperature curve committed fraud – they more than fiddled with the data, they substituted more politically favorable data to support the UN and Team Gore agendas.  For details, see Anthony Watts and my friend Russ Steele (NC Media Watch) who report regularly on the progress of the AGW fiasco (links on right sidebar).

Why scientists sometimes do bad science is not hard to understand.  And the herd instinct applies here in spades.  In a recent email I explained it as follows –

There is a certain class of scientists who can only work in foundation/state-funded institutions – i.e. they cannot get a private sector job that maintains their quality of life.   It is these scientists who are most prone to sell their souls and their science in chasing the available funding.  I witnessed the process for over twenty-five years as a defense contractor.  The political money has been allocated worldwide to this ‘perfect storm’ ushering in the new global era.  Follow the money, the funded conclusions are guaranteed to be compliant. ... This CRU hack is a significant break, if it can be kept politically from being buried.

The Senate’s version of ObamaCare comes up for a “procedural vote” tonight.  Majority Leader Harry Reid is working hallways and offices twisting arms and drumming up the needed 60 votes to bring the bill to the Senate floor for debate.  The ruse is that it’s only debate on the bill that will happen next, but that’s for consumption by the unwashed.  In this Senate, what reaches the floor now will be the version that will be voted on.  The Republicans, with their minority, have no hope of modifying the bill or attaching any of their amendments.

An American Tale

George Rebane