To What End Por Favor?

George Rebane

We are here in Scottsdale again attending the annual conference of the Mercatus Center and Institute for Humane Studies.  For the last several years it has been an annual event for us and friends to caravan down and enjoy a few days of exceedingly interesting presentations and workshops on economics and national issues.  The conference attracts about three hundred attendees, most of whom are donors to the two organizations connected to George Mason University.  What always amazes us is the number of well-read and informed people who also make this their annual pilgrimage for stimulating discussions and debates.

This year’s keynote speakers were PJ O’Rourke and economist Tyler Cowen.  PJ was a last minute stand-in for syndicated columnist George Will who had to deal with a family emergency.  And everyone got a chance to rub elbows and talk at length with the nationally prominent scholars who do the institutes’ research and present their work here, in scholarly publications, national news media, and in congressional hearings.

In the interval I have not been able to monitor the goings on hereabouts.  Looking in on RR, I am more than a bit dismayed over the exchange that has been going on in ‘Sandbox – 11mar15’ during my absence.  I notice that RR is again the tromping ground for Mr Jeff Pelline and some of his cohort.  And the dialogues such attendance has given rise to are nothing to write home about, let alone memorialize for the ages on the web.

Mr Pelline’s contributions are the indelible derivatives of his nature delivered to raise him to the extent that he can successfully push down those he attacks.  As usual, he brings no ideas to discuss or dissect, only ad hominem vituperation.  But what continues to puzzle me is that RR readers take the man seriously enough to more than give him the time of day.  These readers, who have already established their credentials in debating issues and ideas, actually are seen to engage with Mr Pelline at length and at his level.  The resulting mudball fights bring nothing to the large number of this blogs regular, albeit silent, readers. But they do bring out the bitter angels that inhabit a select few of those who oppose Mr Pelline and all that he stands for.  My question again is what end is justified by entering into such exchanges at his peerage.  Are there not better ways to shorten his pointless visits here?

As I’ve said before, if Pelline’s attacks on RR readers are ignored, then I will delete them as I would flick away any pesky fly.  But if his droppings solicit an exchange, then I must conclude that certain RR readers actually enjoy engaging the man.  And according to the established sandbox rules (as they now stand), the dialogue can continue.  But again, to what end???  Any thoughts on this?

Comments

[fish]

As I’ve said before, if Pelline’s attacks on RR readers are ignored, then I will delete them as I would flick away any pesky fly. But if his droppings solicit an exchange, then I must conclude that certain RR readers actually enjoy engaging the man. And according to the established sandbox rules (as they now stand), the dialogue can continue. But again, to what end??? Any thoughts on this?

As I see no reason to turn this into another "Sandbox" I will offer a response to this off line.

My apologies that we got carried away yesterday!

[Gregory]

George, there is madness to my method, with some math education issues bubbling up to the top very soon. The 2011 threat Jeffie posted (Do local schools suck?) is as topical as ever, and the current academic year is directly analogous to 95-96 when a brand new way to teach math was being rolled out in California without *any* well characterized, nationally normed assessments in place. Only this year it's nationwide, but otherwise, the brand new ways of teaching math embodied in the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice are pretty much the same dismal ways of teaching math that hit California in '95 and weren't all that new then, either.

I particularly enjoyed the discovery of the SF rag declaring the only scolds over 'Frisco were aging whites... so much for Jeffie's being on top of current 'Frisco values.

I'm also personally offended by Pelline (or the Pellines) faux outrage over the issue of the name of the school their kid was attending, which, coincidentally, is the elementary school my son was well served by... in fact, The Union twice mentioned him in his last year there, without even asking me first. The gall.

I never even bothered to look into where his kid was going to school... it was another semi regular ruminator who, having been reading Jeff's waxing eloquently about the greatness of our local public schools dropped the fact to me at a local watering hole that the youngest Pelline wasn't attending one as an indication of Jeff's hypocrisy. That Jeff never bothered to grill me how I was able to learn such a secret is probably proof that he knew it was easily divined by anyone who cared enough to google for a minute or two.

I'm good with it going back to a simmer on the backburner, especially if anything he writes will be made to disappear if ignored.

[RL Crabb]

To what end, indeed... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9N6xg83ss

[Todd Juvinall]

I think the point is we all get into the mud sometimes. Pelline takes up most of the space in the pit but speaking only for me, I try and clean him up. It is a tough job, almost impossible.

[Gregory]

How very Jeff of you, RL.

Here's something completely different... the astrophysicist Nir Shaviv, whose seminal 2004 paper with geochemist Jan Veizer was my personal tipping point from believer in the IPCC to scoffer, is spending his sabbatical away from Jerusalem's Racah Institute of Physics and across the ocean at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Freeman Dyson's old haunts. Wrote up a preliminary article for the IAS newsletter... A money quote: "[It]strengthens the idea that cosmic ray variations through solar activity affect the climate. In this picture, solar activity increase is responsible for about half of the twentieth-century global warming through a reduction of the cosmic ray flux, leaving less to be explained by anthropogenic activity. Also, in this picture, climate sensitivity is on the low side (perhaps 1 to 1.5°C increase per CO2 doubling, compared with the 1.5 to 4.5°C range advocated by the IPCC), implying that the future is not as dire as often prophesied." Shaviv is also now an IBM Einstein Fellow, so it appears his research funding is healthy.

https://www.ias.edu/ias-letter/2015/shaviv-milky-way
http://www.sciencebits.com/sights-field-trip-milky-way