So in the car up to LAX, Biggest Guy says let’s not make a big deal of this, you guys can just walk me to the ticket counter and we’ll all be off. It’s about him, so I say sure.

He wants something to drink, and we want to drag out the leavetaking, so we stop at Starbucks on Sepulveda, just north of the airport. The young woman at the register looks at him in his uniform and says – “My husband is in Iraq. It’s so weird…somehow I’ve seen all these people in uniform today. It’s like you’re telling me he’ll be home soon.”

The security line for United extends out onto the bridge to the parking lot, and as we walk by everyone waiting patiently or impatiently to get to their gate, an authoritative woman (tall, middle-aged, slender, black) in a United uniform stops us – and tells us to go to this specific counter to check him in. We do, and magically, there’s no line there.

At the counter, TG looks at me and asks if we should ask for gate passes; I say no, BG’s got a plan, and let’s work to his plan today.

Now he’s checked in to Dallas, and we’re directed back up the non-working escalator to the security line. I’m thinking about it, thinking about what to say, walking up and holding TG’s hand. We get to the top of the escalator and we hear a loud “Soldier!” turn and it’s the authoritative woman, who lifts the cord and gestures for him to jump the line.

That’s it. I get one brief hug, say “Do good” and suddenly my chest is full as TG grabs him and then lets him go and he vanishes into security.

We’ll see him again at the green ramp at Bragg in the fall.

Now he’s going back to work, and it’s back to work for all of us as well. Blogging will resume shortly.
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In case you wonder why I worry that my Democratic leadership can’t manage to get in gear with the public…

But the FEC data suggest plenty of wealthy donors continued to support Democrats with their checkbooks, at least through December.

The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee together took in more than $37.3 million from donors who gave $10,000 or more during the year, the FEC data show. On the GOP side, donors at the same level gave less than $15.6 million to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee combined, the data show.

The overall money race is much closer, with Democratic committees raising $141 million and the GOP close behind at $137.6 million. The Democratic committees, in other words, got more than twice as much of their individual contributions from big donors as Republicans did.

The contrast was particularly sharp between the DNC, which received 60 percent of its money from donations of less than $200, and the RNC, which took in nearly 80 percent of its receipts from the smallest donors. The RNC still edged out the DNC by $4 million in total money raised from individuals.

Large donors, in my view, tend to be ‘investors’ in government more than simply fans…what will it take to grow a Democratic Party that is connected to the $200 donors??
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Check out this great video on publishing…

I tried to close the comment argument with Chris below, and actually liked what I’d written enough that I thought I’d promote it (slightly cleaned up) to a post…

If you’re thinking that AGW will be conclusively proved or disproved in blogs you’ve got bigger issues than I can help you with.

What blogs can – and I believe have – done is to suggest that the emperor has no clothes. There’s a world of difference between pointing out that standard accounting practices haven’t been followed – and therefore we ought to recheck the books – and actually re-auditing GM’s annual financial statement. It’s unfair and unreasonable to suggest that people who point out a) also have a responsibility to do b), or the current books stand.

I do think that people are deluding themselves by suggesting that AGW is ‘science’ as we’ve practiced it for the last few centuries. There’s an epistic problem that comes from the fact that AGW is inherently a wicked problem – we can’t run global climates in labs, over and over again and check what happens in the empirical world. There’s no empiricism there.

Instead we run computer models.

Now in a century, to be sure, we’ll be able to validate (or invalidate) the predictive power of those models.

Until then, they are exercises in quant ‘science’, which is likely to be as successful as quant ‘finance’ was for LTCM, Bear Stearns, Lehman, et alia in the last decade.

Both work well in limited domains (what Taleb calls ‘mediocrestan’) and fail catastrophically outside them.

In my view, science is empirically reproduceable. Feynman said (I think it’s in the Lectures) “The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth’.” Anything that isn’t empirically reproduceable – isn’t really science.

When AGW advocates start running reproduceable experiments, let us all know. For now, I’d even settle for reproduceable base data.

That’s pretty much all I have on this. You’re welcome to respond, advocate, cavort, or whatever in response.
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It was the best of Times…

Over at my work blog, I have a piece up on the latest way the LA Times (I think foolishly) trades audience credibility and goodwill for some ready cash. And give a useful counterexample.

So let’s be clear – all media companies are struggling as both the basic models they operate under (online and offline) are challenged, and as the economy means they no longer have the cushion of good times.

Let’s look at two responses to the problem.

The LA Times ran an ad that wrapped the front page for the film Alice In Wonderland; that was controversial, but what made it deeply controversial is that the ad was designed with copy and font to look like the Times’ front page…with an ad layered on top of it.

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In the course of my comment back-and-forth with Chris a thought popped up that I wanted to share.

Why hasn’t the AGW community lowered the claims to authority – moved the argument to behind-the-scenes work to clarify and improve the data and modeling behind their claims – and stepped forward from a policy point of view to find allies (people like me) who think we need to conserve energy for strategic, local environmental, or economic/financial reasons?

Why not take a partial win on policy?

I don’t get it. Any thoughts??
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So I tripped over this as I was surfing around last week, and flagged it for comment.

It’s unexceptional hard-left cant:

There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.

I was going to just page away from it and shrug when I caught the author’s byline:

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

I’m sure there are NYT and WaPo reporters who post on VDare and Stormfront and places like that. I don’t go to those sites often, so can’t say I have any kind of data. And I can’t find examples in my bookmarks for other crazed left-wing ex-legacy media journalists.

So – serious question – what other examples can people think of offhand, on either side of the political spectrum?
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Me:

I chose this ring for you because it sparkles and is brilliant and because I hope that when you look at it every day, it will remind you of how I see you … brilliant and sparkling and precious. But you are more dazzling to me than any jewel, and your love far more precious than gold. Take this ring as a token to remember forever that you are wonderful and that I am so lucky to be yours.

Her:

I present you with this ring because it symbolizes the unique and awesome person you are. You impress me in so many ways. You are my model of strength and determination. Yet, like the lovely swirls of gold and silver on this ring, everything in your life is touched with sweetness and compassion. I am lucky and happy to be a very important part of your life. Take this ring and my love and devotion.
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Littlest Guy is working on his school science project (making a calorimeter), and so he’s starting to learn some of the basics of thermodynamics (it’s hard to explain the difference between temperature and heat, isn’t it?).

While he was digging he came up with this video, which he’s been playing enough to be annoying.

So in the interests of making you annoyed too, I give you – the Large Hadron Collider rap video…

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