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I thought scientists only cared about the truth, you know, as proven by repeatedly testable empirical evidence!

“I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures,” says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes’ at the University of Colorado.

Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to “dampen” the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

“The case for action on climate science, both for energy policy and adaptation, is overwhelming,” Pielke says. “But if we oversell the science, our credibility is at stake.”

It’s too bad the term “scientologist” is taken, because it is such a perfect description of what passes for science these days.

What are the verses from the Bible that make explicit claims of omniscience? Not implicit claims, explicit ones. I’m trying to make sure I’m not missing anything here.

Okay, this SNL skit was pretty good last night, although I can’t believe they missed the opportunity to have her talking about B. Hussein Osama’s schooling in the madrassa. Or to have her eat a kitten.

THE JENNIFER MORGUE
Charles Stross
Rating: 7 of 10

Charles Stross is quite possibly at the forefront of the generation of science fiction and fantasy writers who are just now entering their literary prime. His books are inventive, innovative and crammed full of ideas; even when his references are lost on the reader they are not wasted, as Stross effectively uses them to paint the scene for the less technical reader in much the same manner that Umberto Eco drops arcane Latin references to dazzles the insufficiently erudite.* Even one who does not know TCP/IP from PCP or possesses too little technosavvy to fully grok the joke is still cheerfully allowed in on it so he can at least grin, if not guffaw.

The Jennifer Morgue is the follow-up to the excellent The Atrocity Archive, which introduced Laundry agent Bob Howard, a oft-bewildered operative caught up in a secret aspect of the modern world that is a twisted concoction made up of equal parts Ian Fleming and H.P. Lovecraft, plus a strong dash of Scott Adams. It’s definitely a worthy sequel, but despite making intriguingly effective use of one of Lovecraft’s most striking stories, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor. This was almost surely due to the cocktail being two-parts Fleming and one-part Lovecraft this time, a reversal of the previous recipe.

As always, Stross sets a dizzying pace, hurling Haut Teknosprach and extreme squamousity at the reader with equal ease and enthusiasm. As with an increasing number of Stross’s works, The Jennifer Morgue leaves one frowning at the last page, feeling rather deprived that there isn’t more. The hardcover published by Golden Gryphon also includes a short story that is a not terribly interesting take on massive multiplayer games and a much more interesting essay entitled “The Golden Age of Spying”.

STYLE: 4 of 5

Somehow, one wouldn’t think that a book so heavily dependent on government bureaucracy for its humor would do anything but plod, but Stross arguably plods less than any writer active in the genre today. He dashes from one event to the next, and is capable of turning the most mundane meeting of bureaucrats into an imaginative eruption of occultic violence. So quickly does the book fly along that the division into chapters is almost irrelevant, the pace and the pounding are such that a radio edit of Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hot Rod springs insensibly to mind. This is not to say the prose is sparse, far from it, but even the most heavily technical gobbledy-gook flies off the page, as if William Gibson not only knew how computers worked when he wrote Neuromancer, but also happened to be snorting methamphetamine while writing it.

STORY: 3 of 5

A extremely twisted variant on the evil Bond villain with a white cat attempting to take over the world, with more than a bit of Innsmouth and technological trappings thrown in. Bob Howard has another field assignment, only this time it involves a trip to Germany, to say nothing of the tuxedo, the Walther PPK and the beautifully seductive foreign agent. Although Stross doesn’t hold back on the blood or the rugoseness, it’s a rather lighter tale that smacks more of action-adventure than the action-horror of The Atrocity Archive. But if the plot is more inventively complicated this time, it’s also a bit too dependent upon a joke that is, in my opinion, excessively foreshadowed.

CREATIVITY: 5 of 5

Mindbogglingly clever. Stross’s ability to take esoteric material and weave it into an exciting, intricate story is simply unmatched. His sly humor, no doubt honed to a razor’s edge by years of working in IT, pervades the book; who else could come up with such a perfect metaphor for the unspeakable evils of Microsoft Office. It’s not so much the plot and its twists that are clever, although they most certainly are, but rather the metaphors and the masterful amalgamation of vastly disparate elements that cause the reader to shake his head and wonder at the author’s madly inventive mind.

CHARACTERS: 2 of 5

There are people. They have feelings which are largely appropos to the situation. But other than accurately portraying the insecure-around-girls technogeek (who nevertheless gets to nail the hot chix) and the soulless bureaucrats, this isn’t the author’s forte. And that’s just fine, this book is about fun and cleverness, not the human condition.

TEXT SAMPLE:

When you go summoning extra-dimensional entities, there are certain precautions you should be sure to take.

For starters, you can forget garlic, bibles, and candles: they don’t work. Instead, you need to start with serious electrical insulation to stop them from blowing your brain out your ears. Once you’ve got yourself grounded you also need to pay attention to the existence of special optical high-bandwidth channels that demons may attempt to use to download themselves into your nervous system – they’re called “eyeballs”. Timesharing your hypothalamus with alien brain-eaters is not recommended if you wish to live long enough to claim your index-linked, state-earnings-related pension; it’s about on a par with tap dancing on the London Underground’s third rail in terms of health and safety. So you need to ensure you’re optically isolated as well. Do not stare into laser cavity with remaining eye, as the safety notice puts it.

Most demons are as dumb as a sack full of hammers. This does not mean they’re safe to mess with, any more than a C++ compiler is “safe” in the hands of an enthusiastic computer science undergrad. Some people can mess up anything and computational demonology adds a new and unwelcome meaning to terms like “memory leak” and “debugger”.

*Otherwise known as everyone who isn’t Umberto Eco.

In the NFC championship, I have to go with the Saints. It makes me uncomfortable, going with the crowd and the fairy tale, but it’s the logical thing to do. Home field and weather go to the Bears, there’s no obvious coaching edge although my suspicions tend to favor Payton over Smith, and while the seasonal DVOA don’t strongly favor the Saints offense over the Bears defense or the Bears offense over the Saints defense, the Bears appear to be declining on both sides of the ball.

The one thing that makes me very nervous about this pick is the special teams. They are the X-factor here, and if the Bears pull out a win, I’d expect it to be consistent special teams superiority giving the Bears field advantage plus a big play or two making the difference. But the Saints beat a very solid Eagles team last weekend, while the Bears needed OT to beat a very mediocre Seattle squad. It’s that, plus the combination of Brees’ superiority over Grossman, that makes me go with New Orleans.

On the AFC side, I have to commend the Baseball Savant* for his good fortune, if not his acumen. I don’t think Indianapolis deserved to win either the Kansas City or the Baltimore game, but they did. Still, I think the Colts have ridden their horseshoe luck as far as it will take them and that Belichick’s coaching superiority will prove the difference.

The Patriots are at a disadvantage, but a smaller one than they faced last week against San Diego. The Colts’ offense is marginally better than the Chargers’, (1 to 2) but their defense is worse and their special teams are much, much worse. (27 and 26 to 14 and 3). And to those people who ask, sarcastically, if it was Belichick’s coaching that made the difference in Troy Brown stripping Marlon McCree of the ball after McCree’s interception, I answer: no, but the coaching delta certainly did.

A Patriots player won’t make that mistake, not so much because he’s coached not to, but because he’s selected not to. McCree knew perfectly well what the situation was, and as he said after the game, he’d do it again because he was “trying to make a touchdown”. ON FOURTH DOWN IN THE FOURTH FREAKING QUARTER! OF A DIVISIONAL ROUND PLAYOFF GAME! If you sign and play me-first players who are perfectly willing to risk the conference championship over a chance to be a star, that’s on the GM and it’s on the coach as well. Bad things will happen, and at the worst possible time.

And it’s Peyton Manning not as if the Colts Dwight Freeney have any players who are known more for flashy stats than Marvin Harrison a commitment to winning as a team, right?

I think the Patriots will win without giving Vinatieri a chance to do unto them as he has hitherto done unto others. But it sure would be nice to see the Sports Guy’s Ultimate Betrayal scenario play out.

Regardless, enjoy the games… it’s going to be a long spring and summer without so much as a World Cup to fill the void.

*The difference between the Baseball Savant and me is this: he’s 6-2 in the playoffs and proud of it, I’m 6-2 and irritated… but then, that’s why they call him the BASEBALL Savant.

PS – by the way, if you’re one of those football writers who has been moaning all week about another Patriots-Colts playoff game, then go kill yourself. Seriously. Or at least go and find another job doing something you’re actually interested in. If you’re truly not interested in the AFC Championship today, then you’re not a football fan. Not a serious one, not a casual one, whatever it is you might happen to be, you’re absolutely nothing where the sport is concerned and you have absolutely nothing to say about it.

PPS – What is going on in Pittsburgh? From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Russ Grimm has been offered and has accepted the Steelers’ head coaching position, a source in Pittsburgh confirmed late Saturday. Grimm, 47, succeeds Bill Cowher, who coached the Steelers for 15 seasons before resigning Jan. 5. The hiring of Grimm will be announced Monday at a news conference.

ESPN and SI.com, Sports Illustrated’s Web site, reported yesterday that Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin had been chosen to replace Cowher.

I had a pleasant exchange of emails with one of the gentleman who had previously expressed some doubts about the creation of a certain term. He had some interesting thoughts on the general subject:

I find /omiderigent/ an extremely useful term. The notion of /all-acting/ God, in a purely structural sense, is arguably presumed by the traditional Western “omni-” characteristics: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. God (as you believe him to be, because I will remind you I am not a believer) is increasing humanized by his detractors, as a mechanism of applying human rule sets and constructs to him. The Omnipotence Paradox exists as a result of this assumption: God is bound by the same rules as man. This notion, however, does not take into accounts Goedel’s Inconsistency Theorems: For any axiomatic rule set, there exists an infinite number of truths that are both true and unprovable. Even if God is bound by the same rules as man, he is still capable of establishing truths that unprovable within the known rules of the set. The solution to the Omnipotence Paradox lies not in the application of Logic to God, but in the fact that the truth does not have to be provable within that system. The broader ideological implications of Goedel might very well serve you in your assault on less accepting non-believers.

As for my own non-belief, it is a choice I have made based on my understanding of my environment. I find that most aetheists and agnostics (incidentally, I take great issue with modern definitions of these words, as they are connotative, not denotative) are unwilling to allow for the possibility of their own error. I do not believe, but I cannot fault, nor deride anyone who does. Faith being an issue of self-actualization means that any reasonable human being has arrived at a belief which satisfies and completes their being. Some individuals will be quite eloquent and intellect in their support of this belief, while others will not. But it is still an actualized choice that must be respected. I do not know if I am right. I do know if you are right. I do know that we disagree. I am still considering the basis for my moral construct; and given that even Plato could not define morality without collapsing his belief into a monotheism, I suspect a rational construct will be difficult to explain.

I tend to concur with that conclusion, obviously. It is always interesting to note how many atheists argue that a rational non-theistic morality that does not wholly depend on cultural traditions could be constructed, I have yet to seen any of them actually do so or provide any evidence that they are living by one.

The Sports Guy contemplates the Ultimate Betrayal:

Vinatieri shanks the game-winning field goal, rips off his jersey to reveal a Pats jersey, then runs across to the Pats sideline and jumps into Belichick’s arms as Jim Nantz screams “Noooooooooo! Noooooooooo!” and Peyton Manning breaks out the greatest Manning Face of all-time. Would I sacrifice three months of my life for this to happen? Yeah, probably.

That would officially be the greatest NFL moment ever, and I’m not even a Patriots fan. (Well, they are my fifth favorite team. They were third, after the Vikes and Cowboys while I was growing up, but Jax passed them up and I found myself rooting against them when they played the Pack in the Super Bowl, partly because I like the Packers ownership setup, partly because of Reggie White and partly because I did NOT approve of their uniform change. Yes, I spend more time than you would imagine thnking about these things, including who I like less, the Seahawks or the Cardinals. (Answer: Seahawks, because Jim Zorn broke Fran Tarkenton’s rookie passing records. And they’re AFC.))

Upon further contemplation, it goes like this:

VIKINGS
Cowboys
Jaguars
Packers
Patriots
Bears
Saints (somewhat less now that they’re no longer lovable losers, except I like Drew Brees. A lot. Why didn’t we sign him??!!)
Rams (although still not keen on the St. Louis thing or the new jerseys)
Broncos
Dolphins

As for my bottom ten, from most-hated to least:

49ers
Redskins
Giants
Raiders
Falcons
Colts
Steelers
Browns
Seahawks
Buccaneers

Not keen on the Bengals, Lions, Ravens, or Cardinals either.

I hate, hate hate the 49ers because I was dating a girl from the Bay Area back when they were winning all the time and all the fake football fans who were lording it over everyone made me sick. The Redskins and Giants kept the Vikes out of the Super Bowl during many winnable years of NFC supremacy, the Raiders should be obvious, as with the Steelers. The Falcons have Vick and they just generally suck, plus the move to black was lame, the Colts = Manning, the Browns are contemptible, I already covered the Seahawks and the Buccaneers were NFC Central imposters who didn’t belong in the Black-and-Blue division. LOVED the move to new divisions, one of the best, most sensible move by a sports league in ages. Also, I liked their funky orange-and-white uniforms much better than the stupid “pewter” that they wear now.

“The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by Slashdot has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats.”

Remember, Democrats are the Champions of Free Speech. And I’m off for a ride on my unicorn. With Adriana Lima.

And I’m proud to be a Democrat, a moral exemplary
And you won’t forget my rectitude, because I’ll lecture on it daily.
I gladly stand up next to you and tell you how you should live.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
May Natural Selection, over a period of time sufficient to engender noticeable differentiation, happen to favor the descendants of the inhabitants of this artificial construction that is currently known as a “country”, although without necessarily discriminating against people, particularly those with darker skin, who happen to cross its arbitrary “borders” at any time now or in the future, although of course we know that it’s really all up to random chance anyhow and it doesn’t really matter since by then Humynkind should have matured enough to accept global governance under the United Nations.

Thus spake the parenting expert:

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, wants to outlaw spanking children up to 3 years old. If she succeeds, California would become the first state in the nation to explicitly ban parents from smacking their kids….

But Lieber is optimistic that lawmakers will find her proposal hard to resist. For the record, she does not have children and says she was not slapped as a child. But she does have a cat named Snoop, which her veterinarian told her never to hit.

“And if you never hit a cat,” Lieber said, “you should never hit a kid.”l

If anyone needs a spanking, clearly it’s Miss Lieber. And maybe the dessicated corpse of that Tennessee legislator who voted in women’s suffrage in the United States because his Mommy told him to. Yes, unsurprisingly, blame all comes down to the Mommy’s boys in the end.

I think it’s time to form the John Adams Society Against Suffrage, dedicated to the repeal of the 19th Amendment. John Adams’ wife famously once tried to persuade him into extending the franchise to include women, whereupon the second President of the United States turned her over his knee, gave her a severe spanking and ravished her thoroughly.

To which Mrs. Adams is reported to have said: “Oh, John, you devil!”

(Actually, he merely wrote her a well-reasoned explanation for why doing so would destroy human liberty, making a case that has been subsequently proven by events. But think we can all agree that my version is funnier, therefore it is more entertaining, and therefore it is more beautiful since the popularity of Us Magazine proves that beauty is entertainment, and because beauty equals truth, it is therefore true… or at least truer in essence than mere “documented history”. QED.)

I’m not quite sure I follow Mrs. Lieber’s logic, however. It’s true that one should never hit a cat, as cats are, quite clearly, for kicking. Does this mean that one should therefore kick small children? I don’t think so.