I have (purely on guesswork) an answer in several parts.

First, much of the volume estimate, as I understand it, was based on video of the leak itself. Apparently they can’t easily tell how much of that is methane and other gasses.

Number two, the oil is relatively light, the Gulf is pretty warm, and much of the liquid may have evaporated by now.

And C, initial estimates of the impact of some disaster are always exaggerated. Unfortunately, that leads many to say that the disaster never was one anyway.

Which brings me to the final part of the answer; It’s difficult to tell the spilled oil from Gulf water anyway.

And so it is with “I don’t care what people think.” Worrying too much about what people think can stifle creativity and inspiration and spontaneity. But again you cannot entirely disregard “socially acceptable” and “common decency.”

This brings me to the AmeriKilt. I was at a music festival along the Blue Ridge Parkway last weekend. There was a full range of music and a full range of ages from toddlers to aging hippies (or more likely ex-hippies allowing themselves to relive those free-spirited days).

Among the sea of tie-dyes I couldn’t help notice the number of men in both kilts and free-flowing hippie skirts. After elbowing my brother and pointing a dozen times we retired to the beer garden for a local microbrew to discuss the matter.

Initially I snickered and mocked. Then as I sipped and sweated in searing heat I thought how nice a breeze across my wedding tackle would be. Then my only worry became pockets. As you see, the AmeriKilt has an attached man-pouch.

Since I actually like its features, is it some sense of decency that prevents me trying the AmeriKilt or do I lack the courage of these unencumbered men who have thrown off the shackles of convention and embraced the freedom, comfort and perhaps trend-setting AmeriKilt?

What if it reached the acceptability of say, men who wear crocs? Would that give me enough cover? Am I going to let fear of ridicule rule my life and determine my choices?

At what point is “worrying about what people think” the right thing to do? Probably at the AmeriKilt.

I think they could balance their budgets in a year if they enforced the posted speed limits. Not that I think that would be fair, since they’ve basically trained everybody to believe that the “real” speed limit is 10 mph over the one on the sign.

And, of course, I’m not even serious about that, because when you swing at people they duck. IOW, in the face of such enforcement people would change their behavior. Some would slow down. Some would vandalize speed cameras. (I’ve been tempted to do that, and I don’t even speed.)

In any event, it got me wondering about the economic effect of states collecting more money in fines and fees and so forth.

If the state takes $20 out of my pocket, that’s $20 I can’t spend on beer or a ball game or a new shirt. But the state’s going to do something with it. Which use of my $20 is going to do more for the economy?

Some economist somewhere has to have rated different types of spending on their multiplying effect in the economy. For example, spending money on infrastructure has to have a better effect than buying everybody in the state a free sandwich.

So … my question is whether the combined facts of an economic downturn and state budget shortfalls will cause state legislators to start scoring their spending based on its ability to stimulate the economy. IOW, if they were sensible, they’d rank budget priorities (at least in part) by their ability to create jobs or whatever, and they’d rank tax/fine/fee proposals by which sector of the economy they’re pulling money from, and whether that money is better left where it is.

Obviously there’s government spending that does a lot of good and government spending that only does a little good (or none), and obviously the same applies to private spending.

For example, if you had some independent reason to believe that the pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals for the whole church, there isn’t a lot to be said to dissuade you. A reasonable defense can be made.

But nobody is going to be reading the various emanations of the popes and notice, “Hey, these two where he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals for the whole church are infallible. Wow!”

In fact, if you didn’t already start with a belief that there has to be a doctrine of Petrine infallibility that works some how some way, you wouldn’t be tempted to come up with all the caveats. Furthermore, if you didn’t already start with such a belief, you’d be tempted to think that all the caveats were a rather poor way to insulate the idea from critical inquiry.

ISTM there are loads of things that are like this. If you already believe it, it’s easy enough to make a respectable defense. E.g., people who have already made up their mind to believe in or disbelieve anthropogenic global warming are not going to have a hard time maintaining that belief. Defending a belief is just too doggone easy.

I think this is a small part of the reason why liberals and conservatives and Baptists and environmentalists all tend to believe a certain set of things. They tend to trust people who are like them, so ideas from thought leaders in their little clique come into their brains with a sort of “right until proven wrong” trajectory. And it’s terribly easy to defend most ideas if you already believe them.

The hard thing is to step outside that bubble and try to look at things as if you’re not already persuaded. And most groups exert various kinds of pressure to keep you from doing so.

“Oh, all those people outside are ” … take your pick — greedy corporate polluters — resisting the Holy Spirit — racists — liberals — homophobes — crazed sex addicts … whatever.

So first you have to believe that it’s possible for someone to disagree for honest reasons. They’re not just making things up to justify their evil ways. Then you have to allow yourself the luxury of looking at things from that perspective. Then you find that you’re not so worried about defending things.

Conservatives were able to pass these laws and get these restrictions because they held the reins to power.

A little while before that, conservatives even controlled Hollywood — which is almost unthinkable now. You never saw Roy Rogers kiss Dale Evans, but now you can see just about anything you want.

So who has the power nowadays? And who is suppressing dissent?

In order to get tenure, young professors have to suck up to the overwhelmingly liberal faculty. If you don’t, you don’t get hired, and you certainly don’t get tenure.

In order to get a movie published, it has to go through liberal Hollywood producers. And TV shows continually pour liberal political and social views into couch potato brains.

Universities have speech codes to stifle conservatives. Liberal student groups shout down conservative speakers. Liberal teachers’ unions control the government-run schools. Some professions (like psychiatry) have been entirely taken over by liberal ideology, to the point that dissenters can’t get their degrees and can’t get licensed.

I don’t think there’s any question that today it’s the liberals who are stifling dissent and forcing their ideology on the rest of us. When they can’t shut somebody up, they make of charges of racism or simply shout them down.

But there is an exception. Liberals used to have a lock on the news media — and they still have a lock on the “main stream media” — but cable news and talk radio has broken their monopoly. Now you can choose which ideology you want to listen to.

Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. But I’m not holding my breath. I don’t see any signs that conservatives are going to re-take academia or Hollywood.

I’m going to try to follow the detailed “how to make sake at home” instructions on this page. (Notice how I got all the appropriate keywords into that link, just to be kind to Mr. Taylor.)

Once I get through a bunch of blasted car-related chores I need to do I will embark on the homebrew sake adventure. Stay tuned.

My first batch will be regular sake, just to see how it all works. (And because I like regular sake.) My wife wants me to make girl-friendly sake — flavored, carbonated stuff. That may be round two.

49 righteous people in Sodom,
49 righteous souls,
Don’t strike them down,
Wait … there are around
48 righteous people in Sodom

…

Experts say tarmac delays rule a mistake, but DOT disagrees

Why are people so good at compartmentalizing their lives? Saying they believe one thing but acting in a manner completely contrary?

Of course doctors don’t just sterilize a needle with a cigarette lighter and poke you. They give you a local anesthetic, use some fancy lancing tool, then give you some fancy orthopedic wrist brace that is exactly like the one you can buy at CVS, but costs three times as much.

I have no idea what the total bill is and I don’t care because I’m not paying for it.

If I was, I would swab the thing with alcohol, sterilize a needle and poke it myself. Or just leave it alone.

IOW, as everybody already knows, insurance distorts health care decisions.

Paycheck Fairness Act Will Be Anything But

The idea that women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes misrepresents the issue because it doesn’t take account of things like the difference between full- and part-time work, different educational backgrounds, or even time in the workforce.

Women are more likely to take a job that they like that pays less, while men are more likely to take the higher-paying job that they hate. Men don’t take time off from their careers to raise babies. And men are less likely to choose work schedules to accommodate child-care needs.

IOW, it’s not something that reduces down to cents on the dollar.

But liberals are using this lie about wages to push for even more interference in the employer-employee relationship.

“There is a lot of scorn in revolutionary socialism,” he explained. “There’s a lot of scorn for the people who aren’t up for it. There is a lot of scorn for the people who are opposed to it. There’s a feeling that you are the vanguard and you know best, and everyone else is ignorant and stupid.”

“You see that scorn in the new atheists, in the way they treat their opponents — not with any kind of respect at all,” he continued. “They still act as if Christianity is a kind of stupid aberration that only an idiot could follow.”

Every minority belief system has to account for the fact that the majority isn’t going along with them. This creates a strong motivation to caricature outsiders as stupid, lazy, evil, possesseed, or whatever.

That’s how fringe groups hold together, and it doesn’t matter what sort of fringe group it is — political, religious, anti-religious, anti-meat, etc.

It’s a pretty decent bet that they are now about as ignorant as I was then. And of course I look back on the “ignorant but confident” attitude I had back then with a sense of shame and regret.

(Not that I know everything now, but I know enough to realize how much I didn’t know before.)

So when I find this youthful enthusiasm I regard it with a mixture of …

+ nostalgia — “oh for the heady days of youth”,

+ pity — “too soon you’ll learn …” — and

+ even more regret.

It would be nice to believe that as time goes on the human race would mature. Cooler heads and saner minds would prevail.

After all, car designs get better. Farming methods get better. Historians today are a heck of a lot more sensible than historians 100 years ago.

But I don’t see that. I see seasoned, experienced people deploying the vigor and enthusiasm of youth to further some cause. And I find myself wondering — haven’t you learned anything?

Of course that’s not what’s going on.

My experience is that the more I learn, the more I see nuance, shades of meaning and grounds for uncertainty.

Other people aren’t that way. Many people become more ideological and more stuck in their ways as they grow older. Enthusiastic youth are foot soldiers to deploy in the fight. What I see as signs of a deeper understanding of things, they see as compromise and laziness.

So when I read these confident, brash young folk, my first reaction is amusement. “Do you really think you know anything?”

My second reaction is a desire to lean back in my rocker and say “you young whippersnappers!”

I have very mixed feelings about this.

I don’t want the mad mullahs to have nukes. But I wonder if this is a sustainable policy. Do we bomb everybody we don’t like who wants to develop nukes?

And if we do bomb Iran, is that going to help pro-US (or at least anti-Crazy) forces on the inside, or will it just make everybody hate us?