I guess there’s no way to write this without seeming like I’m bragging, so let’s just go ahead and get it out of the way – I can’t tell you how proud I am of my daughter-in-law, Katie, for what she has accomplished, and of my oldest son for having the good sense and good luck to marry her.  If that’s bragging, well, OK. Early July found me somewhere I never expected to be – a conference room at Harvard Medical School alongside some of the smartest people on the planet, and feeling more than a bit out of place.  … Continue reading The Science Is (Un)Settled

By Ron McCarley After 12 years of intense study of global warming and related subjects, the whole story of academia, media and private enterprises on the subject of global warming narrows to three basic contributing factors: money, liberal ideology, and power.   The general citizenry understands very little of science and, for this reason, it is easily duped, and duped daily. The science skills of U.S. science students are poor when compared to many other countries, such as Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada, the U.K., etc. Stephen Moore wrote: “My philosophy when I taught college was to show my students how … Continue reading WHY ARE ETSU AND THE PRESS SO ONE-SIDED ON GLOBAL WARMING?

Monday evening my wife told me a message was circulating on Facebook about an Army veteran who had died and whose body had not been claimed.  The call had gone out for people to come to his funeral the next day. I don’t know exactly why I went.  He was a complete stranger.  I didn’t go to comfort a family member I knew; he had no family.  I’m not a military veteran.  It just struck me as terribly sad and somehow wrong that a man would die alone, uncomforted and uncared for, then go to his grave unaccompanied and unmourned. … Continue reading Paying Respects

The arrival of Cable News Network in 1980 was a revelation for people like me with a great interest in current affairs.  OK, that’s not quite right.  Honestly, we’re news junkies, and what could be better than getting our fix any time we want it just by turning on the TV?  So successful was the formula that it was followed over time by CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and others. As if that wasn’t good enough, the arrival of the internet resulted in an explosion of news sites, fake and otherwise.  Not only did you no longer have to wait for … Continue reading News Anytime, All The Time

If you’ve never seen the classic movie “This Is Spinal Tap”, watch it sometime.  There has never been a more devastating or funnier deflation of rock ’n roll bombast put on film.  One of the funniest gags involves the band’s amplifiers.  Every other band’s amps have volume controls that go to 10, so Spinal Tap’s go to 11.  Bigger and louder is always better, right? Well, and take it from a guy who likes his rock ‘n roll, until it isn’t anymore.  At some point it starts hurting your ears, and at some point thereafter the damage becomes permanent.  The … Continue reading To Eleven and Beyond

When pundits start tossing around words like “dangerous” and “extreme”, when the rhetoric becomes apocalyptic, it’s a pretty good bet the game is over.  Desperate times calling for desperate measures, they pull out all the scare words in their vocabulary in a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable. So it’s been with Governor Bill Lee’s Education Savings Account plan.  Its critics have preemptively pronounced it a disaster.  The bill passed, significantly reduced and modified from the original proposal.  Nonetheless the governor signed it, a half-measure being better than none. So far, in defiance of the critics’ flame-throwing denunciations, civilization has … Continue reading Apocalypse Whenever

By Ron McCarley In today’s world, appearing “green” has become more important than the reality.   Any company with the word “green” or “environmental” in its name is a step ahead.   For example, “Environmental Toxic Industrial Sludge, Inc.” might be applauded today for its non-efforts.   And a green-colored truck or package helps.          Environmental magazines advertise exotic trips for the ‘faithful’, where adherents can disturb Earth’s pristine ecology while claiming to protect it from everyone else.   Annually, tens of thousands of U.N. IPCC climate attendees arrive in private planes and limousines at faraway tourist … Continue reading FEELING SO GREEN IN A POLLUTED WORLD

Well, the Mueller report landed not with a bang but, as most reasonable people predicted long ago, with a whimper.  Now Mueller himself has testified to Congress, and in a mumbling and stumbling way, said nothing new.  So here’s what we know, 400-plus pages and 7 hours of testimony later: To no one’s surprise, the Russians did their dead-level best to interfere in the election, although no Americans knowingly helped them.  President Trump has diarrhea of the mouth.  Unseemly acts were committed by naïve political neophytes and a few really-unsavory dirty tricksters, some of which approached criminality, but which, we … Continue reading Captain Ahab Rides Again

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact….Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction….And so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a … Continue reading Everything Old Is New Again

By Ron McCarley In 1799 George Washington went riding on a miserable winter day.   That night he developed a severe sore throat, and had difficulty breathing.   A team of doctors determined that his bodily humors – biles, phlegm and blood – were out of balance, so they began draining his body of 40 percent of its blood, also prescribing vomiting, enemas, and blisters.   He died later that day. Bloodletting was practiced from Old Testament times until the late 1800’s.   Barbers even performed it, as symbolized by their red and white candy-striped poles.   If bloodletting didn’t … Continue reading MONKEYS ARE AS ACCURATE AS SCIENTISTS AND POLITICIANS