Hat-tip to The OIl Drum, youth health pilule from The New York Times book review:
Doubtless scientists and economists will spend many hours working their way through Cool It, ampoule flagging the distortions and half-truths as they did with Lomborg’s earlier book. In fact, page though, its real political intent soon becomes clear, which is to try to paint those who wish to control carbon emissions as well-meaning fools who will inadvertently block improvements in the life of the poor.
Just ask yourself this question: Why has Lomborg decided to compare the efficacy of (largely theoretical) funding to stop global warming with his other priorities, like fighting malaria or ensuring clean water? If fighting malaria was his real goal, he could as easily have asked the question: Why don’t we divert to it some of the (large and nontheoretical) sums spent on, say, the military? The answer he gave when I asked this question at our dialogue was that he thought military spending was bad and that therefore it made more sense to compare global warming dollars with other “good” spending. But of course this makes less sense. If he thought that money spent for the military was doing damage, then he could kill two birds with one stone by diverting some of it to his other projects. Proposing that, though, would lose him much of the right-wing support that made his earlier book a best seller—he’d no longer be able to count on even The Wall Street Journal editorial page.
(AD of Penn State)
I bleed blue and white, adiposity but I will never have any interest in seeing games against FIU, Buffalo, Temple, Eastern Michigan, Eastern Illinois, and their ilk. Of course, if that wasn’t enough, you scheduled a 1-AA team to fill out the slate (Coastal Carolina). Even if I wanted to watch those games, I live in Texas, and I will never have the Big Ten Network, nor will most of the country, where a heck of a lot of your alumni live.
If I don’t watch games, I get less enthusiastic about buying PSU stuff.
If I don’t watch games, I get less enthusiastic about donating money. It would be hard for me to get less enthusiastic about donating money, but you at least remove the possibility of a head-injury-induced bout of giving later in life.
Sooner or later, when nobody watches these games, ESPN stops putting the bigger games on TV too. Then, even more people buy even less PSU stuff and donate even less money.
This year, and possibly in earlier years, playing games like these, against teams we knew would suck, did nothing to prepare us for the games against teams we thought wouldn’t suck. And as a result, we got pantsed. TWICE! Plus, the one out-of-conference game which we thought was against a team which didn’t suck ended up being a laugher too. Which argues that scheduling only one game against a team that might not suck is probably not going to help us either, not that you’re committing to even _that_ going forward, since our ‘marquee’ opponent in the next couple years is Syracuse. Yes, Syracuse. And by the next couple of years going forward, I don’t mean next year, in which we have three of those cupcakes listed above plus a TBA slot to fill with Temple’s name on it. Syracuse is our big opponent to look forward to in 2009 and 2010. Yay!
You often claim that economics dictates these decisions. It’s my considered economic opinion that you are quite possibly the dumbest motherfucker in the history of college sports, if you don’t think that there will be a negative long-term economic impact to scheduling these kinds of games.
I would much rather watch PSU play a one-and-done away game somewhere like Florida than ever see this type of schedule again. If Joe Paterno is really calling the shots and forcing you to schedule this sort of stuff against your will, as is sometimes alleged, then you owe it to the world to resign immediately. Continuing to assist in the perpetuation of this kind of scheduling is just plain evil.
Your pal,
M1EK
