Three study units down, 17 to go

As you may know, I've been trying to make a career transition -- from past work as a technical writer to a second career as an accountant. It's been tough, however, to get employers interested in a 45-year-old who wants to start at the bottom. So I'm working on adding some value to my resume by taking the CPA exam. It's a grueling four-part ordeal that requires you to know a lot about a lot of things -- but at least you get to take one part at a time. I'm starting with REG -- regulation and taxes. I got ahold of some study materials, meanwhile sending in my application to take the REG exam sometime during July or August (the exam is given during four two-month "testing windows," each of which consists of the first two months of a quarter-year, with the third month being used for keeping track of what's going on, at testing HQ).

Stay tuned for updates -- it's going to be a haul!

Recent updates

For those who might be interested, I finally resurrected the Column™ a few weeks ago, with an item about a hypothetical geography book I've always wanted to write: The State Borders and How They Got That Way. Also, the podcast has had a couple of recent additions.

Deny this!

With the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report summary on climate, the mainstream press has gone into a feeding frenzy of apocalyptic headlines and hyperventilating hyperbole about the now-inevitable climate catastrophe the Earth is in for. Ignoring that the report itself is little changed from the Third Assessment Report of 2001, activists and journalists have joined in lockstep, deriding anyone who questions the horrific picture as a "denier," grouping them with the "Holocaust Deniers" who insist that Hitler was really a nice guy.

As a counterpoint to the hysteria, Lawrence Solomon of Canada's National Post has written a series profiling ten of these skeptical individuals. It's an interesting series -- Solomon describes their credentials and the arguments they make, most of which don't really "deny" anything in particular but rather try to shed some light on what might be going on with global climate other than the orthodox CO2-induced-furnace situation that everyone seems to be worried about.

Take a look at Solomon's series, and see if these guys look like a bunch of nuts... or if they might actually have something to say.

Really, I hate to sound like Urbie-One-Note, with these repeated columns and blog entries on global climate -- but when we're hit with alarmist media pronouncements on a daily basis, it's hard to let it all pass without comment. When things reach the stage where intelligent discussion is impossible because everyone's made up his mind, that's a sad state of affairs. But that's what we get from the global-warming Gore-huggers. Their dismissal of skeptics as "deniers" is a low blow. Meanwhile, if they'd take the time to read the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (as opposed to merely taking a few incendiary phrases from the Summary for Policy Makers, which gives a much more extreme opinion than the entire report), we'd all be better off. (The Fourth Assessment Report, which has been completed but not yet released, is an update of the Third report, but as far as can be determined from the summary, does not contain any great new revelations about the state of world climate.)

Once again, it's important to reiterate that there is cause for concern about possible human influences on global climate. It would be a decidedly good thing to burn less gas and coal. We should be looking at all possible options to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere. But using terms like "deniers" serves no one.

Urb's Blog

The MazzCast goes live

Back in 1988 and 1989, I recorded a whole bunch of weekly jam sessions in which I was a participant. They were hosted by banjo and song virtuoso Jimmy Mazzy, who is known to trad jazz enthusiasts nationwide as the best in the business at his chosen craft. I'd started sitting in with Jim sporadically in about 1984 or so, when I was still in college (the first time), but by '88-9, was playing every week -- at the time, the venue was Ephraim's restaurant in Sudbury, MA -- and had realized that he had an extraordinary group of musicians assembled. I'm not sure of the merits of my own modest contributions to the group's efforts, but in terms of the overall music that was happening, it seemed like we were catching lightning in a bottle. In a rare bit of foresight, I thought, why not catch some of this stuff on tape, so that instead of just having great memories of these sessions, I'll have the sessions themselves? I brought a tape recorder to Ephraim's every Wednesday night for several months, compiling three shoeboxes' worth of cassettes -- and, listening back to the tapes, there's some pretty good material there. But what to do with it? It was expensive to put out a record, back then, and besides, I doubt it would have sold much -- trad jazz is not exactly synonymous with big sales in the record business. So the tapes sat in my closet for 17 years -- during which time, I moved several times, necessitating some plotting and scheming to make sure the collection survived each move intact. Typically, I'd split them up, putting two boxes on a moving truck while moving the third myself in the car -- so that if the truck crashed, got stolen, or was staffed by chimpanzee movers who destroyed things, I'd have moved at least some of the material separately.

Fast forward to the present day. With my Mac Mini, GarageBand, and an iMic, it's easy to digitize music and turn it into an MP3 file -- and a podcast. What's more, it doesn't cost anything to do, once you've got the Web space. So I give you the Jimmy Mazzy & Friends jazz podcast. As of this moment, I've only got one program on-line -- a 40-minute segment from December 28, 1988. But I'm already working on the next program, which will be made up of the second set from that same session. And there's a whole lot more where that came from.

In future programs, I may mix some other material in with the Mazzy-&-Friends sessions, because I have a lot of recordings of other groups I've played with. But the main idea of the podcast is to get some of these sessions out there, in hopes that they might find an interested audience. Let me know what you think!

Urb's Blog

The wronger he is, the stupider he gets

Awhile back, I opined that George W. Bush was the worst President in my lifetime -- by a nose over Jimmy Carter -- but in light of his exponentially-increasing state of denial over recent events, I'm going to have to strengthen that booby prize a bit and say that, unless I've missed something, Bush is in serious contention for the distinction of being the worst in American history, period.

This observation would almost seem too obvious to bother making -- and it has been made by countless media pundits already. But I can't help shaking my head at the way Bush gets more intransigent, the more disastrous things get in Iraq. And now that the Baker-Hamilton panel, appointed by Congress, is nearing the release date for its recommendations, Bush is throwing away his one chance to save face and salvage his political/historic legacy -- which, ironically, he seems to spend a lot of time worrying about. The panel would seem to be offering him a golden opportunity to fix his broken Iraq policy, meanwhile partially erasing his image as the guy in the old joke, who says, "I did make a mistake once -- I thought I was wrong about something; turned out, I wasn't!"

But no -- listening to Baker-Hamilton would be too smart (although the panel does contain, among others, Reagan-era sleazemonger Ed Meese, so it might be asking a lot to expect stellar results from their deliberations). And this guy is too stupid. Given that his party just got it's collective butt booted out of Congress, I can't imagine him getting too much accomplished in the last two lame-duck years of his term.

Urb's Blog

Science and assuming your conclusion

This week's "Science Journal" column in the Wall Street Journal discusses a dramatic shift taking place recently in the field of Alzheimer's Disease research.

According to the columnist, Sharon Begley, research into Alzheimer's has been dominated by one particular theory about what causes the disease:

Proponents of the leading theory of Alzheimer's have been in pitched battle with scientists who have other ideas about this awful neurodegenerative disease. For more than 20 years, the leading theory has held that sticky blobs in the brain called amyloid plaques cause Alzheimer's. Because that idea has numerous problems, doubters argued that the plaques might be innocent bystanders to the real, "upstream" culprit. If so, targeting the plaques, or the rogue protein called beta-amyloid that forms them, would do nothing to help the 4.5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's.

You might think this debate would play out with each side conducting research, in a "may the best science win" approach. But as I've written before, many scientists whose work challenges the amyloid dogma have been unable to publish in top journals, and their grant proposals, "go down in flames," as Mark Smith of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine told me. "Among the major journals and funding agencies, the attitude was, 'if it isn't amyloid, it isn't AD.' "

A remarkably similar phenomenon -- only worse -- has been taking place in the field of global climate research. Over the past ten years or so, the idea that the Earth is in the grip of a catastrophic period of human-induced global warming, caused by one thing and one thing alone: the burning of fossil fuels. Anyone who conducts climate research, at this point, is essentially required to start with the premise that this is true. Research papers that don't support the global-warming hypothesis are seldom published and almost never funded, and researchers who disagree with the hypothesis are branded "the denial machine" (Climate Science Watch) as if there were some vast right-wing conspiracy against the obvious "inconvenient truth" of massive global warming.

In an Orwellian turn of events, the National Coalition Against Censorship's "Knowledge Project" has come out against "actions that suppress and/or distort research findings." There certainly is some suppression and distortion going on, in the area of climate research, but it's not what the NCAC thinks it is. On the contrary, it's the skeptical climate research that's being suppressed and/or distorted, while the stuff that makes for better headlines ("Warmest Temperatures in the last 1,000,000 years," etc.) gets trumpeted by the mainstream press worldwide.

This is dangerous. Scientists are supposed to do research, investigate all the relevant phenomena, then publish their results and let the chips fall where they may. When you start requiring scientists to start with a certain restricted set of premises before they can get their research funded, you end up with bad science.

I've argued repeatedly that global climate is a complex phenomenon not explainable merely by studying a carefully selected subset of data designed to support a politically popular conclusion. We may well be influencing global climate by burning too much carbon -- that's a strong possibility. But dismissing skeptics as "the denial machine" does nothing to further our understanding of what is and what is not going on with global climate.

Urb's Blog

No, as a matter of fact, you don't deliver!

For several years -- ever since we lived in Illinois, in fact -- we've had a mailbox at The UPS Store, which used to be called Mail Boxes, Etc. It's a great place to get your mail -- it's secure, so no one can steal your mail (and with it, your identity); they give you a key, so you can get in when the store is closed; there's always someone there to sign for packages; and they provide a lot of other services, like packing, fax sending and receiving, and so on. Bottom line: we'd rather get the mail there than at home.

There's just one problem: when you move, the US Postal Service refuses to forward your mail. That's right -- they do not forward it, even if you submit a change-of-address card and clearly indicate your old and new addresses. I have no idea why this is so -- my sister, who works for the Postal Service, doesn't know, either. But for some reason, the US Postal service -- a public agency, staffed by Federal employees and partially funded by the taxpayer -- refuses to forward the mail of its own customers who exercise their right to use a private mailbox store.

Back in 1999, when Meg and I moved from Illinois to Arizona, this caused me some pain, in the form of a ding in my credit report. Several months after we moved, I pulled into a gas station and tried to charge some gas with one of my credit cards. The charge was refused. Funny, I thought, this card certainly isn't maxed out -- but I just pulled out another card, paid for the gas, and went on my way.

Later, when I called the credit card company to ask what was up, they said, "Oh -- our records show that you haven't paid us in several months, so we cancelled your card. You owe us $72.00," or some such amount. I sent them a check for the unpaid balance -- but by then, it was too late to avoid an adverse entry in my credit report. Which is still in there, because it takes seven years for entries to scroll off your credit report.

The reason for this oversight was simply that I hadn't received a bill for that credit card -- because the Postal Service hadn't forwarded the bills they'd been sending to my old address at the UPS Store -- and, because I forgot to call the credit card company and give them my new address (which I must have done with my other cards), I never got the bill. And got my credit rating dinged up as a result.

This time around, when we moved from Arizona to Rhode Island, I was very careful to make sure I got all of my credit card addresses updated -- directly with the companies involved -- and made arrangements with our old UPS Store to collect our mail every couple of weeks, stuff it in a box, and mail it to our new address, since the Postal Service was not going to forward it. This is fine, provided we remember to tell every single person, company, and other entity that might care that we've moved, that we've moved. In the case of Coconino County (where we own a five-acre parcel of land), we almost didn't get our property-tax notice this fall -- because although I stopped by the county office in person to give them our new address before we moved, they nonetheless sent the notice to our old address. Fortunately, it happened to get to our old UPS Store before the last train left for our new address (even the UPS Store will only forward your mail for a certain amount of time, unless you pay for another three months' mailbox rental, which seemed rather pointless, since we have no intention of going back to Arizona).

All of which is a roundabout way of asking, why -- by what right -- does the Postal Service get off thinking it's OK to refuse to serve its own taxpaying customers by forwarding their mail? There is no earthly reason why they can't forward it -- after all, the UPS Store mailbox address looks like any other street address with a box or apartment number. For some reason, though, postal regulations allow them to say, "Sorry, if you're using a private mailbox, you're out of luck." I say a big "Phooey" to that. And if Congress ever decides to give serious consideration to privatizing the post office, the bureaucrats responsible for the current non-forwarding policy may regret being so customer-unfriendly.

Urb's Blog