Unbalanced Perception (Beer Goggles, Goldberg and Feith, Dinosaur Farts and Hope)

Three somewhat related articles here, wherein I try to tie scientific formulas to present-day politics to future-day politics to horrid, stinking metaphors, and add a little inspring bit at the end.

The first is a scientificish analysis of the "beer goggles" effect many folks have experienced.

Scientists believe they have worked out a formula to calculate how "beer goggles" affect a drinker's vision.

The drink-fuelled phenomenon is said to transform supposedly "ugly" people into beauties - until the morning after.

Researchers at Manchester University say while beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder, the amount of alcohol consumed is not the only factor.

Additional factors include the level of light in the pub or club, the drinker's own eyesight and the room's smokiness.

The distance between two people is also a factor.

[full story and formula available here]

While we don't have a formula yet for figuring out how to calculate when the Iraq War boosters turned "what-did-I-say-again"'ers will wake up, we do get to take a moment and remember how wrong the were.

Here's Olbermann busting on the National Review nutjob, Jonah Goldberg, who had this to say a couple years ago when embroiled in a blog-spat with the prescient Juan Cole.

Let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now).

I think one of Cole's points raised in the discussion still stands as a wonderful, and unanswered question.

I am saying I do not understand why CNN or NPR would hire someone to talk about Iraq policy who has not read a book on the subject under discussion. Actually, of course, it would be desirable that he had read more than one book. Books are nice. They are rectangular and soft and have information in them. They can even be consumed on airplanes. Goldberg should try one.

Goldberg is now saying that he did not challenge my knowledge of the Middle East, but my judgment. I take it he is saying that his judgment is superior to mine. But how would you tell whose judgment is superior?

One way that I've found worthwhle is to have people make predictions, and then come back later and see, with the clarity of hindsight, who had better judgement regarding a certain situation.  In this case, it's so evident as to be beyond obvious, and only nutjobs of Malkin/Coulter caliber could miss this one.

Speaking of which, there's another so-totally-wrong-and-lying-about-it guy that seems to keep getting on TV, Douglas Feith.  Here is a rather strong reminder of how wrong one the hugely wrong "architects" of the Iraq war was (in hindsight).

Dougie Feith appeared on Faux News Sunday with Chris Wallace today and emphatically denied that he or anyone in his office ever said there was an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.  How sad.  Mr. Feith apparently has early on-set Alzheimer's disease.  He's forgotten that someone in his shop at DOD leaked his October 2003 memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee to one Mr. Stephen Hayes, an enterprising journalist, who in turn published the breathless findings in the Weekly Standard.  

[full post]

BTW, I posted a story about this a while back, and even took pains to tear apart the logic of the leaked memo.   The point of the leaking at that point was more of a political cover for the 2004 elections (then a year away) and trying to shore up the tenuous, and now known to be hugely overstated, link between Saddam and Osama.

They weren't wearing beer goggles, they were wearing war goggles.   Which is like looking at a war while drinking $ 450,000,000,000 scotch, in a completely smoke-filled room, with no light at all, and from 6,200 miles away.   If you don't understand how good that makes a war look, go back and read that formula in the beer googles story.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but that kind of distortion can make a decomposing corpse look like Playmate of the Year.

The problem now for these people is that it is now the next morning, the golden light of a new day is revealing all that passed before, and they have woken up next to a hideous hose-beast (curiously resembling a decomposing corpse).  Instead of taking their lumps like real men, these slimeballs are denying they ever encouraged the country to dive right in, or that (I swear) she looked like a Playmate last night.   Too bad we have pictures of them in their cheerleading outfits, and that awful smell to contend with.

[image of George W. Bush in cheerleader outfit cut because my personal site is not an "approved" image host]

Finally, we come to the next massive rotting corpse the Republicans want to take home and do the dirty with, global warming.

Ufnortunately they are still drunk on the noxious combination of methane and carbon dioxide and think that cow farts caused the last bout of intense global warming...which oh-by-the-way wiped about 60% of the species off the planet.

This week, Congress held its first hearing on the landmark IPCC report on climate change. That report concluded that global warming is "unequivocal" and human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — one of the 87 percent of congressional Republicans who do not believe in man-made global warming — questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate change that occured 55 million years ago. "We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?’

[video evidence here]

The question that lies before us now is twofold.  How do we clean up that godawful mess, and how to we avoid bringing the next body bag generator home.

My solution is to change up a couple letters, mix a few names together and hope for the best.  That is:

Barack Hussein Obama.

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