Virginia polling update
VA Blogger over at Too Conservative has an interesting update of the latest political polls regarding the VA governor’s race.
Study spends $423,500 to figure out why men don’t like to wear condoms
Oh, yeah. That’s money well spent.
The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don’t like to wear condoms, a project government watchdogs say is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.
Researchers at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, are investigating why “young, heterosexual adult men” have problems using condoms. The study will include “skill-based intervention” to teach grown men how to use protection.
The first phase of the two-year study will be a simple Q&A, but doctors say the second phase will plumb uncharted territory.
“The second phase involves a laboratory study, and focuses on penile erection and sensitivity during condom application,” reads the abstract from Drs. Erick Janssen and Stephanie Sanders, both of the Kinsey Institute.
“The project aims to understand the relationship between condom application and loss of erections and decreased sensation, including the role of condom skills and performance anxiety, and to find new ways to improve condom use among those who experience such problems.”
You know, I’m betting we could figure out why men don’t like using them for a helluva lot cheaper than $423,500. And even if we agree that such a study is worthy, why is it the public that needs to be paying for it? I would think that the manufacturers of such items would be 1) motivated to figure out how to increase their usage and, thereby, sales, 2) in a far better position to know what they’re talking about as regards the problems and (ahem) shortcomings of their product, and 3) in a far better position to actually do something about those problems once identified.
I love the line in this story that the money represents, “just a crumb in the NIH [budgetary] pie.” Like the man said, a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money. I, personally, am talking real money at the 1st billion and you get there by being casually dismissive of $400,000 expenditures. There’s a lot of serious medical therapy development and pharmaceutical research that could use a spare $400K, I’m sure. Perhaps we ought to be spending it there or, better still, not spending that money at all.
Federal climate change report blasted by scientist whose work was featured in the report.
Professor of environmental studies Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado calls into question the conclusions and reporting of the latest federal report on climate change. From the New York Times:
The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. Dr. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, asks:
‘[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?’
Why, indeed? Consider the Doctor’s list of actual findings of fact in the last year that demonstrate the report’s conclusions to be dead wrong:
1. Over the long-term, U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation . . . there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.
The Doctor, while offering a stern rebuke from the academics’ perspective, is necessarily constrained in his characterization of this report. I’m not. The report’s conclusions cannot possibly be construed from the findings of fact, not by anyone actually interested in telling the truth. The people who are publishing this and similar reports are lying. I do not buy the notion that anyone who knows this subject matter could assess the facts and come to the opposite conclusion honestly. There’s money to be made and power to be had in promoting the notion that the climate change is worsening and, therefore, justifies more government control over the private sector.
I am hopeful that actual science will win out and will inform a rational set of decisions about what actions are necessary.
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