Friday, February 2, 2018

Twitter Etiquette

Well, I'm learning a lot about Twitter etiquette. I wanted to make a lot of climate bloggers and commentators aware of how what everybody thinks they know about the Penn State scandal is likely wrong, and how it might be related to the climate conversation. So I tweeted my post out with as many Twitter names as I could fit per tweet. When one of these tweets got some responses, it produced a lot of static (tweets to wade through) for the rest of the people listed on the tweet. From now on I'll use single tweets or small specifically targeted groupings. Using a lot of names in one tweet is lazy.

A couple people pointed out how to mute the conversation. I've also just found out you can mouse over the names in a reply, and it will let you click for a full check off list. I should probably mention that I never use the Twitter app or home page. I can never keep up.  I prefer go through bookmarked Twitter profiles in a browser.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Climate Change and Jerry Sandusky

What does Jerry Sandusky have to do with Climate Change? Well, on a very tangential level, Rand Simberg called Michael Mann the "Jerry Sandusky of climate science". In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, Penn State president, Graham Spanier was convicted of child endangerment. Michael Mann touts a letter of support he got from Spanier in his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, as I have snickeringly  pointed out in a blog comment thread. Well I've just run across one of the most astounding stories I've ever read and it's been hiding right in plain sight!

At Michael Shermer's site for his Skeptic magazine, I ran across a review of a new book by a very respectable science writer named Mark Pendergrast. It is entitled, The Most Hated Man in America -- Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgement, in which he argues that Sandusky is most likely innocent! Now this is a very sensitive subject and Shermer even included a disclaimer for the review. Some prominent skeptic movement skeptics, such as Jerry Coyne and Danial Dennet have commented on it. It's also gotten some derision, most notably in a couple posts by PZ Myers.