Is API Evil?

Do you drive a car? Ever take a bus, or travel by airplane?

I wish more companies were as efficient and helpful as Exxon. They do very difficult work to deliver fantastic products, high quality, always available, and they make a modest percentage profit on sales.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Sourcewatch seems to think so

They've failed then. Their aim is to appear to be wise and careful, while their forte is debunking scientific evidence in the way pioneered by the tobacco companies.

See "The Merchants of Doubt"

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

And they want to keep on making that modest percentage profit on the highest possible sales, even though this means letting anthropogenic global warming get progressively more severe, which is why they are subsidising advertising campaigns to devalue the - very solid - scientific evidence available on the subject.

John Larkin was too pig-ignorant about the science to realise that he was being had, and has too high an opinion of his judgement to contemplate the possibility that he might have got it wrong.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Being had? My 250 HP Audi goes like a bat out of hell. It's a blast to drive on the hills of San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada mountains.

There have been revolutions in energy lately. Fracking has given us centuries of cheap natural gas, and it seems there are trillions of barrels of shale oil in the US that nobody knew about.

Since this is mostly Federal land, and there are trillions of dollars to be made here, well, you can guess the likely progression.

Speaking of efficiency, how's your oscillator design coming along? Planning to actually buy any parts this year?

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

The American Petroleum Institute is the trade association for a ton of companies in the petroleum industry. It exists solely to advocate for the petroleum industry with various legislative bodies and with the American public.

It's their _job_ to quote whatever studies make the US petroleum industry look good. And presumably any studies or research that they do is going to be slanted to make the industry look good. For that matter, if they do research that makes the industry look _bad_, it would go against the grain of their very reason for existence to publish their results, so you know right off where _those_ results (and possibly that whole research team) will go.

So I guess that my bottom line is that they aren't _necessarily_ evil, or _necessarily_ good, but you shouldn't believe what they say about their client's innocence or good will any more than you should from similar statements coming from a defense lawyer.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

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What that go to do with anything? Except possibly a bit of eg-- boosting self-advertising.

Burning natural gas generates less CO2 per watt than burning coal, but we can't afford to burn anything like as much of it for fuel as Exxon- Mobil would like us to.

Tomorrow actually. It should have been today, but it's now evolved into a two core solution with a heavily gapped core for the tank circuit inductor and an ungapped core for the output transformer. We've got a cute way of driving that transformer which keeps its non- linearities out of the loop, and I'm doing the last fine-tuning on the circuit that drives it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I'm always somewhat distressed by the automatic assumption that people will be dishonest whenever it serves their short-term economic interest. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but assuming it with no evidence more or less precludes any actual dialogue between the two sides, and that's a recipe for polarization (which we've seen) and eventual collapse.

Having a reputation for being honest even when it's inconvenient is a very persuasive thing.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

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Last I heard the oil field that extends under North and South Dakota has=20 more oil in it that Saudi Arabia, so if the Arabs are the filthy rich=20 buggers everyone makes them out to be, then what will that make the=20 owners of that oil? =20 And just think, that's ignoring the vast reserve you mentioned. =20 Naturally, you want to waste your natural resources, but I'm all for us=20 burning up the world's reserves and then making them come to us. Maybe=20 we can treat them like they have been treating us.

Yeah, the best argument for not exploiting domestic oil resources is to use theirs up first.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

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You haven't been treating them at all well so far, but still act surprised when countries whose political systems have been screwed up to suit some US oil driller or copper miner tend to act resentful. The CIA engineered coup in Iran in 1953 is a case in point

Pinochet's similarly inspired take-over in Chile hasn't yet come back to haunt you quite a vigorously, but it killed a lot of people and left a whole lot more with bitter memories.

Read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" sometime.

You probably won't like it, but you need the education.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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The American Petroleum Institute clearly doesn't share your opinion.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Only if you drop context. What was the state of the British economy in

1953? Weak. The US should simply let Mossadegh do whatever? British GDP in 1953 was 17.21 thousand million pounds against a population of 50 some odd million. That's about 345 pounds per person. People were having trouble getting enough food.

SFAIK, Churchill was the prime mover. Not that Churchill didn't make some whopping mistakes in his time.

There's no direct line from 1953 to 1979 anyway. The Mullahs were basically Qutbists. Nasser hisownself presided over Qutb's execution. Qutb was not significantly influenced by any events in Iran; he was in prison in around 1953 and dead by 1966.

For a broader context, read " A Peace To End All Peace", which covers the entire development of the modern Middle East in excruciating detail, in short, punchy chapters that are like blows to the head. It's a masterwork.

But the Allende regime could have easily ended up like Somalia. Chile's had pretty good luck since his death ( and even before his death, after he'd softened ). Somalia is a *failed communist state*, a detail people tend to leave out. Besides:

The economic stuff is quite seperable from Pinochet's nastiness with assassinations and such. I don't know anybody who can fully explain South American politics. Closest I've come is Graham Greene and that's narrative.

It's a load of merde. The medical comparisons are especially outrageous. it's frankly something I haven't seen outside of deep Soviet writing.

There are a thousand better direct critiques of the CIA from '48 to '60. You don't need to make things up. They had some crazy melon farmers...

Won't get it there. But it enables fuming impotently at Milton Friedman for things he didn't actually do...

-- Les Cargill

That doesn't work if we've already given the economy and country to Barak and other Slowmanites.

IOW, the very definition of 'evil'.

James

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Yes, it's a kind of cynical substitution of suspicion for understanding, which has now become an article of faith. If you don't understand the reality, pick a scapegoat and weave a narrative. It's more salacious and engaging to non-thinkers that way. Stereotypes and prejudice are easier than thinking. It's also an explicit tactic from Alinsky: if someone disagrees with you, they're racist, etc.

E.g. the recent Trayvon Martin debacle, whose villain, it turns out, didn't fit the cookie-cut narrative after all.

Oddly, irrationally, the people who toss these accusations so easily, who have so little faith in their fellow man, think the solution is to put more of the most ambitious, self-serving, most suspect of these men in charge, with greater power.

I don't see it quite that way. There's been a lot of polarization from on top recently, as a failing president flails and lashes out, directly at private citizens, at companies, groups, etc. The society is under assault, being denigrated and attacked, often cynically. And, the people as a mass aren't buying it. Americans of all stripes want jobs, and mostly don't resent someone working hard and having a bit more.

Yes.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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Sadly, they pay creeps like the Heartland Institute to lie about the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming.

That actually is evil, though James Arthur and John Larkin don't know enough about science to have noticed.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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On the other hand, there's no doubt that Exxon-Mobil has paid a lot of money to people who are in the business about misleading the public about anthropogenic global warming. Sourcewatch has documented the evidence. There's no "suspicion" involved - the case is crystal clear.

Dubbya and Dick Cheney do fit that description, and their record on anthropogenic global warming was depressing - trying to get scientists employed by the government to change their story to match the political interests of Exxon-Mobil and it's fossil-carbon peddling friends.

Exxon-Mobil isn't taking part in any dialogue - they pay money to the merchants of doubt to devalue the scientific evidence behind anthropogenic global warming without making any reference to Exxon- Mobil, despite the fact that the lie being peddled serve Exxon-Mobil's financial interest.

James Arthur in wishful thinking mode. As if Obama were a failing president ...

Curious comment from somebody who seems to admire Karl Rove, a master of the cynical attack. Presumably he's forgotten about the Swift Boat People in the 2004 presidential campaign

Whoever said they did? A few of the more sensible ones have noticed that the Republicans are in favour of exporting as many jobs as possible to places where wages are lower - most recently China.

Pity that James Arthur's political tunnel vision makes it hard for objective observers to see him as honest.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

...AND are a good investment.

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Until someone sues them for delaying the implementation of effective measures to slow down anthropogenic global warming.

I hope to live long enough to see it happen ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen