George V. Higgins wrote about scufflers and their lawyers. In one of them, Eli either remembers or hallucinates, Higgins explained property transfer, something along the lines ofYou take something of value from one person and give it to another and then do the reverse. The beauty of it is that magic moment when the things of value are in your hands and you get the chance to rip off a chunk for yourself.UPDATE: Carrot Eater below points out that Eli was hallucinating and this was from Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes.
Many, many years ago as a young bunny the Rabett read this and recognized truth. Jerry Ravetz and Roger Pielke Jr. made careers acting as property transfer agents between science and policy makers. Attempts from either side of the gulf to contact the other directly without paying the toll threaten their magic moments, explaining their antipathy to folks like Phil Jones and Al Gore.
And what better way to close this post than an actual quote from George V. Higgins
We are surrounded by nitwits, Matt. It is not a good idea to consider how much time we spend correcting the results of their idiocy
The deliberate obtuseness- the only thing that matters is the process, their control of the protocol. It is pathetic. I can't even imagine making small talk with the guy. I can't imagine that he would want to be the arbiter of even small and meaningless opinions.
ReplyDelete"For Whom the Bill Tolls"
ReplyDelete-- by Horatio Algeranon
The Honest Borker
Sets controls
Decides for whom
The clime bill tolls.*
*May also be spelled with one "l"
How about an r?
ReplyDeletehmm. that reminded me of this quote:
ReplyDeleteKURT VONNEGUT wrote that: “In every big transaction, there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make the moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on.”
http://www.economist.com/node/21556248
Richard Tol has a new book (the 'supporting literature' is fun):
ReplyDeletehttps://sites.google.com/site/climateconomics/home
Supporting literature in Tol's book:
ReplyDelete"Mike Hulme's Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Donna Laframboise' Delinquent Teenager and Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion give a good introduction to the controversies around climate research."