William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
September 6, 2009
The normally sensible mt has a post The Elephant in the Room that I've been meaning to rip to shreds for ages (oh, by the way, if anyone feels tempted to say "how unfair ripping mt to shreds when he is on the Good side, why not shred Plimer or someone" the answer is: mt is interesting, Plimer is…
September 5, 2009
mt has been writing about religion and I even got Paul to comment. I'm going to do my take in a bit, but in the meantime a bit from Nude Scientist caught my eye: Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product…
September 5, 2009
Ha. I wimped out of "bonii" cos I wasn't sure of my grammar. Anyway: Bankers are this year's terrorists, who were last year's paedophiles, who were the year before's witches. Which is to say, everyone appears to be convinced that they are deeply evil and the heavy hand of government is needed (…
August 31, 2009
No, not arbcomm, though they seem to be fairly wacky. This summer has been very disconnected, but I'm finally back, so expect more unbridled tat. I was going to take a peek at the sea ice situation, on the off-chance that no-one else had, but googled it first and ended up with Greenpeace's sea ice…
August 13, 2009
Summer is the time when middle-aged parents scrabble around trying to patch together work and school holidays. We've been to Wales and the Lakes. I could make some not-very-interesting comments about rain; but apart from saving us the trouble of camping one night it hasn't been a bother. Rowing-…
August 7, 2009
"Thanks" to M (if that is the word) for the pointer to Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global Warming Problem, Experts Say. This is Nordell pushing his stuff again (did I blog the nonsense here? I forget). It is the first I've heard of the delightful…
August 5, 2009
Well not in all respects of course. Sometimes people die. But before I get on to that...
Have you noticed that I haven't posted much recently? I've been on holidays. Wales is very nice, I recommend it. I'll go again. That is Castell-y-Bere, if you don't recognise it.
Where was I? Oh yes...
The…
July 25, 2009
On friday, the last night of the bumps loomed like the vast wall of black cloud I could see through the glass wall of our atrium. Fortunately the rainstorms were mostly over by 5 and even the Ladies second division got a clear row. Even more forunately the eventual results weren't too black. This…
July 23, 2009
Just a quick note prompted by the comments: we've slipped below 2008 and are heading below 2006. A long way short of 2007 at the moment. Still all to play for.
[Update: as PH points out, 2009 is now not exciting at all, having rejoined "the pack", albeit at the bottom edge. 2007 still looks very…
July 22, 2009
Ah well, it isn't looking like a good year. I've now gone down 4 places in 2 boats in two days... and none of the rows were very long. Ladies two, who I'm coxing, got taken by two fast crews fairly quickly; not a lot to be done about that, my coxing was OK in terms of steering and in terms of…
July 18, 2009
Yesterday was appalling weather-wise: lightning and thunderstorms all day long and torrential rain. At work, the man in the yellow jacket showed up and stuck his head into the ceiling void - this is a sign of really heavy rain. He doesn't seem to do anything - its more like the seaweed you hang up…
July 16, 2009
PD has an article about Communicating Science whose title I've shamelessly stolen, and a follow up imaginatively titled Communicating Science 2. Since he sideswipes Mooney, I'm all for it :-)
I wrote an exciting and insightful comment there, which like everything I write anywhere got misinterpreted…
July 15, 2009
Our share price, over the last 5 days. Exciting, isn't it? No, I have no idea why it is doing this, and (of course) if I did I wouldn't be able to tell you :-).
July 15, 2009
For those accustomed to a daily diet of Stoat, my apologies. It is nearly bumps (next week) and M1 is finally getting its 5 outings a week in, so I've been fairly busy. Not only do I have to row, but I'm also faced with the onerous task of being sociable in the Old Spring afterwards. Its a hard…
July 12, 2009
It is most of a year since my last pointless pointless arbcomm case so it was about time for another, and here it is (that's the current state, which may not work in a year or a day's time. Permalink to current state).
I don't think it will be very exciting, but I've been known to be wrong about…
July 5, 2009
A little while ago I was ratty at Romm for being ratty at Peilke. All very exciting, but I was challenged to Please identify a single scientifically inaccurate statement in the paragraph that Pielke excerpted from the report. This isn't difficult; Pielke has already done it. Romm also asked me to…
June 30, 2009
Time for a brief break from the viputeration. Dull, I know. But fear not: the daily diet of random insults will resume soon. Speaking of which read Arrse.
PD challenges me to a bet, which I expect to take up once I've found time from wiki to actually read the terms properly. He also points to the…
June 28, 2009
I've been a little weighed down with various activities recently. So anyone keenly awaiting the next round of me-vs-Romm-vs-Pielke will just have to wait.
Meanwhile, in-joke of the day.
June 26, 2009
A good outing tonight with the closest we've come to M1 so far - M1.25 perhaps. John-the-coach did an excellent job on us for the first leg then p*ss*d off to the pub when it started raining, which was probably fair enough because it was a real English summer thunderstorm and we all got soaked.…
June 23, 2009
As I was pondering
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly---and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
I was reminded of Marvell (OK, I know, does it help if the first piece of Marvell I read (also this one) was…
June 23, 2009
"A friend" points me towards Why does the New York Times hate science? by Joe Romm. Sigh. Experience teaches me that RP Jr can wipe the floor with Romm without even trying, largely because Romm falls flat on his face without any help from anyone else.
As far as I can tell (because it took me some…
June 17, 2009
With all the wild excitement over 2007's record low there is clearly room for noise to be made about summer sea ice, so predictions must be made! We all know, of course, that whether this year, or any other year, is going to be a record is going to be a matter of chance: on top of the long term…
June 15, 2009
Catz women catching FaT (I think) on saturday. Which was all jolly good fun but meant that I didn't get to row myself all week after monday. And over the weekend I felt somewhat ill. Coupled with pouring rain at 4 this afternoon I was not at all looking forward to being 6 in our "M1" crew for the…
June 13, 2009
Tis the season to watch the young folks. Ah, those were the days.
Just after the 1 minute gun. LMBC, friday, destined to be caught by Kings.
Jesus II hard on the heels of Anglia; what you can't see from this is that they stuffed up their line on the corner. But they got them in the end.
Catz…
June 8, 2009
But it was worth it. Thanks to John for coaching and Emma for organising. Come in Andy Hurst, all is forgiven.
June 6, 2009
Too late now. I got 323 votes which is about twice Labour, but only a fifth of the Tories so I'm still safely kept away from the mighty levers of political power on the county council. Whew. Unlike Simon Sedgwick-Jell in the Abbey ward of the city who is now the first Cambridge Green councillor.…
June 6, 2009
Following my oops I got a new portege, though it had a blank disc. Fortunately I didn't really care about that, as I wanted to swap discs. This turned out to be a matter of 2 screws on each box, and lo and behold the mind and memory of my old machine is transferred to a shiny new one, with the…
June 4, 2009
As I said before, I lay claim to introducing the use of the term "going emeritus" to the climate change wars. And you're not allowed to use it without attribution.
June 4, 2009
Or, Pielke versus the world. To put my prejudices up front, my money would be on Pielke. Since I get to write this whilst watching a backup of my laptop (for for some odd reason) I'll have time to read the sources as I write this.
Background: global warming is happening, and will continue into the…
June 1, 2009
Oops.
I think I may have kicked it a bit too hard this time.
[Update: best comment so far has to be the ref to http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/windows-7-to-…, but http://www.computerhistory.org/VirtualVisibleStorage/popup_image.php?ba… is a good second-best.
Another…