Misc
stoat | March 20, 2013 The Daily Fail has been lying to the public again says says KK but he sneaks in a dig at the Grauniad on GMOs as he passes, for balance. QS notes that Myles Allen has a column in the Graun about the same (not the GMOs, obviously, you wouldn't get that past the Graun) which seems bizarrely forgiving of David "I made it up" Rose. JA is caustic as ever.
In misc news, I've made my first foray into advice on how to row, and been climbing again. And running (pix).
Cyprus is a disaster area featuring enormous political stupidity for such a small country. That the finance minister flew off to Russia…
milhayser | February 26, 2013For once an asteroid strikes when we were kinda, sorta expecting one to. According to the Washington Post, the Russian Academy of Sciences "estimated that the meteor weighed around 10 tons and was traveling at 10 to 12 miles per second (roughly 30,000 to 45,000 mph) when it disintegrated." The same report estimates that more than 1,200 people were injured by the blast in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow. Based on video of the event, on Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson says it "looks like a fairly slow shallow angle impact, detonating with kiloton++ energy below…
stoat | February 25, 2013Having a comment policy is a good idea. But then it can be fun to test the limits of other people's (cite, in case the limits turn out to be as hard as announced).
Errm, pinch-and-a-punch, first of the month, no returns :-)
You can use this thread to discuss comment policy if you like.
milhayser | February 15, 2013On February 15th, Asteroid 2012 DA14 came hurtling between us and our satellites, twelve times nearer than the Moon, so close that it was visible through binoculars from certain parts of the globe. Greg Laden writes, "This asteroid is not going to hit the earth now or during any of the next few decades, but eventually it may well do so." On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel writes that the Sun's 11-year Solar Cycle peaks in 2013, meaning we can look forward to a year filled with solar flares. Even when these are spewed towards Earth, our magnetic field protects us from irradiation. But solar…
stoat | January 28, 2013 Driverless cars are in the news recently (I won't even bother linking to the various posts, there are so many) and Brian worries they might turn High Speed Rail into a dinosaur. Which indeed seems entirely likely.
My own view is that I love railways; going on holidays via sleeper and waking up as you're going through an alpine pass is wonderful. Commuting in the things isn't great, though it beats sitting in traffic queues. But where does the obsession with HSR come from? As CIP points out in Brian's comments, they aren't energy efficient - you might as well fly. They make great macho…
stoat | January 8, 2013 James Hansen says:
I was lucky to grow up in the era of rapidly rising expectations and opportunities. I was born on a small farm, the son of an itinerant tenant farmer. None of the farms that my five sisters and I lived on had electricity. Daylight was extended by kerosene lamps. I barely remember the use of kerosene lamps, because, when I was four years old, we moved a small house to the outskirts of town and by the time my brother was born, when I was 5 years old, we had electricity.
And so on. Which is, at first sight, weird: he claims to have been lucky to grow up in an era so…
stoat | January 2, 2013 From campaignforrealfarming.org, via IR. Inspired by KK, of course. I don't know who the campaignforrealfarming are, but for the moment I'll treat them as worth talking to. You'll notice there is a total absence of refs in the piece, so I feel no obligation to provide any in response.
The first three questions
The first three questions are:
1: After 30 years of intense effort and huge investment, can the GM advocates offer any examples of GM food crops that have brought unequivocal benefit to humanity or to the world at large?
2: Assuming that the advocates of GM food can demonstrate…
stoat | December 21, 2012
A summer picture for the winter solstice. Which I'd forgotten until Amy reminded me.
Refs
* Book of the New Sun. I still think Gene Wolfe does a better job of capturing the wonder of the Apollo programme with that brief paragraph that anyone else ever has.
* Dispatch from AGU: How to Understand Water Vapor Feedback - for WJI.
stoat | October 25, 2012 To Amsterdam, for the marathon. In case you've been wondering why its been quiet around here. 3:55, since you ask.
I know I still haven't written the sea ice post. But I will; and isn't it nice that they don't all come at once?
I'm reading Atlas Shrugged. Yes, I know Rand is a wacko. And I know CIP didn't like the book. But I'm quite enjoying it so far (p 703), as long as I skip through the multi-page sermons. Its getting duller now she's reached Rivendell, though.
Middle class decline: is it inevitable? (h/t: EW). Speaking of Atlas Shrugged, there's Greece falling apart some more. Though…
milhayser | October 19, 2012On Universe, Claire L. Evans notes the renewed appreciation than can come with a change in perspective—whether it's seeing the space shuttle Endeavour roll past a Sizzler in South Central, or daredevil Felix Baumgartner leap towards the Earth from 24 miles up. Baumgartner, aided only by gravity and a spacesuit, broke the speed of sound during his four and a half minute freefall. And thanks to a video camera, he shared his experience with the world. Evans writes "The 21st century is an epoch of P.O.V. feats, of go-pros taped to helmets and steering wheels, streaming the direct visual stimulus…
milhayser | October 1, 2012On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk says that although many books are ascribed profound historical significance, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring truly brought environmentalism to the mainstream. Carson described the deadly effects of pesticide use on its unintended targets—birds, wildlife, human beings. Carson was a nature-lover at heart, but her memory will always be tied to agricultural issues. On Tomorrow's Table, Pamela Ronald writes that Carson "envisioned harnessing the knowledge of biological diversity—entomology, pathology, genetics, physiology, biochemistry, and ecology—to shape a new…
stoat | September 17, 2012 More misc, under a thin veneer.
I've been rowing again: the Boston Marathon.
For fans of short-sellers-are-all-irredeemably-evil brigade, try Bronte.
Our head isn't too impressed with todays announced shake-up of the exam system: my heart sinks at the prospect of even more time spent on debating assessment rather than improving teaching and learning. Pols too keen on "leaving their mark" rather than knuckling down to work. Or indeed, leaving well enough alone.
Two views on Tyler Cowen (who he?)'s piece in the NYT about hunger.
stoat | September 7, 2012
I'm not quite sure what it is. It is something like a houseleek - click on the tiny pic of its base for a bigger view, or here for a fuller view. I bought it in a village sale a few years back and it has sat outside come sun, rain and drought. This is the first year it has flowered. It reminds me of asphodel somewhat, though on a much smaller scale, and only really in the way the flowers look when closed up. I'm pretty sure they aren't related.
More Friday Fabulous Flowers can be found at the Phytophactor's. I'm going to ask him what mine is, if no-one volunteers.
Update: TPP himself stops…
stoat | September 1, 2012Inquires Timmy. But its a stupid question. Indeed, a curiously illiberal anti-business not-really-thought-through question. The premiss is the usual one: the degrees aren't useful, they are a hangover from the old days, they aren't value-for-money, and they don't teach people what business wants them taught.
But of course what they do give you, even if you believe all that, is a piece of paper that allows employers to value you.
One solution is just to say, aha, universities are just convenient traps for the initiativeless, whilst those with va-voom get on with making their way in biznis. In…
stoat | August 28, 2012 Plenty of other people are talking about seaice, so I don't need to. Monthly means are more interesting the dailies, and since August is unlikely to beat September, we're unlikely to see a record monthly mean for a month yet. The bets are summarised here and in this, to which the former refers.
I was a bit sad that the blog formerly known, rather gawkily, as "Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah" is now "Climate Asylum".
mt is sad that The Way Scientists Try to Convince People Is Hopeless: "they present evidence, figures, tables, arguments, and so on. But that’s not how to convince people.…
milhayser | August 27, 2012
Filovirus Entry by AJ Cann
Two weeks after an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the same disease is circulating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the outbreaks have been caused by two distinct subtypes of virus, meaning they were not spread from one country to the other. The same thing happened in 1976, when over 500 people died in the two regions, hundreds of miles apart. Tara C. Smith asks, “Is this just coincidence that Ebola has twice now broken out in two different places at the same time, but with different viral subtypes?” If not, and specific environmental or ecological…
milhayser | August 3, 2012At first glance, Richard Muller's "conversion" from global-warming skeptic to true believer—based on research funded by global warming denialists—is a welcome surprise. Hey, people can change their minds! But on Stoat, William M. Connolley takes a more critical view. Connolley asks, "Everyone who has doubts gets to run their own re-analysis of the temperature record? Wouldn’t it be quicker if people just read the existing literature?" Most of the data used by Muller has been around for years, and so has his conclusion: that humans are rapidly raising the temperature of this planet by…
stoat | July 24, 2012 Scott Mandia accuses Chronicle of Higher Ed to Its Bloggers: Feel Free to Disparage Climate Science but not Black Studies. This is in reference to Mann suing the National Review for libel (see, e.g. DA or BA). The Chron piece seems piss-poor, as does their lying evasion about no-editorial-control, but then again I don't know who they are: perhaps they have no reputation to lose?
In a much lighter vein is the pic. I've seen others elsewhere; its a fashion; perhaps because you can get code to draw out the lines for you. But its still fun.
Can you guess what it is? Lovely, no. Click to find out…
milhayser | July 19, 2012At scales where nothing can see, the best science is done by colliding particles at near lightspeed and picking up as many “pieces” as possible. We know of six quarks (which combine to make baryons, protons, and neutrons), six leptons (which include electrons and neutrinos), and four gauge bosons (which carry or exchange the fundamental forces of the universe). Not to mention antimatter and color charge, the last piece of the Standard Model puzzle is the Higgs boson. On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson calls the Higgs “quintessentially a scalar field – there is no charge, colour, flavour…