Category Archives: View

View 790 Wednesday, September 18, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

Ios7 warning

Hi Jerry,

Just a quick note and warning: beware of ios7, which comes out tomorrow. Setting aside some of the dubious design choices (they clearly ignore color blindness and over 40 year old eyeballs), the iPhone4 hardware is barely adequate to run it – it has a lot of user interface lags, to the point of nearly being unusable for some functions like deleting voice mail. Even on an iPad 3, it has issues with performance. There are also a number of bugs; it’s definitely a dot zero release.

This apple pie needs more time in the oven. Wait for 7.0.1 or 7.0.2 which are both in development….and maybe even for 7.1.

Cheers,

Doug

I have received other indications that installing IOS7 is contraindicated at this time…

And now for some good news from Australia:

PROFESSOR Tim Flannery has been sacked by the Abbott Government from his $180,000 a year part time Chief Climate Commissioner position with the agency he runs to be dismantled immediately.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt called Prof Flannery this morning to tell him a letter formally ending his employment was in the mail.

Public service shake-up as heads go

In the letter, Mr. Hunt tells Prof Flannery: "The Climate Commission does not have an ongoing role, and consequently I am writing to advise you that the Climate Commission has been dissolved, with effect from the date of this letter.

http://mobile.news.com.au/national-news/tim-flannery-sacked-climate-commission-dismantled-by-coalition/story-fncynjr2-1226722779566

It’s not likely that the present Administration will do anything of the sort, but the precedent remains.

World’s top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought – and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong

• Leaked report reveals the world has warmed at quarter the rate claimed by IPCC in 2007
• Scientists accept their computers may have exaggerate
• A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong.
• The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science.
• They are cited worldwide to justify swinging fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.
• Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that over the past 15 years, recorded world temperatures have increased at only a quarter of the rate of IPCC claimed when it published its last assessment in 2007.
• Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2fJhkG0i3
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2fJhaOUWs

The reverberations of this are running around the world. Suddenly “Deniers” are not such awful people after all. Of course a majority of Americans is coming to believe that Global Warming is a scam.

Some day a history of Global Warming showing how many smart people got taken in by it all will be written. A number of otherwise sane and competent scientists managed to swallow the bait hook line and sinker.

Scientists with conflicts of interest

Dear Jerry:

In your View dated 9/17/2013 you said:

"Since the academic budgets of a great number of people depend on the continued Global Warming Consensus, there is a conflict of emotions among the climate scientists."

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=15440 <https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=15440>

Certainly their emotions must be conflicted as reality intrudes on their imaginings. I think we should also think about their conflicts of interest.

As Dr. Henry H. Bauer, an experienced and well-informed student of the history of science and the conduct of scientists, has written:

"The only way to avoid the consequences of conflict of interest is to avoid conflicts of interest altogether."

("Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth", McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012, Chapter 6.)

http://www.amazon.com/Dogmatism-Science-Medicine-Dominant-Monopolize/dp/0786463015/ <http://www.amazon.com/Dogmatism-Science-Medicine-Dominant-Monopolize/dp/0786463015/>

Scientists, science, and science-based institutions have changed greatly since you and I were in school half a century ago. Today science consists of networks of industries, universities, and governments, all with vested interests. Dr. Bauer’s well-documented review of these changes would be of great interest to your readers. Scientists themselves are often unaware of just how much thought and effort has gone into studying their activities.

In the past you posted some of my questions concerning the integrity of contemporary science. For instance, in Mail for August 31, 2012 I quoted Dr. John Patrick, founder of Augustine College as saying https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9400#science

<https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9400#science>

We have no idea now, do we, how much of the scientific literature is fabricated. And, of course, it’s very hard to imagine why it wouldn’t be fabricated. We’re merely reaping the rewards of what we have taught."

43:37 minutes into the talk at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOTUEQinowAt <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOTUEQinowAt>

Also, in your Mail for February 4, 2013, you posted my comment in which I cited the documentary evidence for 1) the nonexistence of the peer reviewers who supposedly maintain the integrity of the scientific literature and 2) the fact that the overwhelming majority of article retractions from scientific journals is due to fraud and misconduct.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?m=20130204

<https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?m=20130204> Dr. Bauer’s book presents an extensive analysis of what has happened to science and why doubts about the integrity of science are fully justified. After reading his book I’ve concluded that things are far worse than I ever imagined.

Dr. Bauer concludes his book

"The inescapable fact is that something needs to be done so that scientific expertise can once more be relied upon to serve the public good as it did for many centuries." (penultimate paragraph on p. 263 of his book.)

Of course, it can be argued that science has always suffered from those scientists and institutions more interested in serving their personal political and social agendas than in searching for truth. The movie and book "Longitude" presents the case that the leaders of the Royal Society were perfectly willing to allow tens of thousands to die on the high seas rather than admit that an unschooled watchmaker had solved a problem whose solution had eluded for decades the most strenuous efforts of the most distinguished astronomers.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

Government funding will always have deep flaws. There needs to be a long discussion on the mechanisms for directing public money into meaningful research and into projects that accomplish something. Most does not. Look at California high speed rail and various mandated research such as the Stem Cell research funded by enormous bond issues. None of this has had much of a payoff.

The Manhattan Project had a goal.

And Dr. Huth sends more good news:

feynman lectures finally in web format

Jerry,

We’ve finally got accurate, formatted, device independent copies of the classic Feynman lectures on physics with exercises, errata, and notes. It’s a great resource.

http://www.feynmanlectures.info/

View 790 Tuesday, September 17, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

Some advice for the Republicans:

The Budget

What they should do is attach a mandate to the CR to implement Obamacare as written without any carve-outs or exemptions for Congress, no exemptions for Congress Staffers, no exemptions for Unions, no exemptions for Corporate Cronies like GE, Goldman-Sachs, and Warren Buffett. Let Obama veto that and explain why he is against implementing his own law.

Bruce Garrick

I confess this appeals to me. Comments?

ObamaCare suggestion…

I would add one thing to Bruce Garrick’s idea: No delay for business penalties.

Charles Brumbelow

As the IPCC report approaches publication there is much speculation on just how far the consensus view will retreat from the absolute confidence the previous reports displayed. Mike Flynn calls attention to this:

Denialism

This short blog post might interest you:

http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/17/consensus-denialism/

Seems I’ve heard bits and pieces before.

MikeF

Since the academic budgets of a great number of people depend on the continued Global Warming Consensus, there is a conflict of emotions among the climate scientists. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. We’ll have a longer discussion shortly, but my conclusions haven’t changed: we don’t have a climate model reliable enough to bet trillions on. We know the Earth has been both warmer and colder in historical times, and the earlier climate shifts are unlikely to have been caused by human influence. Clearly human activities can affect climates – we all grew up learning that the desertification of much of North Africa was due to goats, and we know that some local climates are determined by human activities in the region – but human activity is unlikely to have caused the Viking period warming, the great cooling after 1300, the Little Ice Age, and such; and the warming beginning in 1800 or so is very unlikely to have been caused by human activities. Until the Believers stop denying the existence of the Viking Warm, the Roman Warm, and the Little Ice Age, we aren’t going to learn much from those models.

View 789 Friday, September 13, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

It’s late and time for our walk, but if you want something to think about try this:

Jerry, amid all the Syria hoo-hah, I found this piece in the New York Review of Books to be among the most worrisome things I’ve read in quite some time.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?pagination=false

Say what you will about the open questions around AGW, but it’s a certainty that we’ve been collecting a tremendous amount of fish from the oceans for a long time now.

It sounds like we may not enjoy some outcomes of that at all.

Jon

—

Jonathan Abbey

It’s pretty scary   More later today.

But then we have this:

jellyfish

I was almost taken in by the fascinating story until the end where the CAGW stuff came in. The oceans are 30% more acidic now than 30 years ago? I don’t think so. Then I looked at the author of the review – Tim Flannery, mammologist and paid catastrophic climate change advisor to the previous Australian Government (we just changed the diaper there). Tim gets A$180,000 per year(US$165,000), roughly, to spend 3 days a week spreading his message of gloom and doom, rising sea levels and temperatures, drought etc. while investing in government subsidized geothermal and other alternative energy schemes, having recently bought waterfront property near Sydney. He could probably make a good living selling used cars as he did well selling the vastly overpriced, now mothballed, desalination plants that several state governments built in response to his predictions of endless drought.

The book appears to be the usual "I need more funding to study this problem" plea from an academic scientist. A quick look at her website http://lisagershwin.com/ doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence as she appears to tend towards the moonbat end of the environmental scientist spectrum.

Mike Borgelt

Thank you. I confess I was hoping it was something like that. I have gone looking for more, in particular that Black Sea disaster.  I found

http://whyfiles.org/055oddball/fish.html which suggests that that part of the threat is pretty real.

REVIEW OF JELLYFISH BLOOMS IN

THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BLACK SEA  a report from the UN FAO in Rome http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/i3169e/i3169e.pdf also takes the threat seriously but not with the same breathless tone as the Australian document.  The UN Document suggests that “Citizen Science” – amateur naturalist systematic observations – would be useful and encourages more data gathering.  As to the Black Sea:

The ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi (Fig. 11) was first detected in the Black Sea in 1982 (Peredalov, 1983). This species is typical of the Atlantic coast of the USA, and was probably brought to the Black Sea as a clandestine passenger in the ballast waters of US oil tankers. The Black Sea has several native gelatinous plankters but, evidently, they coevolved with their prey and predators and they never caused serious problems. Mnemiopsis , instead, built huge populations and put the Black Sea fisheries on their knees, depleting the nekton by feeding on fish eggs and larvae (direct predation) and on their crustacean prey (competition), as reported, for instance, by Kydeis (1994) and Shiganova (1997). For the first time, it was undeniable that fisheries can be severely affected by gelatinous plankton (besides the clogging of fishing nets during episodic blooms).

The problem was almost solved by another ctenophore invader, Beroeovata , presumably coming from the same Atlantic ecosystem where Mnemiopsis thrives (Finenko et al. , 2000). Beroe feeds on Mnemiopsis and its arrival in the Black Sea mitigated the impact of the alien, just as it probably does in the original ecosystem of both species (Shiganova et al. , 2004). For the first time, with the case of Mnemiopsis, it became clear that the predation and competition of gelatinous zooplankton can have an overwhelming impact on fish population sand, hence, on fisheries.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, and especially along the USA coasts, plankton ecologists had been showing that gelatinous plankters do feed on fish eggs and larvae and proposed estimates for their impact on fish populations (e.g. Purcell, 1985). But these claims apparently passed unnoticed by fisheries ecologists, who continued to envisage man as the sole cause of decrease of fish populations.

Between the extreme of zero impact allotted to gelatinous plankton by traditional fisheries ecologists and the total impact allotted to Mnemiopsis there is probably some intermediate measure.

An NSF document on the Black Sea also says that introduction of predators into that body of water has greatly ameliorated the problem, and

Swarming from coast to coast, Mnemiopsis crowded out almost all fish in the Black Sea. The result: losses of hundreds of millions of dollars to the area’s fishing and tourism industries.

The tide only turned on Mnemiopsis in 1997, when another invading species of comb jelly, called Beroe, arrived in the Black Sea, probably also via ballast water from the U.S. Because Beroe eats Mnemiopsis, it has helped tame the Black Sea’s Mnemiopsis monster.

Moreover, because Beroe eats nothing but Mnemiopsis and disappears as Mnemiopsis disappears, it has improved its adopted habitat without causing ecological problems–a rarity for an introduced species.

Nevertheless, Mnemiopsis remains a serious problem. Why? Because even though Mnemiopsis is controlled in the Black Sea through Beroe-assisted jellycide, it still greatly impacts area ecology. Additionally, Mnemiopsis has fanned out from the Black Sea via canals and ships to the Caspian, Azov and Mediterranean Seas. Also, additional waves of U.S.-based Mnemiopsis have recently invaded the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

Just as it did in the Black Sea, Mnemiopsis has significantly reduced fish catches in many of these other huge seas. Indeed, Mnemiopsis has caused even more damage to fisheries in the Caspian Sea than it did in the Black Sea.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/textonly/locations_blacksea.jsp

In other words, yet another problem. although not the most serious one facing mankind.  And another instance of my view that if you have a lot of wealth it’s a lot easier to face new disasters; if you bankrupt yourself trying to solve one particular problem you may find yourself swamped by another and have no recourses to use on that one’s solution.  Of course that’s just common sense prudence, but this seems more rare now than when I was younger.

I don’t know if it’s an effect of the affordable health care act or something else, but I find that my copayment for an MRI has more than doubled since the last time my oncologist decided he wanted another look at the inside of my head. That will be in about two weeks. I have no reason to believe my brain cancer is returning, but they want to be sure. Apparently I’m pretty healthy.  Of course he increased costs mean I’ll have to say a few words about subscribing or renewing subscriptions to this place, but I expect that can wait until the next time KUSC does a new pledge drive.

The good news of the day is that they are talking about way to prevent the US bombardment of Syria, and everyone sounds hopeful.  Just imagine. We’re working hard on finding a way to prevent ourselves from killing Syrians and breaking Syrian things in order to punish Syrians for using chemical weapons on Syrians.

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism — a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.

By Gay Talese

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_

My attention was called to this in a writers discussion about journalism, and I vaguely remembered. Then I found that in one place it tells a story of Frank Sinatra and Harlan Ellison.  I’ll have to ask Harlan about it next time we talk.

View 789 Thursday, September 12, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto attributed to John Muir

If a freighter with 1000 tons of Sarin FOB Iskenderum, return address Russian Consulate, and a delivery address of Secretary John Kerry’s mile long driveway showed up in Boston harbor would US customs allow them to land? Perhaps there would be a long pdf document on how to reclaim the Sarin components for profit.

Today’s Wall Street Journal column:

Henninger: The Laurel and Hardy Presidency

After the Syrian slapstick, it’s time to sober up U.S. foreign policy.

After writing in the London Telegraph that Monday was "the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began," former British ambassador Charles Crawford asked simply: "How has this happened?"

On the answer, opinions might differ. Or maybe not. A consensus assessment of the past week’s events could easily form around Oliver Hardy’s famous lament to the compulsive bumbler Stan Laurel: "Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into!"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323595004579069291111631648.html

Henninger goes a bit farther than I would, but makes some serious points. Whether they make a case for continuous US intervention in Syria is not so clear. Russia is arming Iran with S-300 Surface to Air missiles; unlike the surplus Seventy Years War surplus stuff Russia has sent into the Middle East in the past, this is pretty good stuff, and a good cause for Israeli concern. One more reason to remember that until the US got involved, Iran and Iraq were at war and neutralized each other.

Secretary Kerry is now talking tough and threatening a military strike against Syria unless they comply with what amount to impossible demands. There is no word on whether this strike will still be unbelievably small, now that we understand from the President that the US military does not do pin pricks. Meanwhile the President has asked Congress to delay the vote authorizing him to bombard unspecified locations in Syria with more than a pin prick. We can surmise that makers of teddy bears to put atop the broken things and dead people that will result from this unbelievably small bombardment are at work just in case, since bombs and missiles often break things and kill people. The President has said he doesn’t need Congress’s permission to lob a few missiles in the general direction of some part of Syria, so the vote doesn’t really matter.

There do seem to be many opportunities for another fine mess with Secretary Kerry and President Obama. The State Department needs adult supervision. Even under Reagan and Bush is spawned a Foreign Service unable to convince Saddam Hussein that he would become an actual enemy rather than continue his status as informal commensurate so long as he warred with Iran if he dared to actually invade Kuwait. The message State gave him was ambiguous and uninformative as well as unpersuasive. One of Bush’s political friends from Texas ought to have been sent as Ambassador but State claimed to have that post as a non-political plumb. The result was a fine mess. Then after we had conquered Iraq, State sent us the most incompetent proconsul in Mesopotamia since the fading Roman Empire in the person of Brenner. The result was another fine mess.

Obama needs to find an adult to supervise the Department of State. Let Kerry head a special organization to dispose of the Syrian Sarin. Maybe Mr. Gore could participate. There’s money to be made at this. But get some adult supervision to state before we have yet another fine mess.

I missed this and perhaps you did. It’s important good news.

A Drop of Blood. An Instant Diagnosis

Elizabeth Holmes: The Breakthrough of Instant Diagnosis

A Stanford dropout is bidding to make tests more accurate, less painful—and at a fraction of the current price.

By

JOSEPH RAGO

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324123004579055003869574012.html

Palo Alto, Calif.

‘The reality within our health-care system today is that when someone you care about gets really sick, by the time you find that out it’s most often too late to do anything about it. It’s heartbreaking. Because in those moments, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to change it, and too often you’re helpless," says Elizabeth Holmes. "We’re finding cancer when you have a tumor, or heart disease by virtue of the fact that you’re having a heart attack."

She wants to change that.

Ms. Holmes, a 29-year-old chemical and electrical engineer and entrepreneur, dropped out of Stanford as an undergraduate after founding a life sciences company called Theranos in 2003. Her inventions, which she is discussing in detail here for the first time, could upend the industry of laboratory testing and might change the way we detect and treat disease.

– – –

The secret that hundreds of employees are now refining involves devices that automate and miniaturize more than 1,000 laboratory tests, from routine blood work to advanced genetic analyses. Theranos’s processes are faster, cheaper and more accurate than the conventional methods and require only microscopic blood volumes, not vial after vial of the stuff. The experience will be revelatory to anyone familiar with current practices, which often seem like medicine by Bram Stoker.

A Theranos technician first increases blood flow to your hand by applying a wrap similar to one of those skiing pocket warmers, then uses a fingerstick to draw a few droplets of blood from the capillaries at the end of your hand. The blood wicks into a tube in a cartridge that Ms. Holmes calls a "nanotainer," which holds microliters of a sample, or about the amount of a raindrop. The nanotainer is then run through the analyzers in a Theranos laboratory. Results are usually sent back to a physician, but a full blood work-up—metabolic and immune markers, cell count, etc.—was in my inbox by the time I walked out the door. (Phew: all clear.)

It’s the kind of modern, painless service that consumers rarely receive in U.S. health care, though Ms. Holmes makes the point the other way around: "We’re here in Silicon Valley inside the consumer technology world . . . and what we think we’re building is the first consumer health-care technology company. Patients are empowered by having better access to their own health information, and then by owning their own data."

And a Theranos clinic may be coming soon to a pharmacy near you. On Monday the company is launching a partnership with Walgreens for in-store sample-collection centers, with the first one in Palo Alto and expanding throughout California and beyond. Ms. Holmes’s long-term goal is to provide Theranos services "within five miles of virtually every American home."

The entire article is very much worth reading. The process is cheaper, faster, and more accurate than conventional lab work done even in the best places: my recent blood work at Kaiser involved nine vials of blood, which was no problem for me but could be for others at my age.

The only problem here is the Federal government which is being furiously lobbied by the existing health technicians unions (one can hardly blame them; perhaps they deserve some early retirement plan?) which seeks to protect their jobs. We can watch the outcome with abated breath…

If you missed this  http://www.mediaite.com/online/whoa-take-a-look-at-esquires-epically-bad-911-fail/

Re: Putin Speaks

Jerry,

Linked from Drudge Report, a New York Times Op-Ed by Vladimir V. Putin, president of Russia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?_r=0

He even indirectly mentioned the specter of teddy bears. I think Putin is kicking Obama’s butt.

Regards,

George

Colonel Putin is not a fool.  He also understands the Russian temperament. Although he prefers to take no chances,  I suspect he can win a purely democratic election. His motives are not clear, but Russian nationalism is certainly a part of his motivation.

And I again call attention to this: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/05/mr-obama-youve-already-lost-syrian-war-here-how-to-win-big-one/