Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Fall Equinox
For explanation of equinox: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34334712
There is new material in Chaos Manor Reviews http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ and there will be more. Tell your friends.
Great conference with Barnes, Niven, and Jack Cohen (by Skype) this morning, followed by a great lunch at Hugo’s. There Will Be War: the anthology is filling faster than I thought it would, including some new stories written just for us (reminder: we buy only non-exclusive anthology rights, sometimes known as reprint rights; we do not pay extra for first rights). Anyway, if you have a story for the new There Will Be War, now’s the time to get it to submissions@therewillbewar.net .
Dr. Cohen had some marvelous biology for our colonists on Tau Ceti to discover; the saga of interstellar colonization proceeds. Now it’s sort of my turn, so I’ll have to get to work on the plot, and while I’m at it contribute some scenes.
This message gives serious cause for concern:
Top Scientist resigns / Global Warming Subject
see http://www.sott.net/article/277349-Top-scientist-resigns-from-post-admits-Global-Warming-is-a-scam
“Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned this week from his post at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He admitted global warming climate change was nothing but a scam in his resignation letter. “Gary
As reported by the Gateway Pundit: Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned this week from his post at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He admitted global warming climate change was nothing but a scam in his resignation letter.
I think “nothing but a scam” goes beyond the evidence, and Dr. Lewis does not go so far as that; but he does come close. His letter of resignation is given in the article, and says that physics has been corrupted by money, much as Eisenhower predicted. His resignation was as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, not from the University of California. It is worth reading.
Meanwhile, we have
Ice age predictions
This letter to the editor of NYTimes from a NASA scientist clears up the question of how global warming can be modeled without taking account of the ice ages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/wobbling-on-climate-change.html?_r=0Hoyt Purcell
Which purports to explain why the various climate models pay no attention to the long term trends responsible for Ice age predictions.
I would myself question whether this “clears up” anything; if we understand the Ice Ages that well, I would think, then that understanding would be better known; it may be my ignorance, but it is my understanding that the role of volcanoes and their effect on albedo has not been eliminated. If we actually understand any part of global climate, I would think we would eagerly incorporate that into our models, even if the effect was trivial; and I am not sure I believe that the effects are trivial. I thought the origin and explanations of the Ice Ages was still under debate, and not settled for all time by the hand calculations of a Serbian mathematician in the early 20th Century. I know that it was not generally accepted that we knew all about the Ice Ages during the 1970’s when I attended meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the scientific consensus of climate scientists was that we were headed for lean years and lots of cold. It may well be that the “wobbles” in Earth’s orbit have effects that take hundreds of years to make a noticeable difference, but I also know that Belgian lake sediments indicate that the local climate went from deciduous trees to being under several meters of ice in under 100 years; and apparently more than once. The sudden oncoming of the Ice Ages was not so casually dismissed as Dr. Piers Sellers of Goddard would have us believe.
and
http://www.livescience.com/7981-big-freeze-earth-plunge-sudden-ice-age.html
will tell you more; apparently the consensus at Goddard is not shared by everyone in that field. And as I said, the sediments in lakes on both sides of the Channel show rather sudden transitions from deciduous trees dropping leaves to ice. I would myself believe that if all is clearly understood it might be considered appropriate for our computer models; and that a model that cannot distinguish between a climate appropriate for deciduous trees and being covered by meters of ice might need modification. The map is not the territory.
“What we see here has nothing to do with seeking refuge and safety.
It is nothing but opportunism.”
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Roland Dobbins
Of course.
Subediting
Been a reader of Jerry for more than 40 years – welcome back. But the standard of editing seems to have slipped.
Typo’s in virtually every article.
As an ex magazine editor (80 Micro for one) it hurts me to read … if you want free help then ask.
Jim Perry
Thank you; since my stroke I have been a sloppy typist, and can only do two finger typing. I am doing the best I can. I apologize, but I am not sure I can promise better.
The U.S. Air Force Has Loathed Close Air Support Since the Beginning.
<http://warisboring.com/articles/the-u-s-air-force-has-loathed-close-air-support-since-the-beginning/>
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Roland Dobbins
Yes, I fear so.
http://fortune.com/2015/09/22/cybersecurity-women-careeres/
The gender gap is especially high in the business of securing the world’s data.
Women represent more than half of U.S. college graduates, yet they account for only 11% of today’s cybersecurity workforce. That’s even lower than the 26% of IT professionals who are female, according to a report from the ISC Foundation.
Given the rise of cyber attacks, the need for experts in this field is likely to increase. It’s estimated that almost 2 million cybrsecurity professionals will be needed by 2017, and 1.5 million security jobs will be open and unfilled by 2020. More than 200,000 cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are currently unfilled and postings have gone up 74% over the past five years.
The shortage of women in cybersecurity struck home when I recently attended a conference at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering, held to promote cybersecurity careers among female high school and college students. The young women I met had a passion for computer science, but were discouraged to go into cybersecurity by their friends at school. Their peers didn’t see the mysterious, male-dominated culture of cybersecurity as a place where girls belonged. I told these young women to follow their instincts and not give in to people throwing cold water on their goals. <snip>
SUBJ: The solar system to scale
Just as an FYI: Along the bicycle path in Eugene, Oregon that runs along the Willamette river, there is a scale model of the solar system, similar to the youtube video on your site yesterday. It runs approx 5.5 miles of bicycle path and is at least 20 years old. Each planet is cast as part of a bronze plinth. The sun is in the park downtown.
Quite took me aback first time I saw it. Should your readers be in the neighborhood, I recommend the bike ride. The beer is excellent in Eugene too. 🙂
Cordially,
John
“Before I publish this, are you convinced that the Texas authorities acted moronically? He was charged, not with making a bomb, but with making a fake bomb. He repeatedly was uncooperative with the authorities before he was arrested; in particular he would never say why he brought a bomb-looking object – it looks like NCIS or any other TV show bomb – to school on 9/11. He just insisted it was a clock.”
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Recall my story years ago about the Bomb Squad here taking me off in handcuffs in front of everyone in the office without telling me what was going on.
I lost a day and a half of wages as well as having to pay the deductible to repair my vehicle. At a time when I was not sure where my next job was coming from.
The lesson – always say ‘I don’t consent to that’ and ‘I want a lawyer’. In my mind he co-operated too much as he said more than the above two sentences.
B-
I do recall that, and it was outrageous; but I would have taken Mr. Mohammed’s device to be a fake bomb, and I think the police acted as if they did.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
