Chaos Manor View, Sunday, January 03, 2016
“This is the most transparent administration in history.”
Barrack Obama
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.
Roberta has the flu and worse; we didn’t get to New Year parties or much of anything else. Recovery is happening, but it’s a bit slow. Fortunately she has my walker to go to the bathroom because I am not able to help. Alex and Eric are off to Los Vegas for CES. Mike Galloway was over to help and drive me to the pharmacy today. As I said, recovery is happening.
Meanwhile I have been reading Hive Mind by Jones, https://www.google.com/search?q=Jones+Hive+Mind&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 and it is fascinating: nearly all the stuff I thought I knew about IQ but which was dismissed with prejudice by many of the younger experts remains true. There’s more to know, and we understand somewhat less about it than we thought we did, but I knew that long ago.
The higher a nation’s average IQ the richer that nation is; it’s a strong coupling. Individual IQ isn’t so successful in predicting individual success, but we knew that, too. But collectively – think Hari Seldon – it’s a different story. Couple that with Deaton’s The Great Escape http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Escape-Origins-Inequality/dp/0691165629?tag=chaosmanor-20, a book on diversity, and you have something important in the social “sciences” although I doubt that it’s politically correct enough to get past “Peer” review. Speaking of which, the February 2015 Reason Magazine has an interesting piece on how much of what we scientifically know is false, in part due to peer review.
So I have a lot to contemplate while not having a lot of time at the keyboard (and with my bad typing production is slow), but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Happy New Year.
Monday: still recovering. A strong correlation is not a perfect correlation; and we know a lot about what happened in China. High IQ would predict a higher economic performance in China, but The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution among other political events had a predictable effect.
Have a look at this:
Most of the climate change stuff is not so much fraud as eagerness to prove and reluctance to question, so that little difference are misinterpreted as significant when the truth is lost in the noise.
Most if it. But there is less and less evidence that we know more than Arrhenius did at the turn of the 19th Century into the Twentieth.
Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get. And we can’t predict weather over a period of years all that well. It froze the Hudson and The Thames in 1700 and 1800. You could grow cattle and vines in Greenland in the Viking era. It has been both warmer and colder in historical times. Thus it was and thus it will be. Maybe we’ll get better at it now.
Replicability of results — The Grumpy Economist proposes a Demand-based solution
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2015/12/secret-data.html
[quote]
So, rather than try to restrict supply and impose censorship, let’s work on demand. If you think that replicability matters, what can you do about it? A lot:
. When a journal with a data policy asks you to referee a paper, check the data and program file. Part of your job is to see that this works correctly.
[end quote]
Followed by many additional suggestions along the same line, to wit:
that those concerned, that lack of supporting data and computer programs constitutes a corruption of science, exert cultural pressure upon the offenders, and thereby stimulate the development of social norms that require making supporting data and computer programs available.
I wish such a solution would work in Climate Science.
Alas, I’m afraid the dominant clique have too firm a stranglehold on the peer-review process, and too firm a political hold on the funding process, in that field.
We’ll probably have to wait until the divergence between the model predictions and reality becomes so blatant that even the politicians who provide the funding realize they’re being sold a bill of goods.
Shall we start a wagering pool, on whether that will happen before the returning glaciers cover New York City?
Hmmm…
On second thought, since the theory is non-disprovable, even the returning glaciers will, somehow, be determined to be caused by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
“They’re skating on the Hudson! In November!”
“I Knew it! Global Warming! When will they learn! Oh, and ask for another billion to refine our model”
Periodic table’s seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added
Russia Says Elon Musk Is ‘Stepping On Our Toes’ – Fortune
Do they give up when they realize they can’t compete? They did it in the Cold War.
http://fortune.com/2015/12/30/russia-elon-musk-spacex/
R
NYCON II photos: August 31st – September 3rd, 1956.
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/slomuse/sets/72157662390340119>
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
‘Poverty and economic inequality are not identical.’
<http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html>
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Roland Dobbins
No, and we don’t really understand either. But we do know that nations that save more get richer, and high IQ correlates with accepting deferred rewards — saving.
What are they building skyscrapers out of?
Dear Jerry –
This news item http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fire-breaks-out-dubai-skyscraper-near-burj-khalifa-n488586 shows the exterior of an Abu Dhabi skyscraper burning over about 40 stories, yet the fire appears to be confined to the exterior sheathing, and according to the article engulfed the building in a few (less than 10) minutes, apparently set off by an errant firework.
So – what are they making skyscrapers out of, these days? Cardboard?
Regards,
Jim Martin
I don’t know. Interesting.
Japanese researchers develop touchable holograms, buffy willow
Jerry
This is huge:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/49286/japanese-researchers-develop-touchable-holograms/index.html
Think ghosts. Think service members or astronauts hugging their loved ones at a distance. This stuff will soon be ready for Internet sex. Where does it end? I am thinking of the planet in Daneel Oliva’s case where there were few humans, and they had no physical contact with each other.
In case you do not want to go to the above link, YouTube has it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nlnRpFoBLo
Ed
But first Hollywood will use it….
Space Viking?
According to Wikipedia:
“Pournelle was one of the few close friends of H. Beam Piper and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper’s Terro-Human Future History. This right has been recognized by the copyright owner of the Piper estate. Pournelle did work for some years on a sequel to Space Viking but seems to have abandoned this in the early 1990s.”
What is the status of this? Space Viking was an INCREDIBLE book — will we see you see you doing a sequel?Gary Rogers
I wrote a daft I wasn’t happy with; it’s lost now. I had a notion that one of the supercomputers survived and thought it was running the universe with the Gilgameshers as its agents. They thought so too. It was a good yarn, but I had other things to do and it slipped between the cracks. I’m sorry. I doubt I will ever turn to that again.
Beam was a good friend and II;’d have loved to do an homage. He was one of the best. John Carr has done well in trying to keep his memory alive.
Wind, solar power soar in spite of bargain prices for fossil fuels (WP)
By Joby Warrick December 31 at 9:01 AM
In normal times, a months-long slide in energy prices would be enough to rattle a man who makes wind turbines for a living. Yet amid a worldwide glut of cheap fossil fuels, business is blowing strong for Vestas Wind Systems and its CEO, Anders Runevad.
The company posted record gains in 2015 and inked major deals to build wind farms in the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia. That boom in turbine sales was part of a global surge for wind and solar energy, which occurred despite oil, coal and natural gas selling at bargain rates.
“We’re seeing very good momentum across the board globally,” said Runevad, a soft-spoken Swede whose firm is now the world’s biggest producer of wind turbines. “We’re seeing growth in every region.”
Vestas’s performance is emblematic of the changing fortunes for renewable energy, an industry that achieved a number of milestones this year.Massive new projects are under construction from China and India to Texas, which now far outpaces California as the nation’s leading wind-power state. Just this month, the United States crossed the 70-gigawatt threshold in wind-generated electricity, with 50,000 spinning turbines producing enough power to light up 19 million homes.
Energy analysts say the boom is being spurred in part by improved technology, which has made wind and solar more competitive with fossil fuels in many regions. But equally important, experts say, are new government policies here and abroad that favor investment in renewables, as well as a growing willingness by Wall Street to pour billions of dollars into projects once considered financially risky.
“Renewables have turned a corner in a fundamental way,” said Dan Reicher, a former Energy Department assistant secretary who is now executive director of Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.
While solar and wind power have been expanding for years because of steadily falling costs, recent regulatory and financial decisions have set the stage for continued growth for years to come, according to Reicher and other energy experts.
In the United States, these include the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which requires states to reduce emissions from power plants, and the latest congressional budget compromise, which extended tax credits for wind and solar energy. Also key was this month’sclimate accord in Paris, where more than 190 countries approved a plan to reduce pollution from fossil-fuel burning worldwide.[snip]
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
