Friday, March 09, 2012
Harold has come clean. Al? Mike? Phil? Maurice?
Apocalyptic wacko Harold Camping has admitted that his proposed date for the end of the world was wrong.
Well, what about it? Algore? Mike Mann? Phil Jones? Maurice Strong?
Your turn.
Not holding my breath.
Christian apocalyptic wackos are capable of humility and rationality.
Gaian apocalyptic wackos are not.
Well, what about it? Algore? Mike Mann? Phil Jones? Maurice Strong?
Your turn.
Not holding my breath.
Christian apocalyptic wackos are capable of humility and rationality.
Gaian apocalyptic wackos are not.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 4:28 PM
1901 again
Looked for some indication that Urban Heat Island was understood a long time ago. Couldn't find that, but bumped into an interesting bit of climate alarmism from 1901. This is a little unusual in that it's written by an expert. Generally speaking, before the digital era the experts were more in touch with reality and the common people were more likely to succumb to alarmist and apocalyptic feelings.
This is a short pamphlet from the St Louis Botanical Garden, here in ebook form.
I've reassembled the somewhat jumbled pages to put the diagrams where they belong:
Probably unfair to call the author an alarmist. Actually he sounds like a careful observer who grasped the distinction between fact and theory. He expressed a fear that agriculture would be permanently damaged, but carefully avoided attributing any cause to the current problems.
If I'm reading his Diagram B properly, the July mean for 1901 was about 88. According to NWS 'climatology' data for St Louis itself, the July mean for 2011 was 85.7 degrees.
So the author was right! 1901 was indeed unusually warm. But despite his hand-wringing at the end, the unusual weather didn't continue. It went down after that, then went up again in the 20s and stayed up, according to this NCDC record for the part of Missouri that includes St Louis.
This diagram shows no carbon effects. When St Louis started to bustle in the Route 66 era, it got warm. The supposed "Carboniferous Era" after 1970 is actually a bit cooler than the preceding peak, perhaps because St Louis stopped bustling after 1970.
If nothing else, it emphasizes yet again, as Polistra has been pointing out for a long time, that "global average temperature" and "global average change in temperature" are utterly meaningless and illogical concepts. If you want to use those concepts, you have to prove first that it's valid to assemble such a conglomerate. But the modern theory-bound idiots fly right past that basic point and ASSUME AS AN AXIOM that "global average" has meaning. Circular reasoning at its best.
= = = = =
Nostalgic sidenote: The pamphlet gives a good feel for meteorological technology a century ago. Though they lacked radar and satellites, ground-level observation was better then than now. Every small town had a railroad station with a telegrapher, and those telegraphers sent regular reports of temperature and conditions to the Weather Bureau.
Presumably the author drew the curves by hand, probably with a drafting table; but he was helped by printed graph forms. Takes me back to my first real job in an Oklahoma print shop. I remember setting up similar forms for oil logging companies. Required precise casting of rule slugs on the Ludlow, followed by even more precise cutting and beveling to fit the graph together. Photoshop can be fun, but it lacks the smell and feel of hot lead!
This is a short pamphlet from the St Louis Botanical Garden, here in ebook form.
I've reassembled the somewhat jumbled pages to put the diagrams where they belong:
Probably unfair to call the author an alarmist. Actually he sounds like a careful observer who grasped the distinction between fact and theory. He expressed a fear that agriculture would be permanently damaged, but carefully avoided attributing any cause to the current problems.
If I'm reading his Diagram B properly, the July mean for 1901 was about 88. According to NWS 'climatology' data for St Louis itself, the July mean for 2011 was 85.7 degrees.
So the author was right! 1901 was indeed unusually warm. But despite his hand-wringing at the end, the unusual weather didn't continue. It went down after that, then went up again in the 20s and stayed up, according to this NCDC record for the part of Missouri that includes St Louis.
This diagram shows no carbon effects. When St Louis started to bustle in the Route 66 era, it got warm. The supposed "Carboniferous Era" after 1970 is actually a bit cooler than the preceding peak, perhaps because St Louis stopped bustling after 1970.
If nothing else, it emphasizes yet again, as Polistra has been pointing out for a long time, that "global average temperature" and "global average change in temperature" are utterly meaningless and illogical concepts. If you want to use those concepts, you have to prove first that it's valid to assemble such a conglomerate. But the modern theory-bound idiots fly right past that basic point and ASSUME AS AN AXIOM that "global average" has meaning. Circular reasoning at its best.
= = = = =
Nostalgic sidenote: The pamphlet gives a good feel for meteorological technology a century ago. Though they lacked radar and satellites, ground-level observation was better then than now. Every small town had a railroad station with a telegrapher, and those telegraphers sent regular reports of temperature and conditions to the Weather Bureau.
Presumably the author drew the curves by hand, probably with a drafting table; but he was helped by printed graph forms. Takes me back to my first real job in an Oklahoma print shop. I remember setting up similar forms for oil logging companies. Required precise casting of rule slugs on the Ludlow, followed by even more precise cutting and beveling to fit the graph together. Photoshop can be fun, but it lacks the smell and feel of hot lead!
Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Carbon Cult
¶ 10:35 AM
Japan recovers sanity, Germany goes crazy
Via NPR:
Not surprising to sane people. Only surprising to fucking fools.
Meanwhile, Germany is continuing on the fucking fool path, switching from clean safe nuclear to the dirtiest of all coal: East German lignite. Famous for creating the deep brown smog that enveloped the Soviet Bloc for 50 years.
Health effects from radiation turn out to be minor compared with the other issues the people of Fukushima prefecture now face.
That may come as a surprise. We all watched frightening TV images, and clouds of radioactive steam and gas did erupt from the plant. That material did sometimes move over the countryside and into populated areas, so it looked like a horrible disaster.
But in the case of radiation, the dose matters. It's true, there is no bright line that separates a safe dose of radiation from a dangerous dose, but at some point, a dose is so small that any potential health risk is simply too small to measure.
Not surprising to sane people. Only surprising to fucking fools.
Meanwhile, Germany is continuing on the fucking fool path, switching from clean safe nuclear to the dirtiest of all coal: East German lignite. Famous for creating the deep brown smog that enveloped the Soviet Bloc for 50 years.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 6:00 AM
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Ionized shame?
Noticed an odd feeling today, something like shame or guilt. Could be a continuation of the full-moon emotion but I doubt it.
The full moon creates longing and dissatisfaction, as in "Is that all? There must be something else...." Thoroughly familiar, happens every month.
This is much less familiar, but it's a sensation I learned to associate with a coming earthquake. Dark shame, as in "I'm a piece of shit."
Does that mean a quake is coming tomorrow? Not necessarily.
The best hypothesis for a quake sense in humans and other animals is that we're detecting piezoelectric ionization. Strain in the underlying layers builds up to the point where it charges the soil.
And what do we have today for sure? Ionization from a sun storm.
The full moon creates longing and dissatisfaction, as in "Is that all? There must be something else...." Thoroughly familiar, happens every month.
This is much less familiar, but it's a sensation I learned to associate with a coming earthquake. Dark shame, as in "I'm a piece of shit."
Does that mean a quake is coming tomorrow? Not necessarily.
The best hypothesis for a quake sense in humans and other animals is that we're detecting piezoelectric ionization. Strain in the underlying layers builds up to the point where it charges the soil.
And what do we have today for sure? Ionization from a sun storm.
Labels: 20th century Dark Age
¶ 8:01 PM
Sitters and rovers again
Reported in SciAm, a good observation of behavior in bees. By now it should be fairly unsurprising to find sitters and rovers as distinct personality types in all living things.
Again, sort of unsurprising but a good solid experiment.
The most interesting part is the admission at the end of the article:
There's your Grand Blueprint, which seems to be taking shape as a basic theme for biologists.
Makes you wonder how long they can continue to defend the opposite notion of random unguided mutation and selection. If the 'tool kit' was there before the genes started to be used, how did the 'tool kit' develop randomly? What was the selection pressure for a broad set of design imperatives that hadn't been applied yet?
After studying hives—both in the wild and in the lab—and analyzing genetic and biochemical profiles of bees’ brains, researchers have found that some bees, like some humans, seem to be programmed to seek out new experiences, or novelty.
To figure out if some bees searched for new food and for new real estate, the researchers first pinpointed the food scouts. Under the cover of night, when bees generally don’t forage, hives were moved to a new location outside of familiar territory. The researchers then singled out bees that served as food scouts—the ones that located flowers and returned first to tell other bees where to find the choicest pollen. Then, to see if the food scouts were also more inclined to hunt out new homes, the researchers watched eight different colonies over two years to see which bees took the lead when swarms broke off to find a new home. It turns out that the nest scouts were more than three times as likely as other foragers to also be food scouts.
Again, sort of unsurprising but a good solid experiment.
The most interesting part is the admission at the end of the article:
It is possible that insects and vertebrates developed similar signals independently, but a more likely explanation is that “these mechanisms represent part of a basic tool kit that has been used repeatedly in the evolution of behavior,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
There's your Grand Blueprint, which seems to be taking shape as a basic theme for biologists.
Makes you wonder how long they can continue to defend the opposite notion of random unguided mutation and selection. If the 'tool kit' was there before the genes started to be used, how did the 'tool kit' develop randomly? What was the selection pressure for a broad set of design imperatives that hadn't been applied yet?
Labels: bee, Grand Blueprint
¶ 5:28 PM
Grump about install-builders
Currently working on the 4th revision of my main product. For the first version in 2002 (roughly Windows 98 era) I used an install-builder from Eset. At that time Eset was a small shareware company, and their installer was simple and cute. When my publisher changed ownership, they disliked the cuteness, so I had to switch for the next version.
For the second and third in 2004 and 2008 (roughly Win XP era) I used CreateInstall.
Eset and CreateInstall both worked neatly, building all the usual install stuff in a logical order. You just ran through a fixed sequence, filling in the blanks with appropriate files and folders.
Usual install stuff = (1) choose destination folder; (2) agree to the EULA that nobody ever reads; (3) show readme if wanted; (4) put shortcut on desktop; (5) make program able to uninstall. Those are the steps that every ordinary program uses, and those are all I ever need.
For this fourth version I wanted to follow Microshit conventions and make an MSI installer. CreateInstall didn't seem to have that option. Maybe I didn't look hard enough...!
First I tried MSIStudio, cost about $100. NOT RECOMMENDED. An incomplete program that produces none of the usual install stuff by default. You have to write separate code for some of it! Their email support is excellent, but I finally ran into a brick wall.
Now I'm wrestling with AdvancedInstaller, cost about $300. It will make all the usual install stuff, but some of it requires odd non-intuitive steps that aren't listed in the internal Help. AdvancedInstaller has a well-run online forum that provides answers to every question, but these basic things really shouldn't require attention or advice. They should be automatic, as they were with Eset and CreateInstall.
That's the whole fucking point of computer software, for fuck's sake!
= = = = =
Later: Good old tracking cookies. After I posted the above NON-recommendation of MSIStudio, Google is hammering me with MSIStudio ads! ¶ 7:19 AM
For the second and third in 2004 and 2008 (roughly Win XP era) I used CreateInstall.
Eset and CreateInstall both worked neatly, building all the usual install stuff in a logical order. You just ran through a fixed sequence, filling in the blanks with appropriate files and folders.
Usual install stuff = (1) choose destination folder; (2) agree to the EULA that nobody ever reads; (3) show readme if wanted; (4) put shortcut on desktop; (5) make program able to uninstall. Those are the steps that every ordinary program uses, and those are all I ever need.
For this fourth version I wanted to follow Microshit conventions and make an MSI installer. CreateInstall didn't seem to have that option. Maybe I didn't look hard enough...!
First I tried MSIStudio, cost about $100. NOT RECOMMENDED. An incomplete program that produces none of the usual install stuff by default. You have to write separate code for some of it! Their email support is excellent, but I finally ran into a brick wall.
Now I'm wrestling with AdvancedInstaller, cost about $300. It will make all the usual install stuff, but some of it requires odd non-intuitive steps that aren't listed in the internal Help. AdvancedInstaller has a well-run online forum that provides answers to every question, but these basic things really shouldn't require attention or advice. They should be automatic, as they were with Eset and CreateInstall.
That's the whole fucking point of computer software, for fuck's sake!
= = = = =
Later: Good old tracking cookies. After I posted the above NON-recommendation of MSIStudio, Google is hammering me with MSIStudio ads! ¶ 7:19 AM
Confused as usual
More of the usual idiotic confusion by our Satanist media.
Hopelessly confused and idiotic.
The whole point of the Arab Spring was to get rid of secular regimes that obeyed US/EU influences, and replace them with regimes that reflect local needs and tastes. Regaining sovereignty requires ejecting foreign agents of influence. That's a normal part of any healthy nation's immune system. It's like coughing and sneezing.
America has completely lost its immune system. For the last 25 years we've allowed Chinese, Saudi and Israeli agents of influence to infect all parts of our organism. But that doesn't mean we should require other nations to be just as unhealthy and suicidal as we are!
¶ 5:27 AM
The Americans, among 43 democracy workers facing charges of fomenting unrest, are not expected to return to Egypt.
The episode is raising serious questions about how Egypt will approach calls for democracy and democratic institutions in the country.
LaHood had been running programs on voter education in Egypt and teaching new political parties how to run campaigns and develop their platforms. He says he and his colleagues at the International Republican Institute never expected to be prosecuted for their work.
...
Still, the issue is far from resolved, says Tamara Wittes, who recently left the State Department to join the Brookings Institution. She says key issues are at stake.
Wittes says the U.S. and others need to keep reminding Egyptian authorities that if they want the country to be a democracy, they need nongovernmental groups that hold authorities to account.
"The idea that community-based grass-roots organizations inside Egypt should be able to reach out to and partner with counterparts in other countries, this should not be controversial. This is a core component of freedom of association, well rooted in international law," she says.
Hopelessly confused and idiotic.
The whole point of the Arab Spring was to get rid of secular regimes that obeyed US/EU influences, and replace them with regimes that reflect local needs and tastes. Regaining sovereignty requires ejecting foreign agents of influence. That's a normal part of any healthy nation's immune system. It's like coughing and sneezing.
America has completely lost its immune system. For the last 25 years we've allowed Chinese, Saudi and Israeli agents of influence to infect all parts of our organism. But that doesn't mean we should require other nations to be just as unhealthy and suicidal as we are!
¶ 5:27 AM
Sometimes I wonder
Sometimes I wonder what it feels like to be another kind of critter. There's no reason to assume that any living thing doesn't have some form of awareness. Might be true or might not, but you simply can't draw the line.
What does a plant's life feel like?
Maybe like this:
What does a squirrel's life feel like?
Definitely like this!
Cat's life:
Life of a bacterium? How about:
= = = = =
[Serendipity note: I picked that rendition of Moldau based on the sound, before noticing that all the accompanying pictures were plant-y! Apparently the clip-maker felt the same connection. Note especially the plant that photobombed the picture starting at 4:00.]
What does a plant's life feel like?
Maybe like this:
What does a squirrel's life feel like?
Definitely like this!
Cat's life:
Life of a bacterium? How about:
= = = = =
[Serendipity note: I picked that rendition of Moldau based on the sound, before noticing that all the accompanying pictures were plant-y! Apparently the clip-maker felt the same connection. Note especially the plant that photobombed the picture starting at 4:00.]
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 4:22 AM
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Bibi's song
A little song for Bibi and his Congressional criminal allies.
Verse:
We are you and you are us and so we are all psychotic,
So we are wild-eyed killers,
So we are lethal bullies.
Nuke with us, we'll nuke with you
And so we will nuke together
As we end the world!
Chorus:
Oh we are marching to Apocalypse, to World War III, to End of Days,
We are marching to a holocaust, to Ho-Lo-Caust Hoo-Ray! ¶ 10:07 AM
Verse:
We are you and you are us and so we are all psychotic,
So we are wild-eyed killers,
So we are lethal bullies.
Nuke with us, we'll nuke with you
And so we will nuke together
As we end the world!
Chorus:
Oh we are marching to Apocalypse, to World War III, to End of Days,
We are marching to a holocaust, to Ho-Lo-Caust Hoo-Ray! ¶ 10:07 AM
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Shouldn't have been surprised.
Objectively today was pretty decent. Fine crisp sunny weather after a couple of nasty windy rainy days. Got my annual royalty check and the IRS refund in the mail. Got work to do on the latest software revision.
But all day I was nagged by a sense of frustration and incompleteness. "Hmph. Is this all there is? What's missing?" The frustration was doubled by knowing that I should be feeling massively grateful for sun, money, and work.
This Hmph feeling generally comes from a full moon, but the moon isn't full, is it?
Oh. It is. ¶ 8:24 PM
But all day I was nagged by a sense of frustration and incompleteness. "Hmph. Is this all there is? What's missing?" The frustration was doubled by knowing that I should be feeling massively grateful for sun, money, and work.
This Hmph feeling generally comes from a full moon, but the moon isn't full, is it?
Oh. It is. ¶ 8:24 PM
Always fun
Always fun to watch devils fighting. This is, of course, the only fight that ever happens. Satanists can only be stopped by even more enthusiastic Satanists.
Anti-satan forces are completely fairied out, utterly pussywhipped. When they dare to squeak a few delicate falsetto whispers of polite disapproval, the devils stomp them down.
Via Northwest Public Radio:
Sounds like the project will go ahead anyway, wasting huge amounts of money and real energy to turn the oh-wow-pretty-pinwheels-oh-wow. Still, it's vaguely satisfying to know that the People Who Count have slight internal disagreements about this one form of slaughter. ¶ 6:39 AM
Anti-satan forces are completely fairied out, utterly pussywhipped. When they dare to squeak a few delicate falsetto whispers of polite disapproval, the devils stomp them down.
Via Northwest Public Radio:
Washington Governor Chris Gregoire has approved the controversial Whistling Ridge Wind Energy Project in Southwest Washington.
But some people object because the project will be visible from Interstate 84 in the scenic Columbia Gorge.
And it could threaten spotted owls. They’ve been seen within two miles of the site in the past year.
“Some places should be off limits to industrial wind development and we believe that the Columbia River Gorge is one of those places,” says Nathan Baker, staff attorney with Friends of the Columbia Gorge. “Most people are in favor of renewable energy but they’re not aware of all the negative costs and impacts from wind energy.”
Sounds like the project will go ahead anyway, wasting huge amounts of money and real energy to turn the oh-wow-pretty-pinwheels-oh-wow. Still, it's vaguely satisfying to know that the People Who Count have slight internal disagreements about this one form of slaughter. ¶ 6:39 AM
Now we know what "Never again" meant
News item from UK Guardian:
You don't often get such transparency from major leaders.
Now we finally know what "Never again" means.
"Never again" is shorthand for "Never again will Germany get a chance to be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun. From now on, Israel will be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun."
The only good part of this mess is that Obama is courageously trying to hold back the bully for a few seconds. But he doesn't have much support; most of Congress is ready to help the bully. ¶ 4:07 AM
The Israeli prime minister invoked the Holocaust in saying he would not allow Israelis to "live under the shadow of annihilation". He said he had in his desk a copy of a letter from the World Jewish Congress asking the US war department to bomb the Auschwitz death camp in 1944.
Netanyahu said that in their reply the Americans said that such an operation would require them to divert too many aircraft from other missions and it probably wouldn't succeed.
"And here's the most remarkable sentence of all, and I quote: 'Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans'. Think about that – 'even more vindictive action' - than the Holocaust," he said. "Today we have a state of our own. The purpose of the Jewish state is to secure the Jewish future. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel's survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate."
You don't often get such transparency from major leaders.
Now we finally know what "Never again" means.
"Never again" is shorthand for "Never again will Germany get a chance to be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun. From now on, Israel will be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun."
The only good part of this mess is that Obama is courageously trying to hold back the bully for a few seconds. But he doesn't have much support; most of Congress is ready to help the bully. ¶ 4:07 AM
Monday, March 05, 2012
See? Those wars were justified after all!
Aha! Finally we have a home-grown terrorist who was trained in both Afghanistan and Iraq! Finally we have a reason for invading those two countries instead of Saudi Arabia, which actually attacked us on 9/11!
Whoopsie! He's a terrorist working for America, not a terrorist working against America. Oh well. Facts don't matter when you're justifying lunatic psychopathic aggression against countries that didn't attack you. ¶ 6:54 AM
Arizona-born Amir Mirza Hekmati, 28, had been accused of spying for the CIA and receiving training at US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iran's supreme court has dismissed the death sentence passed against an Iranian-American man accused of spying for the CIA, and called for judicial review of the case according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
Hekmati, a 28-year-old of Iranian descent born in the state of Arizona, was arrested in December and Iran's Intelligence Ministry accused him of receiving training at US bases in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq.
Whoopsie! He's a terrorist working for America, not a terrorist working against America. Oh well. Facts don't matter when you're justifying lunatic psychopathic aggression against countries that didn't attack you. ¶ 6:54 AM
Missing the point
The Carbon Cultists and the real scientists ("skeptics") are still tossing charges and countercharges about Gleick and Heartland. Fussing about the need for integrity in process while missing the crucial difference between facts and falsehoods. It appears that the general public has caught the real difference, and even the governments in Britain and Germany are picking up the important point.
In Russia, "foes" are protesting the process of yesterday's election. It appears that the Russian people understand the real difference. Before Putin, things deteriorated into an unholy mess. Under Putin, things are gradually improving. Putin is ready to use all necessary power to continue improving his nation. He doesn't worry about process.
= = = = =
Later: Must admit, some media (BBC, NPR) are doing a good job of carrying both views on Russia. The process-loving Jimmy Carter idiots get some airtime, but the folks who understand practical reality are getting even more airtime.
In Russia, "foes" are protesting the process of yesterday's election. It appears that the Russian people understand the real difference. Before Putin, things deteriorated into an unholy mess. Under Putin, things are gradually improving. Putin is ready to use all necessary power to continue improving his nation. He doesn't worry about process.
= = = = =
Later: Must admit, some media (BBC, NPR) are doing a good job of carrying both views on Russia. The process-loving Jimmy Carter idiots get some airtime, but the folks who understand practical reality are getting even more airtime.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 4:25 AM
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Ideas from an old book, 2
Following up on 'Ideas from an old book', where I found a tantalizing concept in Shepardson's 1901 book on electricity.
Questions: Do plants and trees get energy from ionization (electron transfer) along with sunlight? Is plant growth modulated directly by sunspots?
After some thought and googling, I settled on wheat yield (bushels/acre) instead of forest growth, because wheat is where the streetlight is. Richly documented and available.
Then decided to use Palouse wheat instead of Kansas wheat. The Palouse is closer to the Aurora, thus more likely to feel the Shepardson effect. Also avoids a couple of unwanted variables, because Palouse weather and farming practices are much more constant than Kansas. No prolonged droughts, no change from family to corporate ownership, no crop switches induced by subsidies. Just the same families working the same acres for a century, gradually improving their methods.
And I wanted to focus on the sunspot event of 1957, because it was the deepest penetration of the aurora over North America in living memory. If there's any effect, 1957 should bring it out.
I found exactly what I wanted in an old USDA document, PDF here. This shows winter and spring wheat yield for Whitman County from 1939 to 1964.
Added Palouse temperature and precip data from NCDC. (More detail in this entry.)
Tacked on a sunspot curve (PDF) from here.
Result is this chart with 1957 highlighted:
Corresponding Excel spreadsheet is here.
Not conclusive by any means, but 1957 certainly stands out, especially for spring wheat! The temperature wasn't doing anything special that year. Rain was up, but not nearly enough to spur the jump in yield.
Questions: Do plants and trees get energy from ionization (electron transfer) along with sunlight? Is plant growth modulated directly by sunspots?
After some thought and googling, I settled on wheat yield (bushels/acre) instead of forest growth, because wheat is where the streetlight is. Richly documented and available.
Then decided to use Palouse wheat instead of Kansas wheat. The Palouse is closer to the Aurora, thus more likely to feel the Shepardson effect. Also avoids a couple of unwanted variables, because Palouse weather and farming practices are much more constant than Kansas. No prolonged droughts, no change from family to corporate ownership, no crop switches induced by subsidies. Just the same families working the same acres for a century, gradually improving their methods.
And I wanted to focus on the sunspot event of 1957, because it was the deepest penetration of the aurora over North America in living memory. If there's any effect, 1957 should bring it out.
I found exactly what I wanted in an old USDA document, PDF here. This shows winter and spring wheat yield for Whitman County from 1939 to 1964.
Added Palouse temperature and precip data from NCDC. (More detail in this entry.)
Tacked on a sunspot curve (PDF) from here.
Result is this chart with 1957 highlighted:
Corresponding Excel spreadsheet is here.
Not conclusive by any means, but 1957 certainly stands out, especially for spring wheat! The temperature wasn't doing anything special that year. Rain was up, but not nearly enough to spur the jump in yield.
Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Carbon Cult
¶ 6:22 PM
Agh, don't go squishy.
Mormons are always eager to prove that they're just another Christian church, following the Abrahamic tradition.
Well, they've proved it nicely today. They're just as fucking chickenshit as any fucking fairyass Episcopalian when faced with Commie pressure, and they're loyally obeying Abraham.
Abraham Foxman, that is.
For a long time Mormons have been "re-baptizing" dead people, for reasons that I can't begin to fathom. (I don't do theory in science or religion; I only understand practices that have some contact with reality.)
The usual Jew pressure groups, led as usual by Abraham Foxman, got all weeweed up about this silly ceremony which has absolutely no effect on anyone or anything. Unless you believe the Mormon theology, which I'm damn sure Foxman doesn't. Foxman only believes in Modern Jewish Theology, namely "Jews win. You lose."
So now the Mormon leadership has received a new revelation, just as they did a couple generations ago when other Jew-financed Commie pressure groups got weeweed up about Mormon hiring practices.
I suppose the Romney candidacy is part of the picture here. Romney is a vulture who lives and moves among Jewish vultures, and his funding comes from Goldman Sachs.
So the natural tribal desire to see Romney win the presidency requires a new revelation about a completely meaningless practice that can't possibly offend or bother sane humans. ¶ 5:20 AM
Well, they've proved it nicely today. They're just as fucking chickenshit as any fucking fairyass Episcopalian when faced with Commie pressure, and they're loyally obeying Abraham.
Abraham Foxman, that is.
For a long time Mormons have been "re-baptizing" dead people, for reasons that I can't begin to fathom. (I don't do theory in science or religion; I only understand practices that have some contact with reality.)
The usual Jew pressure groups, led as usual by Abraham Foxman, got all weeweed up about this silly ceremony which has absolutely no effect on anyone or anything. Unless you believe the Mormon theology, which I'm damn sure Foxman doesn't. Foxman only believes in Modern Jewish Theology, namely "Jews win. You lose."
So now the Mormon leadership has received a new revelation, just as they did a couple generations ago when other Jew-financed Commie pressure groups got weeweed up about Mormon hiring practices.
I suppose the Romney candidacy is part of the picture here. Romney is a vulture who lives and moves among Jewish vultures, and his funding comes from Goldman Sachs.
So the natural tribal desire to see Romney win the presidency requires a new revelation about a completely meaningless practice that can't possibly offend or bother sane humans. ¶ 5:20 AM
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Log-rolling is a coup?
It's hardly worth mentioning AP's uniform and drearily predictable bias, but this example is so egregious and subtle that I think it's worth a note.
Trading favors to "peel off" a few votes is a routine everyday part of every legislature's function. But because Repooflicans did it, and especially because it was used against the Satanic Supreme Sacrament Of Universal Infanticide, it becomes a "budget coup."
Describing a dull legislative process as a "coup" is like describing a tap on the brake pedal as a "multiple-fatality head-on pileup." ¶ 5:28 AM
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- A bill to link abortion coverage to maternity care has died in the Washington state Senate.
The bill was caught up in a Friday afternoon Republican budget coup, in which the GOP peeled off the necessary three Democratic votes to introduce an austere budget plan.
The abortion measure, HB 2330, had passed the House and Democrats expected it to have the votes necessary in the Senate, but two attempts to bring it to the floor were narrowly voted down in the aftermath of the budget coup.
Trading favors to "peel off" a few votes is a routine everyday part of every legislature's function. But because Repooflicans did it, and especially because it was used against the Satanic Supreme Sacrament Of Universal Infanticide, it becomes a "budget coup."
Describing a dull legislative process as a "coup" is like describing a tap on the brake pedal as a "multiple-fatality head-on pileup." ¶ 5:28 AM
The Shutup gun
Lots of foofaraw about a "new" Jap invention that uses delayed auditory feedback to confuse an unwanted speaker.
Nothing new about the technique at all. DAF has been used for 50 years in speech & hearing circles. Before digital tech, DAF devices were built as tape-loop machines with separate record and play heads. A microphone fed the record head, and the tape traveled about a half second before reaching the play head, which then went into earphones. Now you can do the same thing with software on just about any computer.
DAF is mainly used as a tactic to reduce stuttering in some people. Apparently the external delayed reverb cancels out an internal reverb loop in the brain, which is the presumed source of the stutter.
Based on known data about DAF, we can be sure that (1) The Shutup Gun won't work on everyone, because some people are immune to DAF; (2) With practice you can learn to ignore the delayed sound and pay full attention to your own speech; (3) Most experienced TV and radio broadcasters have already acquired this skill.
In short, it's an old idea, and for the Jap purpose it's a dumb idea. Determined speakers can arm themselves against it by practicing with software DAF. ¶ 4:42 AM
Nothing new about the technique at all. DAF has been used for 50 years in speech & hearing circles. Before digital tech, DAF devices were built as tape-loop machines with separate record and play heads. A microphone fed the record head, and the tape traveled about a half second before reaching the play head, which then went into earphones. Now you can do the same thing with software on just about any computer.
DAF is mainly used as a tactic to reduce stuttering in some people. Apparently the external delayed reverb cancels out an internal reverb loop in the brain, which is the presumed source of the stutter.
Based on known data about DAF, we can be sure that (1) The Shutup Gun won't work on everyone, because some people are immune to DAF; (2) With practice you can learn to ignore the delayed sound and pay full attention to your own speech; (3) Most experienced TV and radio broadcasters have already acquired this skill.
In short, it's an old idea, and for the Jap purpose it's a dumb idea. Determined speakers can arm themselves against it by practicing with software DAF. ¶ 4:42 AM
Friday, March 02, 2012
"Politicized"
Unbelievably good news from the educrats in Britain:
I've noted before that the current British educrats are miraculously rational on matters of discipline. Now we have a REAL UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE by the same educrats.
Could never happen here. Our educrats have been diamond-hard Satanist-Stalinists for at least 60 years. If our educrats ever decided to slim down, they would eliminate everything except Carbon Cult propaganda and homosexual propaganda. Students would be reduced to chanting "Carbon is bad! Gay is good!" all day every day.
Predictably, British Stalinists (who are OUTSIDE the educracy!) are calling REAL SCIENCE "politicized". In Stalin's vocabulary, "politicized" means "disagrees with Party Doctrine." The Party's edicts are never "politicized"; they are simply the universe. Nothing exists outside the universe.
A school play has been referred to a Government Minister after an MP complained it was “propaganda”.
Philip Davies wrote to the Education Secretary after reading about a production on climate change that was touring schools in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Michael Gove replied, agreeing there was no place for propaganda and promising to “slim down” the national curriculum.
Whether climate change should be taught in schools is under debate as the Government looks to slash the size of the curriculum.
Its advisor has previously said lessons should stick to core scientific principles and not include global warming.
But this has led to fears that science teaching is being “politicised” and could lose its relevance to modern life.
I've noted before that the current British educrats are miraculously rational on matters of discipline. Now we have a REAL UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE by the same educrats.
Could never happen here. Our educrats have been diamond-hard Satanist-Stalinists for at least 60 years. If our educrats ever decided to slim down, they would eliminate everything except Carbon Cult propaganda and homosexual propaganda. Students would be reduced to chanting "Carbon is bad! Gay is good!" all day every day.
Predictably, British Stalinists (who are OUTSIDE the educracy!) are calling REAL SCIENCE "politicized". In Stalin's vocabulary, "politicized" means "disagrees with Party Doctrine." The Party's edicts are never "politicized"; they are simply the universe. Nothing exists outside the universe.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 4:29 AM
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Unfortunately it will work.
The boss of MegaUpload is trying out a hippieshit defense:
The analogy will work among the brainless hippieshit tech masses, but there's an important and crucial difference.
The WMD lies were undetectable and uncheckable by ordinary citizens. None of us had inspected Iraq's military facilities, and very few of us had even seen Iraq. So we had to decide which set of experts we trusted, when neither set appeared fully consistent or certain of their facts.
MegaUpload is not mysterious or uncheckable. Most techies have used it, and some of us (including me) have lost actual money when our work was stolen and placed on MegaUpload.
Ironic, ain't it? This pirate improves his cashflow by advocating Open Source Everything, but he's using an argument that will not fool anyone with real experience in the Open Source world!
As I've discussed before, MegaUpload is closely associated with Big Music, and actually helps the big producers at the expense of small operators. This guy is a complete fake from stem to stern. ¶ 4:53 AM
Kim Dotcom has compared the US department of justice charges against him and his Megaupload website to the weapons of mass destruction claims in the lead-up to the war against Iraq, accusing American prosecutors of doing the bidding of the US film industry to prop up its "outdated monopolistic business model".
"It's kind of like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you know? If you want to go after someone and you have a political goal you will say whatever it takes," said the 38-year-old German online entrepreneur...
He said "a hundred other companies" offer similar cloud-based file sharing services, but he had been "insanely" singled out as the "over-pirate of the planet". The 72-page indictment against him was a "maliciously designed ... press release", he told the TV3 television station.
The analogy will work among the brainless hippieshit tech masses, but there's an important and crucial difference.
The WMD lies were undetectable and uncheckable by ordinary citizens. None of us had inspected Iraq's military facilities, and very few of us had even seen Iraq. So we had to decide which set of experts we trusted, when neither set appeared fully consistent or certain of their facts.
MegaUpload is not mysterious or uncheckable. Most techies have used it, and some of us (including me) have lost actual money when our work was stolen and placed on MegaUpload.
Ironic, ain't it? This pirate improves his cashflow by advocating Open Source Everything, but he's using an argument that will not fool anyone with real experience in the Open Source world!
As I've discussed before, MegaUpload is closely associated with Big Music, and actually helps the big producers at the expense of small operators. This guy is a complete fake from stem to stern. ¶ 4:53 AM
