DUFF & NONSENSE!

The Sunday Rumble: 31.1.16

Oh no, Galloping Brain Ache this morning:  And I blame that Richard J. Bird!  He's that computational maths swot who wrote Chaos and Life, a book that didn't so much blow my mind away as blow it up!  Now he's come out with another one, What is Evolution? A Computational Complexity Approach.  Well, judged by the first few chapters it's certainly 'computational' and definitely 'c0mplex' - and yet - and yet - beneath all that is an elegant simplicity that explains the abundance of life forms.  It also blows a hole in 'Archbishop' Dawkins' theory of tiny incremental changes that lead, eventually, to speciation.  Anyway, I will no doubt be boring you all to death as I read further into this marvellous book - so stand by!

 

When 'Jezza' flashed his, er, black credentials:  According to The Telegraph, back in the '70s 'Jezza', having recently split from his wife, so arranged matters that he and a group of 'Leftie' leaflet distributors suddenly returned to his flat where a naked Dianne Abbot lay on a mattress on the floor underneath a duvet.  The man's an absolute rotter and a cad, as well as requiring a visit to Specsavers!

 

Pub lunch today:  Yeeees, quite, so there's no knowing when I'll be back nor what state I will be in!

 

She won't last long:  I refer to Ms. Angela Eagle of the Labour party who is reported to have said, in direct contradiction to her less than glorious leader, 'Jezza', that the Falkland Islands was an issue that had been settled a generation ago, and that stopping companies from paying a dividend to their shareholders because they failed to pay the minimum wage was a non-starter.  Well said, Miss Eagle and I hope you enjoy your return to the back benches!

 

More rumbles later . . .

'I told you I wasn't well'

My title are the apocryphal words allegedly carved on the gravestone of the late, great Spike Milligan.  However, they will do for me in the light of a fascinating article in The Telegraph that reports on research done by some medical swots at John Hopkins University which proves that Man Flu really does exist.  Well, of course, I didn't need proof of that having spent the last two and a half weeks bravely fighting off the vicious effects of Man Flu with barely a word of complaint, er, except from time to time when the tea supply ran late!

Apparently it's all the fault of those 'wimmin'!  They have high-jacked far more of their fair share of oestrogen which helps to alleviate the really worst effects of a head cold. 

Oestrogen, which is found at considerably higher levels in women than in men, was found to reduce the replication of the 'influenza A' virus in nasal cells, thereby initiating antiviral effects against the disease.

Apparently, women have 24 times the amount of oestrogen than men - typical!  But it gets even worse;

Previous studies have found that high levels of testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, can weaken an individual's immune system - suggesting that men pulled the short straw when it comes to both hormones in relation to winter germs. 

Honestly, I just don't know how us chaps put up with it all!

"Oh, brave new world!"

As most of you know, this blog has a tendency to the gloomy so you will not be surprised when I seize on an article in this week's 'Speccie' by Mary Wakefield.  She touches on a looming problem that this blog has muttered about before.  It can be summed up in the warning paraphrase - 'The robots are coming! The robots are coming!

Ms. Wakefield reports that four distinguished geeks gave a presentation on future trends in artificial intelligence for the benefit of our 'glorious leaders' in the House of Commons.  Needless to say none of them were there but the 'policy wonks' who turned up spent most of their time fiddling with their twitter machines!  So as usual when the brown stuff hits the fan all our leaders will be 'shocked, I tell you, shocked'!

For example, driverless vehicles are already being tested on public roads in the USA.

[America] is a continent defined and created by roads. In more than half of all US states, the top job, the one done by more people than any other, is truck-driving. There are 3.5 million truck drivers and a further 5.2 million employed in the trucking industry. Just think of all those men crisscrossing the country; rumbling from Savannah, Georgia to Sacramento, CA, sprinkling dollars like fish food along the way, in cafés, gas stations, motels. Whole towns depend on the appetites of truckers.

Now consider the fact that Daimler has just unveiled its first self-driving truck. The 18-wheel Inspiration has, on the quiet, been cruising the interstate highways with great success. It’s road-approved and, once purchased, needs no more than petrol money. Each human driver costs $40,000 a year.

And that is just one industry facing a threat from the deus ex machina.  Fast food outlets is another in which waitresses and burger-flippers will fall to the robots:

A smart-alec company called Momentum Machines has announced that its robot can make a perfect hamburger — all toppings sliced, placed and cooked in less than half the time it takes a human. A burger every ten seconds — and no need to pay a machine, or let it smoke, pee or sleep.

‘The device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient, it’s meant to completely obviate them,’ says Momentum Machines. The nasty irony for America’s minimum wage earners, who’ve been striking recently for higher pay, is that the more they cost, the quicker they’ll be replaced by droids.

Of course, the free market advocates, of which I count myself a member, will insist that this is progress and that robotics will free up the working class to undertake yet unheard of possibilities.  Well, yeeees, possibly but getting from here to there could be exceedingly tricky as unemployment reaches heights never before attained.  It also casts an even greater doubt over the wisdom of those in favour of huge immigration.  Happily, at my grand old age I can comfort myself with the thought that it will all be somebody else's problem!  In the meantime, do read Ms. Wakefield's article, it's fascinating.

Lies, damned lies and NOAA statistics

The greatest global heat source over the past 20-odd years has emanated from the red faces of the American NOAA 'warmers'.  NOAA stands for National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and they are the equivalent of our Met Office - yeeeeeeeeeeees, quite!  Their (joint) problem over the past 20-years has been that the satellite global temperature recordings have indicated virtually no rise in global temperatures.  Of course, satellite recordings being immune from, er, adjustments tend to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in stark contrast to earth-based measurements which, for decades, NOAA (and the Met Office) have deemed it necessary to , er, adjust on a regular basis - and guess which way they are always adjusted!

Anyway, irritated beyond measure (adjusted or not!) by this stubborn pause in global temperatures, the NOAA issued in June a 'scientific' paper utterly refuting the idea of any pause in the global temperature increase.  Quick as a flash, the excellent Judicial Watch organisation 'over there' slapped them with a law-suit demanding all written documentation, internal as well as external, connected to this 'scientific' study - and that includes all internal memos between the main actors.  Perhaps, just perhaps, we will see if they reach the hideously embarrassing levels once seen by the publication of the University of East Anglia documents several years ago in which it was clear that these so-called 'climate scientists' were a bunch of stitch-up merchants prepared to go to any lengths to protect their pet theories.

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-documents-withheld-from-congress-in-new-climate-data-scandal/

Hat tip to Drudge

 

 

Trust 'Dim Dave' to pick the wrong man to back in space

God knows how much 'moolah' - er, my 'moolah' as I fondly think of it! - went into sending that Brit into space the other day.  Everybody raved about it but I kept trying to find out exactly what he would do 'up there'.  Nothing much, seems to be the honest answer.  Even some space swot when interviewed admitted that there wasn't all that much to do that would be of much use.  In other words, it was all British BS, the sort of thing Dave does so awfully well!

But today comes news of a truly remarkable space accomplishment not least because you can instantly see there is huge money-making potential in it.  A fella' called Elon Musk was responsible.  If you check his Wiki entry you will see that he is one of that new breed that I call 'International Man' so it is entirely appropriate that he has a name that might have come out of futurist magazine!  Anyway, he put his money where his mouth is and built a space rocket which he blasted off into orbit where it released various communications satellites - and then brought it down again landing it safely upright at it s launch pad.

I instantly thought of those great 19th century railway entrepreneurs who contributed to making Britain the richest country in the world.  Instead of spending zillions sending some army major into space to play around, 'Dim Dave' would have done much better to slip Mr. Musk a few quid and thus buy into a bit of the considerable wealth that will flow from Mr. Musk's enterprise.

Philosophical Christmas books

And positively my last set of Christmas recommendations!  In my middle-age I went through a philosophical period, and no, not a mid-life crisis, I was and still am far too smug and self-satisfied for that sort of thing, but I did begin to wonder, as the old song has it, "What's it all about, Alfie?", 'it' being life, the universe and all that stuff.  It didn't take me too long to realise that for every philosophical proposition there was an equal and opposite proposition so my question was never answered satisfactorily but I did enjoy the exploration.  Much of the thinking displayed by various philosophers was quite brilliant, even if the next book I read demolished their arguments with equal brilliance.  So, I quickly learned that to study philosophy it is necessary to choose!

One of the first philosophers to make a very big impression on me was Karl Popper and his book The Open Society and Its Enemies.  The 'enemies' he takes on over two volumes are Plato, Hegel and Marx, so in following his demolition of their ideas he provides the reader with an excellent over-view of the history of political philosophy.  It is all written in plain and easily understood English.

The second book I would enthusiastically recommend is not, strictly speaking, a philosophical book but it is written by a philosopher, and an Australian philosopher at that!  The late, great David Stove obviously became increasingly irritated by the likes of 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins and the collection of neo-Darwinian disciples who pushed poor old Charles Darwin into all sorts of areas that one suspects Darwin, himself, would have resisted.  In his book, Darwinian Fairytales, Prof. Stove applies his analytical thinking and his very funny and blunt Australian wit against the sort of nonsense spouted by the likes of Richard Dawkins and his acolytes.  The fact that Prof. Stove, throughout his adult university life, fought a constant and ferocious war against the communist and ultra-feminist members of the faculty only 'adds lustre to his cluster', so to speak.  I even forgive him, in another book, for taking up intellectual arms against my hero, Karl Popper!  Above all his book makes you laugh out loud in places and not many philosophical scientific books do that!

 

VOTE LEAVE #2:

As promised (or threatened!) here is the weekly summary of "events, dear boy, events" pertaining to the upcoming EU referendum as issued by that splendid organisation VOTE LEAVE.  With apologies to my many foreign readers who couldn't give a toss!

Incidentally, the very last paragraph refers to a Dr. David Deutsch of Oxford University, a fearsome swot on the intricacies of quantum physics, one of whose lectures I once attended.  He looked about 141/2 at the time and, having just seen the latest Bond movie, my memory is that he was a dead ringer for the new 'Q' as played by Ben Whishaw:

Of course that was all about 40 years ago when my, er, eccentric curiosity led me into the mysteries of the sub-atomic world.  Totally bonkers when you remember that I failed maths, physics and chemistry at 'O'-level.  But I will never forget Dr. Deutsch, even if I did have trouble keeping up with him.

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Problems with the Single Market

The EU’s supporters base their case on the supposed benefits of the Single Market. For example, Number 10 sent out the Business Secretary Sajid Javid yesterday to claim that the EU could be the ‘most successful single market in the world … but only if it [the EU] actually gets on with the job it was created to do.’

Actually, this gets the history the wrong way around. The Single Market was developed by Jacques Delors, the European Commissioner, for political purposes. As he said in 1993, ‘we’re not here to make a Single Market - that doesn’t interest me - but to make a political union.’ The Single Market has always been seen in Brussels as a tool to continue EU founding father Jean Monnet’s mission of centralising political power in Brussels.

Many of the worst EU regulations have been Single Market regulations. For example, the Clinical Trial Directive proved disastrous as it dramatically slowed down the testing of cancer drugs. World-leading chemicals producer BASF was recently forced to move its research operation to America after its innovative products were banned by Single Market rules.

Earlier this month George Freeman MP, Life Sciences Minister, issued a warning to Brussels that over-regulation by the EU could lead to a ‘new Dark Age’ for bioscience. He revealed that the UK is battling the EU on a number of issues which will restrict scientific research. Mr Freeman warned, ‘The Luddites threatened to hold back discovery in the early 19th century … [and] we face a similar challenge today’.

Furthermore, many of these regulations prove impossible to correct or take many years to modify. One of Britain’s most brilliant scientists is David Deutsch (see below Tweet of the Week). As he said yesterday, ‘The open society is not a system for avoiding mistakes. Like science, it is the only known system, in its domain, for correcting mistakes.’ Error-correction is vital but the EU system of centralisation and harmonisation creates a one-way ratchet that makes error-correction slow and hard - look at the Common Agricultural Policy, still there after decades of promised reform. This is the opposite of the sort of system we need to cope with the forces changing the world.

Unsurprisingly, in a recent poll of business opinion, just 25% of respondents agreed with the rationale for the Single Market.

After we Vote Leave and stop sending £350 million to Brussels each week, we can use some of this money to spend on our priorities such as the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund, science research and education. The UK will be able to do better in leading world-class science projects and developing new high-tech industries.

This also leads to a wider point that rules and regulations are increasingly, and sensibly, made at a global level. Currently the UK has little say in these decision-making bodies as the EU represents its 28 member states. Once we leave the EU, we will be able to take our seat on these global bodies.

More holes in PM’s renegotiation

As reported last week, David Cameron’s letter to Donald Tusk received a poor reception from business, politicians and the media. Over the weekend, prominent Conservatives announced that they would back Vote Leave as the PM’s demands were ‘feeble and irrelevant’, ‘wholly inadequate’ and would ‘not secure a deal the British public deserve’.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond this week admitted that the deal will have no legal force under EU law. The truth is that the European Court of Justice will be able to decide the scope of any deal. These EU judges have a history of ignoring political agreements drawn up by politicians.

Voters should be able to change our laws and control our taxes by voting out those who make the decisions. After we Vote Leave, Britain will again be a self-governing democracy that trades and cooperates with our friends in Europe and countries around the world.

The only way to get a better relationship with the EU, take back control, and spark discussion about sensible reform in Europe is to Vote Leave.

Business is split on the EU

The BSE chairman Lord Rose of Monewden has called on businesses to speak out on the EU referendum. We agree. Of course, Lord Rose also said recently that after we Vote Leave ‘absolutely nothing will happen’ to the British economy. We agree with him there too.

However, businesses should not allow Brussels mouthpieces such as the CBI - which is EU-funded and uses ‘dodgy’ polling to distort media coverage of the case for EU membership - to claim that they speak for British business. Also, people should always remember that many multinational businesses can be destroyed by Brussels with regulations - they must support the EU, or at least keep quiet. Most multinationals kept quiet or spoke in favour of the euro too, from fear of reprisals.

New CBI boss Carolyn Fairbairn this week signalled a partial climbdown from her predecessor’s strongly pro-EU stance, insisting that she would ‘listen and consult with’ members who believe that the UK should leave the EU. This followed a letter from Vote Leave calling on Ms Fairbairn to ‘rethink the position that the CBI adopted on the EU’ in previous years.

UK business is divided on EU membership. A survey by the Federation of Small Businesses released in September found that 41% of its members would vote to leave the EU. In the Treasury Select Committee meeting this week, the FSB stressed that they, unlike the CBI, do not have an official ‘remain’ position on the referendum. In a recent Business for Britain poll of SMEs, over 40% of respondents stated that the EU hinders their business, compared to 20% who said it helped.  About two-thirds of businesses want Britain to take back power over trade deals from the EU. It is clear that UK businesses do not hold a uniform pro-EU stance.

Tweet of the week: The open society is not a system for avoiding mistakes. Like science, it is the only known system, in its domain, for correcting mistakes.

David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf), the brilliant physicist who extended Turing's 1936 paper to the quantum realm.

 

Vote Leave http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/

Vote Leave · Vote Leave, Westminster Tower, 3 Albert Embankment, Lambeth SE1 7SP, United Kingdom This email was sent to david@davpat.co.uk. To stop receiving emails, click here. You can also keep up with Vote Leave on Twitter or Facebook.

Really, really BIG reality or titchy, TINY actuality?

Yeah, you probably guessed from my title that I am about to launch a load of waffle on a subject about which I know virtually nothing but I do so happy in the certainty that none of you do either!  (You can prove me wrong - again! - in the comments.)  The question at issue is simple (hey, you're kidding, right?  Yes, I am!), what rules the universe - general relativity or quantum mechanics?  The first, as stipulated by Einstein, explains gravity which 'controls' the movement and momentum of everything in the universe from the beginning of time to the 'end of days'.  Or is it, as the subversive quantum mechanics would have it, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces operating at the sub-atomic level that reflects reality.

The 'Einsteinians' are led by Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.  In effect, and despite the bewildering - well, bewildering to mugs like me - intricacies of the theory of relativity, he holds to his master's view that everything in the universe is subject to (in theory) measurable cause and effect.  It is a deterministic universe.  But not according to Craig Hogan, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Fermilab.  He maintains that the true 'reality' at the heart of the universe is the 'now-you-see-it-now-you-don't' world of quantum theory in which the closest you can ever come to 'certainty' is probability.

Ever since I first stumbled upon quantum mechanics, even I, a Physics failure at 'O'-level, could see the dilemma that exists between a measurable, predictable universe and one where particles can effect each other at distance and where the result of any action can only be estimated by bookies' odds.  In fact, a world where even the very existence, or otherwise, of the particles themselves can only be determined by looking - until then they both exist and do not exist!

Confused?  Well try Corey S. Powell who explains it all so much better than I can:

http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/will-quantum-mechanics-swallow-relativity

 

I confess, Father, I have been a very naughty boy!

Sorry, but all this Popery has put me into confessional mode.  As the grim-faced 'Memsahib' acknowledged, I cannot be trusted out on my own.  However, today I had to go to Yeovil (such fun!) to get the car cleaned - well, you don't expect me to dirty my hands, do you?  Fortunately, and entirely co-incidentally, just down the road is an excellent 'greasy spoon' café which serves a superb English breakfast - even at 1.00pm! 

Suitably fortified, well, the thought of all that work on my car made me feel quite tired, I then marched into Cineworld, our local cinema complex.  A young lady with a permanently open mouth blinked at me slowly when I demanded re-imbursement for my computer and my window.  At that her mouth actually opened even further but, alas, she was unable to conjure up any words.  So I explained that last night I wasted several hours of the fast-vanishing number of hours left to me on this earth trying to book two tickets for the 'simulcast' of Henry V from Stratford.  It was impossible and in my rage I hurled my computer through the window - so where's my money, I asked?  Slowly, very slowly, a slight smile softened the 'O' of her mouth as she realised - or hoped - that I was being ironic.  She even nodded in agreement when I suggested that all the Cineworld sites, and there are at least half a dozen of them, are utterly useless and were obviously designed by the 14-year old son of the Chief Executive!  Anyway, bless her cotton socks she sold me two tickets over the counter - no probs!  By the way, on the 21st October, if there is a cinema near you, or even far away from you, then book some tickets and get your idle arses over there because these 'simulcasts', in which cameras move into the auditorium and film a live performance as it happens, are terrific - and they are broadcast simultaneously all round the world.  This Henry V has only just opened at Stratford but has received some rave reviews. 

Next, and ever so casually I wandered up the main street of 'downtown' Yeovil - yeeeeeees, quite - and, heavens to Betsy, what did I find but a Waterstones bookshop.  Now I am forbidden to enter any bookshop unaccompanied by the 'Memsahib'.  But, hell, I thought, I'm a grown man now and I am more than capable of resisting my book-buying compulsive disorder (BBCD, the psycho-babblers call it).  So in I went just to test my steely resolve and guess what?  Inside five minutes it melted!

The first thing I spotted was Volume One of a new history of WWII written by James Holland.  Now, I need another history of WWII like a hole in the head not least because I have been reading the damn things since the early 1950s. But then, opening it at random, I read this:

Intellectually, the British Army was also stymied by a somewhat insouciant and deeply entrenched regimental system, which laid great emphasis on both loyalty to the cap badge and tradition, and which encouraged a culture that frowned upon too much talking shop.  In the Mess, one discussed cricket, polo or pig-sticking, not how to effectively co-ordinate tanks and infantry. (*)

Right, I thought, that's good enough for me, obviously this man knows where-of he writes and I have got to have that book and I shall just have to take my punishment like a man when I get home!   But then, just as I was going to the counter to pay for it, I spotted a very slim, slender volume with a most attractive hard cover.  I don't know what the bookbinders technical name is for this size but it measures about 7" x 4".  The title is Seven Brief Lessons On Physics written by a terrific Italian science swot called Carlo Rovelli - and no, me neither!  Now I have been buying these sorts of books for years and each time I read them I smite my forehead, shout, "EUREKA! I've got it, I've really, really got it!"  Unfortunately, the next morning I can't quite get my head round it again and I'm back to square one.  Still, this little volume only has 80 pages so it's the sort of thing I can slip into my jacket pocket and dip into on those tedious days when I sit in various chairs in various ladies' shoe shops as the 'Memsahib' tries on every bloody shoe in the place!

OK, I'll be on short rations for a week or two but at least I have plenty to read!

 

(*) The War in the West: Germany Ascendant 1939 - 1941 by James Holland

The Sunday Rumble: 30.8.15

Is Obama the most malignant president of the USA - ever?   I would hesitantly suggest the answer is 'yes' but the only reason for my slight hesitancy is my lack of knowledge of the many other presidents who preceeded him.  I chose the word "malignant" with due care because in medical terms it indicates a process that usually leads to death.  There is no doubt in my mind today that America is a very sick entity indeed!  The one thing that a black president could have done over two terms is to improve black/white relations.  Obama has done the exact opposite and instead has reduced inter-racial relationships in the big cities to an almost war-like status.  Gee, thanks, Mr. President - not!

 

Watch the BBC peanut:  Yet another example of BS baffles brains but not, thankfully, the brains of Christopher Booker in The Telegraph.  We all cheered when we heard that the Met Office had lost its contract to supply weather forecasts to the BBC but now we learn that whoever takes over will have to use Met Office data anyway!  This data come from a huge variety of sources:

ranging from its 330 UK weather stations and 16 weather radars to information from 300 ships, airliners etc, providing 106 million weather observations a day.

So with all that basic intelligence how does the Met Office get it so wrong over and over again.  The answer is simple, according to Booker:

But the chief reason why the Met Office has been getting so many forecasts spectacularly wrong, as reported here ad nauseam, is that all its short, medium and long-term forecasts ultimately derive from the same huge computer model, which is programmed to believe in manmade global warming. Hence the fun we’ve all had with those “barbecue summers” when rain never stopped, and “warmer than average” winters, which promptly saw Britain freezing under piles of snow.

So now you know not to expect much in the way of accuracy from whoever takes over.

 

See, I've been telling the 'Memsahib' that for years:   But still she moans and nags when I totter off for a mid-morning nap followed after lunch by a mid-afternoon nap. But now "truth will out and shame the devil" because 'researchers' - yes, those ubiquitous 'researchers'! - have shown that a nap a day could save your life. 

Apparently, it slows your heartbeat, lowers your blood pressure and you wake up feeling really, really pleased with yourself.  What's not to like?  So, as it's nearly 10.30am I think I'll just slope off and have a quick nap!

 

Good job I'm not one of them:   I have been reading reports about ten American 'wannabe' astronauts who have volunteered to spend a year inside a totally sealed dome with recycled air and processed food in order to test what it will be like for those who may eventually go to Mars.  All I can say is that it's a good job I'm not one of them because in a year's time when they open the doors there will only be me left!  I don't 'do' sociability and I will almost certainly murder them all.  On second thoughts, of course, they might murder me!  And on third thoughts which are slightly more realistic, as there are ladies going inside with the chaps, will there be, say, eleven of them coming out in a year's time?  Jest askin'!

 

Machiavelli funny? Of course he was!   I came across an interesting if somewhat learn-ed article that posed the question as to whether or not Machiavelli was funny.  Apparently he wrote a play that was a sort of 'Carry On Up the Boudoir' farce which, from the description doesn't sound very funny to me.  However, I can tell you that his serious books, especially The Prince is an absolute hoot.  He really tells it the way it is and at times he is so shockingly honest that all you can do is laugh.  If you have any more holiday time left, I recommend slipping a slim paperback edition of The Prince into your suitcase.

 

Total, utter gobbledegook:  A new language has evolved.  It appears to have its roots in the language of the Kalahari tribesmen who communicate with a series of clicks and grunts. However, it has also been heavily influenced by 'grunt-futtocks English' as used by footie fans.  The main practitioners of this indecipherable language are these four men:

          

  Portugese prat                        Dutch prat                 French prat             Kalahari wise man

If you are not an English footie fan or a student of Southern African tribes you will not know what on earth I am on about which is exactly how I feel when any of those three prats come on my TV and try to explain why their multi-zillion pound footie players can barely kick a ball! 

 

No more rumbles today

 

The Sunday Rumble: 16.8.15

'Hi, there, how ya'll doin'?    I thought I'd give ya'll a little wave from 'over here' from the labs of Planned Parenthood where they really take care of ya', know what I mean?!  Sorry it's only a little wave but, heh, the rest of me seems to be missing, I think they sold it off.'

'Perhaps you folks 'over there' could show my little 'wave-greeting' to my fellow spare-part providers in the UK.  They're easy to find, just pop in to your local NHS abortion clinic, you know, "The envy of the world!"  Ooops, sorry, did I just upset your breakfast?'

http://www.onepeterfive.com/the-fifth-planned-parenthood-video-is-horrifying/

 

 

Some nicer pictures to calm you down:   Sorry if the one above upset you but here are some superb pictures, courtesy of the indefatigable Art Contrarian, Donald Pittenger.  He has chosen these as examples of pictures that have become so famous that they have eclipsed other works by the artists concerned.  Here are a few:

 

September Morn - 1912
By Paul Émile Chabas (1869-1937).

Washington Crossing the Delaware
By Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868).

 

Sunday on the Grande Jatte - 1884-86
By Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891).

 

American Gothic - 1930
By Grant Wood (1891-1942).

 

 

The 'SandByn©' phenomenon:   And yes, my witty neologism which combines the surnames of two of the biggest prats in the Western world is copyrighted and use of it by third parties, particularly those scum from Fleet Street who devour these columns for copy, will cost the usual 'readies' in a plain brown envelope!  Anyway, today we have not one but two 'pie-eyed pipers from Hamelin'.  Over there, Bernie Sanders is actually making progress against the armour-plated advance of the Mk.II Clinton Tank, whilst over here 'Jezza' Corbyn continues to captivate the kiddie-winkies by talking completely illiterate economic theory and spouting political nonsense guaranteed to lose Labour the next two elections!  (Mind you, it never does to under-estimate political 'giants' like 'Dim Dave' who are more than capable of tripping over their clown-boots!)  In normal times, the likes of 'SandByn' would have been pelted with rotten veg and hooted off-stage.  But today, the juveniles (of all ages), the mouth-breathers, the 'grunt-futtocks' with a Double First degree in 'Applied Soppiness', hang on their every word.  The masochist in me wants them to win!

 

Oi!  Gordon!  Show us your willy!   I have just wasted half an hour of the precious few hours remaining in my life by listening to 'Ur Wee Gordie Broon' laying down the law to his comrades in the Labour party.  He had them weeping buckets as he described the incredible goodness and kindness for which the Labour party in general, and he in particular, should be remembered.  Sorry, Gordie, me old mate (not!), you were the Chancellor and Prime Minister who spent borrowed money like a drunken sailor, who sold our national gold reserves at the lowest possible price and who blithely steered the country into a financial cataclysm.  So do me a favour, show us your willy and then be a good fellow and fuck off!

 

Stand-by for incoming Aussie!   Yes, the DNIA (D&N Intelligence Agency) has picked up several reports indicating that 'incoming Aussie' is due very soon.  It has been quiet round here for a few weeks whilst he pissed his way round Europe undertook an in-depth cultural tour but reports indicate an imminent return.  Better watch out!

 

Clever gal, that Isobel Hardman:  Well of course she is, she writes for The Coffee House, the inside café for The Spectator.  Apparently, some (not so) 'smart Alecs' in the parliamentary Tory party are already rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of introducing some specific pieces of legislation whose main aim will be to catch a new Labour leadership between a rock and a hard place.  She slaps them gently on the wrist and reminds them that the electorate will take an exceedingly dim view of such childish parliamentary games.  A government should govern seriously in the interests of all the people.

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

Oh no, it's back to 'skool' again!

The moment I have been dreading has arrived!  Today Microsoft unveiled their all-new, all-singing, all-dancing MS10, er, thingie.  My IT Manager (aka: 'SoD'), had warned me that it was imminent.  That means, of course, that I will have to go back to 'skool' to learn how to use the damn thing but worst of all, of course, is that the headmaster is 'SoD' and he's a hard, mean taskmaster!

I do realise that in this modern world everything is constantly on the change but it is irritating when you finally get the hang of something, they - yes, it's always that mysterious entity called 'they' - suddenly change it all.  But, to be fair to one of my 'New Best Friends', Bill Gates - good ol' Bill! - I understand that this is the last major change from Microsoft.  From now on they will eschew grand openings of revolutionary computer-thingies and instead will simply and quietly make small adjustments as they go along with this new system.  Very sensible.

I understand from my 'IT Manager' that we will not be switching immediately so there is no chance of this distinguished blog suddenly disappearing - sorry, did you say something?  When I make my great leap into the unknown I will provide you with plenty of warning.  The changeover shouldn't take me more than a year or two at the longest!

 

I'm a berk, ooops, sorry, I mean, I'm a Burke

Or to be precise, I'm a 'Burkean'.  I think I always have been without realising it because I have never had much detailed knowledge concerning Edmund Burke, he was simply a name that floated in the background of some of my history books.  Now, however, I have read Jesse Norman's superb biography and all is revealed.

Burke, despite being Anglo-Irish, was a quintessential Englishman.  Decent in his private life and equally so in his political philosophy.  He could see when the balance of the State was dangerously out of kilter either in the form of over-weaning Royalty or their lickspittles in the aristocratic Tory party.  Thus, he spent most of his life in the Whig party which was not without its faults but within which he tried, tried and tried again to move in the right direction.

You shall know a man by his enemies, so they say, and Burke's enemies were the continental (mainly French) philosophes, like Rousseau, who were captured by the new scientific revolution and saw Mankind as merely a huge collection of indistinguishable molecules which could not be ordered but which must be left to do as their will took them.  Individual liberty (or licence?) was their driving force and its malignancy lives with us to this day in the Anglo-American sphere.

Burke saw that individualism was not the sum total of Man's parts.  Man was and is always a communal animal.  Whether it be via family, or locality, or religion or politics, always Man seeks to form communities or groups through which particular desires can be satisfied or at least proclaimed.  This proclivity of Man reaches its heights in the formation of political parties who can be free to push and pull within the confines of a free parliament.  Thus, Burke is the man who can claim to have formed the beginnings of the Party system in Britain through which the views of the many can be expressed, roughly but never perfectly, by the few.

Today, he is seen as a (small 'c') conservative although he spent most of his life fighting against the great bastions of Tory misrule.  Despite his own Protestantism he constantly urged the emancipation of the Catholic Church both in England and in Ireland.  He waged constant political and legal 'warfare' against the East India Company which he saw was an oppressive, greedy monopolist literally grinding the faces of the poor in India.  He urged the King and his dim Tory sycophants to deal fairly with the American colonialists.  All to no avail as we now know.

It is difficult to summarise his philosophy into a logical body of thought, in the manner of a Rousseau, or later, a Marx.  Burke tended to take events and judge them separately based on their inherent pros and cons as tested against his natural instincts and intelligence.  Thus, when it came to revolution he was all in favour of the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 because despite his support for Catholic emancipation he realised that England was now a Protestant nation and King James's plots amounted in effect to a religious coup de main.  However, he was entirely sympathetic to, albeit, sorry for, the American revolution.  The French revolution, however, was an absolute anathema to him and everything he believed in.  He foresaw immediately that it would be a total disaster not just for France and its people but for all of Europe.  By the time the Napoleonic wars ended in that little field in Waterloo, millions had perished from Russia to Spain.

I am truly grateful to Mr.Jesse Norman for his excellent biography of a fascinating man and a truly great Englishman.  The book educated me in the easiest possible way being written with a light, elegant but careful touch.  I recommend you buy a copy for your Summer hols reading:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edmund-Burke-Visionary-Invented-Politics/dp/0007489641

 

The next train arriving on platform 10 will crash and kill everyone!

Well, I suppose, as predictions go, if I keep repeating it daily for the next millennium (I should live so long, my life already!) it may come true assuming trains are still a mode of transport in the future.  Anyway, I am encouraged to follow this, er, 'scientific' method by the distinguished Bling - oooops, sorry - Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford.   His name is Paul Ehrlich and he has been telling us, in suitable Pte. Fraser tones, that 'we're all doomed' for close to 50 years now.  In the last few days he and his cult of similarly-minded loonies have issued, yet again - and again - and again - and well, for bloody ever, really - another dire warning:

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence.

Oh no, say it ain't so!

               

         Prof. Ehrlich                                                 Pte. Fraser                                                         

To quote yet another favourite from Dad's Army, we must turn to the redoubtable Cpl. Jones who constantly offered this advice to his less than glorious leader, "Don't panic, Capt. Mainwaring", as he, himself, panicked!

My advice to all of you - er, you are taking note, I trust! - is to lean on the memory of the late and very great economist Julian Simon.  He ridiculed Ehrlich's nonsense and went further by offering him a wager in 1980 that the price of certain essential minerals would fall not rise in the next 10 years.  He allowed Ehrlich to choose the minerals.  Ehrlich lost despite all you wretched, copulating humans increasing the world population by 800 million during the period - the biggest ten year rise in history! - and you're all very naughty boys - and girls!

Should you doubt my scorn for Prof. Ehrlich then let me provide you with a quote from his 1968 book, The Population Bomb:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Yeeeeeeeees, quite!  Anyway, I leave you with two bits of very sound advice - ignore anything Prof. Ehrlich says but, for God's sake, stay away from Platform 10 - you have been warned!

ADDITIONAL:  Sorry, I forgot to add another Ehrlich quote from 1970 courtesy of IHTM:

In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.” “If I were a gambler,” Professor Ehrlich concluded before boarding his plane, ” I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

God almighty, his bookie must be a very rich man!

 

  

Do the tits at the top have any conception of this sort of thing?

The other day, in mentioning some former heads of our three armed services, I referred to them as "total tits".  After reading an article on the US Navy Institute site I am even more convinced of their total 'tit-ishness'!  Whilst our latter-day admirals continue to fight WWII with their ridiculous, out-moded and eye-wateringly expensive aircraft carriers (which have no aircraft!), the US Navy is attempting to prepare for WWIII. 

The Navy wants to integrate robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) into more of its workload, from warfighting missions to non-combat support roles, and is seeking fleet input on what types of AI research are worth investing in. 

The service already has, in varying stages of completion, its Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) in the air, a Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV) under the sea and the Swarmboat unmanned vehicle on the surface. The warfighting value for these platforms is clear, the service said.

No doubt, tucked away in some dusty cupboard in the MoD, there is a latter-day Barnes Wallis who understands the future of robotics and AI and the operational implications but I bet he spends most of his time fighting for some pennies from the Navy's budget against total tits with gold braid up to their armpits who think the whole notion is frightfully un-Nelsonian!

 

 

Related articles

U.S. Navy Wants Artifical Intelligence Systems To Wage War

The tech threat - Is Artificial intelligence (AI) leading to inequality and fewer jobs? - Al Jazeera English

Artificial Intelligence in Weapons Systems: The Ethical Dilemmas

The sun has cured his acne - better buy those Long Johns!

According to Anthony Watts at his superb site, WUWT, the sun has virtually rid itself of spots.  Waddya mean ya didn't know it had any spots?!  It's had spots since, well, whenever, but the number of them goes up and down over time.  Now at this point I must be careful because whenever the sun and it's spotty eruptions come up as a subject on WUWT because of their supposed link to our climate on earth then a fearful, and fearsome, swot by the name of Prof. Svalsgaard leaps in in a most un-professorial way and gives you a right kicking if you fail to provide at least a PhD dissertation of proof to back your claims!  I, of course, write on scientific matters having failed 'O'-level maths, physics and chemistry.  However, that was only because at the time my mind was concentrated not so much on the expanding universe as the expanding bosoms of Josie B who used to sit next to me in the classroom!

And talking of expanding universes, I do wish sometimes that these swots would keep certain things to themselves.  According Anthony Watts the sun constitutes 99.86% of everything that exists in our solar system!  99.86%!!!!  But ... but ... that makes me feel really, well, speck-like!  And, dammit, I'm not a speck, I'm me ... as in me, me, me!  Where was I?  Oh yes, the damned sun and the fact that its high energy spots have faded away.  Of course, it's happened before and usually (fingers crossed) they come back after a few years.  But the thing of it is that usually these 'minima', as they are called seem to coincide with long periods really cold weather - and yes, yes, Prof. Svalgaard, I know, correlation is not causation and all that.  Even so, my advice is treat yourself to some Long Johns and mittens!  And don't say I didn't warn you!  Still, there's always some good news, at least the Big Freeze, when it comes, will finally shut up those idiot 'warmers'!

 

I want my money back!

Good grief, the world's gone mad!  The other day I threw a hissy-fit because 'Her Majesty's Royal Daily Telegraph' had decided to charge me - yes, ME! - for access to their website.  Through gritted everything I had to comply because there are several of their commentators I admire.  However, yesterday, being a Saturday, it is my habit to buy a printed version - the 'Memsahib' is much taken with several of the supplements - and I came across an article by Mr. David Blair (no relation, I trust!), their chief foreign affairs correspondent.  He was reporting on the outcome of the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear activities.  This summarises Mr. Blair's vision of what was achieved: 

Under the joint statement released by Iran and America on Thursday, all uranium enrichment at Fordow [the main Iranian nuclear site for enriching plutonium] must stop. The installation will be stripped of fissile material and “converted” into a “nuclear physics and technology centre”.

If this accord sticks, then a vital threat will have been neutralised without a bomb being dropped or a person maimed. All the revenge attacks for an Israeli first strike – from Iran firing missiles at Dubai to Hizbollah bombarding Israel with thousands of rockets – will have been avoided.

As such, the joint declaration on Iran’s nuclear programme amounts to a genuine triumph for diplomacy. 

What is this man on, I asked myself?  Well, even so, I reminded myself, just because he reports the dead opposite of what I suspect has happened, he is, after all, something of a Middle East expert and, dammit, he works for the 'Torygraph'!  But then a second article appeared under his name which in places had me rolling on the floor with laughter.  Here is the opening paragraph: 

In the White House, as the Iran nuclear deal was on, then off, then on again, a Harvard-educated lawyer poured over the technical niceties of heavy water reactors and uranium-enriching centrifuges with forensic attention, convinced the devil lay in the details. 

Er, the "Harvard-educated lawyer", by the way, is Barack Obama, a man so embarrassed by his university grades that he has had them locked up in secret vaults protected by death rays, or something like that!  But according to Mr. Blair:

 

In order to take personal control, Mr Obama – a Harvard law graduate – trained himself in nuclear science, according to his aides.  [Do stop that sniggering!]

 

One official claimed that by the end, in meetings in the White House situation room, he understood the technical issues as well as “almost anybody in the room” except for his energy secretary, Ernest Moniz.

 

He studied the way the centrifuges installed in Natanz, the Iranians’ giant uranium processing facility, operated. He read, according to one account in the New York Times, briefings on three alternative ways of converting Iran’s nuclear plant at Arak so that it could not be used to create weapons-grade material.

 

He personally examined and approved proposals for the heavily intrusive inspections programme to be carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Oh my giddy aunt, I couldn't take any more.  Is The Telegraph seriously expecting us to believe that a man who is too embarrassed to produce his college grades, a man who rose up the ranks of the Democrat party by being a good-looking, smooth-talking but, most important of all, a black 'community organiser' - whatever that is - and who, when he isn't on holiday playing golf, spends most of his time jetting, at public expense, to various golf courses in the USA, is the man who mastered all the intricate maths and physics of exactly how nuclear centrifuges work?

Well, do you believe it?

But according to Mr. Blair (can we be absolutely certain he is no relation?) a new dawn has broken.  All is well with the world.  Those nasty Israelis (Mr. Blair only intimates that feeling, by the way but he has history) have been done down.  It's 'peace in our time' - now, where have I heard that before?

But more important, how do I get my money back from The Telegraph from whom I expect a modicum of reality?

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11516061/MIT-a-whiteboard-and-nuclear-physics-how-the-Iran-deal-was-struck.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11514924/The-men-in-suits-not-special-forces-brought-down-Irans-Bond-villain-lair.html

 

Waiting for God to turn the lights out . . .

08.26 hrs:

Yes, apparently He is displeased because we haven't been paying our energy bills on time and so sometime this morning 'the lights are going out all over England - will we see them lit again in our lifetimes'?  Enough of this sub-Lord Grey nonsense, there is to be a solar eclipse this morning and your brave frontline reporter, instead of burying his head under the duvet, will bring you all the latest news as it occurs - er, unless I blink and miss it!

09.04 hrs:

No change - heh! - promises, promises . . .

09.45 hrs:

"Is that all there is?"  (Sorry, more Peggy Lee!)  Well, the earth didn't move for me nor for the 'Memsahib', although she added that it never did - what can she mean?  Anyway, I could discern no change in the light whatsoever.  And I was looking forward to a sudden blackout with my elderly neighbours tripping over their furniture, cars skidding and crashing on the main road because they failed to put their lights on and the lady vicar shedding her clothes in the churchyard and converting to paganism.  Instead of relying on all those astronomy science swots the media should have turned to the astrologers, far more accurate they'd be!  Anyway, we'll wait and see if there are any late effects . . .

15.53 hrs:

Well, the day just got brighter and lighter as time went on.  What a con!  If that's the best the 'Master of the Universe' can do then I shall begin to harbour doubts!

 

The four Fs in action

I'm sure I have mentioned before that my garden is the size of a postage stamp - thank God! - and that most of it is taken up by a patio - well, I'm not daft! - but I don't want you all thinking that I am unappreciative of nature at work.  As part of my programme for extending my green credentials I feed the birds.  It's true, unfortunately, that I have quite possibly the most boring-snoring set of birds anywhere consisting as it does of blackbirds, chaffinches, collar doves and - dammit - the biggest, fattest, most waddly set of 'flying pigs' anywhere, aka, wood pidgeons.  I wage a never-ending war against the latter because they are forcing up the bird seed bill in excess of our household food bill!  To be fair, I do have occasional visits from robins and tits but basically it is 'blackies', 'chaffies' and 'luvvie-dovies'.

Sitting in my semi-conservatory on constant guard duty against incoming pidgeons I have become a sort of latter-day Charles Darwin when he spent all that time holidaying working on the Galapagos Islands watching his finches.  Studying the behavior of 'my' birds it is now quite clear that they are entirely driven by the four Fs.  They are, in no order of priority: Fighting, Fucking, Fleeing and Feeding.  So not too different from us humans, really!  I'm wondering whether my very astute and learn-ed observations would gain me entry into the Royal Society and, with a bit of luck, a holiday in the Galapagos Islands.

Oh, take that as a 'no', shall I?

 

The Sunday Rumble: 15.2.15

Woman's vagina widened:  As you regular readers know, this blog prides itself on being totally non-sexist and thus, following my earlier report on penis reduction, I am pleased to tell you, courtesy of The Daily Mail, that a lady has just undergone a vagina enlargement procedure.  Sometimes, just sometimes, there are no words  . . .

Carry on up the Vistula:   This was going to be a deeply serious comment on the dangerous strategic tensions mounting in eastern Europe as news comes through that the left-wing candidate in the forthcoming Polish presidential election has made it clear that she would be prepared to do whatever it takes to improve relations with 'Vlad the Impaler'.  As you can see, she is hot!  Alas, given that 'Vlad baby' is as queer as a nine bob note, her looks will availeth her naught. 

Also, and alas, the fact that her surname translates as 'cucumber' in English reduces me to giggles, as it appears to do to the Polish electorate where so far she has only 5% support.  She is, apparently, a part-time actress so just think what those rascals on the "Carry On" films would have made of her and her surname!

 

'Don't cry for me, Mother Russia':   Instead, save your tears for yourself, according to James Jackson at Taki's Magazine.  Incidentally, Jackson sounds like an interestin' fella'.  His summary of all that is worst in 'Mother Russia' is worth reading.

This about sums it up:

The country remains what it ever has been: a third world state with oil and nukes and a lot of resentment. Gangsterdom reigns. To do business there, you must climb into bed either with the politicians or the mafiya, and relying on protection won’t prevent you being screwed or feeling violated. My twin brother previously had dealings in Moscow and once or twice had meetings with a strange and unappealing government minister named Vladimir Putin. “Everyone sniggered that he had a voice like a woman,” my brother recounts. Perhaps they are not so ready with the laughter now. Incidentally, the charming right-hand man of my sibling ended with several hollow-point rounds in his head. Sad how things turn out.

His final paragraph had me nodding in agreement: 

That man [Vlad] has issues. Bare-chested and riding a horse, wrestling a bear, the martial arts poses, the chaperoning of migrating geese from a microlight: perhaps if he just came out of the closet, he would spare himself a great deal of angst and the rest of the world a headache.

 

Thank God this nutter is 'down under there':  But first let me urge you to bookmark a new-ish site called http://climatechangepredictions.org/.  On this excellent site you will be able to read many of the ga-ga predictions made by 'Warmers' in previous years.  I intend to reprint a few of them from time to time and to start us off, here are the words of an eye-ball swivelling Aussie loony who should be put back on the prison ship on which we Brits originally 'exported' him:

Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, believes we must move towards a global ant’s nest, regulated by a global intelligence, and sharing all resources equally. In this world there will be no room for individual choice, individuals will have their specialised roles defined and limited and world population will be massively reduced.
interview 2011- link - – see also BBC News article

 

The 'Right Hitch' gets it right:   I call him the 'Right Hitch' to distinguish him from his late brother who was, for most of his, er, exuberant life, a 'Left Hitch' - but no less interesting and amusing for that!  Anyway, brother Peter sums up the source of some of our problems in his usual trenchant style:

After more than 40 years as a journalist at home and abroad, often experiencing history at first hand, I am certain of only one thing – that most people in power are completely clueless about what they are doing.They seldom, if ever, think. They know no history. They are fiercely resistant to any facts that might upset their opinions. They take no trouble to find out what is actually happening.

Step up, Dave 'n' Ed 'n' Nick and take a bow!

 

Spiral's nearly out of control:  I watched the last episode of "Spiral" last night and unfortunately, for the first time, I sensed that the multiple story lines were getting away from the writers and director.  Everything was rushed to a (sort of) conclusion, well, I say "sort of" because of course there is another series to come.  One thing is for sure, if "Spiral" is even roughly accurate as a description of the French judicial system and the Parisian police force then La France is in trouble!

 

The 'Kraut' on Obama's non-policy:   I would urge you all to read 'The Kraut's' latest essay on the non-policy pursued by Obama in  the field of foreign affairs.  Whilst I am risking a severe case of lèse-majesté in going against 'The Kraut' I am prepared to defend the President - to a certain extent.  I will risk that next week in a full blog post.  Until then, nightie-night!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

I think I am what I am therefore I must be!

My title comes with an apology to the late Monsieur René Descartes who was capable of much greater thinking than I can summon up at nine o'clock on a chilly morning.  Ever since Tom Stoppard's play, The Hard Problem, opened (to mixed reviews!) I have been trying to avoid the subject of consciousness because, first, it is a diabolically difficult subject and, second, there appears to be no definitive answer and, third, I'm not brainy enough to offer anything original on the subject.  So, as usual in my ignorance I will lean on the brains of someone who does appear to have a grasp of the subject - Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian.

In essence, 'the hard problem' can be summed up thus: is the cosmos and everything in it made up totally of material things which, even if as yet we do not know entirely how they operate, nevertheless being material they can in theory be measured and their activities defined; or, is there another part of the cosmos which is made up of immaterial things which cannot be measured, like minds and consciousness? What do I mean by 'consciousness?  Well, let me ask you a question: do you, like me, think that inside your body there is a 'real you' existing which, whilst it is dependent on your carcass to carry the 'real you' along on your lifetime's travel, is in another sense independent of it?  In other words, do you feel that there is a 'real you' hiding inside your body peering out at the world through your eyes and your other senses?  And, even more important, this 'real you' is a mental being not a physical being.

The materialist philosophers and scientists will not have it!  In recent years huge advances have been made in understanding the intricacies of how the human brain works and the more they learn the more definite their opinion that consciousness, the notion that there is a separate, independent entity called 'mind', is false and that in the end everything will be explained by material matter.  This begs the question that Mr. Berkeman poses in his article, if the materialists are right does that make all of us zombies?  Well, I'm 'in here', peeking out at you, or rather, your carcass over there and whilst I definitely and absolutely know that I am not a zombie, can I be sure that you are not one?

The zombie scenario goes as follows: imagine that you have a doppelgänger. This person physically resembles you in every respect, and behaves identically to you; he or she holds conversations, eats and sleeps, looks happy or anxious precisely as you do. The sole difference is that the doppelgänger has no consciousness; this – as opposed to a groaning, blood-spattered walking corpse from a movie – is what philosophers mean by a “zombie”. 

Already my brain is beginning to hurt and I blame that René Descartes:

The source of the animosity [between contemporary philosophers] dates back to the 1600s, when René Descartes identified the dilemma that would tie scholars in knots for years to come. On the one hand, Descartes realised, nothing is more obvious and undeniable than the fact that you’re conscious. In theory, everything else you think you know about the world could be an elaborate illusion cooked up to deceive you – at this point, present-day writers invariably invoke The Matrix – but your consciousness itself can’t be illusory. On the other hand, this most certain and familiar of phenomena obeys none of the usual rules of science. It doesn’t seem to be physical. It can’t be observed, except from within, by the conscious person. It can’t even really be described. The mind, Descartes concluded, must be made of some special, immaterial stuff that didn’t abide by the laws of nature; it had been bequeathed to us by God.

Well, we can set aside the 'God question' for the moment but still ask if Descartes was right?  Not according to the materialists:

The withering tone of the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci sums up the thousands of words that have been written attacking the zombie notion: “Let’s relegate zombies to B-movies and try to be a little more serious about our philosophy, shall we?” Yes, it may be true that most of us, in our daily lives, think of consciousness as something over and above our physical being – as if your mind were “a chauffeur inside your own body”, to quote the spiritual author Alan Watts. But to accept this as a scientific principle would mean rewriting the laws of physics. Everything we know about the universe tells us that reality consists only of physical things: atoms and their component particles, busily colliding and combining. Above all, critics point out, if this non-physical mental stuff did exist, how could it cause physical things to happen [...]?

Well, I don't care what they say, I'm still in here, inside my head, and that's 'me', the real 'me' and, to quote the title of, ahem, a 'famous essay',  "I think I am what I am therefore I must be"!

 

I'm glad I don't live in Decatur, Illinois

Mind you, just over 74,000 people do, so all I can hope is that they all have some oxygen tanks and breathing apparatuses to hand.  You see, according to Eric Worrall at WUWT, the good 'folks' (as 'The One' always refers to his subjects!) are sitting on the top of 1,000,000 tons of CO2. Heh, you probably grunt, typical Mother nature, always playing tricks!  But not this time.  No, no, this time it is loony, swivel-eyed Greenies who are trying to prove the efficacy of burying CO2 underground.  But, they assure the good people, ooops, sorry, the 'folks' of Decatur that they have been really, really careful and, honest Injun, nothing can go wrong: 

“Extensive monitoring takes place during and after injection to be sure the stored CO2 stays in place. Monitoring techniques include using geophysical technology to confirm the position of the CO2 underground and wells to monitor groundwater and soils. 

No out-of-bounds health, safety or environmental risks were observed from this properly designed and managed storage site. Appropriate risk mitigation and management plans were an integral part of the overall project planning. Extensive monitoring took place before, during and now after the injection to be sure the CO2 stays in place. The first line of monitoring begins deep below the ground, so we know if any leakage occurs long before any CO2 might reach the surface.”

So that's alright then!  I mean, no chance of wicked old Mother Nature kicking off on one like she did at Lake Nyos in Africa:

Nyos is one of only three known exploding lakes to be saturated with carbon dioxide in this way, the others being Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu in Democratic Republic of Congo. On August 21, 1986, possibly as the result of a landslide, Lake Nyos suddenly emitted a large cloud of CO₂, which suffocated 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock in nearby towns and villages.

Of course, CO2 is invisible and heavier than air so that en masse it rarely rises above 10'.  Thus, the first indication you will get is people dropping dead around you from suffocation, that is, just before you do the same.  My advice to the citizens of Decatur -  buy a penthouse appartment - now!

 

 

Real science is like checking out the spiel from a second-hand car trader

This is a longer than usual post because most of it is a transcript from a book I am reading.  Suffice to say that so far it has all the makings of being the best book I have read for decades!  So, since I took the trouble to laboriously hand-type this extract you can - you will! - all bloody well read it and inwardly digest!  The book is entitled:

Why Aren't We Dead Yet?

It is written by a chap called Idan Ben-Barak who is obviously Jewish and obviously jam-packed full of brains and intelligence, er, despite the fact that he chooses to live in Australia - yeeeeeees, quite, eccentric or what?!  (Just kidding, Dame Andra, honest!) I do not intend to say too much about his book at this stage because I am only part way through it and I intend to bore you all educate you all when I have finished it.  Suffice to say that it is concerned with the auto-immune system in the human body which, let me tell you, alone constitutes the eighth, ninth, tenth ... up to twentieth, Wonders of the World!

But that is not my main concern today.  What struck me was what amounts almost to an aside on the scientific method as practiced today.  Ben-Barak makes no connection  - but I do.  This extract should be typed out by every practicing 'Global Warmer' and then they should then be forced to eat it! 

When I was at uni, I took a course called “Breakthroughs in Microbiology”.  There were about a dozen students, and each of us was randomly assigned a different seminal microbiology paper, on which we had to present a short talk.  Nearly all of the papers were decades old, which to me, back then, meant they weren’t very interesting(*), and so I rejoiced to see that the paper I’d been allocated was only a few years old.  Virtually hot off the press!  (*) Scientists nowadays often regard any research that is more than about five years old as practically obsolete.  At the pace modern science is advancing, it’s all you can do to keep up with the accumulating data.  Like many students, I absorbed this attitude uncritically.  I’m a little less stupid about it now.  Virtually hot off the press!  And published in the esteemed journal Nature, no less.  The subject was Toll-like receptors (TLRs), which are molecules found oncells of the immune system.  The paper showed that one type of TLR, named TLR2, was responsible for identifying a type of molecule that almost all bacteria have on their outer coat, but non-bacterial cells never do.  It’s known as lipolysaccheride (LPS).  So when TLR2 senses the presence of LPS, it’s a safe bet that bacteria are afoot, and an immune response is necessary. 

So far, so good.  I read the paper, summarised the findings, and went forth to find a few more recent papers on the subject so that I could provide background and context for my talk, like a good little student.  But there I ran into trouble: something was amiss, and I couldn’t tell exactly what.  The papers I was reading seemed to be saying weird things that wouldn’t settle neatly into my talk.  Several frustrating weeks later, I figured out the cause of my confusion: the other papers were weird because they were directly contradicting my assigned Nature paper.  TLR2 doesn’t detect LPS at all; that was an error.  A different Toll-like receptor, TLR4, is the one that detects LPS.  I know it doesn’t sound much when I put it like that, but this little fact was worth the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine. 

The Nature experimenters weren’t careful enough.  The LPS solution they used wasn’t sufficiently purified and was contaminated with a tiny amount of other bacterial elements, and these contaminants were the ones that provoked the TLR2 reaction.  Our course lecturer, that crafty old devil, deliberately gave out an erroneous paper to demonstrate the fallibility of scientific papers (I never worked up the nerve to tell him just how awesome I thought that was.) 

This paper wasn’t some sensationalist survey creatively misreported in the science news of a local newspaper.  This was serious, respectable research published in Nature, and it was wrong.  It took me a while to rid myself of the shudders conjured by the what-if scenario: what if I hadn’t caught on to what was going on?  I’d have delivered the talk as if the paper was correct, making a proper fool of myself, and would most likely have had my arse handed to me on a plate.  Research, even research published in prestigious journals, can and does produce errors.  It’s something every scientist ultimately learns one way or another, and this was a good way of learning it: in a classroom rather than in the real world of research.

If I hear or read one more 'Warmer' telling me that I don't understand the 'scientific method' and that all their papers are 'peer reviewed' and published in the very best scientific magazines, I'll ram Ben-Barak's book up them where the sun don't shine and then set light to it.  See how they like that for 'warming'!

 

 

So old Albert was wrong, God does play with dice

 Having rid ourselves of the Language Commissars, the next lot on my list of undesirables are all those Health Commissars who never cease their prating about our unhealthy life styles and issue a steady stream of directives as to how we should change our habits because they cause cancer.  Today, some medical-scientific swots who obviously failed to read their politically correct guidance notes have issued a report saying that most cancers are just down to sheer bad luck!  Those pesky genes - or whatever - just roll along the green baize of life and if they come up double-six then - bingo! - you win the 'prize' of cancer.

And that, according to some other medical swot may not be such a bad thing because death by cancer has its advantages, well, in so far as death by anything has any advantages, because in the vast majority of cases today it can be managed fairly painlessly and provides the patient with time for farewells, for contemplation, for setting affairs in order and all those sorts of things which being flattened by a No. 16 bus does not!

Well, I don't know whether any of that is right or wrong but if it shuts up those nagbags f0rever telling me how to live my life then it has to be "A Good Thing".  And it reminds me that in all my past arguments debates with Health Commissars I have always asked the same question in regard to smoking and lung cancer - is there a specific micro-biological-chemical re-action which kicks off cancer in smokers that is different from non-smokers?  Answer came there none so I remain of the view that whether or not you smoke has no causal effect on the development of lung cancer.

 

'pH-ony baloney'

They're at it again!  I'm refering to those "hide the decline" con artists who have built reputations and fortunes from alarming tales that 'the end of the world is nigh' due to the wicked increase in CO2 emissions by uncarying, profit-seeking, corrupt, Big Business.  First there was Michael Mann's infamous 'hockey stick' which, if it had been drawn correctly, based on facts not computer models, would have been as flat as a witch's tit! 

Now we have a (non)scientific paper issued with suitable fanfare alarums by some professorial 'warmer' called Dr. Richard A. Feely who would have us believe that CO2 emissions are causing severe acidification of the oceans and all the poor 'likkle fishy-wishies' will die, followed by the rest of us because the world will end - or something like that!  Here's his chart but I should warn you that if the 'Hockey Stick' diagram scared you this one will make you wet your pants, er, thus adding, I suppose, to yet more acidification!

  

 Didja see it? - Didja? - Didja?  Well look again and take note of the fact that he starts his measurement of sea water acidification from CO2 in 1988.  A lonely - and by now even more lonely, I guess - scientist familiar with the field has pointed out that the king has no clothes on the diagram omits 2 million+ accurate measurements from over 80 years prior to to 1988!  I can safely tell you now, because most 'warmer' (non)science') is treated with contempt by anyone with more than three brain cells, without fear of anyone fainting in shock and suing me for damages, that if you take into account those, er, 'missing/over-looked/dog ate it/hide the decline' 80 years then there is absolutely no sign of any increased trend in ocean CO2 levels.

 Why am I not surprised?

 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/23/touchy-feely-science-one-chart-suggests-theres-a-phraud-in-omitting-ocean-acidification-data-in-congressional-testimony/

 

 

Damn, but those titchy things blow my mind!

Tuesday night, slumped in my armchair and idly clicking around on my 'magical-do-flicker-thingie' I came across a real 'baldy-bonce' called Prof. Jim Al-Khalili.  Well, I'm not surprised he's bald because his brain cells must be leaping about beneath his skull at a ferocious rate.  This man is a serious swot!

I immediately took to him because of who he was not!  That is, he was not Prof. Brian Cox, 141/2, the BBC's usual swot of choice.  I resent the fact that Prof. Cox looks so young but more, much more, I am infuriated when the juvenile geeks who design his programmes fill the screen with noisy, pointless cgi effects.  By and large Prof. Al-Khalili avoids that sort of thing and instead uses wit, eloquence and intelligence to inform us of the profound mysteries of quantum mechanics.

My admiration for him and his programme was sealed when he actually made mention of a book I read some 35-years ago which had an enormous effect on me.  It's fair to say that The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav had a profound effect on my internal life, or, if you prefer the current jargon - 'it blew my mind away'!  Scientifically, it's almost certainly out of date by now but I treasure my dog-eared edition.  And I should add, of course, that both then and now I had considerable difficulty in following the science but - heh! - even Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, the two greatest 'brain-boxes' of the 20th century had major problems, too.  They both disagreed fundamentally with each other's theories on the quantum world.

Part of what fascinates me is not so much the description of the quantum world, or the various theories proposed to make sense of what is apparently a bizarre or even lunatic description of what passes for 'reality' at that level, but the border between our world of tangible objects behaving rationally and measurably, and the quantum world where things both are and are not!  Remembering, of course, that all the things in our world are made up of the things from 'loony-land'.

The programme was on last Tuesday evening on BBC4 so if you have one of those i-pod, i-pad, i-pud, or whatever they are, you may be able to watch it now.  The second and final programme is on Tuesday next week.  Not to be missed!  Julia Raeside in 'The Graun' has written a very good review of the first programme.

 

 

Oh no, say it ain't so!

Not much time this morning except to sound the alarm bells.  This is the headline in The Telegraph:

Deadly heatwaves 'could kill thousands'

Scientists say Britain will experience three times as many heatwaves as it does now by 2100 

You have been warned and as this emanates from the, er, 'distinguished' Royal Society you have no excuse for failing to rush out NOW and buy up all the Long Johns, woollen underwear, sweaters, snow boots and fur coats you can lay hands on!  Alas, the latter-day Royal Society is about as scientific as Meg the Magic Medium!

 

Who let a woman park the damn thing?

So, ten years later and 1.5bn euros(!) spent, all those brain boxes at the European Space Centre managed to steer their tin-can several zillion miles across space and then detach a special 'do-flicker-thingie' (sorry for the tehnical language) which was landed on a bit of old space rubble which, by the look of it, might have originated in downtown Damascus.  So far so brilliant but what I want to know is which of those swots allowed one of their female assistants to park the bloody thing?  It is a well-known fact that women couldn't park a Mini inside an empty multi-story carpark so it is absolutely no surprise to learn that the 'do-flicker-thingie' ended up under a cliff that has blocked the sunlight required to keep the batteries working.  Of course, even as I write these words I can hear the lady swot concerned screeching something along the lines of 'well, I told you over and over to pack extra batteries but you never listen to a word I say and you never told me there were cliffs on that titchy lump a' junk, I expect you were too busy cracking quadratic equation jokes with all your mates whilst I was left to try and sort out your mistakes . . . ' and so on and on.

Well, it was either that or it is proof positive that God does indeed have a sense of humour!

 

Well, it's all relative, innit?

I knew I shouldn't have stuck my toe in all that heavy stuff about space, life, evolution and really, really big sums but there, I've done it, so now I will jump in head first!  The Really Big Fundamental Question remains what it has always been, how did matter/energy come into existence?  The swots seem fairly agreed (for the time being!) that it all began with a Big Bang but that, of course, does not answer the fundamental question.  Even I can grasp that if you suddenly let loose mega-gazillions of hydrogen particles at high speed in all directions then, assuming (yes, another assumption) that the laws of physics are just sitting around waiting for something to operate on, then some of those hydrogen particles will collide, or attract each other, so that larger particles are formed and then suddenly, hey-ho, we're off to the races.  It is worth noting that if this explosion of particles had been absolutely exact and precise the little critters would just have flown off into the big beyond but, of course, it was the tiny little deviations in the explosion which assisted the gradual union of particles.  So, in a sense, we are the result of a series of tiny errors.  What lies beyond the Big Bang, of course, is silence!  Not even the great scientific swots have more than fanciful theories which are no more convincing than those offered by the theists.  You pays your money and you takes your choice!

All of that takes us to the Really Big But Second Question which asks how organic life developed from collections of inanimate matter?  The swots seem convinced that water was a cardinal requirement which is why there is so much  fuss over exactly how and when water came into existence on earth.  Those who believe that life began on earth seem to have settled on a theory that the very best conditions were deep in the pre-historic oceans w here various chemical particles and elements under huge pressure and immense heat from fissures in the seabed somehow created replicating organisms from hitherto lifeless matter.  But now we return to the current question plaguing the swots - did this process just occur on earth where at a certain moment in time the conditions were just right, or was it that the water from space detritus that crashed into earth wasalready bearing the 'seeds' of replicating cells?  The point is, as I understand it, that the parameters for an environment conducive to creating life from non-life are unbelievably strict and limiting and that even the very slightest deviation would result in no result!

All this leads onto the Really Big Third Question which is that if all that frozen water was hurtling about the universe crashing into this, that or the zillion other planets then surely there must be a chance that life exists elsewhere.  Alas, to the deep regret of the swots who believe that theory, so far there has been absolutely no, nil, zilch indications of any life anywhere within reach of our observations.  It's not so much that we are waiting for the second shoe to fall, we haven't actually heard the first one yet. Alas, well, alas for me, I must now return to sums again!  The absolutely essential requirements for life to develop on earth are, as I said before, terrifically strict - even the minutest deviation would abort the attempt.  So looked at from an earthly perspective the chances of life beginning here are infinitesimally tiny.  But looked at from a cosmological platform with zillions of planets all in different stages of development and with all that water whizzing around, so to speak, to 'fertilise' them then you would have to say that it would probably happen sooner or later - somewhere.  And perhaps in several different places even though there are no signs (signals) of it to us.  It is necessary to think of the mathematical chances of success when the opportunities for it run to eye-wateringly huge numbers given the size of the universe.  It is around this point that my synapses tend to close down rapidly!

And that word 'synapses' brings me - er, are you still with me? - to the Really Big Fourth Question.  Actually, I should refer to it properly as The Hard Problem of Consciousness.  Thoughts can be explained scientifically as a series of inter-actions between objects 'out there' which are picked up via our sensory perceptions, sight, sound, etc, and are then converted by electrical impulses into our brains where we experience thoughts and images.  As Isaac Newton put it:

to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.

It's that old mind/body problem again.  When and how - and why - do merely mechanical processes somehow convert into ideas?  Perhaps that very intelligent chappie, Tom Stoppard, will tell us in his new play due to open any moment now at the Royal National Theatre.  The play is called The Hard Problem!

(I suspect there will be a number of typoes in this for which I apologise and will make every effort to correct as soon as possible.)

 

Sums do my head in!

That's why in restuarants I'm either a very generous tipper or the meanest one your average head waiter has ever sneered at!  I simply don't 'do' sums.  And certainly not sums of the complexity required to work out a 12.5% service charge.  Thus, I am truly impressed with all those 'sum-ematicians' who worked out how to send that 'juke box-thingie' up into space and let it spin round and round the earth using gravity (something else I have never worked out) and then let it go off like a sling shot into deep space to land, precisely and exactly, on a bit of old cosmological detritus that is the equivalent of finding exactly the right speck of sand in the Sahara.  I mean, how do they do that?

I gather it all cost several gazillion quid but at least now that the 'juke box' has landed safely - I trust it 'spoke' some truly momentous words after it landed, you know, like, "Thank Christ for that, a soft landing!" which is what I mutter everytime some monstrous great aircraft of which I am a passenger actually hits the ground without disintegrating, always a minor miracle in my view. I gather that its first task is to look for water althought frankly I would have though a large gin and tonic would have been in order.  Anyway, they are testing a theory which has it that life arrived on earth via these old bits of space rubbish which might have been carrying organic water which means, I gather, either water with organisms in it, or water capable of supporting organisms as and when they pop into existence.  Of course, none of that actually proves exactly how organisms developed from inanimate matter so the really Big Question remains unanswered and if it all cost several zillion quid, well, just be jolly grateful and doff your caps to the Intergalactic Sums Meisters!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 19.10.14

Those 'damn Yankees' are at it again:   I keep telling them but they never listen - all we want are your food parcels and you can keep your hurricanes to yourself.  But no, on Monday night and Tuesday morning our 'septic Isle' is to be pounded from the west by another hurricane which, if it knew it's place, would be ripping through Arkansas and blowing the jugs of hooch off Barney Magroo's shelves.  But it may not be all bad because according to reports it will mainly hit Ireland and 'ooop north' as far as 'Jockland', and it's an ill wind that doesn't blow up a Scotsman kilt and give us all a laugh!

Why UKIP will ultimately fail:   Because deep down, that is, just beneath the skin which counts as profound in 'Kipper' circles, they couldn't agree on the time of day!  It is already obvious that Farage and Carswell do not live on the same planet.  Carswell's views on immigration would horrify most 'Kippers'.  Now we read that Mark Reckless, 'their man in Rochester', is refusing to back 'Kipper' policy in regard to the HS2 farrago.  I think the only thing they can all agree on is their detestation of 'Dim Dave'.  Beyond that, they're a shambles!

'Lookin' good over there':   Shouldn't speak too soon, I know, but me and my big mouth, or perhaps I mean, me and my big keyboard, can never resist the temptation.  However, I am relying on Mr. Larry J. Sabato of the University of Virginia who is, by all accounts, a terrific pollster swot and on Thursday he summed up the electoral situation 'over there' as they run in for their midterm election.  His opening paragraph, with his emphasis, says it all:

As we approach the home stretch, 2014 has turned into a tale of two elections. On the one hand, this is a classic sixth-year itch election where the incumbent president’s party is going to suffer losses in both houses of Congress. We’re just arguing about exactly how many. Overall, it is indisputable that Republicans will have more critical victories to celebrate than Democrats when all the ballots are counted, and they have a strong and increasing chance to control the next Senate.

I do hope he's right and if he is, then only a jug of Barney Magroo's Very Finest 12-Hour Vintage, slightly chilled, and served in a tin cup, will do for the celebration.

Take cover, Professor! 

 Sometimes, just sometimes, I regret never having gone to a university.  For example, reading this witty, intelligent and self-perceptive essay by Chris Walsh of Boston University made me regret never having had the chance to be tutored by him, or someone like him.  He is writing on the subject of cowardice - mostly his own!  Well worth reading.  Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily.

And here's another reason why I might have enjoyed university:   From time to time I have expressed my irritation, I could use a stronger word but given that I don't know the man it would be inappropriate, at 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins but anything from uneducated 'me' by way of criticism would be like shooting at a Tiger tank with a pea-shooter.  So on this occasion I am delighted, courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily again, to whistle up a proper, heavy weight, intellectual tank-buster - John Gray, the philosopher.  In his long but elegant dismemberment of 'Bish' Dawkins, John Gray displays that finesse with an intellectual and literary scalpel that I truly envy:

One might wager a decent sum of money that it has never occurred to Dawkins that to many people he appears as a comic figure. His default mode is one of rational indignation—a stance of withering patrician disdain for the untutored mind of a kind one might expect in a schoolmaster in a minor public school sometime in the 1930s. He seems to have no suspicion that any of those he despises could find his stilted pose of indignant rationality merely laughable.

Honestly, once those university swots go at each other it makes World Wide Wrestling look cissy! 

 

Yet another 5-star corker:   Yes, yes, I know I 'm a tad generous with my 'star' allocations but this one really does earn every one of them!  It is "Eyeshot" by Taylor Adams, and no, me neither!  However, Mr. Adams understands that in a thriller a simple setting and story line can be absolutely terrific - as in terrifying!  In this yarn, a young couple are driving across an almost totally empty desert, somewhere in New Mexico, I think.  They are diverted by emergency signs off the main road and along a small country road which eventually leads them across a sort of moonscape bowl about two miles across.  Waiting for them, well camouflaged, is a psycho, long-distance sniper!  The rest is a nail-biter!  By the way, I bought it for my Kindle for £1.99!  They ought to make a film of it but as much of what goes on is inward thinking that might be a bit tricky to pull off.  The chap who made Gravity could probably do it.  Anyway, buy it and money back if you don't like it, er, not from me, waddya think, I'm made a' money?!

'Nige' gets some help from - Barroso?  So the soon to retire consigliori of the racket that is called the European Union spends all day on our TV sets telling 'Dave' what he can and cannot do.  How much of his various interviews will re-appear on 'Kipper' electoral ads, do you think?

 

No more rumbles today

 

The dread Second Law - proved again - by me!

For those non-swots, like me, whose brains shrivel at even a hint of high-brow science, allow me to explain, almost certainly incorrectly but what the hell!, that my title refers to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states, er, very roughly, that it doesn't matter a fig who or what you believe in, the only winner (if that is quite the word in the circs) in this whole bloody existential cosmos-thingie will be, yes, you guessed, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  You see, in any closed system it is vital to inject energy into it otherwise everything just gets colder and slower until in the end everything just stops!  This injection of energy comes in via the medium of 'work' which, of course, requires energy.  But as energy is constantly leaking its heat to ever-increasing cold then you can see the truth in dear old Keynes' melancholy prognostication that 'in the long run we're all dead'!  Yes, thanks for that, Maynard, old chap, 'it was being so cheerful as kept you so young', I suppose.  Anyway, we all know that our own bodies are kept going by injections of energy mostly via food but we also realise, but try to ignore the fact, that in the end our body system decays faster than we can energise it - and we end up cold, as in dead cold!  And, that, according to the swots, is the fate that awaits the entire universe. 

I had the proof of it today.  You see, when the 'Memsahib' came out of hospital and required non-stop care and attention whilst I ran Chateaux Duff single-handed, I threw myself into it with terrific energy which lasted, I dunno, two or three days but, dammit, I couldn't keep it going, not just because I'm an idle, layabout husband used to being waited on hand and foot, although there is an element of truth in that, but because it's all SO BLOODY BORING! Concentrating on exactly which vegetables we need for supper in three days time is the mental equivalent of reading Karl Marx.  One's mind does not so much freeze up as skitter about madly trying to think of something, anything, that would break the eye-stabbing tediousness of deciding between leeks or cabbage!  I even began to listen to endless reports on the Scottish referendum because, on the whole and taken in the round, it was fractionally more interesting!

Well, you can guess the rest.  Let me just put it this way, the injection of energy into Chateaux Duff fell off after the first burst of enthusiasm and consequently, and in accordance with the Second Law, the amount of chaos increased exponentially and by this morning it looked as though everything was grinding to a halt.  Galvanised, I have spent the entire day 'injecting energy by means of work' here, there and everywhere.  I will not list all the tasks that I have accomplished today, suffice to say that I would have cleaned those Augean stables twice as fast as that Hercules bloke!

Anyway, as you have probably already realised this is the longest, waffliest load of old blx pretending to be an excuse for not having posted anything on theblog today.  Sorry and all that but I'm knacked and I'm off to bed.

 

 

Philosophy for Dimwits 101: Well, like, it all depends how you look at it

Yes, I know, my title is hardly an original thought - you don't get a lot of that here! -  but as I intimated in my previous post, there is a genuine difficulty in differentiating between the particular and the general.  My example from yesterday based on so-called 'national characteristics' was, I think, a very good one.  There is excellent evidence to support the idea and I can provide one very good example - the Prussian way of war.  The geography of the north German plain is best summed up in the memorable phrase - 'it's as flat as a witch's tit'!  From the earliest of times that meant the German tribes who existed there were under constant threat from their neighbours because there were simply no natural defences like large rivers or mountains.  Consequently, those early tribesmen learned that the best form of defence was attack.  This became deeply engrained in the national psyche and was re-enforced over the ages by the unchanging geography of the place, such that, at the beginning of the 19th century Gen. von Scharnhorst spelled it out in exact words:

Prussia should never conduct a defensive war, her geographical position and her lack of natural and artificial means of defence do not allow that option.

A century later, Gen von Schlieffen, operating under the same zeitgeist, worked out his (in)famous plan in which he intended to attack the French and destroy their entire army in six weeks despite the fact that it was becoming increasingly clear that modern weapons made fighting a defensive war much easier than an aggressive one.  But all of that is, so to speak, looking down on matters from a great historical height.  Go down to ground level and pay a visit to Germany and you tend to find polite, friendly and civil people who would hesitate to say 'boo' to a goose.  Apparently, even their demonstrators obey traffic regulations!

And all this disparity between the general and the particular takes me to another 'German' (well, actually, he was Austrian but what the hell!), Ludwig Boltzmann.  He was the major swot who realised that in order to understand the nature of gases it was impossible to follow the trajectories and behaviours of each and every molecule or atom.  Instead, you had to average them out in order to draw certain conclusions.  Thus the question is left hanging, what, exactly and precisely, is the true nature of a gas, its individual atoms or the average of their behaviours?

It is around about this time in my occasional ponderings on the matter that my head begins to hurt and I require some 'Scottish medicine' - and, oh my God, what will that cost in the future if the Jocks walk?  Now that's what I call a real problem!  Mind you, thanks to 'JK' there's always the product of Barney Magroo's still to fall back on - and I do mean 'fall'!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 7.9.14

Hollande will be 'gummed' alive by the 'sansdents':   I don't know if François Hollande intends to run again for the presidency when his current term runs out but my advice would be to go into exile!  We all know what the sans-culottes did to their leaders back in the 19th century and their successors today, the 'sansdents' ('the toothless'), the poor people of France so described by their president whom they foolishly believed loved and cared for and about them will take every opportunity to have their revenge.  His former lover has well and truly blown his hypocritical cover and for this Mde. Trierweiler deserves the  Legion of Honour.  I am prepared to pin it to her breast myself if I can stop my hands trembling!  Summary at The Telegraph.

 

 

An 'ice-bucket' treatment for you all:    "Febrile"!  I do love that word, it's so onomatopoeic - and I love that word, too, but I'm not going to explain it to you, look it up yourselves and have your answers on my desk by Monday morning or else!  Were was I?  Oh yes, 'febrile', you can almost feel the vibration in it, can't you?, and Dan Hodges in The Telegraph uses it to describe one end of the atmospheric spectrum in parliament which regularly switches to and from febrile to becalmed and back again.  At the moment all is excitement as the world and his uncle assume that following Douglas Carswell's desertion to UKIP and the imminent by-election in Clacton then 'Dim Dave' and the Tory party are doomed.  Not so, avers Mr. Hodges, in an article which will be a sweet melody to those in Downing Street who have heard nothing but the sombre beat of the funeral march for the past week or so.  A mere storm in a Westminster teacup, says Mr. Hodges, none of the fundamentals has altered and,he reminds us, the vast majority of the electorate wouldn't recognise Mr. Carswell if they tripped over him, and UKIP are still at 14% in the polls, the same as they were in the early Summer.  To paraphrase Cpl. Jones, 'Don't panic, Capt. Cameron'!'

 

Hurrah - she returns!   Yes, indeed, 'SoD' and I are off to Shepton this afternoon to collect 'Peg the Leg', I mean, the 'Memsahib'.  I shall have to mind my manners though because I remember from the last time that she was quite nifty with a swipe from her crutches if I stepped out of line.  Alas, not being a theist I do not know whom to offer a prayer of thanks to for the 'miracle' of modern medical science.  I think I'll follow crafty old Shakespeare in King Lear who in that play carefully referred to the "gods" in the plural to avoid any suspicions by the religious 'thought police' of his time.  So, praise be to the gods!

 

Sorry, sorry, sorry:    Memsahib in bed beign waited onhand and foot, 'SoD' slaving away in the kitchen producing meals and me up and downstairs with trays, so sorry again, but no more rumbles tonight.

 

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 31.8.14

Shockin', shockin'!   Poor George Galloway, attacked in the street by some demented oaf who appears to have taken umbrage at George's virulent anti-Israel remarks.  Poor George's jaw was broken and I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked . . . er, but, of course, that means poor George will not be able to speak for some time.  Ah well, it's an ill-wind that doesn't, so to speak, blow someone's hat into the river and give us all a laugh!

 

There's usually more to a story than the headlines:   Which is why I have delayed in remarking on the case little Ashya King (5) who was taken from a British hospital by his parents who drove him to Spain where they have connections.  Ashya suffers with a brain tumour and because the parents are Jehovah Witnesses original reports hinted darkly that the parents were refusing medical treatment for their son.  Actually, JWs only object to blood transfusions.  Now it transpires that what the parents wanted was a particular ray treatment that is unavailable under our NHS - "the envy of the world"!  The parents believed that the treatment insisted on by the NHS medics would cause severe collateral damage where-as the ray treatment would not.  The father objected and apparently gained the distinct impression that if he complained again the authorities would seek a protection order which would ban the parents from the hospital.  He did a runner taking his wife and son with him and made for Marbella in Spain where he owns property and the boy is now in a Spanish hospital.  He and his wife are under arrest at the behest of the British police.  There are all sorts of stereotypes who might (or might not) fit into this story - religious fanatics denying science, bumptious 'I know best what's best for you' doctors so don't argue with me, 'Nurse Ratchett'-type hospital administrators . . . and so on.  It's too early to say for sure but whatever, I do wish little Fashya all the very best.

 

Would you buy a used Nobel Peace Prize from this man?  

 

Al Gore

 

A polar bear

 

His 'prophetic' words according to today's Daily Mail:

‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff. It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’

They were actually spoken seven years ago when he picked up his totally undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.  So then, Al baby, how did your prophesy work out? 

The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres. 

This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph, right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent. 

Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.

So, not too good then, Al Baby, better stick to all your investments in windmills and solar panels which, with the help of big fat Federal and State subsidies, makes you the 'gazillionaire' you are today.  Er, but don't ring us, we'll ring you!

 

Carswell puts me in a 'shilly-shally' mode:   Or perhaps a 'shall I, shan't I?' mode is a better description.  What I mean is that Douglas Carswell's defection from the Tories to UKIP has, like "a hanging in the morning", 'concentrated my mind wonderfully'!  I am now certain that Carswell believes on the evidence of his experience with those in and around the Tory leadership that whatever Cameron does or does not achieve in his 'negotiations' with the EU, he will never lead a campaign to get us out.  That is something I have suspected for some time but because I trust Carswell's judgment I now know it.  Thus, my previous decision to vote UKIP for the European elections and Tory for the general election is now under review!  I will expand on what passes for my reasoning in a full post next week.

 

"The banality of evil":   That phrase, first conjured by Hannah Arendt, has always struck me as being deadly accurate although, on looking up 'banal' in my OED it says "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring".  Well, most evil is exactly that but there are some examples which are the exact opposite.

The story of this young man is told by Spiegel and incorporates both the banality and the mouth-dropping incredularity of evil.  Warning: it will likely ruin your day!

 

"Ten Little Niggers" in 'Yerdie-durble':   Damn!  BBC4 let me down last night.  About the only TV viewing I look forward to are the foreign murder series shown on BBC4 on Saturday nights.  After a long, tedious Summer, they kicked off their Autumn schedule last night with 'Crimes of Fashion' set in 1950s Sweden on a remote and inaccessible island.  A collection of friends, lovers and aquaintances have gathered and one by one they get bumped off.  Obviously loosely based on Agatha Christie's classic which recently had to be renamed "Ten Little Indians" and was then changed yet again to "And Then There Were None".  Alas, with so many different characters and not being able to read the sub-titles at speed I soon lost the plot, or, to be precise, I couldn't work out who was who.  After watching them all for an hour I decided I didn't much care who they were.  Big Fail, my 'Yerdie-durble' friends - and BBC4 - must do better!

 

No more rumbles

 

  

 

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In which I indulge in some hero worship

Here's a simple question - not!  Who wrote this:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures [my emphasis], what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Yes, you are right, a swot, but a truly great swot and a man I have admired enormously since I first came across him in the early '80s - Richard Feynman.  It was just before that time that my insatiable curiosity was hooked by the 'fantastical' - well, they were 'fantastical' to just about everyone including the swots! - notions of quantum mechanics.  Thank God, there were, and still are, excellent writers who are able take the ignorant by the hand and lead them gently at least part of the way into the magical mystery land that exists below the level of the atom.  I stress that one can only go so far unless, that is, you can 'speak' mathematics.  Without maths you can only grasp the outline but that is enough to blow your mind away in such a fashion that you will never look at the world in the same way again.

I can't recall the details of the programme I watched but in essence it was Feynman explaining these wonders in a totally relaxed, not to say downright easy-going manner in which all the hideous complexities (well, some of them) were clarified.  Later I bought and read James Gleick's biography of him, Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics.  This showed the mischievous, gambling, womanising, drum-playing Feynman as well as the brilliant scientist and the loving husband who was widowed far too early in his life.

Anyway, the point of all this waffle is to tell you that friends and colleagues of Feynman have brought together all of his lectures given at Caltech University  back in the '60s and published them on the internet.  I have saved them and I will, I promise, try and nibble at them bit by bit although whether or not I live long enough to finish them is moot!  And how much I will understand is even 'mooter'!

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

 

The explanation for Prof. Michael Mann's peculiar walk

Well, be honest, how would you walk if someone was slowly but steadily inserting a 'hockey stick' up your fundament?  Poor Prof. Mann is finding out the hard way because he has committed the great error of attempting to sue various publications including National Review.  But that error has been compounded doubly - nay, triply - by including the free-lance writer Mark Steyn.  As the Canadian authorities found out the hard way, Mr. Steyn is like the guy dressed in black leaning against the bar in a crowded western saloon - and someone spills his drink!  The silence is sudden and shocking and all breath is bated! Actually, the saloon empties rather fast but the spectators gather round the windows to watch.

In Canada it was some Islamic group that took exception to Mr. Steyn's, shall we say, lively style but he took them through the court system to the very top - and won outright!  Now Prof. Mann, the, er, inventor of the infamous 'hockey stick' which seeks to show that global temperatures ran smoothly though the millennium until the 20th century when it suddenly ticked up leaving the graph looking like a hockey stick lying on its back.  The 'Warmers' went crazy for it, I mean, it just looked so, so, right - and so simple that even the unscientific dimwits who make up, er, you and me, would be convinced that global warming was real and caused by the industrial effluent of 20th century factories.

Prof. Mann bestrode the warming globe like a colossus - up until the moment Mr. Steyn pointed out that not only was Prof. Mann not wearing any trousers, he had also forgotten to put on the red nose he deserved!  Even worse, according to Mr. Steyn, not only was the 'hockey stick' an invention but Prof. Mann was guilty of lying through his teeth whilst claiming, amongst other things, that he was a Nobel Prize laureate.  Cue: incoming writs from Prof. Mann aimed at the various publications concerned but also directly at Mr. Steyn.  Big Mistake!

Steyn has not only stood his ground, he has actually counter-sued Prof. Mann whom he accuses of abusing the legal system in order to drag the case out for so long that Steyn, who has to act on his own behalf, will give up.  Ain't gonna happen - go read the redoubtable Mr. Steyn and you will get the flavour of it all.  What a terrific film it will all make - except that Hollywood, being full of tree-hugging twats, will never go against a Leftie-Greenie agenda.  Incidentally, the only famous supporter Prof. Mann has attracted is, wait for it, Prof. Paul Krugman writing in one of his WaPo columns.  Alas, his commentary on the Mann case indicates that he knows no more about it than he knows about economics - for which he did actually win a Nobel Prize - I suspect the Scandinavian schnapps was cheap and therefore plentiful the year they voted for him!

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An atrocious benevolence?

I'm afraid it's another of those creepy co-incidence things - again!  Just a few days back, the navigator on the Enola Gay aircraft which delivered the A-bomb to Hiroshima died at the ripe old age of 93.  Today, of course, is the anniversary of the Nagasaki A-bomb which followed the one on Hiroshima three days earlier.  That war ended but the war between the historians - and their less qualified acolytes (that includes me!) - continues today with a vengeance.  I'm sorry to say that it includes a man I much admire, Don Boudreaux, 'proprietor' of the Cafe Hayek, who, just a few days ago, took an uncompromising - one might say 'passionate' - stand against the decision of Harry Truman to use these weapons of mass destruction.  Alas, he is wrong and the reason he is wrong is that the people he uses for sources of support are mostly American academics most of whom concentrate their efforts on who said what to whom, and who decided this or that - in Washington!  They seem to forget, or to ignore, that the absolutely key events to this drama took place in Japan - NOT America!

For as accurate a view of exactly what happened in Japan it is necessary to rely on a Japanese-born and Japanese-speaking historian capable of reading and carefully analysing what remained of the Japanese government's archives after great efforts had been made to destroy as much of them as possible before the American 'conquerors' arrrived.  Only from these remains and from individual diaries and testaments written by the main Japanese actors of the time can a reasonable judgment be made as to the comparative effect the A-bombs and the Rusian declaration of war made on the Japanese government.  And for that you need look no further than the work of Sadao Asada and his meticulous summary of evidence here:

http://www.mconway.net/page1/page15/files/Shock%20of%20Atomic%20Bomb.pdf

That piece of scholorship is well worth reading but if you wish to see him responding to criticism from another Japanese - but naturalised American! - author you can read both sides of the argument and judge for yourselves, here:

http://hnn.us/article/28318

In essence, Sadao tells us that there was indeed a 'peace party' inside the ruling cabal in Tokyo, in fact, the emperor himself was an early starter, coming to the conclusion that the war must end with some sort of peace deal as early as 1943.  However, he lacked the willpower to drive it through.  As time went on and Japanese losses rose, the 'peace party' grew inside the top levels of government but always they were stymied by the military, navy as well as army, leaders in the top level war cabinet.  Because of the peculiarities of the Japanese system there had to be unanimity before major decisions could be taken.

When the Hiroshima bomb fell the first re-action of the army was to deny that it was an atomic bomb!  Their own scientific experts had assured them that no country could produce such a weapon during a war and so when the realisation sank in it was an incredible shock.  Of course, when the Russians declared war and immediately invaded Manchuria that, too, was a shock but given that the Russian had been shifting hundreds of thousands of men and munitions to the east immediately Germany surrendered in May it was not a totally unexpected shock.  However, many post-war historians, especially those of, shall we say, a Left-wing bias, eager to puff up the importance of the Soviet effort, attempted to suggest that it was the Russian move that brought about the Japanese surrender.

The Japanese were shocked by the first bomb which they had never expected but the second one was an absolute clincher.  They simply didn't know how many bombs the Americans had and were now forced to assume the worst, that is, that the Americans could take their time and just nuke their way across the Japanese islands turning them into a wasteland.  However, and this is a bitter irony, it wasn't just the destructive power of the A-bombs that forced the military chiefs to concede defeat but - the fact that America had obviously won the scientific war!  Now, the mad, purblind generals and admirals had an excuse to surrender without losing face - so critical to oriental peoples.  Yes, they could say, we were defeated in the laboratories but not entirely on the battlefield!

To sum up, any suggestion that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria alone caused the Japanese to surrender is tosh!  Yes, it added to the general feeling of malaise that Japan was losing the war but it was the two American bombs that truly clinched the inescapable truth of what was to come, and by offering a scientific fig leaf to the Japanese military brought the war to an abrupt halt and avoided an American invasion of Japan in which, I venture to suggest, many, many more would have died than were killed at Hirsohima and Nagasaki.

 

 

'You wan' CO2, we got plen'y, velly cheap': Prime Minister of China

Well, perhaps not his exact words but they could be because along with all that dirt cheap gear they churn out by the zillion tons - and believe me, I love 'em for it - they also churn out CO2 which, according to the 'Greenies', means we're all set to fry as global temps go through the roof.  Here, from the always excellent WUWT, are some charts which show you exactly who the dummies are who believe the 'Greenies' alarmist claims that CO2 causes global warming, and who are the sensible ones who ignore it and refuse to add to their manufacturing costs:

Perhaps we should send Mr. Ed Davey, our current clown in charge of energy and climate change, over to China so that he can see for himself exactly who is producing ga-zillions of CO2.

 

Perhaps not, it's fairly obvious that he's a sandwich short of a picnic and he would just come back here and insist on even more windmills because, as he might put it, 'the Chinese are very, very naughty boys so we must try harder!'   Just how 'naughty' we really are may be judged from this graph:

 

 

 

Of course, were 'Dafty' Davey to accuse the Chinese of ramping up global warming through their massive CO2 emissions, they would reply, "Ying tong yiddle I po" (or something like that) which roughly translates as "What global warming, you long nose prat, there hasn't been any for at least 13 years and probably longer!" 

 

 

Let's all assist Lord Falconer to an early death!

Well why not?  He wants to assist us to die by allowing creepy, swivel-eyed 'doctors' to 'off us' if we say, as we all do from time to time, that we're fed up and enough is enough, or if our relatives shout loud enough that they just know that poor old gran'dad really doesn't want to live any more.  And anyway, why shouldn't we help 'Fatty' Falconer to an early exit?  His efforts in government with his old buddy Blair were mostly a complete waste of oxygen and this idea which he is pushing through the Lords is a disaster hurtling towards us all.

Prof. Theo Boer, unlike 'Fatty' Falconer, actually knows where-of he speaks because he, as a Dutchman, was a tremendous supporter of euthanasia when the idea was pushed forward in Holland twelve years ago.  The Professor poo-poohed his opponents when they warned that allowing doctors to help patients to commit suicide would open the floodgates on the numbers of such killings.  They were right and he was wrong, as he now admits with genuine shame because the number of such deaths doubled in twelve years.  In neighbouring Belgium thay are about to pass a law that will allow doctors to assist children in suicide!  As Prof. Boer puts it in The Daily Mail:

In 2001 The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia and, along with it, assisted suicide. Various ‘safeguards’ were put in place to show who should qualify and doctors acting in accordance with these ‘safeguards’ would not be prosecuted. Because each case is unique, five regional review committees were installed to assess every case and to decide whether it complied with the law. For five years after the law became effective, such physician-induced deaths remained level - and even fell in some years. In 2007 I wrote that ‘there doesn’t need to be a slippery slope when it comes to euthanasia. A good euthanasia law, in combination with the euthanasia review procedure, provides the warrants for a stable and relatively low number of euthanasia.’ Most of my colleagues drew the same conclusion.

But we were wrong - terribly wrong, in fact. In hindsight, the stabilisation in the numbers was just a temporary pause. Beginning in 2008, the numbers of these deaths show an increase of 15% annually, year after year. The annual report of the committees for 2012 recorded 4,188 cases (compared with 1,882 in 2002). 2013 saw a continuation of this trend and I expect the 6,000 line to be crossed this year or the next. Euthanasia is on the way to become a ‘default’ mode of dying for cancer patients.

Remember the likes of David Steel and sundry other pro-abortionists who absolutely assured us all that, no, no, there would be no mass killings of unwanted babies if doctors were allowed to conduct abortions.  Today, in this country, we kill nearly 200,000 unwanted babies a year.

Be afraid!  Be very afraid!

 

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DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Are we on the verge of a deadly mistake?

Oh no, I've actually book-marked 'The Staggers'!

Being, as you will have already judged, somewhat to the political Right of Ghenghis Khan you will wonder if it is an attack of advanced and galloping infantilism that has made me book-mark The New Statesmen site.  As you all know, the average age of the readers of the 'Staggers' is 171/2 and that of its writers around 231/4.  This is not surprising because belief in the religion of socialism is usually confined to the very young or the incurably stupid elderly.  Happily, most of us grow out of it.

And yet . . .  and yet . . . that wonderful site, Arts & Letters Daily, pointed me towards an essay by Simon Heffer, a man who on the whole makes me look like a bit of a 'pinko', on the subject of the historiography of the First World War which has been published by the 'Staggers'.  Hard to believe Heffer is in such Leftie company, I know, but it's a terrific read.  The only slightly embarrassing thing - well, I don't embarrass easily! - is that his summary of the very many histories written on this complex subject made me uneasily aware of my ignorance despite the bravado with which I proffer opinions on this blog.  Still, none of you regulars ever pay any attention to my opinions anyway so it doesn't really matter.

And talking of ignorance, nowhere outside of knitting and mending broken domestic devices (ask the 'Memsahib'!), am I more ignorant than on the subject of quantum physics, and this despite the fact that I was hooked on the subject back in the mid-eighties and since then I have read numerous books on the subject.  Dammit, I even attended a lecture on the subject at Oxford given by some super-swot who looked about 14-years old! 

Even so, certain curiosities stuck like, for example, the fact that you can 'capture' a couple of photon 'twins', that is, tiny particles of light energy which are 'twinned' in the sense that they share particular physical characteristics such as 'spin' (not 'spin' as you  and I understand it but similar-ish).  You can separate these 'twins' by sending one hurtling off into space, obviously as it is a light particle, at the speed of light which is absolutely and definitely as fast as you can go in this universe of ours.  So far, so what, but the fascinating thing is that if you alter the spin on the particle here on earth it will alter the spin on its 'twin' that is already several zillion light years away!

This cosmic connection can’t involve any signals passing between them: it would have to be quicker than light. The only explanation is that photons inhabit a reality beyond the space and time in which we live out our existence.

So writes Michael Brooks, a science writer who contributes to the 'Staggers' and his brief but fascinating essay is also worth a read.

So, my recommendation to you all is to book-mark the 'Staggers' but avoid reading their political stuff, especially if you are in the middle of drinking tea or coffee - it could ruin your keyboard!

 

A perfect lab test - the Falkland Islands

So today sees the launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth II, the largest aircraft carrier ever to see service in the Royal Navy even if you could probably fit three of them inside an American carrier.  Allegedly, there is a second one to follow and with tears (of pain not patriotism!) glistening in my eyes I can tell you that together they will cost around £6.2 billion!  However, with the sort of political and strategic leadership that we have all grown to despair of, it seems that the second one will be moth-balled because we can't afford to fill the tank or something.  Even with those two British behemeths added to the punting party which constitutes the Royal Navy these days, we still have more admirals than ships.  Even so, none of them appear to possess more than 3.07 brains cells!

OK, OK, as an ex-corporal I admit that my knowledge of naval matters is limited but even so I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that these floating castles are as out of date as land castles.  The only justification for aircraft carriers is to aid the projection of your power  round the globe.  Yeeeeeees, quite, what power?  And what good will one operational aircraft carrier be when you consider its vulnerability in a modern age where some 15-year-old geek in his bedroom can close down computer systems at the press of a button, or, a missile (or multiple missiles) can hurtle in from space?  As always, our admirals are intent on fighting the last war.

Of course, what they should be concentrating on is how they will defend these Islands against attack and in that scenario an aircraft carrier is a waste of space.  What is needed is superb e-warfare measures and counter-measures.  And I do mean the very best that our brainiest IT swots can come up with.  In addition, we do not need big ships, we need lots and lots of little ships but all of them packed with anti-missile missiles - how many small missile ships could have been built for £6.2 billion?  Their anti-missile defence systems deployed well out to sea would act as the first line of defence and be integrated into our land-based systems.  This should provide as good a defence as possible against any enemy attempting a missile/drone/aircraft attack on this country.

And as it happens, we have an excellent site for testing these tactics - the Falkland Islands.  There is no possibility these days of us emulating Maggie's crusade, we simply haven't the means.  But we could institute the sort of defence system I have described above on and around the Falklands which should be able to stop any 'Argie' force long before it even reaches the Islands.  The lesssons learned from that would be invaluable in planning the defence of Britain.

 

Beach reads #2

Some more recommendations to accompany you as you jet off to the Caribbean, or Mauritius, or perhaps Clacton-on-Sea for your hols!  I have just finished A Delicate Truth by John le Carré and it is quietly, discretely, carefully, utterly compelling.  I gained an impression that after the great run of classic MI6 novels he rather lost the plot, by which I mean to say that his characters raised little or no interest with me, the reader.  However, just recently, by which I mean the last decade or so, he has returned to superb form and this book is a corker. 

Le Carré has always been an idealist, a writer who loves to create what I would call 'moral heroes', that is, men and women who might be flawed but who, nevertheless, recognise good from evil and who are prepred to sacrifice themselves in their efforts to wrest good from evil.  This book epitomises that struggle.  It is a very old-fashioned concept, emphasised, I suspect, by those, like him, who lived during the war.  It went out of fashion as the 'Me, Me, Me' generation took over in the '60s and '70s.  I am quietly pleased that judging by le Carré's recent successes it might be coming back.

My other recommendation is for a book which I have not yet finished!  I took it on holiday but became so engrossed in a couple of others that I barely started it.  Since my return I have it next to my armchair and dip into it from time to time because for an unscientific dummy like me it is invaluable.  It is called A Little History of Science by Willian Bynum and, so to speak, it does what it says on the cover.  And, moreover, it does it in 'non-swot' language understood even by me.  Rather like life itself, this book describes the incredible increase not just in knowledge but in the rate at which knowledge has been learned.  In the last 200 years we must have learned a thousand times more than we learned in the previous three thousand years.  An excellent book and it will impress the little tottie in the bikini who sits opposite you at the poolside!

 

When and why did Islam get shut in the deep freeze?

My previous post reminded me of something, to be precise the question in my title, that has been rattling around in the back of my mind like a pebble in my shoe and which, irritatingly, will not go away. Don't feel sorry for me because, of course, it is my own laziness that has stopped me from seeking an answer.  Anyway and apropos my previous post, there must be a reason, or probably several, why Islam has barely changed over the centuries in the way that Christianity has.  Together, both religions entered what is generally called the 'Dark Ages' but on the backs of a handful of truly great thinkers both began to enter the very early Renaissance.  For example, for centuries Islam ruled in much of Spain and their societies were open and tolerant.  Islamic thinkers added to the general knowledge of science and mathematics, and their craftsmen created works of art in architecture and design as you can see from these photos of parts of the 14th century Alcazar Palace in Seville, a place not to be missed if you are nearby on your summer holidays.

 

So when and where and why did it all go wrong?  I do understand, and even sympathise to a degree, why they are so frenetic in their desperate resistance to the inexorable advance of social, political and religious mores that are hateful to them but still the question remains, when and where and why did they get stuck in stasis?

 

"Grenade rolling around the room with the pin out"

My title is taken from the heading to an e-mail sent to me by 'SoD'.  By Jove, that 'boy' has a capacity for a marvellous turn of phrase, I wonder where he got it from?  Attached was a straightforward link to a book review by Ed West at The Coffee House which in turn is entitled "Darwin's unexploded bomb".  Given the contents of the book, neither title is over-fanciful.

The book in question - and, boy, is it going to be questioned! - is by the British-born science editor of the New York Times, Nicholas Wade, and it is called A Troublesome Inheritance.  That is the understatement of the year!  In essence, Wade is telling us that all the latest scientific evidence points inescapably to the fact that in evolutionary terms race does matter!  You may read the review - or better still, the book - for yourself and judge but I am delighted to have one of my own racial 'prejudices' confirmed:

It is obviously understandable why Jewish intelligence and success, the subject of extreme and violent jealousies through the ages, makes people nervous. But the outsized contribution of Jews to almost all fields must surely interest all but the dullest of minds: just 0.2 per cent of the world population, Jews accounted for 29 per cent of Nobel Prizes in the late 20^th century, and 32 per cent so far in 21st century. That tiny, remarkable country Israel recently won its fifth Chemistry Prize in a decade.

One can admire Jewish culture and the Jewish work ethic, but the idea that this enormous level of achievement is purely cultural, while possible, certainly does not pass the Occam’s razor test. As Wade says, ‘People are highly imitative, and if the Jewish advantage were purely cultural, such as hectoring mothers or a special devotion to education, there would be little to prevent others from copying it.’ They haven’t.

Only the other day I mentioned my regret at not owning (at least, as far as I know) a drop of Jewish blood but at least now I know why I'm not (quite!) the genius I sincerely believe I should be!  The moronic Left and Right will seize this book for, respectively, attack and defence.  But, as any good, intelligent, Jewish boy will tell you, in the end scientific evidence will out!

 ADDITIONAL:  Well, it didn't take long for the grenade to explode as my e-pal 'Whitewall' informs us in the comment thread below which is confirmed by The Daily Caller.  Mr. Nicholas Wade, a 30-year employee of the NYT is now, in 'Pythonese', an ex-employee of the NYT!  The row of bare arses you see sticking up before you is the editorial board of the NYT sticking their heads in the sand, a position they find very comfortable!

 

And lo, I have seen the future and it's scary!

I seem to be repeating myself today - sorry, did you say something? - but this blog is always so far ahead of the news that long after I have raised a subject it finally appears elsewhere.  I mentioned before, but Lord knows where, the coming 'printer' revolution in which these giant 'printer-thingies' will take over the world.  Here I give you an early example:

That is a house, 33 foot wide by 22 foot tall, and it was produced by a 'printer'.  This particular 'printer' can produce ten of those houses a day!  Yes, it's not exactly a mansion but if your normal dwelling is made of discarded sheets of tin and tyres and cardboard, it's a huge improvement.  This was made in China so you can expect several trillion more by the end of the month!  Meanwhile, in America some boffins reckon they can develop a 'printer' that will produce something like this at the rate of one a day!

The ramifications that will arise from this new technique are so overwhelmingly enormous and complex that the mind, well, my mind anyway, simply boggles.  As usual with new technology, some people will suffer direly, particularly all those zillions worldwide who earn their living in the building industry.  However, again as usual, zillions² will benefit.

I am obliged to Mish's Trend Analysis and IHTM for pointing me in the right direction.

 

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Am I really totally useless?

Well, the 'Memsahib' thinks so, for most of the time, at any rate.  And it's true that for a great many of the mundane tasks that are required to get through "this vale of tears" I am, to all intents and purposes, useless!  But surely, I ask myself desperately, I must be good for something, beyond, that is, entertaining two or three hundred people for 0.75 of a minute per person per day when they visit this blog?  Alas, I fear not, at least, according to a book review by John Derbyshire in the Feb edition of Taki's Magazine.

He has been reading on of those futurist books, you know, the ones that mimic Pte. Fraser's favourite line in Dad's Army, "We're doomed, I tell yee, we're all doomed!"  This one is called The Second Machine Age by a pair of clever clogs called Brynjolfsson and McAfee.  They reckon that virtually all the jobs in the world will soon be done by robots and computers. As Derbyshire describes it:

So what’s it all about? The Second Machine Age is an addition to the growing pile of books about the vanishing middle class, books such as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Tyler Cowen’s Average is Over. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s the message: Great swaths of the pen-pushing middle classes are about to lose their jobs to smart machines.

Of course, there may well be working space left for the smart arses, like 'SoD' (Son of Duff), who understand all this binary jiggery-pokery but for the rest of you pen-pushers, sorry and all that but it's curtains!

Brynjolfsson and McAfee did a New York Times op-ed after their original e-book came out, and it’s accompanied by a striking graph. The graph shows private employment and productivity since 1947. The two curves rise together until the year 2000. Then the productivity curve keeps on rising, but the employment curve flattens out. The authors call this a “decoupling.” There is no reason to think there will be a re-coupling, ever.

Yes, folks, it’s official: The future—the quite near future—will have less and less use for human workers. Software or gadgets will do the tasks that millions of people now do for modest middle-class salaries. The software and gadgets’ creators will get tremendously rich without employing many people. WhatsApp, whose entire payroll headcount seems barely to have made it into two digits, sold for $19 billion.

But, hang on a min, if this is right who is going to do all the consuming?  I mean, it's no good producing all this stuff if no-one can consume it because they're out of work and broke!  Now, I began this by asking if I really was totally useless and the answer is absolutely not because there is one thing I am damn good at - consuming!  Show me the modern equivalent of 'baubles, bangles and beads', and I instantly want to 'consume' them.  Even worse, or 'better' if you are a producer of 'bs, bs and bs', is that I regularly throw them away.  I am The Ultimate Customer! 

So, without me and my ilk (and that means you, you, and you hiding over there) the clever-clogs might just as well chuck their robots on (or order them to march to) the dump and then we can emulate that hero of the working class, Yosser Harris, as we demand "Gissa job!"  Either that, or, better still, the handfull of Zuckerberg GA-zillionaires will have to be taxed up to their eye-balls and the dosh given back to us so that we can become full-time consumers again - without having to do any work!

"Oh brave new world!"

 

Damn! Just missed yet another qualification!

As you will have gathered, or guessed, if you are a regular reader of this blog, I am not exactly over-endowed - no, no, I don't mean that - behave! - I mean that I am not over-endowed with qualifications.  Five fairly soft 'O'-levels and, er, that's it, really!  Mind you, I did qualify as a morse code operator in the army, albeit, possibly the slowest they ever had, so slow, in fact, that they were considering the re-introduction of homing pigeons!  Later on, in another branch of the army I also qualified as a touch typist and, well, you can judge how well that lasted by the number of typos I produce - per sentence.  So, all in all, not a very distinguished cv.

So it was with hope and expectation that I read a piece in The Telegraph by Tom Chivers who reports that some psychobabbler has produced a test which if you pass will qualify you as a psychopath.  Well, when you are as bereft of qualifications as me, anything will do, frankly.

At heart, Hare’s test is simple: a list of 20 criteria, each given a score of 0
(if it doesn’t apply to the person), 1 (if it partially applies) or 2 (if it
fully applies). The list in full is: glibness and superficial charm, grandiose
sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse,
emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept
responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack
of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural
control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal
versatility, a history of “revocation of conditional release” (ie broken
parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behaviour. A pure,
prototypical psychopath would score 40. A score of 30 or more qualifies for a
diagnosis of psychopathy.

To begin with I was flying high - glibness and superficial charm, grandiose
sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse,
emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept
responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack
of realistic long-term goals - yep, all of that, no probs.  But, alas, I failed on impulsivity on account of my tendency to boredom.  Mind you, I came back strong on lack of behavioural control, although to be fair that's only when I'm on my third dry martini.  My juvenile bad behaviour was only distinguished by never having been caught and thus, never having been locked up, I couldn't be judged for breaking parole.  Regretfully I lost out on promiscuous sexual behaviour though it wasn't for lack of trying, and as for muliple marriages - what, do you think I'm mad or something?  One's hard enough!

So, despite the fact that sometimes you might detect flecks of foam on your screen as you read this blog I can assure you that I am definitely not a psychopath - although I do know where you live!

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 30.3.14

"The most dangerous man you've never heard of": Not my words but those of 'Dellors' writing in The Telegraph describing Lord Pillock Stern, a former civil servant who, prior to his laughable 'report' on the economic effects of climate change, had  "never published before on the economics of energy, environment or climate". Not my words but those of Richard Tol, a professor of the economics of climate change who has just asked his name to be removed from the forthcoming IPCC agitprop report on account of its inaccuracy.  Summing up his opinion of the Stern report he wrote, "Its academic value is zero."  And yet the chumps who run the world, well, some of them anyway, have spent zillions of our money in vain attempts to to deal with the non-existent problems that Lord Stern forecast.  Why does anyone pay the slightest heed to these dim-witted poltroons?

 

'Spring has sprung, the grass has riz ...':  Which means - groan, groan - that next week I must get out and cut my bit of the churchyard grass.  With all the rain and now the sunshine - and, no, I'm not c0mplaining - the grass is nearly as "high as an elephant's eye".  Yet again, as I do every year, I bemoan the fact that I forgot that primary but unwritten rule you learn very fast in the army - never, ever, volunteer!

 

 

'Rasher of the Yard' - R.I.P:  I have this book, you see, called rather wittily "Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer" which is a summary of Telegraph obits over the years with just one person featured for every day of the year.  In an idle moment I wondered who was today's entrant and it turned out to be Sir Ranulph Bacon, former deputy commissioner at Scotland Yard who died on the 30th March 1988.  Known to intimates on both sides of the law as 'Rasher of the Yard' - natch! - he was very definitely 'old school', urging the public, as he did controversially, to 'have a go' when they saw a crime taking place.  And as he told a crime conference, "A shotgun is part of the adult Englishman's equipment'.  I wonder if he ever considered emigrating to Arkansas?  I think he might have done very well there!

 

How to annoy the French: I have another silly book called "1,000 Years of Annoying the French" by Stephen Clarke.  It is not the sort of book you would read fromcover to cover but it is worth dipping into during idle moments.  For example, this morning I learn, with a frisson d'excitation, that those two culinary inventions so dearly beloved of our Gallic neighbours as being quintessentially French, la baguette and la croissante, were actually the invention of two different Austrian bakers.  Quelle horreur!

 

'California, here I go':  It almost defies belief but California which, if memory serves as far back as the '70s/'80s, was once ranked as about the 8th richest political entity in the world, in other words, as a single state of the Union it was richer than most countries.  Today, according to Peter Hannaford at The American Spectator, it is well on the way to following Detroit down the plughole:

California’s economy continues to head south. The highest state corporate tax rates, sales and gasoline taxes in the country, combined with a heavy regulatory burden, continue to drive business away. Charles Schwab, the San Francisco-based stock broker, announced recently that “a significant number” of its 2,700 locally based jobs would be moved out of state. Oil giant Chevron is moving 800 jobs to Texas. Campbell Soup is closing its Sacramento plant and moving its 700 jobs to other states. Boeing is closing its big jet assembly plant in Southern California and laying off 3,000 workers. Bayer, instead of making a new drug in its Berkeley plant, is going to do it in Germany, eliminating 500 new jobs — on top of the 450 it shifted from Berkeley to Europe two years ago. 

Chief Executive magazine does an annual survey of 650 corporate chief executives throughout the nation. It asks them to rate the states based upon taxation, regulation, environment, and the quality of living for workers. For 2013, California ranked 50^th — dead last — for the eighth year in a row. 

What evils socialism can inflict on the unwary, and yet still people vote for it.

 

Kissing in public: I had better start by making the statutory declaration, to wit, I am not homophobic, most of the homosexuals I know I prefer as company to a lot of heterosexuals I know.  Also, I have long advocated that homosexual relationships should be recognised in law by civil partnership arrangements.  I don't approve of 'marriage' between them, not for any ethical reason but simply because marriage has meant one thing, and one thing only, for millenia and being of a conservative bent - oi! I do the jokes round here! - I do not see any reason to change it.  However, that said, I do wish they wouldn't kiss each other.  Don't ask me why, it just makes me grimace.  Mind you, I don't much care for men and women kissing in public, either.  I don't mind a quick peck of the sort bestowed by husband on wife prior to hopping on the 7.30 train to London, but those 'deep throat' efforts in which you fear for the life of one or either of them are deeply unpleasant to look at.  Of course, being an A1 humbug of the first water, I think I could manage to look at two young, pretty lesbians sealing their vows, so to speak, with a five minute long snog but, alas, in nearly every photo I see in the press featuring a lesbian marriage, one of them is gorgeous whilst the other looks like a retired lorry driver! 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the next Prime Minister: Er, well, perhaps not the next but maybe very soon:

 

 Mr. Sajid Javid MP who is the subject of an admiring piece by Fraser Nelson over at The Coffee House and an equally admiring article in today's Mail.  He strikes me as admirably well-qualified in that he is absolutely and definitely not part of the metropolitan mildew which has spent its entire life growing in and around SW1.  He has a rich - and I don't mean the dosh he earned the hard way - background which began from a very humble beginning.  He is a great admirer of another outsider from humble origins who made it to the top - that woman!  Of course, we need to know more but he shows promise.

 

No more rumbles today - see you all tomorrow

 

 

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Should Prof. Lewandowsky consider the second-hand car trade for a living?

For those unfamiliar with the name of Prof. Stephan Lewandowsky, late of the University of Western Australia (UWA) and currently with Bristol University - just up the road from me, perhaps I ought to pay him a visit - he is a 'psycho-babbler' in cognitive psychology at the School of Experimental Psychology.  He is also a mouth-foaming 'warmer' - amongst other things, as we shall see, but first I wish to express my thanks to my e-pal A K Haart who first tipped me off to the developing story and, yet again, to Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit who at vast trouble (and expense, I guess) has conducted a forensic investigation into Prof. Lewandowsky's behaviour at the UWA.  To be fair, which I am not inclined to be in this instance, it is the ethical authorities at the UWA who should now face intense interrogation. 

In essence (and you can read the whole thing in detail on McIntyre's site), 'Light-foot Lew', as I shall call him, arranged with his university ethics authorities a plan to undertake some esoteric research:

[...] under which pedestrians in Perth were interviewed about their “understanding of  statistical trends in time series data”. The original ethics application included an ethics checklist, which, according to Australian policy, included the following question whether the research involved any deception or concealment: “Does the research involve active concealment of information from participants and/or planned deception of participants”. To which Lewandowsky answered “NO”.

But by August 2010, 'Light-foot Lew' had lost interest and wanted to undertake another investigation to prove his suspicion/prejudice (you choose) that global warming sceptics were conspiracy theorists.  Having obtained permission from the UWA ethics authorities to keep certain information back from those being questioned, he simply used the permit already provided for the former 'research'.  However, in addition, he slipped in his requirement that his own name be kept of the questionaires which were to be addressed to various AGW sceptic sites because, of course, his name would have instantly been recognised and raised questions with his targets.

In due course his paper was published which more or less accused sceptics of being swivel-eyed conspiracy theorists but a follow-up paper published in a 'scientific' magazine, Frontiers in Psychology, was subsequently withdrawn when doubts were cast as to its probity and complaints were made to the UWA ethics authorities.  In an amazingly short time the UWA issued an absolutely clean bill of health not only on the 'research' paper but also on 'Light-foot Lew', himself.  All is well, they said, nothing to see here, move along!

But by now McIntyre had his fangs firmly locked into the seat of Lew's pants.  He has now discovered that a good part of the clearance of all complaints and suspicions issued by the UWA were - wait for it! - written by 'Light-foot Lew', himself!   I suppose the only good thing to come out of this as far as 'Lew' is concerned is that this particular sceptic is now a confirmed conspiracy theorist, and having read the details of his machinations you can hardly blame me!

 

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