Which Are You?

Unseen Cause of Global Warming

Please don't get me wrong, I'm all for clean energy and protecting the environment but not at the expense of sane, rational, clear thinking. But the hype that surrounds the "Global Warming" bandwagon makes me deeply suspicious.

Perhaps its because I'm old enough to remember the hype around "Global Cooling" in the 1970s that led to the banning of CFCs. Back then we were all going to freeze to death and the Australian Great Barrier Reef was going to be destroyed before the end of the century. Well, the century came and went and that little piece of propaganda was conveniently forgotten. Apparently, Global Warming will destroy it by 2020.

I won't be surprised if our grandchildren look back on us as the generation of Henny Penny, the Post-Cold War generation that lacked a super villain and so got all upset about the sky falling.

Anyway, the guts of this post is to point you to an obscure comment by National Geographic that points out that Mars has warmed by roughly the same amount as the Earth over roughly the same period of time.

Evidently, the Martians aren't looking after their planet either.

As a side note, author Michael Crichton has an interesting perspective on all this

The White Man's Burden

If you haven't heard the buzz yet, Kevin Garrad, an American solider in Iraq, was saved when an AK-47 round passed through his iPOD before being stopped in his flak jacket (ordinarily, at close range, flak jackets won't stop an AK round).

But perhaps the most amazing part of this story is the swarm of debate it has unleashed. On one hand, the majority of people (myself included) have found it a pleasant curiosity, a novel and perhaps somewhat humorous by-line in the whole Iraq fiasco. On the other hand, some have used this as a soap box on which to bellow out their dogma (both pro and anti war).

I think there's a third alternative that sits between the pro/anti stance and that is understanding that this is just another example of the white man's burden.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The US meant well in Iraq but has paid an awful price for being naive about "bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East." Freedom is something that has to be found, it can't be imported. Like nature, politics and religion abhor a vacuum. If there's no hunger, no desire for freedom, something else is going to fill that void. And all of your well-meaning sincere efforts and mine won't make a damn bit of difference.

Initially, I was all for the war and liberating the Iraqis. Now... I'm in stasis. I'd like to see freedom succeed, but I'm no longer as naive as I was.

Rudyard Kipling penned The White Man's Burden over a hundred years ago. Somewhat ironically it is almost universally interpreted as encouraging pro-American imperialism when, in fact, it is a facetious, scathing, sarcastic review of the folly of forcibly spreading Pax Americana (the American peace).

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

This could have been written about Iraq today. I bet Kevin is thankful he didn't have to pay the white man's burden.

The lesson learnt in Iraq:
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink...

Music Lovers

The Internet just gets better and better for music lovers. First there were "radio stations" then pandora and now finetune. It's a bag of mixed lollies, but here's some classics I've enjoyed over the years.

The Pweor Of The Hmuan Mnid.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

So it semes I ralely ddint drvesee thsoe lusoy grdas in Hgih Sohcol Enslgih

Great Mysteries of Life

1 Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are flat?

2 Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is not enough?

3 Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

4 Why doesn't glue stick to the bottle?

5 Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?

6 Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?

7 Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a gun at him?

8 Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

9 Whose idea was it to put an "S" in the word "lisp"?

10 What is the speed of darkness?

11 Are there specially reserved parking spaces for non-disabled people at The Special Olympics?

12 If you send someone 'Styrofoam', how do you pack it?

13 If the temperature is zero outside today and it's going to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold will it be?

14 If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

15 Why do cars have a three-point seatbelt while planes have only a lap-belt?

16 Do married people live longer than single ones or does it only seem longer?

17 If someone with a split personality threatens to commit suicide, is it a hostage situation?

18 Can you cry under water?

19 What level of importance must a person have, before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

20 If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches?

21 Why does a round pizza come in a square box?

22 How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on bigger suitcases?

23 Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up, like, every two hours?

24 If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

25 Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

26 Why do doctors, when they ask you to strip, leave the room or close the cubicle curtain while you change? ............ they're still going to see you naked anyway.

27 Why don't we spell phonetic the way it sounds?

28 Is it just me, or is it weird that weird has an i after the e instead of before. Is that why it's weird?

29 If someone's crying, why do we ask if they're OK?

I was trying to hit thirty, poaching some classics from off the net, but I couldn't quite get there. If you have any other bona fide great mysteries of life, please leave a comment...

Eternal Sunset

The Eternal Sunset takes me back to when I was working & studying in Scotland and the beautiful midnight sunsets we'd enjoy in summer. I'd stand outside with a cup of coffee and enjoy watching the majestic sun setting behind the hills north of Stirling each night before heading back in doors and drawing the blackout curtains so I could get some sleep in the ever-present twilight. Winter, now that was a different story...

Do you love a beautiful sunset? Then regardless of what time of day it is where you are, you can now enjoy live sunsets from around the world, 24x7...

Space Sounds

Although sound can't travel in space, this site has some intriguing "sounds" captured by space craft. In particular, I got a kick out of the "noise" generated by Jupiter's magnetic field and the sound of dust particles striking the antenna of Voyager II as she passed through the rings of Saturn. Oh, don't forget to check out the Lion's Roar on Earth...

Check out spacesounds

Abolition of Slavery

It's 200 years today since the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. While I appreciate the monumental change for good in the legal abolition of slave trafficking from Africa to the New World, I'm a little more ambivalent about this anniversary - and I'm especially sceptical of the fad for ceremonial apologies. Here's why:

Firstly, I have no doubt there are more slaves in Britain today than ever before. Sex slaves are being brought in from eastern Europe in their droves. Children are being flown in from Africa to live with cousins and aunties as unpaid household help [read - domestic slaves]. Uprooted from everything they know, they will fail at school, fall in with the wrong crowd, and eventually run-away, likely into prostitution (as I saw happen in a family I know).

Second, my ancestors were Scottish - some of whom were mercilessly driven off their land tenure. People were cleared to seize land for the wealthy elite. Yes, that's white people being treated as more worthless than chattel.

Thirdly, it's a lot easier to make theatrical apologies for crimes of another generation than to put your own house in order. Our society still consigns people to miserable hopelessness by fostering dependence on welfare and a host of other morally corrupt policies.

Fourth, many of those clambering for an apology can trace their ancestry back to slaves. But it is almost certain that their ancestry also includes the slave masters. Callused as I may sound - apologise to yourself! We did not chose our ancestors, and it's just too damned convenient to chose to identify with the victim rather than the oppressor. The genes from both sides define every cell in your body.

And finally, the vast majority of white British families never kept slaves. They were more likely to lose their jobs to them. My ancestors and yours had enough to think about putting food on the table before their own children.

So apologise if you want. It'll do more harm than good - because it is not honest.

Why are scientists atheists?

Why are scientists so dead-set against the concept of God?

They say, "we can't test the theory." But you can't test the string theory either, and you don't see mass revolts against that. There's absolutely no proof for the existence of Dark Matter except that we have a hole in our gravitational calculations and it just so happens that Dark Matter is a convenient way of filling that hole. Occam's Razor would suggest that when 99% of the universe has to be made up of Dark Matter for the our equations to return a result close to what we see around us, it's the equations that are wrong. Dark Matter is fairy dust.

Interestingly, if you adopt the fractal universe and the influence of electromagnetic radiation on large scale structures of the universe, the "need" for Dark Matter to make the equations work disappears... To my mind, the observational evidence for a fractal universe and the elimination of fairy dust are the two strongest reasons to consider fractals. But... that strays from the point.

Science has always been at the cutting edge of suggesting things it cannot prove or substantiate. It took almost a decade before anyone was able to find any conclusive proof about relativity and, even then, some of Einstein's predictions weren't properly tested until the late 1990s, almost a century after they were made. So I don't buy this, "I don't believe in God because I can't test Him" argument.

I love the image associated with this post. It shows the distribution of galaxies through space. The solid green curve you can see is the Great Sloan Wall. A hundred years ago, an image like this was unimaginable. Erwin Hubble would be astounded at how far we have come in such a short period of time.

So why do scientists feel threatened by the existence of God?

The Religion of the Secular Left

Those of us who believe in God well know the sneering disdain of the atheist political left. There are of course many kinds of atheists, but few are as self-righteous as the humanist left.

It's striking how religious the anti-religious left-wingers have become.

This stark irony is glaring in the recent bullying of the church by our Labour government. Having grown up in the church I see the worst characteristics of religion in the secular left:

1. Disagreement from the received wisdom is barely tolerable. All efforts are made to suppress dissent. Parliamentary time was not even allowed to debate new laws which will force Roman Catholic run adoption agencies to adopt children to gay couples. The view that "any loving stable relationship" is equal is above question to the elite left. In their arrogance, they smugly dismiss the accumulative wisdom of human history, heritage and design. They have no respect for the knowledge of the church which has been active in caring for orphans and the vulnerable long before the government took an interest. The liberal left's willingness to use children for this reckless social experiment is deeply shameful.

2. Those who dare to disagree are personally attacked. There has to be at least a character flaw, and probably a psychological derangement in anyone who deviates from the holy consensus. To suggest that children should be with a mother and father is tantamount to sacrilege. 'Homophobia' is the much thrown about accusation as though belief that marriage is between an man and woman, or disagreement with gay couples adopting is a mental illness. Actual phobias are real, and can be debilitating to the sufferer. Believing that children in need of adoption should be cared for by a married man and women is not a phobia, it's common sense.

3. Outrageous bossiness. The elite not only demand obedience of action, but obedience of thought. Not content with banning smoking in public buildings, every public building must display regulation signs forbidding the practice. Once again, churches are being made to display the signs. Nobody smokes in church! If the lefties had ever put their head in the door for a moment just to glimpse the heritage of their nation's principles, law, morality and values, they'd notice that no one is smoking in there. We don't need your damned bossy sign defacing the wall! The fashionable morality of the left may be a flash in the pan beside the enduring principles of the church, but those moral fads will be forced on all nonetheless.

4. Condemnation - for all are guilty. We're wrecking the environment, world poverty is somehow our fault, we're supposed to apologise for African slavery. We're even to blame for the shit-for-brains murderous rabble spreading their violence over the middle-east and the world. Your car is too big, your carbon footprint is too big, your arse is too big, you eat too much, waste too much... And fear - the Earth is too small, too warm, too full, too dangerous, and that's our fault too.

Jesus himself detested this religious practice of lording over people...
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

Jesus called them together and said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.

So many times I've heard Christians criticized for "pushing their beliefs on others". Religions certainly have been guilty of this, but no more so than today's political left. Jesus didn't put his energy into bossing others around. He taught and lived what he believed, and people were inspired to follow.

Jesus wasn't religious at all. He said "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It's the political left and this damned Labour government that has all the hallmarks of a constrictive religion.

Cristiano Ronaldo

I don't mind these foreign footballers coming over here and diving in the penalty box. But I can't put up with them using the word 'polemic' in the after-match interview.

If they're gonna play football in this country, they can bloody well learn to talk proper.

ET

Artificial Intellegence

Do you trust the machine? An intriguing story at Wired tells of a web service providing bankruptcy paperwork.

A web-based "expert system" that helped users prepare bankruptcy filings for a fee made too many decisions to be considered a clerical tool, an appeals court said last week, ruling that the software was effectively practicing law without a license.

First I laughed, but this has huge implications for not-too-distant future technology.

Reynoso entered his personal information, debts, income, assets and other data into a series of dialog boxes, and the program generated a complete set of bankruptcy forms, including an affidavit for Reynoso to sign claiming he'd done all the legal research on his own.

Fair enough! He did do the research - in a manner of speaking. If he had done his research in books he would still be taking the word of the authors. If he printed pages from the web he could be said to be "doing his own research". The affidavit was an attempt (albeit a failure in this case) to make the user take responsibility for the results.

The problem here arose because of an error in the paperwork and the affidavit was apparently inadequate. But this is very early days, software will improve. Some legal advice is fairly simple and a reasonable short term target for AI software. The same can be said for financial advice.

If I need to decide whether a certain level of mortgage is manageable, or whether to pursue a libel case, there are undoubtedly some rules-of-thumb. Answering a few questions ought to give me some guidance.
Perhaps:
Proposed mortgage in described circumstances constitutes: Extreme Risk!
Consider 20% reduction in mortgage level for Moderate Risk.
or:
Libel case success probability: 30%
Libel case failure probability: 70%

Now if I'm choosing between paying £150 for 5 minutes with a lawyer looking down his nose at my small-beer proposal, or paying £5 for consultancy from software that can trawl a database of a million similar cases, the software sounds like a good start. Sure the software can miss things, but so could the expensive lawyer.

A little further down the road - how long before NHS Direct uses some Artificial Intelligence triage? Of course there will be an outcry when it's first suggested, but it will come.

And I think people will want it. How many of us have already walked into the GP's surgery with a fist full of printed web pages filled with possible diagnoses and courses of treatment. We may have used a search engine to find page. Soon we may try a medical search engine - perhaps a search on a symptom database. Perhaps we'll select a category, narrow down the search, answer a couple of questions and view a list of probable conditions. Then who did the research?

Who will take professional responsibility for recommendations made by this software? In the bankruptcy case, the web site maintainer is held responsible. He was ordered to withdraw the service and pay back the fees. This seems straight-forward at first. But web technology isn't bound like that. The site (or something similar) will pop up again, perhaps hosted in a less regulated country. Ultimately, the user will be responsible for the advice he follows.

And what happens when the software is sophisticated enough to amend itself, or to update it's own research database? Then the software will write new software - a generation removed from human authors!

Science fiction authors have been thinking about this for decades. We'd better all start thinking about it. It's here.