Thursday, October 2, 2014

Time for a climate change change!

Time for a climate change change!  If you're a climatologist, and your grant money depends on continued fear of global warming, then the now 18 year long “hiatus” in actual, measurable warning poses a bit of a grant application challenge for you.  If there's no actual global warming, the money is going to dry up.  What to do?  Why, you change the problem, of course!

Out: measuring temperature to monitor global warming.  In: measuring anything else that's still changing in a way that can be cast as scary as a proxy for the non-existent global warming!

Things I never expected to read...

Things I never expected to read...   I came across a link to a Facebook post by Chris Cox, the Chief Product Officer at Facebook.  The post, which greatly surprised me, begins like this:
I want to apologize to the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks. 
That's an official statement from a top-level executive of one of the world's most valuable companies.  My surprise probably reflects nothing so much as my age.  The world sure has changed a lot in this man's lifetime...

CP/M source code released...

CP/M source code released...  I cut my systems programming (such as it was) teeth on CP/M, back in the '70s.  In the late '70s I actually published a highly configurable CP/M BIOS as a freebie.  You could say it was open source before anyone was calling it that.  I also worked with CP/M's publisher (Digital Research, founded by Gary Kildall) on the multi-user sequel (MP/M), which was pretty much a flop in the market, though quite interesting technically.

To geeks of a certain age...

To geeks of a certain age ... the photo at right will bring back memories of the early days of microcomputers (the '70s and early '80s).  Ah, those amber monochrome monitors, with their low resolution, pincushion distortion, ozone smell, phosphor burnout, and character mode only! 

Except this isn't a photo of an ancient monitor.  It's a screenshot from an app that emulates such a monitor.

One hardly knows what to say.  Except, of course, that some people have way too much time on their hands...

ObamaCare's anti-innovation effect...

ObamaCare's anti-innovation effect...  I've written about this several times, especially during the run-up to ObamaCare's approval.  Now we're starting to see it actually happen, and this is awful news for the future of medicine...

How do we feel that something is wet?

How do we feel that something is wet?  I always assumed that our skin had sensors of some sort that directly felt it, but that turns out to be wrong.  Instead, we infer wetness from a variety of other sensors – and experience...

It's the HMS Erebus!

It's the HMS Erebus!  I think it would be wonderful if they raised it...

ISIS is caused by...

ISIS is caused by ... climate change!  In a just world, this professor would be unemployed about 10 minutes after he said something like this.  In our real world, he'll probably be promoted...

McIntyre is hitting a little harder recently...

McIntyre is hitting a little harder recently ... and in the process, he's providing fodder for Mark Steyn in his legal battle against Dr. FraudPants...  See here, here, and here for some recent examples of this unfair fight: McIntyre vs. The Mann.  If he wasn't such a putz, I'd almost feel sorry for Mann, as McIntyre is disproportionately armed, intellect-wise...

75 beautiful photos...

75 beautiful photos...  At right is one example.  There's really no theme to the entries in this collection, other than that they're gorgeous...