Tim Cook is right on this one... We really, really don't want the government to be able to get access to our devices. Smartphone owners, for the most part, have no idea how much information is on their phones. The phones know where you've been, what calls or messages you've received and sent, possibly intimate photos and video, and (depending on the apps installed) may also know every key you've pressed, every web site you've visited, and even may record your conversations! It's no surprise that the government would like to have access to that. There's also no doubt that having access will help them convict guilt people. The problems start arising when you consider how it could be used to help convict innocent people (as every new law enforcement technology has done), and how it will be misused and abused.
I read an example not long ago of such misuse, but I couldn't find the article. The gist of it was this: a woman was murdered in a brothel, in Mexico. The woman was a famous celebrity of some sort, and there was enormous pressure to find the murderer. The police started examining the smart phones of anyone they arrested, looking at the GPS records in the phone to see if they'd been at the right place, at the right time to have committed the murder. A few weeks after the murder, they stopped a businessman for speeding – and after examining his phone, determined that he'd driven by the brothel at the right time. That evidence was presented to the jury, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. What the jury was not told was that he had driven by at 70 MPH! The story I read was of his appeal, and of the fight this man is going through to have that latter bit of information presented to the appeal jury. That's the sort of thing one can look forward to if the government has easy access to the trove of information in smart phones...
The New York Times, of all places, has a reasonably balanced overview of the issue. There's much more, all over the web, ranging over the entire spectrum of possible responses...
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Fire in Paradise...
Fire in Paradise... In our furnace, that is. Our newly repaired furnace!
The experience reminds us once again of why we love living here. We had two new furnaces installed in May 2014 to replace the aged ones that came with the house. The fellow who advised me and did the work – Ryan Osborn, owner of Leading Edge Heating and Air Conditioning (435-994-0666) – recommended a Carrier model and installed them. He did a great job, cleaning up some shoddy work done on the original furnaces – plus he helped me repair an irrigation riser that I knocked off with my lawn mower (the first of several, alas).
Now fast forward to last week, nearly two years after he installed them. We had a problem with the downstairs furnace, so I gave him a call. He instantly accepted responsibility and promised (and delivered) quick action. Four visits later, plus a trip for his sidekick Joe down to Ogden to pick up parts, they had the problem (which was a weird one, naturally) diagnosed, with the parts covered under warranty. Today he's going to preemptively order (and later install) the same parts for our other (identical) furnace. I'm currently trying to figure out how to pay them something for their time, but so far he's not letting me.
This is so different than our normal experience in California – and yet here it's so normal that it is the expectation. Honesty and hard work are the norm here, and it's still hard for us to get used to that after 40 years in the very different culture of California...
The experience reminds us once again of why we love living here. We had two new furnaces installed in May 2014 to replace the aged ones that came with the house. The fellow who advised me and did the work – Ryan Osborn, owner of Leading Edge Heating and Air Conditioning (435-994-0666) – recommended a Carrier model and installed them. He did a great job, cleaning up some shoddy work done on the original furnaces – plus he helped me repair an irrigation riser that I knocked off with my lawn mower (the first of several, alas).
Now fast forward to last week, nearly two years after he installed them. We had a problem with the downstairs furnace, so I gave him a call. He instantly accepted responsibility and promised (and delivered) quick action. Four visits later, plus a trip for his sidekick Joe down to Ogden to pick up parts, they had the problem (which was a weird one, naturally) diagnosed, with the parts covered under warranty. Today he's going to preemptively order (and later install) the same parts for our other (identical) furnace. I'm currently trying to figure out how to pay them something for their time, but so far he's not letting me.
This is so different than our normal experience in California – and yet here it's so normal that it is the expectation. Honesty and hard work are the norm here, and it's still hard for us to get used to that after 40 years in the very different culture of California...
Interesting piece...
Interesting piece ... by a scientist (physicist) and writer named Tom Hartsfield. He takes no sides in the AGW “wars”, but looks at climate science and is appalled by what he sees. The perspective he outlines in this article is very close to what Freeman Dyson observes, and that appears to be the source of Dyson's AGW skepticism...
I can identify with this!
Canada has a national treasure...
Canada has a national treasure ... named Steve McIntyre. There should be a way to honor this man for his sober, level-headed analyses of the data that allegedly supports AGW. He's done it again – no surprise there – and his article is yet another example of why he's been such a mainstay for the AGW skeptics.
I couldn't help but smile at his understated-but-still-devastating conclusion, starting with this paragraph:
I couldn't help but smile at his understated-but-still-devastating conclusion, starting with this paragraph:
The RCS technique used in the LW2005 MXD chronology eliminated high medieval values as a tautology of their method, not as a property of the data. The Icefields data provides equal (or greater) justification for MXD RCS chronologies with elevated medieval values.“…a tautology of their method...” indeed. Translated into language I might use, this says: “The LW2005 MXD chronology is bullshit!” – but he says it much more politely (and with better support) than I ever could. Do read the whole thing, and carefully – it's yet another Steve McIntyre masterpiece...
A map...
Monday, February 15, 2016
Stuffed, I am...
Stuffed, I am... We just finished our early lunch, feasting on Debbie's latest delight: a chicken casserole featuring (lots of) poblano pepper, corn tortillas, mozzarella cheese, cilantro, sour cream, butter, and mushrooms. Poblano peppers, if you don't know them, are a real culinary delight. They're often called “pasilla” peppers in U.S. stores, but they're really poblanos. If you like green (“Bell”) peppers but don't like the spiciness of jalapenos and the like, that the poblano pepper might be your new best recipe friend. It's got way more flavor than a green pepper, but none of the spiciness of a jalapeno...
This is Debbie's second pass at this recipe, and this one was way better for some reason. We know from the first go-round that this dish freezes very nicely, so we've now got some more “instant meals” for our freezer. Man, this was good! At left below is the casserole moments after emerging triumphant from the oven; at right is my pig bowl (and somehow I ate the entire thing!)...
This is Debbie's second pass at this recipe, and this one was way better for some reason. We know from the first go-round that this dish freezes very nicely, so we've now got some more “instant meals” for our freezer. Man, this was good! At left below is the casserole moments after emerging triumphant from the oven; at right is my pig bowl (and somehow I ate the entire thing!)...
Oh, look what Curiosity found now!
I'll speculate a bit. My guess is that those are solidified drops of molten rock, splashed out from some (relatively nearby) impact crater where a meteor struck the Martian surface. The fact that the little sand “craters” haven't filled in suggests that this happened fairly recently...
Really?
Really? Michael Brooks is a physicist (Ph.D. in quantum physics from the University of Sussex in England), and a noted science writer. He's also written a novel (which I didn't know about until I read his Wikipedia page this morning). The New Scientist is currently running an article by him, which includes this:
The entire edifice of science is built upon the notion of seeking the truth about nature, whether it comports with our preconceived ideas or not. Honesty in the process is utterly essential, and rooting out dishonesty is one of the hallmarks of science (though sometimes it takes a lot longer than one would hope!). If Brooks' ideas here were to become the norm, it's easy to see that what we think of today as science would degenerate into something like ... what climatology and social sciences are today. It's appalling that Brooks (apparently) believes otherwise. I can only hope that he was drunk when he wrote this...
How can this be so, when honesty is supposedly such an essential attribute? Because it gets the job done. Raymond De Vries at the University of Michigan and colleagues have argued that data manipulation based on intuition of what a result should look like is “normal misbehaviour”. They see such common misbehaviours as having “a useful and irreplaceable role” in science. Why? Because of “the ambiguities and everyday demands of scientific research”.In brief, he's arguing that it's just fine for scientists to cook and cherry-pick their data (which is, in large part, where any “evidence” for AGW comes from). A scientist is arguing that honesty in science isn't essential.
In other words, data isn’t often as clean as you would like. According to Frederick Grinnell, an ethicist at the University of Texas, intuition is “an important, and perhaps in the end a researcher’s best, guide to distinguishing between data and noise”. Sometimes you just know that data point was an anomaly to be ignored.
Should we do something to make science more virtuous? Probably not.
The entire edifice of science is built upon the notion of seeking the truth about nature, whether it comports with our preconceived ideas or not. Honesty in the process is utterly essential, and rooting out dishonesty is one of the hallmarks of science (though sometimes it takes a lot longer than one would hope!). If Brooks' ideas here were to become the norm, it's easy to see that what we think of today as science would degenerate into something like ... what climatology and social sciences are today. It's appalling that Brooks (apparently) believes otherwise. I can only hope that he was drunk when he wrote this...
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Two minutes of kitten...
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Our downstairs heater (we have a separate one for the second floor) is giving us trouble. It keeps shutting down, with its indicator light showing a code 31. We're not alone in this; the number of hits on a search are staggering. The house got down to 60°F overnight; a little uncomfortable but certainly not an emergency. I tried all the obvious things from the troubleshooting tips I found online, but got nowhere. Tomorrow we'll have our heating guy out here, and he's great – one way or the other, we'll get it fixed.
We civilized people sure do like our creature comforts :)
Take a gander at the photo of Mo'i, at right. Can you guess what our weather is like?
Our forecast says 1 to 3 inches of that white stuff today, but with above-freezing temperatures. We'll see what that really turns out to be. Meanwhile, at left is the current radar picture (as of 7:35 am).
Yesterday Debbie made us a wonderful midday meal: her signature baked Ora King salmon in dilled mayonnaise, accompanied by roast vegetables (Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and carrots). You can see the veggies at left in the “before” photo, and the completed dinner on the right. Sorry y'all weren't here to share with us!
Yesterday evening, just before it got dark, I caught the scene at right. From our perspective on the valley floor, the sun had set, behind the Wellsville Mountains. But the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to our east were still in sunshine, albeit disappearing fast. I managed to catch this about 90 seconds before the last light on the peaks was gone...
We civilized people sure do like our creature comforts :)
Yesterday Debbie made us a wonderful midday meal: her signature baked Ora King salmon in dilled mayonnaise, accompanied by roast vegetables (Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and carrots). You can see the veggies at left in the “before” photo, and the completed dinner on the right. Sorry y'all weren't here to share with us!
Saturday, February 13, 2016
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says...
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says ... that Obamacare costs will rise by 60% over the next decade. In other words, the Obamacare skeptics were right all along when they predicted that Obamacare would increase the cost of healthcare, not decrease it as Obama and his mincing minions promised. No surprise to anyone who's been paying even the least bit of attention to the debate – and especially not a surprise to anyone paying their own insurance costs!
Friday, February 12, 2016
Do you like persimmons?
Do you like persimmons? If you do, try Trader Joe's unsweetened, unsulfured dried California persimmons. They are hands-down the best I've ever had. They actually taste like persimmons!
Music video in weightlessness...
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