Ambient Irony

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I have a right to know! I'm getting married in four hundred and thirty years!

Tuesday, November 20

Bzzz! Wrong, But Thanks For Playing!

The correct answer is "Four and a half billion years." "Four billion years", "Five billion years", and even just "Billions of years" are also acceptable.

"Look at me, I'm a weasel" is not correct.

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1 That's a shame... "Look at me, I'm a weasel" is one of my favorite sentences ever.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, November 20 2012 03:29 PM (MOaaY)

2 It's a fine sentiment in general, just not accurate in this particular circumstance.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 20 2012 04:03 PM (PiXy!)

3 ?

Posted by: dkallen99 at Wednesday, November 21 2012 05:57 AM (2lHZP)

4 Marco Rubio was asked how old he thought the Earth was, and he weaseled. While the question doesn't go directly to policy, basic scientific knowledge is vitally important in our politicians - and sadly lacking.

As Slate has noted, Obama weaseled in just the same way in response to a very similar question in 2008. It's not a partisan issue; it's a weasel issue.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 21 2012 01:30 PM (PiXy!)

5 Don't know about you, but if I were a politician and some reporter asked me how old the Earth is, I'd say it was created out of nothing last Tuesday.
Basic scientific knowledge is as important for a politician as knowledge of policy issues is for a scientist - namely, not much. Scientists can and do carry out their jobs with only a layman's understanding of politics, or even while believing in crank political theories which are patently ridiculous; likewise, politicians can and do perform with honor while believing in crank theories of physics. When a question doesn't go directly to policy, a politician's answer to it should be of only academic interest.

Posted by: Michael Brazier at Thursday, November 22 2012 09:16 AM (9BgEE)

6 When homeopathic remedies (i.e. water) receive special protection under law, when the teaching of evolution is under sustained attack more than 80 years after Scopes, when vaccination, which transformed the face of public health, is under assault, when global warming is, if the models are accurate, the biggest issue facing us today - no, you are simply wrong.

Politics doesn't matter at all in science, not at the level of theory and experiment (though of course it does at the level of management and funding). Your political views simply don't change the numbers.

But science is the only effective tool we have for understanding reality, so scientific literacy is critical among the political class - and in the broader population in general. Whether Rubio and Obama are ignorant of the facts, or are trying to avoid antagonising an ignorant base; either way, it's just not good enough.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 22 2012 11:42 AM (PiXy!)

7 Three out of the four things you mention are policy questions influenced by scientific arguments, not scientific knowledge. Even teaching evolution has some relevance to questions of policy - the appearance of antibiotic-resistant strains of disease is explained by that theory, and the supposed dangers of genetically modified plants are assessed with its help. So those are questions of which a politician's knowledge may be important to how he does his job.

But as I'm sure you know, reporters who ask politicians about teaching evolution aren't thinking about drug-resistant bacteria, and reporters who ask politicians how old the Earth is don't have any question of policy in mind. They are merely trying to make the politician say something which will offend a large bloc of voters. No smart politician will accept that sort of invitation without good cause.

Even on the charitable theory that politicians should be able to follow scientific arguments when they become relevant to policy questions, and that reporters have the duty to test politicians' ability to do so ... this specific question is incandescently stupid. All the politician proves by giving the right answer is that he can remember and repeat what someone else told him. You need a sustained interrogation to establish that someone is, or isn't, able to understand the sciences - and if you get an opportunity to interrogate a politician to that degree, you'd be better off asking about questions of policy anyway, because the arguments he offers will tell you all you need about his education and intellect.

Posted by: Michael Brazier at Thursday, November 22 2012 01:47 PM (34u8A)

8 I agree, these were inane questions raised entirely in an attempt to trip up the politician (Rubio or Obama) and get a story out of it.

But the flip side is that these are simple factual questions, and both men simply weaseled. I don't think we should accept that. The fact that reporters are failing at their jobs should not be an excuse for candidates to waffle.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 22 2012 02:14 PM (PiXy!)

9 The other point I was making is that if telling the truth about science (or anything else) will offend large blocks of voters, then those voters need to be offended.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 22 2012 02:22 PM (PiXy!)

10 Please Pixy. Go after homeopathy all you want, but warmism has no excuse. How is global warming the biggest issue facing us today when even the modest disaster predictions haven't come to pass? "Hockey stick" turned out to be a fraud and scientific malpractice, global temperatures stopped raising 16 years ago (according to Met Office), and Arctic ice covers the largest area on record. It tells us that although the dangers of cooking the athmosphere are enormous, the probability of it happening is fairly small, because the doomsdayers were wrong in every single scare issue. And most importantly: the only way to deal with the problem is for humanity is to become more powerful, and that can only happen if humanity becomes richer. Rich enough to launch clouds of Pete Worden's deflectors, for example. Donning rags in the name of global warming will not reduce CO2 and will only damage the economy, making the humanity weaker. If there is any danger, it's warmists who doom the humanity, not those who buy SUVs!

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, November 23 2012 02:42 AM (RqRa5)

11 That Rubio is a weasel is fairly obvious, or was obvious long before leftists decided to focus on palinizing him. I observed it back when he pandered to illegals. Frankly there are more important targets among Repubs for those who love science: Bobby Jindal for one. Every thing with which Democrat lying lapdogs tried to smear Palin he actually did. He is a creationist who put his ideology into action to detrement of pupils in his state. But he gets a pass, while Rubio is above the fold. Why is that? Because 2016 battlefield preparation, that's why. And it's way too early, and Jindal is not out of the picture.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, November 23 2012 02:48 AM (RqRa5)

12 Errr... Arctic ice coverage set a record low in summer 2012. But this part I agree with 100%:

And most importantly: the only way to deal with the problem is for humanity is to become more powerful, and that can only happen if humanity becomes richer. Rich enough to launch clouds of Pete Worden's deflectors, for example. Donning rags in the name of global warming will not reduce CO2 and will only damage the economy, making the humanity weaker. If there is any danger, it's warmists who doom the humanity, not those who buy SUVs!

Destroying the economy will destroy the environment, that's guaranteed. If the "greens" were truly concerned with the environment rather than just a bunch of ageing leftist nutbiscuits wrapped up in irrational hatred of their fellow man, they'd be promoting nuclear power rather than protesting natural gas pipelines.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 23 2012 11:49 AM (PiXy!)

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Tuesday, November 06

Calibration Day

Today we find exactly how hopelessly skewed the mainstream media is.* Ace was commenting on a recent CNN poll that showed Obama and Romney in a tie - with party affiliation at D+11. Which is crazy; you'd have to have Democrat turnout at levels higher even than 2008, and at the same time have Independents splitting 2:1 in favour of Romney.

The polls and news reports are wrong, we know that. Today's the day we find out how wrong.

Update: Less wrong than I might have hoped, based on early returns. Mmf.

Update: The results are in, and while the polls may have been wrong, they weren't that wrong. It's going to be a long four years.

Meanwhile, in Australia.... Uh, we had a horse race. With actual horses.

* Is? Are? Stupid language.

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Thursday, September 13

Do They Know Something We Don't?

Given the tenor of the questions put to Romney vs. those (not) put to Obama, the press are essentially treating Romney as though he were already president and Obama as though he were simply irrelevant.

Do they know something we don't* or are they just a bunch of brazen partisan hacks?

* No.

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Monday, September 03

Number 1, The Bridge

If you're not sure whether you're in New York or Sydney, here's a tip: Find the bridge with the big stone towers at each end. If it goes down in the middle, you're in New York; if it goes up in the middle, you're in Sydney.

I was just looking for a new wallpaper after spending nearly a minute looking for an icon. While this:

Is awesome, it's far too busy to be practical. I replaced it with this:

Spectrum of a Tree

Which is beautiful and undistracting. But while searching for something suitably decorative I happened upon that very, very lost photographer.

(I'm guessing someone thought it was the Bayonne Bridge, which is at least a steel arch bridge and looks kind of similar to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the confusion grew from there. You can tell them apart as follows: The Sydney Harbour Bridge is much heavier - it carries eight lanes of traffic plus two rail lines to the Bayonne's four lanes; it has four enormous stone pylons that the Bayonne lacks; it has two mechanical spiders that run over the arch, used by the maintenance crews; it has the Australian and NSW state flags on top (a spider and one of the flags are clearly visible in the photo); and finally, it's in Sydney.)

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Monday, August 27

Better To Remain Silent...

Oh dear. Two of the jurors on the Apple v. Samsung patent trial have opened their mouths.

Can you say overturned on appeal, boys and girls?

(Some are speculating on the possibility of a mistrial. I don't know enough about the US legal system for informed comment.)

Update: Groklaw's analysis. I stopped reading Groklaw regularly after SCO burned to ashes and blew away in the wind, but they've had no shortage of material since then.

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Thursday, August 23

Spring!!

Monday the high temperature here was around 17C, with an overnight low of 4.

Today it's up past 27C with an overnight low of 14.

And my lawn needs mowing. Well, parts of it.

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Tuesday, August 21

Teeny Apocalypse

Actually, potentially serious.

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Friday, August 17

All Well And Good, But Technically, Wizards Aren't Real

I'm happy to see a funding campaign to build a museum at Tesla's Wardenclyffe lab. Not least because I'm a huge fan of Tim Powers and F. Paul Wilson.

It's somewhat dismaying, still, to see how much nonsense comes out whenever his name is mentioned.

Tesla's, that is. Not Powers' or Wilson's. Okay, who knows, maybe theirs too, but...

You know what? Never mind. Tesla museum, woo!

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Thursday, August 16

Dear Marissa*

Go big on email.

I spent half an hour last night rescuing important mail from my Gmail spam folder, and spent half an hour this morning flagging mail in my inbox as spam.**

Rescue Thunderbird. Get some top UI designers to make it really pretty, and some top coders to make it really fast. Get it on Android and iOS. And then make it seamless to use it with Yahoo mail, and make it seamless to move from Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook to Yahoo.

Thank you.

* Marissa Mayer is the new CEO of Yahoo!, formerly employee number 20 at Google.

** And missed the tick box once and had to go and rescue a critical conversation.

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Friday, July 20

History's Bloodiest Wars And Who To Blame

A helpful guide.

Rank	Name	Aggressor	Victim	How Many
1	World War II	Germany, Japan, sundry others best forgotten	Everyone else	40 million+
2	An Lushan Rebellion	China	China	33 million*
3	Mongol Invasions	Mongols	Everyone else	30 million**
4	Yuan Dynasty Collapse	China	China	30 million
5	Ming Dynasty	China	China	25 million
6	Taiping Rebellion	China	China	20 million
7	World War I	Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Influenza Virus	Everyone else	15-65 million
8	Tamerlane's Conquests	Tamerlane	Human decency	15 million
9	Dungan Revolt	China	China	8 million
10	Russian Revolution	Filthy Commies	Anastasia, sound agricultural policy	5 million

* This single 8th century civil war is estimated to have killed 15% of the population of the entire planet.***
** The mongols, by contrast, only wiped out about 10% of the people in the world. Even WWI and the Spanish Flu together couldn't break into double digits.

*** As reader Ray points out, this number may be slightly exaggerated.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:27 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It's interesting how often China is on that chart.

But when it comes to WWI, it isn't really fair to designate Germany, Austria and the Ottomans as the aggressors. Everyone was champing at the bit looking forward to that war, pretty much.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, July 20 2012 03:14 AM (+rSRq)

2 Yeah, WWI was pretty much a suicide pact. I could add a causes column and file that one under stupidity.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 20 2012 11:25 AM (PiXy!)

3 China's going to show up a lot on that list because it was unified long ago, because it's bigger in absolute terms than just about anyone, and because until recently, it was a Malthusian test case - it had so many people that almost all its labor had to go into low-intensity agriculture just to feed everyone, and significant disruptions in agriculture (which is among the side effects of war, heh!) were enough to cause widespread starvation.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Friday, July 20 2012 12:39 PM (pWQz4)

4 Yeah, listing the axis as the aggressors in wwi is blatant entente bias. France was itching for a fight after being humiliated by Germany in 1870 and was as big an aggressor as any.

Posted by: Jason at Friday, July 20 2012 12:56 PM (6VB4r)

5 Ditto on WW I. One of my old history professors described it this way: imagine a crowded room with everyone having a noose around their neck, and the guy next to him holding it.

And then somebody decided to give his rope a good, hard yank...

The war could have been stopped in 1915, but Wilson, rather than T.R. got elected (he went 3rd party). I believe (since he was instrumental in stopping the Russo-Japanese War) he could have brokered a peace... maybe.

It's one of history's significant 'what ifs'. Much mayhem and negative change resulted from that useless, bloody war.

The rise of communism not the least of it.

Posted by: CPT. Charles at Friday, July 20 2012 01:00 PM (1GunI)

6 And yet, it was the Germans and Austrians that ended up actually starting the war.

Posted by: Chris at Friday, July 20 2012 01:22 PM (j6QBF)

7 I doubt the An Lushan Rebellion caused that many deaths. Yes the census fell massively but most of those people simply left their homes and removed themselves from the census. Many many of them moved into what is now the more populous parts of China but back then were the thinly settled and barbaric lands. Once you were off the census you didn't have to pay taxes and taxes went up astronomically during the civil war.

Posted by: Ray at Friday, July 20 2012 01:59 PM (7v5dF)

8 Ray - Good point on the An Lushan Rebellion. Not only was there massive disruption and displacement of the civilian population, but the census post-rebellion covered a smaller area. It seems implausible that two-thirds of the population actually died, as the census numbers would suggest, though clearly there was massive loss of life.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 20 2012 02:26 PM (PiXy!)

9 @6
No they didn't. Russia did when she mobilized her army...which Keizer wilhelm begged the tsar not to do btw.

Posted by: Jason at Friday, July 20 2012 04:17 PM (6VB4r)

10 As has been pointed out, the person who put this list together needs to take a history lesson. Let's follow the sequence of events. Serb extremists murder the Arch Duke Ferdinand-Austria wants retribution-Russia supports Serbs and mobilizes Army against Austro-Hungary. Germany did not want war but the Russian mobilization on her borders and the byzantine layers of treaties led to the morass. You might also like to know that the King of England, the Kaiser and the Tsar were all 1st cousins. Now let's look at the end of WWI and it's impact on WWII. The treaty of Versailles was demeaning and destructive leading to German resentment-main instigators-The French. In addition, who was the other participant in the Non- agression pact of 1939 and helped slice up Poland- Why it's the peace-loving Joe Stalin (who also invaded Finland). This table is simple and stupid and shows why there should be a test to allow people to vote. Obama with his understanding of Economics, History, Natural Sciences and Geography would flunk.

Posted by: Vincent Walker at Friday, July 20 2012 10:08 PM (F8nGw)

1. The observation about world leaders being related is interesting, but had no effect on the arms race that preceeded WWI or the war itself. They still contended for possessions in Africa, and they still built battleships designed to fight each other.

2. The Versailles treaty was a scapegoat for the instability of Germany, which lost big in a war it entered. Mentioning the treaty is convenient. Hitler certainly thought so. What is inconvenient were the loans and aid given to Germany. Germany went from being a number of principalities to an empire with a Kaiser to a Weimar Republic to a reich in less than 70 years. That may have also been a factor. Funny how no one wants to mention that. And it was fending off communist uprisings and privation stemming from WWI and the blockade.

3. Were the interlocking treaties a major factor? Yes. But then, Britain and France had treaties with Czechoslovakia in 1938. Ask the Czechs how valuable they were. Germany could have stayed home in WWI. Instead, they launched a pre-planned offensive on two fronts.

Posted by: Blue Hen at Friday, July 20 2012 11:19 PM (6rX0K)

12 Vincent - In other words, Queen Victoria caused WWI?
Oh, and if you think a post labelled "History's Bloodiest Wars And Who To Blame: A helpful guide." and listing the Influenza Virus as an aggressor in WWI should be taken seriously - then you flunk grade school reading comprehension.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 20 2012 11:53 PM (PiXy!)

13 Pixy Misa - You are a flaming fool - as usual - George V was King of England 1910. Get your facts straight asshole. Victoria was dead.
By the way - I didn't say they started WWI - reread if you can understand anything beyond 4 letter words. It is indeed ironic that 3 first cousins were heads of state of the major players of WWI.

Posted by: Vincent Walker at Saturday, July 21 2012 02:58 AM (F8nGw)

14 The Thirty Years' War might desreve a special mention, even though the large number of deaths (estimated at 8 million, give or take a few) occurred over a relatively long period. The war devastated the populations of several central European countries.

Posted by: JP at Saturday, July 21 2012 04:45 AM (m8wSv)

15 Actually, George V, Wilhelm II and Nicholas II were not all first cousins to each other. George and Wilhelm were first cousins (George's father and Wilhelm's mother were siblings and children of Queen Victoria). George and Nicholas were first cousins (their mothers were sisters and daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark). Nicholas and Wilhelm were NOT first cousins - they were actually 3rd cousins through a common descent from Paul I of Russia. However, Wilhelm was first cousin to Nicholas' wife Alexandra, as Alix's mother was another daughter of Queen Victoria.

Posted by: Alia at Saturday, July 21 2012 07:55 AM (2mJE0)

16 Pixy: Vincent - In other words, Queen Victoria caused WWI?

Vinny: Pixy Misa - You are a flaming fool - as usual - George V was King of England 1910.

Winner: Pixy Misa.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, July 21 2012 11:42 AM (8KjSa)

17 Alia, thanks for the details.

Wonderduck, shush. wink

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 21 2012 02:46 PM (PiXy!)

King in 1910? Depends on WHEN in 1910!

Edward VII: 22 January 1901 â€“ 6 May 1910

George V: 6 May 1910 â€“ 20 January 1936

Posted by: Bruce at Saturday, July 21 2012 04:19 PM (MpXo3)

19 Uh-oh, the pedants are loose!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 21 2012 04:25 PM (PiXy!)

Unless you close this comment thread, it's going to keep accumulating pedantic nitpicking forever. Five years from now someone will run into it (via the magic of Google) and point out some unimportant detail that you got wrong or didn't include.

I still get letters about USS Clueless, eight years after I stopped writing it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, July 21 2012 09:36 PM (+rSRq)

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