Marc Hauser publishes on “Evil”

September 27, 2013

Following in the footsteps of other fraudsters (Diedrik Stapel for one), Marc Hauser has published a new book on “Evil”. Since he left Harvard he has been involved with “brain training“  (brain-washing?) of children at risk.

I suppose that a transgressor cannot be said to have no practical experience of morality though to say that he is particularly qualified to write about “Evil” is perhaps pushing it a bit. What constitutes “Evil” is of course rather subjective. Just as with Stapel there is no shortage of his advocates and apologists now rushing to praise his book. Just as with Stapel the New York Times (Nicholas Wade) appears to be providing some free promotion. Good Luck to him though I shall not be acquiring a copy.

Boston.com: 

Marc Hauser, the former Harvard University psychology professor who was found by federal officials to have fabricated and manipulated data, is publishing a book on the nature of evil, “Evilicious: Desire + Denial = Cruelty.”

The former professor, who has worked with at-risk youth on Cape Cod since leaving Harvard, announced on Twitter his book would be available October 15. On his blog, he said that the book will be available through Kindle Select, as an audio book, or as a print-on-demand book. ….

At the blog Retraction Watch, two who blurbed the book—Nicholas Wade, a New York Times science reporter and science writer Michael Shermer—said that they believe in second chances.

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IPCC will ignore hiatus in global warming until it has gone on for 30 years!

September 27, 2013

I have been watching the IPCC press conference and it seems to me that they were very much on the defensive:

  1. they felt that had no option but to mention the hiatus in global warming,
  2. they decided to underplay its significance along a number of fronts
    • the period was too short
    • hiatus was not significant untill it had existed for 30 years
    • 1998 was a very special El Nino year
    • the intervening period had other factors (volcanic activity for example) which could have contributed to cooling
  3. they have rejected the very high sea level rise scenarios but assign no probability because there is no consensus
  4. they are following the line that “it is not important to know where we are now because we are certain about where we will end up in 20 or 30 years”
  5. sensitivities is an emerging subject and there is no consensus
  6. it is still correct to follow the one dimensional greenhouse gas view of global warming.

All in all a rather predictable performance  with a clear task of “protecting the models”.

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Words of un-wisdom

September 27, 2013

I lost my last wisdom tooth this week. It is still painful and this leads me to my many unwisdoms.

If it has to be subsidised, it is not sustainable

Evidence does not require consensus

Human behaviour is “natural” behaviour

Environmentalism which ignores humans is not for humans.

The environment includes humans. An environment without humans is inhuman.

Conservation as stagnation is stupid. 

Protecting unsuccessful species by confining them in an artificial habitat and constraining them to their unsuccessful behaviour is irresponsible.

Genetic modification of species so they can succeed together with man is the way to go.

Without change all is stasis and there is no life.

Conservatism is hankering after no change.

Socialism is for humans becoming an ant colony where the colony takes precedence.

Liberalism is the generosity of others for my good.

Democracy is to justify and authorise the oppression of minorities.

Gender equality does not mean that the genders have been reduced to one.

Rights for the transgender community does not increase the genders to three.

Protecting the rights of those who behave badly does not make their behaviour any the less bad.

Explaining bad behaviour does not excuse it.

Civilisation is about the elegance of behaviour.

Equality of process cannot eradicate the inequalities between individuals.

If all individuals are equal then there are no individuals.

Inequality is a prime motivator for change.

Warmth is good.

Voting for a hypothesis may give a numerical result but says nothing about the hypothesis.

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IPCC still cooking it’s books to cover-up the inconvenient truths

September 27, 2013

The 95% probability/certainty of global warming being due to human activity is based on a show of hands and not on any evidence or statistical analysis of data. What it actually says is that 95% of all global warming believers, believe.

Late last night the IPCC delegates in Stockholm were still messing around preparing their 30 page political summary of their AR5 report to be released today.

The political summary of AR5 is primarily a CYA effort to protect the posteriors of the policy makers (mainly political figures, bureaucrats and activists) in the face of a long row of broken models and broken hypotheses. The IPCC has forgotten that natural variability is a euphemism for unknown mechanisms which cannot be calculated or predicted. It is going to be interesting to see just how the summary report will cover-up, deny or ignore the long string of inconvenient facts:

  • Global temperatures have not risen for 17-18 years while CO2 has kept on increasing. 
  • Global temperatures have been declining for the last 11 years. 
  • None of the IPCC’s computer models have predicted the warming hiatus or the cooling over the last decade.
  • Global wildfires are lower than normal. 
  • Rainfall patterns (and the Indian monsoon) continue within the bounds of known natural variability. 
  • Food and grain production is at an all-time high. 
  • Flood frequency and flood levels have not been at unprecedented levels. Just more people live in flood-plains today than before. 
  • CO2 in the atmosphere reached the magic level of 400 ppm (albeit for just a few hours) and nothing happened.
  • How much of the CO2 concentration increase is due to carbon dioxide from fossil fuel. combustion is unclear but fossil fuel emissions are only 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. 
  • The absorption and release of carbon dioxide by the oceans is unknown and the error margin is greater than the total amount released by fossil fuels.
  • CO2 absorption mechanisms do not care where the CO2 being absorbed came from.
  • The sensitivity of global temperature to CO2 concentration has been grossly exaggerated by the computer models.
  • Carbon dioxide concentration is more likely to follow global temperature (due to subsequent changes in emission and absorption rates) than to lead it.
  • Sea ice levels are increasing at both poles with the Antarctic at record high levels.
  • Polar bear populations are thriving and increasing.
  • Sea levels are continuing to rise at just the historical levels due to the recovery from the last glacial and are not accelerating due to industrialisation or the use of fossil fuels.
  • Oceans are still strongly alkaline and any increase in acidity is within known natural variability.
  • Coral reefs have shown themselves to be self-healing when damaged and are not showing any signs of ocean acidification.
  • Climate models have grossly underestimated solar effects because the mechanisms are unknown.
  • Sunspot activity in SC24 is well down from SC 23 and is not unlike the period of the dalton minimum during SC5 and SC6.
  • Clouds and moisture in the atmosphere have a much bigger impact on global warming and cooling than CO2 in the atmosphere.
  • Cloud formation is linked to sunspot activity and cosmic rays.
  • Global warming and cooling follow solar effects via the oceans in long decadal cycles.
  • The number of hurricanes and tornadoes are at historically low levels.
  • Heat released from the earth’s interior by tectonic and volcanic activity is not known.
  • A Little Ice Age is more likely than further Global Warming and a global cooling cycle lasting 20-30 years may have begun.
  • This interglacial is due (within c. 1000 years) to come to an end.

There is more we don’t know that we don’t know about the climate than the IPCC would like to admit. And for policy makers, activists and bureaucrats who have followed misguided policies for the last 25 years it is no longer possible to admit that they have been making “certain” predictions in an ocean of uncertainty. They have replaced scientific objectivity by “consensus science” where the validity of a hypothesis is based on how many believe and not on evidence. The 95% probability/certainty of global warming being due to human activity being touted by the IPCC is based on a show of hands of believers, and not on any evidence or statistical analysis of data.

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Turquoise ice on Lake Baikal

September 26, 2013

From frozy.net

Gorgeous!

Turquoise Ice Northern Lake Baikal image Alexy Tromifov

Turquoise Ice Northern Lake Baikal
image Alexy Tromifov

Click on the picture for a larger image.

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Wind turbine vibrations causing development deformities in foals?

September 26, 2013

This is from a Masters thesis at the Veterinary Medicine Faculty of the Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa by Teresa Margarida Pereira Costa e Curto. The study reports the findings from a stud where 11 foals developed flexural deformities of the front limbs, after they were born. (Acquired flexural deformity of the distal interphalangeal joint). In 2008, wind turbines were installed adjacent to the property and grazing paddocks. Since this date, a good number of foals and yearlings have developed deformities.  The hypothesis is that ground vibrations induced by the wind turbines are enhancing bone growth in young foals but without a corresponding enhancement of the muscle-tendon growth leading to the deformation.

From Turn180:

The study was performed by Teresa Margarida Pereira Costa e Curto,  ADVISOR: Dr. Maria da Conceição da Cunha and Vasconcelos Peleteiro CO-ADVISOR: Dr. Maria Luisa Jorge Mendes

The above image shows the same foal at 3 and 6 months of age

Final deformity

Radiological examination of front limbs

In this stud farm, the owner has been breeding normal and physically sound horses since 2000. There were no changes in diet, exercise or any other significant alteration in management. Until in 2008, wind turbines were installed adjacent to the property and grazing paddocks. Since this date, a good number of foals and yearlings have developed deformities.

The subjects of the study were:
-11 Lusitano horses. Age between 0 and 48 months old.
-6 males and 5 females
-9 were born at the stud farm,  2 were acquired from a different breeder.

Measurements of ground vibration were made at different distances from the wind turbines, with the same equipment that is used to detect seismic vibrations (earthquakes). The results of these measurements, showed ground vibration at different frequencies.
Research has shown that vibration effects bone metabolism.

Cellular Mechanotransduction is the mechanism by which cells convert mechanical signals into biochemical responses. Based on the mechanical effects on cells it was proposed in this research project that the ground vibrations were responsible for a increased bone growth which was not accompanied by the muscle-tendon unit growth leading to the development of these flexural deformities.

Note

The above research project was based solely on this case study. Therefore, further research is necessary in order to validate these preliminary findings and hypothesis. Regarding the sound that the wind turbines produce, measurements were taken and studies have demonstrated some cellular damage is caused by low frequency noise.

RESEARCH TITLE:             Acquired flexural deformity of the distal interphalangic joint in foals

ABSTRACT
Since 2008, a high prevalence of front limb acquired flexural deformities was observed in a Lusitano stud farm. This work aims to evaluate this problem by reporting the results from tissue alterations in the affected animals as well as environmental conditions and management changes, which could have led to this observation. A total of eleven affected animals were studied. In these, a complete physical and orthopaedic examination were performed specifically the determination of the angle between the dorsal hoof wall and the floor. Radiographic examination, CT imaging, determination of the thickness of the cortical bone of the third metacarpian and histopathology of some tissues collected in biopsy and necropsy were done in a subset of affected foals.

All the animals had been supplemented with balanced commercial diet for equine. To investigate a possible genetic cause, two foals from distinct bloodlines were brought to the stud. These also developed the deformities after 6 months. Two of the affected foals were placed in a
pasture away from the initial one and two others were admitted at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Lisbon. In those animals, except for one that had to be euthanized for humane reasons, an improvement was observed on their condition, with partial recovery of the deformity.
Histopathology was performed from (i) the tendon obtained by surgical desmotomy in one foal, (ii) tendon biopsies were performed in three foals and (iii) from the tissue of one foal during necropsy. Histologically the most significant alterations were the dissociation of myofibrils of the smooth muscle. This was predominantly seen in the small intestine but also in the walls of small capillary vessels, including those of the tendon vasculature. The flexural deformities have a complex and multifactorial etiopathogeny. They occur due to uncoupling of the longitudinal development of the bone and its adjacent soft tissues, but also from shortening of the tendon-muscle unit in response to pain.
In the case series presented here, there was no obvious cause for the development of this problem, therefore we hypothesised that unusual environmental conditions might have played an important role in the development of this condition, especially those introduced in recent years.

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Will the UK Lib-Dems go the way of the German FDP?

September 26, 2013

Last Sunday’s election results were an unmitigated disaster for the FDP in Germany. Historically – and going back to 1949 – it was unprecedented. They have no seats in the Bundestag for the first time. Sharing power in government has not helped them.

(All charts from Wikipedia)

FDP seats won

FDP vote percentage

There is a parallel to be drawn with the UK though the German proportional representation system has generally been kinder to the FDP than the UK “first past the post” system has been to the Liberal Democrats. But when times are bad the PR system of Germany is also more ruthless. The FDP dropped from an all- time high of 14.6% of the vote in 2009 to 4.8% last Sunday. The Lib-Dems were at 23% in 2010 and are currently at 10%.

File:LibDem vote-seat percent.PNG

Votes and seats won by the Lib-Dems

Today’s modern Lib-Dem party is not quite the Liberal party of old. In my youth I read about the great days of the Liberal party of Gladstone and Lloyd George (and even the young Winston Churchill). I thought quite highly of Jo Grimond and David Steele. But the merger of the Liberals – proposed by David Steele – with the break-away Social Democrats  from the right of the Labour party in 1988 has created a strange animal which has no true identity of its own. Like the ancient chimera with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake the Lib-Dems today try to combine mutually repellent ideologies and produce rather confused, fascistic do-gooders. With figures like Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne (now disgraced), Vince Cable and Ed Davey in their ranks they are enjoying their moment in the sun but are suffering from the twin fantasies that the tail wags the dog and that they know best what is good for others.

That their time in government supporting the Tories will be to their electoral detriment in the next general election seems very likely. Whether they will be wiped out like the FDP is unlikely in the British system but a comprehensive collapse is not inconceivable. Like the FDP which participated in a government dominated by Angela Merkel, the Lib-Dems are propping up but are totally dominated by Cameron’s conservatives.

Like the FDP, the Lib-Dems now run the risk of forcing their normally middle-of-the-road base towards the left or the right.  Like in the FDP, their traditional supporters in academia and the education system and the welfare services are going to move leftwards as the Lib-Dems give in to the Tories (with student tuition fees for example and for Helath Service cuts). The Lib-Dems have been the “green” face of this government but Cameron has been quite adept at using them for cover (as Angela Merkel has also done with the FDP). The disastrous cost of the renewable energy policies in Germany and the UK are seen as being more the fault of the Greens/FDP in Germany and of the Lib-Dems in Britain. Their ususal support among the environmental “do-gooders” is likely to shift leftwards for the moderates and greenwards for the more extreme. The traditional support from small shop keepers and small businesses is likely to shift rightwards.  The NSA scandal has hit the civil liberties image of the FDP as being a colluding party within the ruling government and so also for the Lib-Dems.  The support of The Guardian for the Lib-Dems can be compared to that of Die Zeit and Der Tagesspiegel for the FDP.

The general election in the UK is due in May 2015 (Scotland independence referendum intervening in 2014) and this gives the Lib-Dems 18 months to demonstrate that they have an agenda of their own. But this requires them to repudiate much of what they have agreed to while in government and will lead to a level of schizophrenia.

My guess is that the Lib-Dems will be reduced to less than the 10% they are currently polling at (from the 23% they had in the 2010 election). Philipp Rösler has just resigned as the FDP chairman. Nick Clegg will need to do the same in 2015 – though one could argue that the Lib-Dems might do better if they got rid of him before the election. They could do with a leader who is not as light-weight as Clegg or tainted as being Cameron’s poodle (but who?).

They will probably slip behind UKIP who are also at about the same 10% level but seem to be imploding. 2015 then will be a straight Tory-Labour fight. Neither Cameron or Milliband are particularly impressive as leaders. And so it will be a battle to see who is better at losing. And Milliband may be the more prone to losing an election.

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No compensation for woman raped by UN soldiers in Mali

September 25, 2013

UN troops have raped a woman in Mali. What sticks out is the UN spokesman specifically rejecting financial compensation while offering legal support to the victim. As if any legal action by a woman from Mali is likely to succeed against the UN rapists protected by UN immunity and anonymity. The rapists can only face disciplinary action from their own country – and I am quite sure there will be none.

Sexual misconduct by UN troops (Congo, Cambodia, Ivory Coast and Haiti for example) is nothing new. Of course the UN can only mirror its member countries but UN staff – whether bureaucrats or soldiers – are pampered, grossly overpaid and are just not accountable for their negligence or their incompetence or for deliberate misconduct. No UN staff ever received any strictures for bringing cholera to Haiti. At least the Dutch courts accepted their Government’s liability for the killings of those expelled from the UN compound by Dutch troops at the Srebrenica massacre. It was a little late for the victims though.

BBC: 

The United Nations says at least four of its peacekeepers were involved in the rape of a woman in Mali. The soldiers have been identified as being among 1,500 Chadian troops serving under the UN force, Minusma.

The UN says it wants Chad to investigate the incident and take disciplinary action against the men.

Minusma took over security duties in July after the withdrawal of French forces, which led an operation to oust Islamist militants from the north.

The assault is believed to have happened on Thursday in the northern city of Gao.

The woman is thought to have come forward seeking medical help from the UN immediately after the attack. This triggered the UN force to launch an investigation. ……

The BBC’s Alex Duval Smith in Bamako says it is not known exactly how many Chadians were involved, but the victim identified four soldiers as having assaulted her.

At the time, 165 Chadian soldiers were stationed in Gao, our correspondent adds. They had defied the orders of their superiors and left their base in Tessalit after a dispute over pay and conditions.

A Minusma spokesman in Bamako said it was for the Chadian army to decide on what disciplinary action they should take against the men.

He said the victim would be offered medical, psychological and legal support but not financial compensation.

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Europe does not like it’s Roma

September 25, 2013

Freedom of movement in Europe is much touted. European nations like to think of themselves as being in the vanguard of civil rights. But gender equality (for those of the correct ethnicity) and the rights of ethnically correct minorities clearly take precedence over the rights of Europe’s Roma populations. The harassment of Roma – who don’t make much effort to change their way of life to fit in with the rest of society – is evident across most of Europe.

The Roma today constitute a second, lower class of Europeans.

They are walled off in communities in Romania, are forcibly sterilised in Slavakia, and confined to ghettos in Bulgaria. They are an easy target for the neo-Nazis of Hungary and Germany and the Czech Republic and Greece and Italy. They are currently being expelled from Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France – often to Kosovo. Their ways are too strange. They dress strangely. They resort to begging far too often. They are feared and disliked by the majority of Europeans.

In just the last few days they have been much in the news.

Greece Street Musician

Roma girl being kicked in Greece (via Greek reporter)

  1. Sweden: The Skåne police force has become embroiled in a fresh controversy over the Roma registries after it emerged they didn’t admit the records were on file when asked by the Swedish Commission on Security and Integrity Protection last year.
  2. France: Interior Minister Manuel Valls on Wednesday insisted he stood by a controversial call for tens of thousands of ethnic Roma to be kicked out of France. Valls has triggered an outcry from human rights groups, the European Commission and some of his government colleagues by saying any Roma not working should be “delivered back to the borders”, describing their way of life as “extremely different from ours,” and claiming they will never integrate into French society.
  3. Greece: A photograph of a female shop owner pushing a little Roma girl street musician on a pedestrian walkway under the Acropolis to send her away has taken off on the Internet and set Greek authorities to investigate the apparent abuse. 
  4. UK: Nigel Farage will vow today to put the expected influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to Britain from January at the heart of the UK Independence Party’s campaign in next year’s European elections.

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India may have gone Digital but the bricks and mortar are lagging behind

September 25, 2013

India has leap-frogged into the digital age in a big way.

But the only problem (and it is a debilitating affliction) is that bricks and mortar cannot be dispensed with.  Just hopping over the steps of building up the infrastructure does not help even if mobile and wireless services are as widespread as they are.

indian farmer and mobile

indian farmer and mobile

As I noted during the dot.com boom,

You cannot eat e-food and carry your goods down an electronic highway or use an e-house to keep out the rain. Old fashioned roads and rails and bridges and buildings cannot be replaced by a virtual world.

But the mobile penetration into rural India is extremely high. There may be no good roads to reach the villages and some may have little access to electricity but they all have their mobiles phones.

India Mobile Landscape (IML) 2013 study.

…… the field survey was conducted between May and mid-July 2013 covering 109 urban centres and 196 villages in all the 28 states and 3 union territories in India.

“It (the survey) covered 80 of the 88 regions as classified by the National Sample Survey Organisation under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. The study sample represents 94.8 per cent of the Indian population and 96.1 per cent of the total Indian households,” he said. Meanwhile, as per the data revealed by sectoral regulator TRAI, there are total 87.33 crore (873.3 million) mobile subscribers in the country. Of this, 73.14 crore (731.4 million) customers were found to be active on a particular date in June. The cumulative revenue of telecom service providers was Rs 54,284 crore (542.8 million) in the January-March quarter as per TRAI data.

There are 55.48 crore (554.8 million) actual mobile users in the country and 14.32 crore (143.2 million) internet users, according to a study by research firm Juxt.

…” More than 29.8 crore, (298 million) about 54 per cent, of these device owners are in rural areas as compared to 25.6 crore (256 million) in cities and towns,” Juxt co-founder Mrutyunjay told PTI. There are total 77.39 crore (773,9 million) functional SIMs with validity but only 64.34 (643.4 million) SIMs are being used by (the) 55.48 crore (554.8 million) mobile devices owners, the study report said.

Read more at: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/india-has-5548-crore-mobile-owners-1432-crore-internet-users/420444-11.html?utm_source=ref_article

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