August 15, 2013
The Australian election campaign is still fairly low-key. The most exciting event in the last few days was Abbott’s remark praising a fellow candidate that she had “sex appeal”. He should have known better than to say something so politically incorrect. Kevin Rudd is trying to make political capital out of that but his denial that “sex appeal” exists seems a little contrived. The difference between the genders will not change by legislation.
The polls have not been very exciting either. But I suppose that money talks and following the money may be a better predictor of the Australian general election results than just simply asking people how they intend to vote. The Financial Review carries a forecast of the election results based on betting on the elections. The money is on Kevin Rudd and Labour losing by a substantial margin. Of course it could be biased in that betting odds generated by gamblers may not be representative of the electorate, but presumably the algorithms converting betting odds to election results try and take that into account.
From the Financial Review:
Election results forecast based on betting data from 11th August
Labor won’t have to stay up late on the evening of September 7 for the bad news of the electoral result, according to a new analysis of betting market odds.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s party will lose the election by 22 seats, collecting 63 seats to the oppositions’s 85, according to analysis done for The Australian Financial Review by statisticians Kaighin McColl and Leng Lee.
The analysis is based on betting data from 11 August.
The number of seats Labor is expected to win dropped from 65 to 63 in the five days between August 6 and August 11.
Mr McColl notes that the ALP has now slid backwards twice since the analysis began.
“It is still early days, but the ALP has consistently been a long way behind according to the electorate-level betting data. What they’ve had going for them is momentum. That momentum appears to be slowing or reversing,” he said.
The analysis, which takes betting market data and subjects it to an algorithmic process known as Monte Carlo simulation in order to determine odds, predicts just two seats will be won by non-major parties. ….
Tags: Australia, Betting odds, Election, Election forecast, Electoral results, Kevin Rudd, Labour, Tony Abbott
Posted in Australia, Politics | 1 Comment »
August 15, 2013
The numbers killed in Egypt were well over 250 yesterday. According to the Muslim Brotherhood the number could be as high as in the thousands. But half of Egypt approves of the actions of the security forces.
The US and Europe don’t really know how to react to the chaos in Egypt. The US will still not acknowledge that they are dealing with a “military coup”. They have all “deplored” the violence but are secretly relieved that the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power. A strange view of democracy prevails – a blend of wishful thinking and a very flexible definition of what constitutes democracy and the values to be upheld. The West is willing to go along with the military actions – which of course they publicly deplore – if it can ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood is not voted into power again. So if it is mainly members of the Muslim Brotherhood who have been killed then perhaps it is time to express one’s regrets and just move on.
What nobody wishes to acknowledge is that Religions and Democracies do not – can not – mix. With all the failings and weaknesses of democracies, “religious parties” still lead to a fundamental clash between the supremacy of the laws of the majority and the supremacy of the perceived – or proclaimed – laws of god (or gods). As long as any country permits political parties which are religious in nature, then any kind of real supremacy of the laws of the majority is not feasible. The fanatics of any religious political party always claim the over-riding demands of their gods and the supremacy of such demands whether to conduct jihad or to burn down mosques. And this applies to Egypt as well as to Israel or Indonesia or Malaysia or India or Sri Lanka. Around the world, there are many more Islamist political parties than there are for other religions but there are plenty of “Christian Democratic” parties in Europe and in other countries. All of these religious parties – without exception – are fundamentally opposed to – and have values inconsistent with – the supremacy of the laws of man (only the majority of course) over the laws of their gods.
The Arab Springs will not lead to any real “democracies” in the Middle East and North Africa as long as inherently self-contradictory “religious, democratic parties” are around. For there is no religious party – in any country – which would accept that the laws of man could override the imaginary laws of their imaginary gods.
According to Reuters,
Egypt’s interim prime minister defended the government decision to storm pro-Mursi demonstrations on Wednesday. He says they had no choice after attempts at mediation with Mursi supporters failed.
”When freedom of expression becomes terrorizing the public, carrying arms, blocking roads and violating public property — it is not freedom of expression. It becomes aviolation of the people and the people. For the government to continue to operate, it has to be respected. That’s why we had to take a stand and say this cannot continue. It should be stopped.”
Security forces shot and killed scores of people. By evening the death toll was well over 200 and the number injured was around 2,000. Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi praised the way forces handled the operation.
“I have to take this opportunity to thank the police because it has behaved with high levels of self-restraint. There were human rights observers and everything was publicized and there was filming. And it turned out that there were weapons and ammunition and other illegal material.”
Now under curfew Cairo’s streets were markedly different from earlier in the day. Asked how long the situaton could last el-Beblawi offered no specific dates, saying the state of emergency would go on for as short a period as possible. would go on for as short a period as possible, adding that the government is eager to restore democracy.
Tags: democracy, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, religion, religious parties
Posted in Behaviour, Egypt, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Religion, democracies and the “restraint” which kept the death-toll to only 275
August 14, 2013
Andrew Nicholas James Rawnsley (born 5 January 1962, Leeds), according to his Guardian profile, is the Observer’s award-winning chief political commentator. He is also a critically acclaimed broadcaster and author.
But – and in the best tradition of Johann Hari’s techniques and ethics – he is not above lifting a few paragraphs of text from others when it suits his purpose.
The revelations about Rawnsley came 2 weeks ago from Guido Fawkes on his blog (run by Paul Staines and is probably the most read right-of-centre political blog in the UK):
Catching up with Andrew Rawnsley’s “award winning” column yesterday, Guido could not help think he had read the same points being made, with all the same examples and the same anecdotes, somewhere before. Rawnsley tackles the great North/South divide debate with a remarkable similarity to Jeremy Cliffe, the Economist’s UK politics correspondent, who wrote extensively on the issue in April. Cliffe’s two pieces are online here and here.
Guido first smelt a rat at the mention of Alastair Campbell, who Rawnsley writes “secured his two, even more whopping landslides in 1997 and 2001 by winning for Labour in places that had been previously thought unreachable. On the night of his first victory, he thought his staff were pulling his leg when they reported that Labour had won St Albans.”Something Economist readers would know from April, minus the insider anecdote.
“Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s spin doctor, recalls the party’s astonishment at the results: “seats were falling that we would never have imagined standing a hope in hell of winning.” The greatest swing was in the south-east and eastern regions, where Labour won 44 constituencies, including such leafy, middle-class suburbs as St Albans (now comfortably Tory once more).”
A coincidence, surely? So Guido started compare the rest of Rawnsley’s column to the Economist pieces, and it does not look good. See if you can spot the differences here:
Economist:
“Of the 158 seats that make up the three northern English regions, only 43 are Conservative […] Of the 197 MPs representing the English south beyond the capital, just ten are now Labour. The Tories hold only two seats in the north-east and one in Scotland.”
Rawnsley:
“Of the 158 seats in the three northern English regions, only 43 have a Conservative MP. The Tories hold just two seats in the north-east and have only one MP in the whole of Scotland. […] Under a line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, there are 197 seats outside London. Just 10 of those seats are represented by a Labour MP.”
Lifting statistics from the Economist is one thing, but what about whole chunks of analysis?
Economist:
“well-off people in the north are more likely to vote Labour than the poor are in the south […] northerners from the highest social class are more likely to vote Labour than are southerners from the lowest social class.”
Rawnsley:
“Well-heeled parts of the north are these days much more likely to vote Labour than their counterparts in the south. […] Affluent northerners (the As and Bs of pollsters’ jargon) are more likely to vote Labour than poorer southerners (the Ds and the Es).”
The Guide Fawkes post contains many more examples of the filching of text/ideas
Somebody else filled in for Rawnsley last week and Guido reports that he is still away and may be replaced for next week’s column as well.
Perhaps he is on extended gardening leave!
Tags: Andrew Rawnsley, ethics, Guido Fawkes, Johann Hari, Journalism, Observer, Paul Staines, Plagiarism
Posted in Ethics, Media, UK | 1 Comment »
August 14, 2013
Well now!
pH scale : Wikipedia
While I have no belief in the fanciful theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions will have any significant effect on global warming, I have no doubt that an increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will lower the pH of the ocean (and they will only be more acidic in the sense of reducing alkanity though with a pH remaining well over 7.0). In fact it is likely that oceans will maintain a pH over 8.0 even in the worst scenarios. (Liquid solutions are usually described as acidic with a pH of less than 7.0 and as alkaline with a pH over 7.0 though on the continuous pH scale any reduction of alkanity is per force an increase of acidity and vice versa).
A new paper shows that the hypothesised catastrophic scenarios about ocean “acidification” (more correctly – a reduction of alkanity) and the consequent effects on coral reefs are little more than fantasy because they find that “there will be no direct ecological effects of ocean acidification on the early life-history stages of reef corals, at least in the near future”.
CM Chua, W Leggat, A Moya, AH Baird. Near-future reductions in pH will have no consistent ecological effects on the early life-history stages of reef corals. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2013; 486: 143 DOI:10.3354/meps10318
Abstract: Until recently, research into the consequences of oceanic uptake of CO2 for corals focused on its effect on physiological processes, in particular, calcification. However, events early in the life history of corals are also likely to be vulnerable to changes in ocean chemistry caused by increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (ocean acidification). We tested the effect of reduced pH on embryonic development, larval survivorship and metamorphosis of 3 common scleractinian corals from the Great Barrier Reef. We used 4 treatment levels of pH, corresponding to the current level of ocean pH and 3 values projected to occur later this century. None of the early life-history stages we studied were consistently affected by reduced pH. Our results suggest that there will be no direct ecological effects of ocean acidification on the early life-history stages of reef corals, at least in the near future.
ScienceDaily:
Corals can survive the early stages of their development even under the tough conditions that rising carbon emissions will impose on them says a new study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. ….
Dr Andrew Baird, Principal Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, was part of the research team and explains their findings.
“The prevailing view is that ocean acidification will act like a toxin to corals, but we were unconvinced by results from previous work on young corals and ocean acidification so we tested critical early stages of development in several coral species at several different acid (or ‘pH’) concentrations of seawater.
“Our results showed no clear response to increasing ocean acidification in any of the stages, or for any of the coral species,” says Dr Baird. “In fact, in only one of nine experiments did we get the response expected if CO2 was acting like a toxin. More often than not we found no effect.”
By bubbling CO2 through seawater the research team was able to simulate future levels of ocean acidification expected to result from rising human carbon emissions. They tested the success of embryo development, the survival of coral larvae and finally their success in settling on coral reefs.
The rest of the reporting by ScienceDaily is almost embarassing as they try to pay lip-service to the orthodoxy of the “the carbon dioxide is evil” fantasy. They waste space in trying to emphasise that even if young corals are not affected this “study does not discount the possibility that coral larvae may suffer other ill-effects from increasing ocean acidification, for example, their swimming speeds may slow down, but because coral larvae typically settle on the reef two or three weeks after birth it is unlikely that these effects will have a major impact on the survival or settlement of coral larvae”.
Tags: carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide emissions, Coral reef, global warming, Ocean acidification, PH
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Oceans, Wildlife | Comments Off on Young coral reefs will be unaffected by any ocean acidification due to increased carbon dioxide
August 14, 2013
It seems to me that the anonymity afforded by social media encourages and nurtures the “herd” mentality in human behaviour. A herd mentality is the essence of “mob behaviour” and it would seem that social media – like mobs – remove or suppress the controls and judgement calls that individual behaviour is usually subject to. I suspect that it is the anonymity available together with the potential for a “flash, online crowd” which together contribute to reaching the “critical mass” needed for the establishment of an “unthinking mob”.
Mob behaviour is characterised by being reactive and where individuals try to “outdo” the behaviour of their fellows under the cover of being anonymous. But it needs a sufficient number of individuals to reach some critical mass to qualify as a mob. It is visible in the positive sense during rapturous calls for an encore after a concert and in the reaction to high oratory. Or it shows up in a negative way in the behaviour of a lynch mob or in the reaction to the speech of a demagogue. It has shown up in the on-line, “mob-bullying” by social media of some vulnerable teenagers which has even led to their suicides. It shows up with the internet trollls hovering on the fringes looking for a “mob” to join on-line.
A member of a mob gains anonymity in the crowd and his individual actions – while contributing to the behaviour of the mob as a whole – are no longer identifiable as the actions of a specific individual. More importantly the individual behaviour is not subject to identification or to being sanctioned. Just as with a stampeding herd of impala being chased by a predator, it is anonymity and running faster than your neighbour but still staying within the mob which provides this perception of protection. It is this feeling of being protected – I think – which switches off the normal human need for risk assessment and rational judgement to be applied before actions and which shifts behaviour away from the conscious plane. Aping and “outdoing” your “neighbour” from within the mob is then prioritised over the exercise of mind and judgement.
A new study shows that what we “like” on social media clearly exhibits a “herd mentality” and depends mainly on what others before us and around us have “liked”. It seems that random “dislikes” however are compensated for.
Lev Muchnik, Sinan Aral and Sean J. Taylor, Social influence bias: a randomized experiment. Science. Vol. 341, 9 August 2013, p. 647. doi: 10.1126/science.1240466
(The paper is paywalled but there is a related discussion here with the authors about “The effect of free access on the diffusion of scholarly ideas”)
Abstract: Our society is increasingly relying on the digitized, aggregated opinions of others to make decisions. We therefore designed and analyzed a large-scale randomized experiment on a social news aggregation Web site to investigate whether knowledge of such aggregates distorts decision-making. Prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behavior, and positive and negative social influences created asymmetric herding effects. Whereas negative social influence inspired users to correct manipulated ratings, positive social influence increased the likelihood of positive ratings by 32% and created accumulating positive herding that increased final ratings by 25% on average. This positive herding was topic-dependent and affected by whether individuals were viewing the opinions of friends or enemies. A mixture of changing opinion and greater turnout under both manipulations together with a natural tendency to up-vote on the site combined to create the herding effects. Such findings will help interpret collective judgment accurately and avoid social influence bias in collective intelligence in the future.
ScienceNews writes:
When rating things online, people tend to follow the herd. A single random “like” can influence a comment’s score at a social news site, researchers report in the Aug. 9 Science.
Users of the site discuss news articles and rate each other’s comments with “up votes” (positive ratings) and “down votes” (negative ratings). Votes affect each comment’s overall score. To test whether previous ratings sway users, Sinan Aral of MIT and colleagues randomly assigned all comments submitted to the site over a five-month period an up vote, a down vote or no vote.
An unearned up vote packed a surprising punch. The first person to view a randomly liked comment was 32 percent more likely to rate it positively than to do the same with a comment that had received no vote. In the long run, boosted comments’ final scores were 25 percent higher than scores of untouched comments. Random negative votes did not affect a comment’s final rating because users compensated with extra up votes.
The findings may help researchers analyze herding behavior or manipulation in other kinds of rating systems, including electoral polls and stock market predictions, the authors suggest.
Tags: Anonymity, Collective intelligence, Herd mentality, mob behaviour, protection by anaonymity, Social influence, Social media
Posted in Behaviour, Media, psychology | Comments Off on Social media anonymity encourages and nurtures the herd mentality
August 14, 2013
Why do we penalise successful species and protect the failures? Almost as if we we wish to deny evolution by ensuring the survival of those which don’t deserve to survive.
If Giant Pandas were not as disinterested as they seem to be in reproducing themselves and as specialised in eating only a few species of bamboo, but instead were immensely successful in increasing their own numbers, then we would no doubt be organising Panda culls. But since they are an almost perfect example of a species bent on its own extinction we go to all possible lengths to keep them going!
Yet another story where a successful species which adapts to and make use of humans and human behaviour is then considered a “threat”. Unsuccessful species of course would become “endangered” and would then be protected!
BBC: The problem of invasive ants may be far worse than previously thought.
A Spanish team of scientists has found that larger than expected numbers of the insects are being unwittingly shipped around the world. The researchers warn that many of these species are establishing colonies in their new habitats that could pose a threat to the environment, infrastructure and human health. The research is published in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters.
Lead author Veronica Miravete, from the University of Gerona in Spain, said: “Due to their small size, most ants are transported involuntarily in containers and other boxes, together with soil, wood, ornamental plants and fruits etc, on ships or airplanes.”
The research team looked at the numbers of exotic ants in the Netherlands, the United States and New Zealand.
They found far more of these accidental stowaways than had previously been reported.
Extrapolating from this data, they estimate that 768 exotic ant species could have been introduced around the world through trade routes.
Of these, they believe that more than 600 species could have established new colonies.
Dr Miravete said: “The number of ants arriving is very large and 85% of the introduced species are able to establish successfully. This indicates that there are many introduced species that are living around us as of yet undetected.”
While not all animals that move to a new region pose a threat, some can wreak havoc – and invasive ants are some of the worst alien offenders.
Tags: Ant, Evolution, fire ants, Introduced species, Invasive species, Pandas, Species
Posted in Behaviour, Evolution, Wildlife | Comments Off on Ants which adapt to human behaviour are considered a threat
August 14, 2013
The Indian Navy’s diesel submarine, INS Sindhurakshak, experienced an explosion and fire while at port in Bombay and has sunk with 18 sailors trapped and possibly dead.
The Indian navy’s Sindhurakshak submarine in Visakhapatnam earlier this year. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/Reuters
Accidents happen, everywhere but there is always the real possibility with accidents in India that institutional or individual “negligence” has a significant part to play. The negligence is often institutional in that processes and routines are lax or ill-defined or incomplete. It is not only in construction and repairs that India often exhibits the “last mile syndrome” where the last 5% of anything just does not get done!. Cost or budget considerations are a very common excuse for not making the final quality checks – whether in processes or in products.
In state owned establishments – like the Navy – institutional weaknesses can also arise because political considerations and politicians can subvert the processes. Individual negligence is not unknown and is usually a case of incompetence at some level. Not least because of the incompetence of the recruitment, training or supervision of the individuals concerned. In the Defense Services (and not just in India), seniority very often overrules competence in the making of appointments. Indian military appointments – and especially senior appointments – have been the subject of much (idiotic) litigation. Unfortunately even the Indian Courts give little importance to competence and have enshrined the appointment of the “most senior”. For fears of being accused of nepotism it is always easiest to appoint the “most senior” rather than the “most competent” or the “best suited” candidate for an appointment.
Of late the Indian Navy has been the subject of many news articles ranging from today’s tragic story to stories of achievement but also of decadence and dissolution.
All these stories are just from the last 30 days:
Navy sex scandal: wife of official arrested
A 25-year-old estranged wife of a navy officer, who rocked the Indian Navy earlier this year by accusing her husband of forcing her to get “sexually involved” with his colleagues, has been arrested by the south Delhi police on charges of cheating and fraud.
First Indian nuclear submarine set for open sea trials
India announced Saturday that its first indigenously-built nuclear submarine is ready for sea trials, a step before it becomes fully operational, and called it a “giant stride” for the nation. India unveiled the 6,000-ton INS Arihant — Destroyer of Enemies — in 2009 as part of a project to built five such vessels which would be armed with nuclear-tipped missiles and torpedoes.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was “delighted to learn that the nuclear propulsion reactor on board INS Arihant, India’s first indigenous nuclear powered submarine, has now achieved criticality”.
Indian SSBN Arihant Achieves Milestone, Govt Messes Up By Releasing Photo Of US Navy Submarine
The Indian Information & Broadcast Ministry has just released this Youtube clip which contains a single still photograph of what it wants you to believe is the INS Arihant SSBN, which reached a milestone today with its pressure water reactor finally going criticial. Well, guess what. Even on a day like this, the government didn’t mind filching a photograph of a US Navy Ohio-class submarine in an officially released video.
Indian-built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant launched
India has unveiled its first home-built aircraft carrier from a shipyard in southern Kerala state. The 37,500 tonne INS Vikrant is expected to go for extensive trials in 2016 before being inducted into the navy by 2018, reports say. With this, India joins a select group of countries capable of building such a vessel.
Massive Explosion Sinks Indian Submarine At Berth, Salvage On
A huge explosion inside Indian Navy Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhurakshak late last night sunk it in its berth at the Mumbai naval dockyard, with just a tiny portion visible. A major fire spread inside the submarine post the explosion. The navy put out a statement a short while ago to say that 18 personnel were on board when the explosion ripped through the submarine, but doesn’t say yet if they’ve been rescued. Salvage and rescue operations are on right now, and have been through the night.
Launching of INS Vikrant August 12th 2013 – image Livefist
Tags: Indian Navy, INS Arihant, INS Sindhurakshak, INS Vikrant (R11)
Posted in Behaviour, Defense, India | Comments Off on Indian Navy: The tragic, the good, the bad and the ugly
August 13, 2013
I have just been watching the World Athletic Championships from Moscow on TV and need to have a little rant at bumbling officialdom.
I am not sure if this is to the account of the IAAF or to the Russian organisers but the officials at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow have been less than impressive.
- Idiot officials at the winning line who try to shoo away decathlon and heptathlon athletes who have collapsed on the track after completing their grueling final runs in the 1500m and 800m respectively.
- The utter lack of interest from idiot officials who merely watched as an athlete (Diego Ferrin high jump) was writhing in pain from a pulled muscle (hamstring?).
- The apparent lack of medical facilities around the stadium which takes many minutes for assistance to come to injured or physically drained athletes (Hansle Parchment, Diego Ferrin)
- Idiot officials who try to keep winning athletes from celebrating and approaching their supporters.
- Idiot officials who are unable to ensure that the athletes competing in the 20km walk follow the designated route and where the position of the winning line is obscure.
I’m sure many of the officials are just temporary help drafted in off the streets for the championships but they do remind me of the security staff at airports – instructed to follow some rigid protocol and not – in any circumstances – to use their brains or their discretion.
Tags: IAAF, Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow, Russia, sport, World Athletic Championships
Posted in Behaviour, Sport | Comments Off on Officials at World Athletics championship do not impress
August 13, 2013
“Seismic seiches are standing waves set up on rivers, reservoirs, ponds, and lakes when seismic waves from an earthquake pass through the area. They are in direct contrast to tsunamis which are giant sea waves created by the sudden uplift of the sea floor.”
A new paper describes how these seiches -standing waves – observed in the Norwegian fjords in 2011 – for the first time since the 1950’s – have been linked to the Great Tohoku Quake of 2011 half an hour earlier.
Stein Bondevik, Bjørn Gjevik and Mathilde B. Sørensen, Norwegian seiches from the giant 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50639, 2013
Abstract: Seismic waves of the giant 2011 Tohoku earthquake triggered seiches in western Norwegian fjords. The seiching began a half hour after the earthquake origin time. The oscillations were noted by eyewitnesses and recorded by surveillance and cell phone cameras. The observations show maximum trough-to-peak amplitudes of 1.0–1.5 m and periods of 67–100 s. The water waves were not triggered from the arrival of the surface waves, the timing inferred for other seiches. Instead, the seiching began during the passage of horizontal S waves. We reproduced the S wave trigger by means of a shallow-water wave model calibrated previously to Norwegian tides and storm surges. The simulations, which used the observed earthquake motion as forcing, show water waves with periods and amplitudes similar to those in the film clips. However, the strongest horizontal ground oscillations with shorter periods (20–30 s) did not contribute much to the formation of the seiches.
It is not the first time that such standing waves have been observed so far away. As the US Geological Service notes:
The term seismic seiche was first coined by Anders Kvale in 1955 to describe oscillation of lake levels in Norway and England caused by the Assam earthquake of August, 1950. But this was not the first time that seismic seiches had been observed. The first published mention was after the great earthquake of November 1755 at Lisbon, Portugal. An article in Scot’s Magazine in 1755 described seiches in Scotland in Loch Lomond, Loch Long, Loch Katrine and Loch Ness. They were also seen in English harbors and ponds and were originally described in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1755.
…….
Seismic waves from the Alaska earthquake of 28 March, 1964, were so powerful that they caused water bodies to oscillate at many places in North America. Seiches were recorded at hundreds of surface-water gaging stations – although they had rarely been reported following previous earthquakes. Indeed, four seiches were observed in Australia.
Some of the 1964 seiches were very large. Waves as high as 1.8 meters were reported on the Gulf Coast – probably because they were generated in resonance with the seismic surface waves.
In the case of the Norwegian fjords and the Great Tohoku quake, PhysOrg reports:
The scene was captured by security cameras and by people with cell phones, reported to local media, and investigated by a local newspaper. Drawing on this footage, and using a computational model and observations from a nearby seismic station, Bondevik et al. identify the cause of the waves—the powerful magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake that hit off the coast of Japan half an hour earlier.
In closed or semi-enclosed bodies of water, seismic waves can trigger standing waves known as “seiches.” Seiching had not been recorded in Norway’s fjords since 1950. Scientists have traditionally thought that seiching is caused by seismic surface waves, but the authors find that the fjord seiching was initiated before the surface waves had arrived.
Using seismic observations and a model for local fjord behavior, they find that in this case the seiching was triggered by S waves, which travel through Earth’s body, and later was amplified by Love waves, which travel on Earth’s surface. There are a lot of open questions surrounding the connection between earthquakes and seiching, but the authors’ research supports the idea that not all earthquakes will cause seiching in all enclosed bodies of water. The occurrence of the Japanese earthquake?induced seiches depended on the period and orientation of the seismic waves aligning with the natural frequency and orientation of the body of water.
Tags: 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, fjords, Norway, Norwegian seiches, Seiche, Seismic wave, standing waves
Posted in Geosciences, Japan, Natural Disasters, Natural Phenomena, Norway | Comments Off on Great Tohoku quake in 2011 caused standing waves in Norwegian fjords 30 minutes later
August 12, 2013
From Copy, Shake and Paste
Everyone knows that Berkley is an excellent university in the United States. Or was that Berkeley? Whatever, if someone is sporting a degree that looks impressive, it must be from that place.
Except when it is not.
It has come to light, as the Swiss daily paper Tages-Anzeiger noted on 9 August 2013, that the IT-boss at the University Hospital in Zürich has stepped down because of a missing ‘e’. The University of California, Berkeley, is indeed one of the top universities in the US. But it did not grant a doctoral degree to Jürgen Müller. Müller had been working on his doctorate at the University of Passau in Germany when his financing ran out.
Müller then heard about the University of Berkley, and for only $ 3000 in fees he was soon the proud owner of a sheepskin declaring him to be a “Doctor of Science”, according to the Tages-Anzeiger.
……
…. The Tages-Anzeiger article ends with an interesting note. It seems that in March of 2013 a whistleblower tried to contact Müller’s boss about his purchased degree. Müller, as IT boss, apparently had this person on a blacklist, so that emails from him did not bounce, but were just silently destroyed.
I suppose the University Hospital in Zürich is glad that he has resigned. The question is, where will he pop up again where people don’t know the difference one letter can make?
The University of Berkley’s rates for purchasing degrees are below. It’s best to buy your Master’s and Doctor’s degrees together and in advance!!
Buying your Berkley degree
The University of Berkley is a diploma mill and the subject of many scam reports and warnings such as this one:
University of Berkley Distance Learning Accreditation Report
CAUTION: You should be aware… this college is NOT ACCREDITED by any agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation or the US Department of Education to award degrees.
Distance learning accreditation claims include:
- New Accrediting Partnership for Educators Worldwide (NAPEW)
You should be aware that this agency is NOT RECOGNIZED by the Council on Higher Education or the US Department of Education as a college accreditation institution. What does this mean? For you, as a consumer, this means credentials earned at this college might not meet with wide acceptance at other CHEA-accredited online colleges and might not meet with academic or employment acceptance across the USA. You should be aware that in some states and for some professions it may be illegal to use a degree from an non accredited school for employment purposes.
CAUTION: the following State Warnings apply to this online college
- Michigan State Warning: CAUTION! The State of Michigan classifies this online college as an UNACCEPTABLE INSTITUTION for credentialing for those seeking jobs in the State’s Department of Civil Service: (Consult Michigan’s NON ACCREDITED COLLEGES/UNIVERSITIES – “Degrees from these institutions will not be accepted by the Department of Civil Service as satisfying any educational requirements indicated on job specifications”: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf)
- Texas State Warning: CAUTION! The State of Texas classifies this online college as an ILLEGAL SUPPLIER of educational credentials in the State of Texas (Consult: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Institutions Whose Degrees are Illegal to Use in Texas: http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/AAR/PrivateInstitutions/NoTX.cfm)
Tags: Berkeley, Berkley, Degree mills, degrees for sale, Jürgen Müller, scam colleges, United States
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Education | Comments Off on What’s in an “e”? Berkley vs. Berkeley
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