A retirement age of 78 will be needed in Norway for children born today

January 23, 2013

Increasing lifespans are real and the period during which we can be productive is increasing and what follows is inevitable. At the present rate of longevity increasing by about 3 months every year, by 2500 most people will live to be 200. Considering that world population is likely to be falling slowly after 2100 it seems not unconnected that any consequent decrease in human economic activity will be (will have to be) compensated for by people having a longer productive life.

A year ago a trial balloon was sent up by the Swedish Prime Minister when he imagined a retirement age of 70 rather than the current 65. Now a suggestion that retirement age will have to be increased to 78 has been floated in Norway. The necessary debate is starting but the result is not in doubt – only the timing is.

But before not too long the  human condition of “study for 20 work for 40 and live to 80”  which probably applies to me will change to “study for 25, work for 50 and live to 100” and will apply to my children. And probably within another 200 years it would have become “study for 40, work for 80 and live to 160”.

Svenska Dagbladet:

Work until you’re 78. It could become necessary for Norwegians born today if the financial burden on the productive section of the population is not to become too large. The calculation and the challenge is from the Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Industry and has created a heated debate in Norway.

Life expectancy is on the rise in both Sweden and Norway. It will force today’s young people to work longer than today. But to retire at 78 years of age is not what many are convinced about.  Sweden had a similar debate when Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt spoke of 75 years as an appropriate retirement age.

In Norway, the suggestion is that 78 years is the appropriate age but Professor Hilde Björnland has doubts: “ The calculation is interesting because it shows the increased pension obligations we face. It is not enough to work up to age 67 if we are to cope with the coming demographic challenges”. But, she says, there is a difference between a long life and increasing mental and physical health. It is uncertain whether we can work much longer than 65-70 years even though we live longer. It depends on how the jobs look like in the future, it depends on how the tasks are suited to us as we get older. Today, only 2.3 percent of the Norwegian population work between 67 and 74 years. After 74 years, it is so small that it is not measurable by the Norwegian Central Statistical Office.

Those who want to raise the retirement age to 78 years at Den Norske Bank believe in any case that today’s young people must be prepared to work much longer than their parents’ generation did. But to get people to work more years in a country that has huge oil revenues and would like to convert income to more leisure time will not be easy. … 

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Facebook envy is a hidden threat to life satisfaction

January 22, 2013

Social networking has its downsides. I suspect that all enhanced networking for the many will always lead to new stresses and some form of negative behaviour for a few.

The results of a German study of Facebook users is to be presented at an international conference next month:

11th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik, 

Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction? by Hanna Krasnova, Helena Wenninger, Thomas Widjaja  and Peter Buxmann

A pdf version of the report is available here: Facebook Envy

cbronline.com: According to a new German study of over 600 people, using Facebook could make its users feel envious of their successful friends. This result may lead to frustration and dissatisfaction.

The joint research was conducted by Prof. Dr. Peter Buxmann from the Department of Information Systems of the TU Darmstadt and Dr. Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The research, “Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction” revealed that over one-third of surveyed Facebook users reported negative feelings,including frustration, when using the site. Many said this was a cause of feeling envious towards their Facebook friends.

Hanna Krasnova said that although respondents were reluctant to admit feeling envious while on Facebook, they often presumed that envy can be the cause behind the frustration of ‘others’ on this platform — a clear indication that envy is an increasing phenomenon in the Facebook context. “Indeed, access to copious positive news and the profiles of seemingly successful ‘friends’ fosters social comparison that can readily provoke envy,” Krasnova said.

Medical Daily adds:

The study also found that people who use facebook to browse pictures, read wall posts or check newsfeeds are more likely to harbor negative feelings than people who actively participate on the networking platform.

Previous research has associated Facebook use with anxiety, debt and even higher weight. Whether or not Facebook increases depression is still open to debate. But almost everyone agrees that Facebook is addictive, and according to a study, sometimes even more than sex.

A recent study on facebook published in the journal Memory & Cognition had found that people are more likely to remember facebook status updates than lines from a book or even a person’s face. 

Researchers who conducted the present study also found that about a fifth of all events that lead to envy among people were somewhere within the context of facebook. Researchers call this phenomenon as the “envy spiral” where envy leads a person to change his or her profile which in turn leads “others” to be envious.

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Shocking gender inequality in scientific misconduct

January 22, 2013

Apparently men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud according to a new study. Of course the study only deals with misconduct and frauds that have been found out.

Important areas that the study does not address are – for example – :

  1. Whether women are being denied the same opportunities to cheat that their males colleagues obviously have and if so how this can be rectified, or
  2. Whether women cheat as much as men but are better able to conceal their misconduct and avoid being found out and if so what training or ability their male colleagues lack, or
  3. Whether this behaviour is due to the more aggressive nature of the male species and whether all male research should be subjected to greater scrutiny.

Whatever the reasons this kind of gender inequality should not to be tolerated in a modern society. Further study is clearly needed and I think there is plenty of room here for a number of PhD theses in social psychology. That is not to say that immediate actions to promote gender equality should be delayed. For a start quotas for women found to be committing misconduct could be introduced at all research institutions.

Male scientists are far more likely to commit fraud than females and the fraud occurs across the career spectrum, from trainees to senior faculty. The analysis of professional misconduct was co-led by a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and was published today in the online journal mBio.

“The fact that misconduct occurs across all stages of career development suggests that attention to ethical aspects of scientific conduct should not be limited to those in training, as is the current practice,” said senior author Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of microbiology & immunology and professor of medicine at Einstein, as well as editor-in-chief of mBio.

He added, “Our other finding – that males are overrepresented among those committing misconduct – implies a gender difference we need to better understand in any effort to promote the integrity of research.”

In a previous study, Dr. Casadevall found that misconduct is responsible for two-thirds of all retractions of scientific papers. The finding was unexpected, since earlier research had suggested that errors account for the majority of retracted scientific papers.

Researchers embarked on the current study to better understand those who are guilty of scientific fraud. They reviewed 228 individual cases of misconduct reported by the United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI) from 1994 through 2012. ORI promotes the responsible conduct of research and investigates charges of misconduct involving research supported by the Department of Health and Human Services.

An analysis determined that fraud was involved in 215 (94 percent) of the 228 cases reported by the ORI. Of these, 40 percent involved trainees, 32 percent involved faculty members, and 28 percent involved other research personnel (research scientists, technicians, study coordinators, and interviewers).

Overall, 65 percent of the fraud cases were committed by males, but the percentage varied among the academic ranks: 88 percent of faculty members who committed misconduct were male, compared with 69 percent of postdoctoral fellows, 58 percent of students, and 43 percent of other research personnel. In each career category, the proportion of males committing misconduct was greater than would have been predicted from the gender distribution of scientists. The gender difference was surprisingly large among faculty, said Dr. Casadevall, who also holds the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Chair in/of Microbiology & Immunology. Of the 72 faculty who committed fraud, just 9 were female – one-third of the expected 27 if females had committed fraud at the same rate as males.

 

 

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5 year old “terrorist” grilled by ombliferous school officials

January 21, 2013

One wonders how the minds of these school officials work.

The Daily Item: January 18, 2013, Mount Carmel: A 5-year-old kindergartner who told classmates she was going to shoot them, and then herself, with her pink bubble gun, was grilled for three hours by Mount Carmel school officials without her mother’s knowledge, then suspended, a family attorney said.

The girl was initially kicked out for 10 days in what the school categorized as a “terroristic threat,” according to the kindergartner’s mother and confirmed by the family attorney. That suspension was reduced to two days and labeled as a “threat to harm others.”

It would take a Lewis Carrol or an Edward Lear to do justice to these ombliferous soldiers in the war on terror.

There was a toddler from Mount Carmel,
Who armed with a bubble gun did go;
But she was put to the rack,
And forthwith had to pack,
To be sent off to Guantanamo.

(with apologies to Edward Lear).

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Are climate scientists like Lance Armstrong? When will they admit their models are doped?

January 21, 2013

P. Gosselin at No Tricks Zone  is quite right in pointing out the enormous political problems in now admitting that the global warming hypothesis which has been accepted dogma for 3 decades may not be correct after all.

The big question now circulating through the stunned European media, governments and activist organisations is how could the warming stop have happened? Moreover, how do we now explain it to the public?

His recent posts got me to making the parallels between the AGW climate “scientists” and Lance Armstrong.

Both

  • have posed as heroes “saving” the world / sport
  • have promoted dogma based on lies for many years,
  • have made fortunes in the process,
  • have lied and cheated to maintain the initial fraud,
  • have attacked and tried to destroy those who would disclose their fraud,
  • have – on the side – led to some good work along the way (in cancer research and in many disciplines connected to climate), and
  • will come out of the cesspit smelling of roses

I wonder if the Nobel Peace Committee could revoke their decision and if Al Gore and the IPCC could be stripped of their Nobel prize?  They can both afford to give the money back.

Major German Daily Carries Front-Page Headline: “Global Warming Keeps Us Waiting!…CO2 Over-Estimated?”

Warmist Spiegel/Euro-Media Concede Global Warming Has Ended…Models Were Wrong…Scientists Are Baffled!

Lance Armstrong, Livestrong And Climate Research

Weather Service Warns of “Shock Cooling” Coming To Europe…4th Bitter Cold Euro-Winter In 5 Years Shaping Up!

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Facebook copies social networking concept from 600 years ago

January 21, 2013

The Facebook concept was anticipated some 600 years ago.

A collaborative research project is ongoing between Royal Holloway, University of London, the British Library and Reading University, in which a team of academics are cataloguing and investigating the works of the Italian Academies, dating from 1525 to 1700.One of the major outcomes of the project is a comprehensive database of information on Academies from across the Italian peninsula, detailing their membership and publications. This is publicly accessible through the British Library on-line catalogue

Learned Academies represent a vital and characteristic dimension of early modern culture. There were ca. 600 Academies in Italy in the period 1525-1700. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Italian Academies were responsible for promoting debate and discussion in many different disciplines from language and literature, through the visual and performing arts to science, technology, medicine and astronomy.

And the researchers have also found that scholars at the Italian Academies were networking socially with satirical nicknames while sharing comments on topical events and exchanging poems and plays and music.

The project provides information about the academies, their members, publications, activities and emblems. Researchers were surprised to realise just how similar the activities of these sixteenth and seventeenth century scholars were with society today. 

Professor Jane Everson, Principal-investigator, said: “Just as we create user names for our profiles on Facebook and Twitter and create circles of friends on Google plus, these scholars created nicknames, shared – and commented on – topical ideas, the news of the day, and exchanged poems, plays and music. It may have taken a little longer for this to be shared without the internet, but through the creation of yearbooks and volumes of letters and speeches, they shared the information of the day.” 

The scholars created satirical names for their academies such as Gelati  and Intronati. Professor Everson explains: “They are jokey names, which really mean the opposite of what they say. Intronati has nothing to do with thrones; it means dazed, stunned, knocked out and so not able to think straight – but really the Intronati were engaged in serious study, debates, dramatic performances and the like from the moment they were founded in the 1520s – and they are still as active as ever in their home city of Siena. The Gelati were not going around singing just one cornetto. Gelati means the frozen ones – so a pun on the fact that these academicians far from being totally inactive through being frozen cold, were busy debating, exploring ideas, challenging received opinions and changing the cultural world of their home city of Bologna, and indeed of Italy and far beyond.”

Just as the names of the academies and the nicknames of the individual members were fun, so are the emblems and mottos which illustrate the name of the academy. The scholars took great delight in creating puzzling emblems with hidden meanings. Professor Everson adds: “They do sometimes take some working out, but it is great fun when you can see the hidden meanings in the images.”  

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Just another Russian winter — or is it global warming?

January 20, 2013

It is cold that kills not warmth. It is global cooling that will provide the greater challenge for humans – not global warming. But whether cooling or warming or both, humans will be better served by figuring out the best ways to adapt and not waste time and energy on trying to control the climate based on fanciful theories and religious beliefs about what causes climate change.

It’s the Sun, stupid!

Yesterday we had about -20°C,  which is pretty cold but not unusual for this time of year. A friend in Australia was sweltering in +44°C  -pretty hot but also not unusual. Another friend in Alberta had a normal winter day at about -25°C. Yesterday across the world humans were living and managing over temperatures ranging from about -50°C to about +49°C. Coping – quite successfully – with a temperature range caused by local weather of almost 100°C .

Snowpocalypse Russia

On Friday, Moscow was on a verge of traffic collapse as more than 10 inches of snow fell on the city, which is more than half of January’s average. Thousands of passengers were stranded overnight in the capital’s major airports, as several dozen flights were delayed. Muscovites woke up and found their cars, driveways and houses buried under a thick layer of snow, with city workers unable to get to smaller streets.

Moscow (Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin)

Moscow (Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin)

While the snowstorms have caused inconvenience for large population centers in western Russia, they have been life-threatening further east in the country. The polar circle city of Norilsk has been buried under 10 feet of snow – entire apartment blocks, markets, stores and offices were buried under snow overnight.

Banks of snow were as high as two people put together, reaching the second-story windows of some apartment buildings. Cars, stores, garages were blocked. Norilsk metropolitan workers were forced to dig passageways through the snow banks to create access between the outside world and the barricaded city. Meanwhile, icicles up to three feet in length have formed off the ledges of buildings, breaking at random and causing a lethal hazard for pedestrians below.

Norilsk (Photo from bigpicture.ru)

Norilsk (Photo from bigpicture.ru)

 

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Noted in Passing 19th January 2013

January 19, 2013

A weekly post on things that were interesting or which I would have liked to have blogged about …….

Engineering and Technology

A work of genius: Harry Beck's map of 1933

A work of genius: Harry Beck’s map of 1933

The London Underground is 150 years old and the iconic London Underground Map is a work of some genius – by an electrical draughtsman Harry Beck – in focusing on connections and ignoring geography.

Boeing is facing a torrid time with the 787 Dreamliner and has stopped all further aircraft deliveries. This is going to hurt their cash flow even before all the claims from the airlines come in for the grounding of their aircraft.

The advent of hydraulic fracturing and the consequent availability of shale gas means that new lines are drawn on the energy map of the world and many of the oldest and most stable geopolitical truths will be turned on their heads.

If graphene turns out to be the wonder material that it promises to be then it is time to invest in graphite.

Science and Behaviour

The dangers with blindly assuming that correlations represent a causal relationship is well demonstrated by this study on milk, chocolate and Nobel prizes. Derby Proctor believes that chimpanzees have a sense of fairness but her “ultimatum game” experiments were not strictly ultimate games at all and are not convincing.  Altruism among chimpanzees is – if it exists at all – strictly limited and only after basic needs are satisfied and restricted to a very few.

Matt Ridley joins the list and also dumps on Mark Lynas and green orthodoxy

The curious case of Zuma’s deputies deals with the intricacies of politics in South Africa and in the ANC today. An interesting post on the French need to be relevant in the world and Hollande’s adventures in Africa.

How much of the chatter on Twitter or postings on Facebook are real communication and how much is noise? Nandana Sengupta looks at the pluses and the minuses of the explosion of opinions via social media in India.

Having spent a lifetime with contracts I have always taken “terms” of “terms and conditions” to signify “limits of time” but terms and conditions have now converged in usage to be almost identical in meaning.

On where Tolkien may have found the word “hobbit”.

For Wodehouse fans and for the first time since Ralph Richardson as Lord Emsworth in 1967, BBC are showing a  new TV series centred around Blandings Castle. The reviews were not very kind:

“The performances weren’t bad exactly, but there was an impression that the cast had raided the charity shop and were merely having a spiffing time in vintage clothing.”

Bad Science

Michael Marotta describes four books on bad science.

The British Met Office makes yet another misstep and demonstrates that massaging science to get a desired result makes for bad science.

Climate models are hardly worth the paper they are printed on and they don’t seem to have any idea of how to handle the effect of clouds. Models – which are pushing the alarmist cause – generally assume they have a positive feedback on global warming but in reality the feedback is negative.

Professor Debora Weber-Wulff reports on Multiple Retractions of Articles by Computer Science Professor

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Airport security is now more about business than about security

January 19, 2013

I can still remember arriving at airports, checking in and strolling quietly to my departure gate without undressing along the way or unpacking my bag or spending up to an hour standing in a “security” queue. The “airport experience” was still something to look forward to. But that is in my memory like a long-lost dream. Those days seem to have gone forever.

In the name of security we now accept the routine degradation that comes with intrusive pat-downs, small children being frisked by strange men and the impassive reluctance of security staff to use their minds (which is of course what is required of them). I have yet to come across an airport where the time and inconvenience  and hassle of the security process has actually decreased but many where extra layers of hassle with new equipment are added. And it is getting worse. 

We accept the inconvenience to the many in the hope of finding the -presumed – very few who wish to destroy the plane they are travelling on. Airport security has over the years managed to deprive me of two bottles of whiskey, a few lighters, two nail clippers, a bottle of after-shave lotion, one of perfume and a bottle of extra-hot chilli sauce. At Paris my son has been reduced to an incoherent rage when a security female of little mind confiscated his multi-function “Swiss card”. I have been taken out of the security line and hassled for 90 minutes at Frankfurt when I tried to read the name-tag (purposely worn upside down to avoid identification) of the security moron on duty . At Delhi airport I have been taken aside and questioned why I needed two lighters in my bag. At Singapore they confiscated my nose-hair scissors! Twice – at Dresden – my trousers have fallen down without the support of my belt when I was holding up my arms to be patted down.

The idea is that passengers are both protected from potential terrorist attacks and/or at least are reassured that their safety is being considered. In 2010, the BBC lauded the results of a survey that found that the majority of the flying public was in favour of the measure. But can we trust the results? What the BBC failed to mention was that the consulting company which carried out the survey, Unisys, had financial interests in the body scanner industry.

But I wonder whether all this “security” works and even whether it has ever worked? Is there any evidence at all that all this security has ever found an intending saboteur? It seems remarkably convenient that the security industry has no performance criteria to be judged on – for security reasons of course.

And then I comprehend that the airport security “business” is now worth about $100 billion per year and over $30 billion of that is just in Europe. It becomes obvious then that the “security industry” will not permit the easing of the plethora of unnecessary regulations if this volume of business might decrease. They will never admit to how ineffective they are.

So it is encouraging to read that TSA to pull revealing scanners from airports. But I am afraid that my cynical view remains that  after 9/11: airports ‘wasting billions’ on needless security checks for passengers. As Business Week put it Airport Security Is Killing Us.

It is time  to demand that the “security industry” reports on and proves its effectiveness.

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24 aircraft grounded as persistent teething problems with Boeing 787 Dreamliner are impacting operations

January 16, 2013

UPDATE!

Now all Boeing Dreamliners in US and India have also been grounded indefinitely. Boeing’s ongoing dispute with unions will not make matters easier. This could be an expensive delay for Boeing.

=============

Japanese airlines are grounding all their Boeing 787 Dreamliners for inspection: ANA are grounding 17 aircraft and JAL is grounding a further 5 to add to the 2 already undergoing inspections. Last week the Federal Aviation Authority ordered a review of the design procedures as well as the manufacturing processes for the Dreamliner but they stopped short of ordering any general grounding of the aircraft. But this review comes just 15 months after the plane was certified by the FAA which is not very usual. The Japanese Transport Ministry has also set up a team to review the design and manufacture of the Dreamliner. Official government reviews are a major setback for airline operations since it shifts the onus onto the airlines and the manufacturer. They now have the daunting task of  “proving a negative” – of “proving” that nothing can occur –  before operating “as normal.

Air India has 6 Dreamliners but so far neither the airline nor the Indian Government have grounded any planes but are following the lead of the US authorities. The other airlines with the 787 in operation are Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines, LOT, Qatar Airways and United Airlines. In all Boeing has some 850  Dreamliners on order.

So far the problems with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner are system problems (electrical and fuel systems) and there is nothing to suggest that the use of composite materials for the  fuselage or that any other structural issues are of concern. But, of course, structural problems take longer to show up.

This baby is going to give Boeing many more sleepless nights.

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