There is virtually nothing in the physical universe around us that is not worthy of study. Most study begins with observations. We can term any such area of study where observations are made and knowledge accumulated as being a “discipline”. The social “sciences”, environmentalism and even astrology and palmistry could be considered disciplines.
But when does a discipline become a science?
There are still alarmists and Malthusians who believe that the world will face catastrophe due to overpopulation. They believe that the carrying capacity of the earth has been exceeded, that there will be food shortages, energy shortages and resource shortages in every field; that – in short – the population will not be able to sustain itself let alone to maintain growth.
But like so many alarmist theories (be it global warming or peak oil or peak gas or GM crops) the overpopulation meme builds on beliefs and ignores evidence. The environmentalists are increasingly taking faith-based and anti-science positions. Alarmism invokes political correctness and “consensus beliefs” rather than evidence to silence criticism . Even hard-core environmentalists are beginning to question this myopic adhesion to ideology (Environment360).
Just taking the overpopulation myth as an example, the data and projections in the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011): World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision. New York (Updated: 15 April 2011) are pretty unambiguous and revealing. Within 100 years world population will be declining. The majority of children being born today in the developed world will live to be over 100 years old. There will begin to be a shortage of the required “productive population” relative to the “supported populations of the young and the retired” – a problem already evident in Japan and other developed countries. In Sweden (and some other European countries) for example, this proportion is being maintained only by means of immigration and the slight consequent increase in average fertility rates. The “productive population” in Germany would be below the required level were it not for the “guest workers”. The 11 million or so “illegal immigrants” who are nearly all part of the “productive population” in the US are a vital part of maintaining this balance.
The challenge in 2100 will be to maintain the balance between those “producing” to those “supported” in a declining and aging population. Perhaps immigration or population migrations or productivity increases by the use of robots and an increase in the age one joins the “supported” population will be parts of the solution. I have no doubt that solutions will be found, but the “overpopulation problem” would have left the stage.
An Australian group of scientists have published the results of a new study in the October issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This then passes for “scientific research”!!!
From the New York Times:
…. Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.
By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said. ……
Ah well! They are scientists, probably wear white coats and could not possibly be idiots.
Once upon a time I opened a Twitter account.
I found
Twitter is just another medium. The message inherent in this medium is that the tweeter is so obsessed by his own ego that he must broadcast his indiscriminate, purposeless, directionless, 140 character snippets about his life to the whole world. In short that the tweeter is a twit. Perhaps the medium has its uses. But the medium encourages a general “dumbing-down” of transmitted information. It uses “black and white” when “full colour” is available. It downgrades the quality of the information transmitted.
Bad information leads to bad communication which gives bad actions.
It does not seem to add any value for me.
So, once upon another time, I closed my Twitter account.
Chapter 4: Communication: Hearing What Isn’t Said
Communication is the tool that a manager must make use of to mobilise actions from his chosen actors. Communication is a process and not a singular event. It extends from the meaning that he selects and then through all the subsequent steps of converting the meaning into a message which he transmits as information making up a communiqué directed at a particular recipient. The process continues till it is received, interpreted and reconverted into meaning in the recipient’s mind. But the process is not complete until the manager gets the feedback confirming that his intended meaning has been successfully transferred. The manager retains responsibility throughout the entire process. Language and culture enable communication and are not barriers. Focusing on the recipient leads naturally to the process required to generate the desired meanings in his mind. Any manager can make himself into a good communicator. Some will have to work harder at it than others. But being aware of the steps contained within a communications process is where the learning starts.
twit – A silly or foolish person.
to twit – to be in a state of nervous excitement: “we’re in a twit about your visit”
Are all tweeters twits? Is it only twits who tweet?
But there are many types of tweeters:
I am unable to find a category of tweeters who could be considered high-class.
There may be tweeters who are not twits. But that remains to be demonstrated. The empirical evidence suggests that all tweeters are twits.
My hypothesis is that only twits tweet.
“The medium is the message” – Marshall McLuhan
Perhaps the message of the Twitter medium is that the tweeter is a twit.
Are US politics and media channels driven by fear-mongering and alarmism?
By the time it hit the US coast, the storm system Sandy which had been hyped by an alarmist media, irresponsible insurance companies and a frightened set of politicians into the “worst storm ever to hit the US” had fizzled to be a tropical storm.
The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Sandy to a “post-tropical cyclone,” as it approaches the New Jersey coast.
It was no hurricane which hit the US coast.
It was no doubt a severe storm but was it really worth cancelling 8,000 flights for?
Michael Mann is no scientist – but he likes to claim he is one.
Michael Mann is no Nobel laureate – but he likes to claim he is one.
Climate “science” is no science – but Michael Mann likes to claim it is.
Time for the so-called “climate scientists” to be held accountable for their alarmism and waste.
An article in The Telegraph caught my eye while watching the US Presidential debate at my hotel.
A rather disturbing development in the UK and I don’t like the ethics of the situation. Euthanasia is voluntary but I am not sure that the Liverpool Care Pathway is. It is a pathway which leads to the death of the patient /victim in about 33 hours. I wonder who this pathway serves? At first sight it seems to be primarily for the benefit of hospitals and doctors and health care system costs. Perhaps for relatives.
Mary Cooper, 79, died a few days after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
The pathway, originally designed to ease the suffering of terminally ill cancer patients in their very last days, is being used more and more widely in NHS hospitals.
The idea behind the LCP is to give patients a ‘good death’ by avoiding unnecessary and burdensome medical interventions.
However, there have been accusations it hastens death because it can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition.
The LCP leads over 100,000 people to death every year – just in the UK. It smacks of execution of the elderly for convenience.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. …. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
An assisted death for someone who does not wish to die is an execution.
Over the last 30+ years of doing business around the world the one certain indicator for me that corruption is rife and that a bribe is being solicited is when unforeseen delays occur in a permitting or licencing process and/or when an “approval” is conditional or restricted. Politicians and bureaucrats everywhere use the bidding, procurement and regulatory machinery as their opportunity to line their pockets. And the appearance of sand in bureaucratic machinery is a sure sign that a politician or a bureaucrat is available to remove the sand or to oil the machinery – for a consideration.
The EU is probably the most sophisticated and successful corruptocracy in the world.
Yahoo (Reuters) reports on the latest case of EU corruption to come to light:
The European Union’s top health official resigned on Tuesday after an anti-fraud investigation connected him to an attempt to influence EU tobacco legislation, the European Commission said.
The EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF found that a Maltese businessman had tried to use his contacts withCommissioner John Dalli, who is Maltese, for financial gain by offering to influence future EU legislation on tobacco products.
“The OLAF report did not find any conclusive evidence of the direct participation of Mr Dalli but did consider that he was aware of these events,” the Commission said in a statement, saying that Dalli had resigned with immediate effect.
Dalli has rejected the OLAF’s findings, the statement said.
The statement said it was up to Maltese judicial authorities to decide if they wanted to pursue the case.
The OLAF investigation followed a complaint by snuff-and- cigar-maker Swedish Match in May 2012, saying that the businessman – who was not named – sought financial advantages in return for influencing Commission proposals, particularly on the EU’s current export ban on snus, a Swedish-style moist snuff.
“It’s unpleasant that these things happen. We can only hope that the process going forward to create a new directive is transparent and honest,” Swedish Match spokesman Fredrik Peyron said.
“We don’t know all the details that have emerged in this report. But if he has been involved in this it is reasonable (that Dalli resign).”
Snus, which is Swedish Match’s main cash cow, is banned in the EU for health reasons, except in Sweden which negotiated a permanent exemption in its EU accession talks in the 1990s.
Swedish Match hopes the European Commission will lift its ban on snus, which is put under the lip, mostly in pouches. The Swedish government has been pushing for a lifting of the ban, saying the health risks are not proportionate to the ban.
