Cool!
Click on the image.
Infographic designed by Jacob O’Neal
The Cheetah revealed
October 8, 2012The price of longevity is degradation of the elderly
October 7, 2012The care of the elderly passing from family members to institutions is one of the apparently irreversible developments in all cultures today. It is not just a phenomenon of “Western” civilization but is a trend across the globe. As “joint families” have given way to nuclear families and as couples have both gone out “to work” and as the elderly desire greater independence and as people live longer, the responsibility for the care of the elderly has passed to institutions from ever-more burdened children or relations.
But a model for institutional care – whether by private players or the State – which works without the degradation of the elderly has yet to be found. I suppose the fundamental reasons are that
- to die quietly and with some dignity and with as little discomfort as possible is only of value to the dying,
- those who are “in care” have limited opportunities to make themselves heard, let alone to complain,
- those “in care” are no longer worth very much to the society they live in and are only seen as a cost,
- even for the relatives and children of those in institutional care, the elderly are seen primarily as “duties” and they would rather not complain if the only solution is a responsibility devolving upon themselves, and
- for institutions providing care there is always a financial benefit to not providing care and they get no “extra bonus” when they do provide care.
CO2 concentration is not a major driver of earth’s temperature – may not even be a minor driver.
October 6, 2012This paper is about the Warm Period in the Late Bronze Age (3100-3300 Years Before Present), which preceded the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the current Warm Period.
Journal of Archaeological Science Volume 39, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 1862–1870
The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages by Brandon L. Drake, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Are numbers discrete and time continuous? or is it the other way around?
October 6, 2012Idle thoughts and unanswerable questions on a Saturday morning:
The Number System seems to be continuous and infinite but every number seems to be discrete. But if any number is also infinitely divisible it must also be continuous. So are numbers simultaneously both discrete and continuous?
Or is a number just a label? Perhaps a number – if just a label and representing a singularity – is discrete and the divisibility of a number is actually undefined. It is number difference – not a number – which is infinitely divisible. So – for example – the number 10, as a label, is not divisible — it is the number difference between 10 and some reference number (10-0) which is. So is our Number System then a discrete thing and made up of an infinite and continuous quantity of number differences with each number difference being discrete? It would then be rational for there to be an infinity of discrete Number Systems.
So perhaps numbers don’t exist. Only number differences do and the numbers are their labels.
This Land is Mine
October 6, 2012“Owning land” is relative.
Nina Paley has put this together
I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it’s the first (and so far only) scene I’ve animated. As the Bible says, ”So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
And the same story is evident all over the globe and not just in the Middle East.
EPA particulate experiment subjects warned “.. there is the possibility you may die from this…”
October 5, 2012I am amazed.
I would not have thought it possible that for whatever the ends a government agency could justify such means.
JunkScience carries a report today:
EPA admits to Court: Human subjects ‘may die’ from air pollution experiments
EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes — and $12 per hour.
EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against its ongoing human experiment (called “CAPTAIN”) involving the air pollutant known as PM2.5.
In the declaration of Martin W. Case, the EPA clinical research studies coordinator for CAPTAIN, Case claims he verbally warns study subjects before the experiment as follows:
… My first approach after being introduced to the subject by the medical station staff is to ask the subject if they have read the consent form. The subjects for CAPTAIN have been given the informed study consent form on a previous visit, and, they are also given the same consent to read again if they have not read the consent the day of the training…
I provide participants with information about fine particles (PM2.s). I say that PM2.s are particles so small that they are able past through your airways and go deep into your lungs, these particles are so small that your usual lining and cilia of your airways are not able to prevent these particles from passing into your lungs, Therefore, if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York, and it’s been a very hot day, and you can see the haze in the air, and you happen to be someone that works outside, and if you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age; the chances are that you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…
………..
UK cancellation of rail contract is in the style of Indian contracts
October 3, 2012Large public contracts in India are often plagued by claims of favouritism, rigged specifications to suit a particular bidder, rigged evaluations, bid cancellations, vicious publicity campaigns by the protagonists and innumerable rebids. It is not uncommon for high profile complaints by a bidder after losing a bid to lead to a reversal of an award decision. The more high profile the complaint is and the closer in time a complaint is to an election, the more likely it is that a reversal of a decision can be achieved. The sales process in India does not end when a contract is awarded and any self-respecting sales manager does not stop until he has tried all available avenues to reverse an award decision which has gone against his bid. The primary avenues available are through approaches to politicians and the bureaucrats involved in the evaluation and award (and these approaches are not always without the appropriate lubricating flows of money). For politicians, the bureaucrats are both the potential scapegoats and the potential justification for reversals of decisions. For good and bad, the Indian Civil Service is modeled on the British Civil Service and the interactions between politicians and bureaucrats in India today have their roots in the methods of the British Raj. Bidding flaws and reversals of contract awards are usually a good indicator for the presence of corruption.
Phases of approval reversals
This story in the UK where high profile complaints from Richard Branson and Virgin Rail has led to the reversal of a decision to award a contract to a competitor could be a story lifted directly from an Indian newspaper. I note that in this case the politicians who have reversed their decision are using bureaucrats as their scapegoat. Who else? And when they make a new award they will surely justify their new decision on the pronouncements of other, more senior bureaucrats. It would seem that the methods of UK politicians and bureaucrats even today are not so different from those of their Indian counterparts. In India though, the opportunities afforded to bureaucrats and politicians by the bidding process have been raised to a much higher level.
Government cancels West Coast Mainline contract due to ‘flaws’ in bidding process
FirstGroup’s contract to run the West Coast Mainline has been cancelled by the Government due to “significant technical flaws” in the bidding process, which will be re-run. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said that the flaws “stem from the way the level of risk in the bids was evaluated”.
Russia losing the shale gas wars
October 1, 2012The advent of shale gas is not only a game-changer regarding power generation but also a game-changer in the area of energy and geopolitics. The Russian dominance in the European gas markets is being threatened and they are now joining forces with various environmental groups in an unholy alliance to restrain the development of shale gas production in Europe.
But in the long-term I expect Russia will join the shale-gas movement. They have larger resources of oil and gas bearing shales than most others.
Wall Street Journal (Associated Press):
The Kremlin is watching, European nations are rebelling, and some suspect Moscow is secretly bankrolling a campaign to derail the West’s strategic plans. It’s not some Cold War movie; it’s about the U.S. boom in natural gas drilling, and the political implications are enormous. Like falling dominoes, the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is shaking up world energy markets from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. Some predict what was once unthinkable: that the U.S. won’t need to import natural gas in the near future, and that Russia could be the big loser.
Hard times forces a measure of realism into the mirage that is renewable energy
September 30, 2012As the financial crisis continues, countries – one after another – are finding that the cost of pandering to environmental correctness is unacceptable. Renewable energy is proving to be unsustainable.
- Poland: The government moves to overhaul its system of support for green energy by effectively cutting funding for onshore wind.
- Greece: Greece has slashed the guaranteed feed-in prices it pays to some solar operators and is no longer approving permits for their installation.
- Switzerland: Switzerland plans for using more gas until 2050 and “energy needs can be completely covered by renewable energy”.
- Spain: Government has introduced a new tax on electricity production revenues to try and curb Spain’s current energy sector deficit caused mainly by the government’s renewable subsidy program.
- UK: UK cuts feed-in tariffs for Solar panels.
- Germany: Germany to press on with energy changes to the renewable subsidy system and with the easing of environmental over-regulation to rein-in renewable energy costs.
- Australia: Victoria cuts solar subsidies as the amount paid to new solar customers for power sold to the grid will be reduced from 25 cents to eight cents per kilowatt-hour.
- US: Tax breaks for wind energy to be curbed. Hopes that wind power could be competitive without any subsidy have been dashed by the plunge in North American natural gas prices.
Subsidies for what are essentially inferior products for electricity generation are ineffective. Subsidies for what are misguided objectives are just not sustainable.
Late surge gives some flooding but overall a “normal” 2012 Indian monsoon
September 30, 2012
The official 4-month monsoon season in India ends today and the IMD has issued its last press release for this season.
Rainfall was lower than normal in the first two months (-22% at the end of July) and surged somewhat in the final two. The monsoon takes the shape of a skewed “U” and advances N-W and withdraws to the S-E. The withdrawal of the South-West monsoon is underway but it is slightly delayed and this late withdrawal also helps in bringing additional rainfall especially at the ends of the “U” in the North-West and the North-East (with flooding recently in Pakistan and Assam).
Withdrawal of 2012 monsoon: IMD
Until September 26th, total rainfall was running about 7% less than the long-term average and within “normal” limits.
2012 Monsoon – Cumulative rainfall till 26th September : IMD
Though total rainfall will be almost “normal”, agricultural production will be slightly disturbed because of the uneven rainfall during the 4 months.
