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And by that I do not mean that someone has merely been printing stuff on a violin. The violin itself was made by a printing machine. Here is a video of the violin not only being enthused about but actually played, by Simon Hewitt-Jones. To whom many thanks for the email that alerted me to this amazing object. December 2nd, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment claimed that ‘there is strong evidence’ of sea level rising over the last few decades. It goes as far as to claim: ‘Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3mm yr–1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier decades.’ Almost every word of this is untrue. Satellite altimetry is a wonderful and vital new technique that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface. But it has been hijacked and distorted by the IPCC for political ends. In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’ This is a scandal that should be called Sealevelgate. As with the Hockey Stick, there is little real-world data to support the upward tilt. It seems that the 2.3mm rise rate has been based on just one tide gauge in Hong Kong (whose record is contradicted by four other nearby tide gauges). Why does it show such a rise? Because like many of the 159 tide gauge stations used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it is sited on an unstable harbour construction or landing pier prone to uplift or subsidence. When you exclude these unreliable stations, the 68 remaining ones give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1mm a year. If the ice caps are melting, it is at such a small rate globally that we can hardly see its effects on sea level. I certainly have not been able to find any evidence for it. The sea level rise today is at most 0.7mm a year — though, probably, much smaller. We must learn to take the environmentalists’ predictions with a huge pinch of salt. In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. That was last year: where are those refugees? And where are those sea level rises? The true facts are found by observing and measuring nature itself, not in the IPCC’s computer-generated projections. There are many urgent natural problems to consider on Planet Earth — tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions not least among them. But the threat of rising sea levels is an artificial crisis. – Sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner rips into the climate catastrophists. See also this piece, which drives a dagger into the heart of the climate catastrophe fraud. December 1st, 2011 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
James Taranto quotes Thomas Edsall, saying (among other things) this, about the kinds of votes that Democrats are now trying to get, and other votes that they are no longer bothering to try to get:
Edsall goes on to say that the whereas the Dems have now given up on the white workers, they are still eager to get all the non-white workers to vote for them. One of the ways to understand the libertarian movement, it seems to me, is that it is an attempt to convert from their present foolishness all those “professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists” whom Edsall so takes for granted. It gives them the “social libertarianism” that they are so wedded to (even if they often don’t get what this actually means), but it insists on the necessity of at least some – and in the current circumstances of economic crisis – a lot more – libertarianism in economic matters. Okay, libertarianism will never conquer these groups completely, but it threatens to at least divide them, into quite a few libertarians or libertarian-inclined folks and not quite so many idiots. Also, demography is not destiny, when it comes to voting. People’s “interests” are not necessarily what many party political strategists assume them to be. The thing is, it is entirely rational to vote for more government jobs and more government hand-outs (a) if you are at the front of the queue for such things, and (b) if the supply of such things is potentially abundant, or not, depending on how you and everyone else votes. But, if the world changes, and you find yourself at the top of the list to have your job or your hand-outs taken away from you, in a world which is going to take these things away from a lot of people no matter how anybody votes, it makes sense to ask yourself different questions, and to consider voting for entirely different things. Like: lots of government cuts, so that you aren’t the only one who suffers them, and so that the economy has a chance of getting back into shape in the future, soon enough for you to enjoy it. The far side of the Laffer Curve is a rather strange place. Different rules apply. Quite a lot of unemployed British people voted for Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, because they reckoned that Thatcher was a better bet to create the kind of country that might give them – and their children and their grandchildren – jobs in the future and a better life generally. (Whether or not they were right to vote for Thatcher is a different argument. My point is, this is what they did, and they were not being irrational.) There is also the fact that how you vote in such circumstances of national and global crisis will be influenced, far more than in kinder and gentler times, by how you think. For a start, how bad do you think that the national or global crisis actually is? If you think it’s bad, what policies do you think will get that economy back motoring again, in a way which has a decent chance of lasting? How you vote depends on how you think the world works. And how you think can change. November 30th, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
At some point last weekend, on a whim, I did some ego-googling, and discovered that maybe I should do this more often. Because, what I got to was a video of me giving a talk, last February, about modern architecture to the Libertarian Alliance, early this year. I of course knew that it was being videoed at the time, but had assumed that they didn’t reckon it good enough to see the light of YouTube. But I was mistaken. I managed to watch the thing all through without too much pain, but there is one glaring contradiction built into it, which is that my account of the emergence of the nineteenth century American skyscraper contradicts what I later said about form in modern architecture never following function. If by “form” is meant how a building looks, then it is indeed the case, as I said, that “form” in modern architecture follows fashion rather than function. And as a general rule, as I go on to say, a building can pretty much be changed from one use to another, depending not on what shape it is but depending on what people want to do in it. Most buildings have floors, walls, roofs, and provided you aren’t trying to accommodate a Boeing 747 or a rugby match or some such thing, then for most purposes any old building, plus a bit of indoor rearrangement, will do. But there is (at least) one huge exception to this generalisation about the tendency of form not to follow function. The function of a skyscraper (the skyscraper and its emergence in late nineteenth century America being central to the entire story of modern architecture) is to fit a lot of people into a small urban area, and the characteristic form of a skyscraper accomplishes precisely that. It is that shape because it has to be. Form follows function. So, bad me. But then again, part of the reason you give talks is for you yourself to listen to what you said (which is far easier if someone records it for you) and then for you to decide what you think about it. Chairman David McDonaugh’s introduction of me was more an ambush than an introduction, and I floundered about in his trap for a while (be patient please). The title was one thing when I started talking, but they ended up calling it something rather different, and for good reasons. The talk is rather episodic, the episodes towards the end being in a somewhat random order. My attempts to wave drawings in front of the camera were not always as informative as I would have liked. Plus, I refer to my friend Patrick Crozier without making it clear video viewers that he was present, in the front row. (Patrick and I did a recorded conversation about architecture in 2007, which covered similar ground to this talk, and which I listened to again by way of preparation for this talk.) So, a bit of a muddle. But nevertheless, overall, I am still sufficiently pleased with this performance to want to flag it up here, if only to provoke others who could do better on this topic to go ahead and do so. My belated thanks to the LA both for making the video, and for making it available. November 30th, 2011 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
In nine tenths of the written treaties between the Kings of Portugal and the various reigning Princes of Hindustan, the matter of pepper came up in the first clause. – Admiral Ballard I have been reading The Last Crusaders by Barnaby Rogerson. Like many books it has apposite quotations at the start of each chapter, of which the above quotation was by some distance my favourite one. The Ballard quoted is presumably the Ballard who wrote this book, who was indeed an admiral as well as a historian. November 29th, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The concept of property is fundamental to our society, probably to any workable society. Operationally, it is understood by every child above the age of three. Intellectually, it is understood by almost no one. Consider the slogan “property rights vs. human rights.” Its rhetorical force comes from the implication that property rights are the rights of property and human rights the rights of humans; humans are more important than property (chairs, tables, and the like); consequently, human rights take precedence over property rights. But property rights are not the rights of property; they are the rights of humans with regard to property. – from The Machinery of Freedom (1973) by David Friedman, Part 1, “In defense of property”. November 28th, 2011 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is an attempt to get an Instalanche, so he will probably ignore it just to make the point that he doesn’t do Instalanches for anything that flat out asks for it. Although, on the other hand … Either way, two recent objects of linkage at Instapundit in recent times have been Climategate and Goldman Sachs. Well, this Climategate email, spotted by Bishop Hill commenter “GS” (3:27pm), concerns Goldman Sachs, so the Prof ought at least to be interested:
Instapundit has also long been interested by the BBC, as a phenomenon of more than local interest. So I would also recommend to him, and to people generally, a read through of the Bishop Hill comment two down from that one above, this time from “ThinkingScientist” (3:41pm). He copies and pastes an email from a BBC Producer to Keith Briffa, about how Briffa must “prove” (the BBC Producer’s inverted commas) in a BBC TV show that there is something very extreme about the supposed current warming spurt. In other words, Briffa must put the C (for catastrophic) in CAGW. GW for global warming has clearly been happening, although it is not nearly so clear that it is still happening now. (Anyone who denies the second is routinely accused of denying the first.) A for anthropogenic GW is widely believed in, but its scale and even existence are matters of fierce controversy. It’s that C for catastrophic on the front of AGW that this is all about. For a power grab this big, there has to be a C in there. LATER: And, we have our Instalanche. Many thanks sir. (And thanks to the commenter who corrected my earlier wrong spelling of Instalanche.) November 28th, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
We’ve already killed all the dumb terrorists, so all that’s left are the smart ones. – I heard an American voice saying that, in connection with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, while I was transferring a recording I had made of a show called The World’s Deadliest Arms Race (shown in the UK about a month ago on Channel 4 TV) from my TV hard disc onto a DVD. One of the best things about recording TV shows, as opposed to merely watching them, is being able to wind back and find out exactly who said something of particular interest, and exactly what it consisted of. The above words, I quickly learned, were spoken by a big, tough guy in a black T-shirt by the name of Marine Staff Sergeant Jack Pierce. They come right near the end of the show, which lasts just over forty five minutes. Ssgt. Pierce was reflecting on how he and the rest of the crew of the vehicle they were all in were subjected to attack with an I(mprovised) E(xplosive) D(evice). Six of the crew were badly wounded, including Ssgt. Pierce who is now paralysed from the chest downwards. The other two died instantly. November 27th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last Tuesday Detlev Schlichter gave another talk, one of several that he is doing around now in various parts of the world, on Paper Money Collapse. Last Tuesday’s talk was organised by the Adam Smith Institute. I attended this talk and can vouch for the fact that the audience was such that it was standing room only by the time it started, partly thanks (or so I was told the following day) to this City AM report of an interview that they recently did with Schlichter. This talk is now available for viewing on video, a fact which I learned at Libertarian Home, thanks to a posting there by Andy Janes, who describes it as having been “very impressive, if terrifying”. Indeed. You can watch it there. It lasts just under fifty minutes. November 26th, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nice comment at the Bishop’s, on this, about “Climategate 2”, from “simon” (4:35pm):
Perhaps the institution of the Samizdata quote of the day should be abolished. Time and time again, we here quote quotes, out of context. Not all of the snippets that are now doing the rounds of the anti-CAGW blogosphere strike me as being as damning as some of them are. But, if anyone chooses to wonder about the degree of wickedness revealed by any particular snippet, it is the work of a moment for that person to find the context, this being one of the features of the internet. Provided, in presenting your preferred snippet, you supply the means of inspecting its context, then you have at least supplied the means by which your interpretation of the snippet may be challenged. And some of the snippets are very damning indeed. If you are caught saying you are guilty only half as many times as the prosecution lawyer says you have been caught, that still makes you guilty. Earlier in the thread, Viv Evans (4:02pm) says:
Indeed. And shifty politicians is exactly what these people are. I trust that simon and Viv Evans will forgive me for quoting them out of context. November 25th, 2011 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the Chicago Boyz, the one who goes by the name “onparkstreet”, recently posted a question that I had pretty much given up asking myself at all regularly: Where Have You Been Whit Stillman? He links to this, where we encounter the news that, wherever Whit Stillman may have been for the last decade (while apparently failing to finish other movies) he is now back in business, with a new, completed and ready-to-view movie called Damsels in Distress. I’m about a month behind the news on this, but frankly, I don’t pay much attention to the latest movies any more, so I’m not that surprised that it took me this long to learn of Stillman’s return. A movie which apparently stars four girls doesn’t much appeal to me. I tend to prefer chick flicks to implausibly violent costume dramas set either in a violent past or a violent future, but I like my chick flicks not to be too chicky, so to speak. I like men to join in and do occasional manly things, like hit one another and lie and be unaware of people’s feelings, in among all the chick chat. In Metropolitan, Stillman’s first movie and my favourite of his, blows and loud insults are exchanged, in among all that witty dialogue with its deftly constructed sentences which begin, continue and then end, just as if someone had written them out beforehand. In Barcelona someone has his eye shot out. But how much damage are four damsels going to do to anyone? How often will they give me a rest from girls being receptive to each others’ feelings, and get the plot motoring properly by injecting relieving doses of insensitivity and uncaringness? I will definitely make a point of seeing this latest Stillman movie, and judging by what is said in postings like this, I may quite enjoy it, and maybe enjoy it a lot. Nevertheless, I will be hoping for it to be more enjoyable than I will be fearing it to be. November 24th, 2011 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Another for the Ain’t Capitalism Great collection:
Here. By wearing a pair of such lenses, you could presumably receive stuff in 3D. Inevitably, a lot more work will be needed to turn this dream into a reality. But, you know, … wow! November 23rd, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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