Global warming and Morality

There is an increasing trend for people to offset their personal generation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by paying for schemes which sequester CO2.

If you offset your emissions then you are not contributing personally to global warming.

There is an obvious disconnect here. If we take the problem of global warning seriously we should try to minimise the amount of CO2 we produce. Its fine for the minimum to be negative., so we should make it our personal goal to ensure that we have the most negative carbon footprint possible.

There is something strange going on here when people are paying not to solve the problem but to salve their consciences.

Perhaps its part of the "green" worldview. To caricature a somewhat this view the human race as somehow separate from the rest of creation and evil by its very presence. This is a bizarre combination of the biblical idea of original sin, and the enlightenment view of humanity's distinctiveness. It seems to result in a kind of self-abnegation where our highest goal is to leave no footprint on the earth.

Buying Polonium 210

Apparently you can buy Polonium in potentially lethal quantities on-line.

Making Jeans

It takes 12 minutes and 50 seconds to make a pair of jeans.

Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0

People rarely know what they really want.

Google VP Marissa Mayer just spoke at the Web 2.0 Conference and offered tidbits on what Google has learned about speed, the user experience, and user satisfaction.Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers how many search results they wanted to see. Users asked for more, more than the ten results Google normally shows. More is more, they said.So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%.Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it?After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html

The Parable of the Two Programmers

The Parable of the Two Programmers

Plus ca change...

Animusic - Pipe Dream

Amazing animation

What is the difference between Americans and Russians?

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2219890,00.html an Afghan Joke.

Q: What is the difference between Americans and Russians?
A: Americans are better paid

Marvin Minsky writing in 1968

I produce custom clothing for people from 3-D body scans. Its really hard to do, and stretches the capabilities of even 2006 computing hardware. Here is Marvin Minsky writing in the introduction to an issue of the Science Journal in 1968 -- a time when computing power was perhaps a billionth of what it is now.

Prepare for the machines that will end mechanization
The Industrial Revolution brought us inexpensive production of goods at the price of uniformity. Mass production meant that anyone could afford a suit of clothes -- provided his body conformed to one of the official shapes. Thus, and in many other ways, the economics of mass production radiated outwards from the factory into the rest of society. This era is about to end. The new machines will look at a man, watch him run and watch him rest, and design a proper suit for his shapes in his usual postures. For the machine that holds shears in its hand, there is no longer much economy in cutting to standards.
Science Journal, Vol. 4, No. 10, October 1968, Page 3

How do you know?

This is a famous poem by Robert Frost.

The Road not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

The question is: how does he know that it has made all the difference?

US Media and self-censorship

The UN working group on arbitrary detention has published a statement today. Its been widely trailed in the UK media. Interestingly Google News's page guantanamo - Google News, has pretty much no US news sites in the first ten (this will no doubt change, and I may put up a saved link later).

This is not the first time that I've notices international condemnation of the US being downplayed in US media. I don't believe that the press is serving the US public well when it doesn't report this sort of story. The reputation of the US has been trashed in the past few years, with many people in Europe, the Middle East and Asia believing that it is a serial abuser of human rights. If I were a US citizen I'd want to know this.

The Open Society and its Enemies

The Open Society and its Enemies

Shades of Kafka.

IBritain will be first country to monitor every car journey

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey

This is scary. Enormous potential for abuse and very little in the way of public oversight.

Liberal Values

This post by Adam Bosworth is interesting in that I agree with it profoundly, yet believe that the argument he makes is wrong-headed.
I am opposed to unreason and fundamentalism, but not for the reasons he cites.

It is time to speak up. It is time to say that facts are what matter, not faith, that human progress is accomplished through unfettered use of reason and inquiry and tolerance and discussion and debate, not through intolerant and irrational acts of terror or edicts. For all of our children and for the future, speak up against this wave of intolerance and irrationalism washing over the world.

Facts and reason contain no values. They are part of a methodology. What we have here is a war of values, nor methodologies. I believe that the opponents of what I might term "enlightenment values" also use reason and facts. Their values are very different though.

The problem with choosing reason and facts as the grounds on which to fight is twofold. First, they are bloodless, one should fight for what you believe, not for a methodology. Second, its condescending to assume that those with whom you disagree lack reason and an appreciation of facts. Its absolutist in a different way and makes true engagment difficult as the debate must be about values, and these are not stated in Bosworth's case.

In fact the whole article is intolerant of others' beliefs. Its ironic that at one point he says:

I was a history major in college and have loved and read history ever
since. I studied, in particular, the progressive era in history, an era
when the industrial revolution evolved from the grim satanic mills of
England into the modern industrial world.

The phrase "dark satanic mills" comes from William Blake. There's some debate about what Blake's mills were but one meaning is likely that Newton's "reason" had reduced us to cogs in a machine, which makes Bosworth's quotation somewhat ironic.

Official Google Blog: Judging Book Search by its cover

When I first heard of this I was enthusiastic. Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive have made a great start on making all information universally available, and Google with many many times the resources could do so much more.

Then, the other day I came across an article by Hal Varian in the October 2005 Communications of the ACM (not online I'm afraid) entitled "Universal Access to Information". As well as being a respected Economist, and the author of Information Rules he is a consultant for Google. His argument is that copyright law should be changed to make it easier for companies (such as Google) to copy works whose copyright is unregistered.

I'm broadly sympathetic to this idea, but must admit to a certain suspicion of Google's motives. Why do they not make the full text of works that are out of copyright available? I would have thought that the "free" version should be the first one returned in any search. There are certainly tens of thousands to millions of works that are out of copyright and which, if searchable by Google and having the full text available would make an immensely powerful resource.

Its very disappointing that they are not doing this. My suspicion is because its not worth their while -- they are after richer pickings.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia tightens online rules

Looks like a new twist on the tragedy of the commons.

It would seem sufficient to make sure that all authors and editors can be traced. Wikipedia seems to have been a little more clever than this by requiring traceability for authors of new articles, but not for those who edit an existing article.

It is important to allow anonymity, as some people may be under threat for contributing to Wikipedia. There may be an irreconcilable connflict of interests here though, as allowing scurrilous falsehoods and self promotion will devalue Wikipedia. We don't want another UseNet.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Clothes of 1924 head for Everest

BBC NEWS Science/Nature Clothes of 1924 head for Everest:

It turns out that the clothes used 80 years were pretty sophisticated and in some ways, such as freeedom of movement allowed, may have been better. I have a technologist's tendency to believe that newer is better.

Environmental Hysteria

The Independent today Independent Online Edition > Environment claims that

The European Commission report says that if the current rate of growth in air travel is continued, it will result in a 150 per cent increase in emissions from international flights from EU airports by 2012.

Its not credible to claim that emissions will more than double in 5 years, so I have to assume that this unreferenced report is being misrepresented. My guess would be that the claim is for a 150% increase sinece 1990.

The Independent does this all the time. It seems to have intensified sinece they moved to Tabloid format.

Man or Woman, Child or God?

Falkirk to Linlithgow Rail Tunnel

Falkirk to Linlithgow Rail Tunnel
Originally uploaded by timniblett.

The canals from Glasgow to Edinburgh, include this monster which is about 800 meters long, just past Falkirk on the way to Linlithgow.

Apache and Skype

I run Skype (great program). I wanted to install Apache on my local Windows box. I kept getting the error message:

Only one usage of each socket address is normally permitted. :make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 no listening sockets available, Shutting down.

Unable to open logs.

This stops Apache running and installing itself as a service.

It turns out that Skype is the cause of the problem. It listens to port 80 (by default I guess). Quitting skype wasn't enough, I also had to kill its process manually. The way to do is to kill it from the Windows task manager (Crtl-Alt-Del).

Once Skype is killed you can setup apache as a service via "apache -k install" and it should start before Skype on boot thereafter. Skype can use other ports than the http port, although its still listening for https connections...

Not friendly, although understandable I guess in terms of getting Skype working as widely as possible.

New Housing on the Clyde at Partick

New housing on the Clyde at Partick

Oliver Kamm

I read Oliver Kamm's blog from time to time.

His latest entry, http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/right_again.html explains why he thinks Tony Blair was right over Iraq.

The money quote for me is:

Overthrowing Saddam Hussein by force - for there was no other way to topple his regime - was an act of outstanding moral clarity and strategic importance. I pay tribute to the PM for having seen this point so early, and for having it carried it through despite the opposition of many in his party and elsewhere.

He seems to be saying that Tony Blair saw that regime change was necessary and did what it took.

My problem with the "moral clarity" is that Tony Blair sold the war to the public and Parliament by insisting that it wasn't about regime change, but about Saddam's refusal to implement UN Security Council resolutions and/or about a clear and present danger to the security of the UK posed by weapons of mass destruction.

Let's assume that Blair's reason or going to war was as suggested by Oliver Kamm. Surely this should have been publicly debated? The political process is debased when the Prime Minister is not prepared to put a case of such "moral clarity" to the public, presumably because he judged it would be rejected.

Oliver Kamm frequently castigates Noam Chomsky for what he terms sophistry and intellectual dishonesty. His comments on Tony Blair seem to mirror Chomsky's approach to the truth, except that he comes to praise rather than bury. A large part of the case against Tony Blair's approach to Iraq is surely that he didn't have the courage of his convictions (as attributed by Oliver Kamm) but tried to pursue a second rate and bogus rationale for the pursuit of the war, and in the end seems to have discredited any valid case he had for the war.

Chris Lawson's Birthday Party

Chris Lawson
Originally uploaded by timniblett.

We just came back from Chris's birthday bash. It was in Buxton, which is a kind of inland holiday resort (spa). We even tasted the waters.

The lunch on the Saturday was a memorable experience. I hadn't seen some of the people there for 25 years so it was a bit like going to a masked ball where the underlying face was less real than the mask.

Oddly enough, apart from the physical changes, people don't seem to change much with the years, or at least the relationships with them don't.

Thanks Chris! It was a unique experience.

First post

I thought I'd try out Blogger for my weblog. I'd like it to be able to link to my main website though.