Sunday, February 23, 2020

The Climate Change "Hoax"


"Climate change" is a hoax not because the climate isn't changing. Planet Earth has been completely transformed by its human inhabitants.  That's obvious.

Look at all the new, exotic radioactive elements in the environment, the plastics, the changed gas mix, the cities, the dammed rivers, space junk, the landfills.  Look at the sheer volumetric weight of human beings as a species.

Still not as much mass as termites, all told?  Add the weight of the buildings, the pavement.  Of course the planet has changed, and continues to change, thanks to human activity.

The hoax part inheres in singling out one parameter, such as global average temperature, and/or the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and pretending that's the one variable that matters, when it comes to talking about this isolated "climate" concept.

Were we to talk about the "biosphere" instead, there'd be no argument.  But "climate" is something narrow, relating to ozone, ice ages and greenhouse gases.

Even though it's obvious that human activity continues to change the biosphere, debates rage, because we're fixated on global sea levels.  The number of species may be plummeting, the Amazon jungle dwindling, but if sea levels stay the same, well then climate change must be an illusion.  Ridiculous no?

I'm not that trusting of a "climate science" that tries to carve out a narrow niche and reduce itself to merely academic debates. 

We're just minutes away from a nuclear holocaust, on any given day, but somehow that's not the business of climate scientists.  Even though a nuclear holocaust would grossly alter our life support systems aboard Spaceship Earth.

A climate science that's not about preventing nuclear war, is not a serious science at all.

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

American Heritage (MATH)




I tip my hat to the Yang campaign (impressive) at the end of my talk.

Note to self: timeline slightly backward, as the Bucky Symposium at GWU was before the Python conference (Pycon).

I did get to visit with Ed -- including in Georgetown, and take that picture in my blog post: Ayatollah of the Tetrahedron -- but I had to bow out of the ensuing Python conference (Pycon) where I'd been scheduled to talk (on hypertoons).

Ed and I had planned a next dinner, but that one I had to miss. Dawn had just received her diagnosis.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

Asylum District Lore





Monday, February 03, 2020

SuperBowl Sunday

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I don't know if SuperBowl is really CamelCase, but as a Geek it makes sense to capitalize in that way. We have our ethnic idiosyncrasies too, after all.

I wasn't really expecting to catch the Super Bowl, in that I hadn't scheduled it, but on the other hand I'm a regular at a certain Asylum District "krobar" (a generic for me, Cork & Tap is the legal name) and the game was already in the thrilling 4th quarter.  Kansas City was down, and our dinosaur-friendly bartender is from there.  When they came back to win it, she was ecstatic, which was fun to witness.

Glenn was there to my right.  Dr. D. was on vacation from what we call HH, although that could mean HopHouse (nearby) and HH is all day when the krobar is open.  Cross-eyed crossword puzzling?  Crypticism creeps into American Lit through other sources besides me I'd hazard.

Speaking of "hazard", the Daisy Duke in Dukes of Hazard should not be confused with Patty Duke, who married "Gomez" in The Addams Family.  Patty Duke was a celebrity on the HDTV on an earlier evening, where old game shows are a staple when the SuperBowl isn't showing.  The other screen is always sports.


Then you might think of Daisy Mae, funny how these may all blend together.  Americans' "hillbilly" archetype is a part of the infusion.  I'm not planning to offer any exhaustive treatment here.

Daisy Dukes (safe search setting on, DuckDuckGo) were a type of cut-off popular with some "guys" (gender neutral), a fashion statement.

That's right, we analyze popular culture a lot, as we sip our various brews.

This time, on SuperBowl Sunday, I decided to stick with three consecutive 10 oz. ciders, a blood orange (blew the keg), the replacement peach-raspberry (tint of Vicks candy), and the a sour raspberry, which is really a beer but with cidery overtones.  I was one of the last to cash out.

Today on the day job (OCN) I'm able to apply Miller-Rabin (not a beer) to the problem of filtering out what aren't Mersenne Primes. School of Tomorrow is showing off again, trying to recruit high schoolers into an alternative PWS (home-schooling environment).