A Networked World

A barrier to understanding?

Whenever I see some corporate media type slinging off at "Bloggers" as "not the real thing, just a bunch of opinionated losers in their dressing gowns tapping away in the dark, THIS is the kind of thing I want to send them to: RealClimate » A barrier to understanding?.

With respect to sea level, the Thames Barrier is a concrete example that has been frequently raised.

The trends in its 'raising' have been linked to increasing sea levels and storm surges. But how often is it being raised? why? and does it give us any real insight into sea level rises on a wider basis? Looking into it, I was fortunate to get an exceptionally comprehensive set of data on the closings and reasons for them from Anthony Hammond at the Environment Agency in the UK. The results are interesting, but complicated….

Tell me where, any corporate medium, have you last seen a piece as careful, thoughtful and well thought out as that - including the corrections from the gallery?

It is so far from the soundbite inanity of 21st century commercial (and in many cases state) media, it might as well be on a different planet. Except that the denizens of the former are both responsible and oblivious to the warming they are causing to all of us due to the failings of the former.

Thanks to the net, a few of us at least have the chance to read the alternative.

Pascal's wager

This is good. Well, the subject is anyway.

Do tell, How about that, wow

So, apparently: No evidence airport security make planes safer.

Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, US researchers reported on Thursday.

A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.

They also found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.

The US Transportation Security Administration told research teams requesting information their need for quick new security measures trumped the usefulness of evaluating them, Eleni Linos, Elizabeth Linos, and Graham Colditz reported in the British Medical Journal.

... "Even without clear evidence of the accuracy of testing, the Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year," the researchers added. "Most of these illegal items were lighters."

[...] "We'd like airport security screening to be of value. As passengers and members of the public we'd like to know the evidence and the reasoning behind these measures," Linos said in a telephone interview.

Fair point, good question, so friends, what might be the reasoning behind these measures? Oh, look, next sentence.

With US$5.6 billion ($7.47 billion) spent globally on airport protection each year,

Reasoning; "because you are stupid and terrified, we can make billions out of performing little witch doctor dances around you as you head for the plane".

the public should be encouraged to query some screening requirements - such as forcing passengers to remove their shoes, the researchers said.

Note to traveller, do not take up these issues with the overstressed, underpaid, often underqualified person performing these tasks, you will have your ass handed to you. I was told at Frankfurt airport a while ago to empty the breast pocket of my shirt because 'there was too much stuff in there". I thought of taking out individual items until I reached the European standard of "not too much", but I knew for certain that would get me wasting a LOT of time and may involve more intimate relationships just because they can.

"Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?" they asked.

A TSA spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

TSA and the rest don't comment, they don't explain, they don't justify and they wont tell you what the regulations ARE.

But its OK because SOMEBODY is making nearly $6 Billion out of this charade.

Not Here

Over there: Hostility to the notion of limits to growth.

Martin Wolf, to his credit, realizes that these two realities are incompatible, and is looking for compromise. But he is not quite looking in the right place yet:

Two Words

will summarise this. The folks at Kos are spitting tacks over it : Pelosi Says She Miscalculated GOP Determination on Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., admitted Thursday that she had underestimated the willingness of Republicans to stand behind President Bush’s Iraq policy despite the drubbing the GOP took in the polls in 2006.

“The assumption I made was that the Republicans would soon see the light,” she said. Instead, the minority stuck to the president’s war policy in the face of unrelenting pressure from congressional Democrats and powerful lobbying campaigns by anti-war groups.

Bush has consistently refused to accept any limitations on his authority to direct military operations in Iraq, or on funds destined for the war effort. Democrats have been unable to muster enough votes to force him to accept a timetable for withdrawal of combat troops or a change in their mission in Iraq.

“That was a revelation to me, because I felt the American peoples’ voices were so strong and still are in this regard that I hoped that with some compromise and reaching out there might be some change in direction,” Pelosi said. “But they are sticking with the president on this.”

Suicidal naievety.

What would it take, what exactly would it take, to geta hamster to believe in the good will of the cobra?

Whatever it is, Pelosi has it in spades. But then she says

“The grassroots are justifiably disappointed and I am too that we have not done more to end this war,” Pelosi said.

Question; watcha gonna DO about it? Clap harder? THIS is what Weimar looks like in 2007. Holy cow we are all goners with people like this at the switch.

Prediction is tough

Especially about the future.

Jim Kunstler has been on to it for a long time, watching the meltdown of the western. credit fueled, financial capitalist economy,the very slow meltdown: The Final Blowout.

The Christmas shopping frenzy is upon us and I wonder if this is going to be the very last blowout of the the credit card era.  If it's true that American families are virtually maxed out on their credit card debt, and they still go on a spree to buy Christmas presents, then they will hit a very hard wall in early 2005 when those first bills roll in.

Um, WHEN? oh wait, this is from December 6, 2004     

Because something is happening in the financial markets, Mr. Jones.

     The currency markets have entered a supernatural realm of instability. The dollar can't continue to hemorrhage value without interest rates going up.

Who would continue to hold, not to mention buy, US dollar denominated securities with the dollar losing two cents a week against the Euro and the British Pound? While it's true that nobody -- namely, China, Japan, Europe -- wants to see the US economy tank, neither do they want to write off billions in order to help American dog groomers and NASCAR marketing executives enjoy an artificially high standard of living. Only significantly higher interest rates will induce foreingers to hold onto US Treasuries.

Every single word on the nail.  And we have had quite a few more blowouts since December 2004, each one leading closer to the inevitable, increasingly large, final blowout.

But huge economies, plus endless political finagling, create massive momentum that takes a very long time to coast to a halt. We're closer, much closer, and I completely go with the big picture, but I sure as hell wont be shorting any market myself.

Not because I don't believe it will hit Jim's wall, just that we have no possible way of knowing when it will happen.

It looks so SMALL

I'm posting from Changi airport in Singapore and there's one of the new A380 Airbuses parked outside. As i was walking through the concourse a woman walked by in the other direction talking to her partner who was about to grab a photo of the new ,machine.

And that's what she said. I'm assuming she meant the plane. And she is right. because its the same length as a 747, but much fatter and the wings are about as wide as the fuselage is long, the thing LOOKS squat and smaller than you might expect.

The first time I flew on a 777 I was seriously impressed by a new plane for the first time in years - a twin engine jet the size of a 747 IS an audacious piece of technology. And I'm sure so is the 380 with its 4 engines the same size as the 777, but, "it looks so SMALL" for the biggest passenger jet that will ever be built.

The privileged Life

If things are quiet around here its because I'm in Kuala Lumpur for the GK3 conference, hunting new participants for the Stockholm Challenge, handing out some awards at the gala dinner and looking out the window of the hotel at the Petronas Towers.

That alone is enough to put me well into the ranks of those with privileged lives on this planet.

But yesterday I ran into Mike Gurstein in the foyer and he invited me into an impromptu session on ICT, Media and indigenous peoples that followed on from a conference they had just finished in Bario in Sarawak. I've said for years that poor people aren't stupid, just poor; and the people doing things in Bario (which is OFF OFF-Grid and just held an international conference, organised and co-ordinated over the net from their local telecentre) are damned smart. Smart and energetic beyond belief for a soggy middle-aged westerner.

But even they paled a little beside a woman called Kyle who hopped up from the audience and talked about her project among forest tribes in the Philippines where illiterate communities are using GPS and GIS tools to map their land and contest it with logging companies. That alone will make a great entry in the Challenge.

But the killer is that the conceptual framework that the forest tribes use is so sophisticated and multidimensional, that the technology can't keep up. Yesss!!!

And then I just had breakfast with the great Michel Menou and got to have a conversation with him when I should just have shut up and listened.

On my tombstone they should write, "He had a privileged life, and he knew it". The big question will be whether I managed to do anything useful with that privilege

David isenberg on Torture Tapes

Trust David to find the biggest nails for the coffin: Another Reason Torture-tape-gate is Abhorent.

Suppose the torture victim says something useful, but mumbles, or uses disjointed syntax, or uses a language that the torturers don't know. Maybe the victim has a moment of weakness and then clams up again. Or maybe the victim utters the valuable information and dies. Or maybe the information needs to be translated by somebody who's not present. Or maybe it only gains value as it is subject to further analysis.

To NOT RECORD torture is to risk losing the very utility the perpetrators claim makes torture necessary. If they're risking loss of information to keep their own asses out of the fire, it's even worse. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Amen brother.

A Small Thing

This is fascinating: “Washington County Peak Oil Reading Group”.

I found two main things. One is I bought four fluorescent light bulbs...and emotionally that was a bigger deal than the second step, which was putting up solar panels and a heat pump [for my house]. I mean, that was huge, but I remember it took a real inertia to go out and buy [the light bulbs], because it was so symbolic of “I am changing my life.”

When I buy a lightbulb the only attention I pay to non-CFL bulbs is to wonder why these dinosaurs are still messing up the shelves and have done so since they first hit the market and I could buy a better idea than incandescents.

But what we have here is a beautiful example of how change manifests in the real world (as distinct from the exhibitionist 'coming to Jesus' stuff of public conversion for example). Change is really, REALLY, aversive, and leaving your way of life behind is terrifying, if we can get there by tiny, tiny steps, we can manage the cognitive load much better.

Those of us on this side of the PO fence so often demand that the others come over in bulk and in one, mostly because to do so voluntarily is still better than being forced into it.

But it ain't going to happen like that. That woman ahead of me in the checkout line may just be buying some light bulbs.

Or she may be changing her life.

I wish we could tell.