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http://www.therereallyisnosecret.com/
Now get to it.
posted on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 at 14:40 | permanent link | view comments
Lest my readers think I’m a “denialist”, I post here a link to a great article about interpreting the numbers on global warming.
But while these recent posts have ostensibly been about climate change science, they’ve really been about the nature of science itself. For example, I’m still troubled by the heavy political language. Here we have someone skilled in statistical analysis using the same kind of browbeating against any dissent that Paul Krugman uses in his recent article:
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
Treason? That’s pretty strong language (but this is Prince Krugman—he can say whatever he wants and never be wrong, even as a non-scientist). I think all sensible people realize that things are warming up (even if there are local variations from year to year). The long-term indicators we can measure say that the globe is warming. We can accept that (though apparently some can’t—that’s fine too).
What is hard to stomach is the assertion that the near-universal scientific consensus about what is causing the warming to this this fantastically complex system we call Earth implies that there can be no more inquiry into the matter.
There is some dissent, and there is plenty of room for skepticism and rebuttal to the dissent. That’s the kind of science I’m talking about.
It is not science’s job to quash dissent through consensus. It is science’s job to welcome honest differences and to acknowledge places where we still lack data. A good scientist does the research, crunches the numbers, and gives the confidence intervals. Let the Op Ed writers push the policy.
posted on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 at 09:41 | permanent link | view comments
Whenever you adopt science as your religion, you should be prepared to deal with the atheists, agnostics, and general skeptics with grace, civility, and respect. Those who fail to do this do not deserve the honorable title of scientist.
The world is full of plenty of things to believe and plenty to doubt, and a real scientist withholds judgement on both sides, knowing that the jury is always out in the face of new evidence.
Scientists who have signed up to turn climate change science into climate change dogma by ridiculing or ostracizing any nay-sayers are giving all true scientists a black eye. Science is about open and honest inquiry. Leave the political jockeying to lesser minds.
Wall Street Journal: Climate change is changing.
posted on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 at 10:36 | permanent link | view comments
Taken in Tibble Fork, American Fork Canyon, Utah on June 13, 2009.
posted on Sun, 21 Jun 2009 at 20:50 | permanent link | view comments
No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste
I’m a fan of nuclear power. I was delighted to come across this recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
So is this material “waste”? Absolutely not. Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth’s crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from.
Of the remaining 5% of a rod, one-fifth is fissionable U-235 — which can be recycled as fuel. Another one-fifth is plutonium, also recyclable as fuel. Much of the remaining three-fifths has important uses as medical and industrial isotopes. Forty percent of all medical diagnostic procedures in this country now involve some form of radioactive isotope, and nuclear medicine is a $4 billion business. Unfortunately, we must import all our tracer material from Canada, because all of our isotopes have been headed for Yucca Mountain.
What remains after all this material has been extracted from spent fuel rods are some isotopes for which no important uses have yet been found, but which can be stored for future retrieval. France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains — from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy — beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.
“Nuclear waste” is only waste because it was designated so by Presidents Ford and Carter in the 70s.
posted on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 at 22:28 | permanent link | view comments
but does it work?
Any money I receive will be spent on new pens (Pilot G2, of course).
posted on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 at 22:20 | permanent link | view comments
Getting more entropy for Subversion on FreeBSD
I was trying to create a new Subversion repository today and noticed
to my dismay that it would hang during create. Totally
high-centered. My only recourse was kill -9. It was bad.
“Why is this?” I thought. I googled a little and found this entry in the Subversion FAQ. In a nutshell I have too little entropy (sources of randomness) and that I should configure the system to get more entropy from interrupts.
It recommended checking into rndcontrol about this. The rndcontrol
manpage was easy enough:
SYNOPSIS
rndcontrol [-q] [-s irq_no] [-c irq_no]
DESCRIPTION
The rndcontrol command is used to set which interrupts are used to
help randomise the ``pool of entropy'' maintained by the kernel.
The /dev/random and /dev/urandom devices are the user interface
to this source of randomness. Any changes take effect
immediately.
The following command line options are supported:
-q Turn off all output except errors.
-s n Allow IRQ n to be used as a source of randomness. This
option may be repeated for more than one IRQ.
-c n Stop IRQ n from being used as a source of randomness.
This option may be repeated for more than one IRQ.
The default is to have no IRQ's being used.
Ok. So I need some IRQs I can get some entropy from:
# /sbin/dmesg | grep -i irq
IOAPIC #0 intpin 2 -> irq 0
IOAPIC #0 intpin 19 -> irq 2
IOAPIC #0 intpin 21 -> irq 5
IOAPIC #0 intpin 20 -> irq 9
asr0: <Adaptec Caching SCSI RAID> mem 0xfc000000-0xfdffffff irq 9
at device 4.1 on pci2
ahc0: <Adaptec aic7896/97 Ultra2 SCSI adapter> port 0x2000-0x20ff
mem 0xf4100000-0xf4100fff irq 2 at device 12.0 on pci0
ahc1: <Adaptec aic7896/97 Ultra2 SCSI adapter> port 0x2400-0x24ff
mem 0xf4101000-0xf4101fff irq 2 at device 12.1 on pci0
fxp0: <Intel Pro 10/100B/100+ Ethernet> port 0x2800-0x283f mem
0xf4000000-0xf40fffff,0xf4102000-0xf4102fff irq 5 at device 14.0
on pci0
pci0: <Intel 82371AB/EB (PIIX4) USB controller> at 18.2 irq 5
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x30 on isa0
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
Ah, IRQ 9, 2, and 5 look great: hard drives, RAID adapters, network interfaces are all great entropy sources. Let’s change our random device now:
# rndcontrol -s 9 -s 2 -s 5
rndcontrol: setting irq 9
rndcontrol: setting irq 2
rndcontrol: setting irq 5
rndcontrol: interrupts in use: 2 5 9
(Meanwhile, in another terminal):
$ svnadmin create SVN_REPO
Wow, that was fast… er, I guess that’s what it’s like under normal conditions. Oh well. Better put things back the way they were:
# rndcontrol -c 9 -c 2 -c 5
rndcontrol: clearing irq 9
rndcontrol: clearing irq 2
rndcontrol: clearing irq 5
rndcontrol: interrupts in use:
That’s it.
posted on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 at 14:09 | permanent link | view comments
I was minding my own business this morning when into my office bursts a bear holding a shark. The bear looked like it had outgrown its own skin a little (and perhaps eaten my daughter Brooke), but I believe this made it look even more terrifying. Here is the blurry photograpic evidence to back up my claim:
posted on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 at 23:13 | permanent link | view comments
I work from home and to avoid too much familiarity (or just to get out), I go out to lunch a few times a week. One place I visit is a little pizzeria in downtown Pleasant Grove. They love making pizza and do a decent job. The biggest draw for me is that the owner has passion (I’ve overheard him get after an employee when I was the only patron in the store: “You don’t care about the food! You have to care about the food!”).
They all know my name when I come in. I don’t come that often, I thought, but perhaps two or three times a month qualifies me as a regular. I’m always careful to leave a generous tip here. I don’t know how much longer the place can stay in business the way things are going with the economy (I’m often the only customer at the hour I eat), but I hope they can pull through it, and so I contribute what I can because I value what they do here.
Which brings me to my point. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and taught their children (my parents) to be frugal, to pinch their pennies and so forth. This is a good way to live in general, I think. On the other extreme, some people are just bad consumers: they spend their money on things that have no real value because they can’t control themselves, and often later they need help.
Between those extremes is one lesson that didn’t seem to come out of the Great Depression clearly enough: those who survived, those who had employment enough to feed their families did so because other people spent their money. People who had more means hired others to work for them and paid them money. Any fool can make money by putting his head down and working, making something that other people want, but the other side of that coin is that in hard times those with money should loosen up a little bit to help those who need a break.
Yes we should save some for hard times—it’s not right to burden others with our own problems when we could have avoided it, but when people hoard, everyone gets poorer. It’s a kind of sinister selfishness that spreads quickly and quietly. It says, “As long as I have a job, I’m ok. If a local business goes down, that’s not my problem.”
The antidote to this is, in part, to remember that money is a renewable resource, and more importantly, it’s only a representation of wealth; it is not wealth in itself. People are wealth: rather, people make wealth and have an infinite capacity to do so.
If you have a little means to help a brother out, do it. Yes, you’ll be helping someone who could use it, but you’re also turning the tide of selfishness and pessimism back to generosity and optimism.
posted on Wed, 27 May 2009 at 23:12 | permanent link | view comments
Ok, I really wish I’d come across this when I was a little younger, say 10-15 years ago. I’ve learned most of this stuff already (some by observation of people I admire, some by awkward situations I didn’t understand, and some by my wife who is a constant source of inspiration to me).
A brief excerpt from the introduction:
Grow up.
And when I instruct you to grow up, I do not mean that you must read up on mortgage rates, put aside candy necklaces, or desist from substituting the word “poo” for crucial syllables of movie titles. Silliness is not only still permitted but actively encouraged. You must, however, stop viewing carelessness, tardiness, helplessness, or any other quality better suited to a child as either charming or somehow beyond your control. A certain grace period for the development of basic consideration and self-sufficiency is assumed, but once you have turned 25, the grace period is over, and starring in a film in your head in which you walk the earth alone is no longer considered a valid lifestyle choice, but rather grounds for exclusion from social occasions.
Here are 20 things everyone 25 years old and over must do. Please enjoy.
posted on Tue, 26 May 2009 at 22:36 | permanent link | view comments