I have three trucks to paint today (and that may extend into tomorrow) and a two hour drive each way to the job site, so blogging will take a back seat until I’m finished. Check out the blogroll if you’re bored, or get out and enjoy what’s a pretty nice summer day (in these parts at least).
Or go storm chasing with Paul!
The Bin Ladens of the Balkans
Michael Totten has shifted his attention to the Balkans; (Sorry – link fixed)
“We don’t call them Wahhabis here,” a prominent Albanian woman told me. “We call them Binladensa, the people of Bin Laden.” Believe me, in Kosovo that isn’t a compliment.
NASA’s Believe It Or Not!
One of the ironies of climate science is that perhaps the most prominent opponent of satellite measurement of global temperature is James Hansen, head of … wait for it … the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA! As odd as it may seem, while we have updated our technology for measuring atmospheric components like CO2, and have switched from surface measurement to satellites to monitor sea ice, Hansen and his crew at the space agency are fighting a rearguard action to defend surface temperature measurement against the intrusion of space technology.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here is Mr. B. B. King performing the Blues Boys Tune (3:13).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
I’ll Take “Deport Them Both” For $1,000 Alex.
It’s “more pavilions at Folkfest day” at the CBC!
h/t to Catfur, who has a poll in which everyone can lose!
More Evidence
…of Toronto’s desperate need for more shade;
The shooting deaths of three men early Sunday brought the number of murders in Toronto last week to six, the same week Statistics Canada released data saying the city was the safest in the country.
Pay No Attention To The Smell Of Decay Behind The Curtain
An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.
‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’
MORE
In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’
NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’
[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]
MORE
A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator’s Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not “re-work the draft.”
McCain writes in the rejected essay: ‘Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. ‘I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,’ he said on January 10, 2007. ‘In fact, I think it will do the reverse.’
MORE
Shipley, who is on vacation this week, explained his decision not to run the editorial.
‘The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.’
Shipley continues: ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.’
Developing…
Drudge has a copy of the rejected McCain editorial.
Related: Rasmussen;
The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help John McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage’.
UpdateExclusive: NY Times Editor David Shipley’s Notes On McCain’s Rejected Editorial
Cry Havoc!
And let slip the Dawg of Bore.
h/t
One Chance In A Quadrillionzillion!
What would we do without experts?
State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona’s DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.
The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches — each seeming to defy impossible odds.
As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI’s DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation’s genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny.
[…]
Among about 65,000 felons [in the Arizona database], there were 122 pairs that matched at nine of 13 loci. Twenty pairs matched at 10 loci. One matched at 11 and one at 12, though both later proved to belong to relatives.
The American Kennel Club has run into similar issues with their own DNA typing of purebred dogs. Breeders may use now use two different sires on a single litter if they choose, providing they parentage test the offspring. However, problems can arise – sometimes two sires share so many of the same markers that it isn’t possible to know which dog fathered what puppy. This should have been forseeable, given that so many breeds are based on a mere handful of founders.
In much the same way, present day humans are thought to be the survivors of genetic bottlenecking events that reduced world populations to mere thousands in the not so distant past. Despite our large modern population, we have relatively low genetic diversity.
Indeed, there is substantially more genetic difference among individuals within chimpanzee troops in West Africa than among all living humans on earth. As shown in Figure 1, this is due to a series of bottlenecks in human evolutionary history. Geneticists studying many different parts of the human genome have concluded that the past effective population size (that is, the number of reproducing females) averaged only 10,000 individuals over the last one million years, and was as low as 5,000 around 70,000 years ago. Compare this to the approximately one billion reproducing females alive today, and it becomes clear just how narrow these bottlenecks were.
Why this was not factored in when probabilities were assigned to DNA profiling is anyone’s guess, but the actions of the FBI in attempting to block continued investigations of databases suggests their oft-cited figures arose not in the genetics lab, but in the bureaucracy.
DNA typing will always be a powerful tool in law enforcement. But should it have been touted as infallable in the way that it has? Absolutely not – too many genetic phenomenon break the “rules” for that. See tetragametic chimerism. The bizarre claims of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies about the mathematical rarity of DNA matches, (on samples using as few as 9 loci!) were as unprovable and as ridiculous as asserting that “no two snowflakes are alike”. Their attempts to elevate the confidence of the science beyond reasonable limits will likely end up producing the opposite result, giving defense lawyers an opening to undermine the integrity of legitimate DNA evidence in the minds of jurors.
ht
A Decade Of Obama
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, we have the pleasure of guest DJ Shaken spinning Evgeny Kissin performing Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin‘s Patetico Etude in D# minor, op. 8 no. 12 (2:30).
Shaken writes: “An incredible piece of music. Those who know the [piano] love this for its funky G# minor tones, low B, low D#, sweet F# and A# intervals. Scriabin had this very unorthodox idea about colors and sounds. This piece does indeed expose something of that notion. The young fellow [Evgeny Kissin] playing this is, in my opinion, possibly the best living pianist today. Together, it is one breathtaking performance of an intense, dramatic, hideously difficult piece of music.”
I’d have to agree with Shaken there. But wait, there’s more. Here, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of man, SDA Late Nite Radio studios brings together for you, at this single venue, performances of Scriabin’s Patetico Etude not only by Evgeny Kissin as recommended by Shaken, but also by Alexander Scriabin himself (the original), by Vladimir Horowitz ¶ (always a favourite of ours here in the studio), by Sergei Rachmaninoff ¶, and by Alfred Cortot ¶. You must admit, studying Scriabin’s Patetico Etude this way would be much more difficult without this technology 😉
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Now Remember…
Some in this city believe they’re the “envy” of the rest of Canada.
City bureaucrats will fan out across Toronto this summer to analyze the angle of the sun at different times of the day, measure the amount of direct or reflected sunlight and assess the “quantity and usability” of shade in parks, playgrounds and pools.
The “shade audits” are part of a pilot project authorized by city council this week that could soon result in Toronto regulating shade.
The Sound Of Unsettled Science
Via The Corner;
19 July 2008
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Carie, Rannoch, PH17 2QJ, UK
monckton@mail.com
Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D.,
President, American Physical Society,
Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160,
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305.
By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Dr. Bienenstock,
Physics and Society
The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer’s requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity – a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Itsconclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Societydisagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than
the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific
grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
Frankly, My Dear
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night contemporary music show, here are Dieter Meier and Boris Blank as Yello, featuring Dame Shirley Bassey, performing The Rhythm Divine (1987, 3:31), a contemporary version of her 1964 James Bond Goldfinger classic. Dame Shirley is the only singer to have performed more than one, and indeed three, Bond themes.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Greg Norman
Finally, a reason to watch golf!
Update – QOTW comes from Bruce, in the comments;
“The “Improve Your Golf Game with Chris Evert” video should be available in 5-4-3-2….”
“No news publication has dared to barely scratch the surface like this before”
The Onion skewers Time Magazine;
According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with.
“The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at,” New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. “It’s all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, ‘What’s your favorite ice cream, really?'”
Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel.
I don’t know about that – the field is pretty deep.
(h/t Michelle)
Y2Kyoto: Reducing Germany’s C02 Emissions
One factory relocation at a time;
They sat silently through two lectures, but then they couldn’t control their anger any longer. The civil servants from the Environment Ministry, the Environment Agency and the German Emissions Trading Authority made it sound easy for industry to take up carbon trading. It was just too much for the managers to tolerate.
“If that’s the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine,” a cement factory manager shouted into the lecture hall. “Then there won’t be any trading here, nothing will be produced here anymore — the lights will simply go out here.”
[…]
“In Germany the raw-material chemical industry, companies from the iron and steel sector, lime producers, aluminium producers and refineries might be affected,” Franzjosef Schafhausen, the Environment Ministry’s undersecretary, said at the Bonn conference. Felix Matthes, coordinator for energy and climate protection at the Institute for Applied Ecology, added: “The CO2 price signal prompts shifts in production and investment. Yet it doesn’t lead to lower overall emissions, as the production and investment at the company’s new sites will not be subject to CO2 pricing, either now or in the near future.”
The problems with carbon trading schemes could all be resolved, of course, by putting sociology professors in charge of management;
“This principle worked in other countries, so when people say it’s risky, it’s not like we’re inventing it from nowhere. We’re not changing Canada in a kind of laboratory.”
Things Just Haven’t Worked Out The Way Al Qaeda Hoped
Update – for those who are disappointed that progress in Iraq isn’t being reported by our mainstream press, be patient. I predict only a few more weeks shall pass before photos like this are gracing the CBC National, while Peter Mansbridge gravely reports that the “Bush-led invasion of Iraq brings fears of spiraling rates of obesity and heart disease…”
Reader Tips
 |
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night old-time radio crime-detective show, here is Jack Webb (before his Dragnet years) as Jeff Regan, performing The Lawyer and the Lady episode of International Detective Bureau Investigator (1948, 29:26, streaming MP3).
It is interesting, perhaps, to compare Mr. Webb’s performance in that early work to, say, this 1950 Big Girl episode of Dragnet we previously featured on SDA LNR (29:10, streaming MP3), and then later to, say, this 1954 television version of The Big Pair, part 2, part 3 (26:55), and then to Jack’s performance in this 1968 Carson’s Clanging Copper Clappers Caper Comedy (2:49).
One thing you can for sure say about Jack, he
nailed that Sergeant Joe Friday shtick, already.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.