Category: Science and research
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Bolt’s climate comedy
Any appearance of Andrew Bolt on the ABC’s Insiders programme is bound to result in at least one deranged pronouncement on the conspiracy that is climate change. (This is something of a shame, because on other issues discussed on Insiders he does often approach sanity.) In the closing comments, Bolt had this contribution to make:…
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Meta-engineering
I’m beginning to think I should have approached this maths modelling stuff from an engineering point of view: with a requirements document, version control and unit testing. Constructing a reasonably complicated mathematical model seems to have enough in common with software development that such things could be quite useful. I’m calling this “meta-engineering”, because I’d…
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What am I doing?
Over the past few weeks I’ve had numerous questions of the form: “how’s your work going?” I find I can only ever answer this with banalities like “good” or “meh”. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing. At any given point in time, I have a list of minor challenges written up on…
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Reality fails to sway Fielding
From our adorably naïve Family First Senator, via the ABC: When I put forward the question ‘isn’t it true that carbon emissions have been going up and global temperature hasn’t?’, they wanted to rephrase my question and not answer it. Of course they did you fool – it’s a loaded question. Technically the answer is…
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Science fail
Apparently one of the world’s foremost experts on global warming – as far as the denialist camp is concerned – is Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. The sum total of his qualifications appear to be his propensity to comment on the subject. A google search turned up the Heartland Institute’s take on Monckton. Observe the ad…
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Artificial intelligence
A thought occurs, spurred on by my use of Bayesian networks. They’re used in AI (so I’m led to believe), though I’m using them to model the comprehension process in humans. However, I do also work in a building filled with other people applying AI techniques. My question is this: how long until Sarah Connor…
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The Bayesian rabbit hole
You may recall previous rants about my theoretical framework. The recent evolution of my thought processes (much like all other times) has been something like this: hurrah, done… except… [ponder]… I should see if I can fix this little problem… [ponder]… How the hell is this supposed to work?… [ponder]… Damn, the library doesn’t have…
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Bike helmet laws
According to New Scientist, an Australian academic has determined (using a mathematical model) that the costs of mandatory bike helmet laws may outweigh the benefits. This relies on the notion that fewer people cycle if forced to wear a helmet, and so do not receive the health benefits of cycling. However, there is some debate…
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Keeping score
It seems 300 names have been added to the original list of 400 “prominent scientists” who dispute things about climate change. If you follow that link there are a couple of good examples of the calibre of debate on the issue. I [intlink id=”515″ type=”post”]posted a few days ago[/intlink] about attempts to rubbish the scientific…
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Climate control
For someone who rails so vehemently against global warming “alarmism”*, Andrew Bolt sure seems to be alarmed about hypothetical fatalities attributed to air conditioning failure during blackouts. Bolt states: “Just how many died because power blackouts knocked out their airconditioning is not known.” It’s not known, of course, because nobody has reported it happening, not…