Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.
Future Shock (via Instapaper)
In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule.
A great episode of Quirks and Quarks with slime moulds that can build engineering networks and photosynthetic sea slugs. There’s a very funny line in the sea slug segment that almost derails Bob McDonald with laughter.
But we should cut the creationists a little slack, because every new bit of evidence, every discovery, is a nightmare for them. Take the ark. The big-boat business poses all sorts of questions. But, again, they’ve got answers. There are models and plans and layouts of the vessel. You can walk through a part of the hull. There’s biblical carpentry and weather reports. And the dinosaurs are on board. (They were probably small ones, the museum helpfully adds.) But recently scientists found a new giant rat and a fanged frog in Papua, New Guinea, so now some Noah-ists have to redesign the amphibian quarters.
When the Illinois study looked at cases where engineers had taken the time to labor over sophisticated energy models, it found that 75 percent of those buildings fell short of expectations. The fault presumably lay with building managers who made numerous small mistakes—overheating, overcooling, misusing timers, miscalibrating equipment. The buildings’ owners, with LEED banners already hanging in their lobbies, had little incentive to demand better day-to-day performance.
Owen Watching Cars
A short video of Owen’s commentary while watching Pixar’s Cars movie. He’s really keen.
The danger in all this is not just a corruption of science but also an emasculation of politics. The key debates about climate change are political, not scientific. How much resource should we put into mitigating emissions and how much into adapting to a warmer world? How do you deal with the fact that slower economic growth may produce less CO2 but may also make it harder for people in developing countries to climb out of poverty? How do we weigh the moral good of cheaper travel with the moral good of reduced emissions? And so on. These are debates about political principles and ethical values that no amount of scientific data can resolve. The trouble is, the more we insist that ‘the science tells us what to do’, the less we are able to engage in the kinds of debates necessary to resolve such issues.
Kenan Malik’s essay on the science and politics of climate change
When a party, like an individual, is guided by fear, then courage is banished, convictions are buried, and politicians will talk but not say much. Or, to be more charitable, the party of fear will offer alternatives to the government, but they will be timid and at the margin of difference, the theory being that governments defeat themselves rather than opposition parties winning by the force of their ideas.
There was a time when the Liberals stood for something via @globeandmail
In the end, though, the rules do matter - it’s just that obeying them doesn’t. They need to be there to create a tension between conservatism and innovation. If the innovation continued unchecked, unmonitored by Susie Dent, then the language would fragment into thousands of mutually incomprehensible dialects.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/03/david-mitchell-english-language-grammar/print
In Our Time - History of the Royal Society
A great series on the history and influence of the Royal Society.
To Bee or Not to Bee : The Nature of Things
An interesting discussion of bees with excellent footage. The documentary makes a good case for the importance of bees and describes the many challenges they face.
Fun to see some old colleagues too.
Christmas Excitement
Good candidates for elimination from political language http://tgam.ca/GA7 (via @globeandmail)
Top song of 2009 in the Routley household? Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas. Clearly the kids have too much control over the music. #fb
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 →
Canada deserves both a government willing to stand up and defend their decisions and a functioning parliament with mature debate.
Our current response to terrorism is a form of “magical thinking.” It relies on the idea that we can somehow make ourselves safer by protecting against what the terrorists happened to do last time.
Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com (via Instapaper)
International human rights, it seems, are something the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stands ready to impose on others, but not on ourselves.
Getting Away with Torture - The New York Review of Books (via Instapaper)
Irresponsibility might seem to moralists an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can be a huge relief.
The case for building green has rarely been made more clearly.
“It’s very simple,” explains Stuart Bowden, senior vice president of software company SAS: “We doubled our square footage, but halved our costs.”
thestar.com iPhone : Hume: Going green brings unexpected savings (via Instapaper)
History has exploded from the least likely corners; spurious events unsettled our surest expectations. The 2010s will be volatile, unpredictable, dangerous – but not what we hope, and not what we fear.
Ten years that shook, rattled, rolled and helped repair the world - The Globe and Mail (via Instapaper)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 →
Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it’s shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to simply say, look, I’ve seen these kind of claims before, they always turn out to be wrong, and it’s not worth my time to look into it?
Good overview of the consequences of the Climatic Research Unit emails for climate policy http://instapaper.com/zWfgti9R (via @globeandmail)
When Bureaucrats (are) Attack(ed): Richard Colvin and the end of Responsible Government - Gargoyle: the BlogBack in the good old days when the bargain was firmly in place, it would have been highly inappropriate for a bureaucrat to do as Richard Colvin did in his testimony before the special committee on Afghanistan, and effectively blow the whistle on the government from his safe perch in the embassy in Washington. If he gave advice and was ignored, he should have resigned or kept quiet. And if asked by a parliamentary committee to testify, his answer would have been something like, “if you want to know what advice I gave the minister, ask the minister.”
Interesting discussion with philosophy professor Mark Rowlands. The first third on the differences between humans, dogs, and wolves, and the last third on perceptions of time are particularly good.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 →
Four good questions regarding Afghan detainees http://tgam.ca/EO4 (via @globeandmail)
Thank goodness for civil servants who breach the walls of government secrecy and obfuscation and speak out for principle, knowing they will be subject to public attack by their very powerful employer.
One teaspoon of honey, about 21 grams, contains 16 grams of sugar, or 60 calories. It takes 12 bees their entire foraging lives, combined flying time of about 9,700 kilometres, to produce this much.
To understand the importance of these bees, consider that every third bite on your plate is a result of their primary role on the planet as pollinators – the most important group on Earth.
Why honeybees are falling through the cracks - The Globe and Mail
They’re playing lullaby versions of classic Led Zeppelin tunes at Owen’s daycare. Sound very strange, but intriguing. #fb
RT @rhh: And of course, now we know exactly why the Tories have been so frantically trying to muzzle Colvin http://bit.ly/J9XQW
RT @rhh: Tory’s torture defence: bafflegabble: http://bit.ly/jEg17