Our Healthy Princess
Meeting Baby Caitlynn
Science is not a cold body of facts, but an organized system of inquiry, discovery, evaluation and learning. Science not only welcomes the correction of errors, its key attribute is that it is self-correcting over time. As new research arises, old hypotheses gain or lose support. While this process never stops, generally accepted conclusions do accumulate, based on the overwhelming weight of evidence. The fact and threat of anthropogenic climate change are clearly among those conclusions.
Your square-jawed hero is, in fact, the scientist - The Globe and Mail
It is time, finally, to learn from our mistakes. While global leaders focused single-mindedly on cutting fossil fuel use by promising to cut carbon emissions, they have failed to invest anywhere enough money into ensuring that alternative technologies are ready to take up the slack. Keep in mind that global energy demand will double by 2050. Based on our current progress, it is clear that alternative technologies will not be ready to play a significant role.
Welcome to the fun house, friends. The 21st century is going to be the most dangerous and the most complicated (and the most exciting and dynamic) century in the history of the human race. The politics of science are going to get more complicated, more confusing and more contentious — even as the political impact of scientific findings looms ever larger in our lives.
Why Climate Science Is On Trial - Walter Russell Mead’s Blog - The American Interest
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.
From brutal brooding to retrofit-chic
Our offices will be moving to this new space. I’m looking forward to actually working in a green building, in addition to developing green building policies.
The Jarvis Street project will set the benchmark for how the province manages its own building retrofits. The eight-month-old Green Energy Act requires Ontario government and broader public-sector buildings to meet a minimum LEED Silver standard – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Jarvis Street will also be used to promote an internal culture of conservation, and to demonstrate the province’s commitment to technologically advanced workspaces that are accessible, flexible and that foster staff collaboration and creativity, Ms. Robinson explains.
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