Tag: iraq

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva
March 27, 2013 0

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva

By News Desk

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva James reminds Eli of  Makarieva et al in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics as well as featuring on several blogs.  One can summarize the entire thing by noting that Makarieva claims that winds are formed when water vapor condenses decreasing the gaseous volume.  Were this the major process, air would move inwards towards the area where the condensation occurred.  Most others point out that the release of energy from the heat of condensation will blow the air outwards.  That’s the summary There was an almost infinite amount of mathturbation about this including the original paper, and Dr. Makarieva was very, well, insistent. Eli OTOH is a member of the reality based community.  The Rabett likes to look at what is going on and figure out what it means before turning the math crank.  Recently Ms Rabett dragged Eli off into the mountains where he could actually watch the clouds form.  He could tell you what happened, but in this world we have the video.

Inside Baseball Memo War
March 26, 2013 0

Inside Baseball Memo War

By News Desk

NASA Watch yesterday had posts and comments about a memo issued by NASA suspending all educational and public outreach activities From:     NASA Chief Financial Officer and the NASA Chief of Staff  Subject:   Guidance for Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Activities Under Sequestration .

Storyful – Niche Propagandists Work Full-Time Distorting Syria Conflict
March 24, 2013 0

Storyful – Niche Propagandists Work Full-Time Distorting Syria Conflict

By News Desk

March 24, 2013 (LD) – The Western media monopolies, the same media houses that willfully and repeatedly told lies regarding “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq to help sell the corporate-financier engineered invasion and occupation of the Middle Eastern nation for a decade, have been very busy since. They helped sell NATO and its corporate-financier backers’ war of aggression and subjugation against Libya, and has been attempting to sell a repeat of the atrocities committed in North Africa, this time in Syria. They certainly have their hands full

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler
March 24, 2013 0

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler

By News Desk

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler Off topic, but still a prediction in that I don’t know the answer:  I think Tolkien wrestled in his youth. When you read his description of armed combat, it’s pretty simple and somewhat vague, but when it becomes unarmed combat, suddenly every single motion gets described and punching takes a distant second place to grappling. Maybe it’s out there somewhere, but I’ve looked around and not read much about Tolkien’s athleticism – some brief mention of tennis and rugby at Oxford, but that’s about it.

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two
March 21, 2013 0

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two

By News Desk

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two So the contest of Solutions for Planetary Stability continues, and both of the solutions I entered (former blog posts) have made it to the finalist stage.

Shameless self-promotion, Part One
March 20, 2013 0

Shameless self-promotion, Part One

By News Desk

Eli Rabett Eli Rabett Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves.

About as good as I can get
March 20, 2013 0

About as good as I can get

By News Desk

Eli Rabett Eli Rabett Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional.

Rose gets stuck on statistical significance
March 19, 2013 0

Rose gets stuck on statistical significance

By News Desk

Too many takedowns to count for David Rose who doesn’t realize that short-term fluctuations in temperature tell you little about long term trends.  The latest case is that according to one computer model, the temperature sequence ending in 2012 is close to the bottom edge of the statistical uncertainty range, a point where there’s only supposed to be a 5% chance that random variation produces a temperature below the modeled range.