Quotulatiousness

July 13, 2011

Anonymous decides they’re against Ethical Oil

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:13

I guess all the popular targets have already been hit, so the rumour is that Anonymous is going to be going after companies working in the oilsands:

In related news, Anonymous said it planned to attack oil firms and banks supporting the controversial extraction of oil from sand in Alberta, Canada. Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Oil Sands, Imperial Oil, and the Royal Bank of Scotland have been put on notice that they are likely to be targeted in Anonymous’ latest operation, dubbed Project Tarmageddon.

Anonymous began with attacks on the Church of Scientology in early 2008 before it made headline news last year with attacks on financial service firms that blocked donation to WikiLeaks following the release of controversial US diplomatic cables. Another long-running campaign has targeted entertainment industry firms that hassled file sharers or console modders, most notably Sony.

July 11, 2011

A need for speed in 1955 still has lingering influence

Filed under: History, Science, Technology, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Richard Black discusses the start of commercial nuclear power:

An experimental US reactor called EBR-1 generated the first nuclear electricity at its home in Argonne National Laboratory, sending current through a series of lightbulbs in 1951.

But the US did not open the world’s first civilian nuclear power station; that honour went to the USSR, whose tiny Obninsk reactor opened in 1953.

And the world’s first commercial-scale nuclear station was the UK’s Calder Hall, opened the following year.

The race for nuclear power — and with it, political influence — was underway.

“[Soviet President Nikita] Khrushchev… recognised that achievements in nuclear power made it possible to compete with the United States in the world arena — to say ‘our system, the socialist system, is the best — look who is first in areas of science and technology’,” relates Soviet historian Paul Josephson.

“You see a rebirth of hope that there will be a glorious communist future, perhaps a nuclear-powered future.”

All of these early reactors used different designs, with everyone except US scientists forced to work with natural uranium rather than the enriched variety developed during the Manhattan Project.

July 8, 2011

Shifting in the general direction of legalizing marijuana?

Filed under: Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:30

Ace is still not eager to see pot legalized, but he’s had a bit of a change of heart lately:

The liberty argument is a strong one.

The counter-argument, and the one I have previously relied upon/acceded to, was that the state has such a powerful interest in protecting people from harming themselves that our Duty to Protect outweighs the case for liberty.

But I don’t believe that any more. For one thing, I am becoming, little by little, and belatedly, very suspicious of any argument that assigns liberty a lower priority than another value. And I’m becoming, again belatedly, very very suspicious of the general claim that we can use the Coercive Power of the State to make people live better lives.

It’s not so much a slippery slope argument — of the type “If we say the state can do X to supposedly improve our lives, who’s to say they can’t do Y, as well, making the same claim?” — as it is an argument about that first step itself.

I don’t think I want the state using its coercive power to lock people up any more for doing drugs.

What business is it of mine? I do lots of things that others may look down upon but I wouldn’t be at all happy about having State Coercion brought to bear upon me for any of it.

So, cut through all the stuff about medicinal marijuana and the like… it’s really just about respecting a citizens’ basic right to do as he pleases without state coercion, so long as what he pleases does not produce direct harm for anyone else.

And I just don’t buy the case for “direct harm” anymore.

July 7, 2011

QotD: The United Nations has a master plan

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:13

What’s amazing about this stuff — and believe me, there’s plenty more where this came from — is the unblushing shamelessness with which it advocates this economic insanity. Here is the world’s most powerful intergovernmental institution essentially arguing for the destruction of the global economy, enforced rationing, Marxist wealth redistribution, greater regulation, the erosion of property rights and global governance by a new world order of technocrats and bureacrats. And being so upfront about it they actually issue press releases, telling us what they’re planning to do and encouraging us to write about it.

[. . .]

As economies grow richer, so they have more money to set aside for cleaner rivers, fresher air, as well as to invest in R & D projects for ever more eco-friendly forms of energy. It’s no coincidence that quite the worst environmental damage in the last century was done in those countries behind the Iron Curtain. Free market economies tend naturally to be cleaner and healthier because clean and healthy is what people choose anyway if they can afford it. They don’t need government to step in and take their money in order to spend it inefficiently trying to achieve something which would have happened quite naturally anyway.

What this ludicrous UN report is advocating is the exact opposite of what the world needs if it is to become genuinely greener. All those people in the developing world, if they’re to live healthier, less environmentally damaging lives the very last thing they need is hand-outs from richer economies. What they need is property rights and free trade and the chance to grow their economy to the point where — cf the Kuznets Curve — they can afford the luxury of having to breed fewer children and to heat and light their homes without having to chop down the nearest trees. What they also need for us in the rich West to have thriving economies in order that we can import more of their produce.

Rationing and limits to growth are not the answer. The UN is a menace and we listen to its eco-fascist ravings at our peril.

James Delingpole, “UN reveals its master plan for destruction of global economy”, The Telegraph, 2011-07-07

“Bodice-rippers” guilty of perverting women’s lives

Filed under: Books, Britain, Education, Health, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

Apparently, The Guardian thinks that women are weak-willed and easily (mis-)lead, especially when it comes to their sex lives:

Mills & Boon’s romance novels should come with a health warning, according to a report published in an academic journal.

Blaming romance novels for unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, unrealistic sexual expectations and relationship breakdowns, author and psychologist Susan Quilliam says that “what we see in our consulting rooms is more likely to be informed by Mills & Boon than by the Family Planning Association”, advising readers of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care that “sometimes the kindest and wisest thing we can do for our clients is to encourage them to put down the books — and pick up reality”.

Her comments follow a recent claim that romance novels can “dangerously unbalance” their readers, with Christian psychologist Dr Juli Slattery saying she was seeing “more and more women who are clinically addicted to romantic books”, and that “for many women, these novels really do promote dissatisfaction with their real relationships”.

Cartoon history of the global warming panic

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

July 6, 2011

Restricting your salt intake? It may not help you

Filed under: Food, Government, Health, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:36

Rob Lyons recommends you take the constant barrage of advice about lowering your salt intake a bit less seriously:

The advice to reduce our salt intake has been so ubiquitous for so long that it simply must be correct, right? Those white crystals may make our food taste better, but it’s a Scientific Fact that salt increases blood pressure and, therefore, cutting back on it will reduce blood pressure and we’ll live longer. Trouble is, while this seems to make sense, the evidence keeps failing to back it up — and a study published today raises further questions about this simplistic advice.

The new study is the latest Cochrane Review, an effort to revisit the evidence on a wide variety of healthcare interventions to provide clearer guidance to medical practitioners and patients. The review took in seven studies involving 6,489 patients. ‘Intensive support and encouragement to reduce salt intake did lead to a reduction in salt eaten and a small reduction in blood pressure after more than six months’, according to the article’s lead author, Professor Rod Taylor of the University of Exeter. But the real question was ‘whether this dietary change also reduced a person’s risk of dying or suffering from cardiovascular events’.

And the answer was ‘not really’. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Previous studies have come to a similar conclusion: reducing salt does seem to reduce blood pressure a little, but the effect on cardiovascular disease is so small as to be hardly worth bothering with. If your blood pressure is high enough that you’ve been prescribed drugs to reduce it, then there may be some benefit in also reducing how much salt you eat. But that’s about it.

Perhaps they should call themselves the Canadian Fundraising Society?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:21

As it appears that they only have a sideline in cancer research these days:

An Ontario cancer researcher is concerned that the Canadian Cancer Society has proportionally shifted funding away from research and is spending more of its dollars on fundraising and administration costs.

“Most scientists don’t realize that the budget has been going up and up, and donations have been growing, but the budget for research has been shrinking,” said Brian Lichty, a researcher at McMaster University who is looking into treating cancer with viruses that kill tumours. “So they are surprised and disappointed when they find out that this is the case, and the trend.”

CBC’s Marketplace analyzed the Canadian Cancer Society’s financial reports dating back a dozen years. It discovered that each year, as the society raised more dollars, the proportion of money it spent on research dropped dramatically — from 40.3 per cent in 2000 to under 22 per cent in 2011.

The amount of money spent on research has increased slightly over the years, but as a portion of the Cancer Society’s growing budget, it’s almost been cut in half.

The fine distinction between actual disaster relief and mere tokenism

Filed under: Environment, Japan, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:26

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the coast of Japan, many nations offered assistance and supplies to help the battered area. Some of these offers were both timely and appropriate. Others, however. . .

Stranger still was the arrival on May 11th, a full two months after the earthquake and tsunami, of Sri Lanka’s Disaster Relief Team. Some 15 officials from Colombo’s Ministry of Disaster Management came to help clear debris, via a local NGO called Peace Boat. An extremely decent gesture, likewise. But the flights to and from Japan must have cost the ministry a fortune, relatively. This follows an equally quixotic donation by the Sri Lankan government of 3m tea bags.

Then there is the matter of blankets. Since the disaster some 17 countries as well as the European Union have offered blankets as part of their emergency relief supplies. In March this made sense. Some 25,000 blankets from India, 25,000 from Canada and 30,000 from Thailand were donated within days of the disaster. But did Chile really need to deliver 2,000 blankets on May 31st, by which time the temperatures were balmy to say the least?

Earlier Chile donated 100 kilograms of rice, purchased in Japan, to the city of Minamisanriku. Yet considering the Japanese government stockpiles about one million tonnes of rice in case of a crisis—which it buys under World Trade Organisation commitments, keeps off of the market to support local farmers, and burns after it rots—Chile’s altruism was more likely symbolic than satiating.

In the aftermath of natural disasters, the media usually makes a big, hairy deal if the head of government for the region, state, province, or country isn’t immediately seen touring the area. While it makes for useful video footage for the TV news shows, it’s often counter-productive for the people whose lives have been overturned by the disaster. Heads of state, in particular, don’t just jump in a taxi and head off — there’s a huge entourage that have to precede and accompany the leader. This takes up cargo space, landing slots, and flight paths that might be more usefully devoted to providing help to the afflicted area.

It may be useful psychologically for the victims and the relief workers to see the prime minister or the governor, or whatever, but between the TV and other media folks, the dignitaries themselves, their security detachments, and the other support staff, it almost certainly delays the disaster-struck area actually recovering.

July 4, 2011

Internet absolved of charges

Filed under: Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:58

Apparently the smear campaign against the internet — you know, the meme that we were all being turned into morons by video games, social networking sites, and Google — has no factual basis:

Has Google been making us stupid? Are young people nothing but mindless husks, helplessly addicted to Facebook? Is the very internet itself some sort of insidious virus, creeping through the fibre optics, rewiring our brains, deadening neurons, stunting IQs, stymieing human interaction?

You could be forgiven for worrying. You don’t have to go far to read a scare story about what the upsurge in digital life over the past 20 years has apparently done to our brains. Yet help is at hand.

A report released this morning (The impact of digital technologies on human well-being) claims that the internet has actually been the victim of some sort of vicious smear campaign. An analysis of current research by the Nominet Trust, a UK charity dedicated to increasing access to the internet, claims that we’ve really been worrying about nothing all along. Relax, get online and stop worrying, is about the gist of it.

British Green activist recants opposition to nuclear power

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

Unlike Germany, which has announced it will be shutting down its nuclear power plants, Britain is considering a new generation of plants to provide an even greater share of their electricity needs. Even a few green activists are changing their tune:

Also, as much as Greens are enthusiastic about solar electricity, in cloudy countries such as ours it is extremely inefficient and expensive. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is one of the cheapest ways of producing electricity, and it is much safer than many environmentalists would have us believe.

The objection of environmentalists to nuclear power — fears about the dangers of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning it — are overblown, which explains why many people don’t like the Greens.

[. . .]

Solving many of the world’s most critical environmental challenges will, in some cases, involve doing the exact opposite of what most environmentalists want.

Rather than retreating into hair-shirt austerity, I believe that, just as technology got us into this mess, technology is vital to get us out of it.

That means embracing some things that will make a lot of Green believers choke on their organic muesli.

It has taken me a long time to reach this conclusion. I used to passionately oppose not only nuclear power but GM crops. I once even threw a pie in the face of a Danish scientist who dared to question the orthodox environmental line. So what changed?

Through research, I found that much of what I believed about environmental issues had little, if any, basis in science. Put simply, though my concerns were right, my solutions were wrong.

June 30, 2011

xkcd: The first rule of model train layouts

Filed under: Humour, Railways, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 15:34

Jon sent me a link to this xkcd strip, which still amuses me:


Click to see the full image

June 27, 2011

Bodyhacking is closer than you may think

Filed under: Science, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:15

An occasional meme in science fiction stories is someone being able to control the actions of another using remote control. We may be closer to that, um, “vision” than we expect:

Now that pacemakers are to be loaded with firewalls and bionic-man body parts are appearing on production lines, the concept of body hacking has become a spooky possibility. Researchers in Japan have begun to try to teach people how to play instruments by remotely controlling their hands.

Developed by the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs, the aptly named PossessedHand stimulates muscles that move our digits, New Scientist reports.

A belt with 28 electrode pads is strapped to the arm, sending signals to the joints between the three bones of each finger, with two for the thumb.

Stephen Gordon: The “broken window” fallacy of “green” jobs

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

It’s always nice to see a reference to Frédéric Bastiat in a modern day setting:

But it is possible to oversell the green jobs theme. Job creation should not be a goal of environmental policy, no more than it should be a policy goal in the fields of health or national security. If, instead of hiring people, we could use magic to stop disease, crime and environmental degradation, we would. Pointing to jobs ‘created’ to fix these problems is an error that Frédéric Bastiat identified in his ‘parable of the broken window’. Broken windows generate work for glaziers, but that doesn’t mean that breaking windows will increase national income.

An often-quoted statistic goes something like this: “wind energy produces 27 per cent more jobs per kilowatt hour than coal plants and 66 per cent more jobs than natural gas plants”. This could well be true, but it is hardly a strong argument in favour of the employment opportunities that would be generated by investing in wind energy: hiring more people to produce less energy is not a strategy for prosperity. Similar gains in employment could be obtained by outlawing mechanical excavators so that all digging must be done by hand. It may make sense to encourage the development of wind power, but increased employment is most emphatically not one of the reasons for doing so.

June 22, 2011

“Medicalizing” bad behaviour to avoid guilt

Filed under: Health, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Frank Furedi looks at a disturbing ongoing phenomenon in western society: the “medicalization” of bad behaviour:

The rebranding of promiscuity as sex addiction is not confined to Britain. Throughout Europe and the US the numbers of sex addicts is said to be on the rise. Anthony Weiner has recently been diagnosed — by the media and self-styled experts at least — as a ‘sex addict’. Following the revelation that he sent rude pictures of himself to various women online, Weiner has been widely depicted as a sick man. ‘He needs treatment’, one expert told the Associated Press, because apparently, without help, ‘sex addicts’ can go ‘completely out of control and destroy their lives’.

[. . .]

Lust, infidelity, betrayal and the drive for sexual domination have always presented a challenge to a society’s grammar of morality. However, the contemporary conflation of a bad habit with a medical problem is symptomatic of the difficulty that Western societies now have in making moral judgments about human behaviour. Sometimes, even people who claim to possess religious convictions find it difficult to ascribe guilt to immoral behaviour. That is why behaviour that was once denounced as sinful is now increasingly discussed through the language of therapy rather than the language of morality.

[. . .]

The problem with this recycling of bad habits and degrading behaviour as medical problems is not simply that it fails to hold people to account for the choices they make and the consequences that their actions have. Yes, a lot of people — including celebrities such as Keith Urban, Tiger Woods, Michael Douglas and Lindsay Lohan — can present themselves as victims of an addiction rather than as lecherous and self-regarding individuals.

But the real problem is the message that this diseasing of human behaviour sends to all of us. The fashionable label of ‘addictive personality’ encourages people to acquiesce to their worst instincts in a quite fatalistic way. Addicts are portrayed as victims of circumstances beyond their control: they are literally counselled to accept powerlessness as the defining feature of their existences. Sexaholics Anonymous mimics the 12-step approach of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step that a sex addict takes on the road to sexual sobriety is to admit that ‘we were powerless over lust’.

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