Misc stuff

One of those tedious posts listing things the author has been reading recently. This is in part because I was going to write some politics stuff and discovered other people have said it all anyway... BTW, I find I had 22 tabs open to write all this, is that a record? Whats your maximum?

News just now is that Quark Soup has gone, somewhat earlier than promised. Space for a brief muse there perhaps... it was the first blog I read; perhaps DA somewhat lost his place when other climate-type blogs (RC mainly; perhaps even Stoat) took some of his niche. Deltoid was the next one I read... I trust they won't be going out in order.

So... capitalistimperialistpig (who I owe a response on energy balance... its coming... in the meantime, this) condems the US Policy of Torture. We don't do torture ourselves (at least not in public) but why do we need the Law Lords to decide should evidence extracted by torture abroad be admissible in the British courts? rather than the more obvious just-say-no. I'm wondering if terrorism is the new paedophilia is the new witchcraft... Mikael Hallendal finds a story about someone getting arrested in the London subway [ahem... underground] for no good reason, but you've read that through Planet Fleck already. Guantanamo is weird too but that piece is a slightly different slant.

Just like everyone else I read "Don't get stuck on stupid" though I seem to have taken a different moral from it than everyone else.

Meanwhile, over at Creek Running North, I discover the concept of Lurker Day (via, I think, John Quiggin). So, lurkers here, treat this as an invitation to say hello...

Dead trees: I'm reading A War against Truth - An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq by Paul William Roberts. I was lent it. So far I'm up to p73 and I have to say that while its interesting, its a little bit too much yes-yes-I-agree-with-that sort of stuff. And... its a bit too passionate, so I'm not sure all of it can quite be trusted.

For wacko science, I followed [[Zbigniew Jaworowski]] to http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf. He is, ostensibly, predicting cooling... so he should be up for a bet, yes? Ho ho. Speaking of wiki, Jimmy Wales has a blog but it doesn't get updated much.

Wacko maths is also available (no, not string theory (ho ho)) via the talk page of [[Cantor's diagonal argument]]. In some ways this is comforting: I spend a lot of time arguing with wacko GW septics, but at least in that case there is no definite mathematical proof. In the Cantor case, there really *is* definite proof, but the wackos still can't cope with it. Side note: check out the article itself, which points out (did you know this? I didn't) that "the diagonal argument was not Cantor's first proof of the uncountability of the real numbers, but was published three years after his first proof."

No space for this today, so I'll put a placeholder for we-are-rich-but-full-of-sh*t, by which I mean it seems that the amount of total twaddle (and I mean meaningless bureacracy, not GW wackos) generated by a society is related to its wealth. The richer you are the more parasites you can afford. Which, looking forward, is bad news.

Via CIP, I found "ecosystems" and discovered I am a Slithering Reptile (CIP is only a Flippery Fish :-).