Moah Techno-optimism

I seem not to have been optimistic since 2017; but really, life is better than that. The world is beautiful; I've made it out onto the rocks; and tech advances, when the idiot govt stands aside.

And the immeadiate cause for this enthusiasm is Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship. People are always being whingey about Starlink (see ATTP and note my comment; or here; or Sabine) but I've thought for a while that dumping telescopes into space, and having to pay rather less attention to their mass or size could make them a lot cheaper, which is what that discussion paper says.

Speaking of idiot govt, Auntie offers Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion but I am doutful the headline is accurate. It would be very strange if the data was actually deleted; I think it is just being removed from the wub, if that; though I could be wrong. The first easily-verifiable link is "On 16 April, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced that a list of datasets regarding ocean monitoring were now scheduled to be removed in early May". From that, there's ADT-HURSAT, which is just not being updated; Cloud Properties - ISCCP H-Series CDR, ditto; Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (RP's bete noire²), ditto; nClimGrid-Daily: mostly-ditto; at that point I got bored. If anyone knows of anything actually being deleted¹, I'd be interested.

Notes

1. If that even means anything in today's world of multiply redundant backups and copies.

2. "Because the methodologies used by NOAA to generate loss estimates are neither public nor (to my knowledge) written down, it may be that with Smith’s departure the agency may have lost capacity to carry on..."

Refs

* The Pope Who Helped Bring Down Communism.

* Pharmaceutical Price Controls and the Marshmallow Test.

* "Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech," by Prof. Yascha Mounk by Eugene Volokh.

* Surprising, but not unexpected, multi-decadal pause in Arctic sea ice loss via RP.

* Dazal’d thus with hight of place - Upon Somerset's Fall.

* The Merciful Maximization of the Market.

* Europe’s free-speech problem.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

I cannot resist a post on Trump and his foolish tariffs, mostly so I can look back in a few days or a year and think you fool, how could you possibly believe something so stupid⁵. But don't worry, I shall have words for other people too. First off, there are a lot of people explaining why tariffs will raise domestic prices, why the atavistic yearning for the manufacturing jobs of the goode olde dayes⁷ is doomed¹, why Trump's formula is broken in a host of different ways, and madness in general. For all of that analysis I direct you elsewhere; my own view is just the obvious: free trade is good, govenment restrictions on trade are bad, as experience proves. Secondly, I claim no prescience on this, otherwise I would have sold off last week instead of putting my sell order in this morning. There is of course a way out of the mess: Trump reverses, or puts on hold pending negotiations, or claims great success from others dropping their barriers, or shows even some signs that he means to ameliorate his tariffs. I personally think there is a moderate-to-good chance that happens, but don't take that as advice⁴. Oh, and there's another hope: that other countries don't follow the Chinese in raising barriers as retaliation³. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is not good policy.

Noah Smith has a nice post berating leftish people. My summary (which NS liked!) is "Trump's policy is mad but alas the Dems are completely clueless in opposing it". This is what I'd like to expound on.

As a touchstone of "are you capable of thinking about economics without your party blinders" I offer you What Does Public Schooling Teach Us About Predatory Pricing? which conveniently comes my way (or this).

Preliminary: the anger that MAGA feeds on - well, that populism feeds on, Bernie Saunders is much the same - is that you're being ripped off; that life today is worse than it was for your parents; that wages aren't rising; and so on. None of it is true, but people love nothing better than getting really angry about being taken advantage of. And yet, at the same time, I assert another aspect: people are so confident of the strength of the capitalist² system that they don't fear the risks that come from trying to make massive changes; they're confident that somehow it will all work out.

Secondary: on top of everything else, the tariffs are blatantly unconstitutional. But the constitution is not self-enforcing. Either Congress needs to explicitly take back its money-raising powers⁶, or someone needs to bring the case to court; there are moves afoot in both directions. As a good Popperanian, I point out once again how this points to the danger of giving government too much power; notice how none of the opposition are saying the government should not be able to do this they are only saying I don't like this thing the government is doing, my ideal government would wield just as much power, but for the good. A convenient example of this is the House Democrats, who say Trump's trade policy has been a chaotic mess, but that tariffs—if done right and paired with strong pro-worker and industrial policies—can help supercharge manufacturing. Not only is this a very bad idea, it is also desperately weak as a political strategy⁸.

At the moment, I think stock prices reflect what people expect of the future - i.e. the damage that will be done - and not too much of the actual damage done yet. By which I mean, they could still be reversed, if Trump just abandons all this nonsense. But fairly soon they will start to reflect real damaage - economic activity foregone, businesses closing, and so on. They have already done vast reputational damage that cannot be undone in the short term.

Every time I look at the situation something else appalling comes up, so I've probably forgotten some terrible aspect, but I think that will do for the moment.

Oh, but what does the world look like if the Dear Leader does not relent? People get poorer - and so angrier, and more prone to political extremism - and people at the margins, perhaps in distant countries, die. But - despite my headline - I think I expect my - and, dear readers, I hope your - comfortable middle class lifestyle to continue.

Update: I knew I'd forget something. One good thing the Trump admin did was starting the DEI rollback, though I'll be happy to admit that it was done crudely; but probably there was no other way. But if Trump gets completely discredited, that could stall or reverse; see this for a crude take.

Uupdate: and another: Your right to lorenorder refers. The USA is not El Salvador, but this points up the danger of a Strongman govt; or indeed of socialist / fascist govt in general.

Uuupdate: Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false - E. Musk. And I’d like to apologize to bricks for calling Peter Retarrdo dumber than a sack of bricks. That was so unfair to bricks.

Uuuupdate [2025/04/10] Well, yer Orange Man Blinked and the world breathes a sigh of relief, at least for now. Lawsuits continue, as they should. For those who want to know how I did (such as for example me): I put in my sell order (don't worry, not for my entire wealth) on Monday, it was executed on Tuesday, fortuitously more or less at the 5250 peak, and I am happy with that. Had I HODL'd I'd now be better off but still exposed. One obvious point is the potential for vast profits from insider trading (another reason for not giving one man all this power) but I'm not yet seeing much credible evidence for that.

Notes

1. America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back is a readable token in that direction. His solution won't work, though.

2. Is this the right characterisation? Perhaps just "system".

3. Just possibly this is a cunning ploy by the Chinese to raise tariffs merely as a bargaining chip that they want to throw away in return for the Mango Mussolini dropping his tariffs. If so, it doesn't look like it is going well so far. More likely China, as a Great Nation with a big dick cannot be seen to lose face.

4. As a token piece of good news, today's S+P is practically level on the day. I'm not cancelling my sell order though.

5. Ah, if only I know what exactly was the really stupid bit. But doubtless people will tell me that.

6. Some movement in this direction: Bacon, Hurd, Gottheimer, Meeks, Introduce Bill to Restore Congress’ Constitutional Role in Trade. Interesting comment: "In court, it's possibly even harder to defend a universal 10% tariff as an emergency measure".

7. Quite a bit of ye yearnninge for ye goode olde dayes is around housing affordability. This has indeed got worse but that's because idiot govts insist on restricting house building. See-also Even Acts of God Can't Fix Permitting Anymore.

8. NS: It is literally true that billionaires and CEOs, backed by neoliberal free traders, helped save the American economy from an even worse catastrophe while progressive Democrats and "anti-neoliberal" think tankers equivocated on the disaster.

Refs

* The Chinese Communist Party posting Reagan speeches about the importance of free trade…what a time to be alive.

* Rights and Wrongs of the Supreme Court's Ruling in the Alien Enemies Act Case (Scotus blog) / District Court and Fourth Circuit Order Trump Administration to Return Wrongfully Deported Immigrant (Scotus blog).

* More bad takes: Torygraph: The Bank of England must step in to stop market meltdown. But as the article says the markets are already pricing in rate cuts; and the problem here is not one bankers can fix.

* But astonishingly, a good take from the chancellor: In terms of buying British, I think everyone will make their own decisions. What we don’t want to see is a trade war, with Britain becoming inward-looking, because if every country in the world decided that they only wanted to buy things produced in their country, that is not a good way forward. In that she is batting back a foolish Lib Dem idea; it looks like the LDs are continuing the poor tradition of opposition-as-mischief-making.

* Peaks: Stanage.

* Tariff of Abominations.

* Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Claim That He Can Summarily Deport Anyone He Describes As an 'Alien Enemy'.

* Trivia by comparison, but Mackerel stocks near breaking point because of overfishing, say experts shows how the govt can't even do something trivial right; how can it be expected to get the exact value of tariffs "correct"?

* Bandwidth economics - this is similar to the Hayekian / Popperian "open society" stuff: you don't need to know about people in order to interact. Conversely, we suffer from the opposite, insisting on everyone caring about everyone else.

* Americans overwhelmingly agree that more Americans should work in manufacturing, but they definitely don’t want to work in manufacturing themselves.

* The Invisible Crash.

* Review: The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Joseph Stiglitz.

* A Psychological Theory of the Culture War.

* There must be an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect.

* Public Statement in Favor of Free Trade and Against Tariffs.

* The Road to Campus Serfdom.

* In defense of an online life.

* I owe the libertarians an apology says Noah Smith. It is a half-hearted apology and he has a way to go, but there is hope for him perhaps.

* The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs - ACX; better than the title suggests.

* Talking DEI with the Board of Visitors.

Pix

Lord Ribblesdale and friends

To the National Gallery for the Siena exhibition, but we were early so browsed around. And I was happy to find Lord R again; I think they move him around a bit. As wiki says the painting captures "the quintessence of understated aristocratic style … the portrait of an age as well as the man." Amusingly, wiki also says that Lord R ended up living up to the image presented in the painting.

If interested you can see all the pix I took here. And the full-length Lord R here. Sadly what I didn't do was take the ten or so other full-length portraits in the room. What was interesting was how much better this one is; the others were all oddly posed, or with strange backgrounds, or unnatural expressions, or other defects. Ah but happily the Nat Gall has a listing, you may judge for yourself.

The Siena stuff was interesting but desperately religious, of course. And crude. In the sense of their choice of subjects and their methods of painting and style.

I leave you with a quasi-typical example, only atypical in that it isn't the crucified Christ or the annunciated Virgin. Why did it never occur to them to paint stuff like this? Some kind of weird (or not weird, because everyone had it) mental block in painters and patrons.

Refs

* France 2024: Orsay, Chamonix, Argeles, Canal du Midi.

* [2024/03] London: Cloth Fair, Wigmore, Westminster, Courtauld, National Gallery, St Bartholomew the Great, RA.

* [2024/03] A visit to Magdalen and Elias.

* [2023/12] Ashmolean: Egypt.

* [2023/03] Cezanne: a trip to London.

Conjectures and Refutations, part two

Conjectures and Refutations refers, naturally. But what is so charming about Popper is the way that an idea, that in our debased times would amount to an entire book, is merely a single chapter. Although the material I'm discussing here, I am obliged to admit, is not quite up to the first two sections; ah well.

The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science (66-96)

Popper returns to the theme that philosophy is about solving problems not talking about philosophy; and points out that most problems in philosophy arise outside it. But that may not be obvious from the works themselves; they may have so sublimed the initial problem that is is not mentioned.

This is I think true and quite telling; it makes me pause and wonder about my reaction to certain works. Popper's examples here are Plato's theory of Forms, and Kant's Critique.

Before that, since Popper briefly discusses pseudo-problems, and since it fits my view of much of philosophy, I quote his My first thesis is that every philosophy... is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems, and its cant, accordingly, practically indistinguishable from meaningless babble. His second thesis is that what appears to be the prima facie method of teaching philosophy is liable to produce a philosophy which answers Wittgenstein's description [as babble]... that of giving the beginner... the works of the great philosophers to read... A new world of astonishingly subtle and vast abstractions opens itself before the reader; abstractions on an extremely high and difficult level. Thoughts and arguments are put before his mind which sometimes are not only hard to understand, but which seem to him irrelevant because he cannot find out what they may be relevant to; and so we return to the problems that provoked the philosophy.

Let's take his second example first, because I think it is simpler. Popper's contention is that Newtonian physics was so utterly successful and completely accepted by Kant's time that people had mistaken it for an absolute truth; and Kant therefore felt he needed to provide an explanation of how we could know such a thing a priori. I believe that (a) this is likely correct; (b) would not be universally accepted, because Kant is so obscure that people disagree over what he actually means, and are moreover desperate not to admit that he was wrong. My own reaction is yes: this is a nice explanation, it helps to understand Kant, but it also helps by pointing out that I really don't need to bother reading him: he is wrong.

The question of Plato's theory of forms is more complex, and also I think more speculative. Popper says that the discover of irrational numbers gets in the way of the atomisation and arithmetisation of nature, by which he means the programme - apparently that of those times - of associating numbers with things and deducing properties by counting; which assumes a smallest unit length scale, by which all other things in principle could be measured by counting (this programme is obscure and mystical, but that doesn't mean it wasn't their programme). Popper associates this with a switch to geometry; and then somehow connects this to the theory of forms. My own suspicion is that Popper is jumping backwards through hoops to rescue Plato's theory, probably from people like me who think it is silly, but I have to admit that it does perhaps help illuminate the writings.

Three Views of Human Knowledge (97-119)

This one isn't so good. It starts with a rather poor summary of "the Galileo affair" that totally misses the main point - that big G was trying to tell the Church how to interpret the Bible; and then tells us that the Gregorian calendrical reform made full use of big C, which I doubt. But leaving that aside, he is mostly discussing the status of scientific theory in the lights of what he calls Instrumentalism (theories are but tools, and don't describe an underlying reality, which most people using epicycles subscribed to) and Essentialism (theories describe "the realities behind appearances"). And his own preferred view: rejecting Instrumentalism, theories attempt to describe the real world, so not going all the way to Essentialism. All this seems to be not very interesting, and to come rather close to arguing over labels, a thing he usually disdains.

Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition (120-135)

Also not his finest; note that it was given to the Third Annual Conference of the Rationalist Press Association at Magdalen College; how delightful that such things once existed. But the ideas here are largely those of previous chapters.

Back to the Pre-Socratics (136-153)

A great deal of discussion of Pre-Socratic philosophy, doubtless very fine if you're interested in that history, but not of obvious modern relevance; he does though re-emphasise the importance of the emergence of a tradition of critical rational discussion. He does say two very strange things in the introduction to this section: (1) all science is cosmology; and (2) philosophy must return to cosmology. Admittedly he was talking in 1958 and wiki tells me that the CMB wasn't discovered until '64. Now, I would say, cosmology has almost entirely left the realm of philosophy and is part of science; that trend must have been obvious in '58. And (1) is only true if at all in the most general and useless sense.

Refs

* Tragedy in one shitty act.

Conjectures and Refutations

This is a great book by Karl Popper; you should read it. You can even do that online as rosenfels.org/Popper.pdf. The overall theme is the title; he explains it well in the preface:

... a theory of reason that assigns to rational arguments the... role of criticizing our often mistaken attempts to solve our problems. And it is a theory of experience that assigns to our observations the... role of tests which may help us in the discovery of our mistakes. Though it stresses our fallibility it does not resign itself to scepticism, for it also stresses the fact that knowledge can grow, and that science can progress - just because we can learn from our mistakes.

The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by... conjectures... controlled by... attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true... Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the difficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory... is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes.

As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know that is, know for certain. Since our knowledge can grow, there can be no reason here for despair of reason. And since we can never know for certain, there can be no authority here for any claim to authority...

Those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism... may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as 'the science' of that time. Since none of them can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and progressive character - the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors - which constitutes the rationality of science.

Popper's work is dense, which makes summarising it difficult; I contrast that with The Righteous Mind, or fluff like The Tyranny of Merit which is easy to review. I really do recommend that you read him yourself. I will content myself with pulling out some pieces. FWIW, I agree with essentially all that Popper says. Having sat on this post for a bit, I think I shall let it out into the world with only the first two sections covered; I may get round to the rest later.

Introduction: On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance 

Popper's main objectives in this tome are scientific but it turns out that politics gets mixed in: The belief of a liberal... in the possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of fundamental rights, and a free society - can easily survive the recognition that judges are not omniscient and may make mistakes about facts and that, in practice, absolute justice is hardly ever realized in any particular legal case. But this belief... can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts... and that the judge cannot have made a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he can be right. And we agree that there are objective facts (see-also my review of Why Materialism is Baloney).

There is a view - which Popper attributes to the the Renaissance, to Bacon and Descartes - that truth is manifest¹. Not that it is easy to see, but that once it is declared, it can be seen to be true. Thus there is no need for authority; although this isn't really true: Descartes has God as his authority, Bacon has Nature. This he regards as an optimistic doctrine; its opposite is a lack of belief in human reason, which demands an unliberal authority. But if you adopt the optimistic view, you need a theory of error or ignorance to explain why this manifest truth is not believed; and this is often a conspiracy view: priests² or capitalists or whatever conspire to confuse the good folk; or in a worse case, fanatics insist you must be evil if you cannot see their truth. But all this is not necessary, because the doctrine is false: truth is not manifest; it is hard to come by and easy to lose.

Another tempting source of authority is definitions. But considered carefully, we realise that definitions never provide factual knowledge of the world.

Popper again finding congruence between the political and the epistemic: The traditional systems of epistemology may be said to result from yes-answers or no-answers to questions about the sources of knowledge. They never challenge these questions [but] these questions are clearly authoritarian in spirit. They can be compared with that traditional question of political theory, 'Who should rule?', which begs for an authoritarian answer such as 'the best', or 'the wisest'... It should be replaced by a completely different question such as 'How can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers... cannot do too much damage?'... The question about the sources of our knowledge can be replaced in a similar way... I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist... to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree... The proper answer to my question [is] 'By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and - if we can train ourselves to do so -by criticizing our own theories or guesses.'

Science: Conjectures and Refutations

Popper begins his considerations of what makes a theory scientific with his usual examples: relativity, psycho-analysis, and the Marxist theory of history. And finds the latter two lacking, in that they are able to accomodate anything: they cannot be falsified; there is nothing that they rule out³.

Popper solves the Humean problem of induction by discovering that scientific theories are not deduced by induction from observations; rather they are conjectures that are tested by attempted refutations. This is both charming and correct. A theory is any old wild-eyed idea⁵; a scientific theory is one open to refutation by some conceivable experiment. The antient Greek's "planetary orbits are perfect circles because circles are perfect and the heavens are perfect" was a theory; the simple version was gradually falsified by observations and grew epicycles; these too were eventually contradicted by observations. Along the dark centuries the theory lost most of its scientific character by fossilising into dogma and being resistant to criticism; eventually this crumbled. But Kepler's ellipses were not "deduced" from observations; instead, they were the last thing he tried after a long series of other guesses were falsified by observations⁴.

There may be - this is my thought, not Popper's - some relation here to Kuhn's ideas in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Wherein "normal" science does look rather like the process of finding lots of observations that concur with existing theories; only tiny amount of work is paradigm-shifting, the finding of new wild-eyed ideas.

Popper rather wistfully notes that the problem of induction is solved. But nothing seems less wanted than a simple solution to an age-old philosophical problem. And that rings true; philosophy has lost heart, and is more interested in endless talk around old problems, and commentary on what others wrote, and endlessly recursive commentary-on-commentary, than it is on solutions.

Update: notice that Popper's theory is of how intelligent beings (humans) in practice do science. It is not a deduction of some "intrinsic" or "ideal" immanent property; this is not the finally-discovered Platonic Ideal of what sceince is, because Platonic Ideals are silly. But it is what we do (in a vaguely similar way that Hazlitt's theory of morality is what morality actually is for us); and whilst the vast majority of scientists would not actually be able to explain the idea to you, because most scientists don't think about the philosophy of science, they would nonetheless recognise it, if you showed it to them.

Notes

1. I'm a touch dubious about this myself; in Descartes case, he needs the "anything clearly and distinctly perceived is true" to get him out of his pit of doubt; see-also my scathing review. And as for Bacon, where in Popper's view the "authority" guaranteeing correctness is Nature rather than God, see here.

2. See-also Hobbes: Of the Kingdom of Darkness.

3. Or, in the Marxist case, the original version had been falsified by experience but the theory proved sufficiiently flexible to evade this.

4. Incidentally... nowadays, we of course think of planetary positions in 3-D, and we have observations of wondrous accuracy. But in those days all they had were angular bearings from a moving platform, viz the Earth; even had you thought of it you couldn't just plot them out and go "oh yeah, that's an ellipse". And sweeping out equal areas in equal times is similar: this too was a conjecture, which wasn't falsified.

5. This I think leads to Popper being more generous that I would be to a number of the Antient Greek ideas. See-also Après ma mort, je ferai tomber une pluie de roses

Refs

* Science.

* Why do people believe true things?

Global cereal production has grown much faster than population in the last half-century

Every now and again one reads a paper saying something along the lines of "ZOMG we're all going to die of starvation". Perhaps not literally that, but it will say something like crop yields decline under global warming. And totally fail to mention that other factors - better farming, fertilisers, and so on - are increasing yields faster. So this is just a page for me to tag with the obvious rebuttals, and link to some of my old posts. My pic is from ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-production.

Searching, I find Crop yields have increased dramatically in recent decades, but crops like maize would have improved more without climate change, but that too is from Our World in Data, rather than the breathless academic press.

* How overfed are we? [2008]

* How overfed are we? (part 2) [2009]

* Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? [2009]

* Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death? [2017]

* Citing Climate Change, BlackRock Will Start Moving Away from Fossil Fuels [2020]

* How to assess the multiple interacting risks of climate change? [2021]

Refs

* Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture.

Red Team wins again

A follow up to Red team rows over, though I seem to have skipped 2024 (see here for the 2024 playlist). Not to spoil the suspense, but the Red Team rowed over head again; and on the women's side the arguably-red Jesus also rowed over unchallenged. But don't fear, behind those there was plenty of action (Caius bumping the hapless-this-year Madgalene to go second despite a fine charge from Downing, who got their revenge on Friday but still couldn't touch LMBC); see here for the playlist. This year's best chaos was Friday M2 when Caius II and Girton failed to take Grassy, and then Corpus ploughed into them; but no-one was injured.

If you've got no idea what I'm talking about, see cucbc.org/lents.

I took no photos this year, being busy with the drone; so here's an image from 120m up of M1 on Saturday; the closest two sticks-in-a-distance are Christ's not quite catching King's despite being agonisingly close all the way from Ditton.

Addendum

From Rowbridge:

BOATS BEHAVING BADLY: THE DEFINITIVE FINE ANALYSIS (LENTS 2K25)

It’s Boat Race weekend and OUBC are feeling smug. Their “alumni” have successfully banned every single CUBC athlete from competing. Sitting on the start line, though, the OUBC crews’ eyes widen in shock, quickly turning to fear, as they spot the replacement Cambridge crew spannering their way towards the start. Surely not… it can’t be? Murmurs of disbelief now amongst the hapless OUBC athletes as their worst fears are realised: it’s Corpus M1.

Ignoring the rules entirely, the Corpus cox calls for a big 10 straight through the line without bothering to wait for the flag. A nervy Oxford set off in hot pursuit, and overtake Corpus quickly. Jitters beginning to subside, Oxford’s rhythm returns as they approach the bend under Hammersmith Bridge. But panic soon returns as behind them, Corpus make zero effort to make the bend and instead bore a hole straight through the abutments, immediately destroying the whole bridge.

Dread sets in as Oxford’s stroke yells: “WE’RE DONE FOR! THEY’VE NOT GOT A RUDDER! THEY’RE COMING STRAIGHT FOR US!” In desperation, stroke tries to bail out of the boat but Jesus have bike-locked their leg to the footplate with some passive-aggressive note about it being “their” footplate actually. The OUBC cox, true terror in their eyes, swivels around in their seat just in time to hear the Corpus cox shout “yeah, nice corner there boys, bump in 20” before Corpus’s Jannie’s indestructible bow ploughs straight through Oxford’s stern, vaporising the entire boat’s superstructure instantly.

Corpus go on to win the race by 300 lengths. They are fined £50 by CUCBC for boating without a lifejacket.

~ TOTALS ~

Tues: 495

Weds: 510

Thurs: 540

Fri: 555

Sat: 690

TOTAL: £2790

~ MOST DASTARDLY COLLEGES ~

Sidney: £275 (Moneyball. Rocky. Shrek. Time to write another chapter in the book of all-time great underdog stories as one of the Cam’s pretty chill guys rockets into Boats Behaving Badly stardom. The first Lent Bumps since 2020 where Emma haven’t reigned supreme as the most-fined college. Take. A. Bow.)

Jesus: £190 (The Cam’s princes and princesses of darkness relish playing their panto villain role and this week was no exception with particularly noteworthy performances from their lower boats. Late to marshalling? Check. Extremely late to marshalling? Check (again). Blissfully ignorantly rowing on through a checkmate? Check(mate).)

Clare: £180 (the yellow submarine sends a torpedo into Emma’s hopes of a top three finish this bumps. It’s colder than a polar bear’s toenails stuff from their men’s side on the final day, with ruthless examples of how not to clear helping them secure bronze over ducks and laundry college.)

Emma: £165 (heads must surely be rolling in Emma’s Fine Department after this. Most colleges would pop the champagne after a sparkling fourth-place finish like this, but the bubbles will have been decidedly flat for Emma at this week’s BCD. It’s just not the standards they hold themselves to at that college and they’ll be gutted to lose out on an event they’ve had a stranglehold on for so many years now. If you know anyone at Emma, check in with them. Make sure they’re ok.)

Downing: £155 (a big hand for Downing this week, who rarely crack the big leagues at the top of the fine game. A cultured performance, with expert deployment of classic fines like “pointlessly handheld filming a rowover” really showing Downing’s class this weeks. Big foundations laid for Mays.)

~ GOOD AS GOLD ~

Stop press, stop press… yeah yeah the usual nerds and grandparents are in the “lame as hell” list here (Clare Hall, St Edmunds), but so are… Pembroke? And King’s? Are you guys ok? This is the first time in our data that either of these colleges have failed to donate to Umpires’ Dinner, and must be a really concerning place to find yourself so close to Mays. You have to ask: did Pembroke focus too hard on producing ruthless blade-train after ruthless blade-train, and not hard enough on the actual aim of bumps (being choppers)?

~ DISOBEDIENT RASCALS: THIS YEAR’S NAUGHTIEST BOATS ~

Sidney W1: £140 (it’s the Sidney show this week. Absolute smash and grab stuff from these ladies. Go in for a korma, end up with a vindaloo type job. Every day just saw brutal performance after brutal performance from this crew, as they duked it out bumping back and forth with Catz. Sure, Catz may have ended the week +2 to Sidney’s -2, but I don’t see them on this list and that’s what matters.)

Sidney M2: £135 (just pipped by their women to the top spot, this crew has the unusual honour of being fined for delightfully dreadful clearing twice on a single day. But they took their W1 right to the line, stretching them like spandex on the beaches of Benidorm. That kind of close competition can only be good for the sport.)

Darwin M1: £105 (merciless bumping strategy this week from the boys, who continued drilling their bowball into bumped coxes’ backs long after they should’ve held it up on several occasions. The only crew this week to smilingly donate blankets to chilly umpires one minute, and then hurl foul abuse downrange the next. Confusing, but effective.)

~ GENDER FINE GAP ~

Fascinating one this week. We’re delighted to report that the fine gap has remained narrow since last Mays: men’s boats were responsible for 50.7% of fines by value vs. 47.5% for women’s boats (the remainder are generic college fines for marshals not turning up etc).

Fine analysts everywhere are rejoicing, but let’s not be too hasty to declare the fibreglass ceiling smashed: because men tend to get overexcited and pee themselves during the warm Mays week, they often rack up hefty public urination fines. On your toes for Mays then, please, ladies.

~ INSIGHTS & TRENDS ~

First off, big up ARU. Welcome back. Always grinning like Cheshire Cats when we see you lot enter bumps. Guaranteed mayhem. We know you’re too cool for bumps, but hope to see you back for Mays (bring more people next time. We reckon you can smash the “all-time largest illegal bank party” record).

It goes without saying we need to call out Corpus M1, who made that rare ascent of Bumps Fines Olympus this week. They attained the highest accolade in our sport (the cox ban) after making a stellar contribution to bankside erosion by repeatedly slamming themselves into Grassy. Remember: blades are temporary, but bans are (CUCBC have firmly informed us) forever.

Average fine value this week was low, at £28.76 (or just £23.25 per boat entered). Indeed, this is the second-lowest average fine value in our records (only surpassed by last Lents). Not that gassed about it which is why we’ve put this way down here in para 3 tbh. Concerning, but we’re confident that getting a few pints of fizzy pop down the beer/champers boat divs before this Mays will reverse this worrying trend towards safe, clean racing.

We were fascinated by Lucy W2 somehow getting a towpath ban for “abusive behaviour.” This is the first time we’ve seen this in our data, and a noble new slopping of sick into the vomit bucket that is “abusing volunteer umpires giving up their time to put races on for your benefit”. We can only speculate what they said. “OUBC did nothing wrong”?

Finally, it does feel like the vibe has been slightly off lately. Caius proving yet again that they take this too seriously by spending the GDP of a small nation on a new boathouse, which they’ll use almost exclusively to train for two sets of meme races per year; Jesus locking random people’s bikes up; and Oxford… well, ironically, they’re gonna get schooled in a few weeks. But bumps is always a wonderfully bizarre moment of total nonsense in amongst all of that, and thanks again to everyone at CUCBC for putting it on, despite everything. Oh, and shoutout to William “BNOC” Connolley for finally getting the recognition he deserves. BNOC today, Chancellor of the University tomorrow. He’s got our vote.

(Boats Behaving Badly Back Catalogue: #RowbridgeReborn10247, #RowbridgeReborn8304, #RowbridgeReborn5403, #RowbridgeReborn3010, #Rowbridge12496, #Rowbridge11158, #Rowbridge7498, #Rowbridge5474, #Rowbridge5151, #Rowbridge3325)

Energy Secretary Chris Wright Sees Opportunity In Ecological Collapse?

Celeb Watch: Energy Secretary Chris Wright Sees Opportunity In Ecological Collapse says Michael Mann. Or does he? Strictly speaking, all he does is quote someone else's post, but I think we can take it that he endorses the message. Is he correct to do so? No, of course not.

The article begins by calling him a "a slimy worm" just to make their biases clear, which is nice of them but not really necessary. We then move somewhat belately on to...

What he actually said: "Climate change is a global challenge that we need to solve... There’s pluses to global warming... Everything in life has trade-offs". So far so true; not exactly how I'd phrase it, but not a disaster either. And the explicit mention of trade-offs is good: far too often the Woke Side likes to pretend there are no trade-offs, or that they aren't important enough to talk about; this is always wrong.

They then present three taking points from CW: “A warmer planet with more CO2 is better for growing plants”; “The world has been getting greener for decades—[there’s] 14 percent more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago”; “We have far more people die of the cold than die of the heat”. None of that is particularly interesting or novel; but paraphrasing it as "Opportunity In Ecological Collapse" is dishonest, and we should try to remember that we're the Good Side. Or at least I am; I'm not really sure who is on the same side any more.

Finally, I'd like to leave you this lovely cartoon that came my way today.

Hopefully our charming English argot has now penetrated sufficiently to help you Yanks avoid these little faux pas in future.

Refs

* Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist - ACX.

* We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets: Bezos.

* Misinformation mostly confuses your own side.

* Can Bezos Bring Elite Human Capital to Free Markets?

* Should we defund academia? - SH

* Perils of Unitary Executive Theory - IS at Volokh. I find it unconvincing; it is better as a call for less govt as I think it itself recognises.

* Pigou and the Poor: Being able to buy a better life is the whole point of being rich!

* The Case Against Deporting Immigrants for "Pro-Terrorist" Speech.

* Starvation Is Caused By An Insufficiency Of Billionaires.

Return to Sneachda

I last went to the Cairngorms in 2013; and my book tells me I was there in 1992, 3 and 6 (see here for 1996). But without Howard's enthusiasm, my own weak will didn't find the time for the long trip up. Happily, the 4C's and Andy organised a club trip, and E wanted to go, so up we went. I spent a curiously relaxing Friday driving up alone and unhurried; about 9 hours actual driving with stops every couple of hours, and picking up E in Edinburgh. So we were in time for the Friday night chilli, all ready for climbing on Saturday and Sunday. Link to all pix.

Setting the scene, here's the corrie. Snow is a little thin but everything is well frozen. Light wind. There's an annotated version of the pic here, for route identification.

And for convenience, a page from the book:

Saturday: Aladdin's Mirror

Up 6:30, b'fast, faff a bit - we couldn't quite be bothered to get all our gear together the night before - off 8, car park 8:20, set off around 8:30, walk in is a bit more than an hour, kit up and so on and so by 10 we're about ready to start climbing. My pic shows Aladdin's buttress; look closely and you'll see a bloke in red in the centre just on the snow at the base of the buttress. The "Mirror" starts heading up the snow ramp rightwards. GPS trace. We're using the old blue rope and my skinny new rope.

The route continues up right to the snow patches higher on the right, before returning left to the dark pinnacle at the top center just below the skyline, then easily behind the ridge to the plateau above. It's a grade I, perhaps a little harder in these rather dry conditions, but comfortable enough. You can perhaps see the upside-down triangle smeared with ice which is the "direct"; but that's IV, and not really in condtiion. E and I are climbing together, me leading; it is her first taste of Scottish winter climbing. L, M and X are one pitch behind us initially, then they start training and we drop them. Here's E belaying at about "the turn"; the other party, L belaying and M following lower down; and me climbing somewhere near the top.

At the top, the time is an awkward 1:30. We have, in theory, time to drop down and do another route before dark at around 5; but not really any spare. And we're tired. So we wimp out and decide to stroll up Cairngorm, which is only a km or so away; E has after all not been here before. Here we are at the summit, with the cairn of gorm carefully positioned between us.

Drop down the ridge between Sneachda and the ski area until we can traverse back in to the frozen lakes and pick up the pack we stashed, and walk out, quite tired. Somehow the walk out, downhill, feels longer than the walk in, uphill; it takes ages to finally get round the turn of the ridge to see the welcome car park; and we get back a little after 4 so the cafe is shut. 8:30 hours out on the hill.

And so down, time for a late afternoon lounge around before dinner - A and J providing pasta - and then a moderately early bed after the strains of the day.

Sunday: The Runnel

Up 6:30 again; we're more efficient this time and off before 7:30, and leave the car park before 8, there at 9. Today we set our sights slightly higher at The Runnel, II. GPS. 7 hours out total.

The Runnel is one of several climbs that start from the top of a snow-slope to the right of yesterday. In the pic you can see a bloke in red at the base of the "real" start, as it trends off left, but hidden inside the buttress. It is much more closed-in than yesterday. There are two parties above us, and we rapidly discover that the name is appropriate, as (small) bits of ice are channelled down the gully at us. We rope up at about the sharp rock point pointing right; the snow is hard-frozen and steeper than it looks in the pic.

And so on up. It is fairly steep, and somewhat testing for me, but nothing worrying; and I don't have to search too hard for just about adequate gear. The last pitch is the crux, a narrow chimney fairly thin in ice so perhaps I could claim it as II+. Below we see Our Hero thrutching his way up; there are enough small wires in the walls to make me just about happy.

The ice has been hacked around a lot to the point of not always being there anymore; sometimes I'm putting my pick in a nice hole chipped out by those who went before; and having some toeholds pre-kicked helps the burning pain in the calves. Above the chimney is a short easy slope to the plateau and no cornice.

I get to lie back against a boulder on the plateau as some shelter from the now-increased bitter wind, while E climbs up; we can't hear each other while she is climbing, though if I'd wanted to fix that I could have belayed just at the edge. Some of the others had radios for that; cute, but. The ropes have twisted themselves together so we just stuff them into the sack; the wind doesn't encourage lingering. Southwards stretches the plateau.

Into the distance disappear the mounds of human heads; but we're not going that way. Instead we head down the Goat Track and, after wrestling with our consciences for not very long, head back downwards. We could sneak in another climb but again we're tired, and also quite satisfied by The Runnel.

And so down, with time for coffee and cake in the cafe; time to shower, have a stroll down Aviemore high street, which is linear and recalls alpine ski resort streets (that's not a compliment). Dinner: chicken tagine by P.

Monday: drive back, with L and M; E will take the train back to Edinburgh, which is handy, as we're all brought too much kit so the car is full. Memo to self, yet again: strip it down. Second stop is Purdy lodge, which was good. About where Barter Books in Alnwyck were on the way up.

Practical considerations

We stayed in the Youth Hostel, which was a good choice. Here's the foyer / reception / one of the lounges, leading towards the dining area on the left.

As you see, it isn't the sort of place that objects to you bringing sacs and axes in, although like anywhere else it doesn't want mountain boots past the boot room. There was a nice drying room, and no-one in our 4-bed room snored; the showers were good. You could get a basic breakfast, though not until 7, so we brought our own; and we cooked each night. There are big fridges for your stuff.

The temperature outside the hostel in the morning, a little before dawn, was about -5; it would have been somewhat lower up at the climbs. Snow was fairly thin (the ski resort was only just about open, and that limited) and hard-frozen; the path into the corrie was well-made (until you get to the boulder field) but treacherous if oyu didn't watch it. I was in themal leggings, and then my old green "warm" "waterproof" trousers. On top I had again thermals, then a fleece, then a down jacket, then raincoat. That was actually a bit too warm; on Sunday I didn't wear the fleece, and was less like a Michelin man. Gloves were down mitts and outer shell. So that's pretty well what we wore for Mont Blanc; it was fine. Boots were the new boots; they were fine, although on the cold side. On Saturday I carried too many not-very-useful friends and large rocks; Sneachda seems to want wires mostly. And I didn't have enough carabiners.

Kit: here's the hallway once I'd unloaded the car. Not very helpful perhaps. E and I had two technical axes each, one new one old each. The new (Petzl and Black Diamond) were distinctly better on anything steep, though admittedly a bit annoying to use when walking. E had her steel crampons, I had my aluminium ones. We don't have proper leashes for the axes; I've finally realised that using slings on the heads is not a good idea when you're swinging them; for Sunday I added cords from the tails, and that worked well.

Fear

When I've done this before, Howard has been in charge. Quite often I was climbing harder than him, but he was definitely in charge of when to go, what routes to do, safety, not getting lost, all that stuff. I found actually being the Leader of our little party, as opposed to just leading the climbs, quite stressful.

Howard's notes

Howard sends me some notes of previous trips, which I'll include here for the records.

- We went to Sneachda with Miriam in 1992 and climbed in glorious sunshine with no wind. I kept telling you how lucky we were and you didn’t believe me. 

- We went to Glencoe with Debbie Fish and the guy from Chemistry whose name will come back to me, in “1993-4” so I guess over New Year. We were joined by Bill Taylor for the first day on Buchaille Etive More. Later we did Aenoch Eagach ridge as a rope of four, with me leading but you coming last in an equally important role.

- We went to the Shelterstone with Steve McCann and Debbie, my catalogue says in 1997 but it could have been 1996. You led me up most of Hells Lum Chimney (II+) and Steve led us all up Route Majeur (IV) Steve and I shared the decisions on that trip.

- We went to Sneachda in Feb 2013, with Karl Roscoe and young Chris Collett, and I seem to remember you going to look at Alladin’s Mirror Direct with Karl, then me offering to drop a rope for you from its top. I selected the routes, but mostly left you and Karl to it on the other rope.