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Does Trump believe in 'climate change'?
2 min read
Whoever asked that question damned himself out of his own mouth, because that is the sort of question one would ask about matters of religion, not science. On scientific questions, one would ask, rather, "What is the evidence?"
Even the use of the phrase "climate change" rather than "man-made global warming" is telling, because "climate change" is the phrase the faithful adopted because it was becoming embarrassingly obvious that there had been no global warming, man-made or otherwise, for many years.
The evidence says that Earth's climate has been changing continuously for about 4.5 billion years, and during nearly all of that time, Homo sapiens was nowhere to be found. Even during the past century, there has been no correlation at all between climate change and anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Correlation is not causation, but if there is no correlation, the probability of causation is quite low.
What the scientific evidence does suggest is that we are in for a decade or two of severe global cooling, with consequent global famine and civil and international disorder. The expected cause would be a reduction in solar energy output, like that which has been happening periodically, every 209 years, for about a thousand years. The most recent instance was dubbed the Dalton Minimum. It affected U.S. and European history, and in particular was blamed for Napoleon Bonepart's failure to conquer Russia.
The next instance is expected to bottom out around the year 2031. The most recent extremely severe winter in Asia and Europe may be an early harbinger. The onset of the next Glacial Age is not expected for perhaps 1500 years, though by past experience it is already overdue, and there have been some indications that the global "conveyor belt" (of which the Gulf Stream is one segment) is already weakening.
Even the use of the phrase "climate change" rather than "man-made global warming" is telling, because "climate change" is the phrase the faithful adopted because it was becoming embarrassingly obvious that there had been no global warming, man-made or otherwise, for many years.
The evidence says that Earth's climate has been changing continuously for about 4.5 billion years, and during nearly all of that time, Homo sapiens was nowhere to be found. Even during the past century, there has been no correlation at all between climate change and anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Correlation is not causation, but if there is no correlation, the probability of causation is quite low.
What the scientific evidence does suggest is that we are in for a decade or two of severe global cooling, with consequent global famine and civil and international disorder. The expected cause would be a reduction in solar energy output, like that which has been happening periodically, every 209 years, for about a thousand years. The most recent instance was dubbed the Dalton Minimum. It affected U.S. and European history, and in particular was blamed for Napoleon Bonepart's failure to conquer Russia.
The next instance is expected to bottom out around the year 2031. The most recent extremely severe winter in Asia and Europe may be an early harbinger. The onset of the next Glacial Age is not expected for perhaps 1500 years, though by past experience it is already overdue, and there have been some indications that the global "conveyor belt" (of which the Gulf Stream is one segment) is already weakening.
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Rest in peace H. R. Giger
3 min read
View if possible the documentary "Dark Star: H. R. Giger"
Giger was a Swiss artist, best known for his Oscar-winning artistic contribution to the movie "Alien" about 1978. Simply put, he designed the alien itself.
His artwork his widely considered rather "dark". The style is sometimes called "biomechanoid" or something like that because of the merger/mixture of mechanical and human forms, and perhaps because it is often largely monochrome.
Some of my artwork looks a little like some of his, which may not be entirely accidental. From my side, the resemblance stems from some of the graphic tools I have used, notably Blender and Wings3D. To my knowledge, he never used computer graphics, but did very often use an airbrush, something I tinkered with a little. He did study industrial design at one time. My work has often been monochrome because I wanted to concentrate on form and texture. I have called color "superficial", not in a pejorative sense, but merely a literal sense, i.e. "pertaining to surfaces or areas" as opposed to topological structure.
Giger's life is almost coterminous with my own; he was born a couple of years earlier, and died a few years ago. Sadly, he became rather feeble toward the end.
Giger as a person was a little like me in some ways. He was an artist, but even as an artist very unconventional. His dream life was very important to him, as mine is; his dreams often frightened him, as mine do not, usually. His artwork was a means of showing others what his dreams were like, thus gaining a measure of control over them. He loved cats, especially Siamese cats, as I do. Like me, He was incapable of maintaining a conventionally neat, orderly household. I hope to create short movies to display what my migraine auras are like (a neurological phenomenon, very real, not supernatural at all. ) I also hope to create short movies to show approximately the visions I see in response to some of my favorite musical works. Unlike Giger, I will almost certainly get no help from Hollywood in creating such movies. Instead, I will take advantage of modern digital computing.
Some years ago, I had a very long dream, perhaps a "lucid dream", and I wrote a series of very short science fiction stories based on the dream. Someday I may make a movie derived from from that.
At one point, I set out to enumerate Giger's limitations as an artist, but have now thought better of that. More important to try to state how he has inspired me. Certain "themes" are typical of his work (e.g. skulls, snakes, etc), but he combines them in novel ways. To my mind, that suggests a novel universe of artworks, generated by applying a set of definable operations to a set of themes in any order. Many such operations could be borrowed from the operations available in graphic applications like Blender or Wings3D. The themes need need not be borrowed from Giger. By taking advantage of currently available computing power, one could explore a vastly larger universe of artwork than Giger could have explored in a lifetime.
Giger was a Swiss artist, best known for his Oscar-winning artistic contribution to the movie "Alien" about 1978. Simply put, he designed the alien itself.
His artwork his widely considered rather "dark". The style is sometimes called "biomechanoid" or something like that because of the merger/mixture of mechanical and human forms, and perhaps because it is often largely monochrome.
Some of my artwork looks a little like some of his, which may not be entirely accidental. From my side, the resemblance stems from some of the graphic tools I have used, notably Blender and Wings3D. To my knowledge, he never used computer graphics, but did very often use an airbrush, something I tinkered with a little. He did study industrial design at one time. My work has often been monochrome because I wanted to concentrate on form and texture. I have called color "superficial", not in a pejorative sense, but merely a literal sense, i.e. "pertaining to surfaces or areas" as opposed to topological structure.
Giger's life is almost coterminous with my own; he was born a couple of years earlier, and died a few years ago. Sadly, he became rather feeble toward the end.
Giger as a person was a little like me in some ways. He was an artist, but even as an artist very unconventional. His dream life was very important to him, as mine is; his dreams often frightened him, as mine do not, usually. His artwork was a means of showing others what his dreams were like, thus gaining a measure of control over them. He loved cats, especially Siamese cats, as I do. Like me, He was incapable of maintaining a conventionally neat, orderly household. I hope to create short movies to display what my migraine auras are like (a neurological phenomenon, very real, not supernatural at all. ) I also hope to create short movies to show approximately the visions I see in response to some of my favorite musical works. Unlike Giger, I will almost certainly get no help from Hollywood in creating such movies. Instead, I will take advantage of modern digital computing.
Some years ago, I had a very long dream, perhaps a "lucid dream", and I wrote a series of very short science fiction stories based on the dream. Someday I may make a movie derived from from that.
At one point, I set out to enumerate Giger's limitations as an artist, but have now thought better of that. More important to try to state how he has inspired me. Certain "themes" are typical of his work (e.g. skulls, snakes, etc), but he combines them in novel ways. To my mind, that suggests a novel universe of artworks, generated by applying a set of definable operations to a set of themes in any order. Many such operations could be borrowed from the operations available in graphic applications like Blender or Wings3D. The themes need need not be borrowed from Giger. By taking advantage of currently available computing power, one could explore a vastly larger universe of artwork than Giger could have explored in a lifetime.
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'North Korea accuses South and US ...
2 min read
.... of plotting to kill Kim Jong Un
The same thought occurred to me about a week ago.
Until then I had been musing what it would take to disable North Korea as a nuclear power. We could send Cruise Missiles across the DMZ to hit their missile sites, storage facilities, manufacturing facilities etc. Undoubtedly we know where they are. But that would be unnecessarily expensive and risky. There would be the chance that we wouldn't destroy quite everything, and they would strike back in some manner.
And it wouldn't solve the real problem. The real problem is Kim Jong-Un himself. If he were to be removed from power, game over.
He is a problem for the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, China -- and, most of all, for the people of his own country.
A particularly apt way to take him out would be to send a drone to pick him off the reviewing stand at one of those showy sabre-rattling parades he is always staging.
But that is not the sort of plot he is accusing us of. He and his staff are talking of an old-style assassin. Boring.
The same thought occurred to me about a week ago.
Until then I had been musing what it would take to disable North Korea as a nuclear power. We could send Cruise Missiles across the DMZ to hit their missile sites, storage facilities, manufacturing facilities etc. Undoubtedly we know where they are. But that would be unnecessarily expensive and risky. There would be the chance that we wouldn't destroy quite everything, and they would strike back in some manner.
And it wouldn't solve the real problem. The real problem is Kim Jong-Un himself. If he were to be removed from power, game over.
He is a problem for the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, China -- and, most of all, for the people of his own country.
A particularly apt way to take him out would be to send a drone to pick him off the reviewing stand at one of those showy sabre-rattling parades he is always staging.
But that is not the sort of plot he is accusing us of. He and his staff are talking of an old-style assassin. Boring.
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The World Wars
3 min read
Way back when I was in school, history was the subject that interested me the least.
That was largely because it was taught by incompetent teachers, capable of little more than marching a class through a textbook, assigning chapters to read, papers to write, tests to take, etc. History boiled down to lists of names and dates to memorize, in order to pass tests. Math was MUCH more exciting, because it challenged me to think.
Now it's different. A few documentaries, docudramas, etc. have come along to bring history alive, show why it matters.
World War I, then called "The Great War", "The War to End All Wars" is a case in point.
All I understood about that war was that it was a catastrophic bloodbath of static trench warfare in which millions of soldiers died for no reason. I had studied the war from the viewpoint of military history, i.e. tactics, strategy, ordnance, etc; that told me little or nothing about why the war happened.
Now I've come to understand that WWI marked the demise of the landed aristocracy in England, and to some degree the demise of monarchy in Europe, because it was set off basically by a family squabble among the crowned heads of Europe. The kings and queens were all related by blood or marriage, you see. Inbreeding and other processes were taking their toll. The world of high culture, great art and great music shut down.
What's more, it brought about the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which was the last gasp of the ancient Roman Empire. It shut down the ancient Islamic Caliphate for a short while. Islam had been advancing upon Christendom for many centuries, but then suffered a brief setback.
But that war never really ended, there was only an inconclusive Armistice, which set the stage for World War II -- in many ways just the next phase of the same war. It ended not only England's aristocracy but the British Empire. Responsibility for that devolved upon the United States -- which unfortunately also took on the burden of maintaining the lost colonial empire of France, dragging us into the nightmare of Viet Nam.
I could go on, but anyone interested can find better sources.
***
It occurs to me that the war could be the inspiration for a type of extended fiction. I.e. I have no notion of how to invent stories with plausible plots, involving conflict, loyalty, betrayal, jealousy, conspiracy, and whatever else may be the subject of mainstream fiction. But the history of World Wars I (and II?) and especially the royal family conflicts that led to it could be a skeleton on which to hang any number of fictional narratives, fleshed out by any amount of fictional window-dressing. I have the impression that professional writers of fiction often do that. They may use relationships drawn from their own actual immediate families. One fictional TV series I've watched, "The Last Tango in Halifax", includes as one character a man who is a writer of lurid fiction and does exactly that -- and the resulting family embarrassments become the subject of some of the action of the TV series. A play within a play, you see. Not the first use of that device. Shakespeare's Hamlet uses the same device.
That was largely because it was taught by incompetent teachers, capable of little more than marching a class through a textbook, assigning chapters to read, papers to write, tests to take, etc. History boiled down to lists of names and dates to memorize, in order to pass tests. Math was MUCH more exciting, because it challenged me to think.
Now it's different. A few documentaries, docudramas, etc. have come along to bring history alive, show why it matters.
World War I, then called "The Great War", "The War to End All Wars" is a case in point.
All I understood about that war was that it was a catastrophic bloodbath of static trench warfare in which millions of soldiers died for no reason. I had studied the war from the viewpoint of military history, i.e. tactics, strategy, ordnance, etc; that told me little or nothing about why the war happened.
Now I've come to understand that WWI marked the demise of the landed aristocracy in England, and to some degree the demise of monarchy in Europe, because it was set off basically by a family squabble among the crowned heads of Europe. The kings and queens were all related by blood or marriage, you see. Inbreeding and other processes were taking their toll. The world of high culture, great art and great music shut down.
What's more, it brought about the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which was the last gasp of the ancient Roman Empire. It shut down the ancient Islamic Caliphate for a short while. Islam had been advancing upon Christendom for many centuries, but then suffered a brief setback.
But that war never really ended, there was only an inconclusive Armistice, which set the stage for World War II -- in many ways just the next phase of the same war. It ended not only England's aristocracy but the British Empire. Responsibility for that devolved upon the United States -- which unfortunately also took on the burden of maintaining the lost colonial empire of France, dragging us into the nightmare of Viet Nam.
I could go on, but anyone interested can find better sources.
***
It occurs to me that the war could be the inspiration for a type of extended fiction. I.e. I have no notion of how to invent stories with plausible plots, involving conflict, loyalty, betrayal, jealousy, conspiracy, and whatever else may be the subject of mainstream fiction. But the history of World Wars I (and II?) and especially the royal family conflicts that led to it could be a skeleton on which to hang any number of fictional narratives, fleshed out by any amount of fictional window-dressing. I have the impression that professional writers of fiction often do that. They may use relationships drawn from their own actual immediate families. One fictional TV series I've watched, "The Last Tango in Halifax", includes as one character a man who is a writer of lurid fiction and does exactly that -- and the resulting family embarrassments become the subject of some of the action of the TV series. A play within a play, you see. Not the first use of that device. Shakespeare's Hamlet uses the same device.
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'How DNA Killed Evolutionism'
3 min read
The title of one of many videos on YouTube, all apparently carrying the same basic message.
I knew the Creationists wouldn't give up. The only question was, what would be their next ploy for attacking the theory of evolution. Now we know.
The answer to this ploy is immediately obvious. They should consider the process known as Genetic Programming (a subtype of Genetic Algorithm) which produces software by a process that mimics Darwinian Evolution. It has already invented several systems eligible for patenting, and re-invented several processes that had already been patented.
Nice try, guys. I look forward to your next effort.
We don't yet know the exact process by which the present process of life arose, and we may never know exactly how it DID arise, but we should soon discover a multitude of routes by which it COULD HAVE arisen. There are many investigators working on the problem worldwide, and in a small way, it is a hobby of mine.
Incidentally, the speaker in this video refers to the well-known "infinite regress" argument against the existence of a God, but he misinterprets it. If the universe needs to have been created by a God, then who created God? If God doesn't need to have been created, then why does anyone think the universe needs to have been created? If God needs to have been created then there must be an infinite regress of Gods. And an infinite regress, by definition, has no end. Therefore positing a God is nonsense.
***
Molecular biologists have long ago moved beyond this point in their researches. They realized decades ago that the DNA/protein system is extremely complex, therefore is probably not the earliest system of life. Most likely it evolved from some simpler system. In current thinking, a likely progenitor is a system based entirely on RNA. An advantage of such a system is that RNA can act as either a catalyst or an information carrier, so the overall system is much simpler. Such a system is less efficient than the present system, which would be a reason for it to be replaced by the present system. Last I heard (a couple of decades ago) experiments were in progress on an artificial "RNA world", to see what evolution would occur naturally in such a world. I haven't been following the literature, so I never heard how that came out.
I knew the Creationists wouldn't give up. The only question was, what would be their next ploy for attacking the theory of evolution. Now we know.
The answer to this ploy is immediately obvious. They should consider the process known as Genetic Programming (a subtype of Genetic Algorithm) which produces software by a process that mimics Darwinian Evolution. It has already invented several systems eligible for patenting, and re-invented several processes that had already been patented.
Nice try, guys. I look forward to your next effort.
We don't yet know the exact process by which the present process of life arose, and we may never know exactly how it DID arise, but we should soon discover a multitude of routes by which it COULD HAVE arisen. There are many investigators working on the problem worldwide, and in a small way, it is a hobby of mine.
Incidentally, the speaker in this video refers to the well-known "infinite regress" argument against the existence of a God, but he misinterprets it. If the universe needs to have been created by a God, then who created God? If God doesn't need to have been created, then why does anyone think the universe needs to have been created? If God needs to have been created then there must be an infinite regress of Gods. And an infinite regress, by definition, has no end. Therefore positing a God is nonsense.
***
Molecular biologists have long ago moved beyond this point in their researches. They realized decades ago that the DNA/protein system is extremely complex, therefore is probably not the earliest system of life. Most likely it evolved from some simpler system. In current thinking, a likely progenitor is a system based entirely on RNA. An advantage of such a system is that RNA can act as either a catalyst or an information carrier, so the overall system is much simpler. Such a system is less efficient than the present system, which would be a reason for it to be replaced by the present system. Last I heard (a couple of decades ago) experiments were in progress on an artificial "RNA world", to see what evolution would occur naturally in such a world. I haven't been following the literature, so I never heard how that came out.
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