[ in playful response to M. Fouche’s recent post here, Butterfly Effect ]
Links: Chaos theory – Nanoscience
Science
Number Gut, Continued
Many authors have written on these pages about what damage has been done to us humans by people choosing not to vaccinate their children.
I remember just a few years ago when faced with this choice. To me it was a no brainer, but my wife was exposed to other wives/moms her age that had chosen not to vaccinate their kids. I finally convinced my wife to vaccinate the kids by using common sense with her. I said that if there was such a huge connection between autism and the vaccines, wouldn’t we see a huge explosion of autism cases? After looking at simple figures available online, this was simply not the case.
Today on Fox News, it seems that many who wrote here are vindicated – they doctored the data. These guys, imho, should be shot for endangering the lives of millions of people.
Beyond Human
Anyone recognize this guy?
That is Thor, comic character from Marvel Comics. Based, of course, on the deity worshiped by the Norse.
What can this object of ancient reverence do to warrant such regard? Like most thunder gods, he can hurl thunderbolts that destroy his enemies as long as he wields a mystical hammer called Mjolnir.
That is the main thing thunder gods do, after all, and it seemed to be something that would be extremely impressive to the Vikings.
Anyone recognize these?
My favorite carry guns. They are smaller and lighter than that hammer thing, and yet I can still create thunder by no more effort than making a fist.
Sure, it isn’t exactly the same thing. I can’t call the storm like Thor supposedly could, for example. But it still is a perfectly common, well known, mature technology that expands my abilities to something that is impossible for an unaided human being to duplicate.
I’m bringing up the fantastically obvious due to this online article. (Hat tip to Glenn.) Some really strange young woman has a hobby where she cuts herself open in order to shove magnets down amongst nerve clusters. Says she can feel magnetic fields that way.
A new Ice Age. Maybe ?
There is a great deal of argument about the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Al Gore is on one side and the weather seems to be on the other. People are even talking about the “Gore Effect.” This is unexpected cold weather that seems to follow Al Gore around. If he comes to town to give a speech about how the world is warming, expect a cold snap or even snow.
Right now, Britain, and much of Europe, are enduring a terrible winter. This has been called the worst winter in Britain in 100 years. The British Met Office predicted a warm winter. London, however, was prepared for snow. A lot of snow. The result has been that London has kept up quite well with the weather except for Heathrow Airport which has been closed for two days. (My niece has been trapped there since the weekend.) Why did London city do better than Heathrow and most of the rest of Britain ?
The Mayor explains. He uses a private weather forecaster who is getting more and more respect from people who have to know about the weather, like farmers and business people.
And the Mayor of London.
Is it really true that no one saw this coming?
Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.
Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its “mild winter” schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. Indeed, it was back in May that he first predicted a snowy December, and he put his own money on a white Christmas about a month before the Met Office made any such forecast. He said that the Met Office would be wrong about last year’s mythical “barbecue summer”, and he was vindicated. He was closer to the truth about last winter, too.
He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people notably in farming are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.
He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles.
He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time and he makes a prophecy.
Many of us climate skeptics believe that the sun controls our climate and Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue.”
Are we now in a Dalton Minimum ?
Well, it doesn’t look good. How long before the climate science people open their eyes ?
it is a full two years since the month of solar minimum, this was a good opportunity to update a lot of graphs of solar activity.
Read the whole thing.
Gratitude
Looking at Christmas cards. Seeing pictures of Mary and Joseph on the road, or in the stable with the baby. They did not get into the inn. They had to make the most of very rough conditions. Some thoughts occurred to me so I decided to share.
Even if they had gotten into Herod’s palace, or even somehow became the guests of Caesar himself, what I have here is unimaginably superior. In my modest house (it’s old, and it’s drafty, and it’s not that big) I have: insulation and central heating, hot and cold running water, flush toilets, electric power, telephone, internet, cooking gas, refrigerated and frozen food, medicine as needed in the cabinet, more than sufficient clothing, a piano, and 5,000 or so books. I can communicate with anyone I want to anywhere in the world instantly. I am within walking distance of two pharmacies where I can get antibiotics if needed. I and my children are a short drive away from emergency medical care. Dentists and physicians know about germs, and soap, and can give me anesthesia. If I had to, I could get in my car and drive anywhere in North America in a matter of hours or days. If I absolutely had to, I could get on a plane and go almost anywhere in the world within hours or at most days. This is wealth beyond the wildest dreams of Caesar, or Herod, or Charlemagne, or Louis XIV, or Queen Victoria.
There is no immediate prospect of a hostile group or gang, or my own rulers, driving me out of my home, taking my stuff by force, or murdering me or my family. If I have a dispute, I have enforceable rights, though the system is far from perfect. I am in no immediate danger of attack for practicing my religion. I can possess lethal force to defend myself and my family. I can vote, speak, publish, protest, petition, assemble, meet and organize to have an impact on the government I live under, without much likelihood of personal danger. Political disagreements, even over matters of great consequence, rarely lead to blows. This is a level of freedom and security which has been known to a tiny fraction of one percent of the people who have ever lived.
I have gratitude to all who came before us and gave this to us. And there are many defects and failures and challenges ahead for us, and much of what we have could be lost, and some of it is in the process of being lost. But we have it good, and even better things are within our grasp. Let’s keep it going.