The Telegraph report is obviously wrong. The IPCC report just summarizes the scientific literature. There has not been any paper published that would justify reducing the estimate. The reporter has confused climate sensitivity (how much warming you eventually get from doubling CO2), with predicted warming in 2100.
No, I'm saying that we shouldn't use it to spray on crops but should only use it to protect people from malaria. That way we slow the development of resistance and make the best use of DDT against malaria. The US ban on DDT in 1972 ONLY banned its use in agriculture. It did not stop it from being used against malaria and in fact made that use more effective. Crichton does not have a clue.
Because a novel has some footnotes, you think everything in it must be true? Crichton has been taken to pieces by actual scientists for completely screwing up the science in his book. Read what the scientists think of his work here.
As for his DDT stuff -- it's complete rubbish. In the 60s the World Health Organization tried to eradicate malaria by spraying DDT and failed. There are several reasons why it failed, but one of them was the indiscriminate use of DDT in agriculture, which was a very effective of evolving DDT-resistant mosquitoes. DDT is still useful in the areas where the mosquitoes are not resistant and for that you can thank the ban on the agricultural use of DDT. In other words that ban, far from causing 50 million deaths, has saved lives. You can read about the failure of the malaria eradication campaign here.
Why are you citing some economists with a free-market axe to grind? Economists are not the best qualified people to judge this question. Someone better qualified is Donald Norman, an expert in Human-Computer Interaction who has conducted research into different keyboard designs. On page
147 of "The Design of Everyday Things" he writes:
"There is a better way -- the Dvorak keyboard -- painstakingly developed by (and named after) one of the founders of industrial engineering. It is easier to learn and allows for about 10 percent faster typing, but that is simply not enough af an improvement to merit a revolution in the keyboard. Millions of people would have to learn a new style of typing. Millions of keybords would have to be changed. The severe constraints of existing pratice prevent change, even where the change would be an improvement.[7]"
In end note 7 he writes:
"Admirers of the Dvorak keyboard claim much more than a 10 percent improvement, as well as faster learning rates and less fatigue. But I will stick by my studies and my statements."
If you have 100 glasses at 20C and 35 glasses at 30C the average temperature is the arithmetic mean of 100 20s and 35 30s. It is not the geometric mean of the numbers. Nor is the answer as McK claims just some arbitrary convention. It's what you physically get if you allow the temperatures to equalize.
As for your PS: it seems you know even less physics than McK. It doesn't matter that the volumes are different -- it is the mass that is important.
Once again you try to evade what McK actually wrote:
"In the absence of physical guidance, any rule for averaging temperature is as good as any other. The folks who do the averaging happen to use the arithmetic mean over the field with specific sets of weights, rather than, say, the geometric mean or any other. But this is mere convention."
If I have a glass of water at 20C and another one of the same mass at 30C I can physically average the temperatures by allowing heat to flow from the hottter to the colder until they are the same temperature. The temperature they will end up on is 25C. Which is the arithmetic mean, not the geometric mean. The physics of heat tells us to use an arithmetic mean rather than a geometric mean. McK clearly doesn't know anything about physics.
I'll just do the first one of your responses. The rest of what you write is similarly illinfoemed.
For your edification, the comments by McKitrick discussed the change in sample size, and how it effects mean average. To borrow your example "if I have one kg of water at 20 degrees and another at 30 degrees, then their average temperature is 25 degrees." Yes this is true, but if I then increase my sample to the other five barrels, also of one kg next to your hypothetical two samples, and they are of 0C, 15C, 2C, 18C and 32C, then your average is 16.71 degrees C. Which was the entire point.
I'm afraid you don't get to rewrite their point, which was
"In the absence of physical guidance, any rule for averaging temperature is as good as any other. The folks who do the averaging happen to use the arithmetic mean over the field with specific sets of weights, rather than, say, the geometric mean or any other. But this is mere convention."
McK claimed that there was no physical rule for averaging temperatures. Which is laughably wrong and any first year physics student could tell you that.
The Lancet study uses random sampling to estimate the deaths, just like all the opinion polls on voting intentions. The key to all of these things is that you don't need that big a sample to get a reasoanble estimate. The 100,000 number is only a rough estimate since it has broad margin of error, but the number is most likely to be in the middle and is actually more likely to be more than 100,000 than less.
Lots more analysis as well as a thorough (and I do mean thorough) debunking of your chicagoboyz link here.
That study, by John Lott, is the biggest crock of shit you will ever see. Lott makes the ridiculous claim that fully half of Black republican votes were thrown out.
Lott's numbers don't even add up. He states that 5% of blacks are Republicans. If 50% of their votes were rejected, that means that 50% of 5% or 2.5% of black votes were rejected even if not one black Democrat ballot was rejected. But Lott claims that 1 out of 125 (less than 1%) of black votes were rejected. I guess the rejection rate for black Democrat votes must have been negative.
As the author of the article I find your misrepresentation of it objectionable. You write:
It doesn't logically follow that a think tank received a payment from such companies is "in their pocket" or propagandizing as a quid pro quo.
From the article:
My argument is not that the work of any of these authors was bought and paid for by a particular company. That is both impossible to prove and probably untrue anyway. Still, had the relevant corporate connections been disclosed to readers in each of these cases, the op-eds would undoubtedly have seemed suspect. That's the whole point of disclosure: It lets readers judge for themselves whether a particular connection may bias an argument or analysis. It shines sunlight on debates in which advocates may attempt to hide their ulterior motives to advance self-interested propagandistic arguments.
Then you go on to claim that I accuse these companies of being "evil". Which I didn't do.
Lambert is an archetypical gun banner, with all the errors of logic that implies; a quick glance at the rest of his site yields the usual arguments from authority, "tu quoque", strawmen, "victim as authority" and downright misrepresentation that gun banners are so fond of.
Clearly you do not know what any of those words mean. I oppose gun bans and you call me a gun banner? How does that work?
"I saw lots of speculation that Microsoft funded all of them. I saw lots of examples of previous funding. I saw almost no proof though
Previous funding is funding and there is plenty of evidence of that. 9 of 12 think tanks that attacked Open Source have received funding from Microsoft. The other three did not answer my questions about funding.
Philip Morris did take up ADTI's offer. (Though they offered them less money). Details are here.
Astroturf de Tocqueville Institute
on
Stallman vs Ken Brown
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As part of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Philip Morris (PM) agreed
to release millions of documents about their operations. These detail
how ADTI was hired by PM to conduct a public relations campaign
against the Clinton health plan in 1994. ADTI provided PM with
regular progress reports to prove that PM was getting value for
its money, so they also let us see how these campaigns are
conducted.
The Clinton plan included an increase in taxes on cigarettes from 24c
per pack to 99c. Understandably, PM was not in favour of this,
so a Philip Morris executive suggested an astroturf campaign, writing to one of his people:
Having just read the Washington Post with a series of provocative
articles about Canada cutting taxes, CBO estimating higher costs
AND job loss from the Clinton plan and then our old favourite,
former president current homebuilder, Jimmy Carter explaining
why higher taxes will help tobacco farmers, it occurred to me
that we ought to turn a few of our better letter writers loose
to blitz the targeted states with letters to the editor about
Clinton, Carter and Canada...
Our three key executives, Cesar Conda, Bruce Bartlett and myself, will
run this campaign and we will devote the full energies of
our operation and its consultants to this task.
We plan to activate our key Advisory Board Members, including Jack
Kemp, Robert Kasten, Dick Armey, Michael Boskin and others to
mount a public awareness campaign immediately (see enclosed
list of Center on Regulation and Economic Growth participants).
As you can see from our press in recent months, we are in
a position to deliver. We would like to request $60,000, or $30,000 a month, to
implement this program.
And over the next two months ADTI ran a PR campaign against the
Clinton plan. For the benefit of PM they documented all their
activities. All the details are here.
I did some tests and found that 13 of 48 sites in Google Directory's Pro-Gun Rights category were blocked by the 'Weapons' category, while only 5 of the 78 sites in Google's so called Anti-Gun Rights category were blocked. Details are here.
Symantec's explanation for the blocking was:
Basically the logic behind gun filtering lists came about after the Columbine school shootings. It was decided that I-Gear would start filtering gun sites that promote gun use so schools can monitor their students in hopes of preventing future school shootings. This is the reasoning behind filtering sites that promote gun "use" vs. guns in general.
At least you are making a claim about Dvorak that perhaps makes sense (contrary to popular belief, Dvorak layout does not lead to superior typing speeds - see this)
However, those guys get so carried away debunking the claim that Dvorak is much faster that they go too far and claim that Dvorak isn't any faster. The best estimate is that Dvorak is 5-10% faster. See this 1982 Usenet posting from Don Norman or read his book The Design of Everyday Things. Heck, read the book anyway.
As for Dvorak and keyboard pain, I don't think there have been any scientific studies, but lots of people think it does help and often any sort of change helps RSIs.
One thing that the authors of those posts don't realize and argue about is that those are in fact completely residential burglary statistics.
No, the numbers are for all burglaries. The FBI doesn't break the numbers down further. The 2001 UCR says that Kennesaw had 51 burglaries in that year. This is more than before the law, but the population has quadrupled, making any comparison completely meaningless.
If the law really did have some deterrent effect then you would see it in the figures from the 80s. But you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
The Telegraph report is obviously wrong. The IPCC report just summarizes the scientific literature. There has not been any paper published that would justify reducing the estimate. The reporter has confused climate sensitivity (how much warming you eventually get from doubling CO2), with predicted warming in 2100.
No, I'm saying that we shouldn't use it to spray on crops but should only use it to protect people from malaria. That way we slow the development of resistance and make the best use of DDT against malaria. The US ban on DDT in 1972 ONLY banned its use in agriculture. It did not stop it from being used against malaria and in fact made that use more effective. Crichton does not have a clue.
As for his DDT stuff -- it's complete rubbish. In the 60s the World Health Organization tried to eradicate malaria by spraying DDT and failed. There are several reasons why it failed, but one of them was the indiscriminate use of DDT in agriculture, which was a very effective of evolving DDT-resistant mosquitoes. DDT is still useful in the areas where the mosquitoes are not resistant and for that you can thank the ban on the agricultural use of DDT. In other words that ban, far from causing 50 million deaths, has saved lives. You can read about the failure of the malaria eradication campaign here.
Enough. It's clear now that you a troll.
If you have 100 glasses at 20C and 35 glasses at 30C the average temperature is the arithmetic mean of 100 20s and 35 30s. It is not the geometric mean of the numbers. Nor is the answer as McK claims just some arbitrary convention. It's what you physically get if you allow the temperatures to equalize. As for your PS: it seems you know even less physics than McK. It doesn't matter that the volumes are different -- it is the mass that is important.
SidV, you called me a crackpot. You have not provided any information to support your claim.
Lots more analysis as well as a thorough (and I do mean thorough) debunking of your chicagoboyz link here.
Lott's numbers don't even add up. He states that 5% of blacks are Republicans. If 50% of their votes were rejected, that means that 50% of 5% or 2.5% of black votes were rejected even if not one black Democrat ballot was rejected. But Lott claims that 1 out of 125 (less than 1%) of black votes were rejected. I guess the rejection rate for black Democrat votes must have been negative.
More here.
Since you don't know what "arguments from authority, "tu quoque", strawmen etc" mean, I'll take your opinion with a boulder of salt.
Philip Morris did take up ADTI's offer. (Though they offered them less money). Details are here.
The Clinton plan included an increase in taxes on cigarettes from 24c per pack to 99c. Understandably, PM was not in favour of this, so a Philip Morris executive suggested an astroturf campaign, writing to one of his people:
If you want some astroturfing done, who you gonna call? The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute: And here is their proposal: And over the next two months ADTI ran a PR campaign against the Clinton plan. For the benefit of PM they documented all their activities. All the details are here.The claim that crime in Australia has increased substantially since the gun buy back is an urban legend.
Unix at UNSW goes back much much further than 8 year. See the Lions Book.
But Don Norman says that Dvorak is 5-10% faster than Qwerty for experts. And he is an expert on this stuff, unlike the authors of your article.
As for Dvorak and keyboard pain, I don't think there have been any scientific studies, but lots of people think it does help and often any sort of change helps RSIs.
If the law really did have some deterrent effect then you would see it in the figures from the 80s. But you don't.