Fiddling with Technorati

I thought I had claimed my blogs a while ago but apparently not. So here is the claim code – JBDVGPHA7GDT

I hope he gets his job back

by Beverly & Pack

House of Commons exonerates Phil Jones – Based on their inquiry and evidence, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason … to challenge the scientific consensus … that ‘global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity’.”
[Via Climate Progress]

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced….

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community….

Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

These are quotes from the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee must-read report on Phil Jones and “the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.”

Climatologist Michael Mann called the report an “exoneration” of Jones and said:

Those of us who know Phil personally never had any doubt about this. I’m very pleased to hear that this distinguished panel saw through the dishonest attacks against Phil Jones, and made the correct determination.

The committee’s chair, Phil Willis, Member of Parliament (MP), said in a press conference:

We do believe that Prof Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research.

The CBS/AP story headlines, “Climategate Researchers Largely Cleared: Investigation Finds No Evidence Supporting Allegations of Tampering with Data or Peer Review Process.

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The science is still strong and it looks like the researchers have really done nothing wrong. All the efforts by denialists have really produced little objective facts that are useful.

But, as with other denialists, I expect these results to have little effect on the discussion. Such is the way of denialists

Tinfoil hats may stop the magnetic beams but what about people whose moral judgement is normally impaired

by Andréia

Magnets can modify our morality, scientists discover
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature]

Scientists have shown they can change people’s moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.

They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.

And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers’ notion of right and wrong.

The small Massachusetts Institute of Technology study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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While very interesting, especially the part about this region in the brain developing quite late in adolescence, my first thought was whether cell phones might be doing something. But I can not find anything about the strength of the magnetic pulse and the paper is not open access, so I can’t read the paper. Maybe I’ll use my cell phone in my left ear, not my right, just to be safe.

So, a normal person would feel that if they could stop someone from being harmed but did not, they had done wrong when compared to the scenario where they could not have known what was going to happen. Even if nothing bad happened. But, following the magnetic pulses, the subjects saw no difference between the two scenarios, as long as no one was hurt in the end.

Moral judgement became outcome based.

Interestingly, I could pull down the Supporting information and there was one interesting note. The way the tests were set up, normally people would find attempted harms – events where the person’s actions directly could have hurt someone else – as less permissible than accidental harms – where there was no way to influence the outcome. Sounds normal to me.

They tested everyone before hand to get the baseline means. On a seven point scale – the higher the number the more permissible it is – the average for accidental harm was 5.2 (permissible) and for attempted harm it was 1.9 (not very permissible). However, one person was tested and excluded from the test.

His (yep, it was a he) normal moral view of people being harmed, whether by accident or by direct action, was far outside the standard deviation found in the rest of the group. In contrast to every other person, he found attempted harm to be more permissible than accidental harm (3.7 vs. 2.5). He was unsure about the morality of attempted harms (his view was halfway between permissible and not permissible) but was very worried about accidental harms. By the numbers, he viewed potentially harming someone by accident on the same moral level as the rest of the group viewed harming someone on purpose.

Because, in this test, his moral judgement was far outside the rest of the group’s, he was excluded.

Now, maybe he was just goofing on the test and purposefully screwed up. I’d like to believe that this was most likely. But what if 5-10% of the population had such weird moral principles? They feel that purposefully harming someone was morally ambiguous while accidentally harming someone was just plain wrong.

That is scarier than worrying about government magnetic beams.

Never before and no flash forward

by The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN

Collider sees high-energy success
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature]

Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced record-breaking high-energy particle collisions.

Scientists working on the European machine have smashed beams of protons together at energies that are 3.5 times higher than previously achieved.

Tuesday’s milestone marks the beginning of work that could lead to the discovery of fundamental new physics.

There was cheering and applause in the LHC control room as the first collisions were confirmed.[

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The largest collision of particles on Earth so far. There will be some amazing knowledge that comes out of these sorts of experiments. The next year or so will be very interesting. And let’s hope Robert Sawyer was wrong.

We will see more of this

by annikaleigh

Seton Hill University to give new Apple MacBooks and iPads to every full-time student in fall 2010
[Via MacDailyNews]

The iPad initiative kicks off Seton Hill University’s Griffin Technology Advantage Program. This new program provides students with the best in technology and collaborative learning tools, ensuring that Seton Hill students will be uniquely suited to whatever careers they choose – even those that have not yet been created.

Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill, located near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will receive a 13″ MacBook notebook and an iPad. Undergrads will have complete access to these mobile technologies for classes as well as at all times for personal use. After two years, Seton Hill will replace the MacBooks with new ones – MacBooks that students can take with them when they graduate.

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These sorts of things will help alter the model of an undergraduate education. How about taking a test using an iPad. How would that change the learning process?

The younger generation won’t know what it means

by pixelbart

Leaked Screenshots of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
[Via Daring Fireball]

Icon for the Save button is still a floppy disk, despite the fact that Apple hasn’t sold a machine with a floppy drive for a decade.

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Typical that an icon that no longer has any real life meaning will still be used to represent Save. Perhaps they should do a little work getting up to date.

How science corrects itself

by cesarastudillo

ABC The Drum Unleashed – The peer reviewed literature has spoken
[Via The Drum Unleashed ]

Much confusion and spin infects current public discussion of “peer reviewed” research: first we had Maurice Newman, the Chairman of the ABC, who suggested that “distinguished scientists” challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change by “peer reviewed research”, although he oddly failed to name such research.

Now we have John McLean, an author of a lone article that was celebrated by some media scribes as overturning the scientific consensus on climate change, cry “censorship” because his response to a devastating deconstruction of his work in the peer reviewed literature was not accepted for publication.

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This is a great discussion not only of how peer review can allow a paper to be published that may be wrong, but also how other researchers can critique the paper to demonstrate its failings.

Peer review is like a scientific ‘spam filer’, which hopes to prevent poor research from being published. But, since it is performed by humans, sometimes it does not accomplish this task. However, in contrast to other approaches where transparency is not a goal, publication of the paper, even a poor one, gives others a chance to respond to the work.

In this case, other researchers identified several key aspects of the procedures used in the original paper were not applied properly, effectively negating the main point of the paper that its authors had trumpeted.

Being wrong happens a lot in science. It gets easily fixed. The problem for many climate change denialists is that their ‘science’ is the one that seems to always be wrong and they do not like having tit fixed.

Another in a series of great Microsoft predictions

by Robert Scoble

‘Another Nail in Apple’s Coffin’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Harry McCracken, looking back at Microsoft Bob, 15 years after its release:

Analyst Charles Finnie of Volpe, Welty & Co. called Microsoft’s product a threat to the very existence of Microsoft’s competitor in Cupertino. “Bob is going to be another nail in Apple’s coffin unless Apple can somehow raise the standard yet again on the ease-of-use front,” he told the AP.

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I had forgotten about Bob. Has it only been 15 years? Seems much longer. I wonder what Charles Finnie up to today and whether he is a little embarrassed about the comment.

[Listening to: Melancholy Man from the album "Time Traveller (Disc 2)" by Moody Blues]

I’m working on my tome

by stephmcg

Apple’s iPad iBookstore offers low-cost e-book self publishing
[Via AppleInsider]

Self-publishing authors will be able to offer their titles on Apple’s iBookstore for the iPad at almost no cost, potentially breaking down the barriers for independent writers who want to sell their work across the globe.

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Not bad for anyone who like to write. Of course, the hard part will be the marketing so that people can see your book. But vanity publishing has a long and cherished heritage.

[Listening to: Boy Blue from the album "Eldorado - A Symphony By The Electric Light Orchestra (Remaster)" by Electric Light Orchestra]

I’ll be there on Thursday

Apple offers guided tours of iPad software with new videos
[Via AppleInsider]

In-depth video demonstrations of the iPad software including Safari browser, iBooks, Keynote, Pages and Numbers have been posted on Apple’s Web site days before the hardware will be available for consumers to purchase.

The new Guided Tours section of Apple’s promotional iPad Web site offers video previews of the native software included on the iPad, as well as the four Apple-created iPad applications available for download on day one from the App Store. iBooks is a free application available to U.S. users that allows the purchase and download of e-books for the iPad, while the iWork suite will be available in three separate applications for $9.99 each.

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My Thursday plans take me near an Apple store so I plan on touching an iPad then. In the meantime, I’l watch the videos.