Less Arctic ice in winter than seen before

Arctic sea ice at a record low again; a warmer February for the U.S. coming
[Via Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog]

Arctic sea ice extent for January 2011 was the lowest on record for the month, and marked the second consecutive month a record low has been set, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Most of the missing ice was concentrated along the shores of Northeast Canada and Western Greenland. Relative to the 1979 – 2000 average, the missing ice area was about twice the size of Texas, or about 60% of the size of the Mediterranean Sea. Hudson Bay in Canada did not freeze over until mid-January, the latest freeze-up date on record, and at least a month later than average. The late freeze-up contributed to record warm winter temperatures across much of the Canadian Arctic in December and January.

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And this figure gives you an idea of how far away from normal this year is:

It looks very likely that when melting starts in March, the amount of ice seen in the Arctic will be the lowest we have recorded. And remember that this is only looking at surface area. Volume which includes the depth of the ice has also been decreasing rapidly over the last decade.

And sea ice is not the only thing affected by rising temperatures. Alaska has also been heating up. Trees are sprouting up in places where tundra only existed before. Erosion from melting ice is becoming a big problem. Buildings built twenty years ago close to the ice are now far away.

Yet America continues to do little and is even on the brink of reducing any ability to control carbon emissions.

First rule of dictators – hide the money

Mubarak used those 18 days to stash the money
[Via Butterflies and Wheels]

“They can lose the homes and some of the bank accounts, but they will have wanted to get the gold bars and other investments to safe quarters.”

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Not a surprise at all. The question will be how much he eventually ends up with, assuming he can avoid prosecution.

Is it science if there is no research to back up opinions?

by Jodiepedia

Playing the rape card: “Media psychiatrist” ratchets up anti-videogame rhetoric
[Via Ars Technica]

Pundits and legislators have been attacking the gaming industry for decades now, pinning the blame for tragic events like the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech on violent videogames. This week, self-described “media psychiatrist” Carole Lieberman took that war of words one step further, claiming that explicit games trigger rapes.

“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in videogames,” Lieberman told Fox News in an article, sensationally headlined “Is Bulletstorm the Worst Videogame in the World?” The story discusses the violence and sexual innuendo in developer Epic Games’ upcoming first-person shooter.

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If one is going to go to a major news source and make such declarative statements, it would be nice to actually have research backing them up. This article shows that there is really no serious work linking violent video games to rape.

There might be some connection between violent games and aggressive behavior but even that is fairly weak, especially when discussing long time effects of the behavior of adults.

She gives away her poor reasoning skills with her logic. Violent games increase aggressive behavior. Rape is a very violent aggressive behavior. Ergo, the games increase rape.

With no evidence. And when the reporter, actually doing their job for once rather than just acting as a stenographer, braces her on this need for evidence, she can not actually produce such research. Other experts say there is no such research.

Especially since the number of rapes has decreased.

Then there is this quote:

“Obviously I know what I’m talking about or I wouldn’t be called upon to testify in front of Congress,” she said. “I’ve been doing this research for over 20 years…. It’s all about violence, it all applies to rape. And it has been done on videogames less violent or less sexual than the current one that we’re talking about.”

Any researcher who uses appearing in front of Congress as a measure of what they know is skating on very thin ice. Lots of idiots have testified in front of Congress. It is not really a badge most scientists would put on their cv or spread around as an important credential.

Especially when there is no research backing up the claims.

Makes me wonder how she became a “media psychiatrist.”

Moving between mobile iOS development and desktop

iOS developers making leap to the Mac, thanks to Mac App Store
[Via Ars Technica]

The Mac App Store is, by most accounts, off to a good start. But not all entrenched Mac developers are ready to entrust their entire business to Apple’s recently opened digital distribution point due to certain restrictions placed on how apps are packaged and how they access certain system resources. However, several mobile developers—already accustomed to App Store life—have begun to bring their iOS-only apps to the Mac platform thanks to the ease of porting and their comfort with the app store model.

The trend is the reverse of what happened when Apple launched the iOS SDK in 2008. Then, many developers leveraged the underlying development similarities—including the Objective-C language, available frameworks, and Xcode IDE—to build mobile versions of desktop apps. Ars spoke with the developers behind Chopper 2, Crosswords, Mathemagics, and The Incident to find out what was involved in moving from small, fixed-size touchscreens to large, variable-size screens and keyboard-and-mouse input.

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I mentioned this a month ago. Now we are hearing the stories of those who moved from the app economy to the desktop – in a very short time.

Much of the code was reusable and the APIs were straightforward. The porting often took about a month.

And one key aspect was not the ability to use APIs to create the software but having a ready-made distribution channel that they could leverage. They all say they are really happy with sales so far.

Only APple allows developers to not only easily port software between devices but also provides them large markets at each stage for distributing their works.