Denying money will not make climate change go away

by Rob Crawley

House of Representatives Votes to Defund IPCC
[Via The Intersection]

Amid invocations of “ClimateGate,” House Republicans have voted to abandon the work of this leading, and celebrated, international scientific body, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The vote was 244-179, with Republicans charging that the IPCC would receive an undeserved $ 13 million in the president’s next budget. I’m not clear on the true funding amount because I’m seeing contradictory figures–but it’s clearly tiny in the context of total federal spending.

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Making sure the IPCC gets no money from the US. That’ll stop the world from warming. Mooney makes the best point:

It’s pretty staggering that we’re now at a point where the most definitive outlet for information about the state of the climate is being not only rejected, but defunded, on partisan grounds.

Typical of denialists – If they can not deny the facts, they try to deny the ability to learn anything more. If Nature comes up with things they do not want to hear, they take their money home and plug their fingers in their ears.

Skeptics are not afraid of new information and welcome the ability to gain further understanding. Denialists are afraid of new information and wish no further understanding.

The political leaders of the day thought that if they could get Galileo to shut up, things could return to normal. His famous words “Eppur si muove” describe the inabiity of political pressure to turn back the tides.

I guess we can paraphrase this by stating “And still it warms!”

The inhabitants of Cargo Cult Worlds do not want to know anymore. They already know all they need to and more facts might just make them uncomfortable.

To help maintain their denialism, they just work to make sure no new information can disturb their world.

That is the hallmark of an inhabitant of a Cargo Cult World. They do not want to see any further facts discovered or any new research. Their very worldview prohibits further investigations of the natural world, all while they deny the data already discovered.

This way they can live in a safe simulacra of the real world, one whose falsity provides them with the comfort they yearn for.

Just more indications of how we have elevated stupid people –  see Carlo Cipolla’s essay on The Basic Laws of Stupidity for the relevant definition. His description of a failed society becomes more obvious with every passing year.

Using the Nano and Kickstarter to create an audio system that fits in your hand

Kickstarter-sponsored WALdok is a speaker dock that plugs into your wall
[Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

It takes quite a bit for me to be impressed with yet another speaker dock. I run my music through some pretty good PC speakers, so I don’t really have a need for a separate speaker to play music directly from my iPhone. But something about the WALdok appeals to me. It’s a tiny dock that plugs into the wall and gives you what sounds like a surprisingly powerful speaker anywhere you have an outlet. Combine it with the nano, as you can see above, and I think I might be sold on a tiny and simple solution for something like a workspace or a hobby room.

The whole project is being funded through Kickstarter, which means it’s just an idea that someone had and ran with. For pledging US$59 or more, you get access to one of the first units off the assembly line, and you get to read about the product as it’s made and designed on the process blog.

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They already got the $30,000 they need. They have had 11 people sign up for the level that gets several special WALdok plus the transparent ones. Cool.

And they are also thinking of adapters to allow use around the world.

Hope it works out right. Kickstarter can be a little overwhelming when things work well.

Nice article about the word America gave to the world – OK

OK
[Via Daring Fireball]

Allan Metcalf on “America’s greatest word”. (Via Jim Coudal.)

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Nice read. I’ve watched several foreign language movies where the character says “OK” just like us. It always seemed weird.

Now I know more why they all say it. More pervasive than the arches of McDonalds.

An example of the newsites I dislike

Gizmodo rented a plane to take this photo of Steve Jobs’ demolished house.. wtf!
[Via Edible Apple]

In acquiring photos of Steve Jobs’ recently demolished Spanish Colonial house, Gizmodo admittedly rented out a plane to view the destruction from above and document it with photos and video.

Damn, that’s some wise spending right there. It must be nice to have money to burn, but hiring a plane to take photos of a house post-demolition seems downright absurd.

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This is the sort of thing I was referring to in my last post. Wow! An exclusive of Steve Jobs’ demolished house. No real tech news but Gizmodo kows that any mention of Jobs/Apple/iPhone etc. brings in a lot of page views.

No tech news about Apple. Lets take a picture of a demolished house.

I bet these guys are paying photographers to sit outside various cancer clinics, hoping they can take pictures of Jobs leaving.

I understand people like tabloids but I refuse to give them any of my attention.

I left Gizmodo quite some time ago. Looks like Engadget might be on the way. Any other really good independent general tech sites out there?

Good people leaving good online newsites

Leaving AOL
[Via Daring Fireball]

Paul J. Miller:

I’d love to be able to keep doing this forever, but unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling partner in this site’s evolution. It doesn’t take a veteran of the publishing world to realize that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content. As detailed in the “AOL Way,” and borne out in personal experience, AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it doesn’t promote good journalism or even good entertainment, and it doesn’t allow an ambitious team like the one I know and love at Engadget to thrive.

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In my opinion, Engadget is much better than several other tech sites. Its reporting was less exploitive for the purpose of getting page hits. Too many other sites are like the Enquirer, posting whatever rumors will bring in the ad traffic.

I had noticed recently that Engadget had started hopping on the page-view train. Seeing this, I wonder if AOL was pushing editorial changes to become more like the popular tabloid sites rather than a tech site.

I’ll keep reading Engadget for the moment but I will seriously be looking at its content more to see how far down this dark road it is going.

That is how an iPad was for me

by tomt6788

Director DJ Caruso on using iPads to make I Am Number Four
[Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Here’s yet another example of the iPad excelling in a place it was never intended to actually go: Making movies. Director DJ Caruso did an interview in an Apple Store recently, and he says that he used the iPad to help make his new movie “I am Number Four” in all kinds of ways, from controlling on-set lights with an app to seeing scripts, marking up storyboards, and even scouting out locations. Caruso says the initial purchase was more for fun, but as he used the iPad more and more, he found he was doing a lot of his filmmaking work on it as well. “I got it, I don’t want to say as a toy,” he says, “but then I realized about a week into prep that my storyboards were coming on it, my previs was on it, my script was on it, I don’t carry my script anymore.”

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Just like Caruso, my first uses of the iPad were more playful then useful. But as time went on I found myself using it quite a bit for my day. Once multi-tasking was included ot has become invaluable.

I no longer take my laptop to meeting; just my iPad. While everyone else is tethered to an outlet in order to take notes, I can sit anywhere and use SoundNote to take notes with. It records the meeting while I simply take simple notes which are linked to the audio.

I only need my laptop when I am on the move and need to do some heavy lifting with writing or presentations. There are still some things that a lap top is really useful for but  I find that I carry most of my documents on my iPad, using DropBox and other  approaches to move things to my iPad.

I have actually gone weeks without needing a pen to write anything but checks with. The iPad is, for me, much more transformative than the iPhone. The iPhone made using a mobile phone trivial.

But the iPad has completely changed my workflow during the day.

Jazz versions of Disney tunes

I found this on iTunes today. Some very nice jazz versions of Disney songs. It makes a very nice versions to listen to.

Currently playing in iTunes: Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag) by Kurt Rosenwinkel from Disney Jazz: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, Vol. 1

Not a good time to show the effects if a migraine

Docs Say a Migraine—Not a Stroke—Caused Reporter’s On-Air Babbling
[Via Discoblog]

It turns out that the news reporter who suddenly began speaking gibberish as she covered the Grammy Awards wasn’t suffering from a stroke–doctors conclude that a migraine is to blame.

Serene Branson, a reporter for KCBS-TV, began speaking incoherently during her coverage of the annual music awards ceremony. “As soon as I opened my mouth I knew something was wrong,” Branson told MSNBC. “I was having trouble remembering the word for Grammy…. I knew what I wanted to say but I didn’t have the words to say it.”

Many internet viewers thought she was stricken by an on-air stroke, but physicians from the University of California at Los Angeles scanned her head and tested her blood, and discovered that she was simply the victim of a migraine. It all started with a strong headache, Branson told MSNBC, but then it escalated

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I never knew a migraine could have that effect. I am glad she is doing okay but that must have been a scary thing to see live.