Owner reunited with unbelievable dog

The unbelievable dog got his owner back. She sure looks happy as does the owner. We need some feel good stories out of this tragedy.

Here is another:

You can find out more and provide some help here.

The difference between a true skeptic and a denialist

Global warming: Critics’ review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on climate change – latimes.com
[Via LA Times]

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called “the legitimate concerns” of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

[More]

A skeptic examines a problem, determines a hypothesis and then does research to see if the hypothesis is supported.If the data supports the hypothesis, good. If the data does not support the hypotheis, then the hypothesis needs to be re-examined.

A denialist does the same but denies any data that does not support the hypothesis, a priori.

On a Congressional hearing about climate change, the GOP invited two scientists to discuss this topic, scientists whose previous public statements put them on the side of climate skeptics if not outright denialists.

The GOP was surprised by the presentation of one of these scientists. Because he actually showed new data indicating, instead of being biased, previous work had produced results very similar to his.

Dr. Muller proposed a hypothesis explaining why the land temperatures might inaccurately semm to be increasing. You can read his testimony and see the data for yourself.

Here are a couple of key statements, ones that have the denialists up in arms, even though this scientist had been a darling of their’s before the actual data was produced (my bold).

1. We have done an initial study of the station selection issue. Rather than pick stations with long records (as done by the prior groups) we picked stations randomly from the complete set. This approach eliminates station selection bias. Our results are shown in the Figure; we see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.

2. We have also studied station quality. Many US stations have low quality rankings according to a study led by Anthony Watts. However, we find that the warming seen in the “poor” stations is virtually indistinguishable from that seen in the “good” stations.

Here is the figure, showing that there is very little difference between the data from all the stations and the new preliminary data using a random number equal to 2% of all the stations:

The black line – the data from his group at Berkeley – is little different from those at 3 other groups. All 4 groups, using different approaches to examining the data arrive at the same point – land temperatures over the last century have increased almost 1°C. In fact, his summary provides his major conclusion:

Despite potential biases in the data, methods of analysis can be used to reduce bias effects well enough to enable us to measure long-term Earth temperature changes. Data integrity is adequate. Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought

And how did the denialists respond? About as one would expect. Pre-Congress, they were all  about how this work would get to the bottom of the matter once and for all, revealing systematic bias or not in the climate data. Post- Congress, the denialists are all about how this data can not be believed,  that the researchers here no longer have any credibility at all, that from a team of experts that “seems dedicated to providing an open source, fully transparent, and replicable method no matter whether their new metric shows a trend of warming, cooling, or no trend at all, which is how it should be” to people driven by a very serious agenda, apparently as a front for some geoengineering conspiracy.

So, all it takes to change someone from a darling of denialists to a hack is the simple discussion of data. Data that fits quite well with all the other data generated by thousands of other scientists.

Most scientists, when given data they find hard to believe, work to understand why that might be and how to really understand what is going on. Heck, even Muller states that he is surprised that his approach generates a curve so close to what others have found. Surprise in the face of data is what makes researchers so curious about the world. That is also skepticism – a frank response to data that does not fit the hypothesis.

Denialists have a very different response to surprising data. Denialists assassinate the character of the researchers. Not only is the data just wrong but the researchers who generated it are simply incompetent and/or liars.

Now Muller is not only a scientist but also a human, who has made some personal choices that might make his personal credibility worrisome to both sides. However, the discussion here is not him personally but the data that was generated and its ability to support a hypothesis. Even biased people can produce valid data, particularly if the bias are identified and dealt with.

In fact, science generally works in spite of human bias, both known and unknown.

Creating value by moving

by Collin Anderson

The Engadget Staff Jumps Ship to SB Nation
[Via Daring Fireball]

Joshua Topolsky and the rest of the Engadget staff that’s quit AOL in recent weeks are starting a new tech site for SB Nation.

[More]

As many organizations have found, good people are more important than good ideas, particularly in the App economy. Editors and writers, those who create content, are often the ones who make an entity valuable but they are the ones often left out when buyouts happen. AOL has done this with Engadget and with the Huffington Post.

In the old days, the reporters, writers and what have you simply hd to deal with this, missing out n the huge amount of money that trades hands.

Not anymore. They can simply leave and start their own entity for themselves. Thus AOL is left with nothing but a shell. The people that created the content that gave Engadget  are gone.

And the readers, those who like the content , can now easily move to the new site. They are loyal to the people not the entity.

When they get this up and going, I’ll be there. I’ve noticed a drop off in interesting Engadget stories. I’ll look forward to something new at SBNation.

Interestingly, what makes SB Nation innovative is not the sports but the underlying technology.It appears to be very robust while providing easy management tools. I’ll be very interested in seeing where this goes.

Macbook Air is another arrow in Apple’s quiver

by p_a_h

Strong sales make Apple’s ‘quasi-tablet’ MacBook Air a $2.2B-per-year product
[Via AppleInsider]

More than five months after the new thin-and-light MacBook Air was unveiled, sturdy adoption rates for the notebook have continued, positioning it as a meaningful growth driver for Apple raking in a projected $2.2 billion a year.

[More]

Netbooks were the way to go. Acer bet heavily on the need to own that market, even if they made little mosey. Then the iPad came out and revealed that the market for cheap, underpowered laptops could be filled by a new amazing device – tablets.

The MacBook Air seems to fly under the radar but is a great laptop for those on the go who need a little more power than an iPad can provide. Light and with long battery lives. The same things that make the iPad so useful for many are not in the lightest laptop for under $1000.

Meanwhile Acer’s  sales are off 10%, revenue is down 36% and they are making management changes. THey have no tablet, their netbooks are losing to the iPad and they have nothing to compete with the Air.

Pretty much sums up the whole industry.

“a multitude represented by a few players”

by DrewMyers

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair
[Via Vanity Fair]

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

[More]

This cannot continue for much longer. The math does not support it. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has historically so distorted the democratic process that eventually the people take an active part in its rehabilitation.

The last time income inequality was this bad in the US, we had the social revolution that brought us the New Deal, Social Security, the Wagner Act, bank reform, progressive tax rates and many other huge changes. This gave way to a period of prosperity with a large middle class that was proportionally wealthier than anywhere else in the world.

Now we find ourselves back in a similar spot, with attacks on almost every single change wrought by the last social revolution in the US. I think Stiglitz says it quite well:

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Alexis de Tocqueville was probably the greatest observer of America and its culture. His words from Democracy in America still tell truths – from his chapter on physical gratification  and loss of democracy:

Freedom, in these ages, is therefore especially favorable to the production of wealth; nor is it difficult to perceive that despotism is especially adverse to the same result. The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling. Despotism of this kind, though it does not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of commerce and the pursuits of industry.

Thus the men of democratic ages require to be free in order more readily to procure those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing. It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments abandons them to the first master who appears. The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself, and, without perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance.There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications amongst such a people has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away, and lose all self-restraint, at the sight of the new possessions they are about to lay hold upon. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune, they lose sight of the close connection which exists between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all. It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a troublesome annoyance, which diverts them from their occupations and business. If they be required to elect representatives, to support the Government by personal service, to meet on public business, they have no time—they cannot waste their precious time in useless engagements: such idle amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the more important interests of life. These people think they are following the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is a very rude one; and the better to look after what they call their business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters.

… men who are possessed by the passion of physical gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs their welfare, before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it. The fear of anarchy perpetually haunts them, and they are always ready to fling away their freedom at the first disturbance.

I readily admit that public tranquillity is a great good; but at the same time I cannot forget that all nations have been enslaved by being kept in good order. Certainly it is not to be inferred that nations ought to despise public tranquillity; but that state ought not to content them. A nation which asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart—the slave of its own well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it. By such a nation the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community is engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see upon the great stage of the world, as we see at our theatres, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action whilst all are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws, and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall.

He ends the chapter by stating that so far America has avoided the follies of previous democracies. And we have, so far. We are in another period where a few players are able to drive our democracy in ways that hurt the common weal, as de Tocqueville would say.

I expect we are close to solving this, as we did last time, by a reinvigoration of our democracy and the casting out of the few for the wisdom of the many. There are so many examples around us of this from Egypt to Wisconsin.