Friday 27 November 2009

Friday morning ramble, #372

Liberty and reason are fighting back this week against the faith-based green-mongering bulldozer, as several stories from around the ‘net celebrate.
This week’s most interesting disclaimer:
_quote This paper has not been peer-reviewed by Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Mike Mann, or any IPCC lead author!

_quoteCapitalism is moral because it enables people to act on their own judgment." 
                 - Craig Biddle: 77:01

  • Memo to Government: Outsourcing from the private sector can be good for you
    http://bit.ly/7vWcRi
  • #RaisingGoodKids: New book on raising ethical kids without religion: Parenting Beyond Belief http://bit.ly/6t7TFu
  • Australian warmist Tim Flannery tries a reality check: there’s been a "slight cooling" for the last ten years but "we don’t understand all factors that create earth’s climate"
    http://bit.ly/5Y1czO
  • UK warmist Monbiot is convinced #ClimateGate emails are genuine, and he's "dismayed and deeply shaken by them"
    http://bit.ly/5eq79J
  • It's official. From fruitcake to real fruitcake: Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons has become a Truther. http://bit.ly/6N2bjB
  • Phil Jones, alleged scientist at centre of #Climategate emails, tells friends at the Guardian, "What, me worry."
    http://bit.ly/8SPxBG
  • “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow – Phil Jones, from the CRU, manufacturing consensus for the IPCC
  • Leonard Peikoff addresses the claim that Old Testament doctrine is the basis of morality. As if it could be!
    http://bit.ly/80Ko4O
  • Victoria Postrel has the news: African leaders advise Bono on reform of U2
    http://bit.ly/8QRoa0 Now that's funny. :-)
  • Someone tell Bernard Hickey & all those other mainstream tax-bandits: Australia's Capital Gains Tax is a bust – it raises little revenue at a substantial cost to economic efficiency, and did nothing whatsoever to avert their housing bubble.
     http://bit.ly/4o45J3
  • George Reisman: After the economic disaster, the most important single step for economic recovery is a secure currency. He explains how to get there, and why.
     http://bit.ly/91EdYg
  • The Visible Hand has some good news for NZ:, if we're up for it.
    http://bit.ly/73fbGh
_quoteThere is nothing as glamorous as a brilliant achievement of the human mind."
 
- Ayn Rand


  • Death is no barrier.150yrs after publication of On the Origin of Species, New Scientist magazine interview Charles Darwin
    http://bit.ly/5lnAV3
  • 'Workshops' are not work. -they're designed "to prevent people from carrying on their real work." – Dalrymple
    http://bit.ly/5qIlKU
  • Tapu Misa quotes #AynRand in NZ Herald. "Individual rights are not subject to a public vote . . . " Progress? I think so.
    http://bit.ly/6tuHIz
  • Obama in China. Some "too true" humor from Saturday Night Live. http://bit.ly/59cz6u



We’re cutting lies and jive from our show-we're trying to do a magic show where no one leaves with distorted ideas about reality.”           
      - Penn Jillette, from conjuring duo Penn & Teller

  • Phil Jones? Resignation is inevitable, says the Not Evil Just Wrong blog.
    http://bit.ly/08Nfzi1
  • This is frightening. A time lapse unemployment visualization of USA: The Geography of Recession. Watch America turn purple.
    http://bit.ly/3tpIl0
  • Milton Friedman’s declaration that "inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomena" needs an update.
    http://bit.ly/8NrZyq
  • Michael Mann - premiere climate scientist, inventor of hockey sticks: "These two are clowns..."
    http://bit.ly/6v2I6v
  • Brit Euro MP Daniel Hannan “reviews” Ayn Rand. With friends like these, etc. . .
    http://bit.ly/5Gwgb8
  • ''The warmist conspiracy: The emails that most damn Phil Jones''
    http://bit.ly/4pcspZ
  • Michael E. Mann: "This is the sort of "dirty laundry" one doesn't want to fall into the hands..."
    http://bit.ly/8dc3eX
  • Phil Jones - keeper of world temperature records for the past 1000yrs:
    "Can you delete any emails you may have had..."
    http://bit.ly/7D78XE
  • Whole Foods' John Mackey reckons even though Austrian economists haven’t been credited for their business cycle theory, we nonetheless have what Austrian Business Cycle Theory predicts.
    http://bit.ly/5GLwUj
  • Yaron Brook on PJTV - part 2 reckons that with the trial in New York of the “brains” of the 9/11 atrocity, The War Returns to NYC
    http://www.pjtv.com/v/2744
  • Yaron Brook on PJTV: New Obama Trend: Credibility Is A Bigger Problem Than Health Care Reform
    http://www.pjtv.com/v/2742
And finally, can’t get this bloody song out of my head. Damn that Chris Knox . . . ;^)

And I hate to say it, but Neil Finn’s version on Stroke ain’t half catchy either.

8 comments:

Falafulu Fisi said...

Hehe, that's a funny youtube animation of the Hockey Stick oracle Michael Mann.

For those here who haven't read the original hockey-stick temperature reconstruction graph controversial paper, here it is shown below:

Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries

The technique that they used is called Principal Component Analysis (PCA), which is a linear multivariate statistical technique. It is a popular method in data analysis. If you're using a text search engine, like something searching for a book in a library, this is what the engine is using, PCA. The PCA is based on a linear algebra algorithm called SVD (singular value decomposition), which is also popular in scientific, statistical & engineering analysis. Face recognition software uses it (as one of the many) and so other countless applications.

Since PCA is linear, it is susceptible to giving misleading results since the real world is non-linear. There has been many extensions to the standard linear PCA to make it non-linear, such as Kernel PCA, this is the version that I use in my development (which is still largely still unknown to many statisticians, because these nonlinear PCA variants are published in IEEE, SIAM, ACM journals and not statistics). One version that I am interested to implement is the Dynamic PCA, because the model updates itself incrementally over time, which is good in real time application.

Anyway, back to Mann and his hockey stick. I sent him an email once (no reply from him and I shouldn't be surprised), just to advise him on non-linear methods as I have mentioned above, because the standard PCA he used is unreliable. Yep, unreliable according to researchers in the domain of pattern recognitions (not according to falafulu), and that's why those researchers (pattern recognition experts) have developed non-linear versions because they found that PCA has severe limitations. Also check out their choice of low-pass filter that they used in their paper. There was no explanation of what filter they used and why they used it.

I can only guess that Prof. Mann didn't reply back and thanked me because he felt ashamed that he didn't know it himself. I am 100% confident that he never heard of non-linear PCA variants till the day that I alerted him to the availability of those robust methods.

Ok, the hockey stick is a statistical model (blind-faith) and not a physics model. There are lots of arguments about debunking it by Stephen McIntyre , et al and also the counter-argument put forward by Mann's supporters. These arguments are not important to me.

What I found amazing is that they tried and interpret their PCA reconstruction to fit in with the GCM. This is largely being ignored by both warmists and anti-warmists. Statistics is not physics as I have said many times before, and the interpretation of Mann et al, results in their paper (using PCA), was unscientific to me. Physics model that represent reality, derive what to expect from observations before those are being confirmed rather than tweaking or interpreting the data to fit the model which has been formulated as a priori. Mann's et al original paper did exactly that. Interpreting the PCA reconstruction to agree with the prediction of the GCM.

Ok, I think that's enough global warming explanation for me this week. Perhaps its time for a beer, because it is nice and sunny.

shari said...

To Simon Power

Congratulations on abolishing the defence of provocation.

You are highly successful at what you do; and no doubt viewed as a strong and dependable man by many.

You are now assured of votes from gay men, and the emotionally weak.

May your career prosper.

Anonymous said...

"The Defence of Provocation."

1 It was never an absolute defence. It was a method to negate intent and thereby reduce a murder charge to manslaughter.

2 Its misuse in the Weatherston circus was not sufficient a ground to remove it from the Crimes Act 1961.

3 In NZ we do not have degrees of homicide as in other jurisdictions.

I suggest that the removal of provocation ought to have been a component of an overall re-assessment of homicide. Parliament is a repository for failed lawyers, and they've acted unthinkingly once again!

Faversham.

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mexaguil said...

Q: Where does monetary inflation come from? A: World's banks hold very low real reserves. Major banks in Japan, US, Germany, Spain, & Italy fail the 8pc safety level. Which means for every dollar they actually hold, they’re lending out well over twelve, and some as much as twenty!
http://bit.ly/7ygpzf


Bank's cash reserve ratio is something different from the capital ratio that The Telegraph's article is talking about.

S&P's risk adjusted capital ratio (RAC) is crudely a ratio between equity and assets. Where the assets for a bank are the loans it has made.

The Cash reserve ratio in terms of the balance sheet would be demand deposits (a liability) over Cash + Reserves at the Central Bank (an asset).

The RAC ratio has not much to do with fractional reserve as even banks with 100% cash reserves could have a low RAC ratio.

shari said...

I like that, Anonymous. "Parliament is a repository for failed lawyers".

Not surprising then that Simon Power is unable to grasp the difference between the 'thought' of provocation and the 'act' of defence.

Americans are suffering from PTSD of 9/11 trauma. What's ailing Kiwis?

I don't know. But, if continual disappointment leads to dulled anger, what more will stir Kiwis into acting?

The thought of absorbing 90 million over the next 3 years? Who's laughing silly at this low figure?

Will this thought provoke Kiwis into action?

B Whitehead said...

You actually read what Tapu Misa writes?
It's like eating glass to me & I never get past the the third paragraph of any of her articles.(it just reads like verbal dribble to me)

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling said...

"2 Its misuse in the Weatherston circus was... "

But it wasn't misused, it failed miserably, Weatherston is in jail and is the most hated man in the country.