A special message for Christmas 1999

1. SKEPTIC EPISODE #283 — Michael Strevens — The Knowledge Machine: Creation of Modern Science.
   • https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/michael-strevens-on-how-irrationality-created-modern-science/
   • https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/
2. Sea-level rise is rising faster: One proof of climate-change is the increasing rate of sea-level rise. Most climate-change skeptics stand down after viewing graphs showing average annual sea-level rate of rise doubling from 1.7 mm per year to 3.4 mm per year (much of the original data comes from military sources)
   comments: 3.4 mm per year is a 'global average'. Multiplying by 100 yields 340 mm (13.4 inches) per century. However, today I heard reports from European locations that are measuring seeing 4 mm per year. A similar increase is being seen on the American eastern coast.
   So back to the first link we read: "The sea level will not rise uniformly everywhere on Earth, and it will even drop slightly in some locations, such as the Arctic. Local factors include tectonic effects and subsidence of the land, tides, currents and storms".
   additionally: The contents of this scientific paper from Denmark ( https://os.copernicus.org/articles/17/181/2021/ ) are more troubling. The first line of the abstract reads: "Recent assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) imply that global mean sea level is unlikely to rise more than about 1.1 meters within this century but will increase further beyond 2100". This statement infers that a rise of one meter (39 inches) by the end of this century is within the scope of possibility.
   From this IPCC 2021 summary we read this very troubling line: Sea-level rise by 2100 is likely to be from half to one meter, but two to five meters is not ruled out, as ice sheet instability processes are still poorly understood.
3. Monkey Pox: One of the COVID-19 deniers at my gym just told me that Monkeypox is another hoax so I attempted to remind him that European scientists like Louis Pasteur did much of their original work on Cowpox (which is closely related to Smallpox) in the early to middle 1800s. He accused me of being gullible. So much for every western citizen having a minimal level of scientific understanding (see my comment further down about more than 50% of us being as dumb as rocks)
   comment: once upon a time starting in the early 1930s, politically minded Germans claimed they were smarter than scientists. Misinformation then and there morphed into world-war-2
4. Canada's F-35 purchase plan: It doesn't matter if you are for this or against this (like me), something just doesn't add up. Last month Canadians learned that the Trudeau Liberals intend to spend CA$19 billion dollars on 88 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed. Dividing the two numbers yields a per-plane price of CA$215 million and yet it seems that the actual price (via web searches) should be in the range of US$78 to US$88 million. Many Canadians familiar with the F-35 know that Canada has paid many millions of dollars each year for the past decade in order to qualify for preferred pricing. Putting aside exchange differences between Canadian and American currency for the moment, it sure seems like preferred pricing means paying a lot more rather than less.
   comment: There was once a time when Canada was developing a (potentially) world leading fighter jet designated CF-105 (commonly known as the AVRO Arrow) which the Americans talked Canada out of building so was scrapped by Diefenbaker in 1959 without consulting his ministers. The USA told Canada that jets were irrelevant in the age of missiles then sold us Bomarc Missiles and aging CF-101 Voodoo Jets (why would we need these in the missile age?). Diefenbaker shut down the AVRO Arrow program much to the dismay of the Toronto aircraft industry with the main reason given "to save tax payer money" but the Bomarcs and Voodoos cost Canada much more than the Arrow so Diefenbaker's cost cutting dogma resulted in worse situation for Canada. The decision also resulted in a Canadian brain drain as large fraction of talent moved from Canada to the USA (many engineers and technicians went to US defense contractors. Some, like Jim Chamberlain, went to NASA). Things would have been much different then and now had Diefenbaker first sought the advice of a advisory group like the NRC (but he did not and now we are in this other mess).
   comment: Pierre Trudeau was an anti-war leader (I recall him collapsing the Canadian Army, Navy and Air Force into a single unified service). According to this article, Pierre considered pulling Canada out of NATO so "I wonder" what Pierre might think about Justin Trudeau's decision to buy F-35 fighter jets.
5. Christian Nationalism and the Washington D.C. insurrection (a.k.a. stop the steal)
   • report: The truth behind the Jan6 stop-the-steal
   • video: US congressional representative Jared Huffman (Wow! There are only 15 members in the "congressional free thought caucus" and none of them are senators. So much for the separation between church and state
   • For those people who find it impossible to believe that a white power movement exists in the USA, click this link then listen to the podcast:
     https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103884777/throughline-the-rise-of-the-modern-white-power-movement
6. No other advanced or intelligent life in the universe? People have always speculated about intelligent life elsewhere but no one took those thoughts seriously until Frank Drake published the Drake Equation in 1961 and Carl Sagan began promoting it 15 years later. Since then, other scientists promoting the Rare Earth hypothesis provided good reasons why the evolution of advanced intelligent life may only be possible in a solar system with (1) a water and metal-rich rocky planet in the Goldilocks zone (2) gravitationally bound to a very large moon for both orbital and rotational stability (3) where at least one gas giant can be found in an outer orbit to sweep up asteroids. The Kepler space telescope provided proof that exo-planets exist (the current number is > 4000) with a decent fraction of them seeming to be of the correct composition, and found in the Goldilocks zone, but none with a significantly large moon. A new hypothesis (heard in a 2022 episode of CBC's Quirks & Quarks) suggests that our large moon is also responsible for plate tectonics -AND- without it, Earth's molten core would have cooled off long ago. BTW, a hot core is required to produce a magnetic shield which protects life from most solar and cosmic radiation. Mars has no molten core so no magnetic field,
   Conclusion: All this means that Life on Earth might be the only precious life that exists anywhere in our galaxy -SO- we had better stop taking Earth's environment for granted -AND- had better stop fighting for foolish things -AND- better stop hoping for better conditions elsewhere where humanity might wish for a do-over.
7. New hacker perspectives:
   • Changing World Views (then and now)
   • Vaccines reduce accumulated life-time damage caused by viruses
   • Nuclear Power (comment: apparently Germany and Denmark did not learn a single thing about limiting CO² at COP26 (November 2021))
8. About NATO / OTAN
   
   • 1949: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) also known as OTAN (Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord) began as an alliance of twelve world-war-2 countries to offer collective protection from Joseph Stalin.
     
   • 1993: Stalin died but NATO was not disbanded. NATO's mission quietly changed to offering collective protection from the USSR.
   • 1954: many Eastern block countries expressed interest in joining NATO but were refused.
   • 1955: the Warsaw Pact was created after it became clear that Western countries would never allow Eastern block countries membership in NATO.
   • 1989: the Berlin Wall is breached an Gorbachev allows it
   • 1991: the USSR dissolved but NATO was not disbanded. As part of the German reunification deal, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved and the USA promised Russia to not engage in NATO expansion 'East of Germany' but the USA broke that promise or perhaps never intended to honor it.
   • 1999: Vladimir Putin asked Bill Clinton when it would be possible for Russia to join NATO. Apparently Clinton smiled but no answer was given.
   • We learned from declassified NATO documents that NATO's true objective (according to Secretary General - Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay) was to "keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” and I wondered what modern Germans might think about that.
   • I also wonder how many Americans know that continually funding NATO may be unconstitutional. Article 1 Section 8 of the American Constitution states: The Congress shall have Power To raise and support Armies, but no appropriation of money to that Use shall be for a longer term than two years. America's founding fathers did not want America to decay from within due to excessive military spending as happened in the Roman Empire.
   • Since actions speak louder than words, many now wonder if NATO is nothing more than a sales channel for the military industries of NATO members. Especially since NATO membership has grown to thirty countries with many of them not connected to the Atlantic Ocean (Turkey first springs to mind)
   • Americans are always banging on about capitalism and free markets but did not offer Russia a helping hand up after the USSR collapsed. Instead, Americans engaged in schadenfreude proving to many that this self-described Christian nation has no Christian principles at all.
   • From Wikleaks, and other sources, we learned that Barack Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, took credit for the NATO attack on Libya in 2011 which destroyed that country while destabilizing the region. Was Obama aware of this? (German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was when she commented on the large volume of African refugees entering Europe). While observing the international actions of Joe Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, it appears that the Secretary of State has always answered to the defense Industry rather than the President. No Western politician was ever allowed to question the value of NATO but in 2016 we heard presidential candidate, Donald Trump, referring to NATO as being obsolete, and now I cannot stop thinking that it is.
   • 2022-02-17: Today I learned some new things about the USA:
     • There are four lobbyists in Washington for every politician (now you know why politicians forget their electoral promises as soon as they take office)
     • The American military is the largest 'single payer employer' in the world.
     • The USA cannot afford to not be at war. Their September 2021 exit from Afghanistan (after 20 years) was only a temporary Pax Americana while they prepared for the next business opportunity (er, conflict)
     • President Joe Biden has requested the largest defense budget to date ($770 billion; nearly 3/4 of a trillion dollars).
     • 2022-04-01: After receiving congressional approval, President Joe Biden just signed off on a defense budget of $782 billion (over 3/4 of a trillion dollars). Remember than these are just budgets. Actual spending often goes over budget.
   • A civil war in East Ukraine has been on going since 2014 but the situation was made worse after the USA recently shipped more that $650 million weapons to Kiev. comment: I do not understand why the USA has provided Ukraine with more than $2.5 billion in military aid since 2014. Unlike the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian politicians have been considered some of the most corrupt in the democratic world. That is why a comedian was elected president rather than someone from one of the main political parties
     
   • 2022-02-xx: We now know that Kiev was using foreign hardware to shell targets in the breakaway Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhansk). Did the USA not realize that their gift to one side would inflame the situation by upsetting the balance? Will they accept any responsibility if things get worse?
   • 2022-02-18: Russian-backed separatists evacuate residents from east Ukraine
     quote: "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to house and feed people once they arrived in southern Russia, according to a Kremlin statement"
   • 2022-02-19: BBC America showed videos of many Donbas citizens being placed on buses destined for temporary safety in western Russia
   • 2022-02-20: BBC America reported that 93,000 Donbas refugees have sought refuge in Western Russia
   • 2022-02-24: Russia enters Ukraine with a three pronged attack: Belarus from the North, Russia from the East. Crimea from the South.
   • 2022-02-25: Putin would have been considered a hero by many if he had only ordered Russian troops into the Donbas region to end the 8-year civil war while protecting the lives of Donbas citizens from further aggression. But he did not (so will not appear favorably in the history books)
   • 2022-06-30: (article) NATO has been preparing for a war with Russia since 2014, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
   • 2022-06-30: (article) NATO radically redefined its mission to reflect a new mantra which could be encapsulated as “keep the Russians down, the Americans in, and the Chinese out"
   • To learn more about the Ukraine-Russia debacle:
     • https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/john-mueller-on-putins-war-russia-ukraine-nato/ (podcast)
     • https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/john-mueller-analysis-putins-war-russia-ukraine-nato/ (article)
   • To learn more about the real NATO:
     • https://www.amazon.ca/End-NATO-Scott-Ritter/dp/1949762114 (book)
     • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA4z9tpUpVw interview with Andrew Bacevich
9. Electoral Reform. The two largest Dominions of the British Empire were Canada and Australia so I wonder why Canada stayed with first past the post elections while Australia, and most others, transitioned to proportional representation
   
   1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion
   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electoral_systems_by_country
   3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
   comments:
   1. The first chart in the article under link-3 uses Canada as an example of what went wrong in 2015 where Liberal votes (39%) were "over represented" in parliament while all others (61%) where "under represented".
   2. It appears that Canada and India might be the only ex-Dominion countries still using first-past-the-post. Perhaps we Canadian are just too stupid to change; or too influenced by American-sourced news.
   3. History shows that costly bad decisions are usually associated with "majority wins" because fewer people are involved in decision making. Food-for-thought: British politicians of all parties agreed to work together quietly under Churchill until the conclusion of WW2; everything went well (politically speaking) until the war end when party bickering resumed. If Britain had adopted proportional representation then I suspect:
      1. Britain would have joined the EU in 1952 rather than 1962
      2. there would have been no Suez Canal crisis which means the British pound might still be used as the world reserve currency.
         BTW, Anthony Eden won a majority government in 1955.
      3. there would have been no Falklands War
         BTW. Margaret Thatcher won a majority government in 1979
      4. there would have been no BREXIT
         BTW, exiting the EU began with a Conservative Majority
10. POLIDIOT (political idiot) is a label applicable to both citizens and politicians who insist their "political opinion" is superior to "empirical fact" (this includes politicians who advocate for cryptocurrenices). To those people I present this quote from 1936:

    "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. There are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest." --- John Maynard Keyes

    comment: no one "likes" the idea of printing up money but you would not like the alternative. Recall that very little was done after the crash of 1929; this resulted in a decade of hobos (homeless men looking for work), soup kitchens, and people wearing signs reading "will work for food"
     
11. Two decades of misinformation (and COVID-19)
    Misinformation 1: The Republican-dominated US Congress of 1987 eliminated the FCC Fairness Doctrine citing a violation of the right to free-speech by corporations. This enabled politically biased outlets like Fox News (Cable TV) and Rush Limbaugh (Syndicated Radio) to play fast and loose with the truth. Americans today seem unaware of the fact that one-sided political propaganda in Germany resulted in world-war-2
    Misinformation 2: ARPAnet (1969) morphed into the internet (1982) which enabled the world-wide-web (1991) then mobile social media (2007). These last two iterations have published an ever increasing amount of nonsense,  conspiracy theories and bad science (vaccine hesitancy is one example) from non-experts on both sides of the political spectrum. They also bankrupted many respectable newspapers as advertisers moved their money online. Recall that "newspapers could be sued under libel laws" so they employed editors and journalists to provide "best effort reporting" of fact-checked information. Alternative media sites are protected from lawsuits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (created in 1996 to help start internet businesses) so they check nothing (here is one example of many):
    In 2019, Buzzfeed laid off 43 journalists in their own news division TO SAVE MONEY. Then again in 2021, Buzzfeed (now rich) acquired The Huffington Post then immediately laid off 47 journalists TO SAVE MONEY
    Information: Evolution by natural selection is a scientifically proven fact even though many North American political and/or religious groups claim it is not. Five years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, Herbert Spencer published Principles of Biology containing the phrase Survival of the Fittest. A full year of COVID-19 deaths (now two), combined with people still questioning science, caused me to wonder: We now live in the age of Survival of the Smartest and every citizen needs to be able to separate fact from fiction (or political opinion). Due to the fact that many prefer information from politically-biased ALTERNATIVE STREAM MEDIA rather than neutral MAIN STREAM MEDIA, a lot of people are going to die. They will think they are "politically right" but will also be "dead wrong". COVID-19 stats: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ 1,042,000 lookup current value.
12. More than 50 percent of us are as dumb as rocks. I enjoy listening to the radio program and pod cast Under The Influence about commercial advertising. During episode S10E14 the audience learned about the marketing success of McDonald's Quarter Pounder along with the marketing failure of the Third-of-a-Pound Burger by A&W. During the post failure analysis, marketers discovered that more than half the people in the focus groups questioned the price of the third pounder. They wanted to know why they should have to pay the same price for a third of a pound as they did for a quarter pound at McDonald's. They said A&W was overcharging them. People genuinely thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter pound because 3 was less than 4.
    comment: makes we wonder how much of our Neanderthal DNA is active. Please think about this the next time you decided to pontificate on subjects like politics, the economy and vaccines.
13. China in the news
    This video shows China moving forward on many Chinese infrastructure projects while we watch vested interests in the North American fossil-fuel industry doing their best to maintain the status quo.
    
    comments: this video was created by Bloomberg and is titled Why China’s Lead on EVs Has Been a Long Time Coming. Even if you disagree with the title, this video shows that a significant change is already taking place in the world's most populated country. China is no longer a country of bicycle riders. I am sometimes shocked when I see modern video from places like Japan, South Korea or China where their societies seem to be moving in the direction of The Jetsons while everything in the North America seems to be decaying.
     
14. Commenting on Huawei: It appears to me that western society only supports capitalism "when the west wins". When a Chinese company, like Huawei, becomes the next Nortel, then ridiculous conspiracy theories are invoked. Huawei was one of many companies that bid on the sale of Nortel's intellectual property, as did Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM (Blackberry), Google and others. Huawei was not one of the winners which forced it to increase its own R&D operations (estimates put Huawei R&D in 2019 at a massive 40% of net income) so it should come at no surprise that Huawei is 18-24 months ahead of their competition in the field of 5G wireless. Simple logic shows that Huawei could only achieve parity if they were stealing I/P. Did I mention that their 5G hardware is 90% less expensive than anything from their competition?
    
    Deng Xiaoping (pronounced "dung chow ping") once said "The Middle East has its oil, China has rare earth". Since modern electronics is dependent upon rare-earth materials then it should be no surprise that Chinese-made electronics is much less expensive. Speaking of Deng for a moment, in 1985 I was attending school in Boston where it appeared to me that Chinese students were everywhere. Apparently, Deng had sent 1.3 million Chinese students out into the world to receive a top-quality western education paid for by China (one of my more-gifted Chinese classmates was accompanied by "two minders" who were there to ensure that he returned to China). Unlike Mao, Deng saw great value in education and realized that this was the best way forward for China. Thirty five years later, China has moved more than 350 million Chinese citizens from poverty into the middle class. This number is greater than the total population of the USA so is it any surprise that China is doing well? Meanwhile, there is a tendency amongst some westerners to label "an educated person" as "an elite". It seems to me that the world has flipped.
15. Our culture is awash in lies, dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that merge fact and fiction until they are indistinguishable. We have become the most illusioned society on earth. Politics is a species of endless and meaningless political theater. Politicians have morphed into celebrities. Our two ruling parties are, in reality, one party - the corporate party. And those who attempt to puncture this vast, breathless universe of fake news, designed to push through the cruelty and exploitation of the neoliberal order, are pushed so far to the margins of society, including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money, that we might as well be mice squeaking against an avalanche, but squeak we MUST
    Chris Hedges
16. A conservative friend of mine was fond of asking me political questions (I am a centrist) then would cut me off mid-sentence before I finished answering. Apparently he was the only conservative among his family of brothers, sisters and parents but had no problem thinking he was right (er, correct) while they were wrong. How could this be? This thought rattled around in my mind until I stumbled across a book titled The Republican Brain which was positively reviewed by liberals and conservatives alike. The book contains several points which I will pass along here:
    • Size differences in two brain structures, the amygdala (larger in conservatives) and the anterior cingulate (larger in liberals), bias human perspective of the world.
    • Conservatives see most issues as "black-and-white" (or good-and-evil) and are more pessimistic while liberals see "shades of gray" and are generally more optimistic
    • Conservatives are more fearful of others so are more easily encouraged to vote for POPULIST issues like "building the wall" or BREXIT (funny point: Britain had the lowest number of per-capita immigrants but had the highest political reaction against them)
    • Conservatives play politics as a team sport so will almost always "vote their party" while Liberals will split their vote choosing alternate parties (not very smart in first-past-the -post)
17. Philosophical razors
    • Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions
    • Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
    • more examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
18. When I was a student, I read an English translation of The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek. When I later heard Margret Thatcher using the book to bash socialism, I wondered if she was reading a different translation (Hayek only published in German) since her quotes bore little resemblance to Hayek's book (was Thatcher paraphrasing?). Anyway, when Hayek slams socialism, he is referring to state-sponsored collectivism which is not the same thing as practiced (in one form or another) by most countries of the world except the USA. I recently stumbled onto this Hayek article titled Why I am Not a Conservative (excerpted from a 1960 book titled The Constitution of Liberty - I wonder if Thatcher knew about this).
19. When I attended college in the early 1970s, many students seemed to be talking about Ayn Rand or quoting from her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Years later I finally got around to reading the book which left me with these thoughts:
    1. Like George Orwell (1984) Ayn Rand knows how to tell a fictional dystopian story
    2. Rand's character John Galt seems to be a kinder (although equally ridiculous) version of Orwell's character Big Brother
    3. 1984 (which Orwell claimed is really about 1948 England) was published in 1949 while Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957 so perhaps this tells us something about the zeitgeist of those years
    4. Ayn Rand seemed to project a naive (childish?) view of industry vs government regulation. Did she really think that corporations would never do anything evil? Had she lived longer I would have loved to hear her ATTEMPT to defend the actions of the Big Tobacco for knowing the numerous health hazards associated with the use of their product then hiding them in order to make a buck; or that EXXON knew as early as 1977 that the burning of fossil fuels would cause climate change (they hid these reports then hired retired scientists working for politically motivated think thanks to deny such a thing was possible). It is possible that these large companies got the inspiration to do this from Rand's description of the fictional "State Science Institute" which was low on science while high on politics. I wonder if people who read this book are also skeptical of science and vaccines.
    Recently (Feb-2022) I noticed that Atlas Shrugged had been made into a three part movie currently available on Amazon Prime Video. I watched them all in order; what a waste of my time (it was like a train wreck that I couldn't turn away from). Part 1 was okay; part 2 was corny; part 3 was plain bad. BTW, my comments have nothing to do with the actors or set designers for these productions (which were all done with different actors for some reason); my comments have everything do do with the really bad childish story line that I thought would have repaired for life this side of Y2K; There must be something wrong with the human species when anyone takes this stuff seriously.

Current Items: continued here (more sciency stuff)

"a Feynman Diagram"

"All forces in the universe are mediated by particle exchange"
This "Feynman Diagram" (of electron repulsion) depicts the movement of two electrons (1 to 3 and 2 to 4) in space and time. A virtual photon transfers energy between them (5 to 6) causing them to repel each other. To learn more: 1) brief explanation
2) detailed explanation
Legend: Y-Axis (up-down) is time while X-Axis (left-right) is space

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

 

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