‘Nuff said.
Filed under: Religion Tagged: Bible, Christianity, DWR Sunday Religious Disservice, Science
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More Canadian homes need to be built like this to survive coming fossil fuel shortages. It certainly saves a lot of money for the homeowner. Passive House in Alaska using water insulated in a tank as a giant battery for energy. The world would have forgotten the Saskatchewan house, too, were it not for a quirky German physicist interested in energy-saving buildings. After studying the Saskatchewan house and a handful of similar buildings, Dr. Wolfgang Feist wrote a mathematically precise — and elegantly simple — criterion for designing buildings that require less than a tenth of the energy of (Read more…) This and that for your Thursday reading. - Scott Sinclair studies the effect of NAFTA on government policies, and finds that it’s been used primarily (and all too frequently) to attack Canadian policy choices: A study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds over 70% of all NAFTA investor-state claims since 2005 were brought against the Canadian government and the number of challenges against Canada is rising sharply. From 1995-2005, there were 12 claims against Canada, while in the last ten years there have been 23. “It appears that the federal government’s strong ideological commitment to (Read more…) If you want to take down somebody else’s argument, a certain familiarity with the nature of intellectual or philosophical (as opposed to playground) argument is required, so that you can construct your own counter-argument. In an intellectual argument, the person putting forth an argument sets out a number of premises (statements of facts), which, when you add them together, at best makes it impossible for their conclusion to be false (deductive argument), or at least makes it much more likely that their conclusion is true (inductive argument). If you want to show that somebody’s argument is wrongity wrong, there (Read more…) In a recent story titled “Neil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should Read,” the eminent astrophysicist listed his top eight book titles – from a Reddit conversation that was going on back in December, 2011. Here are the books he chose back then (check the linked story above […] As a followup to the Star Phoenix’s article on the hugely expensive, and (public) money losing CCS plant at Estevan, comes word of further cost overruns. The overruns, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, would have been sufficient to buy Regina its Stadium II, outright, fix its pension shortfall, or replace its Waste Water Treatment Plant. SaskPower has apparently been misleading people by saying we need coal for “baseload” power, when Saskatchewan’s abundant wind source, coupled with Manitoba’s hydro, could safely provide a reliable power supply to homes, schools, etc. And it appears that viable, cleaner, lower-cost solutions (Read more…) Assorted content to end your week. - Aditya Chakrabortty contrasts the myth of the free market against the reality that massive amounts of public money and other privileges are shoveled toward the corporate sector: Few conceits are more cherished by our political classes than the notion that this is a free-market economy. To the right it is what makes Britain great. For the left it is what they are up against. And for the rich it is what justifies their huge pay packets: after all, they have earned it. When asked for his view of western civilisation, Gandhi said he (Read more…) Monty Python was onto something with their sailing financial pirates, I think. “Over 260,000 tons of plastic waste in oceans, study shows“ Why buying dollar store crap will come back to haunt you and your grandchildren: The scientists have stressed their estimates are “highly conservative, and may be considered minimum.” They only took into account the floating plastic garbage, disregarding the waste found on shores and on the seabed. Another unaccounted for type of plastic is one that can only be found “within organisms.” Researchers believe that large portions of “microplastics,” less than 5mm in size, could (Read more…) So, @PMHarper, if oil/gas regulations don’t work at $65 a barrel, at what price are they “uncrazy”? $80? $100? — David Akin (@davidakin) December 9, 2014
Here’s an impressive takedown of the Prime Minister’s “crazy” comments in the House the other day. Since 2006 he’s promised to regulate oil and gas. Now he admits that would be “crazy”. Harper is nuts, and a liar, and he’s our Prime Minister for another year. Dear SaskPower, I’m interested in seeing the statistics regarding the electricity generated by the test panels installed on the Saskatchewan Science Centre, in the attached picture, and as mentioned in the below quote from your website a couple years ago. Solar research: In 2000, we installed a photovoltaic array at the Saskatchewan Science Centre for research purposes. Results showed that the cost savings realized from the solar energy system cannot effectively offset the capital costs for installation. As a result, this technology is better suited to niche applications where connection to the grid is uneconomical or when passive solar enhancement (Read more…) Some people seem genetically inclined – perhaps I should write doomed? – to believe in nonsense: believe in conspiracy theories, in myths, legends, superstitions and supernatural, in magic, in pseudoscience and pseudomedicine. Nothing – no amount of fact, truth, education, reason or contrary evidence will change their minds. The harder you try to correct them, the […] A delusional remark in a CBC article: “Canada, which has long been criticized for being heavily dependent on shipping natural resources to the rest of the world.” Our Prime Minister, and Saskatchewan’s Premier spend millions, hundreds of millions actually, to tell Canadians and the world how many resources we should be sending elsewhere. Consider the stat from Gasland II, where about 60% of some wells’ casings are expected to fail within 30 years. Naturally that stat is going to err on the sensational, but even the more conservative ~10% estimates are extremely worrying. “Leaky plumbing on energy (Read more…) Orac brings the pain to the masters(?) of woo.
Filed under: Media, Medicine, Science Tagged: Alternative Medicine, CAM, Magic, Reiki, Woo This is a short essay about why our species can’t have nice things. A PhD Meteorologist in Florida claims that because October 2003 was hottest since October 2014 by only .01 degrees less, there’s no climate change due to humans spewing ridiculous amounts of carbon into our atmosphere. How did he say this in dog whistle language to climate change deniers: “How much “hotter” was record October 2014 vs. October 2003? According to NOAA 0.01°C. 14.74°C vs. 14.73°C Public doesn’t know this.” Well, “the anomalies are provided with respect to the 20th century (1901–2000) average.” (Read more…) “mmm…buzzz…. click…. This is your friendly….buzzz…. automated calling device…click…hummmm… reminding you that….mmmm….buzzz…..click… there are only three days left to…. zzzzz…. take advantage of the Black Friday sales at…. mmmm…. buzzzz….. your…. zzzz… Collingwood…..insert box store name…. mmmm…buzzz…. click….thank you…” Well, maybe robotic telemarketers won’t sound like the solenoid robots on Roger Ramjet, but within the decade, […] This and that for your Thursday reading. - Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the undue influence of our corporate overlords in setting public policy: What’s your sense of the state of our democracy? We have a troubled relationship with our democratic institutions. We need to get over the idea that government is something and someone else. The government is us. The idea that governments are largely useless, that they’re more likely to make a mess than fix things, is exactly what corporations would like us to think. It gives them more freedom to use the enormous power of the (Read more…) The Ig Nobel Prize is dedicated to science that makes you laugh then makes you think. It’s a fun and great way to get people engaged in science while exploring questions that sound rather bizarre. As founder of the Ig Nobel awards, Marc Abrahams explores the world’s most improbable research. In this thought-provoking (and occasionally side-splitting) talk, he tells stories of truly weird science — and makes the case that silliness is critical to boosting public interest in science. No. They are victims of circumstance, and despite their wealth and fame, they alone cannot change ‘the system’. A voice from the Facebook-sphere intones: “I appreciate your commitment and respect what you are trying to achieve but bashing fossil fuels while you continue to use them adds no value to your cause.” Not true. As Shane’s made plain, there’s no means for someone to hop off the oil bandwagon, because we’ve built our society around it for generations. It will take generations to leave it behind (completely), but that isn’t an argument to stop trying. Quite the opposite, (Read more…) Just like using Vitamin C to treat cancer… “It’s a case that has Canadians and the legal community buzzing. Earlier this month Ontario Judge Gethin Edward ruled in favour of a First Nations girl and her family, who stopped chemotherapy to treat her acute lymphoblastic leukemia, choosing traditional medicine instead. The judge rejected an application from McMaster Children’s Hospital that would have required the Children’s Aid Society to intervene in the case.” Buzzing indeed. Let us be clear up front – evidenced based medicine works. Anything else is just a fine grade mixture of bullshit and the placebo effect that (Read more…) I fully approve of Cool Hard Logic’s video. Confirmation bias, ignorance and a blissful distaste for fact are all on display here by our Chem-Trail friends. Enjoy.
Filed under: Housekeeping Tagged: Chem Trails, Conspiracy, Loons, Science It has been a while since my last blog post (yes, I love euphemisms). I have not been writing for the simple reason that I ran out of things to say, a fate that I am told few, very few amateur bloggers escape. So, what am I doing here now? Well, I have been engaged lately in the […] Last month James took me for a spin in an electric Rav 4. This week it was the sporty and futuristic Model S by independent car company Tesla. This and that for your Thursday reading. - George Monbiot comments on the far more important values we’re endangering in the name of constant financial and material growth: To try to stabilise this system, governments behave like soldiers billeted in an ancient manor, burning the furniture, the paintings and the stairs to keep themselves warm for a night. They are breaking up the postwar settlement, our public health services and social safety nets, above all the living world, to produce ephemeral spurts of growth. Magnificent habitats, the benign and fragile climate in which we have prospered, species that have lived (Read more…) So Pat Perkins is willing to spend thousands of your tax dollars to fly herself out to a real-estate conference in Cannes, France that by her own admission “nothing concrete” has come out of, but she isn’t willing to listen to scientists on climate change? Whose priorities do you think she’ll listen to in Ottawa, the residents of Whitby-Oshawa, or Stephen Harper? Humankind grew a tiny bit today; while we were making large mammal lifeforms go extinct, we were also landing on a comet. .@ESA_Rosetta See for yourself! ROLIS imaged #67P when we were just 3km away! Glad I can share. #CometLanding pic.twitter.com/b6mcid2fsn — Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014
Things didn’t go smoothly, but they worked out. .@Philae2014 #Stagefright. I hope it wasn't a case of premature ejection. #CometLanding — Saskboy K. (@saskboy) November 12, 2014
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