Daily Archives: August 29, 2009

Major Upgrade for Goddard Climate Simulation Machine

Climate Change, Uncategorized

In August, Goddard added 4,128 new-generation Intel “Nehalem” processors to its Discover high-end computing system. The upgraded Discover will serve as the centerpiece of a new climate simulation capability at Goddard. Discover will host NASA’s modeling contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific organization for assessing climate change, and other national and international climate initiatives.

And they’re adding another 4,128 in a couple of months. This will be the first major. Nehalem based climate simulation project. Details here.

Income, IQ, and profession

Uncategorized

Research from Bristol:

Doctors and lawyers are more likely to come from wealthy backgrounds according to new research from the Department of Economics that indicates that the ‘social gap’ that prevents poorer people from entering the top professions is becoming more pronounced over time.

Using data on family income and IQ in childhood drawn from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS), which tracks a representative sample of the population born in 1958, and the British Cohort Study (BCS), which follows people born in 1970, the research shows that professions such as law and medicine attract better-off people, compared with other professions such as teaching and nursing, although differences in IQ test scores for the former decreased over time.

On the other hand, those who became engineers and nurses – two professions with the lowest average family incomes across the groups and the lowest IQ scores for those born in 1958 – appear to buck this trend with the average IQ scores for both professions increasing over time.


Press release continues here.

Bachmann’s Town Hall

Uncategorized, ,

I did not go to the Michele Bachmann “town hall” meeting yesterday because of a schedule conflict (I was out of town) but there is some news. Check out the last few posts on Dump Michele Bachmann blog. There is evidence, apparently, that Bachmann supporters were bussed in to pack the room. I’ve heard from two other private sources, one from inside and one from outside, that there were mostly supporters inside and mostly anti-Bachmann people outside.

I expect there to be a couple of good blog posts out about this in the next day or so, and I’ll point to them if I find out about them. Add any to the comments below, please.

I also expect that most of the people inside the hall were Dittohead Lockstep Republicans and most of the people outside the hall were Discordant Democrats.