How ironic is an advertizing partnership between the worlds largest toy company and Shell, a fossil fuel corporation, whose profits depend on destroying the very future of those toy buying children? Amelia Urry at Grist writes about this nonsensical arrangement which has been in place since the 1960’s and has grabbed the attention of Greenpeace, which is hoping to bring an end to the lunacy.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The US Chamber of Commerce and the SCOTUS: You'll want to see this.
The Constitutional Accountability Center has released it’s annual report The Corporate Court.
…Let’s begin with the numbers. This Term, the Chamber was involved in 17 cases overall—directly representing one of its member companies in Canning, litigating as a party in UARG, and filing amicus briefs in 15 other cases. The Chamber’s 17 cases represent just under a quarter of the total cases set down for argument this Term.
All told, the Chamber racked up a record of 11 wins and 5 losses—or a 69% winning percentage. (One of its cases—Mt. Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action—settled before oral argument.) That means that, since Samuel Alito succeeded Sandra Day O’Connor on the Court in January 2006, the Chamber has won 70% of its cases (85 wins and 36 losses), compared with only 43% in the late Burger Court (15 of 35 from 1981-1986) and 56% in the stable Rehnquist Court (45 of 80 from 1994-2005). …
First 2014 Atlantic Tropical Storm??? IMPORTANT UPDATE
Maybe yes, maybe no. Good chance, yes.
It is too early to call, but the blob I mentioned the other day has turned into a spiral and is starting to get organized. Forecasters at NOAA think there is an 80% chance this low pressure phenomenon will be a tropical storm by the 4th of July. They are also, somewhat vaguely, saying that it will move south, then northward, then northwest, which puts the storm off the coast of the US Mid-Atlantic or Southeast somewhere. Given that the storm is not moving in a consistent direction steered by well defined one directional forces, this should be very hard to predict this early.
This afternoon there should be an aircraft taking a closer look, assuming development continues. By tomorrow mid day, I suspect, we’ll know a lot more, between the collection of new data, the runs of more models, and the behavior of the proto-storm itself.
But yes, this could be Atlantic Storm 1, Arthur, a menacing off coast storm but almost certainly NOT a hurricane, as it will be moved too far north to really turn into one.
UPDATE: The NWS is now more certain about the disturbance turning into a Tropical Storm:
1. Shower and thunderstorm activity has increased in association with
a low pressure area located about 125 miles east of Melbourne,
Florida. Environmental conditions are becoming more conducive for
development, and only a slight increase in organization would result
in the formation of a tropical depression. This system is moving
southwestward at around and 5 mph but is expected to turn westward
tonight and northward by Wednesday near the east Florida coast. A
turn toward the northeast near the southeastern U.S. coast is
expected by Thursday. An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft
is en route to investigate the disturbance. If this system becomes
a tropical cyclone, a tropical storm watch could be required for
portions of the central or northern Atlantic coast of Florida.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…high…80 percent.
* Formation chance through 5 days…high…80 percent.
UPDATE 2 (Monday evening): Check out Paul Douglas’s blog at Star Tribune for details. It is still too early to have high confidence, but there is a good enough chance that there will be a named storm menacing the US Southeast/Mid Atlantic coast on or around the 4th that if you live in that area you might consider the waterproof bratwurst for your picnic.
For reference, here is the list of storm names for the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season:
Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal
Dolly
Edouard
Fay
Gonzalo
Hanna
Isaias
Josephine
Kyle
Laura
Marco
Nana
Omar
Paulette
Rene
Sally
Teddy
Vicky
Wilfred
Jumping the Shark. Or not.
I propose that there are four five categories of TV series distinguished on the basis of how long they run and the quality, or lack thereof, of the show more or less objectively defined (to the extent that one can do that).
1: Shows that jumped the shark
These are shows that become redundant, lose their writing quality, or for some other reason reach a point where they get bad. That point is, of course, the “Jumping-the-Shark” moment. The phrase “Jump the shark” of course comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie, water skiing, jumps over a shark. That was apparently a bad episode and is thought to mark the decline of the show from something a lot of people liked to something that needed to end. But then it didn’t end.
Examples:
<li>Dexter</li>
<li>ER</li>
<li>Grey’s Anatomy</li>
<li>Happy Days</li>
<li>House</li>
<li>Lie to Me</li>
<li>Lost Girl</li>
<li>M.A.S.H.</li>
<li>Northern Exposure</li>
<li>Psych</li>
<li>The Cosby Show</li>
<li>Twin Peaks</li>
<li>Will & Grace</li>
<li>Fringe</li>
<li>Sherlock</li>
2: Shows that are inherently immortal(ish)
These are shows that have a formula that allows them to remain high quality indefinitely, and for which the writing and directing and overall production value remains at high quality. It is hard to decide if a show that has been running for some time belongs in this category, or if they will someday jump the shark. But the examples given here have been on a long time and seem to lack sharks. The Simpsons, for example, has been running a very long time and last time I checked was still as funny as it ever was. Doctor Who, of course, regenerates, and the time element of the equation for that show is different for all other shows because on Doctor Who time is a wiggly wobbly timey wimey thing.
Examples:
<li>The Simpsons</li>
<li>Law and Order(s)</li>
<li>Doctor Who</li>
<li>The Big Bang Theory</li>
<li>Misfits</li>
<li>Son of Anarchy</li>
<li>That 70s show</li>
<li>Star Trek, original series</li>
<li>Red Dwarf</li>
<li>Futurama</li>
<li>Family Guy</li>
3: Shows that were killed ended during their prime
These are shows that might have been of category 1 or 2 above had they been allowed to continue, but were terminated while they were still good, but after a longish run. I like to think these shows would have been in category 2, but that certainly not need be the case. It is sad or disappointing when they do end, but that they were shut down while still good is actually a good thing even if it hurts a little.
Examples:
<li>MI 5</li>
<li>Eureka</li>
<li>Breaking Bad; Seinfeld</li>
<li>Primeval</li>
<li>The West Wing</li>
<li>The Dick Van Dyke Show</li>
<li>Moonlighting </li>
<li>Spartacus</li>
<li>six feet under</li>
4: Shows that die a young and undeserved death
These are shows that has promise, were good, but for marketing or other reasons ended after one or two seasons even though they should not have. I believe it is necessary to have an arbitrary distinction between categories 3 and 4. I’m going to set that at a maximum of three seasons. I could be talked into four seasons.
Examples:
5: Shows that die a young and richly deserved death
“These are mostly uninspired ripoffs of something that was successful a season or two earlier.” (John McKay) It is hard to find examples of these shows because they are obscure, and they may occupy a similar obscure space to gems that were also terminated early. In other words, for me, if I’ve not seen the show I can’t identify it as NOT having filled a niche somewhere. I’ve not seen any of the examples given here but they seem like good candidates.
Examples:
<li>Manimal</li>
<li>Heil Honey I'm Home!</li>
<li>Almost Human</li>
<li>Carnivàle</li>
Discussion
A key feature of this nomenclature is the distinction between categories 3 and 4. In looking for examples of shows that ended way to early (after one or two seasons, mainly) I discovered that those who have talked about this on the internet seem to make no distinction between a show that runs 12 years and then ended but “we want it back” and one that runs only a few seasons. I think they are very different.
Please enter your suggestions or complaints below. Not that there would ever be a difference of opinion about any of this.
Midori’s Floating World Cafe
Midori’s Floating World Cafe
Lizzie, got a job. It’s a pretty nice job, with benefits and a salary and everything. Not in her field (biology), but it is a job she likes. So I took her out for a congratulatory dinner, which ultimately gave me a chance to try a new restaurant. Also, we had been in a routine for a few months of meeting almost every week to work on a project, and those meetings had stopped due to scheduling issues (like, that she went and got a job …). It was time for another dose.
My plan was to trick Lizzie into determining where we were going to eat. This was going to be difficult. Lizzie is a quiet, unassuming and thoughtful person whose first inclination would be to accommodate my (or anyone else’s) preferences in matters such as this. It would be totally out of character for her to start out by telling me where we should go for dinner. But I wanted her to pick, partly because it was her celebration and partly because of a quirk I have. Sometimes I like to experience the preferences and choices of someone that I care for. I wanted Lizzie to suggest where to eat, and I wanted to try her favorite selections off the menu and probably drink what she was drinking and so on.
I’m still grinning at the conversation.
“So, where do you want to go?”
“Oh, anywhere, I don’t care.”
(And so on and so on…via email, in person, for three or four days. Then, finally, we’re in the car about to drive off to…somewhere.)
“So, have you eaten anyplace good lately?”
“Yeah, I like this new Japanese restaurant off Lake Street.”
“Oh. So when was the last time you ate there?”
“Two days ago.”
“Oh. So you probably don’t want to eat there again right away.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, there’s Greek.”
“I could do Greek.”
“We could just go over to Eat Street and see what happens.”
“We could.”
“Maybe Azia or some place.”
“We could.”
“You want to eat in your Japanese restaurant, right?”
“It’s my favorite place. I want to show it to you.”
“What will we order?”
“Eel. It’s my favorite.”
“And what will we–”
“Sake. Of course.”
“Okay, lead the way.”
And thusly, we proceeded to Midori’s Floating World Cafe on 27th Ave in South Minneapolis. At the time we ate there, it was right across the street from the old Resources Center for the America’s building, and next to The Real CMF’s favorite restaurant (to which I had not yet been). Subsequently, Midori’s has moved a couple of hundred feet away.
We had one of the noodle dishes, a biggish bottle of hot sake, and some sushi.
As we were ordering, I remembered that neither of us had brought along our List of Endangered Fish: Do Not Eat wallet insert, but we tried to do our best by staying away from sea mammals and anything that was really expensive.
It turns out that Lizzie and I have pretty much exactly the same taste in sushi: It’s all good, but there must be eel. We figured eel would be safe from an environmental point of view, but we later learned that we had that totally backwards. Eel is one of the worst things you can order from the menu if you care about the planet. Oh, well. We learn.
(Reposed)
I liked the fact that we were drinking hot sake. I had not had that since being in Japan a few years ago. In fact, I regaled Lizzie with a story about a fairly intensive foray into the world of hot sake at a bar in Kyoto. Apparently, the custom in Kyoto is for young men to hook up with a particular small neighborhood bar. These bars are all owned and run by women, who develop bonds with these young men and have a sort of motherly relationship with them. So I went to such a bar where two Japanese colleagues, both of whom work in Central Africa, had “grown up.”
Now, you have to understand that my Japanese is nonexistent, and my colleagues have hardly ever spent time in the English-speaking world, so their English sucked. My host in Japan, a woman who had lived for years in the U.S., was with us, and her English was perfect. But the main point of this gathering was for us Africanists to spend some time together. So, as it developed, Mother Bar Owner and my host (Hitomi) had a nice conversation about who knows what, in Japanese, while my two colleagues and I spend the evening reminiscing in KiSwahili. Much to the amusement of the occasional customer who wandered briefly into this tiny little establishment.
What was really funny was also too subtle for almost anyone to have noticed: We learned our KiSwahili in very different contexts. So, I was speaking with a Pygmy accent, one of my colleagues was speaking with a Chinese accent, and another was speaking with an Italian accent. That was funny.
I have three things to say about Midori’s Floating World Cafe. 1) It has a very nice atmosphere, a small establishment with a simple lineup of unpretentious tables and a sushi bar, family run, staffed with excellent servers. 2) The food is quite good. And 3) the prices are very reasonable.
Lizzie is living in what we used to call a “crash house”…the sort of place I misspent a fair amount of time in my youth. Her stories of life at home reminded me of my own stories, which made good comparisons, so I think we ended up making each other laugh a lot. Maybe we were a little boisterous, because when we got around to leaving, we were the only customers and the proprietor seemed really happy (to see us go?).
I highly recommend dinner with Lizzie. But since most of you can’t have that, I recommend that you try Midori’s Floating World Cafe in South Minneapolis with someone who makes you smile.
Midori’s Floating World Cafe is located on 2629 Lake Street, Minneapolis, which is a new location.
And speaking of sushi, this is the video of the famous Japanese Frilled Shark.
Believe It Or Not .. It's still true. A climate change song.
THIS IS BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT, I SAY!
Andy Revkin, time to sell your guitar!
Oh, and this one too:
(Hat tip Get Energy Smart)
Last May Was The Hottest May On Record WAIT WAIT HOLD ON A SEC
There has been a glitch in the data processing process at NASA and the word was sent out that they may be revising the May data. Stay tuned.
Please note May 2014 GISTEMP LOTI numbers preliminary due to a glitch with Chinese CLIMAT data. Update to follow pic.twitter.com/1hRF4iJA55
— NASA GISS (@NASAGISS) June 17, 2014
Thanks Chris Mooney for pointing this out.
For the period of the instrumental record, going back to 1881, May 2014 was the hottest May on record. See this post for more details.
Does keeping a cell phone in your pocket reduce male fertility?
The tl;dr: maybe a little but for benign reasons. If fertility is important to you and you are a man, don’t put hot things in your pockets. This may fall into the category of switching from tidy whities to boxer briefs.
A study came out in September suggesting that it does. It is a meta-analysis by Jessica Adams et all, published in Environmental International, called “Effect of mobile telephones on sperm quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis.”
The study considered the effects of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) on sperm motility (movement), viability, and concentration. As a meta-analysis, the study looked at several in vitro and in vivo analyses, combining the results, and using a statistical analysis to test the idea that RF-EMR has an effect on any one of these three variables. In total, ten studies were selected from a wider range of studies (the others were eliminated for various reasons) across which a total of 1492 sperm specimens were analyzed. The results, from the abstract:
Exposure to mobile phones was associated with reduced sperm motility (mean difference ? 8.1% (95% CI ? 13.1, ? 3.2)) and viability (mean difference ? 9.1% (95% CI ? 18.4, 0.2)), but the effects on concentration were more equivocal. The results were consistent across experimental in vitro and observational in vivo studies. We conclude that pooled results from in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that mobile phone exposure negatively affects sperm quality. Further study is required to determine the full clinical implications for both sub-fertile men and the general population.
Not all studies looked at all effects and there were other differences between them. See the original study (link above) to find all the details.
Of the nine studies that looked at motility, six indicated a reduction due to mobile phones. Five of the studies looked at viability, with four of the five indicating a negative effect. Six studies addressed concentration but with very inconsistent results.
An effect means little unless there is an explanation that makes sense. Several different ways in which RF-EMR could affect sperm are considered in this meta-analysis.
One possible cause is production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which could lead to DNA damage. ROS are molecules including Oxygen that happen in the normal day to day course of biological activity in cells but that can increase in frequency for a number of reasons, including, and most famously, ionizing radiation. Oxygen is a highly reactive element. When life first arose on earth, Oxygen was not commonly available and was generally destructive to the finely tuned molecular processes associated with living form (probably, and I oversimplify). But life processes tended to release oxygen from molecules in which it was more or less safely sequestered. By and by life processes evolved that handled oxygen by re-sequestering it, life processes evolved that made use of the highly reactive nature of oxygen.
An analogy for this is Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) in the movie xXx. Cage is a dangerous out of control tough guy who has capabilities that the government (represented by Agent Augustus Eugene Gibbons, played by Samuel Jackson) requires for an important task. Cage is tamed, in a sense, so he can carry out the government’s bidding, but at the same time he remains dangerous. There are many movies with this theme. Imprisoned highly capable and dangerous bad guys are given a chance to play a useful role; they are needed because of there capabilities, but their capabilities are dangerous ones, so their exploitation comes with a risk. The exploitation of one of nature’s most dangerous elements, oxygen, provides life with some incredible capabilities, but as a risk.
Oxygen is usefully employed by nature. Oxygen damages biological processes. Nature employs counter measures to minimize that danger (i.e., “anti-oxidants”). But sometimes those counter measures are not enough, either because a very rare form of ROS comes along, one that is not accounted for by life’s counter-measures, or because a counter-measure is simply overwhelmed (or otherwise interfered with).
So in this scenario, RF-EMF cause the generation of a greater quantity of ROS, or especially damaging ROS. My understanding is that this is generally considered unlikely because the range of RF-EMF produced by cell phones is thought to not be physically capable of influencing ROS quality or quantity. However, the authors of this study argue that it is possible:
A small amount of ROS has an important functional role in sperm capacitation, the acrosome reaction, and binding to the oocyte (Garrido et al., 2004). Experimental disruption of the flow of electrons through the mitochondrial electron transport chain has been shown to increase ROS production significantly, with negative consequences for sperm motility (Koppers et al., 2008). In vitro evidence found EMR emitted at the same frequency as mobile phones increased mitochondrial ROS production and DNA fragmentation in sperm, and decreased motility and viability ( De Iuliis et al., 2009). The trends seen in this meta-analysis are consistent with these effects.
A second kind of effect is thermal. Sperm normally develop, in humans (and perhaps mammals in general) in a narrow range of temperatures. Increasing temperatures could interfere with this. There are two ways in which temperature increases could occur. One is that the RF-EMF excites molecules at the site of spermatogenesis, increasing temperatures. RF-EMF in the range emitted by cell phones can certainly do this if there is enough energy. This is what a micro-wave oven is. This particular thermal effect is minimal with cell phones. Were it not minimal we would be slowly cooking our hands and faces while we talked on the phone. Still, at least one study cited by Adams et all shows an increase in heat of people’s faces while they are taking on a cell phone. It is possible that a very small effect that normally has no biological significance would affect sperm production because it is sensitive to heat changes. This effect is considered to be very unlikely as it is simply too small.
However, cell phones also become warm, and this heat could be transmitted to the site of spermatogenesis. I learned about hot cell phones shortly after getting my first smart phone. I had left some apps running (I think the camera app was the culprit) and blanked the screen. The phone sat in my pocket for a while and I noticed a very uncomfortable sensation of increased heat. When I took the phone out of my pocket it was quite hot. It is possible that this made my sperm unhappy.
This study has some severe limitations, some of which are discussed by the authros.
Heterogeneity, that is variation between studies that is greater than expected due to sampling error … is an issue in most meta-analyses. Heterogeneity was high in all our meta-analyses (I2 > 88%) … However, our meta-analysis did include nearly 1500 samples, which increases confidence in the results. The heterogeneity in the motility meta-analysis was partially due to the differences in mobile phone exposure times, as the subgroup analyses demonstrated. The high heterogeneity and relatively low number of studies also precluded meaningful assessment of publication bias… However, sensitivity analyses demonstrated minimal differences when individual studies were excluded, with a tendency for our results to be conservative.
The possibility of confounding variables influencing the results of the observational studies cannot be ruled out. For example, participant age and smoking status were not consistently reported, so it is possible that these affected the observational studies since they are known to affect some semen quality parameters … [S]tudy populations taken from fertility clinics, as used in many studies on male fertility, may not be representative of the general population, as they are likely to contain a higher proportion of men with sperm parameters outside the WHO reference range.
Again, see the original study for more detailed discussion of these limitations.
It is possible that studies that fail to show an effect are simply unpublished and if available would balance out the meta-analysis. The degree of effect is small, so if there was random variation in outcome and several studies on one side of the mean outcome are removed, a small effect would be expected. There may be something about men who keep their cell phones in their pockets that relates to infertility. That seems like a strange idea, but if, for example, thermal effects are important, simply keeping numerous objects in one’s pockets could affect air flow and heat distribution in and near the nether regions. There is no control here; there is not a study of men who keep objects that are identical to cell phones but electronically inert (placebo-phones, if you will) in their pockets. Perhaps men who keep their cell phones on belt clips represent the higher-sperm production men while those who keep their cell phones hidden away have lower sperm production. A control study that looks at external cell phone attachment devices, and probably pocket protectors and other paraphernalia, in relation to fertility and overall manliness would be … well, probably not fundable so forget it.
The important outcome of this study, I think, is that a careful look via many studies of the effects of cell phones on a biological process known to be rather delicate (the making of sperm) shows only a minor effect at best, with much equivocation on whether there is an effect at all. Furthermore, the most likely effect is simply heat, having an object in your pocket that generates extra heat in a region where evolution had previously designed a cooling mechanism, a dangling scrotum that normally keeps the external testes away from the body.
There is the possibility that if anything is happening here at all, it would effect sperm quality in other ways, including DNA or chromosomal damage. That would be important to know. Female egg production is very different from male sperm production, so the two cases are not very analogous, but if there is an effect on sperm it might be worth asking if there is an effect on age. If the effect is anything other than heat, i.e., if it has to do with RF-EMR affecting molecules in cells, then something very important may be going on other than a small effect on fertility. Affecting molecular activity with radio waves might be a thing, and an area of future research and the possible development of medical diagnosis or even treatment. Most of the claims of radio waves for therapy or treatment, however, are wooish bunk. It seems that more study is merited, but for interesting academic reasons and not because this is a clear and present danger.
How to watch #WorldCup #Soccer in the US for Free
Around the world, productivity of businesses, service, all things related to the progress of civilization, and pretty much everything else will be delayed and repeatedly interrupted from today on through some time in July as the quadrennial event known as World Cup Soccer is played out. This is just like the Olympics but much much longer and there is only one sport. Plus, there are only a few countries involved. And, of those, most are sacrificial lambs — only a few of the countries that play ever win.
Every one in the world can watch World Cup Soccer for free by just turning on the TV or hooking up on the Internet. Everyone.
In the United States, however, Disney bought the game out and if you want to watch the game and hear commentary in English and such you have to Pay the Walt. This is done in various ways that I don’t fully understand, so I can’t give you any advice as to how to spend your money that way.
But, Univision, an international network that happens to be Spanish Language, has an on line live stream of the games.
To watch World Cup Soccer for Free, CLICK HERE and check out the site. If there is a game on you’ll be able to click through. No hay problema. Poco los comentaristas dicen que los asuntos de todos modos. Es en su mayoría sólo los nombres de los jugadores están citados el balón rebota sin sentido de un pie al otro y la cabeza a cabeza y los pies a la cabeza y la cabeza a los pies. ¿Sí?
I watched the game for a few minutes today, just long enough to see Brazil score it’s second point. Unfortunately, el punto fue para el equipo contrario! Hahaha!
Best applications to install on your new Mac
What are the best applications, free or cheap, to install on your iMac for basic tasks and productivity?
This post is to guide you in the careful and considered upgrade to your newly acquired iMac or other Mac OSX machine, especially for non-Mac experts. For each of the categories of work you may want to do with your computer, I suggest a number of applications beginning, where possible, with the applications already on your computer, then moving on to free alternatives, then inexpensive paid alternatives. In many cases there is a high end expensive alternative that is probably very wonderful but with one exception I wont be talking about those.
I’m writing this in part from the point of view of a Linux user, who has not been involved with Microsoft Windows except when threatened with waterboarding (and I took the waterboarding), and who mainly uses my computer for writing, because I’m mostly a writer. (See this post if you are considering installing Ubuntu Linux.) I do, however, mess around a bit with images; I do not claim to be a photographer but my work involves manipulating photographs and images. Also, I’m a cross platform kind of guy, so that factors into some (but not all) of my suggestions. I like Open Source Software but frankly, if there is a much better option that is non free for a certain use, I’m willing to pay a reasonable (meaning low) price for it. So some of my suggestions will cost.
Browsing
Browsing is of course the most important thing you do with your computer, because this is how you get your news, check your Facebook feed, tweet, and all that. Mac comes with one of the best browser out there, Safari, so just use that. This is an especially good choice if you have multiple iOS/OSX machines and use the same Apple ID on all of them. Your stuff will be integrated.
This does not work well for me because I switch back and forth across platforms, so instead I use …
Chrome/chromium/whatever you want to call it.
Install the Google Browser made of Chrome. If you are at all cross platform, you’ll want this because it is very good at sharing bookmarks and such and it runs on all the platforms you’ll ever likely use. Each instance of Chrome on different machines, including your iPad, can be signed into with the same account and there will be a certain amount of syncing, mostly bookmarks and such.
Writing and Words
Text Editor
I do most of my writing with a text editor (emacs in Linux) and most of what I write ends up in blogs. Using a word processor messes up the text. Text is best. (We’ll look at word processors below.) I generally prefer to write outside of the WordPress platform (all my blogs are WordPress these days) using Markdown. I’ve written about Markdown here. It is a simple writing “language” where you insert symbols to cause headings, italics, links, etc to be created later by a magical process.
You have two built in text editors on your Mac. One is called “TextEdit.” There is nothing fancy about it, which is appropriate for a text editor. One key feature of TexEdit is that is uses the cloud, so you can share text files across your OSX devices. However, the files you put on this part of the cloud are not available to you using iOS, because for some reason Apple has not implemented TexEdit on iOS. This is probably one of the best example of why the Apple Cloud as currently implemented is a toy, at best. (The next iteration of the operating system promises to fix this, coming out in the Fall 2014.)
Other than that, TextEdit, for most purposes, this is fine. There are many other free or inexpensive text editing solutions some of which give you that cloud overlap. I’ve tried them all. I am not especially impressed.
A second text editor that comes with the system is called “Notes.” This is mainly for writing simple notes that are very quickly upgraded, using a cloud-like thingie but it is not “the cloud” … just a hidden in the background cloud … across your devices. I put my grocery lists on this, and I use it to jot down notes for stuff I’m writing, etc. But really, you can use it as a regular text editor as well up to a point.
Since I use emacs on my Linux machine, you may wonder why I don’t use emacs on the Mac, because it is available. Well, I’ve done that but I don’t like the implementation of emacs on mac. It is a bit kludgy and ugly. Somehow it feels wrong. But you could do that if you are an emacs maven, which you probably are not.
A very good free text editor that has excellent features is Bare Bones Software’s TextWrangler. It is like TextEdit with more features. It is nice. Free. But I’m not going to recommend it because I personally think that if you are going beyond TextEditor to the next level of functionality, you will benefit by shelling out money and buying Bare Bones Softwares’ super duper editor, BBEdit. The motto Bare Bones uses for this application is “It doesn’t suck” … and it is true.
You can download a trial version of BBEdit, which I recommend, to see if its features are good for you. I like the layout, and I use text searching, grep-style (regular expression) manipulation, sorting, etc. frequently enough to make it worth while. If you like it, then buy it. It is a bit expensive for a text editor but for me it is worth it because I virtually live inside the text editor. It’s about 50 bucks.
Marked for Markdown
This is the magical processs I mention above. I recommend using “Marked” as your markdown processer. You write something in a text editor. Then you save the file and grab the little icon on the Mac title bar for the text editor, and move it to the Marked icon on your Dock. Magically, Marked opens up with the text all converted and formated and stuff. The most likely thing you’ll do then is to copy and paste the HTML code into your browser but maybe you’ll make a PDF or RTF file. It is the best thing since sliced bread.
WordProcessor
You can get Pages as your Mac word processor if you want. Let me know how it goes. I found it hard to use because I’m too accustomed to other word processors. Frankly I think it is an immature program that I’ll probably try five years from now if it still exist.
For a long time the only word processor I used on a Mac was Apache OpenOffice or LibraOffice. People fight over which one is better. They are identical except that the most recent version of one might be a little newer than the most recent version of the others. LibraOffice emerged as an alternative to OpenOffice when a big giant company nobody trusted bought out OpenOffice. So the Libra in LibraOffice is meant to be revolutionary, freedom fighting, all that. I use LibraOffice on my Linux machine because that is what is installed automatically with the version of Linux I use, and I use OpenOffice on my Mac for no particular reason.
These two Office programs come with a Word Processor, a Spreadsheet program that is quite nice, and a Presenter (like “PowerPoint”) program that is also very good.
That is the free alternative, and it is a good alternative, and you should just do it.
However, you can also install Microsoft Office for Mac, which includes Microsoft Word on your computer. It will cost you. How much? Nobody can say, because Microsoft has a pricing scheme that is not understandable by humans. In my case, since my wife and I share our desktop computer at home, it was free because she was eligible for a free copy of it. If it is free for you, you might want to try it.
I like Word’s handling of Tracking Changes. That is really the only thing I need to do because the publishing industry is totally locked into Word. So, when I’m working with an editor on a project, we have to go back and forth with Track Changes and Comments. OpenOffice’s Writer does not handle those things as nicely as MS Word does, so I’m glad to have MS Word on my computer, though it does make me throw up a little in my mouth when I say that. But yes, Microsoft makes a good word processor.
I’ve almost never had OpenOffice or LibraOffice crash on my Linux machine or the Mac. Since installing Microsoft Office a few weeks ago, Excel, the spreadsheet, has crashed, would not recover my document, and I lost data, once. Just sayin.
Graphics
Built In Preview
The first thing you need to know about graphics is that the “preview” application that comes with the Mac does more than you think it does. Open a graphic in preview (quite likely, by just clicking on it) and poke around. Especially, pick “Tools.”
You can annotate the image. You can adjust color. You can crop. You can scale it, flip it, and rotate it.
Frankly, the vast majority of time you need to manipulate an image, this is the stuff you need to do. Preview is lighting fast, reliable, built in, default, and you should just learn to use it automatically as the first thing you do when you need to mess with an image. You’ll find yourself hardly ever using other software.
iPHoto and Aperture
I hate these programs, though I do use Aperture on a limited basis. I don’t get the way they work. They take forever to load. They are slow and clunky. I believe iPhoto is free on the Mac (and available for the iPad), and Aperture costs money. Between the two, Aperture is so much better than iPhoto that if you have to use one or the other a lot, spring for Aperture. But really, they are a pain.
One of the best things you get with either of these is access to your cloud-based photos. This means your iPad and iPhone photos can be synced to your desktop and accessed. Again, the fact that it has to be done this way is a function of Apple’s Cloud being a toy, and not really that useful. Again, this may all get fixed this Fall when the new system comes out. If you don’t need these things, wait.
Gimp
The Gimp, free, is an image manipulation program originally built for Linux. I use it on the Mac. It is very good for me because I’ve been using it so long I know how it works. But, the Mac version is a bit clunky and buggy, so I don’t recommend it, but I just wanted to tell you that it exists.
Pixelmator is the closest thing I’ve use on a Mac to Adobe Photoshop or The Gimp that is also cheap (but not free) and works very well, once you learn to use it. It also uses the cloud, but again, you can only get to images it had created. This is where the cloud really breaks down because one might want to do multiple things using multiple different software applications, to one image, which means you simply can’t use the cloud because the cloud stores files on a program by program basis. Anyway, Pixelmator requires a bit of a learning curve but once you’ve got it it’s good.
iDraw
I use iDraw for anything that needs vector manipulation, but it also does some pixel manipulation. Increasingly, I find myself using iDraw and Preview together. iDraw is also available on the iPad, so if you have it installed on both you can manipulate images from more than one location. I don’t ever do that so I can’t vouch for it.
Presentation
PowerPoint Like Applications
If you installed MS Office you’ve got PowerPoint. Good luck with that. I don’t like it, don’t use it. If you installed LibraOffice or OpenOffice, you’ve got Presenter. I like it better than power point, and until recently I used it often.
Keynote
Save your presentations in the cloud. Make sure your iPad or iPhone has downloaded the presentation before you take off to give your talk, because you might be heading for no-internet land. Plug the device into the projector and most likely it will just work. As opposed to Powerpoint or Presenter on your laptop which may require you to reboot and restart everything a few times.
Regarding inter-changeability between Presenter, PowerPoint, and Keynote: Forgetaboutit. Sure, you can do it, but whether or not that works changes with each release of each of these programs. This just isn’t something you can rely on.
Annoyingly, some of the features you use on desktop Keynote will not work on iPad Keynote, including some fonts. This is very bad because most likely you’ll design your presentation on the desktop and show it with the iPad. But the degree to which this is the case is reducing with every version, and it hasn’t actually caused me trouble yet. But check your prsentation on the iPad before you leave your desk, just to be sure.
Spreadsheets
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here. I have typically used OpenOffice Calc and, on my Linux machines, Gnumeric. I recently installed Excel (see above) on the Mac, and I use that now all the time. MS Excel on the Mac is strange, with some functionality removed or hard to get to and it can be a bit frustrating, but if you are a spreadsheet guru you will get past all of that. OpenOffice or LibraOffice Calc is great, works fine, and interacts with Excel fairly well. But frankly, if you are in a business environment where every one sues Excel, you’ll need to get Excel and there is nothing I can help you with here, dear power user.
Apple’s Numbers spreadsheet…
… is a toy. Don’t bother.
Other Things
I’m not going to talk about video because I’m not advanced in that area. I use iMovie, it seems fine. I use the note archiving software Evernote and the iMac version of Evernote is great. I don’t use a Twitter client because they all suck or go out of date as Twitter changes its API. I just use Twitter on the web.
Some other time we can talk about utilities and such, but for now I’ll mention only one program that you may find useful when your hard disk starts getting full: Duplicate Detective. If you have duplicate files filling your hard drive, this application, which takes forever to run because it simply takes time to be sure two files are exact duplicates, may save the day.
I would also like to talk about email software but I can’t because it all sucks. Apple Mail does not work well with Google, and all the alternatives I’ve tried have problems. If you have any suggestions, let me know. If you are a developer, I hope you see this as an open niche and fill it!
XNconvert
Scrivener
Lin
Finder replacement
iDraw
Gimp
The Consensus on Climate Change
Sadly, a large percentage of Americans are under the impression that climate scientists do not agree on the reality of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). A lot of people are simply wrong about this. They think that there is a great deal of controversy among the scientists who study the Earth’s climate. But there isn’t. One way we know this is from a study done by John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce, called “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”
In that study, the authors analyzed “the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’.” They learned that “66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming.” Among the papers that expressed a scientific position on the topic, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
The study was actually a bit conservative, as in order to be counted as part of that ~3% not supporting the consensus position on AGW a paper did not really have to be fully against the idea. Also, since the study was done, the consensus has increased. I asked study author Dana Nuccitelli about more recent changes in consensus, and he told me, “The consensus is growing over time, and reached 98% in 2011 (the last year included in our survey). So by now the minimizers/deniers are probably in the 1-2% range in the peer-reviewed literature (contrary to the ‘crumbling consensus’ claims).”
The other day I was giving talks at a local high school, and between classes, found myself chatting with a science teacher who had just completed a module on climate change and AGW. She asked me, “Isn’t there now research that shows that the consensus isn’t really as high as previously thought? Or is that bogus? Sounds bogus to me.”
Yes. Bogus.
I’m not sure what research the teacher was referring to (it was just something she had heard about) but there is a paper just published in “Energy Policy” by economist Richard Tol, who as far as I can tell has been a naysayer of climate science for some time now. Tol’s abstract says:
A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change… This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook’s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.
Nuccitelli has responded to Tol’s paper, in a post at Skeptical Science called “Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus.”
Concern Tol-ing
Tol is practicing a special kind of science denialism here, sometimes called “seeding doubt” or as I prefer it, “casting seeds of doubt on infertile ground.” In other contexts this is called “concern trolling” or the “You’re not helping” gambit. The first of two paragraphs of the Conclusion section of Tol’s paper reads (emphasis added),
The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).
Let’s get straight that Cook et al is not flawed, despite Tol’s complaints.
Tol’s main complaint is in the coding of the abstracts. He claims that it is imperfect. Well, duh. This is, essentially, social science research, and coding of text is imperfect. Tol makes the claim that the imperfections, if corrected, might bring the consensus down to a dismal 91%. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about that, but if he is right, we are not impressed.
Tol’s key point is that the papers that are coded as not making a claim include some that do. He then incorrectly calculates how many of of those, if coded “correctly” there would be, and using this, downgrades the consensus to 91%
Nuccitelli explains in detail, in his post, how Tol’s re-analysis is badly done (see the amazing graphic at the top of this post) (go read it) and notes:
In reality, as our response to Tol’s critique (accepted by Energy Policy but not yet published) shows, there simply aren’t very many peer-reviewed papers that minimize or reject human-caused global warming. Most of the papers that were reconciled ‘towards stronger rejection’ went from explicit to implicit endorsement, or from implicit endorsement to no position. For abstracts initially rated as ‘no position,’ 98% of the changes were to endorsement categories; only 2% were changed to rejections.
Nuccitelli also notes that a separate study indicates that Tol’s method is flawed in the sense that no matter what data are used, the consensus will be decreased as an artifact of the methodology. Nuccitelli notes “…by making this mistake, Tol effectively conjured approximately 300 papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming out of thin air, with no evidence that those papers exist in reality. As a result, his consensus estimate falls apart under cursory examination.”
Amazingly, when the Consensus research team fixed Tol’s methodology but applied the same question about coding papers in the no-position category, and re-calculated the percent consensus, it went up by 0.1%. Also, as Nuccitelli points out the Cook et al paper is not alone, and there have been a number of other studies that show essentially the same level of consensus among papers and/or scientists.
So, the consensus is real and isn’t going away. As is also the case with Anthropogenic Global Warming.
From now on all commercial air flights will include this
A Call To Arms about Climate Change
Tens of millions of red blooded Americans, Tea Partiers, were called to Washington DC the other day to overthrow the government. A few hundreds or so showed up.
Now, Bill McKibben, of 350.org, is calling Americans to New York City, not to overthrow the government but to talk some sense into it. I’ll bet more than a few hundred people show up!
McKibben wrote an item for Rolling Stones that you should read HERE.
This is an invitation, an invitation to come to New York City. An invitation to anyone who’d like to prove to themselves, and to their children, that they give a damn about the biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced.
My guess is people will come by the tens of thousands, and it will be the largest demonstration yet of human resolve in the face of climate change. Sure, some of it will be exciting – who doesn’t like the chance to march and sing and carry a clever sign through the canyons of Manhattan? But this is dead-serious business, a signal moment in the gathering fight of human beings to do something about global warming before it’s too late to do anything but watch. You’ll tell your grandchildren, assuming we win. So circle September 20th and 21st on your calendar, and then I’ll explain.
350.org has a page devoted to the march, HERE. Please click through and get busy!
The Facebook Page is HERE.
The image above is from an earlier march, details here.
And now a little mind-blowing diversion…
Wheel of Fortune #Fail UPDATED TWICE
You have probably already seen the cringworthy Youtube Video of the famous Wheel of Fortune Fail in which a college student makes three awful blunders and loses the game. Well, I’m here to tell you about another Wheel of Fortune Fail that is even worse. Pat Sajak, the famous host of the long running game show, turns out to be a rabid Climate Change Science Denialist.
Here’s a recent tweet by Pat:
I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends. Good night.
— Pat Sajak (@patsajak) May 20, 2014
Here’s a screenshot of the same tweet showing some of Pat’s loyal followers telling you, dear reader, what they think of you:
Apparently, Sajak is well known (to everyone but me, until just now, apparently) as a science denialist. Get Energy Smart has some coverage of this, including references to blog posts Sajak has written about climate change. For example (see GESN’s post for context):
Is it just me, or is it warm in here? which focuses on the old canard that global cooling was predicted 30 years ago so why should we trust scientists about Global Warming along with arguments that it’s all natural. (For ammo to shoot this down,Grist’s quick Sajak slapdown references two items of their great Skeptics’ Guide: Global Cooling and natural cycle arguments.) Global Warming: What Are You Willing to Do? In this, with a lot of arrogance and disdain, Sajak actually strongly states an ethical and moral dilemma that faces all who believe in Global Warming. More on this one below.
Sajak has taken down these posts.
No more Wheel of Fortune in my house, I can tell you that. Unless it is to watch the show to see who advertises on it. So I can not buy their products!
UPDATE:
Here is a petition to sign from Forecast the Facts.
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Other posts of interest:
- How to get rid of spiders in your house
- Why is your poop green?
- How many cells are there in the human body?
- Is there really a plot hole in Harry Potter Goblet of Fire?
- How long is a human generation?
- Is blog ever really blue?
- How to not get caught plagiarizing
- The origin of the domestic chicken
- What are the three necessary and sufficient conditions of Natural Selection?
- How do I get rid of foot fungus?
- Which is better, Tap Water or Bottled Water?
- Has Global Warming stopped?
Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, which is also an alternative history of the Skeptics Movement.