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The BBC missed a trick. After showing a phone number on screen in an episode of Doctor Who, fans naturally called it up. But the number went nowhere. What it should have done, is played a recorded message with a password to a secret website, and a series of clues leading to a prize hidden somewhere in the UK. That would have fitted right in with the way intergalactic dramas always seem to culminate Cardiff or London.
A Doctor Who alternate reality game. Would have been great fun.
Gordon Brown says we should stop wasting food because it’s making the prices go up. He should mind his own business. I’ve written before that food “waste” isn’t really waste: people are simply trading money for convenience when they buy more food than they need. It should also be obvious that as food prices rise, that convenience becomes more expensive and people will automatically throw less away.
Why does Brown feel the need to sound like someone’s mother?
Update: Guy Herbert explains it better.
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 6:36 PM EDT
I like watching the betting odds change as a game progresses. I wish I had put money on Federer just before Nadal lost those championship points at the end of the third set. Or maybe I don’t. Still waiting for the rain to stop to find out who wins.
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 7:13 PM EDT
The BBC has a report about a Texas man who shot burglars and was let off without charges. I’m not sure why the BBC reports this particular case when this sort of thing happens all the time without the BBC mentioning it. After all, Texas is a civilised place where one does not expect to break into another’s house unchallenged. Perhaps it is because the burglars were black, and there were protestors who claimed the shooting was race related. The reporter says this is an example of America’s “difficult” relationship with guns. Seems like a perfectly healthy relationship to me.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 10:01 PM EDT
There is no evidence that salt is bad for you, and too little salt is definitely bad for you. A local council is handing out salt shakers with fewer holes. It is illegal to advertise Marmite to children because it is too salty.
The government is spending £100 billion on wind energy, while E.ON have admitted that they’ll need 90% of the capacity of wind farms to be backed up by other sources for when there is no wind. Nobody is teaching physics properly any more.
People are importing medicine from India because pointless regulations push the price up here. Canadian human rights courts are going after comedians now.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 5:25 PM EDT
Now it’s text messages that will be subject to roaming price caps. Why don’t they just nationalise mobile phone companies and be done with it? It’s obviously just about MEPs who don’t like their high phone bills. Don’t their expenses cover the costs?
I’ve written about this with much vitriol before.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties at 6:12 AM EDT
On Tuesday I attended a Skeptics in the Pub evening, at which a talk was given by atmospheric physicist Professor Fred Singer.
His talk focused on why the data in the IPCC reports does not match up with its conclusions in the summary for policy makers. It was all fairly un-contentious stuff, problems that all but the most ardent global warmer will admit exist: the models have not been validated, predict troposhperic warming we don’t see in the observations and are uncertain about clouds; carbon dioxide levels don’t correlate with recent temperatures because CO2 has been going up and up while temperature of late has remained largely flat. These are arguments I am familiar with from following the work of people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts. Singer invoked Popper, pointing out that concensus means little when one piece of evidence can refute a hypothesis. Surely he would be popular with skeptics used to having to explain the scientific method to creationists!
But it was not that simple. People I assumed would be a natural audience for Singer were in fact highly skeptical of him. I heard mutterings from many in the audience along the lines of, “I know when I’m being fed bullshit, and this is bullshit.” But skepticism is not about having a “bullshit detector”. It’s about critical thinking and considering the evidence. A maxim oft quoted by skeptics is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It seems clear to me that the IPCC is the one making the extraordinary claim, that they are 90% certain that climate change is anthropogenic. How can they be so certain when there is only one Earth’s atmosphere to measure so we can’t simply remove the effects of man and see what happens? And here is Professor Singer explaining why the IPCC’s evidence is not so extraordinary.
One questioner seemed to equate Singer with conspiracy theorists. How can 2,500 scientists be either wrong or lying? Singer tried to explain how the IPCC works: that it is not made up entirely of scientists, that even those who disagree are counted among the 2,500, and that the summary is written separately from the report, by political delegates. It does not take a conspiracy to explain the discrepancies. The problems Singer presented are indeed debated heartily in the scientific community, but because they are complicated they are glossed over by the mainstream media. Politicians have their own reasons for not drawing attention to them.
I am skeptical of climate change alarmism for reasons I have stated before. The models don’t make accurate predictions and there are big problems with all the data sources except for the satellites, which are inconclusive. I was surprised that this was news to so many self-described skeptics.
Singer’s report is available online. It includes a graph (figure 3b on page 4) of paleo temperatures without using tree ring proxies. This graph makes the 20th century look unexceptional. McIntyre has been very skeptical of tree ring proxies. The latest is that leaves appear to remain at a constant temperature, casting more doubt over them.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism at 1:15 PM EDT
Today seems to be the day for it.
Photographers are increasingly harassed. The government doesn’t want you to take pictures of a couple signing the wedding register. You’ll need a CRB check to help out at the scout group. The government wants you to discriminate in some cases, but not in others. Hillary and Obama want to decide how much profit is ok.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties, News at 11:57 AM EDT
In Britain, only the criminals are armed. A doorman writes about how this affects his work.
I’ve spent more than a decade working as a nightclub doorman. I’ve been involved in hundreds of violent incidents, including many away from the club. I can state unequivocally that in situations where some of these punks decide they’re going to pick on myself, or someone with me, with the intention of stealing our property, terrorising us or just for shits and giggles, on the occasions I’ve been armed, the situation has suddenly resolved itself when I produce a weapon. It’s true that the people who come after you with weapons are cowardly fucks, so much so that even when they massively outnumber you, if you present a viable weapon they are unwilling to take the risk of even one of them being hospitalised. Predatory criminals prey upon people they perceive as weak. There is a massive fucking difference - not recognised in law - between carrying a weapon and initiating force or aggression with it and carrying a concealed weapon purely for defence of yourself and others.
The way the attitudes to and laws regarding self-defence in this country work do everything to disempower and terrorise the ordinary citizen, whilst maximising the power that the wannabe gangster fuckwads then have over them.
I’ve also had dozens of very negative experiences with the police in this regard - when as the default monopoly on force, they have been called to deal with an incident involving armed shits and, either failed to turn up (even though we know they have units in the area), turn up and watch from a distance and - in several cases, turn up, watch what happens, then come and harass us (the door team). I can’t express in words the frustration and anger this has led to in the past and I’m willing to go on record with most of this, along with many other lads who can share similar experiences with you. In many cases the police actually facilitate the operation of these gangs, not defend people against them.
Unfortunately the media is often complicit in keeping this kind of thing off of the radar. Here’s a recent example: Reporting in the Sheffield Star on a murder in a Sheffield nightclub last weekend. The story mentions “Two other men, both in their 20s, were also injured. One worked at the club and he was treated in hospital for a cut to the stomach and later released.” Those “two other men” were doormen who were trying to save Brett, who was killed, they were among four doormen at the venue who all received stab / knife wounds as a result of trying to save the victim (n.b. batons - if they had them- could have foiled at least some of the attacks). The lad with the stomach wound is in fact still in hospital.
Here’s the absolute nugget of gold though, the article finishes: “”We are still trying to find out exactly what happened, the club was busy at the time and we’re appealing for anyone with information to come forward,” a Police spokesman said.”. Here’s something else the article fails to mention: Two of the wounded doormen came out of the nightclub covered in blood, there were at this point already lots of police officers outside the building. One of the lads demanded that the police go in to stop more people getting hurt and arrest the people involved. The police refused. The doorlad then said “you’re all fucking useless”. They then arrested him for a public order offence. Meanwhile the knife attacker somehow managed to escape the building.
This isn’t a one off incident. This is part of a recurring pattern with police (and “gang” behaviour). Don’t get me wrong. The police aren’t always like this and there’s no way I’m of the ACAB disposition. However, it is a regular occurrence, especially when it is a major violent incident - somehow the police consistently seem unable to get involved or even turn up at the most serious altercations. The least violent offences are punished vigourously, whilst the most violent appear to be given free rein.
– Posted by a doorman on a private forum.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 10:55 AM EDT
Increasingly these days, people want instant gratification. There’s no point fighting it. If people think they can get 90% of the benefit of product A, for 20% of the effort by buying product B, it’s a perfectly rational choice for them to switch to product B. Producers of A can read the market signals and switch to production of B, and everyone wins.
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 9:42 AM EDT