I have no interest in baseball but...

This article makes me want to read Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

The article makes an interesting point about free market ideology. The baseball market is extremely competitive and accurate metrics are available and widely publicised yet it was operating so inefficiently that Billy Beane was able to rip it to pieces by being the only rational actor. Why did it take so long? What other "free markets" are in an inefficient equilibrium due to all actors operating irrationally?

Whitespace separated lists

I'm trying to figure out a nice way to do lists in F++ while not requiring commas as separators and also taking advantage of the difference between \n and " " to avoid a layer of parens. By lists I really mean function argument lists and elements (I won't call them statements) in blocks of code. It seems like I should be able to make \n mean "next item in implicit list" but it's a bit tricky figuring out which list is the implicit list. Below are some examples of what I'd like to be able to write and what I'd like it to be equivalent to.

With whitepsace	Explicit	Notes
f 1 2 3	f(1, 2, 3)	Nothing special.
f(1 g 2 3 4)	f(1, g(2, 3), 4)	The \n at the end of the "g" line terminates the g() function call and moves us onto the next argument for f().
{ x = f 1 y = f 1 2 3 z = f 1 2 \ 3 w = f g 2 3 v = f g 2 3 }	{ x = f(1); y = f(1, 2, 3); z = f(1, 2, 3); w = f; # still not sure if that's f or f() g(2, 3); v = f; g(2, 3); }	Here the "z" line uses \ for continuation and so the \n is treated as just as list-separator space. The "w" line does not grab the "g". Neither does the "v" line because indentation is irrelevant!.

So what rules will result in parsing the above the way I want? Perhaps any explicitly delimited list containing a raw \n (ie not preceded by \) gets treated as 1 element per line and that's that. Or I could make function calls special. I think that's mainly where the fun is. Since they always start with a symbol, you know when you've encountered a function and if the symbol isn't followed by "(" then it ends at the next raw "\n". I can say a function call is symbol "(" args* ")" # separated by any kind of whitespace or symbol args* # separated by any whitespace except raw \n

Bjorn Lomborg - climate denier

Interesting article about Bjorn Lomborg, pointing out many (seemingly respectable) people's opinion that he is a deliberate bullshitter. While I have no reason to doubt it, it seems odd that someone who seems so scientifically dubious would be asked to give the first "Opinion" segment in Nature's podcast (4th Oct 2007, mp3, transcript). They did say in the introduction that they were interested in giving a platform to interesting voices but still...

Letter to the editor: bio-fuels vs food

Most of this comes from George Monbiot's recent article entitled "An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity".

Sir,

James Gleason repeats his usual points about climate change (Monday
December 3rd) but for a change, I find we something to agree with -
the impact of bio-fuels on food supplies for the poorest people in the
world.

The use of bio-fuel made from organic waste or grown on idle
agricultural land might have helped to reduce our use of oil but that
is not what is happening. Instead, land previously used to grow food
is being converted to grow fuel crops, in some countries, tropical
forests are being slashed and burned for the same purpose.

When you factor in the energy needed to farm and refine them with
current technologies, the environmental benefits of bio-fuels are
quite slim. Burning a forest to plant fuel crops eliminates the
benefit entirely and turns the whole thing into a net loss for the
environment.

Some foods can also be fuel crops, for example Swaziland is now making
fuel from casava while 40% of its people are facing food shortage.

Even the IMF is warning that demand for bio-fuel is pushing up food
prices for those who can least afford it.

Western governments must reevaluate their policies and targets for
bio-fuels and at the very least end subsidies,

Update:Published without edits I think.

Letter to the editor: more climate change

Sir,

Robert O'Sullivan complains about the "non-solution put forward" in my
letter. I put forward no solution at all in my letter, I am simply
trying to show that there is a real and urgent problem. He calls me an
"alarmist" but has yet to make any real argument that this is a false
alarm.

Mr O'Sullivan brings up Homer Simpson's again. I agree that Homer has
something valuable to contribute. How we will have hamburgers if we
have to kill all of the farting cows? A funny question but with a
serious side to it.

I believe many people who deny the reality of man-made climate change
do not do so on the basis of scientific argument. They deny the
reality because they do not want to face questions like Homer's or
questions like "how will I have my holidays in the sun if I have to
pay for the full impact of the pollution it will cause?".

The fact is that someone must pay for it. Maybe it's someone in a
flood in Bangladesh or someone in California who's house has been
incinerated or someone in Tuvalu who's home disappeared below below
sea-level a few years ago. Or maybe it's a member of your family in
the Ireland of the future.

These are hard questions and we might not like the answers but the
longer we avoid them the greater the pain we will have to endure when
we are finally forced to deal with them.

I enjoy hamburgers and I enjoy travel, although I have already cut
back on my travel. I hope we can all continue to enjoy them but this
requires immediate action, not prevarication and denial,

Update:Published with some edits that probably improved it. Some fun going on in the comments on that page too. Next day, someone else calls Robert O'Sullivan clueless.

Debate on academic boycott of Israel

Justin Podur covers a debate on whether an boycott of Israeli academic institutions is a good idea. This was held in a Canadian university, I get the impression that this debate simply couldn't take place in the US. Those opposed don't make a very good case and the question of where is the academic freedom of the Palestinians is a very strong counter to many of the anti-points.

Letter to the editor: there is no debate on climate change

Sir,

Robert O'Sullivan complains complains that the "save the planet" squadron only
quote from scientific sources with which they agree. He himself does
not quote from any scientific source, the best he can manage is a
quote from Homer Simpson.

What else can he do? The only explanation for climate change that has
stood up to scrutiny is that it is caused by man-made emissions of
greenhouse gases. It's a pretty simple. Greenhouse gases trap the heat
of the sun and humanity is pumping out greenhouse gases like never
before, while at the same time slashing and burning the forests that
might have soaked them up.

If you do the calculations based on what have burnt and what the Earth
can absorb, it all fits with what we observe in reality.

The few other explanations that have any scientific basis at all have
been debunked.

Every now and then someone puts forward a new possible cause,
frequently with much media coverage. Then over the course of a few
months the results are analysed, mistakes are found and the idea is
put to rest. Of course the debunking never gets the same news
coverage.

There have been "natural" climate changes in the past but this time
around we have a smoking gun and a bullet wound - declaring it to be
"natural causes" would require some extraordinary evidence and that
evidence simply has not been found,

Update: Published without my reference to the media's lack of interest in debunking theories and some other minor tweaks. Update: Another round, although I don't think he actually read my letter!

Letter to the editor: distracting our attention with driving license fiasco

Ted O'Keeffe suggests that the government created the provisional
license fiasco to divert attention from their unjustifiable pay-rises.
I suppose this government would actually have the cheek to use a
display of incompetence to divert attention from their greed.

It was, however, a risky move, at this stage we are so used to it, it
would really have to be something spectacular to get our attention.
They seem to have delivered.

Years of bad planning and questionable tax-incentives have forced
ordinary home-owners out of the cities and given them over to
investors. This has created massive commuters belts. We have public
transport policies that make people entirely dependent on their cars
for almost every aspect of their lives. With all that, threatening to
take away their ability to drive is truly a master stroke that
couldn't fail to divert our attention.

I have no idea what they'll do to top this but they have almost 5
years more in power so I'm sure they'll think of something,

Letter to the editor: followup to landills and incineration

James A Gleeson was annoyed that I hadn't debunked his entire letter, so here goes.

James A. Gleeson complains that I didn't comment on the main element
of his letter about landfills and incineration. I commented on what I
considered the most important claim, that global warming was not at
all caused by human activity.

Mr Gleeson's says his main claim was a "revolutionary method of
cleaning" that can be applied to "power stations, industry and
incineration". From the details he mentioned I think he means a
material called "LSCF", and the recently published research by Prof
Ian Metcalfe and co. This material can be used to extract pure oxygen
from the air and can withstand high temperatures.

LSCF makes it easy to burn methane gas in pure oxygen, avoiding the
pollution that arise by burning it in nitrogen-rich air and producing
only carbon-dioxide and water. These can then be easily separated and
if we could find something to do with the carbon-dioxide, this would
make methane an incredibly clean fuel.

LSCF is not a magic bullet for industry or waste incineration. Its
benefits depend on the fact that methane is a very simple molecule,
containing only carbon and hydrogen. It would not have the same effect
when incinerating domestic or industrial waste as these produce a wide
variety of nasty pollutants even if burnt in pure oxygen.

As for recycling the carbon-dioxide, Prof Metcalfe himself points out
that it is much cheaper to just release it into the atmosphere and
that recycling would only be economical under a carbon credit system
(http://tinyurl.com/2efafu).

On landfills, Mr Gleeson says that "the very same toxins and
chemicals, irrespective of world population, existed in a processed or
unprocessed state then, as now". This is simply not true.

We are burying toxins and chemicals in landfills now that do not occur
in nature. It is true that the materials from which these chemicals
are made have been around for billions of years but they were never
before combined in these ways.

To ignore how the materials have been processed and combined is to
ignore the difference between C-O2 and C-O (carbon-monoxide) or
between H2-0 (water) and H2-O2 (peroxide bleach). In both cases the
basic materials are the same but the difference is life or death.

Human-created landfills tend to be located close to large population
centres, so their toxins (natural and man-made) have a much greater
effect than those buried deep in the earth's crust.

Landfills and incineration are probably both necessary evils but far
better than either is to reduce the amount of waste we produce and
where that waste is unavoidable, to use materials which can be
recycled,

Letter to the editor: climate change science

James Gleeson's points about landfills and climate change do no stand
up to examination.

He claims that landfills are a natural phenomenon, citing bogs and
landslides as examples. Neither bogs nor landslides involve the
burying of masses of toxic and volatile chemicals with all the
resultant dangers and so the comparison is invalid.

He cites Dr Antonio Zichichi's comments this year, saying that he
pointed out that climate change is driven by natural phenomena. Dr
Zichichi is not a climate scientist but has published a paper pointing
out problems with current climate modelling. His paper is available
online and contains the following, emphasised in bold text: "it is not
possible to exclude that the observed phenomena may have natural
causes. It may be that man has little or nothing to do with it." Even
if Dr Zichichi is right (and all of the thousands of climate
scientists are wrong), he is simply saying that their methods are
wrong. His paper does not put forward any evidence that humans are not
actually to blame.

The claim that "Human activity has less than 10pc impact on
environment" also comes from Dr Zichichi. Consider that a few thousand
years ago there were vastly fewer humans on the planet and each one
had a far smaller impact than humans today. So in the blink of the
planet's eye we have gone from having almost zero impact to 10pc. This
is an enormous, unprecedented change. It's hard to imagine how this
could occur without a significant impact on the planet!

Mr Gleeosn also cites Dr David Bellamy's stance on global warming. Dr
Bellamy wrote to the Sunday Times on 2005 to say he had "decided to
draw back from the debate on global warming". Before that he made
incredible claims about the worlds glaciers in a letter to New
Scientist. When Guardian journalist George Monbiot pressed him for his
source material it turned out he'd seen the figures on a website run
by a climate sceptic, who in turn could not provide any source for
them. You can read the details at
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science/.

The fact is that climate scientists are so sure about the human role
in climate change that the UN IPCC has been able to get their
conclusions accepted by countries such as the USA and Saudi Arabia who
have a vested interest in business as usual. That just would not be
possible if there was any serious doubt that we are to blame.

Update: Published with the Monbiot paragraph omitted.

Update: He wasn't happy with my reply so I had to reply again.

Pilger, Israel and the "coup" in Palestine

I'm seeing more and more about boycott Israel, including an article by John Pilger talking about how the boycott movement is picking up steam. The most interesting thing in the article was a reference to an article by Kathleen Christison, an ex-CIA analyst, and her explanation of the "civil-war"/"coup" in Palestine. I've only read a small bit of it so far but it seems to pin the blame on Elliott Abrams and the US.

Boycotting Israel and other stuff

Here is an article very clear explaining why a boycott of Israel is justified, despite Israel not being the only country doing bad things. I think the strongest argument though is that it could work. Israel wants to be part of the Western world and it's citizens have influence over their government. Most of the other countries worth boycotting are already officially boycotted or under sanctions and the people who would be hit by the boycott are not in any position to change things. This is why South Africa was the subject of a popular boycott but Cambodia was not.

Jonathon Cook writes another interesting article this time following up on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, including evidence that Hizbollah were not launching rockets from town centres.

Letter to the editor: Sikhs and Garda Uniforms

Sir,

as usual, it takes an outsider to teach us what we really love. The
Gardai changed its uniform on 1st July 2005, nobody cared. Some time
while nobody was looking, Gardai on bikes started wearing t-shirts,
cycling-shorts and cycle-helmets, again nobody protested. It has taken
a Sikh, giving up his free time to help make this country a better
place to wake us up to exactly how much we love the Garda uniform. We
love it so much that we would rather reject this man's energy and hard
work than change a single thing about this uniform. What a proud
moment to be Irish.

The minister for integration and several correspondents on your
letters page believe that since immigrants have chosen to move here
they should accept our culture and that we should not accommodate
theirs. While there is a certain logic to this argument, it misses a
very important point. Some time in the future, a Sikh man, born and
raised in Ireland, an Irish citizen all his life, will join the Gardai
or Reserves. What excuse will we make then?

Update: they published the second paragraph.

Chomsky and morality

Here's a good interview with Chomsky where he points out pretty clearly the double standards of morality applied by the west. A pretty blatant and almost funny example is from the Nuremburg trials

So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on—those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved.

Interesting too, the comments on the punishment of researchers and journalists. The point being that it is unimaginable that we would ever apply those standards to ourselves.

I must try find someone actually trying to argue against Chomsky. I come across people dissing him and I've heard of people arguing against his misquotes but never anyone arguing anything specific.

25,000 Jews living happily in Iran

Another very interesting piece by Jonathan Cook asks: if Iran is the next Nazi Germany then why are 25,000 Jews living happily in Iran? In fact not only living happily but refusing the ever growing incentives from Israel to move, like $60,000 for every family, cheap loans etc. And not just politely declining, they are responding with

If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not.

and

The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.

Why is Israel so keen to take them in? Cook says it's because their existence contradicts Israel and the US's claims that Iran is intent on genocide. Seems plausible. What are the counter arguments to that?

Lots of other titbits in there too, including claims about previous black ops by Israeli-backed Zionists to force Jews out of other countries. No references though - not every writes like George Monbiot!