宁静

宁静.
Just wanted to wish you serenity.

Having fun with industrial strength pressure cooking

This guy really loves to experiment with cooking, while trying to follow the scientific method :-)

Rolf-Dieter Heuer about before the Big Bang

The European: Do you think it is conceivable that we will eventually learn something about before the Big Bang?
Heuer: I doubt it.

Interesting. He says in the interview basically that humans will push the knowledge further and further, that answering questions will open doors to new questions – but whats's before the Big Bang is beyond our possibilities. And I think I can understand the reasoning, but it is still a bit absolutistic… (via)

A song I just heard, which I think I just fits right in:

There you go
Swimming deeper into mystery
Here I remain
Only seeing where you used to be
Stared at the ceiling
'Til my ears filled up with tears
Never got to know you
Suddenly you're out of here

Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light

Walked outside
Summer moon was nearly down
Mist on the fields
Holy stillness all around
Death's no stranger
No stranger than the life I've seen
Still I cry
Still I begged to get you back again

Bruce Cockburn – Closer to the light

John Hawks on consensus building

I feel so fortunate to have been engaged in this problem, because it says so much about the process of science. Science is always a process where progress requires an opinionated minority to recruit support among peers who are not specialists in the same area. Such a minority may forge consensus through consistent and repeated demonstration of facts. More likely -- as in the case of modern human origins, where new evidence was often equivocal -- a motivated minority will apply a broader range of rhetorical strategies. Over the years, I saw people pull out every trick in the book to persuade the uncommitted to their point of view.

"It turns out fish are essential to the health of a reef."

Scientists say the world's reefs are being harmed by a complex combination of factors; including pollution, agricultural runoff, coastal development, and overfishing. It turns out fish are essential to the health of a reef. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other leading institutions are also very concerned about climate change because they believe rising ocean temperatures are triggering a process called "bleaching" in which the coral weakens, turns white and often dies.

Captain Obvious to the rescue!

There is a very important message from this news report. The risks to coral reefs are dominated by local interference by humans on its ecosystem function. Such effects include local pollution (e.g. runoff from rivers and shorelines and from shipping; overfishing including the major predator species such as sharks).

What seems to be a minor, or even an inconsequential effect, is any warming of the ocean (i.e. global warming) despite the reference by NOAA in the CBS show to bleaching (they also showed a calving glacier :-)).

Despite this short reference to global warming in the CBS report, the report is quite an important addition to the broadening out of environmental issues beyond the mypopic focus on global warming. The contrast between reef health near Veracruz, Mexico and the Cuba Preserve should convincingly show objective readers that coral bleaching from global warming is clearly not the largest threat to the health of tropical coral reefs.

Will Huntingt …

… tells it like it is:

What a nice inquiry indeed

Although the UK Parliamentary Committee directly asked Muir Russell to examine this incident, Muir Russell refused to do so, and, worse, made a false finding that Jones had not sought to delete emails subject to a prior FOI request. Muir Russell did not satisfactorily explain his false finding when recalled by the UK Parliamentary finding, but admitted that he had not asked Jones about the incident because that would have been asking Jones if he had committed a crime.