Content by DonPMitchell
Posted at 12:27am on Jun. 15, 2008 Some Arithmetic about Energy
By DonPMitchell
Here are some back of the envelope calculations about alternative energy.
1. Biodiesel: Canola (rapeseed) yields about 122 gallons of oil per acre. If the USA planted all of its arable land, 407 million acres, with canola, we could produce 188 billion liters of oil per year. The bad news is we consume 1207 billion liters of petroleum per year. Oil seeds can never solve our energy problem, and ethanol from corn is even worse.
Posted in Energy — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:56pm on Sep. 20, 2007 Europe's New "Not Invented Here" Attitude
By DonPMitchell
The Bush administration today criticized the European Union's court ruling against Microsoft, and the EU commission fired back a predictable salvo of "mind your own business"
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2007/226070.htm
The same EU commission is preparing to go after Intel, Rambus, Google and IBM. The question is, are they fostering competition or just lashing out at American companies that dominate their market?
Posted in Economy — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:35pm on Sep. 14, 2007 Bad Science: Do Liberals Have Better Brains?
By DonPMitchell
New of a neuroscience study hit the mainstream media last week, that NYU professor David Amodio had proven that "liberals" have brains that processed new information more effectively than "conservatives". Kudos to William Saletan, at Slate.com, for some much-needed debunking:
http://www.slate.com/id/2173965/
Saletan is by no means a conservative himself, but he seems to value the concept of truth more than some people in the soft sciences.
Posted in Technology — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:36am on May 7, 2007 Useless Arithmetic
By DonPMitchell
The latest issue of Nature had a surprisingly positive review of a new and controversial book, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future.
Surprising, because the editors of Nature have an annoying tendency to jump to the left on populist issues -- for example their poorly executed investigation of Wikipedia last year.
Useless Arithmetic claims that quantitative mathematical models used to make predictions and form policy are often completely inaccurate. What is getting them good reviews is they don't just wave their hands about this, they give example after example after example -- predictions of lake polution of mining, predictions of north atlantic cod populations, predictions of sea level rise, etc, etc -- all wrong and all resulting in bad policy decisions.
Posted in Archived — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:00pm on Apr. 20, 2007 Three Articles on Anti-Americanism
By DonPMitchell
The BBC has published the first two of three articles on a skeptical look at anti-Americanism. Here are the first two, and I am also including a third article by Andrei Markovits that presents another viewpoint. The articles present three bad but common reasons that America is hated:
1. American common-man democracy offends and alarms the intellectual elite of Europe.
2. Anti-Americanism is an easy way to deflect criticism of local ineptitude.
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Posted at 10:21pm on Mar. 5, 2007 Copenhagen Consensus - what to fix first?
By DonPMitchell
Issues like global warming come up frequently here, and I thought some folks would be interested in the Copenhagen Consesus project - http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=788
The Copenhagen Consesus is a group of economists who meet periodically to rank major world problems according to how much good can be done per dollar to fix them. In other words, given so much money, what should you do first to help the world?
Posted in Economy — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:23am on Feb. 22, 2007 Google Hosts Video of Americans Being Killed by Sniper
By DonPMitchell
Maybe some of you have seen this article already on The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/21/propaganda_video/
Google Video is hosting footage of American soldiers being shot by a Baghdad sniper. They've continued to host this video since Feb 13, and it is still online even as I write this. Users (myself included) flagging the video as "inappropriate" obviously has no effect.
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Posted at 2:07am on Sep. 9, 2006 Visions of Lunacy
By DonPMitchell
Bravo to Brigham Young University for doing what the University of Colorado should have done with Ward Churchill. BYU put on leave a professor who co-chairs the conspiracy-theory movement "Scholars for 9/11 Truth".
Political mass movements are fascinating, but none moreso than those based on uttery wacky ideas. I'm a big fan of the internet, but it does seem to be a forum for information of questionable quality. Here are a few of my favorite lunatic movements and examples of viral videos you can find on YouTube or MySpace or Google.
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Posted at 9:10pm on Aug. 14, 2006 Moon Hoax
By DonPMitchell
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060814-124925-9491r.htm
Morons. Clearly they "lost" the tape lest anyone know for sure that it was done on a sound stage in Los Angeles.
-- Erick
Strangely enough, I got involved in that problem over two years ago. I'm heavily involved in the history of the space program (actually my speciality is the Soviet space program), and some of the scientists from Australia contacted me for help, in 2004. They asked me to help them find a Mincom slow-scan video tape recorder so they could play it. Now it seems they didn't actually have the tape in hand.
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Posted at 3:45pm on Jun. 30, 2006 European Economic Meddling
By DonPMitchell
Are European nations trying to force their nationalistic over-regulated economic policies on the United States?