Life: February 2023

Monday 27 February 2023

Index of first lines

Every now and again, I try to find something that I know is on my blog, and fail. And sometimes Google doesn't cooperate. So here is an index of titles. I went back as far as June 2022, so far.

2023

February

Bad beliefs: Misinformation is factually wrong – but is it ethically wrong, too?

Advancing the estimation of future climate impacts within the United States?

January

The partisan divide largely stems from conservatives’ perception...

Rahmstorf joins the Dork Side

Let's Audit Alex Epstein

Rawls on Liberty

2022

May

Bad beekeeping: spring recolte 2022

Clash of the titans: Mann vs Gates, with a side of...

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

A piece of Olde Englande

Recent considerations in Roe vs Wade

Bad beekeeping chez M+S

Why does the Evil Empire want to be paid in roubles?

April

Salus populi suprema lex

Coronavirus days: tag, I'm it

Digital technology supports decarbonisation only i...

Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Lucia Liljegren is not notable

March

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fa...

The Evil Empire strikes

The flower of poor thinking is to lack influence

February

Meeting the objectives of climate resilient develo...

The flower of justice is peace

January

McKinsey: fundamental transformation of global eco...

Climate blogging in a post-truth era: Opportunitie...

Mind-gargling ignorance just doesn't aid in saving...

Climate change: Small army of volunteers keeping d...

Two views of democracy

2021

December

Happy New Stoat

Coronavirus days: Omicron

Two quotes from Leviathan

An International Institute Will Help Us Manage Cli...

A Research Strategy for Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide...

McTaggart on Time

November

Lust for suing

Who knew what when - 1992 edition

Make extreme wealth extinct: it's the only way to ...

Equilibrium climate sensitivity is...

October

There should be a law to the People besides its ow...

Fueling the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil's Dis...

Study shows shocking impact of 'photo-hoarding' on...

COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to c...

Fossil fuel production set to soar over next decade?

Please Don't Give Up On Having Kids Because Of Cli...

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021?

Yet more Exxonknew drivel

September

Book review: Climate Shlock

Leaving Afghanistan

The ETS again

Gray agonistes

Bad beekeeping, autumn 2021

Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson

August

The Problem with Nordhaus?

Yet more bollox from Supran

Afghanistan

Three weeks around the Monte Rosa Group

July

The end of an era

Book Review: The Righteous Mind

May

Coronavirus days: lab leak?

Twenty firms produce 55% of world's plastic waste,...

Coronavirus days: the beginning of the end

Half of emissions cuts will come from future tech,...

April

How to assess the multiple interacting risks of cl...

Yet moaah climate suing

Equity Isn't Just Ethical, It's Stupid

More weird shit from Mann

City of New York v Chevron Corp, again

March

Reflecting Sunlight

Warren vows to fight against being heckled by snot...

A Bankruptcy Judge Lets Blackjewel Shed Coal Mine ...

Doughnut Economics

Global 'elite' will need to slash high-carbon life...

Coronavirus days: Happy Anniversary

More wank about science as a social construct

February

Shamima Begum cannot return to UK, Supreme Court rules

Rush

The Tyranny of Merit?

EU carbon price soars to record highs

The dim and distant history of global warming: sea...

January

Coronavirus days: how's my vaccinating?

All this fuss over one dickhead

In many Congressional districts, the primary is mo...

Have we reached peak CO2 emissions yet?

BATTER my heart, three person'd God

Thursday 23 February 2023

Dune refers. Dune Messiah doesn't, because I haven't re-read that; I had a brief go recently but found it dull; I might try again. This is the cover I remember. Note how jarring it is: the somewhat porky blonde is completely at odds with the desert; and anyway, Ghanima is described as having red hair.

Lay that aside, and consider the story. Which is thin on plot; some things do happen, but too much of it is people talking to other people, or people talking to themselves, or people talking to people inside themselves. In this it is worse than Dune.

The cod philosophy is worse than Dune, too: indeed it is incoherent. In this it resembles the "Golden Path" that it doesn't really describe; and here we come to the heart of the problem, which is that for all the supposed intelligence of the protagonists, and their supposed ability to foretell the future, the choices they make appear to be deeply stupid, and a worse path for humanity than just doing nothing. Or leaving the Padishah emperor in place in the first place. If Frank Herbert were attempting to demonstrate how badly top-down rule works, he'd be doing well, but I fear that's not his intent.

Even more stupid is their realisation, late in the book, that the longed-for ecological transformation is... going to ecologically transform Dune. Duh. Specifically, it is going to kill off the sandworms, but how was this not totally obvious from the start? Not only that, it is going to destroy their society and Fremen way of life. Duh. Removing the harshness of the desert is going to make them soft: FFS you clowns, you need to actually think. For a book with so much talking, there isn't really any talk about whether this is desireable or not. Why not... just export those Fremen who'd like a soft life to Caladan, and leave Dune for those who want to stay?

I think Our Author is uneasily aware of governmental issues; he would be remiss otherwise, in a series so saturated with them. And yet he manages to say so little of interest. At one point (p 141 in my copy) he says "Good government never depends on laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern". Which could be a nice lead in to Plato vs Popper. But it isn't... partly because the book is inherently character-driven; special-case driven; he has no time for generic law.

Finally, a word about how implausible his concept of genetic memory is; he has Leto and Ghanima somehow able to remember conversations and incidents from an apparently infinite chain of forebears; in many cases, better than most people can recall their own lives. So this has to have been imprinted on their genes... somehow. Even if you could solve that, I doubt it works on information-density grounds. Or on info-access grounds.

Thursday 16 February 2023

Rowing photos

I have too many rowing photos to count. They are all available for use under the usual non-commercial rules. Lots of the pix are also on fb, which mangles them a bit, but you can tag people. Some of the pix are:

2024

* Lents (drone vidz). Other people's pix: 2052photos (Sat); aja65, misc; Giorgio, Friday; Wednesday.

* Pembroke regatta: drone vidz.

* Newnham Head, drone vidz.

2023

* Fairbairns Thurs div 1 pix (flickr), fb; Friday div 1 vidz; pix (flickr), fb. AL: Novice, Senior (source). AllMarkOne; fb post by JCBC.

* Emma Sprints NM2 incomplete pix and vidz (mostly for the comedy lining up at the start). NW2 by someone else; moah.

* Winter Head (Div 1 and head of Div 2).

* Uni Fours: Weds; Thurs (AL's: Tues, Weds, Thurs).

* Autumn Head.

* Mays: vidz; pix.

* Xpress head: pix: div 1, div 2; vid div 1, div 2.

* Summer eights, Youtube; Flickr

* Nines Spring regatta (whinge: results should have been on Twitter)

* Champs Eights head (or fb)

* Head of the Cam

* Lents vidz; pix (a few)

* Torpids pix; vidz

* Pembroke regatta (and vidz)

* Newnham Head

* Head to Head

2022

* Fairbairns (vidz) (results)

* CRA bumps (mostly non-rowing)

* Mays vidz

* Oxford Summer Eights vidz

* Champs Eights Head div 3

* Head of the Cam

* Lents vidz

* Lents GoR div 2

2021

* CUCBC June Eights Regatta (vidz)

* Head of the Cam

2020

* Lents vidz

2019

2018

* Mays: vidz close to here

* Chesterton at HoRR vid

* Lents: vidz close to here

2016

* Mays vidz

* Lents vidz

* Chesterton RC: Vets HORR, 2016; part I; part II

2015

* Mays vidz

* Lents vidz

* Chesterton M1: CRA time race 2015 (winners)

* Chesterton IM3 VIII: Huntingdon Head 2015: all of it

* Chesterton IM3 IV+: Vets Head, 2015

2012

* Winter League leg 3

2011

* Christmas Head

* Mays

* Head of the` Cam (set 1; see others)

2010

* Christmas Head

* Boston

* Town bumps

* Head of the Cam

* HoRR

2009

* Head of the Cam

Friday 10 February 2023

Book review: the Million Year Hunt

1676059414060-fb2432eb-d743-4d84-bcec-f188b7bf8b45_

Another low-quality piece of antique trash following The Martian Missile. I do rather wonder why I read this stuff; then I turn on the radio and listen to the drivel that passes for analysis on the supposed high-quality Radio Four news and I feel justified.

An orphan grows up on an out-of-the-way world; he simultaneously loses his Young Love to a bizarre and implausible Agent of Stasis and finds himself on a strange planet and aquires an Alien Symbiont about which he has no troubling qualms whatsoever. Eventually all is resolved, and he gets a hotter version of his dead lover and he turns out to be the heir of, not exactly empire, but of civilisation, and genetic something. Dont't trouble yourself too much about the details.