Although I spent some time looking through the photos, and I just can’t quite come up with anybody there that would qualify as dirty or a hippy.
Category Archives: Science
More Dirty Hippys
John Oliver on the climate change debate
Explains what a “fact” really means,… with a little help from Bill Nye the Science Guy and some friends.
I’m more and more amazed
The stupidity just keeps coming.
It seems endless.
I suppose murder is good for the economy, … it makes work for cops, detectives, forensic specialists, funeral directors, and many more.
A boon.
From http://grist.org/
It’s dirty work, but …
Pipeline builder says oil spills can be good for the economy
Kinder Morgan wants to spend $5.4 billion tripling the capacity of an oil pipeline between the tar sands of Alberta and the Vancouver, B.C., area. Yes, the company acknowledges, there’s always the chance of a “large pipeline spill.” But it says the “probability” of such an accident is “low.” And anyway, if a spill does happen, it could be an economic boon.
“Spill response and cleanup” after oil pipeline ruptures, such as the emergency operations near Kalamazoo, Mich., in 2010 and in the Arkansas community of Mayflower last year, create “business and employment opportunities for affected communities, regions, and cleanup service providers,” the company argues.
Those aren’t the outrageous comments of a company executive shooting off his mouth while a reporter happened to be neaby. Those are quotes taken from an official document provided to the Canadian government in support of the company’s efforts to expand its pipeline.
It’s a bit like claiming cancer caused by nuclear accidents can be great because it provides work for oncologists. Here’s more from The Vancouver Sun:
Classic Republican Wisdom
Just thought I’d remind over half the US population where they stand with our friends.
Of course they will,… why wouldn’t they??
There are still people that will tell you the average guy on the street should back himself up financially with ” some smart stock choices”
But this is what you will be competing with. There are absolutely no ethics involved. I think that’s a fair statement.
The “average guy” will,…. on average,…. come out on the short end of this kind of deal. Don’t you think?
Unless you’re equipped to keep up with the ” trade ever faster, using lasers and microwaves ” scenario. Maybe my friend Toph can get me hooked up,…. he’s in the laser business.
Chris-Toph…… think you could set me up with one of them new-fangled really quick laser thingys that you play with?? I’d like something in the 2 or 3 millisecond response range,….. so that I can keep up with the rest of the boys. Get back to me on that.
Anyway, no use ranting. This appears to be an absolutely fair, reasonable, practice. The playing field is very, very level here.
Here’s the article from Mark Gongloff at the Huffpost
High-Frequency Trading Is Bad For Profits, Including Those Of High-Speed Traders: Study
High-frequency trading is bad for everybody, including high-frequency traders, according to new research from a university that produces economic reports that are sold early to high-frequency traders.
Congratulations, world, these are your modern financial markets. The study, by the University of Michigan’s engineering department, focuses on one particular tactic of high-speed trading, known as “latency arbitrage.”
This is the practice of gaming the split-second lags between the time trades are made and the time those trades are crunched by a central clearing house called the Security Information Processor into a price quote called the National Best Bid And Offer. Traders with super-fast computers can calculate the NBBO faster than the Security Information Processor can do it, and they take advantage of the tiny gaps between the old NBBO and the new NBBO.
The researchers say this trade somehow reduces the total amount of profits in the system — in other words, it not only hurts regular, slowpoke investors, but also other high-speed traders. Whatever profit each individual robot makes on a latency arbitrage trade is less than the amount of profit that is destroyed by the practice, according to the report. This is just more evidence that zapping thousands of trades per second does nothing for society.
High-speed trading’s defenders, including academics whose research is bankrolled by high-speed trading firms, claim that this sort of foolishness improves market function and makes trading cheaper for everybody, which gives investors more money to spend on puppies and charity and whatnot.
But the University of Michigan researchers, who were paid by grants from the National Science Foundation, say the latency arbitrage trading they studied actually hurts market efficiency by widening the spread between the prices that buyers will pay and the prices that sellers will accept.
Ironically, the University of Michigan has recently been involved in a scandal-like brouhaha involving high-speed trading. The university produces a monthly consumer-sentiment index that it sells to Thomson Reuters for $1 million per year. For a fee, Reuters gives traders a look at these sentiment numbers five minutes before the rest of the suckers on Wall Street see it. For an even bigger fee, high-speed traders can get the numbers five minutes and two seconds before everybody else, giving them time to make high-speed trades on the numbers.
The university told CNBC that it thought the arrangement didn’t violate any regulations and that it could not produce the sentiment index without the money it gets from Reuters. Reuters said it has always made these arrangements public knowledge.
It’s not clear just how much money high-speed traders can make on sneak peeks at consumer-sentiment data, or on latency arbitrage or other shenanigans. Obviously trading firms think there is gold in them thar milliseconds, as they have been steadily ramping up their efforts to trade ever faster, using lasers and microwaves.
Still, there are signs that the growth of high-speed trading has stalled, Bloomberg Businessweek noted earlier this month, with trading volume and profits falling. Maybe traders are figuring out they’re mainly taking from themselves.
The Only Man In History With The Right To Say ‘I Told You So’ To The Entire Planet
Don’t you hate it when somebody was really, really right?
One hundred years ago?
No,….. no, I don’t.
I hate that, still,…… not many are listening.
From Rollie Williams at upworthy.com
The Only Man In History With The Right To Say ‘I Told You So’ To The Entire
Planet
Renewable Energy in Germany
Let’s see,…. they produce 20% of their energy with renewables.
Good standard of living. Very good average wages. Strong economy. Very good engineering. Ultra-strong social safety net. (no,… not “socialist” safety net) Extremely well trained workforce.
Not the sunniest spot on the planet. Yet, 20% of their energy is from renewables. With a goal of making that 80%.
Yeah, …. I don’t understand why anyone would want to take those European guys as some sort of example.
They’re just not exceptional.
Joking aside, there’s some interesting concepts in this. I really like the underground storage deal at the wind farm. Unobtrusive for all the NIMbYs out there, and what would seem to be a relatively low cost potential.
Some of Those Idiot, Scientist Types
You know,….. MIT, Princeton,…… worthless.
“We’re republicans. —– We live in the real world. We know.”
This is from February of this year.
Physically based assessment of hurricane surge threat under climate change
4 Minute 19 Second Free Fall
Or,…. How long does it take to fall 20+ miles?
Now we know.
I’m just so freakin amazed at this!!
http://gizmodo.com/5951621/watch-the-video-of-the-space-jump-here
Felix Jumps At 128k feet! Red Bull Stratos – freefall from the edge of Space
Felix Baumgartner Jumps from 127,000 Feet – This is Just Fun
And from above Roswell, New Mexico. Fitting.
It’s done. He’s OK.
Juevos the size of mountains.
http://gizmodo.com/5951563/first-human-supersonic-space-jump-live-coverage
Space Jump Live Coverage: SUCCESS!
Total success. After many delays, Felix did it. He reached the highest altitude ever reached by any man in a balloon, more than 127,000 feet. He then jumped and fell faster than any man, breaking Mach 1 (it’s unofficial for now, they have to confirm it).
A little update:
Felix Baumgartner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, according to preliminary data, and became the first man to reach supersonic speed without traveling in a jet or a spacecraft after hopping out of a capsule that had reached an altitude of 128,100 feet above the Earth.