Senior Scientist at GNS Science (New Zealand equivalent of USGS more or less). Programmer, modeller, dabbling in physics, geology, geophysics. Back-roomer and like it that way.
Phil Scadden
Karma: 232
While I agree that the examples are stupid, I am not so sure about the electrical and plumbing. Connecting things to a public water supply that result in contamination from backflow/siphoning is very bad. You also dont want to electrocute a power pole worker who thinks power is off, but your house with DYO solar connection suddenly starts exporting power to grid. If I was insurer, I would take a dim view of unregister plumbing or electricial work in your house because of fire and flood risk. Where I live, so long as you are owner of property , you can do electricial that doesnt involve swithboard or cables coming into switchboard from street. Fair compromise? Drainlaying rules are still extremely strict though.
The problem for me with porridge has always been too much water, not enough oats—I am hungry well before lunch despite feeling full at breakfast. Even more so when out in the hills, tramping/climbing. Muesli or soaked oats dont have that problem.
We soak whole rolled oats overnight in kefir and eat with nuts, seed and fruit for breakfast. It’s my wife’s favourite meal and I miss it if travelling. I do wonder about the effect of the acidic kefir on the oats. I wouldnt expect it reduce phytic acid, but I would expect breakdown of fructans and other carbohydrates into more digestable forms. That said, I really dont care much unless it’s killing me. It is just a great way to start the day and gets me through to lunch without getting hungry. The slight fag is making kefir every 4th night—getting the kefir grains to scale production for more than that is problematic.
Well for the dark humour side of things...A surgical ward in UK for guys with testicular cancer was named “The lonely ballroom”
New Zealand government research sort of does that. In 90s, the public research was reorganised into institutes—private companies but owned by government (government of day appoints the board members as position falls vacant). Initially, all government funding of these institutes was contestable—vaguely like the PI model. The cost and inefficiency of this system led to this be abandoned. Instead, the institutes get “Core” funding to support their core area (eg earth science in my case). Essentially the institutes propose very broad-brush programmes (so peer-driven) about how this will be spent. External panels (researchers from similar institutions overseas mostly, or possibly unis) critique it and a government bureaucracy evaluates against performance and alignment with government goals. Essentially it’s a negotiation process that sets a contract of around 5 years (from memory) which get tweaked as required. A similar model provides research funding (as opposed to teaching funding) to the universities. There are also several contestable funds, open to the whole research community.
Does it work? I doubt any system is perfect and this one has a number of downsides. It is certainly a much more efficient system (less scientist-hours spent chasing money, and less bureaucracy evaluating bids) than what preceded it. There are advantages to the individual scientist though in pursuing contestable funding, though most will involve teams of scientists, often across multiple institutes/universities. Core funding is tied to agreed programmes and the programme manager controls it. You can’t just do your thing on Core funding. Winning contestable funding means the team that won it is in control. Enough funding for your pet project and you can thumb your nose at institute management.
The downsides as I see them: The % of government funding going to each institute is very static. It is hard to convince the government that your discipline is now hotter and more important than the discipline of another institute. The opposite was true of the contestable model—uncertainty of future funding made investment in research infrastructure (eg vessels) uncertain. Scrapping between institutes over money turned to scrapping within institutes over money. Perhaps this is actually a major upside—at least the scrappers know what they are talking about unlike the bureaucrats. The accountability model is everyone’s bugbear. It’s public money so asking for accountability is obviously reasonable, but it generally feels like time-consuming paperwork to clueless bureaucrats. There must be a better way.
It should be noted that the institutes total funding thus consists of Core funding, contestable funding but also commercial research contracts. Depending on the Institute, this can be pretty high. Ours has been up 50% commercial. Others even higher.
Well here (NZ), reclaimed land is often a very problematic climate and tectonic risk. Lots of discussion about managed retreat. Ok, plenty of 19th C stuff was done badly, but engineering for sealevel rise, earthquake (liquifaction), tsunami and storm exposure isnt cheap. Also, we have had too much finding-out-the-hard-way that coastal wetland was performing valuable environmental services that are not easily replaced. I am happy to have strong regulations around that. To make it work and be economic to maintain over very long term, then I think you need to have large area of land created compared to length of your seawall (the Dutch situation) and yes, the easy ones have been taken.
There are other things on with playgrounds I think. Here (NZ), there has been a big movement toward making playgrounds safer—which has made them a great deal less fun. Since children still want adventure and a challenge, they use playgrounds in ways not intended (eg on top of frames holding swings etc).
Apparently our kids were “feral”. As far as I can tell, this was for being allowed in the bush unsupervised. They got by on one broken leg, 4 pulled elbows, one concussion plus usual scrapes and bruises which help teach limits. All but the concussion (on a school playground during break) happened while supervised. Maybe we werent paying enough attention.
But my own upbringing had far more freedom. Only 1km to beach and the rule was no going into water without an adult, no digging in sand dunes, and “careful on the road” walking to and fro. Oh and tell an adult where you were going. The environment did not seem as safe to us when our own children came along. Perception? Reality? Lot more cars for one thing.
Oh, and lets hear it for the scout movement. Getting really dirty, proper physical challenges. My son did sea scouts where supervision amounted mostly to ensuring they were wearing life jackets and fishing them out of water if required. They raced in, rigged their boats and got onto water as fast as possible with no direction at all. Water fights, boardings, and races all ensued. On the way, some pretty good water/boat skills developed mostly by osmosis.
I would give this a very low probability of it happening. The political risks are enormous. I don’t think people react very well to having their toys taken away—including the people in your security apparatus that rulers would depend on to stifle revolt. Way worse than taking radios. I would also be extremely surprised if Russian commerce did not also depend on internet for marketing and sales now. Going back would be very hard.
But what it gets wrong is also interesting. It has an incoherent model of the world (which is probably what you would expect) and that messes with the writing.
Sorry for late reply. I meant that Contact begins with Eleanor listening to the sounds being picked up the radio telescopes and then suddenly hears the gutteral throbbing of the alien message.
Read a little more—the geologist inside me screaming “wrong,wrong, wrong” at every turn. Doesnt invite the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy scifi.
Opening is a massive steal from “Contact” (Sagan) in my opinion. “The low thrum of the spectrometer”!!!! This is straight steal from listening to radio telescope. Spectometers dont do that. I’m with Richard Kennaway on this. (and only read chapter 1 and 35.
Such much to agree with. I couldn’t care less about long hair or stylishness but care a lot of about sense of humour and having things in common to do. But, hey, I have only really had one relationship, 30+ years and counting. Shape sadly does matter—I dont find very overweight attractive. Also wouldnt consider anyone not close to my age, probably +/- 2
First off, I am not in the USA (from NZ). I dont look back on my school years fondly (and I went to a lot of different schools thanks to family circumstance), but that was mainly due to bullying being incapable of sport, too bright and socially inept. However, the actually schooling part was something I very much enjoyed. Many teachers that inspired and effectively taught things I really wanted to know. I hated programming (we are talking punch card fortran) but was forced to learn it and hey, have been programming (writing models) for decades. Sometimes (often) teachers are right about forcing you to learn things (add propositional calculus to list) . Two of us skipped class for physics in final year as teacher said better off with textbook but please turn up for labs. Similarly learnt geography by visiting teacher after school for assignments as couldn’t timetable it. From my own kids, Year 1-8 schooling here leaves somewhat to be desired but both kids thrived at high school and we were happy with how taught. Sciences and maths are very hierarchical in learning. What bothers me about the home schooling is tendency to drop the “boring” or difficult bits which then struggle later because fundamentals missing.
I cant see that working for a whole lot of subjects. At its’ heart is idea of degree as accreditation of competence. However, “competence” extends far beyond passing an examination for a lot of subjects. eg most science subjects that I can think of. Actual work is likely involve field and/or lab work and when I hire, I am looking for grads that I have confidence in those competencies. I don’t see how you acquire that from exams-only approach.
I would also say from my own experience that lectures were really only a big thing at first year (NZ uni) or in maths, and that I learned a hell of lot from interactions with my fellow students as we battled with material especially in the senior years (where we had a common room together). I did notice the arts students lived much more insular lives (my own children in arts did remarkably little interaction with classmates which surprised me).
The real nub, since you are looking at degree as a certification, is that faced with candidates from exam only uni, versus a traditional uni with compulsory lab and field work, which would I employ? I’d take the traditional. Could be different for humanities.
Mask-wearing falls foul of political values which are a major obstacle to rational thought. If just wearing a mask was ironclad protection, then there wouldn’t be an issue. Those that wanted protection would wear them and those that preferred unmask could take the risk. The moment that there was a suggestion that an unknowingly infectious person could reduce the risk of infecting others if they masked then a can of worms opened up. The implication is that everyone’s safety is improved if everyone wears mask. Whoops! that would be collective action versus personal responsibility. Any suggestion of collective action sounds too much like communism for some. And for others, well if collective action is necessary for safety (eg like road rules), then obviously the state should enforce it. Battle lines are drawn and rational thought flies off. Not to mention it being quite difficult to exactly quantify the effectiveness of masks (especially on an infectious person) given variations in type and use practice (ie are they worn in way that is effective—not to mention things like mask fitting and facial hair).
Given the no. of upscores on this, then maybe I should expand. Firstly, if don’t suffer from insomnia then chances are that you get into bed, close your eyes and go to sleep. You are not counting sheep or some more sophisticated exercise in an effort to get to sleep. If you do suffer from insomnia, then this is this the destination you are aiming for. The sleep hygiene stuff is important because you want to train your brain that this place, this time is for sleep. But shutting off bad brain behavior is more complicated. Understanding the feedback loops is key to breaking them which is why I highly recommend the insomniacoach.com short course. But other key things for me were:
1/ the golden rule: Never toss and turn. Get out of bed and read for 15-20 minutes instead. This is surprisingly hard to adhere to but seriously, do it.
2/ mindfulness has thing of focusing on something (eg breathing) and when mind wonders off, then bringing it gently back. Your mind wanders off when going to sleep and if it wanders into a worry area, then it will stop you getting to sleep. Learning the trick of gently refocusing really helps that. It never worked for me to try mindfulness exercises in bed (other people have different experiences), but learning the trick by practice at other times helps.
3/ Body scan is an exercise you find in CBT-I and some mindfulness/meditation disciplines. This seemed totally counter-intuitive to me. Eg when I was struggling with sleep, I noticed body discomfort and if you start worrying about how your arms are arranged, then you are lost. However, what it actually teaches you (eventually), is how to ignore those body signals. Again, never worked for me to actually do this in bed.
Not instant fixes, but things that eventually work with practice and repetition.
Excellent! Not feeling tired makes it a lot easier to enjoy life.
Some self-administered CBT. The VA CBT-I app helped, as did understanding the issue via the free course at https://insomniacoach.com/. Complimentary was doing some mindfulness stuff. There was key things that worked together and never looked back since.
I am going to nit-pick on Wegener. His theory of continental drift is not plate tectonics, and he was wrong for pretty much all the reasons that other geologists and physicists of the time said he was wrong. Plate tectonics was able to explain Wegener crucial observation of the continents “fitting together” but with a different and plausible mechanism. His observation was an important and theory-driving anomaly. I remember a text book from 1960s examining both the strong evidence for continental matchup and the highly problematic issues with his idea of continent drift. An expanding earth was also postulated which fitted a lot of observation but would imply physical laws changed over long time periods. In short, it is a lot more nuanced. Similarly, Boltzmann’s ideas on atomic theory were widely accepted in chemistry though physics took longer. Again, physics had an alternative hypothesis and it needed an experiment to separate them that didnt happen till after Boltzmann’s death. I think there are similar nuances with Marshall and H Pyroli. The “heroic” lone scientist against the establishment may be an appealing narrative but in terms of how science actually makes progress, I think the nuances in these cases are important and more telling about the process.