tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post5375215462682000552..comments2024-03-08T06:18:28.125+11:00Comments on Bronte Capital: Why Phil Falcone is like the most loopy left-wingers in AmericaJohn Hemptonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03766274392122783128noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-35414999082078190272012-02-25T12:11:20.406+11:002012-02-25T12:11:20.406+11:00"...this sort of anti-science based obscurant..."...this sort of anti-science based obscurantism has historically been the province of the Left."<br /><br />Are you kidding? Remember Galileo? Or was the Roman Catholic Church part of the left? Who has been denying the validity of evolution for the last 150 years? Not the left. Huxley debated an Anglican bishop not Marx.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-25353884771475187892012-02-19T12:57:23.733+11:002012-02-19T12:57:23.733+11:00"I mean who other than a left-wing loopy inte..."I mean who other than a left-wing loopy intellectual would think that the reality described by conventional physics is a social construction - a conspiracy of physicist?"<br /><br />It doesn't seem so bizarre a claim to say that science is based in reality but also a social construction. Kuhn makes the argument far better than I can, but don't quantum physics, newtonian mechanics, and special relativity have irreconcilably different views of reality? I am a leftist "social scientist" though, so maybe these are just my postmodern instincts kicking in.tEric Titusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-56274683008130375042012-02-17T14:24:05.060+11:002012-02-17T14:24:05.060+11:00most of the scientist are left by your standards.....most of the scientist are left by your standards.. but most of the anti-science guys are religious far-right folks. so the generalization it this post is plainly stupid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-7183116420241940402012-02-17T13:17:35.025+11:002012-02-17T13:17:35.025+11:00Climate change is real, however human contribution...Climate change is real, however human contribution to current climate change is rather insignificantAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-13771758028721994242012-02-17T08:28:36.926+11:002012-02-17T08:28:36.926+11:00«physical "reality" [and note the "...«<i>physical "reality" [and note the "scare quotes"] no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct. Sokal invites "anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions</i>»<br /><br />But the non-extreme version of the claim is entirely correct: the laws of physics express the social context in two different ways:<br /><br />* The formulation of physics depends very much on the specific political and social history we have had.<br /><br />* The mental categories we use for physics are very much the product of a specific political and social history.<br /><br />The *numbers* we get out of the above must be the same in any path-dependent social and political context, but we can get there in very different ways.<br /><br />For example it is hard to deny that Laplacian/Hamiltonian approaches are the direct outcome of the 19th century fascination with "engine boom" that happened at the time, and that mental framework still surprisingly influences even quantum physics. Every technological era has a dominant metaphor, and it is not by chance that in ours computational rather than mechanical engines are that, and thus Wolfram's attempt at what he calls a new kind of science (formalism).<br /><br />Similarly even the popularity of infinitesimals in maths is far from the only possibility, and we could have had very different maths as a basis for physics.<br /><br />In other words the mental frameworks with which we approach "reality" could be very different, down to basic categories like "matter" and "energy", or "truth" or "falsehood" which some cultures don't use that much.<br /><br />Quantum physics has of course challenged a lot of political and social traditionalism (at the scale of an electron the world does not resemble an orrery or an engine that much), but it is remarkable how much of it is a stubborn attempt to reframe quantum phenomena into inherited categories.<br /><br />The <b>laws</b> of physics are certainly «social conventions», even if not «mere» ones, as their usefulness depends on how well they approximate or compress <b>physics</b> which is the something that is not a social convention.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-32824990664584037502012-02-17T05:16:04.590+11:002012-02-17T05:16:04.590+11:00Its SokAl, btw.Its SokAl, btw.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-52360683511478440652012-02-16T16:24:33.456+11:002012-02-16T16:24:33.456+11:00I would just like to second H.Z.'s remarks. Th...I would just like to second H.Z.'s remarks. The problem with the LightSquared proposal isn't that it couldn't in principle coexist with GPS devices. Rather, it is that it is seems that it cannot coexist with some fraction of current GPS devices. It isn't physics that is preventing this; it is engineering.<br /><br />I think that the more telling objection is that while it might be desirable to re-allocate some spectrum to additional wireless data use, that should be done explicitly through the normal regulatory process, not through the use of loopholes and waivers, which both establishes a bad precedent and deprives the public of proper compensation for the use of the very limited spectrum resource.Matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09402238078390707450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-35878808959538441272012-02-16T13:08:46.760+11:002012-02-16T13:08:46.760+11:00John, you cast out your line and wove a net before...John, you cast out your line and wove a net before it hit the water... Great piece!<br /><br />Also - please keep giving it to the loopy lefties. It is a startling and curious function of mankind (particularly the lefty who has a propensity for it) that at the border of their knowledge base they invent a conspiracy or myth.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-32294580333481846222012-02-16T10:39:36.736+11:002012-02-16T10:39:36.736+11:00John,
I will give you the benefit of the doubt an...John,<br /><br />I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you let that last post through to prove your point.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-50162917758363584672012-02-16T06:41:29.482+11:002012-02-16T06:41:29.482+11:00'Climate Change?' The climate is always ch...'Climate Change?' The climate is always changing. CO2 levels used to be 10-20x higher and Manhattan was covered by a sheet of ice 2-3km thick.<br /><br />What happened to the darling daughter of the Loop Left, 'Global Warming?' There must be some reason they changed their verbiage after dozens of papers in Geophysical Review, Atmospheric Science Letters, Geophysical Research Letters, Climate Dynamics, JAMSTEC, and others have poked every hole available in the theory of AGW, as well as admitting no models can properly account for water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas. <br /><br />As Phil Jones of CRU-fame himself said to the BBC, from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming. <br /><br />And the GISS data contained a massive software bug until other researchers like McKitrick pointed out the absurdity of the changes they were showing...NASA had to go back and correct the values but didn't even bother to issue a press release about their error which showed that the 1930s was the warmest decade in the US, not the 1990s. <br /><br />Temperatures rose from the lows of the mid-70s until 1998, and have been flat to down ever since. <br /><br />Even some of the AGW alarmists like Stott, et al, say that up to 40% of the warming could come from solar forcing. The most recent Svensmark research at CERN [which the alarmists tried to supress] goes a lot further towards proving his theory of cloud formation and warming than the absurd 'simulations' at PSU and other places where they jointly 'hide the decline.<br /><br />The CO2 increase has been shown in several scientific papers to have lagged the rise in warming by 800 +/- 200 years - the AGW alarmists have been forced to admit this a while ago. <br /><br />No real scientists send emails to others telling them to delete their data to avoid complying with federally mandated FOI requests. Using taxpayer money to hide and delete and 'lose' the original data should be punishable by prison time, just like fraudulent CFOs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-40899254664663350342012-02-16T04:39:41.897+11:002012-02-16T04:39:41.897+11:00"We know that if you put a low power radio st..."We know that if you put a low power radio station near a high powered radio station the high-powered station causes interference. We understand resonances between different frequencies."<br /><br />This is not nearly a given as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In general physics does not prevent you from filtering out the high powered station. The propagation media (air) itself is extremely linear and one frequency never mixes with a different one. Mixing is caused by non-linearity in the receiver components. At RF the selectivity of the filter is limited. If you can't filter enough you will need highly linear amplifier to reduce mixing or amplify less. High linearity is not hard to achieve but does use more power so is a problem for portable consumer devices. Less amplification could reduce radio sensitivity. At the IF stage (esp the zero IF) high-powered nearby bands can be easily filtered out. So the trade-off is how much linear amplification at RF and what kind of sensitivity can you achieve.<br />Question:<br />Lightsquared claimed that current GPS devices do not meet spec. Is that true? Are they also seeking to raise the in-band power limit of their band?<br />If they are not raising the power limit in their bands GPS devices meeting spec should be able to handle the interference, as it is clear that they don't propose to raise their out of band emission. If they are raising the power limit in their band that could be a problem even for GPS devices meeting spec.<br />As cheap consumer GPS devices have proliferated in recent years it is very plausible that most of them don't meet spec. But it is interesting that FAA is also concerned which leads one to think that Lightsquared is seeking to raise in-band power limit. Of course the sensitivity of even a well designed radio could still be affected a little so all users have incentives to have quieter neighbors rather than noisier ones. <br /><br />I agree with the general principle that the spectrum should be used as intended. Otherwise it should be auctioned off to the highest bidder . Lightsquared's investment premise of exploiting loopholes on a multi-billion dollar scale was faulty from the beginning.H.Z.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-45107429451670931552012-02-16T04:20:18.802+11:002012-02-16T04:20:18.802+11:00Did Steve Jobs not create an exception to Newton&#...Did Steve Jobs not create an exception to Newton's law of universal gravitation?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4815867514277794362.post-10811994078351765662012-02-15T22:26:42.344+11:002012-02-15T22:26:42.344+11:00As Max Born said: "theoretical physics is act...As Max Born said: "theoretical physics is actual philosophy".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com