The 100 Best Innovations of 2009

Via KurzweilAI.net:

A robot that uses whiskers instead of cameras to see in the dark, a personal video network that lets users place cordless cameras virtually anywhere and view video in real time on the Web, and an electronic stethoscope that beams sounds to a doctor's PC by Bluetooth and renders a near-real-time graphical representation of the sounds onscreen are among Popular Science's Best of What's New list gallery of 100 innovations of 2009.

Neda Soltan Is The Times Person Of The Year

I've blogged before about the brutal murder of Neda Soltan in Tehran during the anti-government protests last June. The Iranian opposition has not forgotten her despite thuggish actions by the government against her family and friends to suppress her legacy.

Now The Times of London has named her Person of the Year for 2009.

Christmas Around The World

Enjoy this slideshow of Christmas displays from around the world from Examiner.com.

Merry Christmas!

The Meaning Of Christmas

As told by Linus.

The End Of An Era - GM Cuts The Rat Motor

When the clock on the office wall reads 4:54, gearheads never think "quitting time", gearheads always think "Rat Motor". And if you happen to have one sitting in the parking lot under your office window, patiently waiting your lead foot, then you are very lucky.

That's because the 454 Rat Motor was one of Chevy 's biggest engines. These were "big block" monsters, ranging from 396 to a massive 496 cubic inch displacement.

They were meant for trucks, motor homes and even boats, but they quickly found their way into blisteringly fast street cars of every type.

They've been known since hot-rodding time immemorial as "Rat Motors".

Now the Rats are no more. GM has stopped production.

From Global Warming Believer To Skeptic

Bradley Fikes writes for the North County Times and The Californian. I think he speaks for many of us who used to think humans were responsible for global warming (back in the 90s I certainly did) but who have come to realize the truth. I don't usually quote entire articles here, but I'm making an exception. Please read it all.

A few years ago, I accepted global warming theory with few doubts. I wrote several columns for this paper condemning what I thought were unfair attacks by skeptics and defending the climate scientists.

Boy, was I naive.

Since the Climategate emails and documents revealed active collusion to thwart skeptics and even outright fraud, I’ve been trying to correct the record of my earlier foolishness. In one of those columns, I even wrote: “And see Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) for global warming science without the political spin.”

In fact, Real Climate was and is nothing more than the house organ of global warming activists, concerned more with politics than with science.

My mistake was assuming only the purest of motives of the global warming alarmists, while assuming the worst of the skeptics. In fact, the soi-disant moralists of the global warming movement can also exploit their agenda for profit.
Climategate jolted me into confronting the massive fraud and deception by top global warming scientists, who were in a position to twist the peer-review process in their favor, and did so shamelessly.

Yet still most media reports desperately minimize Climategate, saying that it doesn’t taint the massive research supporting global warming theory. To them I say, how do you know that? Have you investigated how much of that research was published due to the manipulation of these unethical and fraudulent scientists? Do you know how much research that goes against the global warming activist claims was unfairly suppressed?

Until all this is known, it’s not possible to say with any confidence how much of global warming theory will remain after all the fraud and deceit has been removed. And until climate science is cleaned up, it doesn’t deserve the worship so many in the media unthinkingly give its tainted practitioners.

 See Fike's comments for excellent discussions.

Jingle Bells - In Chinese

The Wizards Behind The Screen

This is perhaps the best description I've ever seen as to why climate cannot be modelled by computer programs. Via Glenn Reynolds from Pajamas Media's John Droz, Jr.

For instance, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we aren’t really being run by pandering politicians, self-serving lobbyists, fanatical environmentalists, and greedy Wall Street manipulators. They are the illusion.

There is another even more powerful (but much less visible) agent behind all of these puppets.

The person behind the screen is the computer programmer. And, just like in the Wizard of OZ, they do not want you to look at this real controller.

Please read the whole thing.

Trust Wikipedia? Not For Climate Science!

Wikipedia is one of the greatest general research tools ever invented. But because anybody can edit it, Wikipedia is wide open to abuse. And that is just what happened when the warmists took over editing the entries on climate change.

Lawrence Solomon of The Financial Post tells the disturbing story of a powerful Wikipedia bully and how he managed to censor Wikipedia and suppress all dissent to warmist orthodoxy.

Today Is The Winter Solstice

It's the shortest day of the year. And you could believe that it is really the first day of winter. Except for the record winter that's already started for most of us on the top half of the planet. Here's a bunch of facts from National Geographic.

Hockey And Head Trauma

From The NYT, via Canadian Press, via TSN.

Former NHL player Reggie Fleming, who died in July, had brain damage due to repeated head trauma, linking hockey for the first time to a condition usually found in boxers.

The Role Of Beer In Science

Apparently, geologists believe that beer is essential to their science. So much so that, unlike other disciplines, they serve great quantities at their professional conventions and meetings.

“Science doesn’t work when people keep secrets and don’t share their data,” said Daniel Jaffe of the University of Washington. ”And what could be better [than beer] to help with the free flow of information?”

Perhaps the global warming guys could learn a thing or two from the geologists.

From Wired Science:

Rick Saltus of the U.S. Geological Survey explained that because geologists often don’t have enough data to say definitively what went on millions of years ago, creativity is needed to fill in the gaps.

“You have to think outside the box, you’ve got to release your inhibitions, and beer is one way to do that,” Saltus said. ”Anything that helps you get to that epiphany, that realization of what’s there in the rocks and not easy to see but there to spin a story from.”