A long but very interesting piece on the overconfidence of the incompetent, by David Dunning (of Dunning-Kruger fame). For some reason, I think it has some relevance to the Trump phenomenon, and politics in general.
For the record, I have never had a problem claiming my ignorance on a topic.
A year ago, we went down to Anza-Borrego State Park for the weekend for Patricia’s birthday. Deborah Netburn went down to check out how the El Nino (so far) flameout went for the flowers.
Here’s your daily dose of stupid. Based on nine mice.
Future researchers will find bizarre the notion we thought lab mice were good analogs for humans in diet studies. https://t.co/xrT0dOoH02
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 19, 2016
This is a huge day for Kip Thorne (and others). Nadia Drake has a comprehensive story up already.
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Here’s another write up by Matthew Francis at The Atlantic.
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Here‘s the paper itself.
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And one from Miri Kramer.
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And from Loren Grush.
Imagining a world without them:
“The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That’s the consequence,” says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be “less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools”, says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila.
They kill more humans than any other animal species, by many orders of magnitude. I wouldn’t miss them.
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We have the technology to wipe out all Zika-spreading mosquitos.
Why stop there? Go after every species that vectors blood. As the article notes, though, gene drive is not without risk.
It’s as broken as peer review.
As with civil (and military) space, we have a 20th-century system in place for the 21st century.
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Related: Why scientists hide their doubts about global warming from the media.
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Sorry, HTML was broken for first link, should be fixed now.
No water required? Not sure how this relates to the recent stories about liquid water.
Looks like they should be great this year, with an almost new moon. Might drive up to the mountains or desert, if it’s clear.
(From a surprising source) let’s stop pretending that it works.
They can’t do that. It cuts the legs from under one of the primary weapons they use against critics of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
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Related: Senator Cruz’s climate hearing with Judith Curry, John Christie, Mark Steyn et all is today at noon PST. Get out the popcorn.