Monday, November 28, 2016

Borrowing from a piece linked at Insty,

During the 1930s, there were many apologists for Joseph Stalin’s brutalities, which he committed in the name of building a workers’ paradise fit for an improved humanity. The apologists complacently said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” To which George Orwell acidly replied: “Where’s the omelet?”
Having just gone through some bullshit of "Everything you wrote about Castro is false!  He raised literacy!" etc., I think they only omelet they care about is "He was a socialist!", and all the death and ruined lives and so forth doesn't count.


Antarctic sea ice had barely changed from where it was 100 years ago, scientists have discovered, after poring over the logbooks of great polar explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. 

Experts were concerned that ice at the South Pole had declined significantly since the 1950s, which they feared was driven by man-made climate change. 

But new analysis suggests that conditions are now virtually identical to when the Terra Nova and Endurance sailed to the continent in the early 1900s, indicating that declines are part of a natural cycle and not the result of global warming.
But globular warmening is still a big threat we must act on, etc.


But I thought the science was settled!
“The idea that the speed of light could be variable was radical when first proposed, but with a numerical prediction, it becomes something physicists can actually test. If true, it would mean that the laws of nature were not always the same as they are today.”
Why, it's almost like the 'laws of nature' aren't, and there are things we just don't know yet...


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has long been believed that old Albert didn't wright the TGR AT ALL. His ex wife did. He never understood and could not explain ANY of his early math works or papers, and NEVER did anything better than undergraduate math after his divorce. It have long been speculated that his math was flawed because he simply didn't understand her stolen work. Many of the top minds of the 1930's and 40's considered him a complete fraud. What we know for certain is that he held seeing her(the ex wife) children hostage on the condition that she never publish an academic paper or speak in public while he was alive.---Ray

Dan said...

I suspect that the 'Laws of Nature' which are quite immutable here on planet Earth
are perhaps less permanent and in fact more like suggestions when you are in other
parts of the universe. For everything we have learned about the universe there are untold numbers of thins we don't even suspect. But that doesn't mean those 'laws'
no longer apply here. Jump off a cliff and all the theorems and math on the planet won't save your ass.