Latest Blog Entries by jwray at VideoSift.com

A hypothetical

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:11:01 -0700

(8 comments - 66 views)

If the USA had preempted Pearl Harbor, might the reconstruction of Japan have turned out as badly as present day Iraq?

The sheer propaganda value one gains by being on defense vastly outweighs any small military advantage that might be obtained through preemption.

- jwray

10 degrees warmer in the Jurassic?

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:39:47 -0700

(13 comments - 133 views)

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

The vostok ice core data only covers the last 500 thousand years, but what about the last 500 million years? This site has a little graph that shows Earth was 10 degrees C warmer than it is now during most of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. It's based on a model of plate tectonics and assumptions about the conditions under which certain kinds of rocks form. It assumes Laterite, Bauxite, Glendonite, and Kaolinite form in warm conditions while Tillite, Dropstone, and Glendonite form in cool conditions. So it can sort of map out the latitudes at which tropical regions existed in different time periods and extrapolate the global mean temperature from that. According to this website there have been several periods of millions of years when there was no polar ice at all, based on analysis of sedimentary rocks.

Can any of you debunk that stuff? If it's true then global warming doesn't seem that bad. New Orleans and Miami are still screwed eventually, but "runaway global warming" is far off. If it's true there appears to be a very strong negative feedback that prevents the global mean temperatrue rising above 22C. I've been trying to think of what it could be, and came up with three possibilites:

1. Higher temperatures make rocks erode and dissolve faster. Greenhouse gasses could be sequestered by being combined with components of those rocks.

2. Change in meteorological patterns increases the albedo of tropical regions.

3. Ozone decreases due to stratospheric cooling, allowing more transmittance around the peak of the 310K black body radiation curve.

The wikipedia article on the author doesn't have much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Scotese

Also, I found a graph of carbon dioxide over millions of years:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

According to that, CO2 levels were around 2000ppm during that period, over 5 times their present level of 385ppm. Do any of you find evidence to the contrary?

- jwray

The Golden Rule implies the Harm Principle, etc.

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Thu, 22 May 2008 05:27:39 -0700

(1 comment - 228 views)
1. "Do unto others as you would wish others do unto you" (the golden rule)

2. The only class of things you would wish someone to NOT do unto you is to cause you harm against your will. You would not wish anyone to interfere with your freedom as long as you harm no one. You would wish someone to protect you when you were too young and stupid to know what had to be done to protect yourself (though you probably disagreed with your parents on when exactly the transition from that state occurred). Government is just the collective organized action of people.   Non-sentient beings don't have wishes, so the golden rule makes no prescriptions about what must be done to non-sentient beings except inasmuch as those actions cascade to affect sentient beings. Therefore it follows that a "prerequisite for governmental interference in an activity is that the activity harms a non-informed sentient being, or harms an informed sentient being without his informed consent", which is a more precise statement of the most famous quote attributed to John Stuart Mill, aka the Harm Principle (taken in context, of course, because he stated that his principles of liberty did not apply to extremely ignorant peoples)

3. Activities which, through negative externalities, contribute towards the destruction of the whole society or environment, also contribute to harm people (present or future) without their informed consent, thus the society may take collective action to preserve itself and the environment.

4. Deliberately causing birth defects should be illegal.

The fetus will suffer from the birth defects after it attains sentience.

5. Abortion should be legal. Although the fetus left untouched might developed into a person, it never will, because it was aborted before attaining sentience. Therefore it cannot feel pain, and therefore the abortion caused no harm unless by contributing to future harm of other sentient individuals not aborted.

6. Drugs which do not impair the reason of their users should be legal.   If someone chooses to harm herself by smoking tobacco or pot privately, that harms no one else (unless she's pregnant or she exposes somebody else to secondhand smoke without the other's consent).

6a. However, drugs that impair the reason of their users impair the user's ability to give his informed consent to future actions, putting him in the "non-informed/child/savage" category of the harm principle, justifying action for his own protection even if such action is against his will.   Therefore drugs that impair the reason of their users may reasonably be restricted or banned.

7. Medical prices cause some people to die, therefore government regulation of such prices and industries is not prohibited by the harm principle, and is supported by the original golden rule.   If you were sick and you could not pay for a doctor, you would wish someone to help you.   Such help is not guaranteed except by a sovereign organization of the people, i.e. government as it ought to be. So socialized medicine follows from the golden rule.

8. To knowingly conceive a child that will have severe genetic diseases violates the golden rule because you would rather be healthy than get sickle cell anemia from your parents.   Governmental restrictions on whether people with severe genetic diseases may have children would protect future people from harm that is done to them without their informed consent.   Therefore such restrictions are justified.

- jwray

Top 10 things I hate about youtube

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:21:04 -0700

(7 comments - 279 views)

In no particular order:

1. The ability to disable comments exists

2. The ability to disable embedding exists

3. The ability to disable ratings exists

4. The ability to disable video replies exists

5. The ability to pre-emptively censor messages from anyone not on your friends list exists

6. Morons without the most basic understanding of grammar or spelling write most of the comments

7. "Most viewed" rankings and lack of sifting mechanism rewards videos that lie about their content in the title

8. Legal videos get removed for no good reason (e.g., the entire XenuTV account was deleted)

9. Crappy softcore-porn videos, and other shit posing as softcore porn with 1 frame of it in the right position to be thumbnailed, dominate the top video list. It's not even good softcore porn.

10. Shitty videos made unrehearsed without a script that consist of at least 75% "um".

- jwray

Science Literacy Survey

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:13:50 -0700

(9 comments - 253 views)

Why was a substitute teacher fired for witchcraft? Because:

source

This ought to make every 8th grade science teacher weep.

Our democracy is in the hands of these ignorant people! They elect senators and congressmen who are expected to make policy on global warming, healthcare, and nuclear power. What can people who know nothing about the issues contribute with their vote besides choosing whichever candidate is the most beautiful / the most propagandized by media? We are in deep shit unless the education system improves. Economic effects of education are insignificant next to education's role in democracy.

- jwray

titles schmitles

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:09:13 -0700

(1 comment - 211 views)
I ought to tell the students to stop calling me "Professor" because I'm just a first year grad student.

- jwray

Fabulous essay

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:29:29 -0700

(0 comments - 198 views)

I was reading This

(c.f. "don't taze me bro", where the original offense was only trespassing)

And my friend sent me this great essay on a similar topic.

- jwray

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:46:12 -0700

(1 comment - 198 views)

Proof of what we've suspected all along:

"Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions." -- New York Times

Not at all surprising.
- jwray

Free Speech

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:54:01 -0700

(0 comments - 175 views)

"Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else you, in potensia, you are are making a rod for your own back...who is going to decide? To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be that we know enough in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Isn't it a famous old story that the man who has to read all of the pornography in order to see what is fit to be passed and what is fit not to be, is the man most likely to become debauched? Did you hear any speaker in opposition to this motion eloquent enough to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you -- relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up! Do you know of anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there's no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear? I had no idea...but there's a law that says there must be such a person...or there's some subsection of some piddling law that says it. Well, to hell with that law then! It's inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already..." -- Christopher Hitchens

- jwray

Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow revisited

jwray (http://jwray.videosift.com) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:03:49 -0700

(4 comments - 194 views)

The federal government of the united states inserted "in god we trust" on the currency and inserted "under god" to the pledge in the same year, during the red scare, with congress' stated intent being to acknowledge "the creator". Every supreme court session must begin with the prayer "God save the United States and this honorable court". These, taken together, amount to an official declaration that there is a singular god. This is tantamount to an establishment of monotheism. The language excludes polytheists, atheists, agnostics, nonreligious people, and nontheistic religions like Buddhism, which taken together account for almost half of the world's population.

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow SCOTUS chickened out of considering the merits this case, unanimously overturning the ninth circuit ruling that Newdow had standing to sue on behalf of his child despite lack of custody. However if you listen to the oral arguments, they are far from unanimous. Some seemed like they might be receptive to Newdow's case if the standing issue were resolved.

Newdow is trying again to have "under god" removed from the pledge of allegiance, representing a group of parents who have definite custody of their children. Simultaneously he is targeting the equally unconstitutional "in god we trust" motto on the currency. These cases were heard in December of 2007 at the ninth circuit.

Some have argued that the pledge and the motto have "no religious content" which is a bit like saying that a declaration that we are on land has no geographical content. It is false, and if taken seriously reeks of provincialism and ignorance of alternative beliefs. I would like to see them use the same argument to defend the pledge and the motto if they instead said "under no god" and "in no god we trust", and SCOTUS had to start every session with "No god can intervene in the United States or this honorable court". Those would be declared unconstitutional in a jiffy. The double standard is indefensible.

Most republicans are already under the impression that the United States is a Christian Nation. It's time to give them a history lesson and make the government neutral on matters of religion as the Establishment Clause of the first amendment requires.

- jwray