notes101

Leaving facebook

2025-02-11T00:00:00+11:00

Posted as 3 posts on facebook. I left them up because I wanted people to be able to find them. I changed my passwords and then deleted them form my password manager.

This is my third last post on facebook ever. I'm splitting it in three, because Meta has been blocking mention of alternatives. This first one is about why I'm leaving, the second is on alternatives, and the third is on how to find me elsewhere. Then I'm going to change my password to something I don't know, and log out on all devices.

I think the reasons I'm leaving are really well encapsulated in this book, Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari. It covers many reasons why our attention spans have been degrading over the last few decades, a substantial chunk of which is due to corporate social media (personally, I think the jury is still out on whether other forms of social media can be beneficial) If you care about your personal mental health, or global geopolitics, or climate change, I'd strongly suggest reading it. The book covers a lot of ground, includes a lot of research, and has an excellent systemic analysis (instead of the usual individualistic focus of self-help books). It's also an enjoyable read.

Here's a summary of the core reasons I'm leaving:

Content driven by advertising-optimised algorithms that push conflict-heavy, reactive content, and decrease our capacity for nuanced, thoughtful, and empathetic communication. Hari makes the case that this is dramatically affecting our ability to engage as a society with complex issues like climate change.
The same process also destroys our ability to be attentive, and robs us of our capacity to fully engage and enjoy life outside of the internet too. I haven't been using facebook much for the last 2 years, and apart from missing a couple of events maybe, nothing is worse, and some things are substantially better.
Facebook is a walled garden. You can't easily interact with the rest of the internet, and it's design pushes you to stay here. Platforms that interoperate with the rest of the internet in an open way, ensure that bad-actors can't enshittify the platform. More on this in the next post.
Meta is just fucking evil, as they have shown repeatedly, and with gradually less and less shame over the last 8-10 years. I don't want to be involved anymore.

I'm not gonna be replying to comments here. My last post will include other ways to contact me.

Second last post ever on facebook. If you missed the last one on why I'm leaving, it might because I said something Meta wouldn't like. Next one will be on where to find me.

This one is on alternatives. There are two critical issues here: 1. No centralised control that can be monopolised and enshittified by another corporate oligarch. Services must interact openly with other parts of the internet. 2. No vendor lock-in. If my service's owner does something shit, I want to be able to migrate to another provider - vote with my feet

For a more detailed explanation of why no corporate-controlled, profit driven social media platform will ever be good, I'd suggest reading this article by Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

The alternatives that currently exist are listed in the image. I'm not typing out their names here, because Meta has been blocking any posts that mention some of them. You can search the name to find out more details.

The common thread amongst all of them (except signal) is that they are designed to be federated. Which basically just means that there are lots of different websites all offering the same kind of service, and they all talk to each other. Pretty much the same idea as email domains. This means that there's a little bit of confusion in choosing your first server (most of them have tools to help you do that though), but once you have, you can interact with anyone on any of the servers.

Federation, combined with the ability to move to different servers while still maintaining your networks, means that (unlike corporate, centralised social media), there is no vendor lock-in, and there will never be One Big Arsehole controlling everything and fucking it up for everyone else.

Next post will be a list of my accounts on these services, with recommendations on how and why to join each. I'm not gonna be replying to comments here. My last post will include other ways to contact me.

This is my last post ever on facebook. There were two more before this, giving reasons and alternatives. This one is a list of my accounts on other services, some of which are banned, so this post might not appear.

The most popular federated service right now is Mastodon. It's a twitter-style micro-blogging social network. I'm on one of the main general servers, at https://mastodon.social/naught101 . For new users in Aus, I'd recommend joining aus.social or mastodon.au, or one of the bigger global servers. You could also join an issue-specific server if you're looking for something in particular. Doesn't really matter which you join, you'll be able to interact with people on all of them. A key thing for mastodon is that you should follow a lot early on. In particular, find hashtags that interest you, and follow those.

Pixelfed is an instagram-like image-focussed social network. I'm at https://pixelfed.social/naught101 . For this service, I'd recommend downloading the app (it's free and has no ads), and joining whichever server it suggests first.

Friendica is a facebook-style social network, with groups and events and stuff. It's a little less popular, but it can interact with content from a lot of other networks, including pixelfed and mastodon (e.g. you can comment on stuff that's on pixelfed or mastodon from Friendica). I'm at https://friendica.world/profile/naught101 - and I guess that server is the best to join at the moment, because it's one of the bigger ones.

Lemmy is a reddit-style link aggregator and forum. It basically feels exactly like reddit. It's not user focused, but you can find me at https://lemmy.world/u/naught101 - I'd suggest joining that server, or lemm.ee, or maybe aussie.zone or slrpnk.net. Again, you can interact with content from any server, but the front page of each might have a different focus.

Flow basics: How to flow good

2024-05-01T00:00:00+10:00

Writing this because a few people have asked me for help with flow, and I figure it's better to just stick all my thoughts in one spot.

Flow is a skill that anyone can learn the basics of, but that does not mean that it's easy - building the ability to write and deliver complex, controlled, and creative flows can take years. But it's impossible to do complex and creative flows well without learning the basics, which is what this guide is aiming at. Once you've learned the basic rules, you'll have the foundation to start breaking them in interesting ways.

Personally, I've found learning basic flow skills fairly easy because even though I've only been rapping for a year or so, I've been writing electronic music as a hobby for 10 years, and getting drum lessons for a couple, and flow is strongly tied to musicality. I'm still building my chops with vocal delivery and hip-hop as a style though, and I still have a lot to learn about the finer details of crafting a killer rap flow. But here's what I know so far.

tl;dr version

Write to the beat. Not all flows work on all beats.
Rap to the beat. If you can't hear it, you can't feel when it sounds wrong. If you're just starting out, then rap it out loud to the beat.
Count the beat. 1, 2, 3, 4. Nod your head and feel it. 2 and 4 land on the snare.
Write your bars so that the main emphasised syllables land on the beat - especially on the 4.
Space the in-between syllables out so that they hit beat divisions - usually no more than 4 syllables per beat, unless you're double-timing.
Make the rhythmic patterns the same on consecutive bars to get that consistent feel.

How to count a beat

If you don't understand how a beat works, you can't flow. You can learn this intuitively just through practice, but a little bit of rhythm theory will help you get to that understanding faster.

Beats and tempo

Almost all modern popular music (pop, rock, hip-hop, EDM, and lots of jazz) is based on some variation of a rock beat. The most important parts of this are:

It's in 4/4 time, which means that there are 4 beats per bar (quarter notes).
There is a strong back-beat - usually an emphasised snare drum or clap on the 2 and 4.

To test your understanding of this, find any rock/pop/hip-hop track, and count along with it, making sure to land the 2 and the 4 on the snare/clap sound.

Usually it makes sense to divide a beat into smaller pieces, so that you can fit lots of syllables into a 4-beat bar. Knowing how to count smaller sub-divisions can help you plan out your flows:

Beats/Quarter notes are counted 1 2 3 4
8th notes are counted like 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
16th notes are counted like 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a

Try playing a beat, and counting along with it like this, and see how it feels. Make sure the 2 and the 4 land on the snare.

The tempo of the beat is measured in beats-per-minute (BPM). Most hip-hop is between 70 and 100 bpm. If you download a free metronome app, you can tap along with the beat and figure out what tempo the beat is at.

Components of groove and feel

On top of this these elements are common, and can affect the groove/feel of the beat:

A kick/bass drum providing a driving rhythm. In a simple rock beat, this is on the 1 and 3, but there are often variations. Most tracks have a kick on the 1 though.
Often some other element like a high-hat keeping time on the 8th notes (but sometimes 16th or quarter notes).
A bass that might play along with the kick, or might back-and-forth with the kick. Together these provide the foundation of the groove.

"groove" or "feel" generally refers to the intentional irregularities in the beat, that might be related to certain elements lagging behind the perfect divisions a bit, or to changes in intensity of elements in different parts of the beat. A common type of groove is swing, which is where every off-beat hit is delayed a little bit, which can give the beat a wobbly vibe, or make it feel loose.

The main thing here for a rapper to pay attention to is how the beat feels - nod your head or dance to the beat a bit to get a feel for the groove.

You can also start mumbling/scatting over that movement (e.g. "Da di di Da di Da di Da Da"), and see how it feels - avoid using real words at first, as they will mess with your cadence.

What is flow?

Flow is the way that the lyrics work with the beat. Flow basically has two parts: writing, and delivery. If you write flow badly, then it is very hard to deliver the lyrics over the beat in a way that sounds good. It's also very possible to fuck up a well-written flow with a bad delivery.

If you think of the voice as an instrument, then you can think of written flow as something like sheet music or tabs - it describes what to say - and if you annotate it a bit, it can also tell you when to say it. Delivery is using your instrument - your voice - to play the written flow along with the beat - to rap.

So before jumping in to how to flow good, it's worth going over some (super-simplified) rhythm theory.

Syllables and stress patterns in words.

Words are made up of syllables. "Cat" has one. "Horses" has two. Some words are a bit flexible, for example "Bubbling" can be pronounced bub-ling, or bu-bul-ing.

Each of those syllables in naturally spoken English has a different stress - the amount of emphasis you put into the syllable. For example, "horses" is pronounced HOR-ses, if you try to pronounce it hor-SES, it will sound weird in most contexts (the exception being when you're emphasising that there are multiple - "hor-SES, not horse").

Also note that not all syllables are the same length. The middle syllable of "bu-bul-ling" is quite short, the first syllable of "hor-ses" is long.

If you want to emphasise a syllable even more than it's natural stress pattern, you can do so by making it longer or louder, or higher pitched (or a combination).

The rhythmic structure of stressed syllables in language is often called meter in poetry or rap, or prosody in prose.

Meter and meaning in sentences

Understanding these stress patterns for each word is important, because you want to use those patterns to make the flow you write sound natural, and convey the meaning you want.

As an example, start with a sentence that might end up in a rap verse:

I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap

You can write it out and annotate which syllables are stressed:

 X   .  .  X   .    X  .    .     X   .     X
I'M gonna WIN this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP

Say the sentence above, really emphasising the syllables marked as X.

Note that the stress pattern is not certain in written language until you speak it. Changing the stress pattern can dramatically change the meaning, for instance

 .   X  .  .   X    .  .    .     .   X     .
I'm GONna win THIS battle 'cause you CAN'T rap

Suddenly the meaning shifts to something like "I know I've lost before, but I will win this one, because you aren't as good as you seem". It sounds a bit desperate.

This example shows how stress patterns are critical to communicating the meaning you're trying to get across.

The trick with rap is simultaneously making the stress patterns communicate the message you're trying to convey, AND making those stress patterns line up up well with the beat rhythmically. If you can nail both of those aspects, then you can rap.

Delivery

Rapping is talking rhythmically to a beat. It's not the same as singing, which tends to be less rhythmical and more melodic, but there are odiously overlaps. I think of singing as a melodic instrument, where rapping is more like a percussive instrument.

The main things you want to focus on with delivery are:

Timing. If you don't get this right, then nothing else will make it sound good.
Stress/emphasis: This makes sure the key elements are getting through to the listener.
Tone: How your voice sounds - angry, happy, relaxed? Deep, nasal? Play with this to find what works for the verse you're delivering. Focus on tone only after you've got the timing and stress nailed.

How to flow good

The first thing to note here is that these aren't rules, they are just guidelines for someone starting out. You can absolutely break them if you want to. But you should only do so intentionally. Learn the rules before you break them, kind of thing.

Stressed syllables land on beat

Thinking about the example sentence above, there is a problem if we are going to use it for a decent rap flow: The number of stressed syllables doesn't work with a beat - the first stress pattern has 5 stressed syllables, the second has only 3. Ideally we want 4, for a basic flow. Maybe we could do something like this:

 .   X  .  .   .    X  .    .     X   .     X
I'm GONna win this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP

Try saying this stress pattern out loud: Notice it doesn't change the meaning as much as the previous stress change, so it retains the meaning. Now we can match this to the beat, and space it out according to the beat counting pattern above:

 .   1  .  .   .    2  .    .     3   .     4
I'm GONna win this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP

If you rap this over a beat, you'll notice it feels easy and smooth.

This flip side of this advice is: Do not emphasise naturally unstressed syllables, and avoid landing right on the beat with them, because it sounds janky AF.

How many syllables per bar?

If we analyse the above pattern in more detail, we can see why it works well:

(a)  1  e  &    a   2  e    &     3   &     4
I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap

Notice that some of the es and as are missing - this is OK, because it leaves space for the syllables that come before them to be lengthened for more emphasis. Another way to look at this is in a table:

(a)	1	e	&	a	2	e	&	a	3	e	&	a	4	e	&	a
I'm	gon	na	win	this	bat	tle	'cause		you		can't		rap

Things to understand about this example:

the first syllable ("I'm") actually comes before the 1 (on the a of the previous 4), but leads into the 1
- If you do this, it's important to make sure that the end of your last bar doesn't overlap with the start of your next bar. The easiest way to check this is to rap both bars consecutively and make sure there's enough space.
The syllables from "cause" onward all have a gap after them, which lets you emphasise them a bunch more
The last emphasised syllable ("rap") lands on the snare at 4, which gives it even more emphasis, which is great.

Obviously this is not a lyrically amazing bar, but in terms of basic flow, it's simple and good.

Once you have nailed this kind of flow, and understand what's happening, you can mess around with it by using different stress patterns.

X . . X . . X . . X . . X . .
1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a

This is particularly important for beats with strong off-beat patterns (e.g. beats with extra kicks, or bass patterns that don't hit directly on the 1 2 3 4.

I've built a flow analysis tool over here: https://naught101.gitlab.io/pages/flow-checker.html

You can use it to analyse your own flows or use it to dissect and understand flows from pros.

tl;dr: using normal time, you have a max of 16 syllables per bar, but you probably want to leave a bit of space at the end.

Double-time and triplets

Double time is basically fitting 2 syllables in the space of 1. That means that in a full double-time bar, you can potentially fit 32 syllables in. You can also use double time just for a few syllables within a bar, in order to fit a bit more in.

General rules of thumb for double time:

Don't do it if it messes with the broader flow, e.g. if it makes it hard to land your main stressed syllables on a beat.
Generally only double-time shorter, unstressed syllables. If you try to jam stressed syllables into a double-time burst it will probably sound awkward.

But ultimately you can ignore both of those rules, as long as you can make it sound good. If you're not sure if it sounds good, record it at listen back, and see if it feels rushed.

Sometimes, especially on beats with swing, you might find that triplet time also works well. In this case, you might be able to write in triplets (12 per bar) or sextuplets (24 per bar). A sextuplet groove (sometimes called triple-time, but this is weird terminology, because it's slower than double time) would be counted like this:

X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .  X  .   .
1 tup let & tup let 2 tup let & tup let 3 tup let & tup let 4 tup let & tup let

Whether you can pull of double time depends on the beat, and how good you are at talking fast and clearly. Personally, I can easily pull off double time at BPMs lower than 70, and sometimes up to 80 or 85bpm, depending on the beat. Really skilled/fast rappers might pull off double time at 100 or 110bpm. If you think you're double-timing at 140bpm, then you're almost certainly wrong - you're probably rapping normal time at 140, or double-time at 70 (i.e. the beat is probably half-time).

Consistency across bars

Consistency is what makes a group of bars feel like the belong together. If you have bars that look like:

X . . . X . . . X . . . X   .
X . . X . . X . . X . . X . .
X . . . X . . X . . X . X . .
X . X . . . X . X . . . X   .

Then your audience is gonna have a really hard time following your flow, even if each individual bar sounds good by itself. It will sound janky, and even if your content is great, your verse will fall flat.

Music is about repetition with variation. So a really killer flow will have bars that are really similar, with some minor changes. There are different ways to do this: you could have all bars using the same basic pattern, or you could have consecutive pairs sharing a pattern, or you could have multi-bar patterns that repeats, e.g.:

X . . X . . X . . X . . X
X . . . X . . X . . . . X
X . . X . . X . . X . . X
X . . . X . . X . . X . X

Note that the second two bars repeat the same patterns as the first two, with 1 extra emphasis (the variation).

This approach to flow is ideal, but it's really hard to do well, while making the lyrics coherent, so treat it as more as something to work towards, instead of a hard rule that you need to follow every time.

A note on grammar:

I would recommend that you don't sacrifice your grammar for flow. The two critical things in rap that you should be aiming for at all times are:

it sounds good, and
it's comprehensible.

No one enjoys listening to a stream of random syllables.

Sometimes a bar is really cool, but it doesn't quite fit with a flow. Some options in this case:

Change the grammar, but not so much that it becomes wrong. For example, you can change something from "I'm going to beat you" (6 syllables) to "I'll beat you", which saves 3 syllables. If you wanted it to be somewhere in between you could have "I will beat you" (4), or "I'm gonna beat you" (5).
Re-write it in a different way, e.g. "You're gonna get smashed". This kind of re-writing can be great for finding better flows when you've got a good angle that doesn't yet sound great.

A general guideline here is: If you speak it out loud in a normal voice and it sounds wack, then it will sound wack when you're rapping too.

Tips on how to improve:

Cheat codes for learning flow faster

Analyse flow from rappers you like. Start with just 2 bars, rap those bars yourself, and then annotate which syllables land on the beat, using the method above.
Get a couple of drum lessons. Probably the best cheat code for flow. There's also lots of good youtube videos that can show you the basics.

How to practice delivery:

Once you've got a good written flow, you need to nail the delivery. Mostly this is just a matter of practicing a bunch of times until it feels good. If you're finding this hard (e.g. 'cause it's too fast), here are some options for practicing:

Set the beat going, and rap the whole 4 bars
Record one bar at a time, makes it easier to get right. Then you can splice them together and use that as a guide for how to nail the flow when you do one take
Try slowing the beat down by 10% in a DAW, and practice over that in order to get the feel right. If it feels impossibly fast at that pace, re-write.
Use-non word syllables over the beat in order to figure out the rhyme. like "DAH-di-di-di". These are easy to say, so they won't interfere with the rhythm. If the rhythm sounds jank against the beat, try a different one until you find a cool one, and then adjust your writing to suit.

If after all this you can't make the flow work, then note which parts sound good, and which parts don't, and try re-writing the bits that don't work.

How to check timing

One way that I use to check flow feels good, is to count the beats, and then figure out which syllables land on those beats, and then JUST say those syllables, without the syllables in between (so just 4 syllables per bar). It helps you lock in the main rhythm, and also helps you think about which syllables you want to emphasise.

So with this bar:

(a)  1  e  &    a   2  e    &     3   &     4
I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap

You might just rap:

(a)  1  e  &    a   2  e    &     3   &     4
    GONna          BATtle        YOU       RAP

It can really help to get a feel for the rhythm to fully YELL these syllables in time with the beat. Over-do it to get the feel for the timing, then back it off to make it sound good.

Then go back to the full bar, and see how that lines up with the in-between syllables included.

Flow check-list

Which syllables are on each beat? Are they the ones that you want emphasised?
Can you rap all 4 bars in one-take over the beat?
Are there bits that have too may syllables? Could you slim it down?
Is the flow consistent between bars? Or complementary?
Does our flow respond to your opponent's?

How to record vox good

2023-10-03T19:26:00+11:00

This was originally written as a post on Keyboard Warriors, as a beginner recording tutorial.

Tips for getting good vocals for submitting to KBW

Main points

A $5 mic is bad, but anything better is fine. Smart phone or better mic.
Try to minimise background noise, especially resonance and reverb.
Speak clear and consistent.
A few FXs can make your vox pop.

What mic do I need?

Your phone microphone is probably good enough, on any smart phone in the last 10 years. Especially with some post-recording editing. But then you have to transfer the audio to a laptop to get the timing right to submit.

But it's easier to record straight into Audacity or a DAW, so you don't have to worry about the audio lining up, and most laptop microphones are not great, so options:

Get a lapel mic that you can plug straight into you laptop. Need to make sure it has the right connection - TRRS jack on modern laptops. You can probably also find USB ones.
Get an audio interface and any XLR/6.5mm jack microphone. A cheap dynamic XLR mic and cheap interface from a well known brand is probably around three hundred bucks, or cheaper if you go second hand.
Get a digital audio recorder. There are a few of these around for about $200 new, and they sounds great. Using one with a "class compliant" USB interface in it means that you can use it to record directly into your laptop over USB. But you can also record when you're away from your laptop, unlike an interface.

Any of these options will get you 95%+ of the audio quality you need.

Mic placement

This depends a little on what kind of mic you have, but mostly the idea is to get close, but avoid spitting directly into the mic, as plosive sounds (p, b, etc) will create pop sounds that are annoying to remove. If you rap across the front of the mic at about 45°, you will reduce this. A pop filter and/or wind shield can help too.

Many mics pick up handling noise too, so it can be good to get a mic stand or something to hold it near where your mouth will be. Some digital recorders have camera tripod mounts, so a cheap tripod can help.

Room treatment

This is really important to get nice clean sounding vocals. Mainly you want to minimise reverb and resonances.

The best way to figure this out is to learn what to listen for. To do this, go outside, and clap, and listen to the clap. Now go in your bathroom, and clap again. You should be able to hear a quick reverb afterwards. Now try the same thing in your recording space. It will probably be less intense, but still there. You want to get rid of that, it makes recordings muddy and hard to work with. People spend thousands on this, but you don't need to.

The easiest way to do this is to isolate the mic. You can get cheap reflection filter for $50ish on ebay. But you can also just make one out of a cardboard box and some foam, a pillow, a towel or something similar. The main thing is that you voice hits the wall, and then it doesn't hit the wall behind, reducing echos. As @bloodsporks mentions below, putting your mic in a closet (perhaps with hanging clothes) is also a great option.

TODO: INSERT PICS OF MIC SHIELDS

Recording

Rap in a loud talking voice - lots of air. This will give you a fuller audio spectrum.
Getting closer to the mic will generally give you more body/low tones. If you're further away, you'll sound a bit thinner, but this can be good, depending on style. Try both and decide.
To sound less nasally, open your mouth and lift your soft palate (like when you yawn). Search "how to overcome nasal singing voice" for more detailed tips.
Try to keep your volume as consistent as possible (including mic distance).
Dial in your recording volume. It should be as loud as possible, but not loud enough that it clips (e.g. hits the red). Yell into it a bit louder than you will rap, and turn it down so that that JUST hits the red. That way your vox will be loud, and interference noises will be relatively quieter.

Post-Recording editing:

The best general tip I know on how to learn audio editing is this: Try the effect in a really extreme way (e.g. shitloads of reverb), then decide if you want some of it, and undo and re-do it to the level where you can JUUUST tell that it's making a change. The untrained ear tends to want too much FX, so while you're learning you want to under-do it on the final product, but make sure you can actually hear the difference. DAWs are nicer than Audacity for this, because you can easily compare before and after by disabling the effects, instead of having to undo each time.

Some things that I do to my vox (the order matters!):

If you recorded Vox in stereo, mix it to mono. Or at least reduce the width.
Run it through a de-esser. This reduces the volume of silibances (s sounds).

EQ: This has 3 main focuses (numbered above), not all necessary, depending on your voice, your mic, and your room, but try each one (and vary the values to see how they sound!):
1. Cut the low end: Most voices don't have much going on below 100-200hz. But the mic will pick up rumbles, which make the mix sound bad. Cut with a High Pass Filter (HPF) at 200hz. If it makes your voice sound thinner, undo and try again a bit lower.
2. Boost the high-end: Use a high shelf filter to boost the high end of your vox to make them a bit brighter/sharper. You don't need much. +2-3db, with a shelf at about 2.5kHz-5kHz. To taste.
3. MAYBE: use a notch filter to reduce any dominant frequencies in the mid-range. This requires a lot of trial and error. If you're not sure, don't do it.
Dynamics control (to make the volume more consistent)
- Soft gate: turns all the really quiet bits between words down, which can reduce background noise.
- Compressor: Turns everything up, and then turns the loudest bits back down, so that levels are more consistent. You want a very short attack (1ms), and a medium tail (maybe 80-150ms). Threshold around -15 to -20 dB, ratio between 2:1 and 3:1. Makeup gain ON.
Reverb: only a TINY bit. Like, turn it down until you just CAN'T tell it's even doing anything. Maybe like 5-10%, depending on the effect you're using. Something like 0.5-1s tail length. Basically this makes the recording sound a little less clinical.
Limiter: Kill the spiky volume peaks, without modifying the sound much. This lets you push it a little louder, if you need it. Might be better to put this before the reverb.

Getting over the fear of recording

Some tips:

Record a video of you doing it, and then watch it a few times. Seeing your own face moving in time with your (weird sounding, out-of-skull) voice helps to normalise it, and make it sound less weird when you listen back next time. Works super well, I went from hating my voice to being OK with it pretty quickly.
Aim to finish a bad take. After that, do it again. After a few bad takes, a good take will be a lot less daunting.
I also like to just hit record, and then practice a bunch. Do enough takes of a verse until you get it right without mistakes, and then do a few more times, until you're getting it right every time. Then delete everything (or maybe just keep the best one for reference).
From @om_gm: "do a few takes as not just bad takes, but silly takes.. Do one like Elle from Legally Blonde, one like Blinky Bill, etc"

If you're struggling with flow, some options: - If you're in a DAW, try slowing the track down by 10%, and practice at that speed until you're nailing it, and then speed it back up. - If you don't have a DAW, @Welbot pointed out that you can use the FL Studio demo for free, including exporting (you just can't save). There are also cheap but sufficient DAWs like Reaper and Ardour. - from @ADG: It can also be useful to record each bar individually, and then splice them together, and then re-record along side that, using it as a guide.

Bad Poetry: a game of wordplay

2023-02-23T00:00:00+11:00

Bad Poetry is a poetry-building game, that allows you explore word-play of all types, and create terrible poetry along the way.

This game is a work in progress. It has only been play tested a little bit, but the rules are simple, and you can modify them as needed. Feedback or suggestions are welcome.

The game stemmed from a desire to create a framework for quick and effective collaborate poetry or lyric writing. The rules are designed partly as a way to have some silly semi-competitive fun, and as a set of creative constraints, that can help you create poetry that you actually care about, in a similar way to how story-telling games help create fictional settings. As such, you can treat it as a game, or as an exercise, and you should feel free to modify the rules to suit your purposes. Some modifications to the rules are suggested along the way.

Overview

The basic game play runs like this:

Game setup phase:
1. Set up the pages (described below)
2. Decide on a poetry format (suggestions below)
Brainstorm phase:
1. Players come up with 2 themes (examples below)
2. Players collaboratively brainstorm 10 nouns for one theme, and 10 verbs for another
Writing phase:
1. 3 cards are dealt out from the deck, and laid face up in the centre of the table.
2. Everyone has 3 minutes to come up with one or more lines of poetry.
  - The lines must contain at least one word from the brainstorm lists.
  - Bonus points can be won by including word-play listed on the cards.
  - Bonus points for using extra words from the lists.
3. Discard the cards, and repeat these steps until your poems are complete
End phase:
- Each player reads out the poems in full.
- Tally up the scores (optional)
- Review the poems, and edit as you see fit.

What you need

One or more players
One sheet of A4 paper per player (lined paper is good, but blank works too)
Pens for each player
Either:
- A standard deck of cards and the word play prompt list (below), OR
- A set of cards with the word play prompts written on them (printed cards might come later)
a timer of some kind.

Set-up

Set up the pages

Divide each piece of paper up into sections:

Top quarter:
- Divide this into two columns. These will contain your two concepts and their associated word lists.
Bottom 1/8th:
- Divide this into columns, one per player, for scoring.
Middle section:
- Divide into 2 columns. The left will be for your poem, the right for any notes you want to make.

Decide on a poetry format

You may use any poetry format you like! The only thing that matters is that all players are happy with the format.

Some suggestions:

4 couplets
- 8 lines, where each pair of lines rhyme.
- Double it if you want a longer game.
Haiku.
- 5, 7, 5 syllables. A cutting word and a seasonal reference.
- Probably one per player, so everyone gets a go at each line.
- Maybe change direction after the each one?
A Sonnet
- 14 lines, with a pre-defined rhyming scheme (e.g. ABBA ABBA CDECDE, or ABAB CDCD EFEF GG)
Free verse
- There are no rules, write whatever the fuck you like.
- You probably want to decide on a number of turns to play if you choose this form.
Or any other form. There are lots of forms listed on Wikipedia, but you could also just make one up, no one is stopping you.

Also decide how many lines should be written in each turn. This could be one, or two, or it could be optional on each turn (which might mean that some sheets finish before others). So a sonnet will take 14 turns if you only write one line per turn, or 7 turns if you write 2 per turn.

How to play

Brainstorm phase:

The brainstorm phase has 6 turns.

(Turn 1 and 2): Players each individually come up with a theme, and write it in one of the columns at the top of the sheet.
- Players then pass the sheet on to the next player.
(Turns 3-6): Players pick a column, and then brainstorm 5 words for that column.
- Words in the left column should be nouns.
- Words in the right column should be verbs.
- Only 10 words total per column, if one is full, choose the other.
- Players then pass the sheet on to the next player.

This sets you up with a bank of words that can help stimulate lines in the next phase.

Writing phase:

At the start of this phase, shuffle the deck of cards.

For each turn:

Deal out 3 word play cards from the deck, and lay them face up in the centre of the table.
Start the timer (suggest 3 minutes, but up to you)
Each player writes one (or two) lines on the sheet in front of them.
- Remember, this is BAD poetry. Don't stress about quality. Perfectionism is the enemy, just write something.
- The lines must contain at least one word from the brainstorm lists.
- Bonus points can be won by including word play listed on the cards.
- Add any notes you want in the notes column.
At the end of the round, tally the scores (in the notes column, and/or in the bottom columns).
- 2 points for each word used from the brainstorm lists.
- Points for any word play listed on the three cards that match the line(s).
  - If there is a disagreement on whether a line correctly contains a word play, sort it out by consensus like normal fucking adults.
  - If you can't do that, try one of these:
    - Arm wrestling
    - Rock-paper-scissors
    - Hired hit man
    - Majority vote
  - If the cards aren't clear, send complaints, with suggested improvements.
Discard the cards, and repeat these steps until your poems are complete

End phase:

Each player reads out the poems in full.
- Applause, general mirth.
Tally up the scores (optional)
- It's just a game, who cares, really. The real winners are the ones who can't breath for laughing at the terrible poetry you all produced.
Review the poems, and edit as you see fit.
- They probably aren't good, which is good, because good wasn't the point.
- However, they probably DO contain some interesting word-play, and maybe some nice lines in amongst the chaos. Maybe you should save those for later :)

Prompt Cards

| Card | Rule |---------------|------------- | ♥ A | Symbolism | ♥ K, Q | Homonyms/Homophones | ♥ J, 10 | Perfect rhyme | ♥ 9, 8 | Near rhyme | ♥ 7, 6, 5 | Assonance | ♥ 4, 3, 2 | Consonance | ♦ A, K, Q, J | Multi-rhyme | ♦ 10 | Same | ♦ 9, 8 | Break a cliche | ♦ 7 | Mix 2 idioms/Ciches | ♦ 6 | Contrast | ♦ 5 | Double meaning | ♦ 4 | Alliteration | ♦ 3 | Anaphora | ♦ 2 | Enjambment | ♣ A, K | Metaphor | ♣ Q, J | Similie | ♣ 10, 9, 8, 7 | Repetition | ♣ 6 | Pun | ♣ 5, 4 | Onomatopoeia | ♣ 3, 2 | Allusion | ♠ A | Sight | ♠ K | Hearing | ♠ Q | Touch | ♠ J | Smell | ♠ 10 | Taste | ♠ 9 | Kinesthetic | ♠ 8 | Internal | ♠ 7 | Mix a metaphor | ♠ 6 | Contrast 2 images | ♠ 5 | Hyperbole | ♠ 4 | Personification | ♠ 3 | Metanym | ♠ 2 | Slang | Examples | Points | ------------------|---------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------|----------------------------| | Use an object or event as a symbol for a concept | Sunset = closure | 3? | | Use words that are spelled or sound the same | Deer, dear; lead, lead | 4 | | vowel and trailing consonant sounds match | Craze, laze, days, haze | 3 | | Vowel sound the same, trailing consonant similar | Dog, god; confess, behest | 2 | | vowel sound the same | wide eyed fly cries | 2n-1 per syllable | | consonant sounds the same | tit-for-tat | n+1 | | words/phrases that rhyme sonsecutive syllables | orange, door-hinge | 2n per syllable | word different contexts | | ??? | 3? | | Change the meaning by changing or adding a word | give a dog a phone | 3? | | Pick 2 cliches/idioms, and swap words | eat a book, read a fish | 4? | extreme with mundane | | take your dog for a spacewalk | 4? | | a phrase that can be interpreted 2 ways | ??? | 6? | | Leading vowels the same | | n+1 per syllable | | repeat leading word of line | | 3 | | Run a line on to the next line | | 3? | | Use one | | 5 | | Use one | | 3 | | Repeat a syllable word or phrase | | 2n per word, or syllable | | Go on, no one is aloud to groan | | 2, but -5 if anyone groans | | Use a word that sounds like what it's describing | splash, whiplash | 2 | | Use a reference to something from culture/history | | 2 | | Describe something visually | | 2 | | Describe something aurally | | 2 | | Describe something by feel | | 2 | | Describe something by fragrance | | 2 | | Describe something by flavour | | 2 | | Describe how a body sits or moves in the world | | 3 | | Describe via body-feel | | 3 | | | | 3 | | | | 3 | | Use extreme exaggeration | | 3 | | Give an object human qualities | | 3 | | Use part of something to refer to the whole | suit=business man, wheels=car | 3 | | Use some informal language | | 2 |

Thanks

This game developed with input from H.S.

References

Some of the ideas in this game come from:

Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics
Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song

arrangement strategy

2023-02-15T00:00:00+11:00

I often find it easy to build up good fun music loops, and then get stuck on figuring out where to take the track. These are my notes on how to speed up the arrangement process.

Start with a loop

Do this however you want.
A very good method is to start with a loop in your head, and then voice-record the melody, bassline, and/or beat. Then re-create it in your preferred production set-up.
If you don't have any ideas to start with, here are some methods:
- Listen to a track you like, and stop it half way through, and then hum the melody/bassline/beat and continue it with variations, until you find something that's different enough, but still cool.
- Listen to whatever sounds are happening around you (percussive sounds work best for this - try dropping a spoon), and pick up on rhythms and melodies and expand them.
- Listening to music so quietly that you can barely hear it can also trigger this process.
- Grab a random 30s sample, and mess with the pitch and time, and loop a section of it. If you don't like it, loop a different section
- Think of an emotion that you would like to engender. What element would make that work? Create that and then add to it.

Expand your content

Make more content before trying to arrange. I like having at least and A and a B section that work together before trying to arrange anything.
The easiest way to do this is to take your loop, and delete all but a couple of elements, e.g.:
- Keep the beat and bassline, and make new chords or lead melodies
- Keep the kick and snare and something with melodic/harmonic content, and create new percussive loops
- Keep the bass sound and bear, but write a new riff
- Keep the beat and bassline, but find a new bass sound that still works, but feels different
- Keep the bassline and write a new kick/snare pattern (try half-time or double time)
If you do some of these a few times in a row, you'll likely end up with a completely new loop, but because it is an evolution from the original, it will more than likely still work. Now you have an A and a B section, and probably a few extra parts that work well in between.
- Obviously keep going with this if you want. You might generate 4 sections, but only use 2 of them, but maybe you could use the other 2 together in somehting else later.

Analyse for feel/emotion

Do a quick analysis of your A and B
- How do they feel? Happy? Moody? Dark? Sad? Grindy? Driving? Use whatever words you like.
  - If this is hard, see if you can associate it with other situations, or other art that you've experienced, and ask you self how you felt then.
- Is one more up-beat and energetic than the other?

Pick an arrangement structure

it absolutely does not matter which one.
- If you're making house, your structure might be AAAAAA.
- For Pop, you probably want something like Intro, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, Outro.
- EDM might be similar to pop, but with Drops instead of a chorus.
Just fucking pick something.
- Label the sections however you want, but make them clear to you.
- Also decide how long you want each section to be. Are they all the same? Are your A sections twice as long as your B sections?
Figure out how long you want your song to be. Is it a 9 minute tech-house evolution? Is it a 1:50 punk song?
- Then divide this up into your sections, so you know appoximately how long each section will be (20s? 1min?)
You can change all this later! you just need a skeleton to work with to get you going.

Fit your loops into you arrangement

Decide which of your A and B sections match your main sections
Slot them in.
Duplicate them out to 8 or 16 or 32 bars (or 12, or 7, I don't care, be different!), so that they are about as long as you estimated in the previous section.
Leave gaps for intros and bridges and stuff

Great, now your song is arranged!

Now, figure out what you need for the others sections.
- Does your intro need drums? Can you just copy them over from the A section, an maybe remove some elements to thin them out, or change some of the intensity by reducing velocity or using different samples?
- What changes in your bridge sections? bass line variation? chord sequence change?

Now your track is complete!

As my friend Evan says, the rest is just production. Now you will want to go around, adding transitions, fills between and within sections, and modulation and variation. And then come back and add whatever ear candy you want to include to keep it spicy. Or maybe minimal is fine, and you can call it done now.

That's it for now. I will probably come back and edit some more thoughts into this over time. If you've got any suggestions, let me know via Mastodon.

Trip-hop recipe

2023-02-12T00:00:00+11:00

Concepts

Slow tempo - 60-90 bpm
Moody vibe. Dark, melancholic, but with an undercurrent of anger, or cool.
Slow evolutions.

Elements

Drums:
- Break beats, often from funk tracks, usually slowed down.
- Muted - just a slowed down loop will do this, but if making drums from scratch try low pass or reduced high-shelf EQ with lots of reverb (not wide).
- Snare: short, pitched-up, distorted, reverbed.
- Kick provides the groove - add 16ths on off-beat 16ths, in
- Cymbal wash
Percussion:
- woodblock, toms,
Samples from existing music:
- e.g. melodies, chords, pads, vocals
- re-pitched to match your key.
- Muted vibes (pitch down/low-pass)
Melodics:
- Moody
- low-passed + reverbed
- guitar, bell, keys or organ sounds
Bass/sub:
- gritty but dark: distortion + low-pass
Pads:
- constant pitch
- layered chords
- light modulation (e.g. 10% volume LFO, ~1/4 pulse)
Vocals:
- repeated motifs, change every 4 or 8 bars
- reverbed

Techniques:

drums:
- Shuffle the 16ths.
- Variations every 2 or 4 bars:
  - Drop the drums out for part of a bar.
  - Slice and re-arrange parts of the bar.
bass:
- longish notes (1-4 beats), with gracenotes before, e.g. high notes leading in to the down-beat
- Play the bass against the kicks for a driving feel, or with the kicks for more laid-back vibes.
Melodies
FX:
- low-pass/low-shelf most thigns for moodiness
- wash with dense reverb
Ear candy:
- high-pass or low-pass drums for a couple of bars.
- resample the master channel or drums and reverse/stutter for a beat.

Sources

Lyric Writing Process

2023-01-17T00:00:00+11:00

This is a summary of the ideas laid out in the Process chapter of Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics, plus my interpretations. It also includes some ideas from Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song, and probably some other sources that I might eventually remember.

Process

Start with an idea.

Keep an idea diary? Pick one.
What's making you angry/sad/happy/whatever right now? Or earlier this week?

Object writing

Half to one page based on the idea.
Frees up the mind, gets you in the zone.
Focus on sensory descriptions:
- Sight, Smell, Sound, Taste, Touch,
- Organic (body-internal), and
- Kinesthetic (relation to the world - movement, space, time).
- More on this in Chapter 1.

Rhyming Worksheet

A worksheet provides a bank of ideas, without any expectations of structure (like a box of Lego)
Brainstorm ~10 key words associated with the idea (maybe from your object writing)
For each key word, brainstorm 10+ rhymes (in order of most to least resolved a la chords):
- Perfect (same vowel and trailing consonants)
- Family (similar trailing consonants)
- Additive/Subtractive (extra trailing consonants)
- Assonance (only vowels similar)
- Consonant (only consonants similar)
  - (n101) neighbouring vowels work better - useful charts
LEAVE SPACE! you'll probably come back and add stuff to this later.
Use a rhyming dictionary (but use your brain first!)
(n101):
- Skim your object writing for rhymes! You might find some interesting combos.
- This is a good place for multi-syllable rhyming, if you start with phrases instead of words
- Pattison's examples only really contain single word rhymes, but I think this is a great space to add in phrases that rhyme with single words too - the process brings them up, you may as well note them down. And you can always use the rhyming word separately later.

Consonant families

	Plosives	Fricatives	Affricative	Nasals	Liquid	Glide
Voiced	b d g	v TH z zh h	dj	m n ng	l r	y w
Unvoiced	p t k	f th s sh	ch

(a few added from here)

(n101) Many Plosives and fricatives can be followed by r, l, or w consonants before the vowel in English (e.g. press, bless, tween).

Write some stuff

In the Process chapter, he starts with a partially written song provided by someone else, so the rest of this is mostly my interpretation

I guess the idea is to build up a few partial stanzas, and work from there.
Probably good to work in a "yes" mode, and create a bunch of starting points before getting critical
I think starting with key phrases pulled from your object writing, or inspired by it, is really useful. Think of these as targets to work towards - the rest of your writing is there to support these (you might come up with better ones as you go).
Look for rhyme ideas in your worksheet. It might be useful to start your worksheet with the key phrases.
With hip-hop especially, it's very OK to switch vocal rhythms and flow as you go, as long as each line works with the beat, and with the lines around it.
Once you have a bank of material, start re-arranging it into a structure.
- I find that labelling each section/stanza with what it represents, and then writing a structure outline helps.

Analyse macro structure

Think about common language/narrative structures:
- Action -> Reaction
- Set Scene, Tension, Climax, Release
- Macro structure based on rotating through themes, characters, etc.
How are your sections fitting with these structures? Can you re-arrange, or add more?
Are there disparate ideas? Can they be connected? If not, can the be contrasted? Or could one be removed/saved for later?
Analyse and reuse the macro structure from other songs.
Breaking the main structure for a bridge or alternative verse provides tension and contrast/interest
- small transitional sections (micro-bridges?) can force musical development?
Check the narrative from multiple perspectives (first person, second person, third person) and tenses (present, future, past).
- present tense provides immediacy
- first person provides intimacy
- contrasting between sections can work
(n101) check the narrative from each character's point of view too
Is this really all necessary? Could you trim any fat, and still tell the same story?
Develop alternative structures and compare them. (this part is probably easier on a computer)

Analyse Micro structure

Trigger lines:
- Set-up lines for chorus/key sections. Powerful.
- Last line of a verse should obviously lead into a chorus.
- Clear connections between sections.

Tighten lyrics/rhymes

Stuck with clichés? Find the thing they are rhyming with, and add that to your worksheet.
Ground metaphors in reality - are both sides relevant?
- Focus on providing a clear mental image for the listener. Check back to object writing.
Check rhyming schemes (ACAB?), are they consistent? Do you care?

General advice

Colour drips down, not up (Chapter 2)
- Show before telling
- Start your sections with evocative imagery, and let it colour what follows.
- T.S. Elliot's Objective Correlatives - physical objects with sensory aspects that correlate to emotions

What am I?

2021-05-29T00:00:00+10:00

I'm a musician, and I hear. I'm a writer, and a clear thinker. I can draw, because I can see. I'm a scientist, I'm interested, I love new things, I devour information. I'm an engineer, I'm logical, I solve problems, I make things. I'm neat and organised. I'm fun, and funny. I care deeply, about other people, other societies, other species, other biomes. I don't let myself get dragged down by others' problems, but am willing to listen if it seems helpful. I approach things mechanistically, but I understand that emotions and relationships are critical in everything. And I thrive in both spaces. I don't judge others, especially if I don't know their story. I am not perfect. I see the beauty in all things. I hope for the future. I like space, and distance, and silence. I love intensity and chaos in short bursts. I can tolerate nearly anything, except intolerance. I'm a human, primate, chordate, animal, alive, mineral. An eddy in the inevitable march of entropy. I am small, I am finite, I will die. I see no essential meaning. I make my own.

Notes

Written with the realisation that defining identity is useful in creating life direction.
Some of these attributes are more aspirational than actual.

Awareness

2020-10-19T00:00:00+11:00

Today I saw a dude swan dive into the waves - a steep beach, shallow water, no idea where then next sandbar was.

I've done that before. Landed head-first in a sandbank. It felt like the stupidest thing I've ever done then, and it still ranks. A few centimetres of luck difference and I might not have walked away from it, even if I was still breathing. I think there were other people around me at the time, but none of them noticed, and thank fuck they didn't need to that time.

This time, watching this guy dive down the beach, over a wave barely up to his waist, my body tensed. I was 30 meters away, tired after a long walk, and carrying a heavy pack. I got ready to drop everything and sprint, watching to see if he'd come up in the next wave. To my left, a few steps behind him a few of his mates were jogging down after him.

I watched.

He came up after a few seconds, stood out of the trough, stumbled drunkenly and fell back into the next wave. I noticed as he jumped, one of his mates, a heavier set dude, and the back of group, tensed too. And as soon as he saw that stumble, he broke into a run. Others followed, but I wasn't a sure if they had a reason. As soon as I saw that run, I relaxed. I figured as long as there's someone to pull him out of the surf, we can deal with the rest later.

I watched.

With the running man 4 paces away, the first young guy stood up again, and flicked his hair around. He was still in control, there was no problem. The guy running saw this too, and his bolt changed fluidly into a lope, he laughed, and jumped over the next wave, next to his mate (in a way unlikely to cause spinal injury, sensibly). I don't think any of the others noticed, and he didn't seem to say anything to rebuke his mate.

I grinned.

It's a nice feeling knowing you're not going to have to deal with dragging a random stranger with a neck injury out of the water onto a beach with no easy access. It was even nicer - a privilege - to have been able to witness that subtle act of care

I think I've been in almost the same situation countless times, with my own mates, but when it's your mate at risk, you don't really have time to appreciate it how important paying attention is. This was a rare moment where I could witness it from the outside, without any personal attachment. It made my day, and it had already been a good one. One meaningless act of mild stupidity, one tiny, well paced act of awareness and caring, that most likely no-one else noticed, and definitely no one else will ever talk about.

I wanted to go up to him and thank him for that tiny little thing - what seemed to me the perfect example of positive masculinity - rushing to someone else's aid as required. But I had just spent the day traipsing through the back of Glenrock, was covered in sweat, with bleeding feed, and carrying a couple of kilos of old broken lilo I'd found in the forest. Didn't figure a dirty hippie running down the beach to gush praise on you in front of your mates (and the broader group further up the beach) would go down that well for a young Aussie male.

So I just smiled to myself, and kept walking down the beach, dragging my mossy lilo, and significantly more aware of the importance of awareness.

Something is wrong

2020-10-06T00:00:00+11:00

Something is wrong. I know it. I can't see it properly, or hear it, but I can almost smell it. Faint, like burning tin.

It feels as if someone has picked up the entire world, moved it four centimeters sideways, and put it back down askew. Now only three of four legs are touching the ground, and every time something moves, it rocks slightly, unstable.

This feeling has been with me since I can remember. At times, I have been convinced that the world is not real. That if I turned sharply enough, my vision itself would tear through the fabric of reality, like a fingernail through a perished surgical glove.

Letter to Bobin, after the fires

2019-11-10T00:00:00+11:00

Hey Bobin,

I came home today. I wasn't really expecting to. I got a call when I was still asleep, asking if I wanted to drive up to see if the house I grew up in still exists. It does. I'm glad I came.

We're reasonably well fire prepped, but the house probably only remains thanks to a well-timed waterbomb from the RFS. The cottage I grew up in until I was 12 doesn't. It's an oddly pretty pile of corro, ash, and charred logs supported by a couple of stone walls my mum built when I was in utero. The sculpted face of a warrior woman that looked over me from the mantel while I was sleeping in the lounge room as a kid now looks out over a ruined mess. Maybe a fitting end for that place. At least it means we don't have to decide what to do with it.

Bobin, I saw parts of you today that I thought I'd never see. Parts that I probably shouldn't have seen. I saw the insides of trees as infernos. I saw blackened hillsides with nothing left but rock and ash. I saw rainforest on fire. I saw fucking creek beds on fire. Creek beds completely dry, with water in the few deep pools a foot lower than I have ever seen in my 35 years of knowing you.

I saw a country school blackened and twisted and melted to the ground today. After only 136 years. I'm glad the library still stands, and I hope that the relevant authorities have the vision to bring it back. And the Hall. We would be devastated without you.

I saw a few people today. Some fucking amazing ones. I saw fire fighter - friends who I've known for years, still working after a few hours rest following 36 hours of chaos. I saw friends whose houses had been saved looking out for other people. I saw friends who had nearly lost everything, but had managed to escape with their house intact, and their animals still alive, riding the relief high. I saw other friends who had lost everything. Like, everything. Just got out to a neighbour's house with wallet and laptop and a change of clothes before everything collapsed. Photos lost. Memories lost. The smell of home replaced with the lingering smell of ash. I saw some of those friends still smiling, laughing eCV en. I saw others crying. I met new friends, helping old friends with a place to stay, and old friends helping new friends put out spotfires. I saw other friends getting ready for the fire that would be hitting right now, well prepared, but with fingers crossed that their place burns out slowly tonight because if it isn't burnt by Tuesday, it will probably burn harder then. I left knowing I have many friends who are prepared, but also knowing you can never be prepared enough. I hope they get it easy.

Bobin, you're fucking gutted. I've seen fires run through you. The Hall nearly burnt a few years ago. But there was never anything like this. No one expected 6 houses in the middle of the village, in the middle of open paddocks, to just disappear. What the fuck.

But Bobin, if I know any place, and community, that can take a gut punch like that, and stand straight back up, it's you. You're a community of amazing people, with an amazing capacity to get shit done. You can pull through this. You'll probably even do it in style.

I really came home today. I felt it so much. I am who I am because of you. I have fallen back in love, and I look forward to helping you back on your feet in what ever way I can.

ned.

This letter was first posted on facebook, and then republished in the Guardian

Introversion/Extroversion

2019-06-06T00:00:00+10:00

Introversion Extroversion candle flame burning bright starry night city lights buena vista dizzy heights buckle in hold on tight heart at peace spirit free sheltered beach open sea solitude ecstasy melatonin dopamine more time more fun more dry more sun more deep more broad live by the book die by the sword Narayana Nataraja hippocampus amygdala brain alight soul on fire I'll take it wide you take it higher open fire open door win the heart win the war nothing less and nothing more all for one and one for all

note: I can't remember the exact date I wrote this, but it would have been around 2019 or slightly earlier

Patterns in music

2018-08-09T11:02:00+10:00

[Work in progress]

I'm really interested in what makes good music good. Some of that is described in Western Music Theory, but a lot is not - particularly broad scale patterns more focussed on rhythm than on the interactions between harmony and melody. I plan to try and document some of that here - patterns I come across, that are useful in guiding music production.

There should usually be a single focus

At any given point in a piece, there should be a single focus point - a single sound that draws your attention, and for which all other sounds provide a base layer.

This can be done using multiple tools. Volume can be used, such that non-focus parts of the music are lower in volume than the focus. Filtering, reverb and other effects could be used to push sounds into the background. Resonant filter movement, or other effects could be used to add interest to the focus.

This is related to Counterpoint, when it operates on shorter time-scales (within phrases), but it can also be used on longer times scales (between phrases/sections).

Complexity requires trade-offs

At any given point, there should be a limited number of sources of complexity. Too many, and music will become chaotic, and hard to listen too, too few, and it will become boring.

For example, when writing for bass and drums, if the drums are complex, the bass should be simple, similarly, if the drums become simple, the bass has more room to move, and can get more interesting without becoming confusing.

This is related to the previous point, especially for longer time scales.

Examples:

Discussion and example in a Scott's Bass Lessons video

Repetition with variation

This is really a fundamental part of what makes music music, but it can be easy to forget. Forgetting to add variation is what makes shit house music boring, and it is also what makes modern architecture so mind-numbing. Repetition is great for the human mind, which is excellent at pattern detection, but without variation, repetition quickly becomes aggravating.

Common patterns include using 4 repetitions of a 1-2 bar phrase, and altering parts of every 2nd, 4th, or 8th bar, by adding fills, melodic or harmonic variations, or adding space or changing sounds.

Creating interesting drums

2018-06-01T10:04:00+10:00

Initially posted as a reddit comment.

Something that I learned recently (from a bass lesson video) is that when the bass/other instruments are doing something complex, then the drums should be simple. When the bass/other breaks down to something simpler, then the drums can step up their complexity.

I've heard iLL.Gates and others talk about something similar: Basically, there should be one major point of focus in the track at a given time. So don't go nuts with the drums while the leads are doing their thing well.

As for actually creating interesting rhythms, you can try:

Poly-rhythms: try a cownbell/woodblock/other percussion on every 3rd or 5th 16th note. Reset after 1 or 2 or 4 bars for repetition.
Use random snippets of interesting audio (people talking, anything dynamic) and loop them, and put them over a basic beat, and draw rhythms out of that.
Use a midi controller, and then partially quantise. Even if you're shit, this will help to add a human touch (especially to the velocity), and can result in interesting mistakes, when you're off enough that the quantiser pulls a note in the wrong direction (try 32nd, 70-90% quantising). You can manually tweak the beats afterwards.
BREAKBEAT, MOTHERFUCKER. Add some off-beat kicks and snares, and the odd triplet roll on the hats, and swing parts or all of the beat. Skip kicks on the 1 and 3 sometimes. If you do this, then your 4-to-the-floor sections will be WAY more interesting, and more punchy, because they're offering rhythmic relief.
Randomly move notes off the beat a little bit. Make it wonky. See what happens. You can always change them again later.

Welcome Home!

2010-08-26T00:30:00+10:00

Schweet. I've moved off wordpress.com. Finally.

I've been meaning to do this for years. You may notice that this site is based on drupal. I use drupal for most website designs, and it's far more expandable than wordpress. Which is what I plan to do. I've been meaning to put up a bunch of random things that wouldn't be suited to a blog. Now I can.

In the meantime, this site isn't quite finished, and probably never will be. A wise old bloke I know once told me (ok, he told me many times - he's my dad) that "a finished house is a dead house". Words that I've lived with for most of my life (inescapably, since I've lived in his houses most of my life), and a philosophy that definitely rings true with me. So the general dodginess of the graphics and layout will gradually be eroded away as I get annoyed and decide to fix things.

Before all that happens, I plan to start doing a bit more writing, and a bit of other random experimentation.

Let's see what happens.

We've got our anonymity back!

2010-06-05T11:20:00+10:00

We'd better use it wisely:

Yeah, that's me.

Dealing with [Climate] Denial

2010-05-20T21:10:00+10:00

Here's a straightforward approach to dealing with denial. Most of these points make sense to me:

Tips for dealing with denial

Communicate a consistent message. Do not attempt to “soften the blow” too much, by making the issue seem less than it is.

Try not to provide too much information at one time. This sometimes can overwhelm [deniers]. Keep the first meeting as brief and succinct as possible, and end with the scheduling of a follow-up meeting.

Ask open-ended questions, and allow [deniers] plenty of time to talk. Undoubtedly, they are fearful of losing something very important—health, independence, or optimism/faith about the future.

Explain to [deniers] that information is something that you can provide, but that it is their choice what, if anything, they want to do with the information provided. Ask them what they want to know about, and let them guide the conversation.

Provide reading materials, which [deniers] can peruse at their own discretion.

End your meetings with [deniers] positively, and try to instill in them a sense of self-confidence in their abilities to [deal with the problem].

Recommend support groups, whenever possible.

Make it clear that the [problem] will never “go away,” .. but emphatically explain that [solutions] can lessen the severity of the [problem].

Explain to [deniers] that even if they do not believe that [the problem exists], the recommendations that you are making certainly will not harm them in any way. Ask them to humor you by making an attempt to follow your advice for a little while.

Know that [people] in denial often will refuse to admit that they are upset. They claim they are not upset—after all, nothing is wrong. Ask them how they would feel if they really did have the [problem] that they are denying that they have.

Remember that tough love often does not work with [people] in denial. Many [authorities] have said, “There is not much use talking to you right now. Just call me when you accept that __________.” They never hear from the [denier] again. Do not expect that [denier] will independently have a sudden insight. However, you can say, “I feel like you have other things on your mind today. We can talk more about this tomorrow at noon. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions before then.”

Expect [deniers] to direct their anger at you. Many times when you try to deconstruct their carefully built wall of denial, [deniers] will become angry. Do not react to this anger.

Some pretty sound advice there, I reckon. Some of it I've already seen in action in climate circles, some not.

The source? Medical clinical denial advice.

I wonder why more climate advocates haven't looked at this kind of thing? Seems like a fairly obvious starting point, even if it can't be linearly extrapolated to large groups...

IPCC review under way

2010-05-17T13:17:00+10:00

The IPCC is being reviewed by the Interacademy Council (which represents dozens of national science academies). And they're taking public comment. This might be a good chance to get some improvements. The comments form is at: http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/comments.html

If you can't think of anything, here's what I wrote:

The IPCC needs to report more frequently. Interim reports, or even annual updates would be very useful.
More focus on possible tipping points. Especially estimates of sea-level rise from glacial melt, and estimates of non-linear responses to warming.
More transparency with the process - especially which representatives are making which changes to the finial release.
Stop being so conservative. Offer an your analysis, and be prepared to defend it when it gets attacked by the fossil fuel lobby and governments.
Work with science communicators. Create a lay-person's version of the report.

Labor tries to undo 130 years of Conservation.

2010-05-17T13:10:00+10:00

If you needed any more proof that Frank Sartor is scum, try this:

https://www.npansw.org.au/website/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=657&Itemid=495

Labor are trying to open up National parks for developments. What more can be said?

Sounds good: Worse targets than Kyoto

2009-12-09T15:31:00+11:00

Of the three announced national carbon targets I've heard of lately, two are arithmetically worse than Kyoto targets, and one is technically worse. The latter is Australia's target, already discussed here.

The others are the recent US announcement, and the recent China announcement.

The US announcement was for a 17% cut, which sounds a bit better than the Kyoto US commitment (or non-commitment, as it turned out) of 7%. But it's not really better, because it's on 2005 levels, where as Kyoto was based on 1990. As it turns out, the US target, compared to 1990 levels is only about 5.5%, so it's worse than the Kyoto target, and it's 8 years later.

China's announcement was for 40%, which sounds pretty good (and ok, since they didn't have a target for Kyoto, it's not really technically logical to call it worse), BUT. China's target is relative to GDP. And China has a phenomenally high GDP growth rate, that 40% grows less meaningful every year. Even if China's growth rate was close to average, like 3%, that 40 percent would be more or less nothing by 2020. China's growth rate isn't average though, it's massive - 9% in 2008.

I've started collating ruses like these on envirowiki. If you know of any others, please edit that page and add them

Some mothers do have 'em!

2009-07-07T16:24:00+10:00

There's a pigeon nesting in the apple tree in my yard. The pigeon has already laid its eggs - two creamy pink ones. The apple tree hasn't dropped it's leaves yet - some are yellow, some are still green. It's the 7th of July - the middle of winter.

Granted, both species are introduced, and the apple is some bastardised cross-breed grafted Frankenstein, each graft of which seems to bud, fruit and drop leaves at different times (which makes it very difficult to know when to prune it). But the image is pretty bizarre. I reckon the pigeon isn't going to be happy when the rest of its cover is blown. Not that there are many predators in the suburbs.

Weird world.

Population and climate

2009-06-06T14:40:00+10:00

This is in response to a discussion about population control and climate change on an e-list I'm on. In particular, it's in response to a line by a mate, Jono:

it's not the number of people that is important, but rather the power of the argument. Population control arguments need to be challenged wherever they occur, because they turn the climate movement into a war against human rights rather than for human rights.

Population control doesn't have to infringe human rights. Some of the best ways of reducing the rate of population change are PRO-human rights: accessible education, equality in power relations between men and women, access to contraceptives, the aged pension.

Population is inseperable from environmental impact - if the population is low, but consumption per capita is very high, then you have a problem. If you have a really high population with small per-capita footprint, you still have a problem. At the moment, it's obvious that the current global average per capita footprint is too high for the current population. The UN predicts 9 billion people by 2050, (150% of current population), which means that for us to have the same over all impact by then, we will need to have reduced our average percapita footprint to 2/3 of what it is now. To put this in perspective, current Australian GDP per capita is US$40-50,000, globally it's about $10,000, so we'd have to reduce our footprints to about 15% of what it is now. That sounds doable, but that doesn't take into account that we have to REDUCE our over-all impact, not keep it steady. (I realise I'm only talking about averages, but I think median figures would likely show even greater disparity).

There's no reason why population control has to happen in the third world. It doesn't matter where it happens. In fact, it's probably better that it happens in the rich minority world, 'cause one less person here is heaps more impact reduction than the same person in the minority world. And that could potentially mean we have more room for refugees (not that population is the barrier now).

Ultimately, it's about how you do it. Of course there's plenty of fucked up ways to control populations. But the same can be said for any problem (Green Dictatorship, anyone?). We definitely shouldn't be supporting any kind of punishment/penalties for people who feel the need to have more kids, but we should definitely encourage any positive measures that would help to slow down population rates, and oppose those that do the opposite (like Costello's " one for Mum, one for Dad, and one for the Country" - ugh... how would you feel to find out you were the one for the country?)

Seems to me that reducing populations and rates of change should definitely be a part of any broad climate campaign. We just have to make it abundantly clear how we mean to go about it - ethically and compassionately.

Politics

2009-06-02T23:30:00+10:00

Terry Pratchett notes in one of his discworld books that politics is fundamentally about the running of the city. Politics - from Aristotle's ta politika "affairs of state,", from the Ancient Greek polis - the city state.

Something - perhaps Greg Combet's assertion that "[it is] very widely agreed throughout domestic politics and international politics that an emissions trading scheme which fixes a carbon price by a market mechanism is the best way of getting a carbon price into the economy." - tells me that politics just doesn't cut it any more. Politics really does still deal on this level, the level of the ciity state. everything is one big race between competing countries, to get the best deal in the fastest time.

We need a way of dealing with systems bigger than the city state. We need ta geotika. Affairs of the Earth. A global politics - geotics.

CFMEU keeping the bastards honest.

2009-05-22T20:09:00+10:00

CFMEU rejects carbon trading job claims - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Electrical Union (CFMEU) says the release of figures warning that emissions trading will cost thousands of jobs is part of a scare campaign.

The Minerals Council says emissions trading will cost 23,000 jobs in the next decade.

But the CFMEU's Tony Maher says the Minerals Council is using the figures irresponsibly.

"Even on their own shonky report there's a very significant growth in employment," he said.

It's nice, really nice, to see Tony Maher from the CFMEU being honest. The Minerals Council are spinning this for all it's worth, even though they're getting more than they asked for in the CPRS. The CFMEU has run spin campaigns with the Minerals Coucil before, but obviously they aren't as conjoined as it previously seemed.

Also worth noting that on Stateline tonight (I'll link to the transcript when it goes up), solar researchers are planning to start a PV cell manufacturing industry, which they estimate will provide 70 construction, and 120 jobs. They also estimated that such an industry could eventually end up providing 40,000 jobs (if I remember the figure correctly).

That's what I call an offset.

What kind of fallacy is this? Science and Technology.

2009-03-04T15:33:00+11:00

For anyone even vaguely involved in the world of blogs and climate change, logical fallacies are a familiar thing. The straw man, the appeal to authority, ad hominem attacks, the biased sample/cherrypicking, and many more are all used by both sides of the argument, to a greater or lesser degree.

On the side of climate scientists/environmentalists (Yes, I know that some won't agree with my lumping those two groups together - it's a crass generalisation, and it makes my case looks stronger (I am an environmental activist studying science), however it is true in the majority of cases) one of the arguments that comes up quite often is this:

Denier: "why should I trust the science - it's biased/has vested interests/goes against my religion/philosophy."

Greenie/scientist: "Why should you trust science? Look around you. You enjoy watching television, don't you? And you're using a computer right now, and I bet you drive a car. Science brought you those things."

No. It didn't.

Science is not technology, and technology is not science. The two are separate, although closely linked.

Science relies on certain technologies, such as microscopes, rulers and protractors, test tubes, and for more complex calculations, computers, etc. It does NOT rely on technologies like television, or the internal combustion engine, although these can make it easier.

Likewise, technology relies on science, but it also relies on the values of the individuals and societies building it, the resources that are available, and of course, the technology required to build it.

How about this:

Denier: "why should I trust the science - it's biased/has vested interests/goes against my religion/philosophy."

Greenie/scientist: "Why should you trust science? Think about this: The atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, engineered viruses, toxic toys, and television advertising. Science brought you those things."

The point is that Technology isn't brought to you by science. technology is brought to you by humans. True, the scientific understanding is a limiting factor on the technology available, but this does not mean that the technology will become available as the science advances.

Science, in it's purest form, is just the pursuit of knowledge. More knowledge is, as far as I can work out, never a bad thing. Technology can go either way, and depends on the values of those designing it. Conflating the two is potentially a very dangerous thing to do, and even in cases where it's safe, to do so is still a logical fallacy.

There's a long list of logical fallacies here: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/, but I don't think this one features there. Perhaps it's some kind of cause/effect fallacy. Perhaps it should be called the "Science for the Good/Bad life".

Useful questions

2009-03-04T14:05:00+11:00

Been thinkin' with a few friends, about what makes people get up and get active around problems like climate change. For some of my friends, it's love - for family, for society, for other species. For me it's anger. For some, anger comes because others are infringing on their own rights. For me (and I don't claim to be unique), it comes from seeing others (humans, other species) being fucked over by people who simply have no cause to be taking advantage of others - i.e they're wealthy enough, and safe and secure enough not to need to take that safety and security from others.

What ever the root cause of activism, a general commonality that revealed itself was critical thinking. I will be the first to admit that I can quite often appear righteous - but I always know that I might not be right - in fact, given the wealth of possibilities, I'm probably wrong, to some extent. But I also know there there's a lot of stuff in the world that's Not Right, and while I don't know what

Journalism, truth, and climate change.

2009-02-15T14:32:00+11:00

I'd like to declare here and now that I'm sceptical about the "reality" of the round earth. There are many dissenting voices, sceptics of the current "consensus", and significant evidence to show that the earth is not round. Not to mention that it's bleedingly obvious - just look out the window: No curvature there, eh?

But despite this, dissenting voices in the debate are silenced. Proponents of the round earth hypothesis pursue their beliefs with a zeal unmatched even by the world's most fundamentalist religions. While it's true that many scientists believe that the earth is round, there are also significant dissenting voices, but were one to mention this in general conversation, or on talk back radio, one would immediately be shouted down, cut off, ostracised. In short, censored.

This is not how science should operate. Science is not decided by majority opinion, but by healthy debate. And while one side is being censored, there can be no real debate.

I'm not saying definitively that the earth flat or round - I'm still undecided, just that the debate needs to be opened up, so the true process of science can run its course, with maximum access to evidence and competing theories from both sides. Until all the information is on the table, I'll be most skeptical of the majority-imposed "consensus".

Sound familiar? The above arguments are frequently used by the denial-o-sphere (denial-o-plane?). While obviously climate change science is not so developed, or certain (or simple) as planetary physics, that does not mean that the above arguments have any weight in a climate context.

A friend and I recently had a long "debate" of this sort with a local journalist (from one of the larger local media organisations). The above is obviously intentionally hyperbolic, and this journo was much more sane and reasonable than all that.

His story was that he was an old lefty with an unfinished science degree who used to be really concerned about climate change in the 80s and 90s. We started off in agreement, and mostly kept it that way. But once we'd agreed that it was happening, my friend and I started talking about how something has to be done, and quickly. That was about the point that he seemed to start getting defensive. After going through a couple of easily dismissed old denial-o-sphere standards (like solar cycles), and coming to the conclusion that, yeah, it's probably CO₂, since there's no other known cause, we were left with him being concerned about the "religious fervour" of anthropogenic global warming proponents. I wish I'd brought up the flat earth society, but I didn't think about that until the day after.

If this was any old pub goer, I wouldn't have been all that worried, I would have just enjoyed debating with a sane person. But this guy has the potential to reach many, many people through the media corporation he's involved in. Newcastle is an old coal town, and the media is generally well known to be pretty supportive of the coal industry - even some of the journos for the local paper acknowledge that it's a "coal rag". I'd be great to have some solid science injected into the local debate.

Journalists have a built in ethic of trying to seek out both sides of a debate. That's a good thing. But not all sides of a debate are equal. In the fanciful flat-earth example above, it would be insane to treat a flat earther with anything approaching the level of respect given to a physicist. It'd be laughable to give them the same amount of time as, say, the local plumber. Even if you didn't have access to any of the evidence, you would still note that there hasn't been any science backing up that position for at least a century.

In climate science, things aren't so cut and dried, still, both sides of the "debate" aren't equal. But it's safe to say that the people who really know about this stuff are scientists: atmospheric physicists, earth scientists, ecologists, etc.. And the information is out there about what these people think, you just have to search for it for a bit, and then, importantly, check for information about what you've found. For example, it's pretty easy to find out that thousands of scientists signed the Oregon Petition stating that climate change wasn't happening, but it's also relatively easy to find out how flawed and unrepresentative that petition was.

Numbers aren't enough, of course, but they are a good indicator. This is because a fundamental task of science is to attempt to disprove current knowledge, and through succeeding or failing, gain new insight into reality. If someone has a new theory that's convincing or plausible, some scientists will want to test it. Once it's been tested, it will either be rejected, or incorporated into the current body of scientific knowledge. If it contradicts another current scientific theory, both should be tested.

Climate science isn't new. It's been around for well over a century, and has come a long way especially in the last few decades, with a lot of theories tested and rejected. It's extremely telling that there hasn't been a paper in a scientific journal for over a decade that rejects the idea that humans are changing the climate through releasing greenhouse gases.

It's a journalists' reponsibility to tell the public what's new. Climate denial theories that have been debunked many, many times are not new. There hasn't been a new alternative theory for a decade or more. If the general public have some responsibility not to make sure they're not being deluded by spin and lies, then journalists have orders of magnitude more responsibility for the same, as they are the conduit through which a large part of the general population finds their information. If that responsibility is not enacted, is the resulting news really any better than a lie?

Climate Stats tutorial, how to, and how not to.

2009-01-19T03:31:00+11:00

I've been starting to learn Octave, a maths programming language. Octave is similar to other packages that are often used to create nice graphs that you often see around the place, especially when it relates to climate change. This is a bit of a slap-dash tutorial on how to get some graphs happening with Octave. It probably assumes advanced high-school level maths.

If you wanna learn, I suggest you get QtOctave, which is damn nice, and in the Ubuntu repositories, and probably in most other distributions of linux (you can run Octave on windows - but if you really want to be this geeky, and are still on windows, you need to re-asses your values). QtOctave has a nice help-search function that lest you find most of what you need to know about functions, and installing it installs all the pre-requisites too, although depending on your distro, you might need some of the extra packages from octave-forge.

At the very bottom is an attachment with most of this code in it. I think most of this stuff will also work in Matlab, but you gotta pay for that...

Then read all of this excellent tutorial. That's where I learned nearly everything for this tutorial, apart from the names of a few functions.

Crank out a graph!

Now you're ready to go. Get yourself a copy of some temperature data to play with. I used NASA's GISTEMP data. You can use any data you want, but I've attached a file that will do everything I'm talking about here, and includes octave-formatted GISTEMP data.

Ok, so assuming you've got your data in a matrix, you can then extract the relevant bits (Some of the variable names are different here to in the attachment, to save space):

% get the years from the first column
yr = GISTEMPdata(:,1);

(You did read that octave tutorial, right?)

% get the monthly averages
Temps = ``GISTEMPdata(:,1);
% Average them, to get the yearly means (2 refers to the second dimension, ie. average rows, not columns)
AnnualTemps = mean (Temps, 2);

You can now hack out a simple graph:

plot(yr, AnnualTemps)

If you read tutorial, you'll know how to adjust the axes, and add legends and titles, and all that jazz. I'm going to ignore that.

You'll notice that the data range from -60 to 80. That's because it's a graph of temperature differences (anomalies) - which means that what matters isn't the starting point, but rather, the relationships between the data. In this case, the -60 means -0.6DegC, and 80 means +0.8DegC (this is explained in the header of the GISTEMP file I linked to up top).

To change it to real values, to give it some human scale, we have to make the 1951-1980 average = 14DecC.

% Divide by 100, add 14, and subtract the average from the anomaly means
% 1951-1879 = 72, 1980 = 101
RealTemp = AnnualTemps / 100 + 14 - mean( mean( GISTEMPData(72:101,2:13) ) );

Cool, huh? Okay, let's get a Trend line going.

Getting Trendy

So, basically, a trend line is a best-fit line. You can do this automatically with a couple of functions in Octave, but since we're going for just a straight trend line at the moment, we can just use a fairly simple one: a first degree polynomial fit. (a first degree polynomial is a straight line at any angle, from any starting point).

Polynomials are those equations you did in high school maths, that looked like:

y = x²+3x+1.5

That one would give you a basic parabola, shifted down and to the left a bit (I think, I haven't actually graphed it). High-degree polynomials (where x is raised to the power of 2 or more) aren't particularly useful for finding trend lines - they can look pretty, but don't really help much. But more on that later. Simple first order polynomials (straight lines) are a good way of getting an idea of an overall trend.

To get the equation for the line, we need to get all the values for the basic form of a first degree polynomial:

y = mx+b

to get m and b from the data, we can use the polyfit() function, with 1, for 1st degree:

EQ = polyfit ( yr , TempReal , 1 ) ;

which provides us with an array, like:

0.0061271   2.1103472

The first value is m, the second is b. Now we apply y=mx+b:

TrendLine = EQ(1) .* yr + EQ(2)

Now you can graph the trenline, with the original data:

plot(yr, AnnualTemps, yr, TrendLine)

Looks ok to me. (I also note that even with the so-called "cooling since 1998/2000/2002/cherrypick", 2008's average temperature is almost 0.2DegC higher than the linear trend for the last 129 years..)

How Not To do Climate Stats

This is where the higher-degree polynomial equations come in. A high-degree polynomial can easily be made to fit a curve, but that doesn't particularly mean anything, unless a high-degree polynomial cause can be hypothesised, that matches the trend. I don't know of any that can.

All this was recently news, because the Australia published a piece of stupid masquerading as climate science.

Anyway, I want to show you how to do that same kind of stupid (albeit with 129 year data, not 30). You can try it with the last 30 if you like. Or with the last two. I don't care, just don't be surprised by the results, because they don't mean anything.

So, we want a sixth-degree polynomial, that best fits the data we have. In other words, we want something like this:

y = rx`<sup>`6`</sup>` + qx`<sup>`5`</sup>` + px`<sup>`4`</sup>` + ox`<sup>`3`</sup>` + nx`<sup>`2`</sup>` + mx + b

And we need to find r, q, p, o, n, m, and b. Again, we do it with polyfit(), this time with 6:

EQ = polyfit ( yr , TempReal , 6 ) ;

and we get something like:

1.3740e-16 -7.9135e-13 1.5165e-09 -9.6503e-07 -1.9859e-09 -2.5545e-12 -2.6291e-15

You might point out that these numbers are so small that they are ridiculous. To that, I'd reply: Good point.

Anyway, on with the stupidity, let's whack those numbers into the above equation:

TempPoly6=EQ(1).*(yr.^6) + EQ(2).*(yr.^5) + EQ(3).*(yr.^4) + EQ(4).*(yr.^3) + EQ(5).*(yr.^2) + EQ(6).*(yr.^1) + EQ(7);

I hope that makes sense, it took me a while to get it.

Now we can graph it, along with the real data, and the linear trend line:

plot(yr, AnnualTemps, yr, TrendLine, yr, TempPoly6 );

Nice, huh? Now, any sane person would see without any stats education would see that an think: yep, that's a pretty good match. Looks like a good fit to me.

But you already know it's stupid, so you should be looking at it with even more critical eyes than usual. One of the best ways to be critical in a situation like this is to step back, and take a wide view. So let's see how those trend lines look if we add another century on each end: 1700 to 2100.

to do this in Octave, you need to stretch the "years" component first, then just put it back into the same equations:

yr = [1700:2100]'

The ' is important, it makes the vector matrix vertical. Now you can just hit the up-key to access the same lines as before:

TrendLine = EQ(1) .* yr + EQ(2)

TempPoly6=EQ(1).*(yr.^6) + EQ(2).*(yr.^5) + EQ(3).*(yr.^4) + EQ(4).*(yr.^3) + EQ(5).*(yr.^2) + EQ(6).*(yr.^1) + EQ(7);

Then just run the last plot command again, (yr has changed length though, so go back to the GISSTEMPdata for the years for the original data:

plot(``GISTEMPdata(:,1)``, AnnualTemps, yr, TrendLine, yr, TempPoly6 );

That's right. By 2100, temperatures won't be 2DegC warmer, nor 4... Nope, it's gonna be 21 degrees centigrade - 7 degrees warmer. And the "medieval warm period"? Didn't exist. Was actually an ice age.

Disclaimer

I'm not a statistician, though I do hope to be doing stats at Uni this year. I'm reasonably sure this is all correct, though I haven't used this kind of maths since high-school, more than half a decade ago. I learned what I now know in Octave in the last 2-3 days, so there might be better ways of doing this, I don't know. I'd appreciate any corrections, if they're needed, and feedback is always welcome.

I'd also appreciate any help on running a LOESS filter on the data. I don't understand the maths except in the vaguest terms (moving polynomial average, or something?), but it seems like it applies a very useful smoothing, although it doesn't provide any kind of future prediction the way a linear trend does (ie. in a very limited way).

ATTACHMENT:

gisstempdata.m - THIS IS A PLAIN TEXT FILE, NOT AN ODT. rename it to gisstempdata.m to use it in octave/matlab.

Comments

emulenews, Mon, 01/19/2009 - 05:26:

Be careful, extrapolation based on polynomial fitting "always" yields bad results. Dealing with polynomial interpolation, also remember Runge's phenomenon.

naught101, Mon, 01/19/2009 - 09:55:

emulenews: sure, my point exactly :) HTML doesn't have a sarcasm tag though...

Carbon Satellights

2009-01-13T10:55:00+11:00

Until now, the technology hasn't been available to obtain fine-scaled, precise measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere. But the launch next year of two carbon-detecting satellites, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the Japanese Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite, should soon help to fill in this knowledge gap, which is critical to establishing a reliable carbon accounting system. - Amanda Leigh Mascarelli

There's more info on the NASA project at http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/, and on the Japanese project at http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html

It amazes me that this isn't getting more attention already. It's going to mean a massive increase in our ability to account for carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and uptakes. Seems to me that these projects should be WAY more exciting than the Large Hadron Collider, for example, since they will so directly effect the science around one of the most important and controversial issues of this... century? millenium?

It also strikes me that images extrapolated from the data could be strikingly beautiful - in a similar way to the "earth by night" photos. Obviously carbon concentrations won't be so strictly confined as light sources, and the images will obviously be false colour (since CO2 is invisible). But other effects, like those of coriolis winds and ocean and forest carbon sinks would be great to see in action, especially with changes over the seasons.

Reference:

Leigh, A. et al. (2008, December 18). What we've learned in 2008. Nature Reports Climate Change. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0901/full/climate.2008.142.html.

Looks like the Clean Coal Carollers got cleaned out.

2008-12-16T07:55:00+11:00

There was such an uproar in response to this hilariously crap PR campaign, that America's Power has killed it. It's not on facebook, and it's not even on their own website any more. Fucking classic. That PR agency won't be popular next year. America's Power's has made some weak excuse for killing the little bastards. "Behind the plug" - so that's what it was? looks like it's been pulled good and proper.

Anyway, there's one fragment of it left on the 'net, if you still want to check it out: Google Cache of the Facebook page. The comments don't have quite the vehemency of the other one that were there when I checked last time.

Rudd targets: 13% increase

2008-12-15T17:53:00+11:00

That's right, Rudd's targets of 5% by 2020, from 2000 levels mean almost nothing.

According to the UN⁽¹⁾, Australia's 1990 emissions totalled 416.2Mt. In 2000 it was 495.2Mt - an increase of ~19%.

A 5% cut from 2000 levels is approximately a 13% increase from 1990 levels. Even a 15% cut from 2000 levels is a 1% increase on 1990 levels.

We need to be dramatically cutting our emissions, not increasing them.

The targets the government has announced fall within Garnaut's 550ppm range, even though the IPCC and other scientific reports are saying that even a 450ppm target will fall short of saving the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, and result in eventual melting of a large percentage of the world's ice caps and glaciers.

Rudd and Co, in the lead up to the election, promised swift action on climate change. So far, apart from some loose symbolic gestures, Labor hasn't done anything that the Liberal Party wouldn't have been forced to do anyway. Weak.

Some Rising Tide crew slammed Rudd during his speech, shouting "NO!" as soon as he announced the target, and then continuing to interrupt him until they were dragged out. Some Brisbaners stages an office occupation of Rudd's Brisbane office during the speech too.

At least there was some decent media - nearly everyone slamming the government, even the Oz, in an online opinion piece. SBS had decent coverage of the protests. Congratulations on NBN (NineMSNs version wasn't quite as good) TV News in Newcastle too, for some really good pieces on the announcement. TV news reporting is rarely as balanced as that.

(1) http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2008/sbi/eng/12.pdf (p. 16)

CSS3 advanced layout module: templates. Discussion and proposal.

2008-11-28T18:56:00+11:00

CSS template-based layouts, or something like them, have been a long time coming. John Resig has blogged about them recently, echoing the attitudes of a few people, it seems. I generally agree: this looks great, and will be a vast improvement for HTML+CSS web development: finally HTML document structure will be largely separate from visual layout. This is something that CSS grids/tables completely fail to do - divs still have to be in row>column order: a semantic change from HTML tables, and nothing more, and they still aren't supported by ie yet anyway (EDIT: Xanthir points out below that I was confused: CSS3-grid is actually a completely separate proposal to tables, and it's basically the same as what I suggest here, albeit without the ability to name the grid).

But...

Yep, of course there are a few things I'm concerned about (and as there should be - if there weren't I'd know I hadn't been looking hard enough). First, there are a few minor points (Disclaimer: I may have missed or misunderstood parts of the spec. Feel free to correct me):

Minor Issues

The value the template element has been called the return of ASCII-art. It's not. The layout doesn't have to visually line up - you can have multiple columns on one line. But if it is used on one line, how does the last row height (/Xem) work? Does it conflict with the column heights that follow? Could this be made more separate? Maybe a comma after each row, and another symbol after the last row? Actually, that wouldn't be needed, since the column-spacing row doesn't start with a quote mark. Something like:

Example VI modified version

body {
height: 100%;
display: "a   .  b  .   c"  /2em
         ".   .  .  .   ."  /1em
         "d   .  e  .   f"
         ".   .  .  .   ."  /1em
         "g   .  h  .   i"  /2em
         5em 1em * 1em 10em
}

body {
height: 100%;
display: "a   .  b  .   c"  2em,
         ".   .  .  .   ."  1em,
         "d   .  e  .   f",
         ".   .  .  .   ."  1em,
         "g   .  h  .   i"  2em,
         5em 1em * 1em 10em
}

This would be somewhat more understandable on a single line (same example, without the filler columns and rows):

Example VI	`display: "a b c" /2em "d e f" "g h i" /2em 5em * 10em;`
Modified	`display: "a b c" 2em, "d e f", "g h i" 2em, 5em * 10em;`

This solution still has the problem that if 5 columns are defined in the diagram, and only 3, or 6 column widths are defined, something weird will happen. I guess it wouldn't be hard with 3 to just add define the first three columns, and us "*" for the 4th and 5th. And for 6, just drop the last one... (See "Backwards Compatibility and Graceful Degradation, below)

What happens with odd shapes? Automatic fail? Like this:

"aaaccd" < a-defined cells odd-shaped
"aabbbd"
"aabbbd"
"aadddd" < L-shaped d cell

Not Quite a Complete Solution

This implementation, while far better than what's been the standard so far, is still somewhat limited, in two major ways:

Sub-Child problem: The layout is restricted to direct child elements, meaning that two elements of html that should appear within one another structurally can't appear side by side visually. Also, sub-children can't become part of the parent layout (I assume). This is not a killer, since most likely there aren't going to be many situations in which this will need to happen: usually visual and navigational elements should be fairly separated from the main content element, and all three within the same parent element. (EDIT: this isn't actually a Sub-Child problem, it's a cell-naming problem, see comments below)
The method of defining the layout could be problematic if it needs to change on-demand. Changes might occur either because some parts don't appear on some dynamically generated pages, or because things move as JavaScript changes DOM elements. I think this has the potential to be painful: basically the entire layout defined by the parent element would have to change depending on the page, so every possible page layout combination would need to be defined (and each combination would need it's own CSS identifier). I can't see a way to easily dynamically change the Ex.VI layout (above). I guess this could be overcome by having nested templates, but that would make the sub-child problem worse.
This is mostly a pet hate, and probably isn't really relevant, but the display: property is already used in css. I disagree with the display: table-* values already. It means you can't define an element as a table element AND as "hidden" or "none", but I guess they are usually mutually exclusive anyway. Nonetheless, something like layout: or template: would make more sense to me (I think the table-* values should also have their own property, perhaps grid:...)

A better way?

Might there be a better way? Nicholas Shanks has a decent idea in a comment on John Reisg's blog post. The basic idea has a number of benefits:

It appears to fit more with the general CSS style of defining properties and values.
It would be much easier to dynamically change, either server-side or client-side.
It has the potential to completely remove the sub-child-as-cell problem (See below).
It would be harder to fuck up (impossible to make non-rectangular shapes).
It would allow overlaps and intrusion (See the graphic)!
It works with the already existing width: and height: properties (although maybe the current proposal does too).

Nicholas's version is not without it's own problems though. I don't understand why he uses CSS3 pseudo-elements. I think a grid element should definitely be a whole element, just as a <td> cell is in an HTML table. His method also involves no way of naming the template (and thus escaping the sub-child problem, see below). His method may take up more text in a CSS file, depending on the layout.

My proposal is a modification of Nicholas's, which addresses the first two of these problems, and maybe the third (haven't thought about a lot of cases yet).

The parent element would be defined thus:

#container {
template: "container name"
}

and the child thus:

.cell {
template-cell: "container name";
template-cell-col: 1;
template-cell-row: 1;
template-cell-rowspan: 2;
template-cell-colspan: 1;
}

Where template-cell: could contain -row and -col, like the background: property can contain background-image: and background-color:. I don't know how -rowspan and -colspan: would fit into that, but perhaps -row: and -col: could accept row/colspans like:

template-cell-col: 1-3;

(for spanning columns 1 to 3, I'm not sure if the hyphen is an appropriate symbol).

Ultimately, it could be condensed thus:

.cell {
template-cell: "name" 1-2 2;
}

The naming is important, because it means that the cell elements don't rely on their place in the document structure to find out what their parent element is. The child can be inside 50 nested divs, but once parsed, it will be ripped out, and become a higher-level element (though only visually). This could also be done by simply referencing an ID. An ID could reduce the possibility reduce the chance of accidentally defining the template: property in a generic element, like <div>, but it would loose some of similarity in style between the parent and cell property definition.

Comparing a complex example:

Example XVII Proposed version

body {
display:
"A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A" /5cm
".  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  ." /0.25cm
"B  .  C  C  C  C  C  C  C"
"B  .  C  C  C  C  C  C  C"
"B  .  C  C  C  C  C  C  C"
"B  .  C  C  C  C  C  C  C"
"B  .  C  C  C  C  C  C  C"
"B  .  D  D  D  D  D  D  D"
"B  .  D  D  D  D  D  D  D"
"B  .  E  E  E  .  F  F  F"
"B  .  E  E  E  .  F  F  F"
"B  .  E  E  E  .  F  F  F"
 * 3em * 3em * 3em * 3em *
}

h1 {
position: a;
margin-bottom: 1.5em
}

#toc {
position: b;
margin-right: -1.5em;
}

#leader {
position: c;
}

#art1 {
position: d;
}

#art2 {
position: e;
}

#art3 {
position: f;
}

body {
template: "main";
height:5cm;
}

/* dealing with gap rows/cols */
#headerspacer {
template-cell: "main" 1 1-9;
height: 0.25cm;
}

#leftspacer {
template-cell: "main" 1 1-9;
width: 3em;
}

#bottomspacer {
template-cell: "main" 10-12 6;
width: 3em;
}

h1 {
template-cell: "main" 1 1-9;
margin-bottom: 1.5em
}

#toc {
template-cell: "main" 3-12 1;
margin-right: -1.5em;
}

#leader {
template-cell: "main" 3-7 3-9;
}

#art1 {
template-cell: "main" 8-9 3-9;
}

#art2 {
template-cell: "main" 10-12 3-5;
}

#art3 {
template-cell: "main" 10-12 7-9;
}

This solution has a more CSS feel - the Working Draft proposal has already been described as looking "a bit hacky" by Ben Ward (he is still very approving of the proposal though). The largest problem with this is that it doesn't deal with the 3ems on the 4th, 6th and 8th column. If these were required, more spacer elements could be added (although I already see the current ones as redundant - why not use margins?). I don't quite understand their purpose, but I assume it's basically the same as min-width: 3em - that would have a similar effect, and reduce the complexity of the grid somewhat.

Obviously, this method probably has holes in it that I don't see, if you see any, please point them out.

Backwards compatibility and Graceful Degradation

This is always going to be the biggest problem and can't be overcome by the above solutions, and will require some kind of major-browser manufacturer collusion, if it's to be accepted widely. I posted this RFE for gecko (firefox, etc) specifically for this problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466974

Graceful degradation is the flip side of the same coin: document structure will have to maintain some visual usefulness if the template fails. Templates will fail, either because they aren't implemented in the browser, or because they have a bad value - mis-matched column numbers, non-rectangular layouts (L shaped boxes, etc). But ultimately, the spec is implemented accros browsers, that will be the designer's problem, and not the fault of the browser implementation. Once this (or something like it) is implemented accross browsers, structure will finally be free from layout constraints.

Conclusion

I offer my solution in the hopes of making people think about things in ways they haven't before, and of kindling discussion. If the final outcome is basically what the Advanced Layout Module Working Draft already proposes, then so be it. Nothing is ever perfect, there are no backwards steps in any of the solutions already put forward. What ever happens it will be good. Let's hope it can happen soon.

Comments

Oliver Coleman, Sat, 11/29/2008 - 13:54:

I've only skimmed the working draft (bad me, but I'm short on time).

I can't see how the working draft causes the "sub-child" (should this be just "child", "sub" seems superfluous?) limitation. The examples use children as the cells, but this just seems to be because they're comparing it with the table model, which does require parent>child relationships in the markup.

Yes, it would be annoying to have to define a layout for each page element combination (and having to rely on the markup to specify which combination it was would be even more annoying). Perhaps this can be overcome by not setting dimensions for empty rows/columns and specifying dimensions directly on the elements that are to appear in the table (and then rows/columns with no or hidden elements would shrink to zero)?

Funny shaped areas: perhaps this is intentional? Perhaps the elements placed in the funny shape are intended to flow into the space (the way elements do around conventional left or right floated elements)? Perhaps the neatest way for this to be described is to use the grid format in the working draft?

I think use of the display and position properties is appropriate (or appropriate enough). Like you say, the "none", "table" and proposed template values are all mutually exclusive (we don't care whether it used to be a table or template layout if it's being hidden). Actually, I retract that: when using JS to dynamically hide elements, one would have to store the current "display" value before setting it to "none", and reinstate when unhiding the element. Not a big issue, but a bit Boring.

naught101, Sat, 11/29/2008 - 14:31:

There's still a problem, due to the possibility of nested templates: if the first template and the nested template both have an "a" cell, I would imagine the element defined with position: "a"; would default to being a cell of the template closest in the hierarchy. You're right though, this is not a sub-child problem, since on re-reading parts of the Draft it's obvious that a parent-child relationship isn't necessary, it's simply a problem with multiple templates with the same cell names. Some way to define a name for each template, or possibly having a way to select a layout by ID selector, would fix that.

No, not setting the width/height wouldn't over come it in all cases, ie:
"a a a a"
"b c c c"
"b c c c"
"d e e e"
If you simply want to remove "d", and extend either "b" or "e" to that position, the template won't let you, because of the existing dimensions of the other element.

The funny shapes thing is plausible, but element shape isn't mentioned in the spec at all. If you were going to do something like this, why limit yourself to weird tetris shapes? Why not just use something like SVG? It's almost certainly going to be implemented widely before this CSS3 module is...

I guess that's true about the display property. If the element needs to stay there but be invisible, there's visibility: hidden. The display property just feels huge an convoluted. There are almost two distinct sets of values within it: Single-element display values, like "run-in", "block" and "inline" Multiple-element values, like "table", and then the new template system, designed for layout and "none", which is unique, and "marker", which is also. Perhaps just splitting the second group of into a similarly generic layout property?

Xanthir, FCD, Mon, 12/01/2008 - 02:31:

I already replied to your proposal on the www-style mailing list, but I'll reply here as well to make it more easily searchable.

Essentially you're reinventing the wheel - what you describe is merely a rewriting of the CSS3 Grid Positioning Module ( http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid/ ). Don't worry, though, basically every proposal made in response to Template Layout that I've seen is of this form, so you're not alone. ^_^

The WG needs to put a reference into Template referring to Grid Positioning, since Grid is basically Template's big brother. Template is extremely easy to use while authoring and easy to visually get an idea of how the page is laid out. Grid how more power, but isn't quite as intuitive. The two together are a good mix I think.

Also, in response to your last comment, display *will* be split into two properties, display-role and display-model, with pretty much the distinction you are making. The display property by itself will then be a shortcut property, like margin is for margin-left, margin-top, etc.

Finally, that quote you use from Ben Ward's blog is EXTREMELY dishonest. It's used completely out of context, which is disgusting. The full sentence you grabbed the quote from is "Sounds a bit hacky, perhaps even silly but I think it’s a good move; it’ll be very easy to explain and grasp." You directly imply that the Ben Ward disapproves of Template Layout, and rely on the reader to correct that misapprehension themselves. You need to either take out that reference altogether, or put in a parenthetical note that Ben still believes Template Layout to be a good idea.

naught101, Mon, 12/01/2008 - 09:38:

Firstly, you're right, that quote does make it look bad, it wasn't intended that way. I'll re-word it.

Re: CSS3 grids: I know about them, I mentioned them in the first paragraph. The main problem with CSS Grids is that there grid cells have to be in the correct order in the HTML. This proposal doesn't require that: due to the "name" value of the template property. Also, this proposal allows intrusion (described in the advanced layouts WD), which CSS Grids doesn't.

I fully realise that my butting into a w3c process that's already many years old is a bit impudent, so thanks for the positive response :)

Xanthir, FCD, Mon, 12/01/2008 - 14:58:

(Thanks for correcting the quote. I retract my harsh words.)

Nope, follow the link I provided. You're talking about CSS Tables, I'm talking about CSS Grid Positioning. Completely different things.

In Grid Positioning, you give an element a grid with the grid-rows and grid-columns properties. You can specify row widths and column heights with any of the CSS length units, plus flex units (units that distribute remaining width between themselves proportionally. Then you use the normal position: and width:/height: properties with the gr unit (for "grid unit", corresponding to the context-sensitive width or height of a grid row/column, and determining the context is a little complex but generally does what you'd expect) as appropriate.

Duplicating the template layout you use for comparison would be something like (I'm going off the top of my head, so consider this pseudocode):
body {
    grid-rows: 5cm .25cm 5* 2* 3*;
    grid-columns: * 3em 2* 3em 3em 2* 3em;
    position: relative; //to establish this as a positioned ancestor
}

h1 {
    height: 1gr;
}

#toc {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    top: 2gr;
    width: 1gr;
    height: 3gr;
}

#leader {
    position: absolute;
    left: 2gr;
    top: 2gr;
    height: 1gr;
    width: 5gr;
}

#art1 {
    position: absolute;
    left: 2gr;
    top: 3gr;
    height: 1gr;
    width: 5gr;
}

#art2 {
    position: absolute;
    left: 2gr;
    top: 4gr;
    height: 1gr;
    width: 2gr;
}

#art3 {
    position: absolute;
    left: 5gr;
    top: 4gr;
    height: 1gr;
    width: 2gr;
}
Note that in my email to the list a week back or so about the template layout, I proposed adopting a proper flex unit, so your example could be simplified quite a bit more to:
body {
    display:
    "aaaaaaa" /5cm
    "......." /.25cm
    "b.ccccc" /5*
    "b.ddddd" /2*
    "b.ee.ff" /3*
    * 3em 2* 3em 3em 2* 3em;
}
(Though you'd probably want to replace the last two row-heights with "intrinsic", since you're putting pictures in there which may have varying heights.)

There is still a slight limit in Grid Positioning that doesn't exist in your proposal, namely that you can only position based on the nearest positioned ancestor, but this is the same limitation that exists in normal CSS positioning. (Note that you can still use gr units without positioning if you want, and they'll instead inherit from the nearest grid ancestor, which may be different from the nearest *positioned* grid ancestor.)

And don't worry about butting in. Advanced Layout hasn't moved in years. Designer response is the surest way to get something worked on. ^_^

naught101, Mon, 12/01/2008 - 17:31:

My proposal is now reduced to one thing: Name grid ancestors and their sub elements :). I guess in most cases there's not going to be any serious need to avoid a HTML-structure hierarchy that doesn't match the visual structure if grids are used (since all content and all visuals are always included in the body anyway).

Thanks for your response Xanthir, very educational. I had a feeling that I should sit on this for a few days after I wrote it, but I guess I got over excited. I'll have a read of the grid spec, it sounds good.

Xanthir, FCD, Tue, 12/02/2008 - 00:10:

No problem. I like educating. ^_^

Note, though, that your newly reduced proposal can be generalized quite a bit for much greater usefulness.

First, realize that all Grid actually does is set up a custom context-sensitive length unit and then specify where it can be used. This is why Grid is so easy - it can interact with all the existing properties because it lives on a completely orthogonal level, that of the unit rather than of the property.

So, when you say you want the ability to name grid ancestors, what you're really saying is that you want to be able to specify positioning ancestors. Wanna work on a proposal together? ^_^

naught101, Tue, 12/02/2008 - 11:43:

Sure, that sounds like a great idea. I will have a bit of a browse of the Grids proposal.

What would your preferred way of going about it be?

Arctic ice melt in the 1930s: Another denier argument debunked.

2008-11-27T16:32:00+11:00

When I'm reading about climate change in public forums like the internet, or newspapers, I expect to see denial argments all over. Usually, they're the same old shit, that's been roundly debunked by numerous people. So it's a pleasant suprise to find new arguments - it gives you something to think about.

This one really was suprising though: Richard Lindzen is well known for being a good debater, and well-read. He's one of the last deniers that mainstream seems to accept. So it's a suprise that I haven't seen this particular arguement before: usually these things get picked up like smallpox. This article's actually a bit old (2004), so I'd expect it to be well spread around the internet by now, but it isn't.

In the 2004 article/interview by Marc Morano for CNSNews.com, Lindzen says: "Although there is [Arctic] melting going [on] now, there has been a lot of melting that went on in the [19]30s and then there was freezing."

Ok, so the basic appeal of the argument - it's happened before, so who cares if it's happening now? - has appeared in many denial rants before, but this one is very specific, and it isn't documented in any of the other major lists of old denier arguments.

The second part of the suprise is that it's so damn easy to debunk. You don't need to be a scientist for this one. You just need to go to the NOAA Arctic website (see the updated graph). Ok, so there was melting from 1934-40, but there was roughly the same amount of ice INCREASE in the year before that trend started. If any sane person looked at that graph, they'd immediately see that the sea ice extent trend is pretty much static up to about the 50s or 60s, and then the trend swings down dramatically, dropping from a relatively constant ~13.5m sqkm, down to about 11.5-12m sqkm over the last decade.

Anyway, the article is generally crap, nothing that hasn't been talked about thousands of times since. I just thought that this specific bit should be pointed out. I'm not going to go seeking it, but I'd be interested to know what Lindzen thinks about that graph, and whether NOAA is part of the whole conspiracy or not. I'd also be interested to hear why he thinks that fossil fuel companies, with all their billions of dollars of annual profit, haven't been funneling some that money into climate science to see if they can get a different result - obviously if it could be done, the rewards (of not having to deal with environmental regulation) would be significant...

Comments

Ed Gulachenski, Sat, 11/29/2008 - 09:52:

Did you know that in 1905 the arctic ice melted so much that a small wooden boat with a crew of seven was able to navigate the fabeled North West Passage? http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history

Wait a minute that cannot be true. There was not enough man made CO2 emissions to have resulted in global warming in 1905. Or could it be that the whole global warming scare is a hoax. Any rational person will have to conclude that the latter is true.

naught101, Mon, 12/22/2008 - 23:03:

Ed, There was no massive melt in 1905. Look at the graph.

Amundsen did cross the north-west passage, but it took him 3 years, and he had to go through water 3m deep to do. Besides, I never mentioned the North-West Passage. You completely ignored my main point.

Agile Aspect, Wed, 07/08/2009 - 10:35:

The satellite has only been operating for 30 years.

Where does the data prior to 1979 (when the Arctic sea ice reached it historical maximum) come from?

naught101, Wed, 07/08/2009 - 10:51:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.updated.jpg <-- looks to me like the recent historical maximum was in the 1950s.

The answer to your question is the same place as every other dataset that now includes satellite data: from ground-based measurement. Considering that this is sea ice extent, you don't have to measure the whole icecap, just it's most equatorial reaches. And of course you don't have to measure every point, you can take any given set of points, and extrapolate a fairly accurate estimate. Of course, the more points, the more accuracy, which is why satellite data is better.

Solar power rebate

2008-06-30T13:11:00+10:00

I don't usually like spruiking for the corporate media, but channel 7 is doing something good with their Sunrise solar panel petition. I don't make any comment on the rest of what channel 7 does - I usually avoid it like the plague.

But they're right, a means test on the solar rebate scheme is bloody stupid. There are lots of people out there who want solar panels, but for the rebate, you have to have the money upfront. Not many people on a median wage (~$25,000/annum) have thousands of dollars just lying around. If they have a mortgage, neither do people on an average wage (~$57,000/annum). So means testing the rebate has already meant a massive drop in household solar installations⁽¹⁾.

But a means test could be a good thing. If the government wants to do something that has a real impact, and is actually equitable for people of all socio-economic classes, it should means test. But don't means test down, means test up. For the rich, leave it as it is, or perhaps leave it at $8000 for households on $100k/annum or what ever other arbitrary measure you want, and reduce it in small increments as wages go up. For everyone else, offer an increasing rebate as wages go down, and a low-interest (0%, inflation adjusted) loan>here was a loan something like this in the budget this year (not sure how "low interest"), but only for solar hot-water, and only for a couple of hundred thousand homes⁽²⁾. Expand this to include all homes and photovoltaics, and by all means means-test the loan.

A good idea might be to cap the loan at a calculated value - say enough to buy a system that could power a small family house - and then offer normal, or slightly lower than normal interest rates for any money needed over that cap. That would allow even mcmansions to go solar, but without encouraging excess energy consumption.

Obviously this solution wouldn't be perfect, but it would sure be better than what's currently on offer. The main thing at this stage is to wean ourselves off fossil fuels at quickly as possible. And that means spending big now - it won't seem like much of a cost later, especially when it pays itself off in a few years anyway.

Rethink solar rebate, industry urges Govt. (2008, May 17). ABC News. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/17/2247721.htm.
Simon, D. (2008, May 14). "Green" budget passed and pasted in Australia. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://de.indymedia.org/2008/05/217318.shtml.

Comments

Asher, Sat, 08/16/2008 - 07:10:

They must measure it differently in Australia, because average income in NZ is NZ$24,251. I know Aussie jobs tend to pay more but not by that much! My assumption is your figure maybe only includes those on salaries, not wages, beneficiaries or unemployed? You got any idea?

Asher, Sat, 08/16/2008 - 07:11:

Just noticed, my figure for NZ is from 1999, but it won't have gone up that much since then anyway...

naught101, Sat, 08/16/2008 - 11:52:

Asher: there's a huge difference between average and median income. Average here is around $57,000, but that's mostly because of the rich few distorting the statistics. The median here is $24-26,000, which is kind of telling. I should put that in the article...

Asher, Tue, 08/19/2008 - 20:31:

Just for anyone else reading, just tried to find my figure again but couldn't remember where I got it from, but here's an official government stat on average income in 2007 - NZ$34,684, that's AU$28,359.

Oh... Petrol prices...

2008-06-26T13:29:00+10:00

After months of wondering why Americans are always complaining about petrol prices, I finally figured out why.

This might seem obvious to some, but the solution everyone seems to come up with seems pretty stupid to me. To start with, let's compare fuel prices in a few countries (unleaded fuel, at the bowser):

US fuel price: around $4/gallon (1)
Australia: about $1.65/L
UK: about £1.18/L (2)
France: about €1.40/L (3)

Just to compare, let's change that to US$/Litre (1 US gallon = 3.7 litres, Exchange rates from http://www.xe.com/ucc/):

US: $1.08/L
Aus: $1.57/L
UK: $2.32/L
Fr: $2.19/L

Of course, these calculations could be off a fair bit, but with a difference like that, the error couldn't be very sginificant.

From that, you can see why I was confused: Americans have some of the cheapest fuel in the industrialised world. It certainly isn't anything to scream about. In fact, with peak oil almost certainly hitting around now (The actual centre of the peak being somewhere between a couple of years ago, to perhaps a few years ahead), it more like something to just get used to. It certainly isn't going to get cheaper for any significant period of time.

But then I realised that there was another factor: Wages. If americans are earning less than us here in Aus, then the fuel is obviously costing them relatively more. So let's see average weekly wages for the four countries:

US: $600.80 (4)
Aus: $1008.10 (5)
UK: About £460 (from average yearly estimate wage of $24000)
Fr: ???

And compared to fuel costs:

country	fuel cost (100L)	weekly wage	100L as % of weekly wage
USA	$108	$600.80	18%
Australia	$165	$1008.10	16%
United Kingdom	£118	£460	25%

Which is obviously the reason why americans currently care more about fuel than australians. This is obviously going to be compounded by wage inequality - the average wage is a pretty stupid measure of income, because the richest few people make the average wage higher than the vast majority will ever earn. Looking at a median wage is a far better way to do it, and if that was done, and considering that america seems to have worst income inequality than most industrialised nations, that percentage, compared to australia would be much higher than it is above, both absolutely, and relative to the other countries.

But what about the UK? Why aren't they going nuts about fuel prices? Even if their income inequality is far less that the US, they probably still have a higher fuel price compared to wages. The answer is obvious: they spend less money on fuel because they buy less fuel. There are two reasons for this: the UK is a more compact country than the US - people don't need to drive as far when they do drive. But more importantly, both for its impact, and for its potential for change, is public transport. Most of the US, by all accounts, has a terrible, or even non-existant public transport service. New York has the metro, and San Francisco has it's trams, but most other cities are designed almost exclusively for cars - in some it's hard to even walk any where. When you're forced to drive a car to get to work, school, or anywhere else, you're going to feel the fuel crunch pretty hard.

Americans do have a fuel problem, but calling for lower prices isn't going to help in the long run. Peak oil means that fuel prices are on a roughly exponentially increasing path - even if we knock 20 cents off now, it'll only be a matter of months, a couple of years at the most, before it's back where it was again. If you want a solution to fuel prices, then call for a decent minimum wage (the american minimum wage is far less than the australian minimum wage, and was even when the australian dollar was at US$0.55 a few years ago. Now it's well under half). If you want to do something permanent about making transport cheaper, then call for real public transport systems, especially electricity driven public trasnport, like trains, trams, and street cars. That's going to be just about your only livable way out of this mess.

Sources:

A Short History of Progress

2008-06-24T18:08:00+10:00

I just read "A Short History of Progress", by Ronald Wright(1). Pretty gloomy, if you need any impetus to become either an activist, or completely depressed, this is it. Wright maps the rise an fall of numerous civilisations, and points out that our current technological and social trajectories are pretty similar really. The only real difference between us and the romans, outside of size of the supporting ecosystem, is that we've got evidence of collapse happening before. Well worth reading, especially if you know one of those people who irrationally believe that technology will save us. Now all I need is something to pick me back up.

Where's Wallace Hartley when you need him? Oh, that reminds me - Chumbawamba have a new album out.

1. Wright, R. (2005). A Short History of Progress (p. 224). Da Capo Press. ISBN: 0786715472

Comments

Dan O'Leary, Sun, 03/29/2009 - 13:16:

It may help to read "Escaping the progress trap"

Carbon capture and storage in Australia

2008-05-15T10:19:00+10:00

There's a useful new article on envirowiki on CCS and Clean Coal: Carbon Capture and Storage in Australia.

The article covers all the projects planned in Australia. If you find any more info on each of these, feel free to add more detail on the pages, it's a wiki after all.

If you don't feel like editing it yourself, feedback would be most welcome here on my contributions, or on the discussion page for the article.

Climate Camp video

2008-04-23T18:16:00+10:00

Video to promote Climate Camp Australia.

This video was made with Kdenlive. I have to say, I'd never enjoyed using a program that crashes every 5 minutes (including system crashes) before using Kdenlive. It's easy to use, and intuitive. Can't wait for version 1.0.

Comments

Clare and Jim Rourke, Sat, 04/26/2008 - 09:18:

looks great, Ned - we won't make it as we have a baby due sometime between the 11th and 16th July! Fantastic clip, well done.

Discussion about the semantic web

2008-04-15T20:49:00+10:00

The following is a discussion from #swig on irc.freenode.org - the Semantic Web Interest Group. It's logged here if you don't believe me: http://chatlogs.planetrdf.com/swig/2008-04-15#T10-32-11. Edited slightly for clarity.

I think the semantic web is an extremely useful tool, but as I mention down the bottom, I probably would have agreed with Francis Bacon that cutting up animals in the name of science was a good thing at the time. For the record, I don't believe this.

Reading the comment first might help.

naught101: check http://www.semanticfocus.com/blog/entry/title/5-problems-of-the-semantic-web/

naught101: my comment down the bottom, would love feedback from anyone here

bengee: simplification is a feature, not really a problem

bengee: URIs and triples reduce the complexity to a level that computers can do useful things with it

bengee: e.g. <#product> :rating "***"; :rating "****"; :rating "**". what might seem contradictory to you may be very useful to an app

naught101: na, I wasn't talking about that kind of information bengee

naught101: Say philosophy for instance... let me find a nice quote

naught101: Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.

naught101: * Cree Indian Proverb

naught101: Obviously a computer could use this sentence, but would it be able to use it a a way useful to humans?

naught101: Obviously it's not TRUE, as most of us already know we can't eat money

bengee: <#only1> a :CreeIndianProverb; rdf:value "Only when..." .

bengee: that triple could be useful for programs that list proverbs

naught101: yeah, sure, but that's triplification ABOUT the proverb, not about the information contained within the proverb

bengee: well, then you have to increase the granularity if your app wants to provide richer functionality

naught101: how do you mean?

bengee: extract more triples from the human-readable text

naught101: but what triples could you extract from a one-sentance text that has no quantitative truth, but which holds more qualitative truth than many many paragraphs of, say, a science text book?

bengee: exactly

naught101: huh?

bengee: you may misunderstand what the semweb is mainly for

naught101: sure, that's a true sentence :)

bengee: it's not for implementing automated philosophers, or compete with humans with respect to intelligence

bengee: well, OWL folks might disagree with me here ;)

bengee: the more rewarding approach (IMHO) is to think about use cases that semweb tech *can* enable/simplify, not to think hard about things that are near-impossible for computers in general

naught101: I agree. but I'm not talking about what the semantic web should be

naught101: I'm talking about possible problems with what it currently is

naught101: I mean, I don't want bite-sized chunks of information taking over the world of ideas

naught101: I think the philospohy or the public is degraded enough without chopping it into bits even more

bengee: oh, semweb tech can clearly improve the distribution and discovery of ideas

bengee: just like the web did

naught101: but it could also hide them

naught101: I don't think the 'web did, neccesarily

bengee: you just google'd WRT, no?

naught101: correct

naught101: I don't think finding an accronym compares to finding meaning in life.

naught101: (if I sound like I'm attacking the semantic web, I'm not, I'm just exploring ideas)

bengee: yeah, don't think I can contribute too much here, sorry.

naught101: no worries :)

naught101: I see it something like baconian/descartian science. it's useful for finding out the little bits of information, but it's not particularly useful for figuring out the interrelationships, or looking at the information holistically

naught101: I mean, for example, the semantic web can take information from a wikipedia article, but it couldn't write a wikipedia article

kjetilkWork: right

kjetilkWork: I don't think it is a very significant goal of the semweb to produce that kind of information

kjetilkWork: we have a billion people out there that can do that much better

bengee: the semweb can be a great aid in helping you write the article, though

naught101: sure, but thinking of the possibility the semantic web a large part of the web should probably include thinking about what it can't do, and how to not impede that work

kjetilkWork: rather than the AI world of natural language analysis to reason and infere relation, I think the semweb is much more about using the collective intelligence of all its users, i.e. real intelligence

naught101: bengee: yes, it could. it could also be a hinderance (information overload)

naught101: kjetilkWork: good. I like that. I just hope we're collectively intelligent, and not collectively stupid :)

kjetilkWork: well, that's what it means to me, at least

kjetilkWork: hehe, yeah

kjetilkWork: I think semweb can help us be collectively intelligent rather than stupid, though... :-)

naught101: I haven't got that far yet

naught101: :)

Comments

Kingsley Idehen, Wed, 04/16/2008 - 00:31:

Why are we taking such a long journey to unravel a simple matter?

The "Semantic Web" was a poor moniker choice for the Web as a Strucuted Database. Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL are strucutred databases, but It isn't natural across these databases to JOIN records across DBMS instance boundaries (where the DBMS doesn't support federation) or across DBMS vendor and/or DBMS engine type boundaries. And all of this is before we look at LAN, WAN, and transport protocol matters.

Add the Linked Data Web (Layer 1 of the Semantic Web technology stack) and you get the Web as a Federated DBMS (Graph Data Model) that is endowed with HTTP based Record IDs (URIs/IRIs) that enable remote Record Referencing and Record JOINS across DBMS instance, DBMS vendor type, LAN, WAN, and transort protocol boundaries.

In short, via the Linked Data Web I can point to records in your Database from mine (or vice versa) without any adverse effect. The worst that can happen is that we agree to disagree about the claims (Triples) that exist in my database i.e. we just arrive at perspectives withing the context of open Discourse.

The Semantic Web is not about replacing human intelligence, it's about encouraging the application of Human Intelligence to what it does best: Reasoning (typically :-) ).

naught101, Wed, 04/16/2008 - 09:50:

What you say is true. I'm just trying find holes in the apparent goodness of the semantic web. Any technology has unintended side-effects, and it's important to find out what those side effects might be.

For example, the humble shovel initially just allowed us to dig holes more easily, but then we realised that we could also dig bigger and better holes. Then we decided that the shovel wasn't big enough, and repeated the process until we finally came to the point where we are now, with huge disasters like the Aswan Dam.

I'm not saying that the semantic web WILL be a problem, or have problematic side-effects, I'm just asking how it COULD be. A question that should be asked of any new technology.

Dear Mr. Quinn

2008-03-24T21:35:00+11:00

Daniel,

You argue that the major defining factor of population size is food limits. Australia (to give an example), currently has a birthrate less than 2 births per woman. We have an overall annual immigration, so our population is growing, but if we had no immigration, our population would be decreasing. Australia is a fairly affluent country: plenty of food, people are educated, well supported with social services, and generally feel secure. They don't need the added security of a large family (I don't claim that this is causal, but believe it may have some impact). This seems proof that it is at least possible to disconnect population growth from food supply (and then be able to decrease food supply due to decreased demand). You answered this in response to Q&A 122: "the country has traversed the "demographic trap" and gotten through the growth phase of the population dynamics".

Obviously, as you have pointed out, there's plenty of food in the world, and if it were (able to be) shared out equitably, then no-one would starve. This being so, wouldn't the best course of action be, after figuring out the relevant system dynamics, to attempt to give those in the highest population growth areas the same security we in the affluent, and low-population growth, minority world have? This might include immediate food aid for a period or, preferably, some kind of "food asylum", which might lead to an immediate population spike, but a combined approach of social support services and education, seems like a population growth control method that is more than equitable, just might work, and doesn't seem like a "sci-fi fantasy", as you label other birth control schemes.

As an aside, what do you think of permaculture? Seems like a way of at least starting to break the food lockup, and something that doesn't rely on some kind of fascist revolution.

(This was originally posted on the Ishmael.org guestbook)

Comments

naught101, Tue, 03/25/2008 - 11:07:

got a response: go to http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/Guestbook/search.shtml and search for post "15420"

Post-Taker culture and other questions

2008-03-15T13:51:00+11:00

I just finished reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael for the second time (I previously downloaded the audio-book, which was amazing, but I think the book is slightly better). If you haven't read it, read it. I'd say it'd be life-changing for anyone wants to do something about the state of the environment but don't know where to start. For the ones how have already started, it's perhaps even more recommended. That said, the rest of this post won't make sense unless you already have read the book.

Ishmael answers a lot of questions for me - primarily the one that goes "if this isn't the right way, then what is?". But of course the answer isn't final, it isn't an end point, it's just an opening. It's another method of looking at things, and realising how much could change. Which basically means that it brings up more questions than it answers.

One of the major questions that it brings up is about the future. Considering the fairly convincing arguments that Taker (ie. civilised) culture is bound for destruction, while stagnating on the way, and that Leaver (uncivilised) culture seems to fit fairly well with the ecological realities of planet earth, it seems an obvious path to take to move towards a Leaver mentality, as fast as possible. This raises some questions: "What will a post-taker mentality be? And what will a post-taker society look like?" Obviously, no Leaver society has had the experience of previously being a Taker culture. If we survive this (I feel sure that some of us will) will there be fundamental differences between our culture and any other Leaver culture?

My first reaction is to say that there wouldn't be - that the differences would be superficial, or purely technological (computers in a Leaver society?). But I also think I might be missing something. I can't envision it.

The second question, and more pressing one relates to the Laws of Life: Quinn's arguements for laws of life are extremely convincing - and I even think he's pretty close to the mark with the Law of Limited Competition, although I think it needs sometesting. The main question is "is that it?" I mean, is there only one Law of Life (or rather, the three encompassed in the Law of Limited Competition) ? Are there more? Can these be refined? Expanded?

The third thing that springs to mind is a correlation between laws and patterns and pattern languages. Obviously my understanding of patterns comes from my architectural background (specifically, Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way", and "A Pattern Language"), however, this has strong parallels to Quinn's flight metaphor. For any law, be it gravity, or a law of life, there are specific patterns that can be used to correctly operate in that law. For flight, the relevant law is gravity. If you asked an aeronautical engineer, they might tell you some patterns like wing area to body ratio, or strut-braced wings, or methods to attain laminar flow (I'm reading out of New Scientist (2007-2-24) here). These patterns don't define an aircraft, but they can help define it. They help to guide the designer. The patterns don't allow us to overcome gravity, but they do allow us to work within the limits of gravity (and wind resistance, and structure, etc), to create a functional solution. The same is true with buildings. Alexander came at it from the other end to Quinn - He started with the patterns, but the laws of building haven't been entirely figured out yet (the structural ones have, but the social ones haven't). Regardless Alexander and Co. managed to find over 250 patterns relating to how to design and build beautiful (livable) buildings and cities. None of them are perfect - all of them only relate to some specific purpose and scale, and none of them are applicable to all situations (or cultures) - but all of them important, and useful for the society that they were written for (or rather, discovered for).

Perhaps it's this way because the patterns are actually simplified expressions of how best to go about working within the laws relevant to the field. If this is so, and we now have at least some understanding of the Laws of Life, then what are the patterns of life?

I think some are already understood - a lot of permaculture principles seem to fit this bill. but permaculture's principle's haven't been expressed as patterns yet (as per Alexander's methods), especially on the social side. More research to be done...

Why I use a non-commercial license.

2008-03-01T11:54:00+11:00

There's a huge wave of open-licensing sweeping the 'net, and it's starting to get into the real world. This is definitely a good thing - freedom of information is a great. The most common licenses, such as the GNU FDL, or the Creative Commons BY-SA stipulate that anyone can use the works, as long as they acknowledge the author, and that they keep it free (usually by using the same license). The last tactic has been called "viral" by numerous capitalists, and they are correct, it is. Eventually it will take over the world, or at least a large part of it. I can't wait.

Creative Commons, and perhaps a few other licences, give people the option to license their work with a "non-commercial" (NC) clause, This is strongly derided amongst the free software movement particularly, as economic exploitation by a creator is considered a freedom and a right. This is argued well on the Freedom Defined wiki.

There are two main arguments against using an NC license, the first is economic, the second in a matter of compatibility. A third minor argument against the CC-BY-NC-SA, is an argument against creative commons itself. I will deal with these in the above order.

The problem with the economic arguments is that they argue for the rights of the creator, but completely ignore the rights of the audience - where freedom of information really matters.

First, I should point out that the CC-BY-NC-SA license says that no-one may exercise their copy-left rights "in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation". This obviously does not include recuperating costs of reproduction - even if cost recuperation could be considered "private monetary compensation", which it probably can, no-one reproduces something primarily to cover costs. In other words, if someone reproduces something released under a creative commons license and recuperates costs, they are still legally acting within the restrictions of the license. If they make profit, they are not.

In this case, the audience is actually protected from exploitation, as the publisher, ie. a magazine or advertiser, cannot charge exorbitant rates for publishing a piece of work that they didn't create (there's a good example of this is on techrivet and on flickr.com), but small time users, zine creators, bloggers are free to use the work (except those making a profit, a concept conflated with cost recuperation on the Freedom Defined wiki). Fundamentally, a non-commercial license will only affect the rich (magazine buying public, for example), and middle-men who, frankly, need to be affected (middle-men should not exist, except where necessary, and never for profit. There is more worth-while work to do).

This means that all kinds of media and groups CAN use the work freely: community radio stations, Not-For-Profit organisations, collectively run media (such as New Internationalist, or Indymedia), and they can recuperate their costs, and they can probably even make a bit of profit, as long as that profit goes back into the organisation (ie. not individual profits). But corporate media - media which is primarily run as a profit making venture - is locked out. That's exactly what I want. I really don't want NewsCorp making money from my labours. They already make enough money with the crap the sell, not to mention the way they support the capitalist system, which I consider highly immoral.

I'm in it for the commons. And the people who need the commons the most are the poor. The rich already have enough resources, they can sort themselves out. And imposing profit on a product is a form of restricting the freedom of the commons (arguably recuperating costs would put the price of some products out of some people's reach, however not to do so would hardly be sustainable for the distributor, and would finally destroy the supply line entirely).

The Second argument, that the NC license creates a rift in the free content movement, is true, but I don't consider this problematic, or even true, necessarily. I highly respect anyone who uses a share-alike license, regardless of their stance on the non-commercial license. But I consider the non-commercial license more useful for my purposes.

From the other side, the argument runs that adding an NC clause restricts the core freedoms of the commons. However, I would argue that profit making should not be a core freedom of the commons - Profit is not created out of thin air (this is a core part of the neo-classical economic fallacy), rather, it is simply resources (generally either physical resources, or time, and also ideas in an intellectual property regime) moved from one place to another. Anyone making a profit from the commons is ripping off someone else. I would argue that it should be a core for people to have the right to freedom from being economically exploited.

The argument includes a practical side: that content can't easily be merged, for example, between envirowiki (CC-BY-NC-SA) and wikipedia (GFDL). I can see the point in this argument - it would make writing envirowiki much easier if I could pinch large chunks from wikipedia - but I also see an advantage in the separation: it helps forster diversity (something I value very highly). Because I have to write envirowiki articles from scratch, I get to do more research, and the final result will be two different perspectives on different issues, which can be extremely valuable.

The final part of the second argument is one that I like because it's circular: the NC license should not be used because it's viral, that is content under and NC license, even if modified, will always remain under the NC license. I like it for the same reason that capitalist hate all copy-left licenses.

On the final argument, against Creative Commons as a corporation, that is that they are a tool of the capitalist capitalist system. I can't really respond to that, I don't know how true it is yet. Regardless, I don't particularly think there's anything wrong with using a concept from such a corporation. True there's the trademark thing, but I don't think that's a such a problem. If creative commons had a physical product, and related resource exploitation, like most corporations, I would think differently, for sure, but the domain of ideas is logically infinite, unlike the physical world.

The NC license is more restrictive, but the restriction can be seen as a protection from the other side. The arguements against NC, and the more general arguments for free licenses have, so far, been completely artist/creator-centric. But the rights of the audience should have just as much consideration given to them, and so far that hasn't happened, at least no explicitly. One of the fundumental problems with capitalism and intellectual property is profit: rich people restricting the ability of the poor to live and learn by making them pay exhobitant amounts. If an alternative doesn't act to stop that, then what's the point?

I would like to say that my ideas on this are definitely NOT fixed. I'm still considering the whole concept, and would greatly appreciate feedback.

Comments

Oliver Coleman, Wed, 09/17/2008 - 11:21:

"arguably recuperating costs would put the price of some products out of some people’s reach, however not to do so would hardly be sustainable for the distributor, and would finally destroy the supply line entirely": I think this gets to (one) crux of the problem: what is meant by recuperating costs? if it's simply materials (or 'net access, etc), and not time, then the supply line might also fail (more likely for some things than others, such as niche requirements) because no one may have the time or inclination to produce the material unless they're being compensated for their time.

I agree that it doesn't seem reasonable to make a profit selling someone else's information (whether it's taking explicitly open-source material or pinching a scientists idea and patenting it), but this doesn't address the case of modification of material.

However, as far as an NC clause being unreasonable, those who want to make profit (small or large, or simply to cover time spent or more) from some form of information can simply produce their own information and use whatever license they like with it.

James, Tue, 07/20/2010 - 09:21:

If stuff like the Linux kernel and GNOME were released under a non-commercial licence they would not be what they are today. Companies like Red Hat and Cannonical (far from the "capo scum" stereotype you apply all too regularly) have contributed positively to the open-source community - while still making money. Additionally, their ability to make money by providing support services is probably a key factor in Internet hosting companies using Linux. So if we all used non-commercial licenses closed-source companies like Microsoft would be milking it even more, ironically.

On a more technical note, the economy is not a zero-sum game. You say that profit is always made at the expense of someone else - an introductory course in economics would show this up for the fallacy that it is.

Regards.

naught101, Tue, 07/20/2010 - 09:57:

James: of course. I never said that everyone else should use NC licenses. And I do use GFDL and CC-BY-SA licenses elsewhere - mostly where I'm collaborating with other people, and want the information to be as widely accessible to others as possible - for example drupal development. Envirowiki has also switched to CC-BY-SA, (albeit mostly for compatibility reasons). Basically, I'm just using it for my creative content (which probably no-one could make profit off anyway >:)

On the technical note: I don't see how the economy can't be a zero-sum game. Basic neo-classical economics teaches that infinite growth is possible and, more or less, inevitable. But it completely ignores the natural limits on the economy: we're limited in space - we only have one planet, and we're rapidly approaching peaks in nearly every mineral, and bio-resources (forests and fisheries, etc) are diminishing and crashing. Of course there's this bizarre notion that we can switch to a services economy and everything will be alright. But both supply and demand in a services economy are limited by time, and population, which is limited by space, as above. A basic understanding of population dynamics will show you that the quicker we grow and outstrip our resources base, the quicker we fall. (The only place I'm aware of that profit is truly made from nothing is fractional reserve banking, which banks use to lend people money that doesn't exist, and make profit from the interest. But that creates inflation, and the only real effect is to move wealth from the poor to the rich).

Another way of looking at it is that modern economics ignores "externalities". That is, social harm and environmental damage (which should, in economic terms, more properly be considered loss of capital). Until economics starts seriously looking at these problems from an ecological perspective, we're pretty much headed towards disaster. I don't want to be a part of that.

James, Tue, 07/20/2010 - 10:07:

That's a pretty fair post!

The economics discussion is probably a little too deep for a small Wordpress comments section. I do agree that externalities should be dealt with, and that an approach like this would be great for the environment.

As regards zero-sum, not everything primarily relies on finite resources. Computer development, for example. As I said, too deep a discussion. Cheers for the reply, and sorry if I was a little militant earlier!

Recovering files on ext3 the easy and shoddy way

2008-01-10T09:22:00+11:00

I just deleted about 100 photos from an ext3 external hard drive that I really would have preferred to keep. With shift+delete (do not pass the trash, do not collect $200). So I went looking for an answer.

If you've looked around the 'net for a way to recover files from an ext3 partition, you've probably found lots of people saying "it can't be done, because the inodes get wiped". Well that's true. There's no way to simply mark the inodes undeleted and have your files back, BUT your actual files don't get wiped, and if you're lucky, you may be able to retrieve some or all of them.

First step: after you delete something accidentally, DON'T WRITE ANYTHING TO THE PARTITION. If you do, you are likely to overwrite the blocks containing your files. This means, if you deleted something accidentally from your root partition, home partition, or any other system partiton, un mount it immediately. This may mean you need to turn of your computer, remove your hard drive, and put it in another computer as a slave. I was working on an external hard drive anyway, so I didn't really need to worry, as nothing would get written to it without me telling it to write to it...

Second, I recommend you read this: Brian Carrier's "Why Recovering a Deleted Ext3 File Is Difficult . . .". It's where I got most of my information from. Most wise is the cry of "don't forget to backup anything important". Unfortunately, I was working on an old backup with no redundancy. ie. I was screwed.

Third, you need The Sleuth Kit, and you need Foremost, both of which are in the ubuntu repositories, and are probably available packaged for most distros. You REALLY need to read the man page for Foremost, and it would be a good idea to read the man page for dls, a sleuth kit program.

Lastly, you need some spare space somewhere. depending on the files you're looking for, you might need a lot of space. I had an empty 40gb partition, so I used that, but in the end I only needed 180mb of space to retrieve 160mb of photos (this is probably NOT typical)

The Magic phrase:

$ dls /dev/sdb5 | foremost -T -o/media/MUSIC/parish -tjpg

Ok, an explanation:

dls simply reads a partition, straight out. Don't ask me how or why. In my case, I needed to read /dev/sdb5.
The output of dls is piped to foremost, which read from stdin by default
-T timestamps the output directory. It isn't necessary, but if the directory you're outputting to is not empty, foremost won't write to it.
-o<dir> is your output directory. In my case, a folder in my spare partition.
-t<filetype> is where I specified foremost should look for jpegs. Foremost actually looks for signatures such as the first few bytes of a file, to see if it matches a certain pattern. There are a set number of filetypes included by default (Read the MAN page), or you can create your own.

So that's it. I ended up getting all 108 photos back, minus filenames, but that's fine, because I usually just rename my files with the EXIF date/time data anyway.

Because dls only looks at unallocated block be default, the process ignored about 8000 other jpgs on the 95gb drive, and only recovered ones that had been deleted. Very handy for me. I left it go over night, but at a guess, I think it probably only took about 3 hours max (the hard drive is very full, so it probably only ran over about 5gb total).

fuckin' yay.

so... it works, but it doesn't join the blocks back together correctly, so I have my ~100 photos (jpeg files), but each of them is damaged about 10% into the actual image. I can still read the thumbnails, but not the whole image. If anyone has a good suggestion for how to fix this, please let me know.

ned

Comments

anon, Wed, 01/21/2009 - 22:59:

I use testdisk.

naught101, Thu, 01/22/2009 - 12:08:

anon: Thanks. It looks like TestDisk can't recover files from ext3, but an associated program, PhotoRec, can.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Would have been handy when I lost my files - luckily, I found copies of them later on a different backup!

Horse-Electric Hybrid: The Way of the Future!

2007-11-28T16:43:00+11:00

You heard it here first, folks!

Layperson's guide to the favoured transport of the future:

Horse. Equus Caballus. This will eventually replace the petroleum internal combustion engine as the power source of a large percentage land based transport. Smaller versions of this vehicle may be powered by pedal, and one or more Homo Sapiens.
Bloke on top. There's no reason that this couldn't be a woman.
Big Battery. Made with what ever means are the least polluting and toxic. Hydrogen fuel cell? maybe...
Combined electromagnetic braking device and electric motor. Braking charges battery, saves on wear and tear on manual brakes and horses. Electric motor makes life easier for horses, especially on starting.
Blokes on back. Could be replaced with food, or other goods. Or a solar panel, to take even more work off the horse(s)

Comments

naught101, Thu, 12/06/2007 - 21:45:

Actually, you didn't hear it here first! http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/08/31/dubai-firm-envisions-horse-powered-hybrid/ and http://fleethorse.net/

Some-one else already thought of it, albeit in a much odder form. I can't tell who's taking the piss more...

In any case, I hadn't seen or heard of their version when I thought of mine. Honest!

To keep the Internet?

2007-11-28T08:44:00+11:00

In wanting to create a new society, I have a few obvious "core" values (quote marks due to our ex-prime minister's bastardisation of the word in the phrase "core promises") .

These consist of:

Best practice environmentalism (not best as in better than everyone else, but best as in as good as possible).
Autonomy/self governance for groups and individuals
Freedom of information

In that order. These are fairly solid for me, and I won't really bother discussing why in this piece. I think that the second point is basically my ideal for best practice social organisation.

So how to go about the third? I think the internet might be the answer.

Why keep the internet?

The third of my three major values could actually be a subset of the previous two. For the best decisions, in both the social and environmental spheres, to be made by rational human beings, those human beings need access to the fullest possible information set.

There are a number of ways that information can be communicated:

Face-to-face: aural and visual communication, direct, immediate, and ephemeral
Recorded: written down, or otherwise recorded. Permanent.

The first is important at a local scale, but it is impossible to use for empirical data on what's best for what situation - at least it doesn't transport well. Stories are good stores of localised information, but like analogue data, the more times it's passed on, the more noise and impurities make it in. The Chinese whisper effect.

Recorded data, especially digital, is more permanent, and therefore more suited to storage of statistical, or empirical data - which is the best, or safest design of a wind turbine, methods for re-using, or recycling waste, and also things that need to be recorded in their original form - pure thoughts of philosophers, scientists, artists, etc. There are a number of ways this can be transmitted:

One to One - not often applicable to recorded information, but data.
One to Many - the standard form of broadcast journalism - a great bastion of authoritarianism
Many to One - there's not much of this in real life, although perhaps voting could be seen as one form of this.
Many to Many - this may never have truly happened before the advent of the internet and its predecessors.

It's this last method that is most important. It acts to destroy hierarchies, subverting the censoring effects of large, loud, famous ideas, over ideas held by the little people. In its incarnation as the internet, it allows immediate, and as-needed response, by anyone, for anyone. The perfectly unbiased critique, by way of all sides being completely biased, and equally loud.

Various methods allow different ways to reach this - the forum, or comments page, allows discussion and any level, and readers can make up their own mind as to which truth they prefer. The wiki allows the authors to fight it out, and through a process of minor censorship and additive editing, come to the basic common denominator bias of the group as a whole. The simple fact that anyone can get their own web page for free, somewhere, means that there's always room for new ideas, if someone wants to have it (arguably, this is a one-to-many method, but taken as a whole it isn't). Each method has its own merits, and each has many merits over the first three methods of recorded communication.

The only real merit that the one-to-many method has is that it generally has more reliablity, due to processes like peer review - the many-to-many approach is much more open to rumour. However, this is only a generalisation, and there are plenty of exceptions, (falsified evidence in science, bastard opinions in newspaper taken as fact, etc.). This effect has been shown VERY clearly withing the opensource software movement - Linux/*nix is far more secure than Windows. This is purely because mistakes/bugs in software can be pointed out by others before it hits the real world (the reason I pick security is simply because security is the most widely upheld value in the digital world). It's also the case that more and more frequently, people using the 'net are aware of the need check sources, something that almost never happens in print media.

Along with these arguments on communication is the other obvious benefit - communication negates the need for a large amount of travel. Video conferencing, for instance, could reduce the environmental impact of international conferences by around 99% (Lovins, et al. Factor four). Personally, I think similar things could be done for leisure travel, but that's another issue.

Power consumption of the internet

Obviously, with the first point, there's a huge problem with climate change, and energy (peak oil, and later, peak coal). This means that most energy usage drastically needs to be cut - environmentalists have been saying this for decades. This makes it difficult to argue that the internet, or computers in general, should be kept - They use a lot of power.

An average old desktop computer, with a normal sized CRT would probably use 150-300watts. A newer model, with an LCD would probably use the same - more for the faster processor, less for the LCD. A laptop usually uses around 50-100 watts, depending on what it's being used for, and screen size (source). I'd say it's likely that desktops still far out weight laptops, almost everywhere. I'm going to assume an average of 250 watts (this may seem low, but check the next section, and consider that host/server computers rarely have monitors, or other peripherals).

Estimates on the numbers of of computers on line are hard to make, and likewise, hard to source. There's a picture on the wikipedia internet history page that quotes the ISC as saying there are 300 million + hosts/server on the 'net. The same page also quotes a JupiterResearch report which states that 1.1 billion people use the net on a regular basis. I dunno how regular this is, but it seems a safe bet to say that there would be around 750 million computers connected to the 'net, maybe more.

I reckon I probably use my laptop 6-8 hours a day. That's pretty high, much higher than most people, but also much lower than a lot of more public computers, which often get left on constantly. I have absolutely nothing to base this on, but I think on average, 8 hours a day would be pretty standard for a computer (300m constant, 450m 2-3 hours/day).

This means that the internet would use roughly:

750000000*250*8*365 Wh/annum, or 547500000000000 wh/annum - 547.5 Terawatt hours/annum (or 1971 Petajoules/annum)

Bayswater Powerstation, in the hunter valley, is a large coal powerstation (source). It has a capacity of 2,640MW, or 23126400MWh/year, 23.13TWh/year

It would take, in otherwords, about 24 bayswater powerstations to power the internet - maybe 40 average sized coal powerstations.

The IEA says that world energy consumption in 2005 was 18235 TWh (IEA, p. 26), and that would mean the internet used about 3% of the world's electricity.

Interestingly, according to a wall street journal blog info technology in the US used about 3% of electricity in 2003. It'd be a bit more by now, but it would also be a lot less world wide than in the US, so may as well stick with it. 3% of 18235 is 547.05. How's that for guess work? (ahem...)

To put this into perspective, the Aviation industry world wide produces about 2% of the world's carbon emissions. In the UK, it's currently 13%. and it's one of the fastest growing industries in the world.

Cleaning the cruft

I'd like to point out that the internet is almost completely crap. I'd say that the vast majority of internet usage is porn, games, and general 'identity politics' wankery - myspace, facebook, flickr, etc. I admit that I take part in that kind of stuff, but I definitely don't need to, and probably shouldn't as much (although most part of that use is for forwarding political causes I'm involved in).

If we cut out all the content (if that's what it can be called) that doesn't really have any social, or environmental good, we'd be left with some amazing sites - Community sites with socially valuable foci, like instructables, and deviantart (which also has a lot of cruft, but I guess that's a matter of taste ;) ); all the best wiki databases - Wikipedia, anarch(o|a)pedia, appropedia, and, of course, envirowiki; and a few hundred thousand other sites with valuable information, and amazing creativity. All in all though, I think this useful content would be 10% of the entire content of the internet, if that.

That would take power consumption down to ~50TWh/annum, or about 4 medium sized coal power stations. world wide, that's not a huge amount of power, and could easily be powered purely on solar thermal, or geothermal, or tide power. It could probably even be run purely on a distributed wind grid with some kind of storage - UPSs for hosts/servers, and perhaps gravity batteries to prevent blackouts in the first place.

This is a bit authoritarian and all, but I also think it's somewhat generous. In any case, it won't be up to me to decide in the end.

A more decentralised approach?

On of the best things about the internet is its decentralised operation. However this could be drastically improved. A friend of mine, Paul Spencer, had an idea to simply use wireless access points as nodes in an almost completely decentralised network. Obviously there are a couple of problems with this approach - the software hasn't been written yet, and current hardware might not know how to handle it, and household wifi systems aren't strong enough to travel long distances (ie. across oceans). However each of these problems could be over come - the latter through community confederalism at what ever level needed (with control of sub-sea cables, or satellites).

This system could allow each household to control their own internet access, and power it (one small computer, and a wireless router/accesspoint could easily be run off one solar panel, with a battery or two). I imagine it would make more sense in most cases for communities to also have control of, and power their own wireless tower, run on solar thermal perhaps. This would even allow people in repressive communities to get around any community imposed censorship - all they have to do is find other WAPs that will let their traffic through, and possibly use some kind of anonymising service, like TOR, or Freenet.

Conclusion

I don't think it is possible to be conclusive as to whether the internet should be kept, post peak-oil/(hopefully)pre-climate change, there are too many value judgements involved that may not be relevant in the near future. But it seems obvious to me that it could be done, relatively easily, and currently, I would argue that it should, as the potential good far outweighs the extra work needed to ensure it keeps operating. And even this extra work could be basically nullified, if other displaced sources of environmental/social destruction are taken into account (especially travel)

Comments

wizardx, Tue, 05/27/2008 - 05:04:

The internet has been useful until now - IMHO for continuing the awakening that has been happening since the 1960s: Decline in authoritarian values, decline in participative democracy to the extent that it ever existed, connecting dissent and disaffection.

The internet has permitted anarchistic order to rapidly emerge from the bottom up. If we have another decade or two to watch this development continue then the ongoing internal collapse of our conventinal nation-state societies which has paralled the development of mass communication might well reach its conclusions. However, other events are poised to overtake this phenomenon.

As you point ou above the internet is increasingly becoming smothered by corporate driven content. When the computer finally merges with the TV (those f. things are banned from my house BTW) and brainwashed consumers sit back once again to swallow whatever propaganda it spews out then the power of intelligent text, truths popping up everywhere, and growing awareness of the mess we are in may well be extinguished among those who would otherwise begin to change themselves and their lives.

Then we'll be back to brutal authoritarianism.

A fall from grace for one man, a step forward for the rest.

2007-11-25T10:12:00+11:00

Howard is gone.

Not only have the libs lost the election, by an avalanche, but it's pretty certain that Howard has lost his seat as well. Fucking good riddance.

Not that Rudd will be much better. He's definitely got some things going for him over Howard, but his acceptance speech contained a few things that I'm definitely a bit uncomfortable about.

The first of these is his line about "leaving the old debates behind" - most of these arguments were pretty dubious, but one was especially worrying - the debate about "growth verses the environment". So we're going to leave that behind are we? And continue to blindly assume that continuous growth can be OK for the environment? It's not possible, Rudd, it's mathematically impossible. Simple equation. I wonder if any politician will ever understand it?

Another point - "I will be a politician for indigenous australians" - all well and good. If they want it. Have you asked them if they want a smarmy white guy as a leader, Mr. Rudd? Somehow, I doubt it. What about some autonomy? Aboriginal people don't need leadership, they need self detirmination!

At least he noted that climate change was the number two election issue (very close second to your-rights-at-work, a well run campaign, by the looks of it). With work choices out of the way (the liberals won't have a comeback to that), climate change will logically be the largest election issue at the next federal election (it won't be going away, and ratifying kyoto just won't be enough). Which kind of makes me think: Wow. the liberals are dead. Seems like the greens are the new opposition!

Coal Train blockaded in Newcastle

2007-11-19T10:42:00+11:00

FUCK YEAH!

http://www.climateimc.org/en/climate-actions/2007/11/19/coal-train-blockaded-newcastle

Rising Tide stopped a coal train this morning, in the world's biggest coal port. They blocked the whole line to the Kooragang terminal, and that backed up the rest of the coal line, blocking the whole port.

Thanks to the Sandgate Rail Fly over, recently completed, the blockage didn't affect the passenger line at all - I dunno, but I doubt that was an intended side-effect of the project.

News is being a bit slow, but it's up there. The ABC is being even more fucked than usual.

At a close guess, considering the port currently exports 90 million tonnes of coal a year, then every hour that the blockade continues, about 10,000 tonnes of coal are stopped for being exported (postponed, but if we begin to wind down the coal export industry in the next few years, then it's the same thing). That's equal to about 27,000 tonnes of C02 and hour. Beat that. The train's already been stopped there for two hours...

Brian Dale, from ARTC, said on ABC said RT was "incredibly stupid ... because the trains cannot stop quickly..". Seemed like the train stopped pretty quickly to me. Don't get me wrong, I understand the dangers, and I'm 100% sure that the people who stopped the train were extremely careful, and followed the guidelines for doing so, which are freely available on the ARTC website

Comments

mudlark, Mon, 11/19/2007 - 11:13:

Great stuff - a really positive action following up on the latest dire reports on climate change, and the GreenPeace Munmorah action. Keep the Coal Menace in the news! Well done Rising Tide, you rock!

Fuck Social Networking, I want Social computing.

2007-11-12T12:36:00+11:00

Sharing your bookmarks and photos is all well and good. Discussing stuff on forums can be interesting. Editing Wiki pages is better - coming close to a collective conscious.

But the computer has always been an individualistic tool, which sucks. No matter what I do on a computer, it's always just me. Fundamentally, a computer is used for making things; usually, art, writing, algorithms etc. when I do these things in real life, I can do them with other people, at the same time. This is especially true for music, and note taking, etc. This is much more difficult on a computer - mostly, the only way to so it is to write your bit, save it, send it to someone else somehow, and get them to check it, and send it back. I want to do it in realtime.

Googledocs looks like it could be it, but I'm wary of storing anything on google's computers. Also, it's proprietary software, so it's hard to know what you're really getting. The other option is online whiteboards, of which there are a few. Inkscape has a whiteboard function, but it's difficult to use so far, and may not be included in the next official build (0.46) (although you can include it anytime you build from source).

Basically, what I'd like to see, is probably something like googledocs running over XMPP, where each user has a locally stored file, which is updated when ever a session is started with both users, and can be updated in realtime, with the messages sent as short edits, not the whole file. Damn that would be cool.

One problem I can see with such a system is that if one user wants to edit something, then send it through another static communications system (like an e-list), you could end up with a few duplicates. That might be solved by somehow creating a unique fingerprint (not based on the file contents obviously, but perhaps the date and time, and the original title?), or simply by allowing users to diff the files, and choose which changes to include...

Comments

Jamesey, Sat, 11/17/2007 - 21:00:

Hi Naught101,

Interesting post and a coincidence since just a few weeks ago I started looking into developing a project with a similar focus.

I'm envisioning creating a virtual hub for social justice activists and people with technical skills to leverage open source software and Web 2.0 Online technologies to collaborate on projects that will make a difference to their communities and the world through the integration of Open Source software such as GIMP, Inkspace, OpenOffice, Scribus etc etc CASCADE CAD, with a content management system (drupal, plone, or JXTA like Collanos is built on along with technologies that facilitate communications such as OpenWengo (VOIP), Jabber (IM), yabb (forums), Horde or Hushmail (email) wikis, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, blogs, AJAX (mashups), and file-sharing (bitTorrent or Freenet).

Be aware that although I come from a users background rather development I am aware the ambitious nature of my vision.

Perhaps this would prove helpful in developing the concept. http://hausheer.osola.com/publications/euromicro03-camera-ready.pdf

This article might be helpful in conceptionalising the design of collaborative software as well. http://www.stress-free.co.nz/cad_collaboration

Two projects with a similar philosophy that I've come across on the web are Thinkcycle from the MIT media lab and AMD's Open Architecture Network, although as far as I'm aware they don't have an integrated collaborative system that I'm envisioning.

http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v17/n03/170301.html http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/

naught101, Mon, 11/19/2007 - 14:55:

Cool dude, Thanks for the links. Interesting that you mentioned CAD - that's another one of my major wants for FLOSS. To be honest, I won't work on this - I just don't have time, but I am interested in doing some CAD stuff with inkscape, and maybe blender - extensions first, then maybe looking at forks. I dunno. I'll have to find time first.

oh, and http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/ isn't an AMD project - it's an Architecture for Humanity project - AMD just support them.

Jamesey , Tue, 11/20/2007 - 05:13:

No worries.

Re. CAD theres plenty of open source software without needing to reinvent the wheel (BRL-CAD, CASCADE, AvoCaDo etc) I can't testify as to their quality compared to commercial offerings though.

I knew the project would be too much for one person and intended to contact Yuda from anarchism.org.nz, some developers from AptAnarchy and others from the Open Source community to see if they'd be interested in the project.

naught101, Tue, 11/20/2007 - 08:50:

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

a big list, with a couple of notable absences, Including Archimedes http://archimedes.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal , which has had a bit of a stop-start development process, and currently appears to be in limbo.

AvoCADo looks pretty cool, I'll give it a go.

Most of the cad packages are usable, but just not feasible to use for real work, for me, at the moment, perhaps because I'm using CAD for architectural work - I think most are more suited to engineering type CAD.

Keep me informed about the project, if it gets up and running, it definitely sounds cool.

Jamesey, Tue, 11/20/2007 - 17:43:

Hi naught101

Yeah just ones I discovered after a quick scan of Google results.

I've never really been able to get my head around 3d modeling, but I've recently gotten really interested in the Open Design movement (epitomised by GNU/Linux and the Free and Open software movements) and immediately realised its potential in promoting social justice, which is an issue that I'm passionate about.

I've also recently recognised the internets potential in uniting people with different skillsets and allowing them to collaborate on endeavours that they may not otherwise be able to achieve alone. While I was searching a way of merging the principles of Open Design and social justice and leveraging the internet's capacity for collaboration I realised that no integrated infrastructure existed that would allow it to take place, which is when I stumbled across your blog.

I'll be sure to keep you informed. Cheers for the encouragement.

Jamesey , Wed, 11/21/2007 - 12:18:

FYI, I've stumbled across a couple of tools that you might be interested in.

Google Sketchup. http://www.sketchup.com/

Collanos http://www.collanos.com/

naught101, Wed, 11/21/2007 - 13:13:

Indeed, sketchup is great, but I'd prefer to stick to open source software where possible.

Same goes for Collanos, although I should try it, and see what it's like. Have you tried it Jamesey?

Jamesey , Sat, 11/24/2007 - 13:22:

Hi Naught101,

Yeah my preference is to stick to open source software as well. Even when the business releases their product for free to its users like Google does.

No I haven't used Collanos as I have no need of it quite yet. I'm rather hesitant to put forward my idea as yet.

I've stumbled across a possible alternative for facilitating collaboration that being the Chandler Project, although it isn't stable yet. http://chandlerproject.org/

Another interesting project is CloudStack that allows Seamless tasks between multiple users through the JXTA p2p networking protocol.

What excites me is the capablities provided by the underlying software architecture. http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Networking/jxta/

Anarchy and open source.

2007-11-12T10:27:00+11:00

Richard Monson-Haefel's "Open Source Is Anarchy, Not Chaos" on Biosmagazine.co.uk is an interesting article, but it misses some major points, and gets one completely wrong:

Richard is quite right about open source being anarchistic, but is way off in his description of how.

Let's start with: "All open source projects have a leader who is frequently, but not always, the founder of the project. This is well aligned with anarchy as defined above;" Leadership is almost directly antonymic of anarchism. Leadership, while it often, in western thought at least, implies good judgement, and all that, also means power. In the way he describe it, with the "leader" having complete control over who commits, what goes in, and what stays out of the project, Richard is describing a tyranny, not an anarchy. This part of the system is completely unanarchistic, albeit only because of security issues.

The real part of open source, is the power of the community. Richard touched on that a bit, but missed the core part: the community actually has the power over the codebase, because if they don't like what's happening with the project, they can simply fork it, and start a new project, with an already complete codebase to work from. This basically means that the code follows the community, and not the other way around, as in proprietary software. This is the way it should be: the user should define the tool, not the other way around.

That's where the anarchism lies in open source, in the community, and definitely not in the leadership...

it's not a bad article, anyway. For another good article, in a similar vein, check out: http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001239.htm

Embiggen this!

2007-11-08T10:55:00+11:00

I've just started the Big List of Environmental issues - on Envirowiki. You should add to it. Hopefully, after a few decent edits, this page will list all the big issues, and after a few more related issues.

The reason that all the links are red is that those pages haven't been created yet. Click on the links to start editing! Also, check out some of the blue links - some of those pages could do with some improvement.

You don't even need to log in to edit pages on envirowiki, but if you're not logged in, you'll need to enter the answer to a maths captcha after you press save (to make sure you're not a spambot).

Happy editing!

Did I mention that I love linux?

2007-10-06T14:29:00+10:00

I just upgraded from Ubuntu Feisty to Ubuntu Gutsy (which is still in beta). about 6 hours later, a couple of hiccups, and one or two fixes required for problems that I caused myself (and due to running out of hard drive space part way through), I'm running the new version. With all the same software still installed, and all my preferences and options exactly the same as before. Damn that's nice.

The really beautiful thing? Barely any thing's changed. A nice modification of the login dialogue for KDE (something that I've been wanting for a while, a user list), one or two new packages (GDebi for KDE is nice), and a couple of hundreds of minor upgrades that I don't really need to know about, or that I get pleasantly surprised by when I open up old programs. I can go about my business, exactly as before (how's that for productivity (wanker)), knowing that everything's just that little bit more useful, safer, quicker.

Thanks to the debian devs, ubuntu devs, and everyone who made all the packages that make using linux such a joy!

Police state now!

2007-09-19T11:40:00+10:00

Holy shit.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/16/1189881342905.html

We really are becoming a police state. But I guess a lot of people realise that already. Nice that the SMH points out that the Liberal's policy isn't particularly "liberal".

Comments

Asher, Sun, 09/30/2007 - 22:52:

I just realised I wasn't linking to you from Anarchia. Woops, sorry! Fixed now. Now you should post more ;)

Asher, Sun, 09/30/2007 - 22:53:

also, you should check out my friend's blog at http://aucklandsburning.blogspot.com/ - he's writes about a lot of stuff you'll prob be interested in.

naught101, Mon, 10/01/2007 - 18:44:

Cheers Asher. Thanks for the pointer and the link.

Limits to Density: Beginning

2007-08-30T22:33:00+10:00

I've spoken to a number of people about this topic, but I've never seen any definitive answers. So I'm going to try and find some of my own. For a student or architecture, permaculture, and ecology, it's important to understand just how much of an impact it's possible to sustain on this planet. Currently, I'm looking at the issue from an anthropocentric view point, though if anyone else can suggest another wider way of looking at it, go right ahead.

There are two main questions, I guess:

How many people can the planet support?
How many people can a City of a given size support?
- How much hinterland does it need?
- What is the relationship between increased density and food/goods transport, and the sustainability of the system?

These questions both hinge on another, more basic one: What resources does a human need to survive well? Resources being food, water, air, clothing, shelter etc. Human being of any gender/weight/metabolism (average). "Survive well" being completely healthy, minimal stress, and having a decent amount of free time (and what a "decent" amount of free time is).

So that's my question set. My base requirements for data will soon follow. I don't think I need a hypothesis.

NOW would be a good time to point out any problems with these questions.

Note that I don not intend to apply these findings to any real life situation. That would be stupid. Real life situations deal with real people, not averages.

Comments

lamarguerite, Sat, 09/01/2007 - 01:51:

Ned,

First of all, thanks for this great comment you left on my blog yesterday, and which led me to your blog! I just joined a startup that is all about blogs and wikis, and more, so I was excited to see you are part of the wiki crowd. I will add your blog to my blogroll also.

marguerite

MR Z, Wed, 09/05/2007 - 16:16:

To expand the anthropocentric view out to a broader one we could look at the heirarchies that are implicit within anthropocentrism and ask are they just, while also asking is it possible to be sustainable while still being anthropocentric.

It's implied that non-humans are to be utilised only to support humans, which is a heirarchical view that probably helped get us in this mess to begin with.

Perhaps to take this into account we could ask "How many people can the planet support without creating heirarchies between species?"

We could also flip it over the other way, by asking "How many non-humans can a City of a given size support?" This recognises that humans are as much a part of an ecosystem as any other species.

Some observations not necessarily problems:

The questions make the assumption that as a species we should have as many humans living as is possible. Why is this necessarily a good thing? Perhaps it could be politically and organisationally better to have a smaller population, even if this is well below exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth.

The answers to those questions are important, and can give us some sort of indication as to what social/cultural/ethical systems are able to support, for an indefinate time, a human presence. From there we can determine what systems are more desireable.

naught101, Wed, 09/05/2007 - 19:12:

MR Z:

Couldn't it be said that sustainability is all about humans? Especially if we're talking about the density of a city, since the city is a for-human-by-human construction. The point of a city in the context is to concentrate the human population to a level where capacity is maximised, and the impact on the surrounding ecosystem is minimised. The system is never only the city itself, but the city and it's entire supporting regions.

I guess the assumption I'm making here is that cities aren't beneficial to non-human species. Obviously now that I think about it, that's crap, as there are numerous species that thrive in cities. However, in cities like Newcastle, these species seem to be mostly introduced. That's not to say that they have no value - they have plenty, even from a human perspective. But there is definitely value in containing those introduced species, in order to maintain some degree of wilderness in the hinterland. Wilderness having obvious benefits to non-human species, as well as humans, in the form of education and resources.

The question doesn't make the assumption that we should have as many people as possible - it makes the assumption that we're going to have 9 billion people by 2050 at the current rate of expansion, and that it's in our interest to optimise efficiency (and also in the interests of non-human species that we minimise our impact). I definitely agree that a lower human population would be optimal, but I doubt that it's going to happen that way. Not intentionally, at least.

The problem that I can see with the question is that it doesn't ask what social/cultural/ethical systems would best support the city. That would make it much more interesting and informative, but also fuckloads harder. We'll see.

john, Sun, 10/14/2007 - 17:37:

Really interesting questions which I too think should be answered, I've heard it said that using permacultural techniques a city can supply almost all its foood requirments from its landbase - I dont think this is true of all locations but its an interesting starting point. John jeavons is probably a good starting point to getting info on how productive land can be

This is an interesting article on the potential for organic food production http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936

Another question which I would keep in mind is the link between food importation and hierachy, the thinking going that if a city cant produce its food and if it requires food from other places then it will do whatever is nessacary to get that food, including violence.

These two posts explore this

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=16748269&postID=8788901519…

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=16748269&postID=3141545470…

Thanks for the interesting writings :)

Blast from the past

2007-08-16T21:52:00+10:00

just visited Deviant Art (a great art site, if you can get past all the shit anime), which I've been going to for long stints with large breaks for a few years (since mid 2001), and I noticed that my website was still listed as http://naught101.atspace.com/, which is pretty amazing, 'cause that site is probably 5 years old, and I haven't touched it for at least four and a half... I think..

It was my second site ever (first was http://naught101.cjb.net I think, an abandonware site). It still has some songs on it for download, feel free to check them out, if they're still up..

Amazing what you find...

Spark from Bookchin

2007-08-16T21:17:00+10:00

This is something I started that was going to be the first post on this blog, about 6 months ago. As you'll see though, I got lost, and I have never really made it back to it, having gotten lost in many other things in the intervening period. I thought I'd post it anyway. It might inspire me to come back and add stuff to it (doubtful), or, with a few comments, it might set off that train of thought, and inspire me to write some kind of conclusion. So go ahead, criticise, wonder, ramble, insult. See what happens.

– work in progress, 14th December, 2006 –

“In trying to find a low common denominator that would “mobilize” virtually everyone, the new “anti-nuke establishment” really educated no-one. It was Three-Mile Island that did much of the education, and often public understanding of the issue goes no further than problems of technology, rather than problems of society” - Murray Bookchin, “the Power to Create, the Power to Destroy”, 1979, p. 50, (in “Toward an Ecological Society”)

Bloody hell. Not much has changed has it? seems like, 27 years later, the environment movement is still struggling in two directions - firstly to get people active, often through short, punchy catch phrases and shocking images, and secondly to educate, which obviously require a longer attention span, and more in-depth analysis of the issues. It’s a pity that these two objectives sometimes seem almost mutually exclusive.

Of course they’re not, it just seems that way, but I get the feeling that not many are particularly consciously aware of the relationship between them, myself included.

The problem, I’d guess, isn’t so much that they have to act in opposite direction, more that that’s just the way that they are used. Let me take climate change as an example. We (the enviro movement) want people to understand the dangers of climate change, to do this, we really have to go into the complete science, inclusive of the bits that are still being worked out, and the bits about natural cycles, and solar forcings, and a whole bunch of other stuff (which I really have no idea about myself, but would love to learn). to most people, everyone not already interested in climate science, this stuff can get incredibly boring, which really destroys the ability of the information of mobilise people (direction one).

To counteract this, the enviro movement generally packages little bits of the over all picture as bite-sized chunks, which can easily be fed to a public who wants to know a little bit, but doesn’t want to be suffocated by the science. You know the chunks I mean; “air conditioners kill the climate”, “stop flying planes/driving cars”, “buy green energy”. And these things are important, and do make a difference. But how much difference? and they do, to some extent, lead to the rest of the scientific education that needs to happen, if people are open to it. But is that far enough?

Which leads to Bookchin’s next point. That the science isn’t enough. or at least, the technological side of things isn’t enough. we can know all we want about how to cut down our energy consumption, reduce our emissions, use less water or resources, what ever. But is it really going to make a difference if we are just doing it to save ourselves? To save our own arses? No.

What we need to stop climate change, and all other environmental disasters isn’t a know-how of cause-and-effect. We don’t need to know that using recycled paper reduces clear felling of old-growth forests, we don’t need to know that fishing outside of breeding zones lessens impact on fish stocks, we don’t need to know that walking instead of driving saves the climate from almost-certain disaster. It certainly helps to know those things, but they aren’t the cause.

The real problem is that we only come to these conclusions almost in retrospect. We’re only willing to save our arses when we see that we’re at the edge of the cliff. What we need isn’t a technical knowledge of the science of environmentalism. What we need is a complete shift in methods. We need to be looking out for the cliffs while we’re still on the flats. We need the precautionary principle. We need even more than that. But first we need to be in touch with our environment. Something that we definitely aren’t at the moment.

We need to move away from the west’s view of “the environment and I”, or even “me against the environment” to a simple “I”. the human cannot live without the society. The society cannot live without the environment.

I don’t know where this is going. I’m well and truly lost. I think I’ll come back to it some time soon though.

Top ways to save money AND go green!

2007-08-04T23:16:00+10:00

Please note that the intent, order, and formation of the title of this post is sarcastic. There is no way that I would ever put "money" before "going green" in normal conversation.

Anyway, looking around for places to promote envirowiki (http://www.envirowiki.info/ - knowledge database for environmentalist and social justice activists, which you should check out and contribute to), I came across http://envirostats.info/, a reasonably cool site. On the "green your life" page I noticed a link to "29 Ways to Save Money on Gas" (on another site). I kind of get pissed of at these light-green/neocon in camouflage posts, I mean who cares about the money? If you fuck the planet you aren't going to be able to buy anything anyway! And if you have enough money to care about how much you save of it on fuel for your car, then it's pretty much guaranteed that you have enough money not to worry too much about money.

But anyway, it got me thinking, if there was an ecoanarchist approach to "how to save the planet, in ways that are also, co-incidentally, economically efficient", what would it look like? And pretty much, I reckon it'd be this:

naught101's big list of saving the world (and some cash on the way):

STOP BUYING CRAP YOU DON'T NEED.
STOP designing/manufacturing shit that doesn't work, so other idiots won't buy it.
STOP thinking of ANYTHING as waste, and start thinking of it as a resource.

Maybe I'm missing something. Obviously, I could also add some crap about being slightly more efficient or whatever, but Jevon's Paradox kinda fucks that right up, doesn't it? No, I think that really covers most of it..

Good buy, and lucky planet saving!

Comments

Luke, Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:13:

Hello, I found your blog from the email you sent on the eco-workers list.

Although only short and simple, I think your list on saving the world (and cash) is pretty much right.

I've written about this on my blog, that if we didn't waste so much we wouldn't have to buy so much and if we didn't have to buy so much we wouldn't need to produce so much. Not producing so much means two things: less resources are being used right now and less need to work to produce the things and to buy more things.

With less environmental impacts and less work, I kind of see it as a win-win situation.

Here's a link where I kind of explain it better: http://dumpsterdivingeconomist.blogspot.com/2007/11/effect-of-waste-on-resource-allocation.html

naught101, Fri, 11/09/2007 - 11:37:

Absolutely. Point 3 should probably be moved down one, and a new point inserted above it: 3. Waste nothing.

Actually, maybe that should be point 1.

/me trundles off to http://dumpsterdivingeconomist.blogspot.com

Clean Coal

2007-07-19T22:57:00+10:00

Aint.

The term's been popping up a LOT lately, so I thought I'd give a few links to pages worth reading (there's not much point me re-doing it, it's already done so well)

Steve from Rising Tide Newcastle has written a clean coal fact sheet, with a lot of good stuff about carbon capture and storage. Check it out, and leave comments if you want.

There's also a good piece on the HCEC website, showing that coal will probably run out before "clean coal" is even viable, at least in the Hunter.

There's some good arguments at mindfully.org, by Vivian Stockman, from the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

Of course, Greenpeace has a good shot at it too, with their myths and facts sheet.

There's hundreds more out there. if you find any good ones, or ones that point out something that the above articles have missed, leave a comment with a link.

ned

Greens pro-cops, anti-Green

2007-07-19T22:55:00+10:00

We didn't hear much about it on the east coast, but the Greens just became the New Labour. No, they haven't sold out on Uranium yet, but they're on their way! One of WA Senator Rachel Siewert's staffer's went to a protest at Julie Bishop (Lib/Nat Minister for Science), and the protest got violent. That is, the cops whacked people with battons, and pepper sprayed them, and a protester threw a rock. And the Greens dutifully stood up for the oppressed and apologised to the cops, and sacked the staffer who went to the protest. News.com.au's WA branch has a piece on the article, but I don't want to promote that shit. The West Australian had a reasonable front page piece on it on Saturday that I've just seen, unfortunately it's not on their website.

Not only did Siewert sack her staffer, but Bob Brown stepped in, and fucking agreed with her. COME ON you fools! Protesters, being the front line of a diverse movement, pushing the boundaries of issues that you agree with, and get beaten up by a bunch of thugs that have been completely bought out by the establishment and are intent on defending, with violence, the worst parts of the capitalist system - the bits you want to change (I know you've always been too soft to actually tackle capitalism head on). These thugs are actually allowed to be violent - they carry deadly weapons at all times, for fuck's sake. And you take it out on the protesters. Way to support the movement. I think I just lost all respect for Bob Brown, it's unfortunate that such a misguided fool is the face of the Greens.

What the fuck is up with the media today? ABC in the corporate pocket?

2007-07-18T18:27:00+10:00

Just listening to radio national news/current affairs, and this piece about the Geelong ford factory shutdown/worker layoffs and the newsreader says, roughly:

"The Factory's manager admitted today that the decision was a hard one, given the impact it would have on Geelong"

ONE word in that really gets me riled up. It's the word "admitted". Let's get something straight here. Companies don't admit messages like that. They workshop them.

Ford doesn't give a fuck about Geelong, any more than it cares about anything apart from profit. Companies don't work for places, they work for money, and, infact, that's not just an economic choice they make - they are legally bound to to provide profits to their shareholders.

But they DO know that people care about people, even if companies don't. They also know that people buy cars. And if people don't like Ford because they think Ford are capo scum, then they won't buy ford cars (Heh. If people really looked hard, they'd realise that all car companies are capo scum, and wouldn't buy cars). So Ford has to make it clear that they're sorry, very sorry, we didn't want to, but the Market (God) forced us to! no, really!

What the fuck happened to the ABC? It used to be highly intellectual, I'm sure to the point where it could see through this crap, but apparently not any more. It's a pity. Might be time for some Pirate Radio in Oz.

We need value changes, not technofixes: the Aswan Dam as a metaphor for climate change.

2007-03-15T16:28:00+11:00

I had a very interesting lecture today, on thermodynamics, ecosystems, and human values relating to technology (lecture 4, Technology and Human Values, PHIL3910 at the University of Newcastle. I recommend it). It didn't give me a lot of information that I hadn't heard before, but Yin Gao's presentation definitely cemented a lot of that information in place for me.

One thing that did strike me, was Yin's case study: the Aswan Dam. I've heard of it before of course, but never paid a lot of attention. Almost as soon as she mentioned it, I saw the link with climate change. As she went on, the similarities blew me away. let me explain:

First, let's look at the Aswan Dam:

Background:

before the Dam the Nile river flooded regularly, damaging cities and endangering lives. the flood was also the only irrigation for farmers on the floodplains, and s it only happened for a moth or so every year, the land was dry for the rest of the year and practically barren, for farming purposes.

The Idea:

with the best intentions (I assume, I don't know a lot about the case) the British Government of the day (turn of last century) decided that lower Egypt needed:

Flood mitigation
Hydro-electricity, and
year-round irrigation

obviously these would be great things to have (might take some of the excitement out of life, though). the values are commendable: food security, safety, and the possibility to grow economically. but that's not exactly what happened.

The Fuck-up:

all the benefits of the dam materialised perfectly as expected. the Nile now has no dangerous floods, heaps of hydro-power, and year-round irrigation-on-demand. Unfortunately, it also has:

less soil nutrients: the floods brought nutrient rich soils from the upper Nile. now Egyptian have to BUY fertiliser.
less biodiversity: the fish in the Nile delta, which supported a lot of people, lived off (down the food chain) sea grass, which lived off the nutrients of the flood-silt. Fish stocks dropped by about 2/3.
Dredging is now required to remove the silt from behind the dam.
Schistosomiasis, a parasite that lives in the flood-plain mud now has a year-round water supply due to irrigation. It is horribly debilitating and incurable. Infection rates jumped from 5% to 40%.

there are more issues listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam

because the values behind the intentions for the Dam were too narrow (euro-centric, anthropocentric, economic focus), the dam created more problems than it fixed. or maybe the real problem was just that the fucking British wanted to turn Egypt into a little piece of Europe

Climate Change

It's probably obvious how this relates to climate change. if it isn't, try thinking of Fossil Fuels as the Aswan Dam of the now.

The Problem:

the problem we had before fossil fuels could roughly be summed up thus:

Life was fucking hard. get born, work hard, die unnoticed.
hard to find food.
burning wood and other stuff fucked up the local atmosphere, and there was not other easy way to produce electricity, the saviour, which brought great possibilities for knowledge and medicine and other things. (some sarcasm here, not sure how much)
it was waaaay to hard to make a quick buck.

The Solution:

Burn fossil fuels. obviously these things are heaps cleaner and have a better energy-output than alternatives: wood, peat, tallow. And CO2 is only a tiny atom that's not toxic, and only makes up a tiny part of the atmosphere, anyway. right? I mean the advantages are obvious:

lots of heat, and electricity really cheaply
that means lots of goods, really cheaply (even peasants can afford a washing machine!)
plenty of ways to make heaps of money.

The Fuck-up:

Obviously you can't blame people for the scientific lack of knowledge in the 1800s and early 1900s. the problem is that we know NOW, that almost certainly - more certainly than the existence of God, or the right to freedom, or any other moral or ethical dilemma - that CO2 is changing the atmosphere, irreversibly (at least in our lifetime).

That brings real problems: more wildly dynamic weather patterns and rising sea levels make it harder to live: it's harder to prevent your house being blown over/burnt down/washed away, and it's harder to grow food to eat, given less-regular rainfall patterns, and harsher droughts. For the economists: everything will cost more.

That shouldn't be a problem. we also have technological solutions to deal with this. solar is here. wind is here. geothermal is here. efficiency measures are here. and we can definitely do away with a lot of the crap that clutters our lives and slow down a bit.

but it IS, because our fictional fucking right to have a lifestyle that removes us from anything uncomfortable, to ignore the destruction we are causing, to make as much money - another thing that doesn't actually have any energy value (ask a physicist) – as we could ever want, appears to be more important in the short-term NOW, than ours and other's rights to have any life-worth-living AT ALL in an environment that's still somewhat benign the only-slightly-more-distant-future.

The Real Answer.

It's pretty simple really. No amount of technological advancement is going to save us. You can design all the fuel efficient cars, nano-particle solar cells, or atmospheric carbon removal methods (and no, there aren't any viable ones now) you want, but you're not going to fix the problem. You're just prolonging it. Because even with every possible efficiency measure, if you continue to put money before the environment, before people, then you're going to continue to come up with solutions and methods that are blind to the adverse social and environmental outcomes until it's way too late to change you design, or adjust your policies. And then you're gonna want to come up with another technofix to make another buck off, aren't you?

People have been saying it for years, but the money seems to make people deaf. People before profit. Planet before profit. Economic rationalists fuck off.

Rising sea levels: Brought to you by mining

2007-03-05T09:55:00+11:00

it's true, this website told me so: http://www.miningnsw.com.au

not that I didn't take part in making that website. but that's not the best bit. The best bit is that this website is actually a parody of a site set up by the NSW Minerals Council, as part of their "Life: brought to you by mining" re-education campaign (http://www.nswmining.com.au). And the NSW minerals council have already taken the site down twice in the last two weeks.

yep. the NSW Minerals Council is having us silenced. who'd have thunk it? surely the Minerals Council is a free-thinking, facts-only information dispenser! who would imagine that they'd stoop to propaganda, and THEN... then try to silence criticism by the community? surely they are friends with the community?

apparently not.

anyway, check out the site, and check the indymedia page, as it has all the details on the background and all that I can't be bothered writing again: http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/node/50223 (this is a copy of the RT press release) The original is ofcourse, at the risingt tide website: http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/401 (also on the front page at the moment)

the SMH has covered it: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ industry-closes-anticoal-website/2007/03/04/1172943275688.html

let me know what you think. I did all the design work, with some help for a couple of the images. tell me if you think I've imitated too closely the original site's layout etc. I don't think so. Infact, I'm quite offended that those the NSWMC is claiming MY work, which I easily spent over 30 hours on, as theirs. in fact it really pisses me off.

we're looking for a barrister, who mightbe able to do the case pro bono if it gets to court (we'd love to pay,but all we can afford is costs/accomodation, that kind of thing). if you know anyone who'd been keen and has some experience in this field, please let us know.

if you want to help us get this story out there, digg it: http://digg.com/environment/Mining_Lobby_Silencing_Community_Comment

cheers ned

Notes:

this case deals with legislation brought in to comply with the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. Remember when all those small-media people were up in arms about the FTA? well this is just one reason why. The actual amendment is available here: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_reg/car200412004n405376/index.html (check out the schedule)

Fair Dealing Parody Information: Fair Dealing Parody Fact Sheet (Attorney General's Department)

this page is constantly being updated with new sites. nothing will be removed, but I apologise if it makes any comments seem illegitimate.

Happy Valley:

the same shit is happening in NZ, where the big state-owned mining company, Solid Energy, is sueing the Save Happy Valley mob, because they put out a political parody report claiming to be from Solid Energy. check it out!

http://www.climateimc.org/?q=node/5423

**Other media on this story: **

**-- Mass Media: **

steve being masculine on the second article on the SMH site: http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/green-group-seeks-afghan-refuge/2007/03/06/1172943416664.html
the SMH article got printed in both the SMH (p.3) and the Newcastle Herald (p.15) on the monday (5-mar-07)
the daily telegraph had an article (p.9, 6-mar-07)
the Inquirer (Scotland!) - http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38024

-- Law blogs:

**-- Other blogs: **

-- Other media:

**-- Crossposts: **

Comments

PJ, Tue, 03/06/2007 - 10:27:

Have just started a Masters Degree at the University of NSW in Environmental Management.

Will know a lot more in about 18 months.

Thanks for your link

Random Man

An economic policy

2007-02-06T20:09:00+11:00

I think I've finally realised a complete ethical foundation on which I can base all my economic decisions. It's been a while in the making, and although I like it in its current state, it's possible it will change in the future. we'll see.

basically, it consists of two rules (guideline), in order of importance:

Do not Waste.
Do not Steal.

considering that they are in order of importance, what the second rule really means is "do not Steal unless not to do so would cause Waste".

I think that covers everything. the rational is below.

I have to admit, the first rule actually comes from a Terry Pratchett novel, written when he was about 25, I think. it's called "the Dark Side of the Sun" and is probably one of the best science fiction stories you will ever read. really. the exact reference is the One Commandment of the protagonist's religion, Sadhimism - "thou Shalt not Waste".

One of Pratchett's characters describes the religion thus:

"SADHIMISM: the pantheistic/conservation religion founded in cold blood by Arte Sadhim (q.v.), the ruler of Earth from 2001-12. Contemporary documents suggest that he devised the dogmas, beliefs and rituals of Sadhimism in a day and a night, incorporating gobbets wrenched wholoesale from druidism, the marginally-surviving witchcraft practices, voodoo and the Survival Handbook for Spaceship Earth. As a religion it worked well, and achieved it's purpose, which was solely to impress environmental thinking deeply on human minds, and then developed a life of it's own and became greater than it's creator. Sadhim himself was ritually murdered by a breakaway sect called Little Flowers of the Left-hand Path on the eve of Good Friday - the Night of the Long Athames..." (p. 51)

It hasn't happened yet, but Orwell's 1984 seems to have been around 20 years late too. you never know.

Of course, being an environmentalist (ie. someone who sees that the destruction of the environment is not good for anyone involved, generally including those doing the destroying), I see waste* as the basic cause of every one of society's problems. after all isn't every environmental problem: oil spills, rubbish, paper production (lack of recycling, chemical waste), anthropogenic global warming; nothing more than a matter of waste, and not dealing with it properly?

the second part of the foundation comes from many discussions with friends who steal. usually things like food, but sometimes other things. idealistically, I can't agree with it. the argument is that it's stealing from people who have money (perhaps more than they need), and giving to the recipients (my friends), who are poor, on centrelink, and can't always afford good food. my argument is generally along the lines of "even someone on centrelink is hugely more well-off than the vast majority of people on this planet", so really, it's stealing from the rich and giving to the slightly-less-wealthy-rich. not really robinhood stuff when you think about it like that. infact, in essence, although I love my friends a lot, I can't find a line of argument that makes it any different, except in scale, from what I stuggle against daily - the theft inherent the heart of the current neo-liberal uneven-free-market system in place world wide (struggle against and to not be part of).

the argument still holds though, if someone needs to steal, if they need food or water in order not to die, or some similar situation, I don't feel I have the power, or the right, to deny that person what they require. but where do I draw the line?

coming back to the issue of waste, it is clear. the line to draw on stealing is the line at which waste is increased. I don't have a problem with people stealing food or other requirements if they are going to die, or be harmed otherwise. that would be a waste of life. but I do have a problem with people stealing things which they don't require. that's immoral, as it's wasteful. especially as someone else may actually require it.

one of the future paths I can see from here is the exploration of the possible crossovers between stealing and waste. Pratchett, in one of his discworld books, notes that the job of the policeman (person) is ultimately purely as the "theif-taker". if the worst possible crime is murder, what is that but the theft of a life (obviously the most precious possesion for someone, as without it they can't have any others). but that discussion is a long one, and I'm going to have it some other time.

* waste of anything. waste of food, waste of resources, waste of effort, waste of time, waste of energy, waste of potential, waste of life. waste, in this sense, it physical inefficiency, although perhaps there's some spiritual connotation here too.

Boortz on the attack - with a plastic spoon

2007-02-04T16:29:00+11:00

Luckily for me, I'd never heard of Neal Boortz up until the release of the IPCC's Summary for Policy Makers, 2007. then in comments on an intro report on the SPM on realclimate ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/the-ipcc-fourth-assessment-summary-for-policy-makers/ ), a few people mentioned his latest attack: http://boortz.com/nuze/200702/02022007.html

have a read. it's quite entertaining, even in it's simplicity. I thought I'd take a look at it, and rebut some of the more interesting points. If you think I've missed an important one, let me know, I'll have a go at it.

Italics are direct quotes from Boortz's page. (mine are in bold parantesis)

WHY AM I SKEPTICAL ABOUT MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING? A 21-page report from something called the "Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change" has been released today...in Paris, no less... (the point being that if it's french it's untrue?) and as expected, it's predictions are dire. According to the report: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Yeah right...we've heard all this before (and you're still not listening. denier). But the biggest bombshell here is this one: no matter what we do, global warming will not be reversed. It will go on for centuries, according to this report. The sea levels will continue to rise as polar ice caps melt. So I guess if Al Gore wins his Nobel Peace Prize, we'll still experience global warming. So much for riding to work everyday in your hybrid car...it's not doing a thing. The situation is futile, according to this report. (pure tripe. The report says that if we go on, business as usual, the effects will be dire. It also says that if we cut emissions significantly, we can stay under 2°C, the point where a lot of thresholds start being overcome) But really, it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this conclusion. After all, global warming is a religion (no. it's science. Definitely some environmentalists take it further than the science says, but on the balance, mainstream greenies are calling for less cuts than the scientists). The anti-capitalist enviro-nazis (ohhh... and you call us emotive?) don't ever want the problem to be solved. After all, if global warming were to be solved tomorrow, what would they blame the United States for ? They'd have to find some other reason (how about: fucking over nearly every third world country for it's own financial gain, fucking over it's own citizens for similar reasons, numerous wars, and plenty of other environmental problems).

Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic (no, you're a denier). In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare:

The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world. (Anti-capitalist, anti-American, call it what you will, I would say that the UN is pro-fairness, albeit heavily restricted by the political wrangling of the US and other major global powers)
Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists. (yep, soviet communism didn't work as a solution, but the fight goes on. You're not saying anything about the truth of climate change here Neal)
Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming. (read the IPCC SPM. They do. It's just that from all observation and experiment, they conclude that the sun is warming us by 0.12W/m², while Greenhouse gasses are warming the planet by 2.3W/m² [IPCC SPM07, p.3]. That's almost 20 times as much. Have you been doing and experiments Neal?)
The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars? (Mars is a completely different geo-system to earth. There could be any number of reasons why this is happening, not that I've seen your references in the first place)
It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now. (Not from what I've read it wasn't. Where's your reference?)
It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age? (I doubt it was the "very same scientists," although it is possible. Perhaps you're thinking of the possible shutdown of the gulf stream? That's a low possibility, but the oceanic overturning currents ARE slowing down in some areas [NewScientist])
How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening. ** (It is if you understand basic chaos theory. Remember the butterfly. One degree (actually it's only 0.72), can do a lot of damage, severely increasing in instability of weather systems. The IPCC suggests that the world is locked into a minimum of 1.1 degrees (assuming we stop emitting all GHG NOW). 1.5°C is where most of the world's coral reefs die completely)**
Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether. (p.8 of the SPM says that the last half-century's worth of warmth is unusual in the last 1300 years, and the last time they were warmer than now for any length of time was 125,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were still around [wikipedia]).
The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India. (Yep, that's because AMERICA and AUSTRALIA insisted that they wouldn't take part unless they had absolutely useless targets (australia has +8% on 1990 levels). Which is why kyoto is practically worthless, and most environmentalists don't even pay a second thought to it any more)
The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies. (or as an attempt to level the playing field – to punish those who emit too much)
Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon. (Absolute bullshit. If anything, the Bush administration has been anti-science, and this is probably reflected in their grant offers. The same cannot be said for the climate skeptic camp (real scientific skeptics, not deniers), which is supported by the Oil industry with large sums of money [Guardian])
Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree. (Not like what you're doing right now Neal?)
What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why? ** (Because the Medieval Warm period, as well as the little Ice Age, were confined to specific areas of the globe (Europe and the north atlantic in this case) [Wikipedia])**
Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?" (Who? where?)
Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer? (while it MAY get thicker, the total ice volume is getting smaller, due to dynamic losses, such as the collapse of the Ross Ice shelf, and the Larsen B ice shelf. Global warming does not mean that EVERY part of the globe is getting warmer at the same time, or at all. It's just an average. I can think of another reason, that I have no hard evidence for: Ozone is a greenhouse gas. Isn't there a huge hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica?)
In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that. (Again, you fail to take into account the fact that global warming is the global average. Different regions operate differently)
There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting. (wrong. The vast majority are shrinking. Pretty sure your information comes from http://sepp.org/controv/glaciers.html (view it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20050209083016/http://sepp.org/controv/glaciers.html and the updated version here: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/glaciers.html ) or one of it's bastard siblings. Please quote me the reference that they used)
Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise (ice?) mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years. (can I have a reference please?)
Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions. (yes, but now they're rising quicker. Try reading the IPCC SPM)
Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. (not from what I've read, reference please.)
Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today. (I already countered this above. Perhaps you have a better reference?)
During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased. ** (Again, that's counter to what the IPCC says, do you have a better reference?)**
Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man? (Now THAT's a good question. Where can I find out more?)
Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information? (The IPCC is a continuing study. No one has said it's finished. Nearly all new (peer-reviewed) information points in the same direction to the IPCC. Infact, it's what the IPCC reports are drawn from)
On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." (Are you saying that the science in 1974 was better than it is now? If I could be bothered to look, I'm sure I could find updated evidence that disproved that theory... but 1974?)

Hey ... I could go on. There's much more where that came from. But I need to get ready to go on the air. Just know that many of the strongest proponents of this "man-made" global warming stuff are dedicated opponents to capitalism and don't feel all that warm and fuzzy about the United States (all the pictures I've seen of the United states, and most of the ones of it's people are beautiful. I just don't like your foreign policies, materialism, greed, and racism, but that goes for nearly all other first-world countries, including my own).

Neal, you seem confused. Half your arguments seem to be trying to say that climate change isn't happening, the other half seem to be trying to say that the scientists are wrong, because it is happening, but differently. What's the deal Neal?

References:

[IPCC SPM] – International (INCLUDING the US) Panel on Climate Change - http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

[NewScientist] - http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

[wikipedia] – (oops, sorry. Wikipedia is inherently anti-capitalist too)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_timeline

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warm_period

[Guardian] - http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2004397,00.html

Comments

Rick, Sun, 02/04/2007 - 21:18:

"There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting."... How do we know they are growing if no-one has ever seen or measured them

naught101/eco1, signing in

2007-02-04T12:39:00+11:00

This blog is going to be slightly random, eco-anarchist centered rants, musings, and other bits and pieces. don’t expect it to be learnéd, cause I’m not yet. Expect it to be over-the-top, and slightly undereducated. Infact, educate me.

“the best way to learn is to teach, the best way to teach is to keep learning, and that what counts in the end is having had a shared, reflected experience.” - Goéry Delacôte

Look forward to arguing with you.

ned

Climate denial is not skepticism!

2007-02-04T02:17:00+11:00

lets see. here are the relevant entries from Wiktionary (if you don't agree with them, you can change them!):

skeptic - Noun - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skeptic

Someone undecided as to what is true.
Someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs and claims presented by others, requiring strong evidence before accepting any belief or claim.

denier - Noun - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/denial

Someone who denies something.

see, the obvious difference here is that a skeptic needs evidence before changing their mind. a denier simply doesn't change their mind.

If you are an alcoholic, and I say "you're addicted" your responses might be "I don't think so, what makes you think that?" or "I don't believe you, prove it to me". that would be skepticism. It implies that you are open to debate, open to new information, and, importantly, open to changing your views, thoughts, and beliefs.

if, on the other hand, you simply said "no I'm not" without listening to the reasoning behind my statement, you would be in denial.

and that's where the current "debate on climate change" lies, as it relates to whether it is happening or not (oh dear, I just thought of one of the most horrible puns ever: "climate change, weather it's happening or not"). there are those who believe that it's happening fast, those that believe it is happening slowly, and those that are in complete denial. there are no more climate change skeptics. if there are, it's only because they haven't had a chance to read all the evidence that's available out there.

so if you're still a little skeptical, have a bit more of a read. climate science sites such as http://www.realclimate.org, and http://www.ipcc.ch are a great place to start. If you come across someone claiming to be a climate skeptic, check their references. make sure they are up to date too, because as far as I know there has been no new evidence to contradict the climate change hypothesis (evidence, not proof) since Roy Spencer and John Christy re-adjusted their satellite datareading in late 2005 (exact date?) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements#The_satellite_temperature_record )

happy climate denier hunting!

Comments

inel, Thu, 02/22/2007 - 21:17:

To some extent, i.e. whether global warming is happening, the debate on climate change is a non-debate. Global warming is unequivocal, as you know (but many refuse to accept, for various reasons).

You might find it worthwhile visiting Open Mind by tamino to skim long threads commenting from many angles, but tamino maintains an interest in and emphasis on climate science and polite exchanges of views. (No ranting.)

Also, on my own site, I have responded to a few concerns raised by bloggers, e.g. here.

I respond on the basis that everyone asking a question about climate change is asking it for genuine reasons, and wants clarification of a potentially confusing point.

So, although I am becoming aware of the names of key players (!) I do not categorise the questioners into sceptics or denialists: I just assume they are honest seekers of information and I try to write so middle school kids can understand our climate challenge too (hence my use of images as you can see here.

P.S. The IPCC link is:

http://www.ipcc.ch/, unless you want to send people to a Swiss German consulting group ;-)

naught101, Mon, 03/05/2007 - 07:47:

inel: I agree. questions are always entirely valuable, and usually valid. I'm not talking about the questioners though, that's not denialism. I'm talking about the people who simply state their denial and refuse questions.

I've seen openmind before, it's a good blog.

inel, Mon, 03/05/2007 - 10:43:

Hello again naught101,

I still think there are people who are skeptics in the U.S. because they do not know enough science and/or do not trust science per se to provide evidence or other revealing answers. Instead, they are looking for economic arguments to sway them into changing their lifestyles and priorities. They will never be persuaded by scientific evidence because they do not understand what it is, but they may buy into a good financial or environmental health argument when it is presented.

Reasic and I have been discussing this aspect of climate change on our blogs with people who seem to have such questions. They are not deniers, but are still doubters and require strong evidence in their own format that makes sense for viewing the world through economic mindsets, for example. That's why I would describe them as sceptical at the moment.

naught101, Mon, 03/05/2007 - 11:08:

I guess we've got a little bit of a different target audience :)

I'm talking about people like Neil Boortz (check out my other post on him)

I agree with what you're doing, and saying. if people don't agree with the climate theory but are open to discussion and are asking questions and actually listening, then I wouldn't call them deniers.

the deniers are the ones who don't listen.

plover, Sun, 11/23/2008 - 16:19:

Good one Inel. May I suggest that you all take a look at Prof, Barry Brook's blog www.bravenewclimate.com.au as there is a wealth of information on CC/AGW as well as a series of lectures.

Evolution & Climate Deniers: The Redux Edition « Greenfyre’s">Evolution, Tue, 11/25/2008 - 18:14:

[...] different groups. This point is made repeatedly throughout the discussions of the issue. For eg here, and here, and here, and here, and here (you get the [...]

That “Denier vs Septic” thing again « Greenfyre’s, Sat, 03/14/2009 - 10:31:

[...] discussion is not new, but fired up again with the column by James Randerson Climate change creationists in The [...]

climatesight, Mon, 05/18/2009 - 03:38:

That's a great post. All scientists are trained to be skeptical. Being skeptical does not mean "believe the opposite of the mainstream no matter what." Keep up the good work.

Have you seen my blog? It has to do with how climate change relates to ideas such as credibility, responsible journalism, and risk management.

You can probably just click on my name and it'll take you there.

Thanks!

Slamming the deniers

2007-02-04T01:45:00+11:00

I think I've found a new hobby! it's more fun than clubbing seals, and it's ethical too! it's climate denier bashing! I'm not talking climate change skeptics here, skepticism is well and good, but most of what you hear these days ain't skepticism, it's denial pure and simple (I've posted a page on the difference in definitions).

I've already posted a few previously, here's a new one:

Originally posted in response to a blog blasting the Scientific American for believing the IPCC (they could have chosen an easier target!):

http://britandgrit.wordpress.com/2007/02/03/thank-you-scientific-american

you crack me up greatly.

if you actually READ the IPCC summary for policy makers, you'll notice that the factor of five data is still there, complete and correct. it's just that the wording "outweigh.. by a factor of five" was to politically forceful. the facts are there, but now people have to work it out for themselves.

there's no such thing as a "fact" when you are dealing with the future. there are only probabilities. the science inherently recognises this. the models are basically simplistic chaos systems. they run multiple times, and then the range and average is taken into account to put forth predictions.

why are you even writing such a detailed critique if you have to beg for an definition of "global warming"? global warming it the [i]average warming of the globe[/i]. if point A gets 1C cooler, and point B gets 3C warmer, then the average of the two is 1C warmer.

I wonder why you question the Scientific American? I don't read it, but I assume that it's a magazine devoted to scientific evidence. but you aren't questioning the science, are you? you're questioning the political integrity of the magazine. well and good, but you have no more proven political integity than they do, and you have NO scientific evidence to back up your claim that the science reporting is "crap... dung... drek".

nice reading you.

Weekend holiday

2007-02-03T23:24:00+11:00

Went on a weekend holiday Flew from Sydney to Byron bay the Flights are so cheap there's no bloody way that I was getting on a train

the Villa was great, air-con all day Lights all night and the stereo playin' went out on a jet ski I'd hired trashed the reef as I rode for miles it's better than surfing, cause you don't get tired and the petrol's cheap in Byron

on the flight back, up so high the whole east coast looked so dry started to think 'bout what those greenies we sayin' 'bout Global Warming, and Climate Change

Stepped out of the Airport, the city was a mess we'd had another hailstorm, the worst one yet and the whole south coast was a blazing wreck an' it was snowing out at Ularu

Read it in the Herald, the hottest year yet and the government's bringing back the nuclear threat didn't work in the 70s, and nothing's changed much, but the government wants to make a quick buck I started wondering about that flight to Byron

Got home late, but I jumped on the 'net had to find out what might happen next read some science sites, said we had to do something cyclones are getting stronger and glaciers are melting with the sea up higher, wonder what it'll be like at Byron?

Read some greenie websites, full of good solutions we have to stop burning coal and reduce our consumption but the corporations don't like it cause the can't make a profit and the pollies are all living from the corporation's pocket cause they get free holidays in Byron

found out my computers using 400 watts coming from coal power, it emits quite a lot so I've switched to renewables and I'm using it less all of my consumption has been re-assesed, wish I'd never flown to Byron

should have gone surfing, probably would have cost less but if we all thought that, we wouldn't be in this mess if I go back to Byron I'll ride my bike cruise all day and camp at night but I could just go surfing at Coogee.

Chords, so far:

|D--A--|A--EmG-|

music, rhyming patterns, and rhythm inspired by (none-to-closely) Redgum's "I've Been to Bali Too" and "Long Run"

if I could play reggae, it would probably be more like Bali

comments on the lyrics, and suggestions for chords/strumming patterns most welcome.

Re: Another brave soul speaks out against Gore (Giegengack)

2007-02-03T22:46:00+11:00

posted in response to a forum topic using a Bob Giegengack biographical piece in an attempt to discredit climate science

'"For most of Earth history," he says, "the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler."'

I like that... I mean, for most of earth's history, it was a ball of semi-molten rock. no life. sounds like fun to me.

but seriously, that article is pretty weak. "lets do a biography on a climate skeptic. we can even include a few bite size chunks of stuff that sounds like science, but doesn't include any figures. it'll definately stop people believing this climate change crap, and stop the voting for Gore!"

the four bits of info that I got from that that were in any way intellectual and related to climate change were: Milankovic cycles: true, it does have an impact. Newscientist had an interesting, if a little hyped, article on this a few months ago, saying that the cycles were probably peaking right now, and that it would have some effect. the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (just out this morning in france) claims that the radiative forcing of anthropogenic carbon emissions is somewhere around 2.1-2.5 Watts/meter squared. to be honest, I have no idea what this measurement means for the future, but I CAN compare it to the next measurement they present: solar radiative forcing since 1750: 0.12w/m2. half that of the GHG. current carbon levels are 380ppmv, and in 1750, they were closer to 280. BAU predictions say we'll reach 5-700 by 2050. that's an extra 100-300%. a drop in solar radiative forcing might have an impact, but only a small one, and we're hardly gonna feel it.

the icecaps melting: if the arctic icecap melts, the polarbears will almost certainly die out. and is is melting. predictions from observations in the last few decades say that it will be gone in summer in about 60 years: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1470668.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4290340.stm

sealevel rising: of course it's rising - even Giegengack knows that. the problem is that he seems to think that just because it's been slow until now, that it's going to remain so. the problem it that sea ice, which has had a habit of breaking off over the last few decades (don't blame global warming, blame terrorists!) ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6218333.stm , http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=3840 , http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1880566.stm ). and sea ice also had a habit recently of stopping the land ice from moving. that is, it acts as a kind of buttress against the polar glaciers. when the sea ice breaks up, the glaciers start moving faster. and it's the glaciers that are the problem, because the while they once stored huge amounts of water on land, they are now moving towards the ocean.

it's true that Al Gore's movie was soppy (the my history bits anyway), and emotional. but it also presented a lot of hard science, which when you compare it to the majority of the climate skeptic camp media (emotive AND low on information, or even lies, in the case of the CEI), makes it seem that much more rational.

if this Giegengack really reckons that climate change isn't happening, or isn't serious, then he should publish a scientific paper on it, and prove his case. otherwise, it seems he's all talk.

Originally posted on the OpenDemocracy.net Forums: http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=179&threadID=47902&tstart=0

Comments

David Simpson, Mon, 07/06/2009 - 09:08:

I was interested to read you response, however you really say much. I cant believe you comments about Al Gores movie being presented with a lot of hard science it was mostly emotional pull the heart strings rubbish and that is the only way it should be described. You refer to climate change when what you are talking about is Human Caused climate change causing dangerous warming of the planet and CO2 is the culprit. Well as we KNOW Co2 in theory does have some warming effect but it is very limited (about 1 degree). It's effect is also logarithmic meaning at first it causes a fair bit of warming but as the quantity grows the effect reduces to virtually zip now. How will this cause uncontrolled warming of the planet... well it cant by itself and this is where the theory of AGW relies heavily on the alleged positive forcings of other effects. However it does seem at the moment according to empirical data that these forcings are neutral or even negative not positive. AND this should be cause for pause before we destroy our economy and make the poor suffer more. There is no reason to rush these decisions through right this minute, unless you are trying to get it through before the jig is up perhaps. Say no to cap and trade/ETS. We have time to learn more.

naught101, Mon, 07/06/2009 - 19:11:

Yes, warming from increased greenhouse gasses is logarithmic: Most current estimates predict about 3°C per doubling, give or take a little. But human caused emissions have been more or less exponential over the last couple of centuries.

What forcings are you talking about?

Perhaps you mean feedbacks, in which case, which ones are negative? Tropical forest dieback? Decreased albedo from melting ice and rising treelines? Phytoplankton die-offs? Arctic tundra thaw releasing methane? Ocean floor methane clathrates?

Yes, the currently proposed ETS is flawed. It will basically do nothing to restrict Australian emissions, while making bucket loads of cash for big polluting industries. But we need something, and we need it soon. We have very little time for messing around.

Why James Lewis is Probably a Bullshit artist

2007-02-03T22:42:00+11:00

the post was made in response to a forum post using James Lewis's article "Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock" on american thinker to discredit climate science.

response part one

there's a serious flaw in the logic of that article:

see, that only works if you want to be 100% percent correct. the same logic says that with the same variable, they have a 60.5% chance of being right half the time, 47% of being right 3/4 of the time, and 77.7% chance of being right a quarter of the time.

and when I mean right, I mean exactly right. which means that if they are close to right, that would fall outside those probabilities. if they are completely wrong... well. let's have a look at it, shall we?

100% wrong = 1%^100 = 0% (my calculator doesn't go that small. but
practically, NO chance of them being 100% wrong)
75% wrong = 1%^75 = 0%
50% wrong = 1%^50 = 0%
25% wrong = 1%^25 = 0.0000000000000000000000001%

obviously those figures are complete bullshit. but they use exactly the same logic as the original statement.

one problem is that extremely basic probability maths is not suited to a "hypercomplex system". the other is the concept of "right" and "wrong" in a system of probabilities.

James Lewis either needs to go back to university (or even highschool), or more probably he's a bullshit artist.

Part 2

sorry. I was going to post a bit of evidence (something the quoted article is extremely short on) for my case.

I assume that this James Lewis character is referring to the IPCC and others in his attack. it's interesting to not that the IPCC's third assesment report actually fell a fair way short of the mark: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11083-sea-level-rise-outpacing-key-predictions.html

as you can see, the probability of them being right (it is happening) had little to do with it, and they actually underestimated (using highly complex computer probability models) the real figures.

Originally posted as a response on OpenDemocracy.net: http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=179&threadID=47882&tstart=0

Science is political

2006-10-09T23:56:00+10:00

I like Dan Carmody's articles. They're often very scientific, always amusing and, at least the science part, if not the hippy-bashing part, is usually pretty objective. But I sometimes get the picture that this isn't always a matter of choice, but sometimes a matter of lack of political awareness. And don't get me wrong Dan, I'm not claiming you're less politically aware than the average aussie, or even less aware than me. I think this is a wide spread problem, and it affects all of us. Infact, we are the cause, and we affects everything else.

I love science. The great thing about science is that it is always trying to prove itself wrong. That means that, if it's done right, it's nearly always right... if that makes sense. If it's not right it changes. Which is why I like Dan's articles. They inform me of bits of science that I hadn't previously heard of. Perhaps the best one being the Naturalistic Fallacy article. Trust my friends weren't such beautiful people, they would have long ago got sick of me sue to that article. But I've got a bone to pick with Dan's latest article. (lucky I'm supposed to be editing this mag, and got to read it early eh?)

Nuclear fusion eh? Ok. Let's start from the start. Dan assumes that:

Hippies call all types of nuclear energy, and even nuclear science “nuclear” and fail to acknowledge that there may be potentially good uses of nuclear practice
that those good form may include Nuclear Fission

First off: Dan, I would consider myself a hippy, to some extent. Perhaps environmentalist would be a better word, but I think that might be what you were referring to anyway (and a side note- most environmental/hippy types don't really consider “hippy” an insult, even when it's coming from the most idiotic bogan). If that is correct, I agree, nearly every environmentalist means “fission” when they say “nuclear.” BUT this is in no way something restricted to environmentalism. it's something that's a problem with the broader community as a whole. And I wouldn't say it's the enviro movement's fault that this is the case.

Try looking up news report on Chernobyl and Three Mile island. How many say “the Nuclear Fission reactor at ...” or “the (insert relevant name here) Fission power station?” not many I'd reckon. most would say “the Chernobyl nuclear power station” or some such. Also, check out Howard's “Nuclear Task force” and see if they are doing anything other than finding a good excuse to dig up uranium and either sell it to china, or build a couple of reactors and processing plants to piggy-back their way with the US to becoming a Nuclear Power (If you get a chance to hear novocastrian Wayne Reynolds talk on this topic, jump at it). there's that word again! but it's not talking about hydrogen bombs is it? nope. plutonium. amazing. Not only that, but the government is using the science (or at least the hype) of climate change to push the “Nuclear Debate” - and they aren't talking about fusion. At the same time, whenever anyone approaches Howard about the need for real action on climate change, he spews some bullshit about the science not being proof enough, or emissions cuts being bad for the economy (wonder if he'll still be saying that when Kiribili is underwater and it doesn't rain on the east coast any more? How's your fucking economy gonna fix that Howard?).

I would suggest that the media and government, are probably your main culprits, and thank you for making you hypothesis falsifiable (not that I just did conclusively, mind you).

Now on to point two, and here's where the politics comes in. Nuclear Fission is potentially great, but it's also a potentially huge sidetrack that may never be really feasible. ITER is still only just building it's reactor, and it's only an experiment. there IS another experiment in the US, DEMO, which is about to start, and IF it works, may, in a few decades, be the first commercial fusion power station. unfortunately, that may be a few decades too long. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (probably the world's most respected body of scientist, climate experts and ..gasp.. business interests) last report, in 2003 (third assessment report), reduction needed were around 60% by 2050. the Fourth report, due out in November has been partially leaked, and is much harsher, with the emissions cuts required estimated at around 80-90% in the same time frame. Sorry Dan, but even if we managed to get all the infrastructure ready in time Fission still wouldn't dig us out of our hole, due to the “40 years off” that's always quoted. On the other hand, proper efficiency measures, a good mix of wind (which is now up to 23% in Denmark), solar thermal and thermal storage (photovoltaics are next to useless at the moment), geothermal, wave and tide power, and a political switch from the federal government funding the fossil fuel industry to the tune of 9 billion dollars a year (Deisendorf, 2003) to subsidising the renewable energy sector instead could easily get us out of danger of serious climate change. and we wouldn't even need any new technologies. on top of that, we would have communities in control of their own power generation, and be on our way to a society more in control of the means of living.

And that's the thing, Dan. every, every thing we do has political ramifications. Buying clothing generally means you're accepting, nay, encouraging a system which uses slave labour, under any other name. writing only on one side of a sheet of paper means you are, through market forces, taking part in the destruction of Tasmania's forests, some of the oldest, and most beautiful in the world. thinking of getting married? if you've been reading opus, you'd know that a plain gold wedding band uses stupid amounts of water, poisons the landscape with cyanide, and displaces indigenous peoples (not just in the valuable wetlands at Lake Cowal, but also at Manchu Pichu and many other places). Even flushing the toilet is a political act. think of the water you're wasting! we're in a drought! Infact, if you really think about it, flushing the toilet really encompasses all those things. where was you toilet bowl made? in a sweatshop? or in a plant now so mechanised that all it's workers have been laid off? are you wiping you arse on old growth? is the copper or petroleum plastic in those pipes from Oktedi or Nigeria? chances are your (and my) answer to all those questions is yes – and the same goes for nearly any other thing you will ever do. every action has a political re-action.

And that's the root of the problem Dan. You say science can save the world. Not only with Fusion, but also with your Genetic Engineering article last year, and perhaps other I might have missed or forgotten about. but you're wrong, Dan, oh so wrong. science, as much as I love it can never save the world. Only people can save the world. and the problem is, usually, that science is controlled by those eteemed few with power, money, and a vested interest in seeing that the world stays that way. the problem with genetic engineering isn't that it creates mutants, or that it will create superweeds, or that it will increase the likelyhood of cancer, or any other hippy shit like that. The problem is that companies like mosanto control the new GE species. that's right, Monstano actually owns the “rights” to whole species. Monsanto owns life itself. And if you try to fuck with them, you will get cut down like the tall GE poppy they will make you out to be.

The same goes for fusion. Even if it could work in time, and saves us from the threat of severe climate change, it would still leave the control of power (electricity) in the hands of the powerful. the average person would be entirely controlled by the rich few with enough money to fund and own a power station. Renewables, on the other hand, would mean that each and every individual, family and community group would have the power in their hands, to control their own lives. on top of that, they would have direct access to the knowledge of what effects their every day actions, like turning on and airconditioner or heater, have on the real world, something which even the most politically aware people don't really have under the current system.

Fusion isn't the answer Dan, renewables are. It really doesn't matter that greenies now use the word “nuclear” to describe fission, cause we aren't trying to demonise just one part of the nuclear industry. We're not about saving small bits of woodland, or single species in single swamps. we recognise that it's all connected. The western capitalist political system is the basis of nearly everthing that's wrong with this planet, from the smallest loss of biodiversity, to human rights, to the entire fucking planet getting an acidic atmosphere make-over. We're trying to bring down the whole military industrial complex, and if on branch of science needs to take a few punches then so be it. science can deal with it. By all means, research fusion. it looks like it could be really useful in the future. but right now, what we really need is something we've never had: freedom. and fusion just isn't going to do it.

Ned Haughton

originally published in the last opus (Newcastle Uni Student Mag) of the year (sorry dan), 2006 (thanks liesel!)

Comments

madmouser, Sun, 02/04/2007 - 02:27:

If you are proud to be called a 'hippie', how do you like, 'refried hippie', or 'burnout hippie'? Just curious...Oh, do you have gray hair, bald on top, with a ponytail? If not, you are a fake.

naught101, Sun, 02/04/2007 - 02:38:

or I just have a broader definition than you. often here in aus, and I'm sure in other countries too, anyone with green tendancies gets labelled a hippy. I'm just trying to reclaim that somewhat.

most certainly not all "real" hippies have grey hair, a bald patch and a pony tail. perhaps you're being just a little bit biased there.

Open Source Architecture Software

2006-03-16T22:56:00+11:00

Originally posted on pushpullbar.com. there've been a lot of good follow ups. if you're interested, check it out: http://pushpullbar.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2547.html

first post here, thought I might do a bit of agenda pushing straight up.

I'm looking to move completely to open source software, since it's ethical and free, everyone can access it, and anyone can improve it (meaning no file type stuff arounds, eventually).

so I'm looking at architecture stuff, and seeing what can be done with opensource. I want to get into the coding of these programs soonish, and I want to improve them in terms of architectural possibility. you can suggest features for most open-source programs, and this would be a great way to get a real open-source system for architecture and design working

so far the stand-out potential has been:

3D

Blender (blender.org) (current version 2.41) designed for animation, but can import nearly all 2D and 3D files and edit them, with varying degrees of success. fairly intuitive 3D navigation system, comparable to sketchup (less directional mouse-wheel zoom), but 3D editing system is not really up to scratch with Sketchup, needs a little bit or improvement
- possibly with the pre-pre-alpha BlenderCAD extension (doesn't work yet, needs attention), which could add CAD editing functions
Yafray (yafray.org) (version 0.0.8) Excellent ray tracer, there's not much this thing can't do, as far as I can figure out. blender comes with this as a plugin as standard.

2D

Inkscape (yep, inkscape.org) (version 0.43) Bloody good vector editor. works with Simple Vector Graphics (SVG, inteded for web use). works well for layout, and graphical design, but need some improvement in CAD related department. could be cmoparable to sketchup in terms of 2D. Doesn't have a huge list of file compatibility yet, SVG, and a few other print-graphics type things.

has anyone else had any good experiences with open-source software? or bad experiences?

please, I'm not trying to attack sketchup, I know many of you love it: I really like it too. I'm just interested in making desing and architecture open to everyone (ie. poor people too).

cheers ned

----- later response ---------

found a really cool project: Archimedes, a brazillian founded CAD program.

"Archimedes will be a Computer Aided Design (CAD) program developed side by side with architecture offices in order to fulfill all their needs. This way, we hope to develop software better suited for architects than the currently widely used AutoCAD."

it's pretty featureless at the moment, but you can try it out, some stuff works, and it looks really neat, and it also looks REALLY popular, and the new versions are coming out thick and fast. I'll update when it gets to a truly usable stage.

unfortunately the webpage, http://archimedes.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal , seems to be not working at the moment, but you can download the java-based installer from the sourceforge.net page: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143642 (you may need a java runtime environment, but you might already have one if you use stuff like internet banking)

there's also a whole lot of other CAD oriented open-source and free programs for linux listed on this thread on the ubuntu forum (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=141735). some of them have windows/mac versions, I think.

Architecture

2006-03-12T23:40:00+11:00

She grew up with me. I guess I hardly even noticed her, a lot of the time. She was always there though. She and my Dad went out sometimes, mostly in the local area, and now and then I'd tag along. She was a pretty earthy kid, which was normal for kids in my area. We all spent our fair share of our time playing in the mud.

I sometimes saw Her at school, but I didn't take all that much notice, there was so much other stuff going on. Going to a bush school does that I guess. Or maybe it's just that there were so many other kids my age, She just sort of faded in to the background most of the time.

I went to high school, She didn't, so I didn't see much of Her during my 'teens. Not that She wasn't able to. She was definitely intelligent enough. Perhaps She thought She didn't need to. I'm not sure. I didn't even really think about Her that much.

My family went to South Africa in year eight. She was there, but I only saw Her once or twice, and She was going through a bad period. Her parents had left her, and She was down and out. Her situation was horrible, at least the side that I saw. She was so depressed at badly treated that She was taking it out on the people around her, becoming cruel and miserly, just as the system She was living in was to start with. Perhaps that was the problem. And unfortunately, She wasn't in a position to change much, which just made Her worse. I wondered if She was going to snap.

My Dad tried to help her, with limited resources, but in the end it all came to little. He wanted to help her, and She wanted, needed help, but She wasn't able to take it. She needed to learn, but She didn't have time. She was too busy trying to feed herself. She worked for little money, when She could find work. Sometimes She had to turn to prostitution to survive. It was horrible, but as a fourteen-year-old I had no idea what I could do. And besides, Africa is so full of amazing animal, landscapes and weird animals, that I had more than enough other things to do, I'm sure I didn't give Her enough attention.

My family travelled a lot that year. Through southern Africa, and to Europe. Turkey is an amazing place, if ever you've been there, you'd know. Such a diverse landscape, from sea-side to desert, moonscape to untouched plane tree forests. And amazing people.

We met up with Her in Istanbul, and She told me Her life story, or part of it. Apparently She was born in the middle east - not sure where exactly, but She moved west soon after, and Her first real memories are from the Grecian Isles. She recanted some of Her glorious childhood, of living in Athens amongst the tight-packed houses, and playing on the acropolis, and watching the world move by underneath, from between the Doric columns of the Parthenon.

After Athens She lived in Italy for a couple of years, and visited most of Europe. She likes it there. Something about the passion of the Italians I think. Every one of them lives with a roar in their hearts.

That was the last I really saw of Her for a long time. All through high school She and I were on a completely different course. I spent my high school years learning, and getting more and more angry at the world. And even more angry that I couldn't do anything about it. What little news I got from the world through the filtered eyes of the Australian media fueled me. Disempowered, I did nothing but sit around playing computer games and getting stoned with friends.

Some time towards the end of high school I realised that if people like me who cared about the state of the world didn't act, nothing would get better. And I resolved to get the fuck out of Wingham and do something to make the world a better place. Not that Wingham didn't need help too. I guess that just wasn't my fight.

I had already decided to go overseas before going to Uni. At the last minute, my Dad convinced me that one of the best ways that I could help people was to get back in contact with Her and try to figure out a way that we could work together. As luck would have it, I landed a job with friends in Germany that meant I could live and work there, and try to find Her again, as well as getting some practical experience.

I saw Her a number of times in Europe, but never to the point where we could actually sit down and talk. I had other things on my mind. She did manage to show me around some of her old haunts in western Germany, but I didn't really see the point, I was just a tourist, seeking the golden souvenir. It's a pity. It's a part of my life I feel I wasted somewhat. Not that I regret doing it, just that I wish I had had my eyes open more.

When I did see Her that year, I was taken aback a little by Her stylism. Not that it was full on or anything, it was just that I never thought such a practical, pragmatic girl would go in for that kind of aesthetic over comfort thing. It surprised me.

Work in progress...

Comments

mudlarky, Sun, 02/04/2007 - 20:34

Good so far, how about finishing it?

naught101, Mon, 02/05/2007 - 00:49:

all in good time. a biography is never finished, not, at least, until the subject is dead.

Ange, Thu, 02/08/2007 - 17:59:

Beautiful. I hope you dont mind me sticky beaking.

The Online Alternative

2006-01-27T00:00:00+11:00

Your guide to internet media. It's free! (yes, both of them)

ned haughton

username: > opused

password: > ********

welcome to freeISP.org.au.

<opused@freeISP.org.au>:
> GET <http://www.opus.org.au>

welcome to opus.org.au

Opus is a real voice for students, but one that is going to get fainter if we don't continue to fight. VSU is set in place, ready to be implemented in second semester, and this may be our last year of a reasonably well funded Student Newspaper.

For the past few years, opus has cost around $10,000 for each print run, this year we have managed to squeeze it back to around $3200 per issue, mostly by cutting the physical size of the magazine to 240 x 170mm (what you now hold in your hands), but also by cutting the print run from 3,000 to 2,500, and reducing the number of pages (most editions will be about 48 pages).

This year we still have some funding, next year, we expect to have a fraction of that. This is the reason that we are setting up the website at www.opus.org.au. The website, like the print edition of Opus, gives all students the opportunity to write about issues affecting them. In addition to this, opus.org.au also gives student an opportunity to comment on articles, and make their point known on the forums. It also allows students to comment on, or reply to, articles, reviews, fiction pieces, and art from the print edition of Opus, which will all be available on the website too. Best of all, it costs us next to nothing.

This is also the reason why I am writing a guide to online media. There are many good things about online media and journalism. It's varied, unlike most mass media you read (the tabloids, or the national broadsheets, or the nightly TV news). It's from a variety of sources, which means you are most likely to get your facts straight. It's free (or at least the best bits are); Those that aren't can be bypassed.. read on. Also, last but not least, you can write it yourself.

The best of the Online corporate media.

Always take online corporate media with a pinch of salt. The mass media is what nearly everyone reads and watches to keep up with world news, and national news. That's probably the best reason to keep an eye open in this part of the news world. Be careful though, all is not always as it seems. Some of these companies have huge vested interest in any number of stories. Some, Murdoch news sources especially, will go out of their way to describe one side of the story as the true one, and block all other debate.

It's relatively easy to find the most well known corporate News services on the web. They all have websites, and relatively easy ones to find. If you can't find them, a quick search on any search engine will get you where you want to be.

One handy tool is Google News, which acts a a kind of reference library for internet news. Just go to http://news.google.com, and search for something and it comes up with a bunch of links to news items on a variety of different news services (most of the corporate).

If you want to find out more about any major news service, check out Wikipedia. It has information on the history of nearly every major news company, including, sometimes, who own who, and past unscrupulousness. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/news_services for a (nearly) complete list.

There isn't really much in the way of online corporate journalism in the Hunter. The Newcastle Herald has a website (http://theherald.com.au/), but it's pretty useless.

Nearly all of the corporate news websites make you pay to view their archives. Most have recent stories for free, but some charge ridiculous amounts for just a few hundred words. Best way to deal with this? There are two.

Free Corporate News

Never pay for your news again. The Uni does for you! Being a uni student gives you access to a huge amount of information on otherwise extremely expensive member-only databases. You can find a complete list athttp://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/database/index.html. Check out Factiva for lots and lots of newspaper archives. A great way to learn your most hated company's dirty secrets. Or do your Uni work. meh.

The second way is a relatively simple system that, rather oddly, seems to work, and for anyone, not just Uni students. Check out BugMeNot! - http://www.bugmenot.org. It's basically a database of usernames and passwords. Anyone with a login for a members-only site can post their details at BMN, and share them with the rest of the world. Feel free to add your own if you can afford it, but I'd suggest not using your normal username and password.

An Eye on the truth

There are a number of sites that watch new services for dodgy practice. Always a good idea to check who's telling the truth, and who's counting their cash.

Media Watch

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/

The ABC's sometimes introspective media watch-dog. Great for keeping up to date with all the lying scum in the media. And the odd funny mistake.

SourceWatch

http://www.sourcewatch.org

A corporation watchdog run by the not-for-profit American organisation PRWatch. SW has information on any number of dirty corporate secrets. It's a wiki too, which means you can edit it as you like. This tends to mean that only the more public, interesting stuff gets the spotlight, but if you have something want to know more about, or want people to know, start an article here.

Alternative/Not-for-profit Online Media

There are a number of not-for-profit media outfits that run stuff on the 'net. Considering they are not usually tied up with big-business advertising, they can present a range of fresh, individual views on any number of

Green Left Weekly

http://www.greenleft.org.au/

the Green Left is an Australian newspaper run in league with the socialist alliance. It's name makes it kind of obvious what it's intentions are. It's website is also a great place to go for a view on whatever social justice-relevant story you don't think you've heard both sides of in the mass media. It can be a little slow to update sometimes, especially over the summer break, apparently.

Student Media

http://studentmedia.org.au/

Not exactly a news website, Student Media is the umbrella group that links all the student newspapers across the country. The site a number of good links, and is worth checking out if you feel like getting involved.

There's a short list of independent media at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_media.

Write your own

Add the the seething miasma of news and information on the internet, and get your point across.

Indymedia

http://www.indymedia.org/

Indymedia is the mother of all independent news on the 'net. Indymedia originally started in 1999, as part of the anti-globalisation movement confronting the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle, in the November of that year. The project grew from the original indymedia.org website, to include smaller satellites from different countries and cities. Despite only having started in a few years ago, Indymedia now has hundreds of small, localized Independent Media Centers (IMC), all over the world.

Indymedia presents a left-libertarian, anti-globalisation view of the world. It's stated aims are rejection of corporate globalisation, and rejection of all bigoted policies that work with the system, it aims to help create a free, critical-thinking, and decentralised society, through broadcasting alternative messages in the media.

Indy media is an open to anyone who wants help out, and that anyone can write for it. There are some restrictions on the writing, but if you're interested in alternative media, they probably won't bother you. The Copyright of anything you do write remains in you hands, as the IMCs are a broadcasting medium only, not a news corporation.

The most useful IMCs for us are:

http://www.indymedia.org - the international site

http://www.indymedia.org.au - the Indymedia Oceania portal site, and

http://sydney.indymedia.org/ - the Sydney IMC.

Wikinews

http://www.wikinews.org.au

Originally an offshoot of Wikipedia, Wikinews runs on the same principals, that is it's free, and anyone can write it. Unlike Indymedia, anything you write on Wikinews is released into the public domain on publishing, under the GNU General Public Licence (a copy of which can be found on the site). Nearly all the news items here are written by ordinary people like you and me, with information either sourced from outside news services (and referenced), or written first hand.

Wikinews is still in it's infancy, but it's popularity is growing along with that of it's parent site. Wikipedia also has information on event-type news like disasters, elections (same shit different smell), etc.

Print it yourself

Lastly, maybe you have some news that needs to be put out to the local community. Bet you can't afford thousands of dollars a pop for the latest Adobe or Microsoft design and layout software packages. You're a student, that goes without saying. So you're left with two options: piracy, or free software.

Five or six years ago if you'd asked a designer or publisher to point you to some free software, they would have given you a long, blank stare, and probably thought you were an idiot. These days many still would, but with the huge uptake in open-source software over the last few years, they'd be the ones in the dark.

Open source software is basically software that gets coded and released with the source code, and generally for free. What this means is that anyone with a bit of programming knowledge can get in on the act and improve the software. What this means for YOU is lots of quality, free software packages for doing anything you want, including writing, design, and layout of your own magazines or flyers.

These programs will help you do just that. They are all originally designed for Linux (the open-source competitor of Windows), but now all work on Mac OSX and Windows as well. All of them are free to download.

OpenOffice.org

http;//www.openoffice.org

The open-source alternative to Microshaft office. Does everything office does, but in open formats.

The Gimp

http://www.gimp.org

No, it's not a sex slave, it's the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's the most widely known and highly regarded open-source raster (photos and stuff) image editor. Basically similar to Photoshop, but sixteen hundred bucks cheaper. It's still missing a couple of features, as it's only up to version 2.2.3, but it does some things even better than it's commercial cousins.

Inkscape

http://www.inkscape.org (how did you guess?)

Similar to Illustrator, this is a vector (line work) image editor, which is relatively easy to learn. It works on xml open format SVG files, but can save to EPS files too (the ones you need for printing). Inkscape is still taking baby steps, but is definitely adequate for web design, and will do nearly anything you need for print design purposes.

Scribus

http://www.scribus.net

Scribus is the InDesign killer; it's for the layout of your propaganda. Scribus has only just been ported to Windows, but it's been around for a bit on Linux (it's currently Version 1.3.4). It does everything you need to get your writing a graphics collated and ready to send to the printers.

Don't have the money to print? Ask NUSA or the Octapod... you never know your luck.

The End

Now you have all you need to get informed, and write your articles, and you even have the means to get it printed. All I ask in return is that you don't forget Opus! We need your news, you articles, your fiction, poetry, ramblings, doodles, and artwork. Now you have the means, the world, and especially this small, printed part of it, is your slimy marine mollusc. Go for it.

originally published in opus (newie student rag) O(rientation)book, 2006.

New Gods

2005-02-07T21:39:00+11:00

Old Gods step aside for the New but the New Gods do not speak the truth.

Taking words of innocence they bite and chew and swallow and spew forth feigned intelligence their best of friends: our ignorance

power fuels control control returns the favour the one true mind- and-soul-enslaver

their power stems from our belief they write what we hear and see a vicious blinding, cyclic mess the New Refrain we must digest "fear and hate: the terrorist rejoice: the neoliberalist"

the New Gods bend religion, and science disprove the proof, brook no defiance that which will not be otherwise silenced is met with force and cold hard violence

and while the restrictions increasingly grow the all-pervasive steals the show the one commandment, set in stone "FEAR THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT KNOW"

originally posted on deviantart.com : http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/14911262

Mister Milton

2004-12-11T22:07:00+11:00

Mister Milton never told me why It is that we all have to die. He said it might be painful, It might last a while. He tells me it's the end, But something new might begin.

Mister Milton never told me why We have to live this life. He says it takes a long time But it's gone in the blink of an eye. He point out those who do nothing I see a sad little smile. He says he loves all human beings I think I know what he means.

Mister Milton says he likes The music that I play, Says it makes him happy, That it takes him away. I play just for fun When he has nothing to say

And I love his smile I love his smile

Mister Milton never told me why We're born into this life. He thinks we fill the void The others leave behind. He laughs at my confusion And I see stars in his eyes.

Mister Milton says he likes The music that I play, Says it makes him happy, That it takes him away. I play just for fun When he has nothing to say

And I love his smile I love his smile

originally posted on Deviant Art: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/13073894/

what are you waiting for?

2004-05-31T23:54:00+10:00

What are you waiting for boy? You've got the ideals, the passion, the zeal. You can make this a big deal.

Do you know what you're fighting for? For blood and vinegar? Or against a war?

What crime will you commit? It's society that's the pits... Don't lose your wits, don't take that hit.

Just a quiet warning boy, don't end up being the toy, to be played along, at your enemy's joy.

Maybe it is your time to stand up, rise up, heads up, fists up. just watch the roof on the way up, pup.

You can make it to the top. And maybe you're right, now's not the time to stop. Just watch your footing and watch the drop

It's fine by me to have your head in the clouds so long as it's mouth on the mic, feet on the ground

What are you waiting for boy? you are what is real, you got the passion, the ideals, the zeal. You can make this a big deal.

Comments

Rick, Sun, 02/04/2007 - 20:07:

You make me cry With pride with envy with love... never give up if you have to, just change course. R

naught101, Mon, 02/05/2007 - 00:48:

thanks you

but that's not necessarily about me. could be you...

rick, Sun, 02/18/2007 - 21:06:

Has been me but I'm not a fighter More a demonstrator