Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
This, from A.W. Grabau's 1913 classic Principles of Stratigraphy: The chief agents in retaining the sun's heat within the earth's atmosphere are the carbon dioxide and the water vapor, which act as thermal blankets. It has been estimated by Arrhenius (2) that if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere were increased 2.5 to 3 …
Continue reading "Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change: An Old View"
It isn't Stuxnet or even Flame, but... The malware known as 'Flame,' that was described by the analysts who discovered it as a super-cyberweapon, is actually a tool for cyberespionage that has been running inside Iranian data centers and labs for as long as five years without being discovered or causing significant damage. Contrast that …
Continue reading "The Most Potent Virus on Iranian Computers"
That's what the President basically said in his grim speech to the newspaper editors: As he often does, the president chose to deal with gritty political issues -- what to do about the deficit, spending, taxes and entitlements such as Medicare -- by widening the lens. This election, he said, will be nothing less than …
Continue reading "Social Darwinism: The Republicans Can't Win on Evolution"
In a culture that imputes statistical studies with authority they don't deserve, this warning, from Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN 77, is very salutary: Data consist of numbers, of course. But these numbers are fed into the computer, not produced by it. These are numbers to be treated with considerable respect, neither to be tampered with, …
Continue reading "A Salutary Reminder About the Limitations of Data and Statistics"
Among other things: Gianni Onorato, general manager of Carnival (CCL) Corp.’s Costa Crociere line, said the ship had embarked about 7 p.m. from Civitavecchia near Rome on a trip that was scheduled to include stops at ports in France and Spain. The vessel hit the rocks and Captain Francesco Schettino, after assessing the damage, decided …
Continue reading "Maybe the Costa Concordia Needed a Native Guide, Too"
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh knows the truth of this, in his tribute to Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan: "Men and women of such dazzling brilliance and deep intellect are born but rarely," declared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Chennai at a function on December 26, to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Ramanujan (December 22, …
It's time once again for a new semester. This is not true everywhere; for some schools with greater prestige and the possibility that the graduate could become President of the United States (yeah, Republicans, we're seeing that again,) it's just the end of what is now denoted as Winter Break, with exams looming towards the …
Recently received this from the web hosting service of this site, and am in hearty agreement: You may have heard about Protect-IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently under consideration in Congress. If passed, among other things, SOPA requires Web hosting companies like 1&1 to police websites in order to prevent them …
While digging through my email, I could not help but notice this, from the promotion of a new publication by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO): New and extensively researched, Bridge Security Guidelines offers guidance on bridge design for extreme events induced by man. This document provides the designer with information …
Continue reading ""Extreme events induced by man:" the new euphemism for acts of terror"
This past weekend I attended the Leadership Summit for the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Geo-Institute is one of eight institutes within the Society which deals with specialties within civil engineering, in this case soils and foundations. Part of that meeting was an induction of some of the attendees into the …
Continue reading "Order of the Engineer: We Still Need Divine Guidance"
