Cabalamat's Britblog roundup tipped me off to one of those storm in a tea-cup debates on Global Warming... Steve McIntyre, a long term climate sceptic, has made analysis of tree ring data used as a basis for claiming significant temperature rise in modern times.. and concludes that by substituting other tree ring data the apparent rise disappears.
I don't have the statistics or knowledge of dendrochronology to know whether his analysis is accurate or pertinent. Whether it is evidence of a 'global warming hoax' I very much doubt (by which I mean whether the results have been skewed deliberately to mislead)- but if this genuinely shows problems in the previous data or analysis it is a valuable contribution to the debate.
Reading Keith Briffa's response to the post you could almost wonder though if it isn't McIntyre that's guilty of selecting the data to exclude to substantiate his scepticism. Briffa promises a more detailed review of McIntyre's analysis. In the meantime RealClimate's response puts the argument into perspective by showing a range of other indicators of long term climate all with the same trend - none of them reliant on the Yamal peninsular tree-ring data.
Getting down to hard facts is important and not easy to do. Nobody wins and nobody loses by establishing the truth... which is why it's a little sad to see the climosceptic crowing that accompanies this type of report. If someone categorically proves that there is no global warming we will all be able to celebrate... but don't you think it's time we all started thinking about plan B?
Monday, 5 October 2009
Sampling, Mash-ups.. and copyright
Making music ain't what it used to be....
"The ones who are mad to live" have a closer look at how sampling and re-mixing has changed how music is created - and challenges the relevance of tradional copyright. It includes some interesting embedded video and this succint quote by Johnathan Zittrain, professor of internet law at Harvard Law School.
"..copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and homerecording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular cultures. There’s no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime."
Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform
"The ones who are mad to live" have a closer look at how sampling and re-mixing has changed how music is created - and challenges the relevance of tradional copyright. It includes some interesting embedded video and this succint quote by Johnathan Zittrain, professor of internet law at Harvard Law School.
"..copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and homerecording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular cultures. There’s no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime."
Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform
Sunday, 4 October 2009
John Lilburne: Beauty and free thinking
Photo: Freebornjohn #359
Unwarranted Intrusion: On the Fourth Amendment.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I'm not a great scholar of history, or an expert in American constitutional law - but this last week I discovered the Fourth Amendment - and more sadly, how it is being bent and broken in American today (although I guess I kind of knew that already).
My starting point was Cory Doctorow's piece on Senator Al Franken, reading out the Fourth Amendment and questioning a Department of Justice official whether the Patriot Act provisions for roving wiretaps on unnamed individuals meet the terms of that amendment. (You can watch the actual exchange on video at the MN Progressive Project).
The moot point here is do you need to name someone to be allowed to tap them - or more to the point to tap the broad spectrum of their friends, relatives and contacts? This snippet of political theatre highlights how much weight is put on the exact wording of constitutional texts that were written well before the concept of wiretaps was ever thought of.- but texts that in any case establish essential principles.
To get at the spirit of the amendment though we can remember that it was - in part at least - a response to British use of writs of assistance in the 1760s - blanket warrants that gave power to search without needing cause and without even identifying who or where you wanted to search. Which makes it unsurprising that, alongside the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendment Act - with it's support for warrentless wiretaps - is seen to clearly be in violation of citizens constitutional rights. Attempts to challenge it's constitutional legality have though been blocked (at least for now) because the plaintiffs have no evidence that they are actually being watched... but as it's a secret government surveillance programme how would you ever know you were under surveillance?!
But that's in America.... we do things differently in Europe right???
EFF on roving wiretaps
Inspector General's report on thousands of abuses of the Patriot act by the FBI
American Civil Liberties Union on FISA Amendment Act
Liberty - death by a thousand cuts
I'm not a great scholar of history, or an expert in American constitutional law - but this last week I discovered the Fourth Amendment - and more sadly, how it is being bent and broken in American today (although I guess I kind of knew that already).
My starting point was Cory Doctorow's piece on Senator Al Franken, reading out the Fourth Amendment and questioning a Department of Justice official whether the Patriot Act provisions for roving wiretaps on unnamed individuals meet the terms of that amendment. (You can watch the actual exchange on video at the MN Progressive Project).
The moot point here is do you need to name someone to be allowed to tap them - or more to the point to tap the broad spectrum of their friends, relatives and contacts? This snippet of political theatre highlights how much weight is put on the exact wording of constitutional texts that were written well before the concept of wiretaps was ever thought of.- but texts that in any case establish essential principles.
To get at the spirit of the amendment though we can remember that it was - in part at least - a response to British use of writs of assistance in the 1760s - blanket warrants that gave power to search without needing cause and without even identifying who or where you wanted to search. Which makes it unsurprising that, alongside the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendment Act - with it's support for warrentless wiretaps - is seen to clearly be in violation of citizens constitutional rights. Attempts to challenge it's constitutional legality have though been blocked (at least for now) because the plaintiffs have no evidence that they are actually being watched... but as it's a secret government surveillance programme how would you ever know you were under surveillance?!
But that's in America.... we do things differently in Europe right???
EFF on roving wiretaps
Inspector General's report on thousands of abuses of the Patriot act by the FBI
American Civil Liberties Union on FISA Amendment Act
Liberty - death by a thousand cuts
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Marek Edelman: Remembering courage in the face of tyranny
Marek Edelman, has died at the age of 90.
The Beeb report the death of the last surviving leader from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in 1943.
"For nearly a month in the spring of 1943 a group of young Jews, armed with pistols and home-made bombs, held off the German army before the ghetto was razed to the ground.
Jewish residents fought for nearly a month before the uprising was crushed. By that time the Nazis had sent 300,000 Jewish residents of the ghetto to the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp."
Three hundred thousand.....
To take arms in the face of tyranny has my utmost respect..
The Beeb report the death of the last surviving leader from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in 1943.
"For nearly a month in the spring of 1943 a group of young Jews, armed with pistols and home-made bombs, held off the German army before the ghetto was razed to the ground.
Jewish residents fought for nearly a month before the uprising was crushed. By that time the Nazis had sent 300,000 Jewish residents of the ghetto to the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp."
Three hundred thousand.....
To take arms in the face of tyranny has my utmost respect..
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Standing on the shoulders of giants
"Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world's scholarly knowledge.... "The idea that culture and idea's build on those that come before us is not a new one - going far back in time before Isaac Newton's famous use of the 'giants' quote. What perhaps is new is the ambition to set free the great wealth of knowledge that is generated by our contemporaries and give us access collectively to it's rich resource.
A small link on Michael Geist's blog takes me to the wonderful Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics from whence the the quote above comes. It's a veritable treasure trove on Open Access - with a hoard of useful links and facts.... Like:
- that over 30 million scientific publications are now available through Scientific Commons - and..
- 20% of the world's medical literature is freely available 2 years after publication at PubMedCentral.
Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party: Against Intellectual Monopoly
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