Truth is Inconvenient

Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" opens nationwide this week. The movie purports to enlighten the benighted masses about the global calamity facing humanity as a result of global warming. Unfortunately, for Al Gore Truth is Inconvenient because as we get closer to the truth about global warming it will be inconvenient that his "truth" will be revealed as a mendacious distortion of unrelated scientific facts. The Gore program for socialism, which has lost repeatedly in the polling place, now seeks victory through hysteria via world wide U.N. mediated regulation, and that is An Inconvenient Truth as history has clearly demonstrated that Socialism leads to misery and death on a vast scale.

Really scary images and wild assertions can be found at this website http://www.climatecrisis.net/. What will be lacking is hard science because by virtue of being hard it is not very popular and is not conducive to simplification, does not provide vivid gut wrenching imagery and is veiled in difficult mathematical formulas, concepts and reams of numerical data. The climatological record based upon observation is about 150 years old, which for a planet of some 4.5 billion years of age is a statistically meaningless sampling period. Nothing can be extrapolated from this data other than its' uselessness. Ask your friendly neighborhood actuary about the veracity of my statement.

Atmospheric dynamics is a subject of such complexity that any "expert" will readily admit that all of the models are no good, that is, have little to no predictive value (that's why the weather man is wrong so often). These dynamics are governed by the Navier-Stokes equation which cannot be solved, as a system of non-linear partial differential equations, the solution of which require boundary and initial value constraints that cannot be evaluated. Additional cmploicating factors are the multi-dimensional systems of chemical kinetics, radiation transfer from the Sun, as well as, radiative re-emission by the planet and its' gaseous envelope. All of these "models" require sufficient simplification such that they no longer represent the systems they model (sadly only a trained mathematician or physicist can recognize this drawback).

We live on a decent sized planet with a large atmosphere, the amount of carbon man can pump into it is trivial compared to the natural sources: biomass decomposition, animal flatulence, volcanic eruption and soil out-gassing to name a few sources that have been studied. There are Internet sites that abound with data on these assertions.
We also live reasonably close to the Sun which provides virtually all the energy mankind and the planet has. It would a vast oversimplification to think that this fusion reactor has a constant output over time. The space weather link provides continuous monitoring of multi-spectral data that demonstrates that this is not, in fact, the case.

Those that have taken freshman chemistry will remember Le Chatelier's Equilibrium. The Earth's oceans provide a massive CO2 buffering system such that the atmospheric ocean system exchanges C02 continuously in copious amounts that will minimize concentration fluctuations.

The planet may be getting hotter, it may be getting colder. Some regions of the planet may be getting hotter while others get colder (they're called seasons), but none of these theories can model any of it with any accuracy. Even the experts admit this in the terse mathematics of their published papers, but never when requesting grant funding.

The Inconvenient Truth is that Al Gore has assembled a team of statist academicians to promulgate his theme. The theme so strongly rejected by voters of the last quarter century at the polls, an overwhelming NO to socialism. Every expert he brings forth in his evidentiary proceeding is on the tax payer dole, either directly like NASA employees, or indirectly as recipients of NSF grants for research.

Atmospheric Physics is a growth industry but only for those that sing the proper tune and in the proper key: the sky is falling and only bold, massive government and inter-governmental regulation and expensive investments( to be paid for by the taxpayer) can save the world. Al Gore is a lifelong politician that has never held a job, the son of a politician, and this is a just another shameless, self-promoting, dishonest and mendacious attempt at securing more taxpayers dollars which at best will squander billions on science without results (think star wars) or possibly a cruel lie that will lead to the death of millions through environmental mismanagement at its' worst. Now that is an Inconvenient Truth.

Copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved

Institutional Definition

We have all been part of, hated or have been used or abused by institutions. What is an institution? The dictionary defines an institution as

in·sti·tu·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nst-tshn, -ty-) n. The act of instituting. A custom, practice, relationship, or behavioral pattern of importance in the life of a community or society: the institutions of marriage and the family. Informal. One long associated with a specified place, position, or function. An established organization or foundation, especially one dedicated to education, public service, or culture. The building or buildings housing such an organization. A place for the care of persons who are destitute, disabled, or mentally ill.

My definition is from an objectivist viewpoint. An insitution is any group, body, association, or set, either public or private that has the capability to influence those that are not members.

A good example is the Federal Reserve, a private institution (that's right it is not part of the US Government) that has the ability to effect millions (everyone that holds US Dollars as currency). Another example is the Catholic Church. When they ran the Spanish Inquisition, muillions were effected.

On Line Libraries

The Internet is bearing fruit on providing mankind’s knowledge trove on demand, at no charge. Some of my personal favorite sites are listed here.

The Liberty Fund in Indianapolis, Indiana has started a wonderful project called the Online Library of Liberty. This website provides many of the classics of human thought in both html and pdf (Acrobat Reader) format for browsing or offline browsing via download. This material, in conjunction with the e-books section of the Mises Institute web site www.mises.org provides most of the material necessary for a free of charge classical education.

For tastes that are more contemporary and scientific then check out the Physics Archive at Cornell.

Math is my personal thing so I like to frequent Math World. The Math Reader product is wonderful and free.

Literature buffs may want to check out the ebooks at University of Virginia. The ebooks site is nice because it provides format for PDA’s via Palm and Microsoft Reader, all available free of charge. Next time you are trapped in an awful meeting boot up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Beowulf on your PDA and go to a better place.
Shakespeare, the great bard(s) whoever they were, are also available.

General knowledge can be found at the wikipedia, where you can contribute your own knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy.

If you’ve always wanted to attend MIT but lack the GPA, tuition, money, necessary connections or just cannot tolerate the Boston weather or having to look at Harvard students on a regular basis, then get their open course work for free.

Consumer Warning: knowledge is not free, like respect, it has to be earned. The reader still has to put forth the effort to acquire it. It is a virtual natural resource of no intrinisic value  until human labor transforms it into something valuable. Here we can all stand on the shoulders of mankinds giants and see vistas that are beyond our individual limited horizons. Man millenniums of effort have gone into these works, but culture pays forward so we can reap the benefits today at a much smaller cost.

This is the inherent nature of capitalism lower cost, higher quality products for everyone's potential consumption. This is another fine example of the spontaneous organization from human action without any government intervention required.

Sadly, the web is also full of statism, porn, fads, hate speech of every imaginable variety, eco-gibberish, and new age silliness, but that is also the price of a free society: tolerance for speech that you abhor.
    

Google Redux

Google is censoring ... 
 

Air brushing people out of photos and re-writing history cannot be far behind

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CIA Secretly Reclassifying Documents |
| from the can-i-get-my-file-yet dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 21, @10:03 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/21/1414223 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]SetupWeasel writes "The New York Times is reporting that [1]the CIA is secretly reclassfying documents. How did we catch on? Historians have some of the documents. From the article: "eight [of the] reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, 'Foreign Relations of the United States.'" Are our intelligence agencies rewriting history, stupidly paranoid, or both? We do know that they are ignoring a 2003 law that requires formal reclassifications. It puts that whole [2]Google censorship thing in a whole new light.
(Americans aren't allowed to see that video.)"
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/21/1414223
Links:
0. http://www.ministry-of-fun.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/politics/21reclassify.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1140498000&en=1490d91764a11aea&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
2. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2053731645001034711 


Bureaucratic incompetence will probably doom this, collect all the data then lose or corrupt it: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html?s=hns
 
All the major serach engines are providing back doors to their systems. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are giving individual records to the Chinese and Feds just for asking, Google to follow.
 
You want anonymity, privacy and security? Disconnect and turn off.


This article was originally rejected by Lew Rockwell in October of 2005. Since then there have been quite a few developments of interest. The Search Engine business is a surveillance business, and the databases compiled over the last decade are just too tempting to resist and the public assault on the private data mines has begun.

The biggest search engine in the world is blocking searches when the executives don’t like them, what kind of abuse potential is that? Or if a court order or secret handshake occurs? Not only do they do it they admit it.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Google Developing Database Service                                 |
|   from the step-four-profit dept.                                  |
|   posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 25, @18:47 (Google)            |
|   <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/2042238>              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

QuantumT writes "[0]Ars Technica has the details on [1]the unannounced Google Base service that will allow anyone with a Google Account to post information and other types of data into a massive, Google-run database.

Ars believes that the company is gearing up to take on eBay and Craiglist, which makes sense given the Google Payment service that is in development. Google has commented, saying, 'This is an early-stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. Like our web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content.' There's a few screenshots as well." 

Discuss this story at:

    <http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/10/25/2042238>

Links:
    0. <http://arstechnica.com/index.ars>
    1. <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051025-5480.html>


The Google Hypocrisy


The word google is a verb, but it used to be a noun. It means “to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine “according to Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6). It is also a publicly company traded company (NASDAQ: GOOG). They also have a nice and catchy corporate motto: Don’t Be Evil. Google represents the power of the Internet; a couple of graduate students go from obscurity to billionaires in just a few years (Larry Page and Sergey Brin). The question is why are they concerned with evil at the corporate level?

The basis of the Google search engine is simple and democratic. Web sites that are searched for, and then navigated to, through the Google search engine are stored and page rank is determined by the open and democratic system of voting by clicking through. This is an easy algorithm to subvert. Google cannot make users click through, it is a voluntary action. To subvert just type the URL presented and do not click through, and a page rank scoring event will not occur. The people at Google are counting on the laziness of users to not do this and click through instead. It’s a lot easier, and saves millions of lost man hours per year from typing in URL’s by the action of clicking through.

Google has also built a tremendous revenue stream from the model by becoming the dominant competitor in this market segment. The verb to Google has come into the contemporary lexicon. Many people develop the Google reflex; just hit the Google web site when you want to find something.

The free services Google offers, searching, web services, toolbar, gmail, froogle, to name a few and offer a great deal of utility for users based upon their algorithm and the faith advertisers place in it, thus providing the revenue stream. What is less clear is what they are doing with all of this data. Lots of privacy concerns have arisen from a variety of sources.

Hypocrisy has always been a concern for Americans. We have recognized that hypocrisy is often at the root of political misbehavior. This is embodied in the slogan the “don’t do as I do, do as I say”. It is toward this end that concern about the power of the Google search engine has arisen. Google has raised hackles around the world when they blackballed a firm (CNET) from the using their search engine after publishing results about the Google CEO using Google searches.

As a strident believer in free markets, I think this behavior is reasonable, even if it is poor public relations. The broader concern is that if they do this once, what is to prevent them from doing it again? Google is building the world’s largest private network graph of what is communicated to whom by whom, who searches for what, and who clicks through. If the eye seeks what the heart desires then Google has a window on user’s collective psyche. If you do not like this behavior, the simple solution is to not use their service which is, after all, voluntary. The market has the capability to take away their power.

Corporations are risk averse when it comes to endangering their revenue streams and profits. The Congressional record is littered with firms and their lobbyists seeking legislative relief from this danger. This is the territory where the free market becomes hindered by pubic interaction with private and powerful parties seeking the power of the state to provide preferential treatment.

The hypocrisy comes when the world largest search engine feels they have a legitimate right to search and index other people’s freely available information, but then denies that right to others. The hypocrisy is codified in their terms of service where they deny the right of automated queries to users, but the basis of their technology is automated queries of others’ data. This policy in and of itself, is meaningless, as it is not possible to make a manual search of Google, since it requires a computer interface to the Internet to accomplish this task. Most reasonable people would argue, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this is the essence of an automated query.

The days of anonymity on the Internet are largely gone. The technology, and its’ usage, renders this a nearly impossible task for the average user. Be warned that powerful and hypocritical corporate entities and their public sector friends may have interest in your data, which once recorded will be stored for a long time to come. Laws are fungible, data today is evidence tomorrow. This brings about the original question as to why they have a corporate motto “Don’t be evil.”  Shakespeare addressed this long ago in his saga about the wishy-washy Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

    

Google Spy Net

Google Spy Net

Google is building the world’s largest private, for profit, spy network.

The dictionary definition to spy is:

spy Pronunciation Key (sp(image placeholder))n. pl. spies (sp(image placeholder)z)

1. An agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, especially of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies.


2. One employed by a company to obtain confidential information about its competitors.


3. One who secretly keeps watch on another or others.


4. An act of spying.

v. spied, (sp(image placeholder)d) spy·ing, spies (sp(image placeholder)z) v. tr.

1. To observe secretly with hostile intent.


2. To discover by close observation.


3. To catch sight of: spied the ship on the horizon.


4. To investigate intensively.

v. intr.

1. To engage in espionage.


2. To seek or observe something secretly and closely.


3. To make a careful investigation: spying into other people's activities.

Google has a large number of servers in many cities and countries sharing data using distributed processing and the Ultra Large File system.

Google monitors and records the IP address of searchers, keywords searched for, plus any available cookie data, and links navigated to via “click-thru’s.”

Other tools Google produces for free download like Picasa, Google Toolbar, Gmail, GTalk and others are surveillance tools. Gmail records who knows who, who writes what to whom, and who networks with whom based upon their invitation subscription service. GTalk records conversations between parties.

Data is an inanimate object like a rock or screwdriver, and as such it is amoral, without morality. An inanimate object is neither good nor bad, on it’s own it does nothing but decay over time. Morailty is correctly applied to the usage of an inanimate object, by an animate user.

What is data today may be evidence tomorrow as the law becomes increasingly fungible in the modern, complex legal environment.

All users should be aware of what Google is doing. The data freely and perhaps naively given will be available for a long time to come. The author makes no judgment on whether this is good or bad, only that it has gone on along time, and will continue into the future.

Here is an update on some of these items of concern:

• http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6034666.html
• http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/04/1426250

The Google Subpoena

The Google Subpoena

Who, What, When, Where, How and Why are the questions to be answered when solving a crime. Who did it? When was it done? Where did the crime occur? How, by what means, was the crime accomplished. Why provides the motive for the crime’s commission. These are the questions answered by law enforcement for presentation to a jury. It is also the data collected by major search engine during their operation. It provides a fertile ground for data mining.

Google is the largest of the search engine providers today, and as the largest, they have a treasure trove of data collected from millions of internet users and billions of web pages, images, e-mail, documents, news postings, blogs and videos.

The recent Federal subpoena of Google is the first wave of judicial assault on this freely collected, and freely given content. The richness of the trove became too great for the bureaucrats to resist. The justification for the subpoena is a 1998 child pornography law. The subpoena was issued in the name of Alberto Gonzalez, United States Attorney General.

Following the logic that the eyes seek what the heart desires, the Justice Department seeks access to millions of records from the Google database.

Google made their money the old fashioned way, by earning it in the marketplace. They built a search engine using a branch of mathematics known as Graph Theory. Graph Theory draws connections between events, just like real world detectives do gathering evidence. Every search using Google records the IP address, the search terms input and potentially the identity of the user, in their database. Click through behavior is also logged since it is the basis of their advertising revenue stream. Many other connections can be drawn depending on the level of usage from many of their tools like Picasa for images, Blogger for web logging, and a network graph of associates via GMail.

This action was inevitable as the Federal leviathan cannot keep its’ hands off of private sector assets. They are drawn like the bee to honey. Google, with a market valuation of $118 billion dollars is an attractive pot full.

Google was not alone in this indictment. Yahoo, MSN and AOL were also subpoenaed, and complied without a fuss, as a matter of corporate policy. Google on the other hand is fighting back. They have resisted, citing protection of proprietary technology, in their response to the suit.

Google did not resist the subpoena based upon principle like the Freedom of Speech or Privacy Protection of their users. They do not deny that they are collecting this data.

This subpoena is trolling for evidence absent a crime. The Attorney General is sure that a crime is lurking within these search engine data mines. He just does not know what crime and by whom it was perpetrated
The days of anonymity on the Internet are over. This subpoena is the first shot over the bow of private enterprise that any and all information is available to the state. The Google model is “Don’t be evil.” They can demonstrate a principled adherence to this by vigorously resisting this egregious attack on First Amendment principles.

To find copious references just “Google” the keywords Google, subpoena, justice.

The Tire Patch Universe

The Tire Patch Universe

The measurement of background microwave anisotropy from satellites has produced a great deal of controversy and confusion in the world of theoretical physics and cosmology. These results of the last few years have led to positing the existence of cold dark matter that is causing the universe expansion rate to accelerate. This result is analogous to Einstein’s infamous cosmological constant which provide a negative pressure. Agreement on the mechanism for cold dark matter and its’ effect is, to date, tenuous at best.

Perhaps the multiverse theory from quantum mechanics can come to the rescue in a novel way. Quantum mechanics allows an infinite number of universes’ to exist. Each habited by different Feynman paths of it’s’ particles or even by different physical laws than we observe in our warm and cozy one. These multiple universes (multiverse) are causally disconnected from one another.

What about a universe that from a local perspective (like ours) is like ours, with all it’s properties but due to the peculiarity of our viewpoint is not completely visible, not dark, but out of range? Our local universe would be like an inner tube sticking out through a weak spot in the enclosing tire (a bad analogy topologically). All that we can perceive due to our chance position in spacetime is the part sticking out of the tire, a local bulge. The larger tire is out of range of our view due to the age of the universe and the slow speed of light, and the rapid expansion.

If the tire was expanding to due to an inflationary behavior, so would the bulge. It would appear in the bulge that some negative gravitational pressure was the causative agent from “unseen, i.e. cold and dark” matter. When in fact we are just going along for the ride on a much larger, simply connected, genus 0 universe than the one our biased perspective allows us to observe. No cold and dark matter and negative pressure is required.

The universe is a large and strange place. The 14 billion light year diameter bulge we live in could actually be part of something bigger and unseen. The throat connecting to the larger universe (the tire) is very far away, and even possibly very small, hence not visible to us as of yet.