April 2014 - luv-talk

Re: [luv-talk] Global warming and survivalism (fork from Linux != Poltics)
by Peter Ross 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

From: "Carl Turney" <carl(a)boms.com.au> > We can recycle all the toilet tissue and containers in the world, live > hot in the summer and cold in the winter, ban personal vehicles, go > strictly vegetarian, and we'd =still= need x Olympic swimming pools of > water and y b-double trucks of food per person per lifetime. Look at this graph: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757 Don't you agree there is _a lot_ room to improve? E.g. we can build houses that are not "hot in summer and cold in winter". It even feels better to live in them. Changing the mindset that "less is poor and more is good" is a way. > Please tell us how we can change the minds of right-wing Tea Party > members, and the devout believers that "God wants us to multiply and > will make it all OK for us if we do"? That is what the taxation of resources is about, because the only way to educate some is making them look in their wallet. As an example, the overall costs of the Morwell fire should have been paid by the mining company and so increased the price of Victorian power generated by brown coal. The electricity bill would have made some people think about our "cheap" coal and the "expensive" renewable energy. Regards Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] Patriarchy and Matriarchy put to the test
by Tim Josling 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

Message: 1 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 15:16:36 +1000 From: Russell Coker Subject: Re: [luv-talk] Patriarchy and Matriarchy put to the test inadvertently To: luv-talk(a)lists.luv.asn.au On Mon, 7 Apr 2014 13:45:33 Tim Josling wrote: > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1168182/Catfights-handbags-tears-t > oilets-When-producer-launched-women-TV-company-thought-shed-kissed-goodbye-c > onflict-.html _ > If we are going to look at male behavior in a mostly-male environment one example that should be considered is the Debian project. Some years ago Debian had no procedures for expelling Developers for anything other than criminal action. When some DDs didn't get along then things just became increasingly hostile until someone voluntarily left. I presume that someone who had access to the debian-private archives and little understanding of people could write an article for the Daily Mail about how a 98% male project didn't kiss goodbye to conflict, however that would be a really stupid article. In recent times DDs have been expelled for being assholes and things are a lot better. Debian is a successful project that took steps to ensure its continued success. Problem? No-one is suggesting that all men are wonderful or that all the world's problems would go away if only men ran things. > Tim, I don't expect you to consider these issues or change your opinion of women. I'm writing this for the benefit of other people who are less misogynistic than you. Again, what's with the amateur psychology and mind reading? Misogyny, cowardice, homophobia... My concern is not at all with women but with the overblown claims that all we need to do is empower women and all will be sweetness and light. Women and men both have their strengths and weaknesses. In terms of the original articles what would be more convincing would be a significant counter-example. An organization that is successfully, other than in merely gaining government funding, and is almost entirely run by and funded by women. A female Linux or Debian project for example, or a female Google - "How I got my company into the S&P500 by employing only women".

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Re: [luv-talk] Linux != Poltics
by Peter Ross 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

From: "Rick Moen" <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> > Quoting Peter Ross (Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au) > >> Unrelated to this discussion, today I stumbled over some activities of >> the American Koch brothers. > > Is there any chance we could call them the 'Dutch Koch brothers'? Their > family is from the Netherlands, so I say we should blame the Dutch. I don't have a problem with that. I do not much about this family, besides of being quite powerful business people in the USA. There are many "Kochs" in the world (Koch is the German word for cook. The Dutch is "kok", AFAIK. Maybe you blame the Germans now;-) Regards Peter

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FOSS != Poltix
by Brent Wallis 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

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Re: [luv-talk] Linux != Poltics
by Peter Ross 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

From: "Andrew McGlashan" <andrew.mcglashan(a)affinityvision.com.au> > On 23/04/2014 2:02 PM, Bianca Gibson wrote: >> *Bad* research that is not really science is manipulated to make a >> point. >> In *real* science you try to disprove and challenge your hypothesis. Try >> to find holes in it. > I've said it before and I'll say it > again, this is a political situation, not a science situation and > perhaps in 10 or 20 years time [but definitely in the future] the fraud > will be well proven and the gullibility of the people will also be > laughed at. Well, this seems to be a very scientific approach from your side;-) Unrelated to this discussion, today I stumbled over some activities of the American Koch brothers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers#Clim… "The Koch brothers have played an active role in opposing climate change legislation...The Koch Foundation is a major funder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort to address the criticism of records of the earth's surface temperatures. At least two of the project's seven scientists are seen as climate change skeptics by many in the climate science world." Here about this project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Temperature#July_2012_a… In an op-ed published in the New York Times on 28 July 2012, Muller announced further findings from the project. He said their analysis showed that average global land temperatures had increased by 2.5 °F (1.4 °C) in 250 years, with the increase in the last 50 years being 1.5 °F (0.8 °C), and it seemed likely that this increase was entirely due to human caused greenhouse gas emissions. His opening paragraph stated: "Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause." I spent Easter with a friend studying agriculture. She meets other students, also living in rural areas, in places like Orange, Wagga Wagga regularly. Most of them, according to her, consider the "climate sceptics" and resulting politics as "completely nuts". They see worrying symptoms on their farms, some hold by families for generations. Some of the families have records going back few generations and have not seen some alarming patterns before. These students basically worry that current politics (not) addressing these issues will render their farms worthless during their life time already. Regards Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] Linux != Poltics
by Peter Ross 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

From: "Andrew McGlashan" <andrew.mcglashan(a)affinityvision.com.au> > Nothing wrong with science, but like many things it can be, [and very > often is], manipulated to produce the desired results And the whole scientific community is busy and producing in results our government does not like. With the result that we have a government without a minister for science, and a lot of scientists wait for months now to figure out whether their projects will be financed under the new government. What was the "desired result" here? Do Australian scientists fake results to help the government to stop spending on science so they lose their jobs? Regards Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] Linux != Poltics
by Peter Ross 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

From: "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> > (Iraq and Afghanistan). > > Starting a war you can't win is wrong no matter how you look at it. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?_r=0 BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP ... [read on if you like] Of course, the war was never about oil and Bush & Co were just dumb. The re-privatisation of the oil industry is just a side-effect of a just war against terrorism. And, anyhow somehow the Iraqis have to pay for the mess we brought them in. It was bloody costly to ruin their country and to destabilise it until bombs and deaths are part of their daily life. (Watch yesterday's Dateline to see more.) And the people who want to get out of the mess end up in our next war to stop the boats. I just make this all up, nothing of this is true or related to the other. Regards Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] Linux != Poltics
by Tim Josling 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

Message: 4 Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 12:17:57 +1100 From: "Lev Lafayette" > Arendt's general principle, and one that I agree with, it is societies > that do not discuss politics, that destroy their public sphere of critical > debate and disagreement, that end up sliding into totalitarian and > simplistic authoritarian societies. Even with the trappings of a > trivilised happy consciousness where any disturbing matters are pushed > out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and preferably somewhere else. > Lev Lafayette Excellent post Lev. The question is how do we have such discussions in a way that generates more light than heat? One can exclude people who don't play by the rules of civil debate but the resisting the temptations of the power of censorship seems beyond most people. You often end up with a boring echo chamber. I had some success with a fervent but poorly informed global heating sceptic by agreeing to do a deep dive on some specific aspects of the question.. Issues such as the alleged bad faith of scientists lusting after grant money$ and the alleged bad faith of carbon industry lobbyists lusting after profit$ at any cost were out of scope. We worked through things like the history of the global climate and the temperature record, including things like the heat island effect, the effect of CO2 on the earth's albedo, etc. After a few rounds he went quiet on the issue. Tim Josling (with a J)

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Crowd-funding: ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) Reboot Project
by Rodney Brown 20 Apr '14

20 Apr '14

This may interest some list members, http://www.rockethub.com/projects/42228-isee-3-reboot-project-by-space-coll… Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission - a mission it began in 1978. ISEE-3 was rechristened as the International Comet Explorer (ICE). If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet. ... The "Hack" xkcd http://xkcd.com/1337/ mentions the ISEE-3 http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1978-079A is the NASA National Space Science Data Center ISEE-3 page

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Brendan Eich and XKCD
by Rick Moen 19 Apr '14

19 Apr '14

I suspect the forwarded thread below is grist for this mailing list's mill. Greg mistakenly thought that http://xkcd.com/1357/ was a slam against http://freethoughtblogs.com/ , a rather obnoxious and narrowminded and insular tribe of Internet ideologues. (Like them, Greg is a militant atheist, but they're too groupthink-oriented for him.) Discussion followed. (For whatever it's worth, if anything, I am a non-religious person but see no reason to make a cause of it.) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:51:08 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting greg bart (cyclopasaurus(a)gmail.com) > On (so-called) Freethoughtblogs.... 'Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.' - A.J. Liebling. Or, as an old joke in the open source software world puts it, information doesn't want to be free; it wants to be $6.99. But, of course, you mean the other (fundamentally different, yet subtly related) sense of 'free'. Blogs are an excellent place for asshats to be asshats without any risk of them hurting the real world. You cited an excellent case in point. > It's got everything to do with tribal gangsterism, however. I'll agree with that. FWIW. ;-> And yet, also: > So, exactly when did it become popular, or even considered a good idea, for > supposed "free thinkers" to openly mock the principle of "free speech"? The right to speak doesn't guarantee the right to be taken seriously by any specific others, let alone to require any specific others either to listen or to give you a stump to speak from. Which is, I believe, Randall Monroe's point on XKCD. Or, as the old saying goes, if you want a friend, get a dog. ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from greg bart <cyclopasaurus(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 22:14:17 -0700 From: greg bart <cyclopasaurus(a)gmail.com> To: skeptic <skeptic(a)lists.johnshopkins.edu> Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> wrote: > The right to speak doesn't guarantee the right to be taken seriously > by any specific others, let alone to require any specific others > either to listen or to give you a stump to speak from. Which is, I > believe, Randall Monroe's point on XKCD. Well of course that's true, there certainly could never *be* such a right since that would be equally tyrannical, not to mention hopelessly unworkable. The problem is, this notion is being used to silence perfectly reasonable discussion for dogmatic or other just plain bad purposes, which is the last thing supposed "critical thinkers" should be doing. I hope that fine comic hasn't fallen under the spell of that nutty bunch. It would be a real tragedy. gj ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:02:18 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting greg bart (cyclopasaurus(a)gmail.com) > I hope that fine comic hasn't fallen under the spell of that nutty > bunch. It would be a real tragedy. I very much doubt Randall Munroe has even heard of them. As it turns out, militant atheists tend to get ignored by just about everyone including the conventional non-religious. I suspect he has in mind more-noticed matters such as Brendan Eich's brief recent stint as Mozilla Corporation CEO and (more to the point) a vast number of people on the Internet claiming to be oppressed merely because others aren't interested in hearing them or promoting their messages. ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 11:01:20 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)lists.johnshopkins.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: free speech Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. I wrote: > I very much doubt Randall Munroe has even heard of them. As it turns > out, militant atheists tend to get ignored by just about everyone > including the conventional non-religious. > > I suspect he has in mind more-noticed matters such as Brendan Eich's > brief recent stint as Mozilla Corporation CEO and (more to the point) > a vast number of people on the Internet claiming to be oppressed > merely because others aren't interested in hearing them or promoting > their messages. Why Eich? Because of this stuff: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/northwestvoices/2014/04/11/mozilla-the-right-… http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/mozilla_s_anti_gay_ceo_and_co… A repeated cry in conservative and libertarian circles over anti-gay Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s resignation is that the company is somehow trampling Eich's free speech rights. Eich, as you've surely heard, donated $1,000 in 2008 to California's Proposition 8 campaign, which successfully outlawed gay marriage in that state before getting shot down by the courts. It's true that, because of this donation, Mozilla's leaders and board members pressured Eich to resign. But it's absurd and hypocritical to claim that this pressure constituted an infringement of Eich's legal rights. [...] FWIW, I'm conflicted about Mozilla Corporation having (probably) invited Eich's resignation. Obviously, I was in the opposite camp on California Proposition 8, at the time it was on the ballot -- which was six years ago and a whole (locally) obsolete mindset away. Moreover, I donated money towards its defeat, so my name is on the same Fair Political Practices Commission roll as Eich's, except in the 'money for no' column. At the same time, I would like to imagine that corporate Boards of Directors tend to make personnel decisions primarily based on the track record of those people in relevant business conduct rather than on their private lives in their spare time. I would think less of a corporation that wouldn't hire me _primarily_ because I donated money against Prop. 8, and moral consistency requires me to have the same attitude towards such a decision (apparently) taken concerning Eich. Had I been on the Board, I'd ponder: Is there any reason to think Eich as CEO would fail to implement company equal-rights policies and obey anti-discrimination laws and regulations? Does Eich have any record of poor relations with gay or other co-workers and (especially) direct reports? The account I hear - albeit not with certainty - is that the answer is 'no' to both questions, that Eich had a long and fine record as a manager and co-worker, and that his personal convictions were kept as part of his personal life. It bothers me when we are not permitted to keep our business and personal lives separate, merely because someone is able to dig up material from the latter and gratuitously make trouble for us in the former, in the form of a conjured-up Internet outrage-shitstorm. On the gripping hand[0], as Munroe points out by implication, Eich's guaranteed freedoms do not include freedom from consequence, and he had _no_ entitlement to being liked by the Board of Directors in the face of adverse publicity. And, much as I might think people should bury the hatchet over a dead (in California) political cause and a personal donation made _six years ago_, I have to admit holding a 45-year grudge, myself (as the beam in mine own eye). And Mozilla Corporation is a private for-profit[1] corporation, so, strictly speaking, its personnel decisions are an internal matter and not a proper matter for public controversy at all. (Said Internet outrage-shitstorm made it so, and I'm tired of being what's important by either amateur or professional trolls.) Eich will, I'm sure, come out fine. The real damage was to Mozilla Corporation, which I _do_ care about (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.), and now has suffered mass resignations from its Board. Remaining Board members will have to deal with employees and the public suspecting that the Board will tend to make poorly thought-out decisions, have NO reasonable plan to defend and implement them, and will be weak and indecisive in the face of any obstacle. I.e., Eich could have been acceptable to all reasonable people with a bit of competent handling of the controversy rather than just letting it blow up and having no plan. On the fourth hand, Eich invented JavaScript, so he can Die In A Fire, as far as I'm concerned. ;-> [0] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/O/on-the-gripping-hand.html [1] It's wholly owned by Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit founded in 2003 by now-defunct Netscape Corporation to lead open-source software projects. ----- End forwarded message -----gg

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