Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby

Welcome to the Christmas season.

Black Friday

A turkey named Elizabeth

Via Gorge, with LOLOLOLZZZZZ:

You do read him every day, don't you?

Credit to The Queen Of The World for the post title.

Happy Thanksgiving

May your turkey drop onto your table ...

Have a non-political Thanksgiving

Srlsy.

pic.twitter.com/v2vNQcpU62

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) November 26, 2019

Music for Thanksgiving

Global Warming causes Acne

I posted this ten years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then.  What I didn't point out in that post is the reason for this - almost all government science grants are awarded to study the effect of Global Warming Climate Change on [fill in the blank].

And so we get a huge list of [fill in the blanks].  Hey, the Scientists aren't too proud to take the King's Shilling.  As the Romans used to say, pecunia non olet (money doesn't smell).

Originally posted 27 November 2009.

Global Warming causes Acne

Really.

Oh, it also causes a bunch of other stuff. Of course, this really isn't a surprise. A while back, Bruce let us know:

Why, just yesterday, global warming cleaned the siding on my house, pruned my hedges, and made me a nice grilled cheese for lunch.

Grilled Cheese beats Acne. Win!

Hat tip: The Corner.

And now, a palate cleanser

I've been a bit ranty lately about our beloved Pentagon brass, so here's some cuteness to put a smile on your face.



How on earth has this only gotten 4000 views on Youtube?  You know what to do.

So we're finally out of Internet Addresses

Well, IPv4 addresses.  I think that this time it's for sure.  Maybe.

It doesn't look like it's making much - or any - difference.  For sure, nobody wants to run IPv6 - no doubt that most vendors "support" IPv6 only if you also run IPv4.  And at no time do their fingers leave their hands ...

The good news is that if everyone had to switch to IPv6, it would probably go decently well.  Sure a few things would break but they'd get fixed toute suite.  I mean, it's the Internet.  You bet they'd fix it.

The whole thing has been billed as an Earth Shattering Kaboom but has turned out to be a damp firecracker.

It looks like Gallagher's case isn't the only one that the Navy JAGs screwed up

Remember how the JAGs screwed up the Gallagher case?  Remember how testimony was dorked up, how the prosecution's "star" witness admitted that he was the one who did whatever "crime" was committed?  Remember the prosecution's misconduct?  Remember how they all gave themselves medals for what a bang-up job they did?  Remember how President Trump revoked all the medals and pardoned Gallagher for the single chickens**t charge they got to stick?

Well guess how their prosecution of the U.S.S Fitzgerald's CO went:

The trial would be allowed to go forward, but the judge admonished Richardson and his deputy, Moran, for violating a sacred tenet of military criminal justice: to not poison the system by making their opinions clear. By doing so, any potential jurors would know exactly what the top brass wanted.

A month later in January, the judge handed the Navy a final blow: The admiral in charge of the criminal proceedings was disqualified for improperly using his position to help the prosecution gather evidence against Benson.

The Navy’s case had collapsed, but more than three months dragged by before it finally dropped the remaining charges against Benson.

[blink] [blink]

And it gets worse, with the post clusterf**k ass covering from the Navy brass:

(The day the charges were dropped, ProPublica had informed the Navy it would be publishing a story detailing the extensive, troubling mistakes made by the Navy’s leadership in Benson’s case.)

The next day, the Navy took one more swipe at Benson, this time with a public letter of censure. The secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, wrote an admonishment that repeatedly used the same words and phrases, such as “failure” and “unworthy of trust,” basically restating the charges the Navy was unable to bring to court, without an avenue for appeal. In an email, Spencer’s spokeswoman declined to provide details about why he wrote the letter.

One last potshot from the E-ring on the way out the door.  And while I don't know if this is true or not, it sure has the ring of truth to it:

One officer said in an interview that he’d decided that he’d opt to retire before commanding a ship again.

“We all realize we’re completely going at this alone,” another officer said, “and are expendable in the eyes of those who only crave rank authority and shirk responsibility.”

Commanders still talk about how [then Chief of Naval Operations] Richardson was publicly saying safety first while privately urging commanders to be more daring and take more risks. One skipper boldly asked Richardson at a luncheon how his position squared with prosecuting commanding officers “when something goes wrong.” Richardson, said some in attendance, sidestepped the question.

Sullivan, captain of the USS Whidbey Island, said all captains accept that they are responsible for what happens aboard their ships — even if they are asleep. But, she said, it “was very shocking” to see Navy leadership decide to hold the commanders criminally accountable. “I’m willing to sacrifice my life; that’s my job. But it’s hard to do that when you don’t think the organization has your back.”

In all, Sullivan said, “The herd is spooked.”

While I can see Sullivan wanting to put this on a dysfunctional Navy bureaucracy, what we see is a dysfunctional Navy bureaucracy.  Second verse: same as the first.

Richardson is no longer CNO which looks like a very good thing.  The SecNAV is gone, too - also a good thing.  But the JAG corps needs to be nuked from orbit, and the Navy brass needs to get purged of the ass-coverers.  Holy cow, it looks like Barack Obama was successful in fundamentally changing America's Navy.

The case against Chief Gallagher

A person I know who is retired Special Forces emailed about the Navy and Chief Gallagher.  With his permission I'm posting his thoughts because they give a view from the inside (and one that you will not hear from the Media):

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I thought it was pretty much crap what they were charging him with, so I’m glad to see the President defend him. However, on the other hand…having served in small unit spec ops, I’m a firm believer that team business is team business, and the President needs to mind his own. While I didn’t want to see Gallagher go down for anything he was charged with, if his team has lost confidence in him, or thinks he’s a wild card, or simply doesn’t want him on the team anymore for whatever reason, that’s their business and it shouldn’t be interfered with. Team dynamics and relationships are critical to team survival. If there’s heartburn between Gallagher and the rest of the team, that’s to the detriment of the team.

We did the same thing in SF. Instead of “trident” reviews we called them peer reviews. It’s unthinkable to me for someone outside of the team to intervene in a peer review.

...

... reading between the lines, and again, having served on a small team…I would have my own reservations about being on a team with Gallagher. I mean let’s face it, we’re at war, war isn’t pretty, and we don’t send choir boys to do the kind of work that team was doing. But Gallagher seems like a bit of a wild card, reckless, not entirely in control, too much emotion/hatred in his actions. His actions don’t describe the cold, calculating, professional and emotionless warfighter you need in that role. I feel confident in saying that if anyone on my team had done the things he’s accused of, I may not necessarily want to see him hang for any of it, but I may think twice about him being one of only 11 other people my life depends on. And that’s all a peer/trident review is. And I think it’s warranted in this case.

Note that this "case" against Gallagher has nothing to do with the JAG corps or Articles of War of Uniform Code of Military Justice.  It's purely between Gallagher and his team.  I still think that a good pruning of Navy (and other branch) Pentagon deadwood would invigorate the military, and suspect that Obama's Pentagon purge did a lot of damage - damage that needs to be fixed by removing his appointees.

Well, it's a good start

Buh bye, SecNAV.  Now there's some more insubordinate brass that needs to get polished right out the door, including the CNO (hey, it's his show, and his command seems to be spending more time contradicting the Commander-in-Chief than - you know - learning how to drive boats so they don't run into everything in the Pacific Ocean).

Supporting evidence for this is in today's newspaper which tells me that "senior Navy personnel" said that Trump's tweet wasn't an order to knock that shit off* and which said that people were working to "defuse" the conflict between the President and the Navy.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  The man doesn't want to hear "But Sir ..." he wants to hear "Yes, Sir!"  Maybe the CNO never heard that one before, but he will.

We can also add in RADM Whatshisname at SEAL Command.  I can't remember a more clear example of insubordination as this "Oh yeah we're going to take his Trident", following hard on the Charlie Foxtrot that was a Courts-Martial including perjury, the Navy's "star" witness admitting that no, he was the one that killed the Tango, and the prosecuting JAGs tapping the defense counsel's phone (!!!).  Incompetent and insubordinate in equal measure.  Trump should bust him in rank and let him know he's luck that he's not facing time in Leavenworth.

And I've already said that the top three levels of command in the Navy JAG command should all get fired.

* Trump's tweet was in the great tradition of Z-Grams.

My first (and only) viral meme

Ten years ago today I posted what would become my only viral meme.  It was satirizing the ClimateGate shenanigans.

What happens when you run the Climate Models?

There's been a lot of analysis of the Hadley/CRU emails disclosed in the data leak. There's been less - but very interesting indeed - analysis of the source code disclosed in the leak.

That got me wondering: what happens when you run the code? I mean, the whole IPCC Thermageddon story is based on this code, right? Running the code might be interesting.

So I ran it. "Interesting"? Boy, Howdy.

The first thing that became obvious is that this is not at all a manual process. There is a lot of operator intervention, with the program asking you for all sorts of input. So much so, in fact, that it looks like a programmer at CRU took a shot at trying to automate the process:

I'm not interested in grants, and it looks like the editor of GRL has already been properly dealt with, so I selected the first option and forged ahead.

Unfortunately, the code looks to be very fragile, with poor error handling. I'm in the middle of stack dumps, but thought that these results so far were interesting enough to post. Here's the (admittedly limited) error report that I have so far.

Michael Haydn - Requiem

Image von der Wik

You wonder if musical families are like everybody's family - probably they are.  And so we have to wonder if Franz Joseph Haydn sometimes thought his younger brother Michael was a twerp.  Maybe.

But older brother Franz was making a name for himself in Vienna and Michael was able to get some temporary gigs - substituting when the regular organist was unavailable, that sort of thing.  Not bad for 12 years old.

The Haydns and the Mozarts were friends, and Wolfgang wrote a part for Michael's wife in one of his operas.

Despite my snarky (whimsical?) opening, Franz held his brother Michael in high regard - perhaps because he respected Michael's focus on religious music.  Most famous of these is his requiem mass that he wrote on the death of Saltsburg Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach in 1771.  Both Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart were at the premier and the younger Mozart admitted that Haydn's requiem influenced his own (more famous one).

But the requiem mass is a solemn occasion - the missa pro defunctis (mass for the dead) is performed for the repose of the soul of someone recently departed.  A friend of mine just passed far too young.  May his soul rest easy.

Rest in Peace, John

I just heard that a guy who worked for me 15 years ago just died.  He was ten years younger than I, which makes him way too young to go.  He was one of those guys that you want working for you - bright, motivated, hard working, glass-half-full attitude.  I could ask him to put together a particularly difficult demo for a big customer and know that he would make the crazy hard look easy.

It's strange, but this one has hit me pretty hard.  I'm sadder than I remember being in a long, long time.

Ave atque vale, John.  I'll catch you on the other side.

This is an excellent reason to finish an 80% Lower

pic.twitter.com/TqiieSGmm5

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) November 21, 2019

That's made of Win, right there.

Donald Trump should fire the top three layers of the Navy JAG command

Can I get an "amen"?

Pour encourager les autres, bien sur.  Of course, unlike Admiral Byng, these bastards would have it coming.

You want a hero?

Offered without comment"

Nike can suck it.

Thanksgiving Blues

This is hilarious.  The guys can play, too.



Thanksgiving Blues (Songwriter: ???)

Turkey is smoking The gravy is burnt
Cranberry’s missin’ I hadn’t learnt
Should’ve called grandma She’d know just what to do
Grandma don’t answer I got them Thanksgivin’ blues 

The in-laws are coming Bringing their friends
The toilet has backed up The fun never ends
Next time I’ll tell them We’ve all got the flu
No sign of grandma I got them Thanksgivin’ blues 

There’s football on TV Just after one
Don’t know who’s playing But it sure sounds like fun
Festive occasions I know you love them too
Hope grandma’s not wasted She’s got them Thanksgivin’ blues 

Kids on their iPads Mom’s got her wine
I’m in my easy chair Marking the time
Pie’s overrated Ambrosia too
Grandma just show’d up We’ve got them Thanksgivin’ blues 

There’s cornbread dressin’ Calling my name
Jim’s on his blessin’ But no word has changed
Amen y’all! We got work to do
Grandma brought fixins’ I love them Thanksgivin’ blues

A refresher: What was ClimateGate and why does it matter

We're ten years on from the ClimateGate scandal.  Here's a FAQ from then that (mostly) holds up pretty well.  I was overly optimistic that the media would not sweep this entirely under the rug.

Originally posted November 20, 2009.

The Science Story of the Century?

I've spent quite some time looking over the chatter about the Hadley Centre's data disclosure, and have a high-level overview of what seems likely so far. While I've downloaded the data, I haven't gone through it yet. I plan to over the weekend, but this is all background on what is a terrifically interesting science story.

What is the Hadley Centre and what happened to it?

The University of East Anglia (UK) hosts the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, one of the three most influential climate research organizations in the UK. The Hadley Centre is part of the UK Met (Meteorological) Office, the UK's national weather office. Hadley develops computer climate models and provides one of the most influential temperature data sets (CRUTEM3). Earlier this year, the Hadley Centre controversially refused a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request for the CRUTEM3 raw (uncorrected) data.

Phil Jones is the current director of the Hadley Centre.

Last night someone posted 61 MB of emails, computer program code, and climate data from Hadley servers to an FTP server on the Internet. While the data has been removed from the original FTP server, it has been replicated to a number of filesharing networks, including Bittorrent. Antivirus messages that the master ZIP archive contains the virus Win32.Agent.wsg are a false positive (some antivirus scanners look for how files are compressed as a sign of being malware, and are a rich source of false alarms; that's the case here).

Hadley has confirmed the data breach.

Did they get hacked?

Nobody knows. Based on many years in Internet security, I am skeptical that this was the work of outsiders. This is speculation, but the following seems significant:

1. Email was exposed as a series of 1073 discrete files. If an external attacker were after email, he would target the email server, which keeps emails in a very small number of files. You'd have a big blob containing many emails, rather than many small blobs containing a few (or only a single) email.

2. The information looks very damaging to Dr. Jones and proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming (more on this in a bit). An external attacker will generally not know where the bodies are buried, so to speak. A disgruntled insider, on the other hand, will have much more knowledge of where the most significant data is to be found.

What is in the information that has been disclosed?

There are lots of emails, ranging from scientific discussions to catty name calling to what may constitute a conspiracy to avoid the FOIA. Here is a sample of the most interesting emails:

On potential data manipulation (of a very warm period that makes the AGW hypothesis less compelling):
(file 1257874826.txt)

Phil Jones writes:
“One final thing – don’t worry too much about the 1940-60 period, as I think we’ll be changing the SSTs there for 1945-60 and with more digitized data for 1940-45.”

And the sausage being made here:

At 06:25 28/09/2009, Tom Wigley wrote: Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.

That 0.15 degree adjustment to the data was not just pulled out of the air; rather, it was carefully chosen to get the "right" results.

On not complying with FOIA requests:

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxx xxxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx xxxxxx
University of East Anglia

Note: “Michael E. Mann” refers to Dr. Michael Mann, who popularized the Hockey Stick temperature graph.

Other information is also very interesting. There is a spreadsheet showing how much grant money Dr. Jones has received since 1990: £13.7M. An email shows that there was big money flowing around:

At 11:31 13/10/2008, Tim Osb*rn wrote:
>Hi CRU Board,
>
>I just had an interesting chat with Jack Newnham
>from the International Development Team at Price
>Waterhouse Cooper. They get lots of DfID
>(Douglas: DfID is the UK Government Department
>for International Development) funding.
>
>They’ve heard that DfID are likely to call for
>expressions of interest for a new centre
>focussing on international climate
>change. Their idea is to fund a centre that
>would be the first point of call for advice and
>for commissioning research related to climate
>change and development or to climate change in countries where DfID operate.
>
>He was talking about £15 million per year for 5
>years! Not sure how much would be from DfID and
>how much raised from other donors (and hence
>uncertain), nor how much would be given up-front
>versus how much spent later on specific research
>projects organised via this centre.
>
>Nevertheless, sounds big enough to be worth getting involved in.

That's £75M in one shot right there. Adding in Dr. Jone's funding, and you have about £100M identified in just these two files.

Lastly, source code and what appears to be raw data sets appear to be in the released data.

What is the likely short-term impact of the disclosure?

The most significant impact is probably in the public debate. While the public has a very low appetite for esoteric scientific arguments, personal conflict is a very different matter. Given that more than a little of this looks dodgy (just why are they trying to get around FOIA requests), and since this is the first whiff of just how much money is floating around the Climate Research community, and you have the making of a story that the general public might be able to sink its teeth into.

Given that the general public doesn't believe the Anthropogenic Global Warming hype anyway, this seems like the most significant short term impact - the narrative becomes not "dodgy science", but rather "dodgy scientists".

We'll have to wait and see how the press plays this. The interest is ramping up all over. Follow the money, indeed.

What is the likely long-term impact of the disclosure?

Just what's in the source code and data? It will take a week or a month for skeptical scientists to start really examining these, but we'll soon start seeing every mistake, every computer programming error, every hard to justify model assumption publicized. We'll also see any data errors or inconsistencies, as well as divergence between the models as run my the skeptics and model results as published in the peer-reviewed literature.

In other words, scientists will do what scientists normally do, and try to recreate published results.

Again, this is not based on my own examination of the data. I'll post on the data tomorrow.

UPDATE 23 November 2009 10:22:  JayG linked, from a very interesting post about how the MSM is playing this. Cliff's Notes version (cue Mark Twain): If you don't read the newspaper you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.

UPDATE 23 November 2009 23:16: Paul The Pirate linked, with the logical question:

To me, this has little to do with science, and everything to do with the horrific results of politicization of virtually anything. Science, medicine, ethics, whatever. The same people who gave us eugenics, social Darwinism and the other bastard children of science are at work again. Last time, it was 'only' minorities and the handicapped who suffered when smart people used fake science to fool the not-so-smart. Who's going to be on the shit end of the stick here? 

Sadly, we know the answer.