A post in Phys.org claims to have used a new method to find and plot the temperature recorded in the bottom of a deep Maine lake. They perform some unspecified analysis of a chemical that I have never heard of to determine the temperature of long ago. They don't explain this bit of chemistry at all. They claim to have taken 136 measurements over some 900 years of lake bottom sediments. And they claim to have discovered previously unknown temperature variations of 50-60 year duration.
Good paper, the authors feel they have made a breakthru.
I think they have not taken enough samples. Temperature in Maine can get up to 90F in the summer, I've been there, I know, and Maine winter runs 20F with cold snaps down as far as -40F. And this temperature variation, 70 to 130 degrees, happens quite regularly, summer and winter happen every year. So we only take 136 samples over 900 summers and winters. Suppose our samples hit mostly summer for a few years? Bingo, a heat wave wave, global warming strikes early. Suppose our samples only hit winter for a few more years in a row? Bingo, a mini ice age.
To do this right, you have to take at least two samples for every year. That's Shannon's Sampling Theorem, you have to sample twice in the period of the highest frequency in the signal you are sampling. If you don't take enough samples, you get aliasing. That is what causes the wheels of the stagecoach to start turning backwards as the stage gathers speed on the way out of Deadwood. The movie camera samples the wheels 24 frames per second. When the wheel spokes move too much in between camera frames, the wheel appears to move in reverse.
This paper claims to find 10 different 50-60 year periods of heat or cold. Since they are not taking enough samples, they could well be seeing an alias. Their samples just happen to hit summer for a long stretch of years, or just happen to hit winter for a long stretch of years. That's aliasing, and will show you imaginary hot spells and cold spells. Just as imaginary as the stagecoach wheels running backwards.
About the best you can do with this under sampled data is divvy it up into convenient slices, say 100 years each, and take the average over each 100 year slice. Then you can look for temperature changes from century to century.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Microbrewers hung up by the Shutdown
According to today's Wall St Journal, micro brewers need approval from some federal bureau or other before they can market new brews or new labels. The brewers have thousands of gallons of suds sitting in tanks, waiting for that bureau to come back to work and do their paperwork.
Sounds like a severe case of micromanagement to me. I don't see why brewers, or any other company, except maybe drug companies, need federal bureaucrats to approve labels, recipes, packaging, or anything else. If the customers don't like the new recipe or label or whatever, they will stop buying the product. That ought be enough to keep the brewers and other companies making good stuff.
Sounds like a severe case of micromanagement to me. I don't see why brewers, or any other company, except maybe drug companies, need federal bureaucrats to approve labels, recipes, packaging, or anything else. If the customers don't like the new recipe or label or whatever, they will stop buying the product. That ought be enough to keep the brewers and other companies making good stuff.
Friday, January 11, 2019
Drug Pushing Robo Callers and the Opioid Crisis
I am getting a phone call every other day now. It's a robocaller who starts out asking if I am feeling any pain, and goes on to point me toward a pain clinic that will prescribe any kind of happy pill I might want. I wonder how many opioid addicts get started by such drug pushing robocallers. For that matter how many opioid addicts get started at those pain clinics, like the one that opened up here in Littleton a year or so ago? Anyone have any numbers on this?
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Near Money and the federal deficit.
Money goes back to King Croesus of Lydia, 595-547 BC. In his time money was precious metals (gold or silver, sometimes copper) stamped into coins of uniform size and purity. Coins made commerce easier, you could do a deal by simply counting the coins, prior to that, you had to find a balance and a set of trusted weights and weigh the gold or silver in order to do the deal.
In those days there was not much that could be done to alter the money supply, short of a silver or gold strike. The Athenian fleet that crushed the Persians at Salamis was built with the proceeds of a rich silver strike on Athenian soil. More commonly kings would debase the coinage by adding lead to the silver or copper to the gold. But they could not debase the coinage so far that the coins looked funny, which was probably in the order of 50%, which is the same as doubling the money supply.
Paper money was invented in the middle ages, after Gutenberg invented printing. The obvious benefit was there was no shortage of paper and the king could print as much money as he needed to meet payroll when times were tight. The drawback to paper money is a lot of people distrust [ed] it. As late as the American Revolution the printing of Continental dollars to finance the war was controversial and there is language in the Constitution forbidding the states to "make Anything but Gold and Silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"
Paper money finally won, certainly because huge amounts of money were needed to run the huge new economies that came out of the Industrial Revolution. There just isn't enough gold and silver to make the vast modern economies work. We also learned that printing too much money reduces it's buying power. When I was a child ice cream cones were 5 cents, comic books were 10 cents, and gasoline was 28 cents. Now ice cream cones are $2.50, comic books are $4-$5, and gasoline is $2.80. In short the buying power of the US dollar has gone down by a factor of ten over my lifetime. Any money in bank accounts is only worth a tenth of what it was worth 60 years ago.
Now we come to my college economics course, using Samuelson as a text, Samuelson wrote about "near money" by which he meant government bonds. He wrote that issuing a bond was just about the same as printing new dollar bills. Consider the US T-bill. It is backed by the full faith and credence of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth with an enviable record of never welshing on its debts. There is a bond market, where the bond can be converted into real cash on any working day, Holding a bond is nearly as good as holding cash, plus you earn interest on the bond. So Samuelson called government bonds "near money".
Now we get the point. When the federal government is short on money, ("runs a deficit") it sells bonds to raise the cash to meet its bills. Which is just about the same as printing dollar bills. It's inflationary, Printing money is why the value of the US dollar has dropped to a tenth of what it was when I was a child. Printing "near money: works about the same.
So far, despite humongous deficits run up by Obama, and the humongous bond sales to make payroll, the inflation rate has remained under 2%. Dunno how that happens, but is has.
In those days there was not much that could be done to alter the money supply, short of a silver or gold strike. The Athenian fleet that crushed the Persians at Salamis was built with the proceeds of a rich silver strike on Athenian soil. More commonly kings would debase the coinage by adding lead to the silver or copper to the gold. But they could not debase the coinage so far that the coins looked funny, which was probably in the order of 50%, which is the same as doubling the money supply.
Paper money was invented in the middle ages, after Gutenberg invented printing. The obvious benefit was there was no shortage of paper and the king could print as much money as he needed to meet payroll when times were tight. The drawback to paper money is a lot of people distrust [ed] it. As late as the American Revolution the printing of Continental dollars to finance the war was controversial and there is language in the Constitution forbidding the states to "make Anything but Gold and Silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"
Paper money finally won, certainly because huge amounts of money were needed to run the huge new economies that came out of the Industrial Revolution. There just isn't enough gold and silver to make the vast modern economies work. We also learned that printing too much money reduces it's buying power. When I was a child ice cream cones were 5 cents, comic books were 10 cents, and gasoline was 28 cents. Now ice cream cones are $2.50, comic books are $4-$5, and gasoline is $2.80. In short the buying power of the US dollar has gone down by a factor of ten over my lifetime. Any money in bank accounts is only worth a tenth of what it was worth 60 years ago.
Now we come to my college economics course, using Samuelson as a text, Samuelson wrote about "near money" by which he meant government bonds. He wrote that issuing a bond was just about the same as printing new dollar bills. Consider the US T-bill. It is backed by the full faith and credence of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth with an enviable record of never welshing on its debts. There is a bond market, where the bond can be converted into real cash on any working day, Holding a bond is nearly as good as holding cash, plus you earn interest on the bond. So Samuelson called government bonds "near money".
Now we get the point. When the federal government is short on money, ("runs a deficit") it sells bonds to raise the cash to meet its bills. Which is just about the same as printing dollar bills. It's inflationary, Printing money is why the value of the US dollar has dropped to a tenth of what it was when I was a child. Printing "near money: works about the same.
So far, despite humongous deficits run up by Obama, and the humongous bond sales to make payroll, the inflation rate has remained under 2%. Dunno how that happens, but is has.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
"Technology" in place of a real wall
We tried that once. I was in Thailand back during the war. We tried to close the Ho Chi Minh trail. It was a real foot path, running from North Viet Nam, down thru Laos, to South Viet Nam. The Viet Cong got all their supplies back packed down the trail. It took a lotta comrades with back packs to equal what we brought to our troops using a single Army truck. The trail ran under triple canopy jungle all the way. You could not see it from the air. The jungle canopy was so thick that when we dropped 1000 pound bombs we could not see the leaves even ripple when they exploded on the ground.
So, we dropped sensors up and down the trail where we thought it ran. We brought in a squadron of big four engine C121 Super Constellation recon aircraft to fly up and down the trail reading all the sensors, which were mostly microphones. The plan was to have the Connies call in air strikes when ever they detected anything on the trail. All they ever picked up was some monkeys, screaming at each other, and some water buffalo crashing thru the underbrush. Never detected any comrades for us to bomb.
Now I am hearing Democrats on TV saying that "technology" is better to secure the southern border than a plain old wall. Every time I hear that it reminds me of closing the Ho Chi Minh trail with "technology".
So, we dropped sensors up and down the trail where we thought it ran. We brought in a squadron of big four engine C121 Super Constellation recon aircraft to fly up and down the trail reading all the sensors, which were mostly microphones. The plan was to have the Connies call in air strikes when ever they detected anything on the trail. All they ever picked up was some monkeys, screaming at each other, and some water buffalo crashing thru the underbrush. Never detected any comrades for us to bomb.
Now I am hearing Democrats on TV saying that "technology" is better to secure the southern border than a plain old wall. Every time I hear that it reminds me of closing the Ho Chi Minh trail with "technology".
Beat the Press goes up against the Shutdown
Host Chuck Todd spent much of his hour ait time wailing about the government shutdown. Strange. They have been shut down for two weeks and I haven't missed them at all. My mail is getting delivered. I don't expect a refund check from the IRS, so they can stay shut down forever far as I am concerned. I don't fly much so I don't care about the TSA.
Far as I can see, things are working with some 800,000 civil servants off the job. Maybe we could keep on that way and save some taxpayer money. These people get paid far better than they would in the private sector, far better than most of my constituents in Coos county, they have first class medical benefits, first class pensions, and they are all democrats. My sympathy for them is limited. If they run out of money they can go out and get a real job in the private economy.
And, if the Congress had done their duty earlier this year, and passed the federal funding bills like they are supposed to, the government would be open right now.
Far as I can see, things are working with some 800,000 civil servants off the job. Maybe we could keep on that way and save some taxpayer money. These people get paid far better than they would in the private sector, far better than most of my constituents in Coos county, they have first class medical benefits, first class pensions, and they are all democrats. My sympathy for them is limited. If they run out of money they can go out and get a real job in the private economy.
And, if the Congress had done their duty earlier this year, and passed the federal funding bills like they are supposed to, the government would be open right now.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
The Last Kingdom 2015
It is a TV series for 2015. I netflixed the first disk. It is a historical drama, Vikings vs Saxons in 900 AD England. I watched episode 1. I don't think I will bother with the rest of them.
They hired the worthless cameraman from Game of Thrones, the one who turns the lights out on set before filming. Some black on black scenes, and all the scenes so poorly lit I could not tell one character from another. Plus everyone dressed alike, identical outfits of furs and grey homespun. We see the protagonist start off as a 12 year old Saxon heir to an important Saxon noble family. He gets captured by and raised by the Vikings. We see him as a 12 year old, and suddenly a time jump and he is a young man. Uhtred serves more as a target for abuse, both from his Saxon family and his Viking adoptive family than a real protagonist. If Uhtred has a mission to accomplish, or a quest to go on, you couldn't prove it by me. His relationship with a girlfriend is pretty tentative, we never hear the girlfriend's name.
They hired the worthless cameraman from Game of Thrones, the one who turns the lights out on set before filming. Some black on black scenes, and all the scenes so poorly lit I could not tell one character from another. Plus everyone dressed alike, identical outfits of furs and grey homespun. We see the protagonist start off as a 12 year old Saxon heir to an important Saxon noble family. He gets captured by and raised by the Vikings. We see him as a 12 year old, and suddenly a time jump and he is a young man. Uhtred serves more as a target for abuse, both from his Saxon family and his Viking adoptive family than a real protagonist. If Uhtred has a mission to accomplish, or a quest to go on, you couldn't prove it by me. His relationship with a girlfriend is pretty tentative, we never hear the girlfriend's name.
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