Grand strategy (described here) can be generalized as a game of interaction and isolation. Viewed from this perspective, Israel's grand strategy has been to maintain or increase its freedom of action in implementing the expansive Zionist apartheid/colonialist agenda, to include gaining control of the region's scarce water resources (see here), by —
(a) preying on the collective guilt in the west for western complicity/passivity during the Holocaust (i.e., compelling an interaction);
(b) allying itself with a great power or combination of powers and inducing/co-opting those powers' domestic political interests into acquiescing to Israeli regional actions and ambitions, first Britain and France, and since 1967, the United States (i.e., compelling an interaction);
The Obama administration simulated a cyber attack on New York City's power supply in a Senate demonstration aimed at winning support for legislation to boost the nation's computer defenses. Senators from both parties gathered behind closed doors in the Capitol Wednesday for the classified briefing attended by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other administration officials. The mock attack on the city during a summer heat wave was “very compelling,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is co-sponsoring a cybersecurity bill supported by President Barack Obama. “It illustrated the problem and why legislation is desperately needed,” she said as she left the briefing. Bloomberg.
The US defense industry is in a full court press to get tens of billions in funding for cyberwarfare.
To get that funding, they need to dramatize the potential threat of cyberwarfare. Here's how. The central method of attack in cyberwarfare is systems disruption. Systems disruption is a way to break networks to achieve extremely high levels of damage (or, in financial terms, high ROIs). One of the best ways to demonstrate that type of attack is through a disruption of the power supply (usually with NYC as a target).
Two John Robb posts, comment, and see also — university grants at risk.
Paul Zak, a pioneer in the field of neuroeconomics, talks about the genes that can make or break a Wall Street trader, and about the chemical that helps us all get along.
Eryn Brown
Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2012
Neuroscience might seem to have little to do with economics, but over the last decade researchers have begun combining these disparate fields, mining the latest advances in brain imaging and genetics to get a better understanding of the biological basis for human behavior.
Paul Zak is a pioneer in this nascent field of neuroeconomics. In a recent paper published in the journal PLoS One, he examined genes that may predict success among traders on Wall Street. His forthcoming book, “The Moral Molecule,” will explore how a chemical in the brain called oxytocin compels cooperation in society.
Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University, discussed this work with The Times.
Phi Beta Iota: Convergence is upon us. Most universities do not get this, but a couple are struggling to change recalcitrant faculty and force the break-down of silos and the reconstitution of unified knowledge. We are at the very beginning of most interesting times.
by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch, 27 February 2012
(Note: This differs slightly from the original because I have corrected a few typos and grammatical errors and added one short clarifying string of words in [ ]'s.)
On 24 February, the Scientific American carried a revealing blog by John Horgan entitled, Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause? Horgan is the Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He analyzes his question in the context of a discussion he held in a freshman humanities class. The subject was the morality of Dr. Peter Gleick’s use of identity theft to steal documents from the Heartland Institute. Horgan is a promoter of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and he is clearly at pains to rationalize the implications of Gleick’s caper. Included in Gleick’s distribution was a forged document, although Gleick denies any connection to its fabrication. Of particular interest to this essay is Horgan’s last sentence, because it unintentionally places the politicization of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) debate into sharp relief.
Drexel University engineers have found a way to improve upon ordinary Portland cement (OPC), the glue that’s bonded much of the world’s construction since the late 1800s. In research recently published in Cement and Concrete Composites the group served up a recipe for cement that is more energy efficient and cost effective to produce than masonry’s most prevalent bonding compound.
Drexel’s “green” variety is a form of alkali-activated cement that utilizes an industrial byproduct, called slag, and a common mineral, limestone, and does not require heating to produce.
According to Dr. Michel W. Barsoum, A.W. Grosvenor professor in Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, this alternative production method and the ubiquity of the mix ingredients, lessens the cost of materials for Drexel’s cement by about 40 percent versus Portland cement and reduces energy consumption and carbon dioxide production by 97 percent.
“Cement consumption is rapidly rising, especially in newly industrialized countries, and it’s already responsible for 5 percent of human-made carbon dioxide. This is a unique way to limit the environmental consequences of meeting demand,” Dr. Alex Moseson, one of the lead researchers on the project, said.
The acid test of any scientific theory is whether or not its predictions reasonably match up to reality. The attached paper by Dr. David Evans is important because it compares predictions of climate models predicting global warming to our most advanced temperature measurement technologies. This is a good example of the kind of information that should be shaping the global warming debate.
The task facing scientists who disagree with this analysis is simple, because this author is up front with his information. His data is sourced and logical descriptions of the models he is testing are clear. The prediction/reality mismatch information shown in this paper is can be replicated and tested for falsification. All one has to do is show why the data is wrong, misleading, or improperly interpreted, or why his logic is wrong — no name calling is needed in what is clearly grist for an honest scientific exchange.
By Dr David M.W. Evans (republished here with permission, PDF link below)
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
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Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.ii
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.iii The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
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Figure 2: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.v The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
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Figure 3: Hansen’s predictionsvi to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellitesvii.
Phi Beta Iota: The New Craft of Intelligence restores integrity to the process of intelligence. There are no governments, corporations, or universities today actually committed to the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Everyone is isolated in little stove-pipes that allow good people to be doing good things, when in the aggregate they are simply perpetuating huge lies against the public interest. This is the challenge of our times.
My pal David Pescovitz at the Institute for the Future blogged recently about the IFTF “Multiverse of Exploration Map,” an overview of the six big stories of science that will play out over the next decade:
“Those stories are emerging from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research.” A followup post includes a video of Luigi Anzivino from The Exploratorium talking about the relationship of magic and neuroscience.
