octave

I am staying with my son at the moment, he is very into competing in motor sport and has a quite fast IC race car but his car of choice is his new Tesla model 3P  which is his daily drive and also has been used on the track, although the motor sport body is drawing up new rules because although he usually does alright he came second to the 200k custom built car.

I had a long drive of it today and I was extremely impressed, It was very easy to drive and makes IC car seem primitive. I of course drove it quite sedately although tomorrow we are going a day trip.

Here is some video of an aggressive launch, I was sitting in the back at this point, my wifes reaction say it all. 

So you are getting high for Christmas?

 

32979 ft to be precise ? 40 minutes NZ

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/decades-old-climate-models-did-make-accurate-predictions/amp

Not a cop out at all. The world is warming at present. It goes through warming and cooling cycles. It always has. The sea is rising. It has been rising since the end of the last ice age. The rate of rise has not changed in the last 150 years. These are facts, easily checked. That is what science is about.

 

The dispute is about models, made on computers, that cannot be tested because they are predicting the future. To the extent we can check their predictions, over only the last twenty or thirty years, they have failed. 

 

The alarmist predictions are predicated on the more extreme results from the unreliable models.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/decades-old-climate-models-did-make-accurate-predictions/amp

 This is where Iam posting from at the moment, 35000ft A321Neo[ATTACH]50494._xfImport[/ATTACH]

I certainly don't know how they fell for the last lot.

 

Some political commentator on the radio yesterday was talking about Labor's loss and was saying that in some quarters there's a view that people who voted for the LNP were voting against their own interests, voting against the climate, voting against the economy, voting against health & education, and were therefore stupid.  She was making the point that such a view will not win votes next time, so was unhelpful.

 

My thought was "despite being bloody true!"

 

The sad thing is that Labor proved that being a big target by putting up well-considered and costed policies only gets you shot down by the voting sheep, so they won't do that again.  Whereas the conservatives had no actual policies, and in fact had already given up on winning the election that a pack of senior members had resigned.

 

What the LNP/One Nation/Palmer voters achieved was nothing more than making all politicians even more cowardly and loathe to actually lead than they already were.

 

duh.

 

We rightly criticise politicians but seem unable to accept any blame ourselves.  Attempt to solve a long standing serious problem or get a $10 tax cut, unfortunately too many are seduced by getting more in their pocket.   I suspect that many of the voting public are like children sitting on santas knee down at the department store asking for for toys. 

 PM do you believe as Tony Heller/Steve Goddard's assertion that hottest temperatures have decreased since the middle of the 19th century?  PM is it getting cooler?  Do you agree with this guy that the likelihood of hot weather has declined sharply over the last 130 years? 

This guy claims the Bom his suppressing temperature readings before 1910, do you agree that Bom is commiting fraud here at at the very least lying?  My understanding is that before 1910 measurements were not very reliable, but not to worry Tony or Steve whatever name he is going by at the moment sites newspaper articles before 1910 where people say it is very hot. In any case  the science is more sophisticated than maximum temperatures, it is also about higher minimums and the extension of the hot weather and fire season.

For some critiques of Mr Heller's work you might like to try  Potholer54 aka Peter Hadfield veteran science journalist 

Another critique of Hellers shoddy work

Heller could site references so his assertions can be checked but he doesn't, Hadfield does.  

It is often stated by deniers here that the climate models have been poor at making predictions. However

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-models-got-it-right-on-global-warming/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming

https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/12/04/early-climate-modelers-got-global-warming-right-new-report-finds/

I could post links from reputable sites all night but it would be pointless.  I suspect your interests are in promoting your industry. 

22 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

 

This thread has been quiet for days! Time to inject some new Australian data.

 

Do believe the Bom is concealing temperature data?  Commiting fraud? 

"Margaret Thatcher was a woman"

 

AND went to WAR !

 

as did most female Leaders.

 

spacesailor

 

Generally in our system government an idividual does not take a country to war by themselves. Whilst Bush was the president during the gulf wars I would argue that it also required the colloboration of Chainy Rumsfeld etc.

Octave, I don't understand why you posted a funny emoticon on my above post. It's no laughing matter trying to keep those two in check, and then there's the maintenance on the Gulfstream. It's enough to make you cry.

 

You have my sympathy. I would be happy to come around and lend a hand or something!

I was thinking about some of the benefits of the digital age.   In my work I need a music score writing software program (like a word processor but for music)   For many years I used a software package that costs around $800. I have to admit that I did have a dodgy copy but eventually it would not run on newer versions of windows.

These days luckily I use a very powerful open source software package that is completely free to use. This began life as a crowd funded project and has the goals of with the help of it's users digitising all public domain music. I have done some digitising for them. This makes a large an ever growing library of music available for free to anyone who can access the net.

"OpenScore[edit]

In 2017, MuseScore and IMSLP launched a Kickstarter for OpenScore, an initiative to create MuseScore and MusicXML versions of public domain music from IMSLP's library.[59]

OpenScore wants to digitise and liberate all public domain sheet music, including the great classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. Our community aims to transfer history’s most influential pieces from paper into interactive scores which you can listen to, edit and share. Together, we can make sheet music accessible to everyone. For free, for any purpose, for evermore.

I would assume that this kind of thing is happening in many other areas also.  I can only see this as a positive thing overall.

Peoples knowledge often dies with them and is often GONE forever.

 

Agreed, this is why this information must be recorded by whatever means and preserved.

IF you are restoring an old vehicle or even a plane you job is to resist the temptation to modify it as by doing that you often ruin it entirely, as frequently happens. You also lose the contact with the feel and history of the time.. 

 

Nev not sure if this was in answer to my post or not

My friend who  restores vintage cars is a stickler for authenticity. More often than not a car being restored is not 100% complete. My friend doesn't modify but where necessary remanufactures to original specifications. He also has done work for Point Cook RAAF Museum and wrote the history of RAAF Point Cook.  The point is that looking for the definitive answer to something on the net is just one thing you can use it for but it is often the networking that can be extremely useful. In the past you might consult with your local vintage car crowd now using the www you can perhaps find the one person who has a spare xxx part that you may be having trouble finding or who has some documentation.  

Octave I don't know how you took a photo of the back of your own head. I tried to do it but kept falling off my office chair. So I am not in it.

 

PS there are pictures of other mines on the other walls.

 

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My lovely wife took my photo.  

Please tell me that there is a bottle of fine whisky in the bottom draw of that filing cabinet!

I have been thinking lately that this forum can easily slip into a place for self important over opinionated tossers to pontificate and lecture others, and people other than me can be just as bad!    I feel the need to start some threads that are not based on our disagreements and are just frivolous fun.  When I am deep in conversation with you folks I do try to imagine you angrily bashing away at your keyboards, iPads etc. and I do wonder where these posts are composed.   I thought it might be interesting to post a picture that illustrates where we do our postings from.  You don't need to be in the picture, it could be a picture of a device or a lounge chair where you type your posts etc. You don't even need to tidy up first, I didn't.    I have shown you mine, perhaps you could show me yours.

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30 years ago we built our own house making some mistakes along the way of course. Now I am renovating my current home and I am so thankful we have youtube.  For example renovating our bathroom and ensuring the shower does not leak.  Many you tube clips are from tradespeople and home renovations who give a variety of advice some of it contradictory. The advantage is that I can look at 30 different clips. I can compare methods and look for points agreement. I can see pros and cons of different methods. Alternatively I could go down to the library and borrow  3 or for books on this subject and compare them.

I can buy Groves music encyclopedia or I can subscribe to Groves online, same information but cheaper more portable more up to date and more searchable.

A friend of mine is quite old school and he restores vintage cars.  Whilst he owns many old books that refer to the vehicles he restores he also uses the net to both get advice and give advice about solving problems that are not in old books.   Where did you get your xxx part, how do I restore xxx part.

Re building a harpsichord, this is not I wish to do (as Thomas Beecham once said "the harpsichord sounds like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof")  I would suspect that there would be much good information as well as an online community of builders. Knowing  a few people who are into such things they would be painfully fussy about details and authenticity.  

Wikipedia, the world's most-visited site, compares well with prestigious encyclopaedias for accuracy- and can be regularly corrected and updated.

 

And available to anyone with an internet connection. Remember the days when the encyclopedia sales people would knock on your door and try to sell you their wares at a cost that would preclude many. 

I'm surprised that in music, you need recently written material. What about Mozart, I wonder. ( My favs are Mozart and the Everly Brothers ) . Yes,  I admit to liking classical pop stuff from Elvis to Abba.

 

It is easy to think that the composition of "serious" music ended sometime ago.  This kind of art music is still happening, it may not be known by the average listener but a working musician needs to be familiar with Phillip Glass, John Adams. Steve Reich, Elena Kats Chernin.  Apart from that the type of music you like to listen to is also important and should not be dismissed just because it may not be as complex or because it is popular.   I am most definitely not a musical snob. What I love about the age  I live in is that I have available to me medieval music all the way though to music composed yesterday.   My spotify  playlist might surprise you, it ranges from nerdy and heavy through to light pop.  

Try to interest a seven-year-old in learning anything when its mother is fat, lazy and uneducated whose parenting method is to hand the remote or tablet to a child at three-years of age and leave education at that.

 

I totally agree, in my childhood the equivalent was the television and before that there was a time when reading novels was frowned upon.   I think the key is parenting.   I think in your example the Ipad or tablet is not the main problem but the lack of parental involvement. That particular parent is failing to interact and using something that could be a powerful tool with appropriate guidance in a passive way.   

Is that because we learned as children to examine encyclopedia and other text books for the information we wanted and not the 'Net makes the preliminary parts of the search so much more convenient?

 

If we consider that one of the purposes of education is to prepare people for the workforce then we need to teach them to use the tools of the age.  As a couple of examples, my wife recently retired from a small engineering company that builds cutting edge water treatments units (built into shipping containers) for the mining industry as well as many other areas in Australia and all around the world.  This small company is a world leader and is able to build bespoke machines to suit particular circumstances form a bowling club to a chicken far to a large mine to a refugee camp.  What is built depends  on local conditions such as salinity levels etc. I can assure you that they do not look up this information in Encyclopedia Britannica, information from 6 months ago is already out of date.

A young friend of mine is from Poland and she is doing her PHD in Nanobiotechnology.   In her research she needs to access other people's scientific papers, she does not go down to the local library for 2 year old books.  Now I can imagine some of you expert hating folks saying what she does is ridiculous. What she is researching is the packaging of cancer destroying molecules in nanoparticles that are able to insert themselves in cancer cells but not healthy cells.  Sound like money well spent to me.

As a music teacher back in the day I purchased a set of Groves music encyclopedia for I think about $2500.  Eventually I got rid of these books, they only covered music theory and history up until 1985 and I can't take it anywhere to use. 

Although books have their place there are some things that I can now find online that I have difficulty finding in books to help my students. Consider this video (I accept you will not find that interesting but if you jump forward a couple of times you may get the point.)     I have to get students of all ages interested in music analysis. This even for the most smart and enthusiastic student can seem a little dry and boring.   I recently turned one of my young adult students to analysis analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody.  i am not sure what physical book could have done this better.

The people regardless of age who are enthusiastic and smart enough  to fully exploit all the available tools (including books) will thrive and succeed. 

When things started to go bad, it was because the good teachers had all of their authority taken from them. I partly blame their union for this.

 

How so? 

I am always suspicious of vague anecdotes.

I have just returned home from my biggest teaching day of the week as a music teacher. I teach kids (and adults) one to one.  I am quite certain the the biggest determiner of academic success is the parent. I always assume that people who think that the system is appalling are people who have been disappointed by the the results of their children or grandchildren.     

After 30 years of teaching and following my ex students I can tell you that the particular school is no predictor of success form exclusive private schools to poorer rough schools. The successful students come from families that are caring and supportive and value education. Harsh discipline does not contribute to success.

Re the internet.   My assumption is that people who bag the internet as an educational tool are those who are unable to navigate it sensibly or whose children are unable to use its resources.

Nothing wrong with books but in many fields of employment the book published last year is hopelessly out of date, information is changing at an ever increasing rate. Those who are comfortable with today's technologies will find it easier to thrive than those who cling to the past. This may be uncomfortable for some but this has always been the case.

Of course there is nothing wrong with WELL INFORMED criticisms but remember that  there are psychological reasons why every generation bags the following generation, it is well understood, this has occurred since Platos time and probably before his time. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamthierer/2012/01/08/why-do-we-always-sell-the-next-generation-short/#17bfc2752d75

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-people-have-always-complained-about-young-adults

Too many links on this to post.

My father used to quiz me on capitol cities. He was horrified that at school I did not learn the order of British monarch. I feel I have done alright especially in terms of happiness and whilst I am not rich I am financially self sufficient.

The notion that young people are as a group are illiterate can not really be supported by anyone who has actually read and understood the source material of the latest moral crisis. The fact is although we have slipped marginally and other countries have slightly we are still well within in the top 25 of the world.

I suspect that news stories about the new awful youth of today are popular with older people who need to believe that they are the greatest generation. The truth is that as we get older we do find it harder to keep up and maintain our relevance.  I personally put a lot of work into keeping up.   I am happy to report that most of my friends are younger than me and some of my best friends are educated and successful 20 somethings. I find that I have less in common with some of my older friends who have reached the unhappy "you kids get off my lawn stage" 

Nearly all of my work colleagues are  around 30 years younger than me.  Sometimes I can see they suffer from lack of life experience but they are much more talented and educated than me, between us we do good things.

.

Octave, with all due respect, I feel you are viewing the "depth and breadth" of internet through your own thorough investigative paradigm. Sadly, such curiosity and forensic tenacity (or personal open minded debate) is neither taught, nor actively encouraged by schooling or most parents.

 

Yes, some of us are like a kid in a toyshop, exploring, learning, balancing differing information, verifying sources, etc. And for us it is a great boon. But most young people are growing up in an environment where simple answers are easy. For instance,  I am disappointed by the lack of logical thought, diagnostic sifting that had been shown by diploma level trainees in the technology industry that I recently left. They had no ability to question or verify anything.

 

The potential is there, just like the great educational potential for advancement of civilisation that was promised by TV back in the 1950's. That age of information hasn't lived up to its promise too well. I see our new age of information as being rather limited by the lack of will, by people who have an attention span of a goldfish.

 

So the answer is to equip people to use the available tools in the best way not discard the tool.  

If the kids you teach have taken on the task of learning to play an instrument, and learn to read and comprehend the syntax —rules for ordering elements such as notes, chords, and intervals into complex structures of music, then I'd say they are exceptions to the general population, and are more likely to undertake other complex pastimes. 

 

According to AUSSTATS around about 20% of children learn a musical instrument, I would imagine that you may find similar or greater results for sports and other pursuits. Hardly exceptional.

I think it is important to not right off any age group.  I could go down to the local club and see the retired folk feeding money into pokie machines as many do but this is not the definition of an older person. Many older people are still working or doing volunteer work  or fighting fires with the bush fire brigade.

Please help, what do you guys reckon is going to boom?

 

I think the days of a career for life are ending.   I don't have any young young people in my family who are at that stage in their education but my advice would be to be adaptable, to develop a love of learning new things.