Apropos the New Zealand AGW case, comments below by Goon and Ross: # Goon (8) Says: September 8th, 2012 at 3:45 pm Justifying the unjustifiable. Don’t believe me…. then here is where the raw data lives. http://cliflo.niwa.co.nz/ Register and have a look for yourself. Nothing even remotely approaching a 1 degree/century trend in the raw data from longer term climate sites. The only way NIWA can come up with this is by applying an extremely dodgy ‘adjustment’ to make all pre-1950′s Read more [...] 6 com

Don Aitkin just weighted in on the Lewandowsky affair as Queensland University's John Cook doubles down at the Conversation. about 1 hour ago Don Aitkin writer, speaker and teacher (logged in via email @grapevine.com.au) Oh dear. The Lewandowsky article is a truly appalling piece of social science. How did it ever get past ordinary peer review? It, and the one above, demonstrate the kind of problems that Jim Woodgett in Nature two days ago and John Ioannidis a few years ago have pointed Read more [...] none

Its reported that a new record has been set by a Japanese anesthesiologist for most retractions by a single author. An investigation of 212 of Yoshitaka Fujii’s 249 published papers found that he had invented patients, forged evidence that medication was administered, and signed on as co-authors other scientists who had no idea they were affiliated with his research. There are a couple of simple solutions to this. First, archive all the data and code and expect reviewers to go through it. Read more [...] none

To follow up on my previous post ("Is Finkelstein totally clueless about the Internet") with real data, I examine the stats of the log files on my server. Below is a table generated by the log file analyzer Awstats for the first 2 months of my server http://landshape.org. Month Unique visitorsNumber of visitsPages HitsBandwidth Jan 20127,361 18,526 71,689 204,7183.02 GB Feb 20127,081 16,422 113,111233,1587.67 GB You can see the number of hits for January and February is 205K and 233K Read more [...] 3 com

The Media Inquiry by Finkelstein Q.C. proposed on page 301 the regulation of blogs with more than a specific number of hits per annum, suggesting an equivalency with print media: If a publisher distributes more than 3000 copies of print per issue or a news internet site has a minimum of 15 000 hits per annum it should be subject to the jurisdiction of the News Media Council, but not otherwise. These numbers are arbitrary, but a line must be drawn somewhere. Does he know how many actual readers Read more [...] 6 com

Newt Gingrich recovered strongly to pip Romney at the post for the South Carolina Primary in a race with a number of reversals, shown clearly in the Gallup Daily Poll above. In the end it wasn't close with Newt 40 to Mitt 28%, as shown on this cool Google App. So the race of 2012 is turning out to be far more exciting than predicted, and with Mittens fading in the polls, the big-heads who named Mitt Romney a shoe-in for the nomination must be feeling the heat. The results in SC reflect Read more [...] none

The GOP primaries race took another twist on a recount today, with the reversal of the win by 8 votes by Romney in Iowa, to a win by Santorum by 34 votes. The score for Romney is now 0-1, spoiling his chance of a hat-trick win in South Carolina. The Gallup daily tracking poll today shows the reversals in sentiment going in the South Carolina race. Read more [...] none

Support for Ron Paul's ideas is growing in Australia as shown by some recent pro-Paul posts at prominent blog sites: Jennifer Marohasy Ron Paul for US President, On-line Opinion Left's Profitable Pauline Conversion JoNova and In 2002 Ron Paul saw the next ten years coming. Further support can be seen on Facebook, with of the Australian Ron Paul pages are merging into a single page Australians for Ron Paul 2012. I try to reserve my judgement on winners, and study the trends of Read more [...] none

What an exciting days racing in New Hampshire in the Tour de President! As expected, Mitt Romney in the yellow jersey after his (disputed) win in Iowa, with his lycra and billion-dollar techno-bike, opened up a commanding gap from the peloton, but Ron Paul riding his $10 Malvern star and air force scrubs stayed with him and was actually gaining a couple of points a day (RPs speech here). Ron Paul and Rand Paul "I Went" photo goes viral. The press dishonored themselves again with some of Read more [...] one

You have probably heard about Steve Jobs retirement from CEO at Apple. If like me, you find him an inspiration, you might enjoy this video from the Apple Music Event in 2001, "The First Ever iPod Introduction". What I like is the steel-trap logic, the "quantum leap" vision, the love of speed, the sparse visuals, and the impeccable timing of the delivery. Read more [...] one

Right now I am in Emerald, Qld., Australia with choppers droning constantly overhead in the middle of a flood event, having spent the last few days bagging sand for friends' houses. I have been through this a few times now, having grown up in country areas. I want to document how poorly BoM modeling has served the community during this event. No flood risk was projected initially. Dec 25th: The main rain fell on Christmas day in the catchment, a widespread 4-6 inches. Dec 27th: The Read more [...] 25 com