Rearden Metal
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
I've been noticed
To my extreme embarrassment (why am I embarrassed by praise?) I saw this on 2Blowhards:
"* Graham, at Rearden Metal (blogname inspired by Ayn Rand), here, is a cracklingly smart English libertarian: check out this posting here. Graham makes overgenerous mention of 2Blowhards, but the posting is fascinating anyway -- a discussion of the wonderful how-to-write book "Clear and Simple as the Truth" (which is buyable here)."
I do like compliments but this will practically force me to do some more blogging and finish the material on calculus and infinity that I started. If I now have a small readership I should apologise for my laziness. I work from home as a programmer, which means I spend far too many hours at the computer anyway; that's about all the excuse I can muster.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Is it just innumeracy at the Guardian?
Interesting correction from the Guardian:
"Numeracy problems blighted our account of a scientific report on global warming when we converted an increase of 2.7C as an absolute temperature of 37F (Global warming may melt Greenland's ice, scientists warn, page 12, April 8). If the increase is from 0C (32F) to 2.7C (36.7F) then that is 4.7F. Each degree of increase in Celsius is 1.8 in Fahrenheit. We also said that an annual 2.7C increase in the temperature of Greenland would melt more than the year's snowfall. In fact, Greenland would boil by 2040 if that were the case. What was meant was that if the annual average increase in temperature reached 2.7C above the present rate, then melting of the icecap would begin."
What fucking fools they are!
By calling their stupid errors 'numeracy problems' they can distance themselves from the real trouble - sloppy journalism, bias, stories that are 'too good to check'. Why didn't they say
"Stupidity problems blighted our account..."
or
"Smug self-righteous fixed ideas blighted our account..."
or
"Crappy mendacious laziness pervaded our account to such an extent that to say 'blighted' would be the same as saying shit was blighted by a noticeable odour."
