Global Warming Revisited

 Global warming is still of primary concern to politicians, world-wide.

And Still I wonder, why?

Based on the amount of greenhouse gasses we are putting in the atmosphere, yes, we can affect the current glaciation period (that is right, we are still in a period of glaciation, an ice age) and extend the current period of non-advancement of glaciation.

First though, let's be clear:  we are in an ice age.  Ice ages end.  Naturally.  At that point all the same fears that are being shared by politicians and environmental activists WILL happen whether we like it or not.  An ice period on Earth is indicated by having permanent ice.  Currently we have 10% permanent ice coverage on our planet and we are in an inter-glaciation period.  In other words the glaciers have receded, but as they did several times in the past 2 million years, they will advance again.  CO2 and Methane are two of the greenhouse gasses we have been pouring into the atmosphere, methane being the more powerful of the two.  While atmospheric gasses are PART of the equation, there is adequate indication that it is not the ONLY aspect of the planetary temperature cycle.

ANYWAY... for the periods from the pre-Triassic through to just 2.7 million years ago, we were in a state of non-glaciation... in other words the Earth was pretty much free of permanent ice.  Yeah, it affects sea levels, it affects the weather, but it does not mean we are all going to die.  The action of spreading information in order to manipulate people and governments is FUD:  Fear, Uncertainty and Dread.  It is a purposeful effort to control and manipulate behavior in people other than the one's spreading the FUD.

As I have said before, I am not against cleaning up pollution... there are far better and more immediate concerns with pollution:  species extinction, poisons that cause illness and genetic damage.  These are evident in the declining amphibian numbers, and in the increase in respiratory illness in people.  These are just TWO things... there are many more.  And they are presenting right now.  Global warming will make it a pain for coastal cities at some point, but global warming in and of itself is not a poison, it is just a pain.  Some people claim it will foster spreading if disease, etc.  But that would occur with carrier migration, and in this current day and age, that is moot since humans travel all around the world, all the time.  We are our own worst enemy... and in the end, disease will ALWAYS be with us.  As micro-organisms continue to evolve to survive, we will keep getting sick...

Alright, I guess I have ranted enough.

Nonsense

 I've deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts in the face of all the nonsense that has been going on over the past month.

I was pretty disgusted with the hypocrisy they show... don't even try to hide it, just blatantly flaunt it.

Well, had enough, done with it.

In truth, Google has shown the same in the past, as does wikipedia as do many other internet speech forums.  I wish we could go back to the late 80's early 90's internet.

Apple Mac mini M1

When I heard that Apple was going to start creating desktops with an ARM based CPU, I knew I would be buying one in the near future.  I didn't know it would be the mini!

I've owned Apple products off and on over the past 3 decades.  My wife still uses all Apple machines for her work.  But, my favorite Apple systems were the original iMac, and the Mac mini.

I bought the very first iteration of the mini, and when the intel version came out, I bought that too.  Now, over a decade later, I have bought another Mac mini, this time with Apples own SOC!

To be honest, I have been building my own, powerful PCs for the past decade, and I used them more for gaming than anything else.  Jumping to a new hardware platform, with a non mainstream GPU, is a sort of "risky" step for me.  90% of my Steam library is now null and void, at least until some Steam upgrades come into play where Rosetta can safely perform translations of the binaries of the games.  But I also have faith that it will happen over time.

In the meantime, I do have a small subset of games I can play, including CIV 5/CIV 6, Bioshock 2, Arkham city, Borderlands 2, Carrion, and some others.

There are, of course, also the games that were designed for Mac, like Osmo and Myst.  These games all play fairly well to very well and they are games that use x86 binaries.  Rosetta 2 does a great job at emulating (or really translating) these x86 binaries into ARM binaries.

But other things impress me about the mini.  One, it is SUPER quiet.  Like you never hear it.  My expansion drive is MUCH louder, even though it too is pretty quiet.  It is very responsive at all times.  I bought the 512 SSD/16GM RAM model and purchased an OWC external miniStack with an 8TB, 7200 drive in it.  Works pretty well, although the quality of the miniStack... might be another story.

Another thing I noticed immediately (mostly because I had been worried about it) is that the font rendering is very very good on my non-Apple 1440P monitor.  I was worried because I use a macbook pro for work and hook it up to another 1440P monitor I have, and the rendering is horrific.  Now, it could just be how I am connecting (USB C to HDMI) to the monitor, but I tried multiple things to try and get it to a state where I can stand looking at it.  I had to resort to default writes in the terminal to fine-tune the anti-aliasing.  This issue did not happen with the mini.  Font rendering is great right out of the box.

I have not had any issues so far with Mac OS X Big Sur, or with the mini itself.  I have a logitech headset on bluetooth, as well as a logitech mouse also on bluetooth.  I am typing with my HHKB Pro Classic keyboard.  It has an "Apple" mode so...  seems to be working fine.

I have been missing some of my gaming friends, who I talk with on Discord, but I plan on sticking with the mini for awhile.

Anyway, if you are thinking about pulling the trigger on one, know this:  Gaming?  Limited.  Productivity, pretty good!  As long as you use Apple products.  I know Adobe is putting out native programs, so they should be fine.  You can also run MOST other apps through Rosetta without noticing any difference (Rosetta is that fast) but, you will likely run into some issues of there are some complex UI/rending things going on that are not accounted for in normal UI calls.

Oh, while Safari is pretty darn good now, I still like Chrome better, and Google has put out a native version of Chrome which not only works fine but all my extensions loaded as well.

I also have a native version of Java SDK 11 (or SDE I guess it is called), a native version of Python and have been able to use Clojure natively thanks to the native version of Java.

The apps I use most at the moment are:

- mail
- browsers (safari, chrome)
- chat/messages
- music
- bb edit
- terminal
- steam

...little things I have forgotten existed was how closely my iPhone and my iMac tie together... my phone calls also ring on my mac now, and anything people send me in message also comes to my mini.

Anyway, I am enjoying this little beastie.

Have fun if you get one!

The Game Of Life++

So I was smoking a cigar and drinking a tumbler of bourbon the other day, just thinking about stuff.

One of my frustrations with scientists (not science itself) has been their reluctance to consider probability in their theories.  Well, some scientists, not all, I should not paint with such a broad brush.  One of the sticking points for me is macro-evolution.

Very often if you point out how statistically impossible life is, let alone life achieving its current state, the response is, "yeah we don't need to mention that because look around you... life!"

But that doesn't mean your theory of how life started and got to this point is valid just because you can see life around you.  Not by a long shot.  And that's the thing... life is SUCH a long shot that even if we had trillions of planets just like Earth in the universe, the chance life would have to form is STILL statistically tiny!!  AND we have not even proven HOW life was able to start in the first place!

So that kind of thing bugs me.

Next thing is evolution.  How do minor or major mutations lead to successful change in life forms?  Successful being a key word here... because assuming mutations occur that can then be carried on to offspring, what percentage of those mutations HELP a life form, and what percentage HINDER a life form?  My guess is only a small percentage ever help... and that most mutations perish and are never heard from again.

So... while I cannot account for how life actually started, I think it might be possible to create a "Game Of Evolution" where we statistically account for environment, predation and mutation in a given species to see how mutation affects a species ability to survive.

It would be complex and yet overly simplistic in comparison to reality... and the models would be somewhat rigid, but I think a super simple program could be written that counts mutation itself and how life fares against environment, disease, predation and how each mutation might affect their abilities to resist (or succumb) to those other effects.

Also, we could then have one species become a new species after so many mutations... giving them base resistance changes on the fly.

The idea of this fascinates me.  I might try playing with it.

On Art

Ugh.  Art.  I love art.  All forms of art.

Unfortunately art has two sides to it:  objective and subjective.

Objectively speaking art does have forms and rules that in general, artists WILL follow for their pieces.  But if their art objectively meets those criteria it does not guarantee that it will be appreciated or liked.  When viewing art it, the subjective aspect of it generally weighs more heavily than the objective aspect of it.  That means artists put themselves through a TON of pain and suffering when it comes to producing works that they may be quite proud of, yet a jury will find not-to-their-liking.  And you could take the very same piece and put it in front of 20 jurors and each juror would like or dislike something different.  Wow right?  What a pain.

On the other hand if multiple jurors cite the same issues, then the artist should consider their criticisms and review that component of their art and see if there is some way they can mitigate that in future works.

Anyway, this is why I am not an artist.  I hear enough of peoples opinions about politics, religion, sports, etc...  Don't need direct criticism of my creativity as well.

Death Penalty?

 I have written about this before.  I have somewhat strong opinions about case law, the death penalty and the prison system.  I will just go over them briefly:

1. Death penalty.

I believe the death penalty should be removed.  I understand that man's law is not God's law, and that while God may forgive, man inflicts a different form of justice that takes the image of punishment.  But worse there have been MANY CASES where convicted killers were later exonerated after serving time or even after having been executed for the crime.  Truth.  Look it up yourself.  It makes me sick to think that so many people have been thrown in prison while being innocent, proclaiming their innocence, but having a prosecution take flimsy evidence and ramrod it down the throats of the jurors.  Take the Ray Krone case as an example.  Some people didn't like him, thought he was creepy.  Stuff like that was allowed to taint the views of the jury.  The EVIDENCE in the trial pointed to SOMEONE ELSE.  Shoe prints did not match, fingerprints did not match, blood type "O", one of the most COMMON BLOOD TYPES, was INCONCLUSIVE, HAIRS ON THE BODY DID NOT MATCH Ray.  Yet, because one man claimed to be an expert and said the bite mark was Ray's (very convincingly I guess) the jury convicted him.  They then let that same expert SNOW them in the retrial.  Finally the fingerprints, blood DNA, shoe size was matched to the ACTUAL killer 10 years later.  They released Ray and he was awarded over $4 million in recompense.  Nice, but... that should NEVER have happened in the first place.  I apologize for all the caps, but this irritates me.

And this has happened over and over and over again.  And in some cases, too late, AFTER the person has been executed.  Imagine yourself, knowing your own innocence, no one believing you and the prosecutors painting you as an evil murder... and sitting in the electric chair or strapped to a table about to be killed but the very system that is supposed to be protecting you.

2. Case law.  

Nope. Nope nope nope.  Look, I get it.  Our judicial system is outnumbered and overwhelmed by the number of criminal cases that need to be tried.  And what are we to do?  Keep potential perpetrators in prison while they wait for trial time?  Risk them being out in the public for years before their trial, allowing them to commit other heinous acts?

But the problem is, citing a decision from a different case is (to me) very unreasonable.  Every case is UNIQUE and should be tried on its own merits, or lack thereof.  Every case should require all evidence analyzed, all stories heard, all angles viewed and each judge/jury should come to their own opinion and the sentence should be treated as some fresh revelation by the judge.

People are unique.  Situations of crime are unique (hey, they take place in different locations, different times, different people involved).  Those unique points should not be shoe-horned to fit another case tried 1000 miles away that had different people involved.

How to solve this?  Invest more in our judicial system, please.

3. Prison system.

Well, you commit a crime, you need to pay for your crime to the point where society is satisfied.  (Also see #2 in my list here).  But what IS prison?  Shouldn't prison at least ATTEMPT to rehabilitate the person who has committed the crime?  What is the point of catching a criminal, throwing him into a cell for 10 years, then releasing him?  Does anyone ACTUALLY BELIEVE that sitting in a cell for 10 years is going bring that person some kind of revelation?  That he is going to step out of that cell a NEW MAN?

Prison is worthless and pointless.  I am not saying we don't need prisons, I am saying they need to be reformed and made into something that takes the men going in, and at least TRIES to reform them, even in small ways.

My own ideas... make the men work.  Let them perform societal functions that can benefit everyone.  Whether that be harvesting farms, tilling fields, cleaning roadways and other areas, learning new trades or skills...  but keep them busy.  Let them feel like they are accomplishing something instead of just being parasites on the system.  Give them some hope that when they leave prison they will actually be able to contribute back to society instead of leaching off it.  Let them know that they DID contribute to society while they were IN prison.

These are the things that can change people.  Not languishing, but action.

OK... I will get off my soap box now.

[EDIT]

Just as an update.  The concept of failures in our court system does not JUST apply to murder and the death penalty.  Google/research/whatever it is you can do, cases where people were incarcerated for a crime for 5 or more years only to FIGHT for a retrial and to PROVE their innocence later.  Incompetency in the prosecutor or the defense attorney, and single-minded persecution by the court system to find SOMEONE guilty for any crime has and may continue to have a negative impact on false accusation/conviction.

See the link in my previous post...

 Seriously.  This young woman is shaken off her yoke.

I will move away from politics in my next post.  :)  Maybe.

Please people:  I am ready and willing to state publicly that the Republican party is not perfect.  Not at all.  I am also willing to publicly state that our POTUS really needs to keep quiet sometimes.

But he really really is the better option.  Please THINK for yourselves!