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jajag

888 karma · joined February 20, 2017

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jajag··on Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
This is a whole part of the problem. Globalisation and the offshoring of manufacturing to the east has meant a corresponding offset of emissions from the Europe and the US to China and other places. We in the West have to take some responsibility for this. You can argue that globalisation does have a noble goal - i.e. to reduce global inequality by raising the standard of living of all to that of the most well-off nations - but the now obvious trends of climate change, global heating and emissions, are showing this to be a dangerous and unobtainable goal. It seems to me that we have to start looking at reductions of living standards in the West (to maybe what we had 30-40 years ago) with corresponding reductions in global trade. I have little confidence that we can actually achieve this in an organized and equitable manner.
jajag··on Farm animals in India and China are becoming more resistant to antibiotics
We had massive child mortality rates in 1900.
jajag··on Reconstructing Denisovan Anatomy Using DNA Methylation Maps
Some info on the Xuchang skulls mentioned in the summary: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/ancient-skulls-may-b...
jajag··on It’s China’s World
With climate change stalking in the background, I really think it's too early to say whose century - whether China's or anyone else's - this will be.
jajag··on How the UK Security Services neutralised The Guardian
"The Guardian is the only remaining newspaper I trust to be unaffected by UK government agenda." - presumably that wouldn't be the case if Labour were in power?
jajag··on How the UK Security Services neutralised The Guardian
Well if you're going to take your headlines from the comment section of the Telegraph, but the news section of the Guardian, then of course they look partial. How about these other headlines from the current Guardian? "Tom Watson is wrong. We need an election first – and then a second referendum" "'People's PMQs': just more trolling from PM Smirky McSmirkface" "Boris Johnson and the crown: a clear abuse of power"

And anyway, my point was that you get a greater range of opinion in the Telegraph than the Guardian. Plus, just because you disagree with something - i.e. Brexit in this case - doesn't mean that the people you disagree with are hard-right or hard anything.

jajag··on How the UK Security Services neutralised The Guardian
And you, IMHO, are not right. I read both the Telegraph & Guardian online. I find - at least with brexit - that there's a plurality of opinion in the Telegraph that the Guardian doesn't have (for example, regular articles from anti-brexit voices such as Irish senator Neale Richmond, or EU figures like Barnier). The Guardian is like an echo chamber in comparison, with only its Economic's editor Larry Elliot offering anything against the grain.

Honestly, if you think the Telegraph is hard-right, then you're much harder left than you're letting on.

jajag··on Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change
It's a time value of money problem; there's been plenty of investigation into the future costs of climate change (most notably the Stern Report [1]) but people prefer to have money now, rather than pay now to defer future cost.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review

jajag··on Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change
The article describes how long-tail outcomes have been excluded from forecasts out of a desire by scientists to present a unified voice so as to minimize perceived doubt.
jajag··on Show HN: MeSpeak.js 2.0 – Text-to-Speech in JavaScript
It can take a while for the full voice list to load after speech synthesis is initialized on the page - try calling getVoices() again after a small delay.
jajag··on Motion smoothing is ruining cinema
Is the article actually suggesting that the brain subconsciously detects the frame rate, and then "frames" the movie to match the perceived medium? High frame rate means TV implies soap opera, low frame rate means film implies more serious, weighty content? Or am I completely misunderstanding what this "soap opera" effect is?
jajag··on Modern use of the word ‘moonshot’ mocks Apollo
The point the article is making is that a true moonshot is a project of incredible scale and ambition, and that we're loosing something by allowing the modern usage of the word.
jajag··on If You're Poor in America, You Can Be Both Overweight and Hungry
I've often wondered that if you give someone a calorifically rich but nutritionally poor food stuff, will the body eat to excess to try and make up for the nutritional deficit?
jajag··on Walking Stewart
By offering your services in return - physical labour, or someone like Stewart could have offered to read, write, teach - or even just entertain, by telling stories of his travels.
jajag··on British Airways faces record £183M fine for data breach
Statement on the Information Commissioner's website: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl...
jajag··on Hybrids 14x better than electric vehicles at reducing carbon dioxide emissions
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20261457 - electric vehicles are neither as efficient nor as sustainable as hybrid.
jajag··on What does it mean to be genetically Jewish?
Why on earth has this submission been flagged? It's a thoughtful article, by a Jew, of the rights and wrongs of using genetic testing, in Israel, to define Jewishness, and raises a number of interesting questions. What is there to object to?
jajag··on Across the rich world, an extraordinary jobs boom is under way
The cost of housing is not low. For one thing, a lot of people can't get a mortgage due to deposit amounts being higher (because of higher house prices) and so are paying over the odds in overheated rental markets. On the other hand, those that can get a mortgage might be paying lower interest but they are still paying larger amounts overall because of the higher house cost.
jajag··on The Achievement of Vasily Grossman
Had just finished reading this article when I came across this post: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/stalingrad-va...
jajag··on As Planet Discoveries Pile Up, a Gap Appears in the Pattern
Two obvious questions, perhaps someone knows their answers:

* Is the gap a measurement artifact? (Presumably not). * Are there other, small gaps besides the Fulton gap discussed in the article?

jajag··on Wind provided 37 per cent of Ireland’s electricity in Q1 2019
Precisely - we're still going to miss our CO2 reduction targets by a mile: https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2019/0515/1049589-carbon...
jajag··on The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’
It's confrontational, but it certainly isn't alt- or hard-right. I mean, this is its current lead article: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/14/why-it-was-right-to... - and the article is not kind to Ben Shapiro.
jajag··on A Late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan Mandible from the Tibetan Plateau
Also https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/01/denisovan-ja... gives an overview of the find.
jajag··on The flame of conviction: Anthony Burgess on writing about D. H. Lawrence
Have to admit to never having read anything by DH Lawrence, but Anthony Burgess is always worth reading.
jajag··on How much can forests fight climate change?
So in that case, rather than seeing forest planting as a complete all-in-one solution to climate change, should we instead see it as just one component of a greater solution? Use trees to solve the carbon sequester problem, look to other technologies for solutions to the albedo and heat absorption problems?
jajag··on Lexical Distance Among Languages of Europe (2015)
I think you're right about many words coming to English directly from Latin during the renaissance and following periods, but it raises another interesting question - why did English take many technical words and terms from Latin, whilst German speakers - who presumably during the renaissance were consulting the same source material - coined their own Germanic words and terms instead?
jajag··on Lexical Distance Among Languages of Europe (2015)
That's part of it certainly, but I wonder whether a lot of technical terms and words were taken directly from Latin - which up until a few hundred years ago was the dominant language for education, law, diplomacy etc.
jajag··on Lexical Distance Among Languages of Europe (2015)
One of the things that's surprised me from learning both Spanish and German is that whilst for a small, basic set of vocabulary, German and English are very similar (e.g. Haus, Schuh, Hund vs. Casa, Zapato or Pero in Spanish), the two languages diverge massively for higher level vocabularies whilst Spanish seems to converge (for example, importante, diferente, imposible vs. wichtig, anders, unmöglich). The net effect is that my Spanish comprehension is considerable better than my German - I can read a news article in Spanish and get a reasonably good gist of what it says; but I still find myself all at sea when reading even relatively simple phrases in German - typically wondering to myself what the hell verb is that?
jajag··on Stonehenge: DNA Reveals Origin of Builders
Yeah I was using the term to refer to the Scottish and things Scottish but according to Wikipedia [1] the term nowadays does have mildly negative connotations which I was completely unaware of, so you learn something new every day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_(adjective)

jajag··on Stonehenge: DNA Reveals Origin of Builders
The Irish Book of Conquests (Lebor Gabála Érenn) tells a similar story - in fact I'd guess that's where the Scotch origin myth comes from:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_Gab%C3%A1la_%C3%89renn

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