Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Climate Science's Myth-Buster

  It's time to be scientific about global warming, says climatologist Judith Curry.

  Only catastrophes seem to grab our attention, though, and it's rarely mentioned that warming would also bring some benefits, such as expanded production of grains in previously frozen regions of Canada and Russia. Nor do we hear that people die more often of cold weather than of hot weather.
  ...
  "There is warming, but we don't really understand its causes," she says. "The human factor and carbon dioxide, in particular, contribute to warming, but how much is the subject of intense scientific debate."
  ...
  Scientists are human beings, with human motives; nowadays, public funding, scientific awards, and academic promotions go to the environmentally correct.

• Softbank And The End Game Of Ponzi-Son

  You see, when you borrow money to buy shares in private companies then mark their valuations higher, the returns look extraordinary. But 'extra' ordinary returns are extremely difficult to deliver at scale, and then only in the most exceptional circumstances for brief periods.

• Share of Americans with no religious affiliation growing

  Based on telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, Pew said Thursday that 65% of American adults now describe themselves as Christian, down from 77% in 2009. Meanwhile, the portion that describes their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular," now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
  ...
  Pew says all categories of the religiously unaffiliated population - often referred to as the "nones" grew in magnitude. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up from 2% in 2009; agnostics account for 5%, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as "nothing in particular," up from 12% in 2009.

• Targeted Memory Reactivation During Sleep Improves Next-Day Problem Solving

  Overall, these results demonstrate that cuing puzzle information during sleep can facilitate solving, thus supporting sleep's role in problem incubation and establishing a new technique to advance understanding of problem solving and sleep cognition.

• Slow walking at 45 'a sign of faster ageing'

  How fast people walk in their 40s is a sign of how much their brains, as well as their bodies, are ageing, scientists have suggested.

• The Case for Being a Medical Conservative

  Medical conservatives are not nihilists. We appreciate progress and laud scientific gains that have transformed once deadly diseases, such as AIDS and many forms of cancer, into manageable chronic conditions. And in public health, we recognize that reducing exposure to tobacco smoke and removal of trans-fats from the food supply have contributed to the secular decline in cardiac event rates. Indeed, medical science has made this era a great time to live.
  The medical conservative, however, recognizes that many developments promoted as medical advances offer, at best, marginal benefits. We do not ignore value. . . . The medical conservative adopts new therapies when the benefit is clear and the evidence strong and unbiased.
  

• The Two Psychological Tricks Trump Is Using to Get Away With Everything

  Peter Beinart

  When judges told jurors to disregard certain information-once it was deemed secret-the jurors gave it more weight.
  ...
  The logic works even better when it comes to Trump's comments about Ukraine and China. ... Whether inviting foreign meddling in an American election constitutes a "high crime or misdemeanor," by contrast, is less well established. By openly inviting such meddling, therefore, Trump sends the message that it's not that important. If it were, he'd have kept his request a secret.

• Trump will soon end the trade war with China because he doesn't really care about winning it

  Trump only desires re-election, and neither his base nor his donors want this fight.

  If he makes a deal and declares victory without gaining anything significant, as happened - e.g., with Mexico and the European Union - there is little reason to suspect that he would get any more trouble from his base than he got in those episodes.

• Billie Eilish and the Triumph of the Weird

  Rolling Stone article about the first musical artist born in this century to reach #1 on the pop charts.
  She kicked off the season 45 premiere of Saturday Night Live 09/28/2019.