More Awesome Than You!

This is the link for this very cool site... bbc.cpdn.org (http://bbc.cpdn.org)

I wasn't certain where I could put this so decided on a new topic, but also felt that there's one or two folk on MATY would be interested in trying this for themselves. Hope that hasn't raised too many issues however!  ;)

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/complexity/complexity.html

The other side of the coin.

Interesting, but the BBC experiment is surely intended to prevent   misinformation by providing accurate information.

I just wish, Laeshanin, that I could get the programme to load on my PC, but it seems to just freeze with the CPU at max.  I tried twice, but the same thing happened both times, so in the end I had to uninstall it.

Thanks for that. It was definately an interesting read. Well... truthfully, due to my short attention span, I kinda got bored by the end, just up until the part where he started to get into the stock market. I skimmed over that stuff until he compared it to human biology, which was neat because it's stuff I already knew, but interesting when compared to a different subject. :)

Overall, it was pretty interesting what Crichton had to say about Cherynobyl and the sort of government/instituionalized induced hysteria. The idea itself, about complex systems that is, isn't new to me (since my "work" is in the field of biology and medicine, and I've even had experience working at a financial company that deals directly with the stock market), but it was interesting to learn about Yellowstone and the other stuff I was unfamiliar with.

Anyways, I have nothing further to add really. Except that there are similar projects that make use of "unused computing power" such as the well known and somewhat popular SETI (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) (the first one that I ever knew about) and probably lesser known (at least in the non-scientific, non-academic community) Folding (http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html). Right now, protein folding is one of the most difficult tasks we have yet to tackle in the scientific (biochemically/medicinally speaking) community. There's been an explosion of information for sure, and we have to deal with a lot of data mining, but actually understanding and using that data hasn't been exactly figured out yet. And currently, protein folding (figuring out how to do it or how to predict it) is one of the major roadblocks to further understanding which could lead to better medicine and better science overall.

Ste

poo...it says it's not for laptops :(

I imagine that's because they think of laptops as being portable - the data wouldn't be consistent in that case!

oh yeah  :D
mine never leaves my bed, though i am contemplating taking it to work sometime, but it's only 5 minutes walk away

Well, they don't know that at the BBC!

Perhaps, depending on who is funding the project.

I am somewhat skeptical that the BBC does not have its own agenda.

Things run by the BBC are generally funded by the licence payers.

And what makes you so sure Michael Crichton doesn't also have his own agenda?

Very, very interesting article. I've heard about the power of sugestion and how specialist try to instill fear in the minds of the masses falsely. I found it interesting how the power of belief in something like a curse could cause a person to die. A Roman Emperior was told he was going to die on a certain date and he did.

Also it seems we make the problems ourselves like at YellowStone Park. We should have just let it take care of itself instead of interfering with nature. We have to learn how to manage complexity and we must eliminate fear and to stop responding to it.

Julius Caesar was murdered!    He didn't succumb to the power of suggestion, his "friends" plotted against him and murdered him!  No doubt the soothsayer had heard rumours!

Since the Chernobyl disaster was not able to be viewed by western journalists, they could only really find out anything by listening to rumours - which always grow on every retelling!  I hardly think the then soviet government would have wanted to "misinform" the world - even now, the Russians are more likely to try to cover up the truth than to exaggerate it!

Crichton, in his author's notes to "State of Fear," states outright that he has no agenda. 

I tend to believe him since his notes call for a new environmental movement with more people working in the actual environment and less behind computer screens (plus many more scientists and far less lawyers); the need for a "nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research..."; the dangers of mixing science and politics, as well as the importance of preserving our natural environments.   

The book is interesting if you don't mind reading fiction about eco-terrorism mixed with factual statistics, charts and graphs (all documented and footnoted).  I found the stats, charts, and graphs more interesting than the storyline or his main character, who has not an ounce of street smarts or common sense.

Lots of tidbits I certainly never was never aware of, such as the fact there are 160,000 glaciers in the world and mass balance data over five years old for only 79 of them; and that the Antarctica continent ice is getting thicker, except for one peninsula which has been melting for the past 6,000 years. 

In addition to the extensive footnotes and URL citations, there's a 30+ page bibliography and his discourse on eugenics in the appendix is worth reading.

I read novels for FUN!  That sounds like hard work - when you reach my age, you've done your bit in that respect!

OK, I agree there is a lot of stuff being said regarding Global warming - as if it never happened before!  In the Middle Ages there were vineyards in monastery grounds in the North of england.  when erik the red discovered North America, it was mistakenly supposed that he sailed further south than new York because he called the new land Vinland - it's now know, of course, that it was Nova scotia or thereabouts (which makes far more sense anyway!)  Greenland was called Greenland because it was GREEN!

At the beginning of the 19th Century there was a mini Ice-Age, the River Thames froze and people went ice-skating and lit bonfires on it!

In the 1960s scientists predicted just the very climate changes we are now experiencing, due to Sunspot activity (or lack of it - can't remember which).

None of these things actually make a good argument as to why the BBC should not make this experiment and involve people from all over the world and their spare computer capacity.  It doesn't matter why it's happening, in this instance - but maybe knowing WHAT exactly the patterns are may help to predict potential disasters and at least evacuate people before they happen!

I thought Greenland was called Greenland as a kind of deliberate misnomer to get people to move there.

But yeah, I ignore all these fear-mongering wussies. It's just like those people who horribly bemoan the awful "terrorists", even though absolutely nothing has happened except for one isolated event, and I hardly think that this improvement was brought about by the vaunted "Homeland Security" measures. If anything, these measures have been more effective at creating terror than anything the terrorists have done.

Well, they just move their field of operations, don't they?  And while so many of the terrorists' home countries still have poor record keeping, especially in isolated areas, it's relatively easy for these people to simply take a new identity and move on!

terrorism happens all the time
one isolated incident? In the States maybe
i live in the Uk where we have had lots over the years, the last being in London back in the summer, and there were many IRA attacks back in the day
also i live in a city where Al Quaeda has/had cells, one at least of which was linked to 9/11

but i agree the fear is largely manufactured and blown out of proportion. my daughter recently spent 3 months in Florida and was treated apallingly by the immigration people at Philadelphia airport. she distinctly got the impression they thought she was out to kill the President. after 3 hours of questioning (fortunately she had 5 hours to wait for her connecting flight) they finally let her go on her way

i would have liked to join this weather thing out of interest, not because i enjoy being alarmed

Interesting. However, whilst it may be true that scaremongery is rife (I take much that is put out in the media with a very large pinch of salt), there is no doubt that there is a bloody great hole in the ozone layer down in Antartica or that the polar ice caps are decreasing at a phenomenal rate. There are other issues closer to home that require examination too, such as the UK barely has a recognisable winter and this has happened in my lifetime - Methusalah I'm not as 47 ain't that old (I hope  :-\).


That's a real shame, Z.Z. It's fascinating and, one hopes, useful. And my CPU reports it's running at max too but I've noticed no lag at all even when running a number of open windows and a game. (The machine I use is good enough but not-shit-off-a-shovel variety.)

I also agree with J.M. about all the nonsense re. terrorism. The "information" so carefully rendered for the hoi-polloi manages to spread panic in the herd thus causing paranoia (which is sometimes good) but in this case is merely counter-productive. Recently in the UK the Government had a small pamphlet sent out to every household concerning the possibility of terrorist attack and what to do should something like this happen. Now, the UK has always been subject to terrorist attacks and I have always been aware of the issue at a certain level, but this little document managed to give me heartburn...I don't go for this stuff generally, but it really gave me pause. It was as if they were expecting a warhead to drop at any minute! Not good.

Funny, isn't it, back in the 2nd WW, so I've been told, (I wasn't quite around then!) the main aim of home government was to keep people's morale high!  Even though every single night there were air raids and whole families being wiped out during the Blitz, it was still considered more important to have people thinking positively than worrying that they might be next!

I might try the program again, but I don't really like having my CPU working that hard!  Seems like there's something that should be done to improve that if they want maximum participation!

There's a really good FAQ's section to look at though I haven't managed to decipher some of it... :-X far.too.dumb. I'm gonna go back and take another looksie and report back if I see owt worth the time.

This is his agenda, then. Everyone has an agenda. If Michael Crichton had no agenda, he wouldn't have done all that research and written books and that presentation. He would be sitting in his Jurassic Park-funded castle blowing bubbles all day.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but everyone has an agenda. I hate that statement and my antenna immediately goes up when someone says that. Anyway, thanks to posters for posting both the BBc and the Crichton links.

Oh I was refering to another Roman Emperor whom for the live of me I can't recall his freaking name! I've been searching the internet throughout the day but, alas, their biographys of all of them are pretty long and I've still got many more to read through :-\. I'll find it I'm sure , but it'll take me awhile to find  whom I'm looking for. On the plus side I'm reacquainting myself with their devilish deeds  . And there were plenty  ;D

As far as I recall, Julius Caesar was the only one to be informed by a soothsayer of the date of his death.

Found it!

1. DOMITIAN (51-96 A.D.), Roman emperor

Early astrological predictions had warned that he would be murdered on the fifth hour of September 18, 96 AD. As the date approached, Domitian had many of his closest attendants executed to be on the safe side. Just before midnight marked the beginning of the critical day, he became so terrified that he jumped out of bed. A few hours later he asked the time and was told by his servants (who were conspiring against him) that it was the sixth hour. Convinced that the danger had passed, Domitian went off to take a bath. On the way he was informed that his niece's steward, Stephanus, was waiting for him in the bedroom with important news. When the emperor arrived, Stephanus handed him a list of conspirators and then suddenly stabbed him in the groin. Domitian put up a good fight, but he was overcome when four more conspirators appeared. He died as predicted, on the fifth hour of September 18, 96 AD.


Well he was murdered but still, his own actions did play a part of his death by murder. He should have stayed in bed, lol.  You see, if only he didn't believe so much in it and tell people he was going to die on that date he wouldn't have.

I know,  I'm stretching it but I did know there was another Roman Emperor besides Julius Caesar  whose death was perdicted . But I was wrong about the other part

For other timely deaths read this: http://www.canongate.net/Lists/Death/12TimelyDeaths

But those who murdered him were simply using the prediction for their own ends!  I didn't know about this one,  but it would seem that the pattern of Caesar's death was being copied.

A prediction of death by a soothsayer would have been wonderful indeed if he had died on a specified date three years later from proven natural causes!  (And very few Roman emperors managed to do that!

Exactly! They should have kept their mouths shut :D

Again as to the other part,mea culpa,mea culpa, I was wrong.

Well, there were so many roman emperors and some were very obscure!

Which is one of the worst-researched SF books I've ever had the displeasure to read.  In it, Crichton demonstrates absolute ignorance about programming as a profession ("40 year olds are too old to program"), flocking ("it won't get us as long as we run around in circles!"), and nanotechnology (a described "nano-part" masses roughly the same as a #6 screw).  It's also a terrible book, but that's a different issue.

His talk is full of all sorts of crap.  The time he spends talking about the complexity of the human body is so much filler.  It doesn't have any point other than to state the obvious, which is that it's complex.

Because he's said things in the past that I've known to be false, I'm dubious about his Chernobyl research.  Maybe it's true.  I'd like it to be true.  I'm pro-nuclear power myself, and it's just plain humanitarian to hope the effects have been overstated.  But I don't trust Crichton to be correct and honest about anything involving research.

Certainly what he says about population problems smells like crap to me.  On a global scale, it's certainly fairly complex, and there are built-in negative feedback mechanisms in wealthy countries.  Yet there are definitely nations that are running into Malthusian scenarios.  If Crichton knew anything about Rwanda or Haiti, maybe he wouldn't be so smug.

Should we have been shooting the predators in Yellowstone?  No.  Am I skeptical about the global warming claims?  Yes.  Do I think the Environmental movement is full of people who don't know much about science?  Yes.  But I still don't think much of Crichton's talk.

 - Gus

Well, who did he write Jurassic Park for?  Not intellectuals who might actually know something about prehistoric life, I would think!

That's true.  As I said, whether it's an entertaining book or movie is a independent issue of whether it's well researched, though frequently good research helps.  Here, Crichton isn't writing for entertainment purposes, he's making claims.  So it matters whether or not he's full of crap far more than if he's writing a thriller.

 - Gus

You're right, and if he's expounding on "green" issues, one needs to know which side of the political fence he's one, agenda or no agenda!  I'm sure a certain US president would have denied having a "personal agenda" when he refused to sign up to a certain agreement!

Are you speaking of Bill Clinton, who refused to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the U. S. Senate for approval while he was still in office?

Well, I suppose both of them, really.

Well, I don't think Bill Clinton's "personal agenda" at the time had much to do with greenhouse gases.... :o

I downloaded the BBC stuff...and then I got really suspicious and paranoid.  Reason being - the BBC program kept trying to access the internet, wanting to send back data - but what data?  My Spysweeper system flagged it a red High Risk connection.    What if they're just browsing through my files and sending my info everywhere?  And why should the BBC run their stuff on my pc for free?  Why don't they reduce my licence fee as an incentive for me running their program? They don't help pay for my broadband. Trust them to come up with a cheapskate way to launch an unreliable experiment.

File deleted - and that wasn't as easy to do as you'd think!   

You know, ZZ, in the numbing days following 9/11, when we were waiting for the other "shoe" to drop here, I often thought of the extraordinary bravery of the Brits during the Bliz.  Helped keep my head together.

Well, I think knowing our country was not alone probably helped them then, and the same would have been the case after 9/11.


I agree, I had quite a time deleting it too!  I'm afraid they want to stop and consider before asking people to load and run a program to "run in the background" which then takes over your CPU and runs it at 100%!  Methinks they didn't testrun it on an ordinary home PC!

I think it is a good idea to read various views. However, do not forget that every reputable scientist out there agrees global warming is occurring on our planet and that it is affected by pollution and CO2 output from the burning of fossil fuels. Please go out there and read some papers by real scientists.

I read Crichton's novel and I enjoyed it as a novel. It also spurred me to read some of his resources. However, many of those resources were funded by OIL and ENERGY companies or by government agencies whose agenda was to support the oil and energy agencies.

I have a master's degree in geology and my thesis involved a climatic study. I know there are cyclic climate changes that have nothing to do with global warming...and the scientists who study climatic changes know this too. They have already calculated sunspots and various other affects into their calculations.  I do not think the increased hurricanes in Florida have anything to do directly with global warming...they are simply a 20 year cycle that has always occurred in the Atlantic hurricanes. But I cannot say for certain that the affects of global warming won't affect the intensity or duration of this cycle.

Unfortunately for us, climatic data is only available for the last 150 years and much of that time it is very spotty and not collected in many locations. However, while global warming may not have the effects you see in the movies, it will certainly have some affects on us in more subtle ways and if we are not careful, it could get worse. So please...read Crichton with a critical eye...and read the scientific papers too before you come to any conclusions. I had a great deal of respect for Crichton as a novelist but when he started traveling and meeting with government officials and speaking out as if he were an expert, my opinions changed somewhat. I do think he has an agenda...in spite of what he says.  I tend to trust BBC myself because I think they are not as 'controlled' by the interests of big business and government as other media outlets. I am going to present a film called Global Warming: The Science and the Signs, next week at a public forum. It is a PBS film and I am looking foward to seeing the reaction from people in my community. I live in Florida and I think people here are eager to learn more.

Well, it's good that there sems to be a debate as to whether the BBC have some other agenda regarding this programme, but from what I understand the scientist who developed it spent some time (years) making certain it only did what it was supposed to. And that is try to build an accurate forecast model that they can use reliably for weather. I've had a look at the site and most people seem to be happy enough, and there is no lag on my pc so I'm not certain why there is on other folks.  ??? Sorry.

As for global warming, even if you take into account all of the factors that LauraW put forward, there has been such a rapid increase in mean temperature levels they are unable to account for it. Having done some research and watched one or two documentaries (I know I'm a biased greenie) it would seem that there is a correlation between the start of the industrial revolution (hey, knew us Brits were good for something!) and said rise in global temperature. Good old green house gases. Did any of you know that the glaciers in Antartica have decreased to such an extent that they can now get ruddy great ships into places where it was just ice plate? Fifty kilometres in as many years, I believe... I'm sorry, that's too scary for my feeble little self.

Maybe the problem with installing has something to do with not closing McAfee, so maybe when I'm not on the net I'll try again.