There’s also a fun quiz about well known sceptics & similar subjects here: Quiz: Just for fun

---

[WATU 2]

For reasons too daft to admit in public, I am engaged in some pretty water breaking research from the Roman period.
However, I have run into problems (and whilst my PC repairs itself from a crash) I thought I’d take the time to relate the issue. For the research I need to know the frontal area of the human body as a function of height – arms up!! (There’s a deadly serious reason for it – even if it sounds daft).
So, yesterday I was searching the internet for images of people with next to nothing on with their hands up. However, for obvious reasons the kind of people who have their pictures available on the internet with next to no clothes on (or none at all) tend to be far from the average.
[Addendum: also many pictures are being touched up to reduce some bulges and enhance others – for full discussion see comments]
So, do I take the “average of people who like to pose without clothes” … or do I somehow select those that I feel to be “average”.
And it seems to be a problem particularly relating to women. Because not only do many men look pretty ordinary on the beech, but there’s even been some actual research producing images of the average man:
So Mr Average – done …. Ok, this is not one average. It’s something like Mr Average US (the tubby one) Mr Average Japan, Mr Average Netherlands (tall one) and Monsieur …
But talking about which ethnicity is most like Britain do I pick Mr average US (who is chubbier) or Mr average Netherlands … or who? And is Mr average the weight of the average age, or is it the average body size (allowing a few extremely grossly overweight individuals to tip the scales … )
But to make progress I decided to go with what was available for Mr average Man. But I also need a “Mrs average” (or miss?) and if I am to believe the scientific research on the subject apparently men  and women are different shapes (who would believe it?)
I started looking to see if I could find a group of women from which I could take some average profiles. First however, they must have either no clothes, or very tight fitting clothes. Which for some reason seems to mean that they are young slender and far from average. So, next I tried searching for “parents” on the beech, then “parents nude” then “parents nudist”.
And who would believe it? What silly poses everyone takes when being photographed in the nude!!!! Women & men can be found in almost every single pose – but apparently no one seems to stand in the nude bolt upright!
What’s wrong with people?
Why doesn’t anyone just stand there – on a beech – not in the water – (preferably with a mono-colour background) in the nude looking straight at the camera with their hands in the air. They don’t have to smile – indeed I don’t care if they are standing with their backs to me (if avoids some of the problems with overhanging protrusions which cause unwanted shadows and make it more difficult to mask)
And when I do eventually find people standing there gormless in the nude on the beech …. what are they doing but standing IN THE WATER … or for some strange reason when displaying nude women, people seem to crop off the most essential part for determining height THE FEET!!!
But eventually this is the kind of images I got:

Note: not one of them has their hands up!!
And whilst I am not that familiar with the average woman … the second group look as if they have more insulation than “average”.

Mr Average Man

And just in case you were wondering (which I seriously doubt) this is what I have so far for “Mr Average”. The units are arbitrary

To explain: the ground is to the left. The peak at around 4 is the feet. That around 8 is the knee. That at 18 is the thigh. At 30 we have the upper chest/arms. The arm contribution is shown separately in orange (I had to chop off the arms and put them back the image so there might be some issues with their place) The neck is the dip at 32 and the top of head around 37 and finally the hands at 42.
And guess what of a man’s body is biggest in proportion to that of a woman? 30% bigger!!!

Addendum

Finally the software started working again, and this my modelled Mr Average versus measured Mr average rss = 2.484402799·10^-3

Addendum – Re the problem of Touched Up photos

The comments from Casey quite rightly highlighted that there apparently suitable photos on the web. And there was nothing for it but to show it in order to highlight the various issues:

The most obvious fault is between the girl on the left and the next where the horizon takes a dramatic plunge (This is so appallingly touched up that I would cringe if it were mine). The next serious issue is the direction of shadows. There is around a 90degree difference between those on the left and right. This would require an extremely wide angle lens – but the girls themselves do not appear to have been taken with a wide angle lens, nor do the waves between the legs arc away from the camera as one would see if the picture had been taken with a very wide angle lens.
Indeed, the waves appear to be in a straight line – although if you notice, there are peculiar discontinuities in the type of waves from one side of the legs to the others.
So the waves are either fake, or the girls have been superimposed on a scene of waves … or most likely it is multiple photos with background waves that have been stitched together with someone drawing in waves.
But, note how spindly the shadows are compared to their actual legs. And compare the massive size of the hips of the girl on the right with the alarmingly small size of the shadow in the same area. Also note how each girl is in sunshine so that there is almost no place that the shadow on one falls on the other. That tells us that there should be eight distinct shadows on the beech – there are not – indeed, toward the centre right the shadows overlap each other. That requires part of one girl to throw a shadow on the girl behind … or someone has added images with shadows in different directions.
Just to cap it all note how (numbering from left)
1 & 8, 3&7, appear to be twin sisters, 2&5  appear to be twins where one has been in baked in the sun and one not & 4&6 have remarkably similar hair and face shape.
Finally, (and key for what I need) look at the absurd thickness of the thighs compared to waist. … and if you want final proof … none of them have bikini lines … although as expected there are strange lines running around the edges of the bikini lines showing the edges of the areas that have been darkened to remove the bikini line.
 
 

I wrote this in reply to James McGinn who has come up with some ideas about the way water behaves as a gas (which are not totally absurd) who had said:

“It’s funny, but when I first set out to tell the world of my new theory I expected people to be thankful that I was reviving an intellectually dead subject. Convection theory was so ephemeral and vague that I knew nobody would or could defend it, as has been the case. However, I never expected the depth of emotions that people have for what is such a non-starter of a theory. “

What I said, was that coming up with new theories is easy. Off the top of my head I have:

• Caterpillar thermal-tectonic theory**
• Pressure induced climate change theory
• The scientifically credible alternative to “wave-particle” (discussed somewhere I can’t find)*
• Birthplace of St. Patrick**
• The lack of any Celts in Britain**
• & the Germanic origin of (some) of the early British**
• The “Cassandra” theory (which is far too controversial to print)**
  *Robust enough that it should be considered
  **with sufficient evidence that (in a perfect world) it would be considered and likely adopted as the standard view

I’ve also got some interesting ideas:

• How rabbits (& grass) killed the dinosaurs
• etc.

So, the problem is not finding a better theory that is more “right” than what others currently accept … it’s basically a PR campaign trying to get people aware of the idea and to slowly accept it … which takes time, effort, facts.
You’ve got to give people a reason for going through the whole laborious exercise of relearning what they thought they knew … then understanding what it is the theory is trying to say … then trying to understand why the theory is wrong … then trying to understand why the new theory is right … and even then … even when people say “yes that’s a better theory” … unless they in turn are inspired to go out and tell other people … it will still be just a small group with a new idea and go anywhere … and even then … if there are powerful interests (like global warming and the political influence of Greens) … then even if you have all the above, the theory may still go nowhere.
To be cynical, over the years, I’ve learnt that theories are just conceptual models that people have that that in practice (not what they say but how they behave), they really don’t care  if they are wrong … unless there is a real tangible problem it causes to them.
So, e.g. I keep asking (to James) “is there any evidence you have … in effect that shows using the current theories does not reasonably well predict what happens. Because even with the best will in the world, I’ve got plenty of other things that I’m working on and unless I have something tangible that really affects me personally it is difficult to justify spending the time and energy looking at someone else’s idea.

A very good example of how a theory can be right … yet it just sits on my website is the “Caterpillar theory“. This just says that the temperature expands the crust causing plate movement. There’s nothing new here … it’s just the application of known physics. And there is evidence that it is happening it in the ridges at the centre of the Atlantic (which show modulations over ice-age periods). So, I’d say there is perhaps 70-90% chance of it being correct. However as you will see from the picture right “I see no Caterpillar”, I knew that the theory would struggle to be accepted even amongst sceptics (I might even  say especially amongst sceptics!)
So, why isn’t the world biting my hand to get this theory? The answer is simple:

There’s no reason for anyone to accept the theory.

Having come up with the theory …and worse published it outsider academia …. academics who usually credit themselves with all discoveries … now can’t credit themselves with my discovery. (And I knew that would happen! ) Nor is it in their interest to promote this theory because it proves how they missed something pretty simple.
Nor to be frank is it in my interest. I cannot see myself becoming rich as a result- quite the reverse – I can see that the huge effort to make people aware of the theory would consume vast amounts of my time and money.
To put it bluntly neither academics nor I stand to gain commercially from this theory.
This is why academia appears to be the “font of all discoveries”- because in the past, it was far too expensive for any individual to try to run the huge publicity campaign necessary to get public acceptance. So when public paid academics could go out to industry, pick up ideas from people who had no (commercial) interest in telling other people about them … they would then write them up as “their” idea.
Yes technically that is theft – but (unless it could be sold in its own right) as those outside academia had no commercial interest – it really didn’t matter to anyone (except for a few bruised egos).
And because in academia there was personal advantage to be had by “discovering” ideas academics benefited commercially through career advancement and added kudos. So, there was an economic advantage for academics in “discovering” ideas (from others). And (in the past) the rest of us benefited by having people who would systematically record other people’s ideas (even if the whole system was a bit corrupt – those outside USED TO benefit).
So, in reality,  we created a useful parasite in academia … one where people got on by taking other people’s ideas and claiming it as their own. But that beast can only work if there are people outside creating new ideas (for them to steal) and if those people themselves don’t go through the process of claiming ownership of these new ideas.
That system worked when publishing was an expensive and time consuming thing to do. Only academics had the commercial interest in going through the laborious process of getting something into print … and even if the original person who came up with the idea complained … what were they going to do? Unless they had already published the idea, they had no proof … and it was academics who wrote up the history of science … so for obvious reason we (USED TO) hear almost nothing about all the people that were written out of (academic) history.
In the past, the only way to get ideas accepted as your own by the academic “gatekeepers”, was to become an academic, then submit to their power and authority … wait for the people whose ideas and theories you were overthrowing to die (so that you were now top of the tree and could dictate what was “science”) … and then to publish.
For obvious reasons – given that new ideas often come from the young – and the old who champion the status quo are in charge – change within academia was measured in life-times (unless someone could come up with unequivocal evidence and then force it through against the old guard)

However, that has all changed with the internet.

Now we have a record of those ideas before academia pinched them … and worse … through the “anti-industry” policies brought on by the “scientific staza governmental advisers”, we (in the UK) have massively lost the engineering powerhouse that used to be the engine of some many new ideas.
So, not only has the source of new ideas dried up, but academia can no longer so easily half-inch everyone else’s ideas and claim it as their own. The result is that academia is now spending more and more of its time trying to police it control of ideas (on the internet and media) and thus spending more and more of its time rejecting news ideas from outside (e.g. climate scepticism).
This is really what the climate “wars” have been about. It is a war for control of the ideas underpinning how we view climate … one which academia lost because it went down a blind alleyway on (anti-engineering) CO2.
So, one of the reasons I do not submit my ideas to academia … is because that old system whereby academia assumed control of ideas and theories can no longer be sustained in an age of the internet.

But climate may also be the way to rejuvenate academia and make it fit for the new internet age.

Academia can no longer thrive as it used to in the past:  living as a parasite off the ideas generated in industry & wider society (particularly when it intentionally set out to destroy UK and US engineering). Nor can it, by its control of publishing, now claim to be the source of other new ideas from outside academia (are there any new ideas from within academia?)
I’m not sure what the new world order is going to look like when academia is finally forced to admit it was never the “font of all knowledge” that it has claimed. But I’m sure the sooner we get to that situation in the UK, the better off both wider society and academia will be.
The climate wars – are important, because never before has so much of academia unified together to back an idea that then so quickly proved to be such an appalling disaster. Hopefully that will be a wake up call to academia (along with all the other smaller “turf wars” triggered by those challenging it from the internet).
We can’t uninvent the internet – we cannot stop people outside academia being sceptic of some of its more daft ideas like “doomsday warming”.  Thus, the change is going to have to come from within academia itself. Somehow, academia is going to have to learn how to live in a world where it is no longer in control of ideas – where it can no longer “half-inch” ideas from outside and claim it as their own.
That doesn’t stop academia being a useful group within society – it just means that academics (and perhaps all of us) are going to have to find a new way to justify their work which doesn’t involve the false idea that somehow academia is “better” than other people or worst of all that someone we “need” acadmics to “invent” new ideas.

There was an article in the Washington time (also Climate Change Dispath). The title and thrust of the article is: “The doctored science of global warming ” detailing Lamar’s committee’s continued investigation into “NOAAgate”.
I didn’t think much of it – because well – we’ve long known that the temperature data and much of the academic research is fabricated.
However, on reflection it is more important than I original gave credit. On the down side, this is all going to be kept at the domestic level in the US, so we’ll hear almost nothing about it until it explodes into a scandal. On the up side, it is an election year and presumably there’s a detailed plan of attack to ensure this scandal is brought to the public attention in the campaign.

With the current El Nino pushing up the only credible global temperature measurement from the satellites, I expected to see a bit more excitement from the (once) mainstream media … but no!
I must admit I’m very much just dipping into global warming these days, but even so, I seem to have missed anything like the great media events that some previous years were turned into.

Why has the fire gone out?

I’m interested in climate, but I have to admit that even I am finding it difficult to find interest in the same news stories that are turning up in the same media outlets time and time again. How many times can one person say “the surface temperature is fake” or similar words. And more than likely these days a dozen people will have all I was going to say and more before I even try to comment.
So, rather like all the weather “once in a lifetime” records we now get almost weekly from the weather (for statistical reasons), it now seems that most of the media are fed up reporting yet another supposedly “record” year. And worse … even when they do report it … all the “0.00001C warmer” figure ever highlights is how far the whole scam is from the “burning up into a fireball earth” that it was supposed to be.
So, in strange way, these supposed records seem to me to be having the opposite effect from that the extremists wanted. Because whilst there was nothing to report … most of the public and politicians just assumed “global warming” was happening. Most of the gullible greens just went along with what they had been led to believe was already happening.
But it is only when they see the 0.000000001C (is that too many zeros?) warming that actually happened that they realise just how much hasn’t been happening and that’s when they work out they’ve been conned.
It’s not when we sceptics point out nothing is happening …. its when their own pet journalists try to make a mountain of a news story out of a molehill temperature rise. That’s when it really seems to be hitting the gullible=greens the hardest.

The problem with Bandwagoneering

That is the problem with these scams. When they start, the extremists can pick on any unusual event that comes along and create headlines. The problem of course, is that for every drought there is a flood, for every cold winter a warm one, etc. And once you’ve run one opportunist headline ascribing one type of weather to “global warming” … you’ve made your bed so to speak and are then even when another event comes along, the headline grabbing nature has disappeared and more than likely it’s be the “wrong kind of disaster”.

It’s the data python Stupid

When small a python is a very malleable creature – so that like the data on “warming” it can be easily fitted to any shape you want. And so the handler can more or less make the “data python” show any result they like (usually by cherry picking start and ends … by adding “corrections” … which although small are very significant in a short run of data).
But like the python, as the data grows, it begins to restrict the movement of the handler. So, whereas once the handler would force the python into the shape they wanted, soon the python is large enough that it begins to force the handler into the shape the python takes.
And, then finally, when the data is just so overwhelming, the wriggle room begins to disappear totally. Then when the data shows a short term event such as “no snow” and the climate extremists proclaim “the end of snow” …. then the python constricts them to that position … and when as inevitably happens it snows … the python crushes and crushes them sooner or later extinguishing all life from the extremists who dabble with the data python.
That is how the data python works. It starts off being their alley … it ends up crushing all except those who tried to abuse it.

≠I’ve been engaged in a long term conversation with a particularly stupid academic who can’t understand why we sceptics can be so certain we are right – when after all he is the academic who knows everything.
So, I was just musing how in theory one would explain to that type of academic why sceptics are so superior and it seemed to boil down to this simple statement:

“academics don’t understand natural variation”.

Given previous research into the nature of academia and sceptics, I would now suggest a very simple theory, which might be called: The Theory of Everything

Theory + Natural Variation = Everything

Or to use slightly different terminology: The Theory of the real world

Theory + Natural Variation = Real World

Or to put it other ways:

Natural variation is the deviation of the real world from theory

Academic Domain + Natural Variation = Engineering/Sceptic Domain

The reason for this discrepancy between the academic domain and that of the engineer/sceptic is that academics focus on theory. And for obvious reason theory only works in systems that are “well behaved”. That is to say a system where:

Theory = Real World + E(x)

Continue reading →