By Russia, With Love

Thank goodness someone is paying attention to these things.

Via 80Beats: Russia Is Developing a Secret Plan to Divert a Non-Threatening Asteroid

"A Cashier In Cashmere Held Up An Old Map Of Norway..."

(title is from the song 'Salvation Barmy')

I read about buying cashmere at moreintelligentlife.com and this got me thinking about all the different types of wools and I ended up at this very informative page at STP: Guide To Wool

Alpaca sounds amazing though it is well-known that I have had a long time love affair with merino.

And it is also good to remember that cheap cashmere has a high cost that someone else has to pay for.

Two Business Related Posts That I Believe Are Related

TNR: Upper Mismanagement: Why can't Americans make things? Two words: business school.

How did we get to this point? In some sense, it’s the result of broad historical and economic forces. Up until World War I, the archetypal manufacturing CEO was production oriented—usually an engineer or inventor of some kind. Even as late as the 1930s, business school curriculums focused mostly on production. Khurana notes that many schools during this era had mini-factories on campus to train future managers.

After World War II, large corporations went on acquisition binges and turned themselves into massive conglomerates. In their landmark Harvard Business Review article from 1980, “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline,” Robert Hayes and William Abernathy pointed out that the conglomerate structure forced managers to think of their firms as a collection of financial assets, where the goal was to allocate capital efficiently, rather than as makers of specific products, where the goal was to maximize quality and long-term* market share.

The Big Picture: Stocks 1999-2009: Worst. Decade. Ever.

Wired Takes On The Big Questions Of Our Day

Why Geologists Love Beer

Supporting the culture theory is the observation that earth science departments at academic institutions across the world almost invariably have a weekly get-together of some sort that revolves around beer.

This appears to be a follow-up to my 2008 post Geologists Love Beer.

Foods You May Want To Avoid

See Yahoo: The 7 foods experts won't eat

1. Canned Tomatoes
2. Corn-Fed Beef
3. Microwave Popcorn
4. Nonorganic Potatoes
5. Farmed Salmon
6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones
7. Conventional Apples

Follow Up To Open Source Climate Science

In news that I see as related to 'Climategate' - the Office of Science and Technology Policy is asking for input regarding tax payer supported research.

See Techdirt: White House Wants Input On Public Access Rules For Federally Funded Research

Comments are welcome on the OSTP blog.

Wired Has An Interview With An Expert On Climate Change Denial

Wired: The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

Yet Somehow the TeaBaggers Are Scared Of Obama

Idiots.

Rumsfeld decision allowed Bin Laden to escape: Senate report

Thoughts On Climategate

Lots of summary at TheAtlantic: ClimateGate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data and BoingBoing: More Insight on Those Leaked Climate Change Emails

My thinking is this:
- this is one data set of many
- climate based observations (e.g., sea ice extent, sea level rise, mtn glaciers, species movement, etc) all point to climate change
- based on source code comments the predictive climate computer model has serious problems
- this "scandal" demonstrates why open data and open source software are so important
- it is odd that the climate change deniers who are hyping Climategate are generally the same people who have been silent on the much more troubling problems with electronic voting machine software

Mars News Indicates It Was Once More Earth-Like

NS: Fresh claim for fossil life in Mars rock

Discover: New Map Suggests Huge Ocean Once Dominated Mars’ Northern Hemisphere