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Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4 If not Latin, then what? Please see the links at...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3 Plants and the moon. For thousands of years, people...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are...

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #1

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. ...

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Patrick LockerbyRSS Feed of this column.

Retired engineer, 73 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge... Read More »

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Arctic News Or Science Abuse?


As I write these words, media reporters and bloggers are gleefully reporting the recovery of the Arctic ice.

There has been snow in many parts of the northern temperate zone recently, and, predictably, there have been cries of "what happened to global warming?"

It is Spring.  The evidence of global warming is all around for anyone who has eyes to see it.  But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Propaganda
South Dakota Exempted From Laws of Science


The South Dakota Legislature thinks that scientific laws are made up by people to suit agendas.
Accordingly, they have invented some agendist stuff to make a political declaration that climate change is a myth.  Presumably, any of the good citizens of Dakota who believe this science nonsense about photographic records of ice melting must be deluded.

Now, why does the sub-text remind me of the creationist / I.D. agenda?

Is this what students are learning in South Dakota?

How deluded will the voters be come election time?

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State of South Dakota 
Freedom Of Information And UK Law



The UK's Freedom Of Information Act 2000 - FOIA - has been much in the news and public debate of late, mainly in connection with allegations that the University Of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit has acted in breach of the FOIA.

Before I go further in my analysis of what law is, and what the relevant law means in the context of the allegations against the CRU, I have some important points to make.
Faint Young Sun - No Paradox


The faint young sun paradox is no paradox, according to a recent paper in Nature.


The faint young sun paradox is that the earth didn't freeze over when the sun was weaker at the time when the oceans formed.  Earth's climate has been fairly constant during the approx. 4.6 billion years of earth's existence, despite the fact that radiation from the Sun is believed to have increased by 25-30 percent over that time.

Professor Minik Rosing, from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Christian Bjerrum, from the Department of Geography and Geology at University of Copenhagen, together with American colleagues from Stanford University in California claim that there is no paradox.
Fossilized Weather


If you want to know what the weather is doing you can do as the candlelight fisherman in the song did, and "open the pane and pop out the flame and see how the winds do blow".  Or you could look at the nearest weathervane.  They come in all sort of designs, shapes and sizes. 
Simon Singh Wins - US Law To The Rescue!

The British Courts do not indulge themselves in bogus judgements - not even on April 1st.

This article is genuine.

A note on common law:

Both the US and the UK are common law jurisdictions.  British courts will accordingly take note of US court judgements, but are not legally bound to follow them.

Occasionally, a judge will recognise that UK law is insufficient alone to secure a just result.  In such circumstances the judge may be more inclined than otherwise to accept a sufficiently fair and just US ruling as providing a model and a precedent.