Interesting Links for 21-02-2016

[andrewducker]

See the Cast of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' Then and Now (tags: FerrisBueller movies age ) Homeopathy successfully turns water into a placebo (tags: homeopathy placebo ) Global wind power capacity tops nuclear energy for first time (tags: nuclearpower windpower renewables ) CIA-backed rebels are now fighting Pentagon-backed militants in Syria (

Comments

[bart_calendar]

The CIA fighting regular army people is nothing new at all.

During Vietnam the CIA took over all these opium farms in Laos and was making O Base to turn into heroin to finance their black ops (and because the mafia really want to push heroin in the black areas around Vegas as a way to generate hooker slaves for tourists.)

Then we extended the war into Laos and the CIA guys were terrified that the soldiers would fuck with the opium farms so they brought in their own special forces dude to blow up/terrify the troops away from them.

And while it's never been proved there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that in Panama and Columbia the CIA was running coca field farms and had to do the same thing when we sent troops in for the war on drugs.

[gonzo21]

And then of course there is the collusion in the American/Global banking sector that allows all the heroin money to be laundered into The System.

I read a very interesting book recently that was arguing that pretty much the entire banking sector now depends on laundering dirty money, and without the drug money, the system would collapse (again).

[bart_calendar]

Yep.

With interests rates so low the only people willing to pay banks enough to keep them afloat are people who really need discreet banking services.

[gonzo21]

I continue to be shocked that the NHS is still providing homeopathy.

I know the sum involved is peanuts. But still. One patient choosing the homeopathic treatment over the treatment that might actually save their lives is one too many, and they should not be offering it on the NHS.

[bart_calendar]

Depends on how we define "homepathic treatment."

Like this week I went to my doctor because my back had gotten much worse. He said

"Well we can go the traditional medical route and operate, followed by several months of rehab. Or we can go the homeopathic route and I can give you exercises to do in the pool that will over time make the problem manageable without surgery."

I was in the pool the next day and I already feel better (but sore.)

[gonzo21]

You see, I wouldn't call physiotherapy a homeopathic route. Physiotherapy is proven science.

And as pretty much every doctor I've ever seen has said, exercise is the number 1 least utilised treatment for a vast range of problems. (Followed by good diet.)

So, yeah, no, I wouldn't call regular exercise and healthy diet, homeopathy. But I might be wrong about that.

[bart_calendar]

I think it comes under the guise of homepathy because it's "an alternative to medicine/pills."

But, yeah, if my back problem is caused by too much typing for work causing two of my nerves to get pinched and fuck me up, moving my arms and around up and down a pool for an hour every other day seems very likely to loosen up the problem (and has worked in the past, but not when it's been this bad.)

Sure swimming is a pain in the ass sometimes but it strikes me as much less of a pain in the ass than surgically repairing the nerves.

[danieldwilliam]

One needs to apply a capacity factor adjustment to the windfarm installed  capacity for a "fairer" comparison. If installed wind capacity is a little bit more than installed nukes I'd estimate wind was at 2/5ths the usable value of world nukes.

Capacity factors for wind are improving as the size of the machines increases, blade design improves and siting gets better.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's going to take a while for them to be as effective.

I do wonder what the energy mix will look like in 10 years time. And 50.

[danieldwilliam]

You can probably hazard a decent guess at the energy mix in 10 years by looking at the current scheduled projects and announced retireals. (and I'm sure somebody does - it used to be the sort of thing I did at work.)

It takes about 5-10 years to plan, consent, connect and build a new power station. Nukes take much longer. On-shore wind and solar PV (especially domestic solar PV) can be done in shorter periods.

If you believe Rameez Naam then solar and wind will be significantly below the price of gas and coal soon and will keep falling. So, the energy mix in 50 years time would look like heaps of solar and onshore wind, large interconnected grids with some nukes providing baseload.

http://rameznaam.com/2014/10/05/solar-wind-plunging-below-fossil-fuel-prices/

[nojay]

Modern nuclear plants, including older plants that have been upgraded to digital control and such are running at about 90% availability with very high predictability for outages for refuelling, repairs, upgrades etc. Well-sited wind turbines on land can manage up to 30% of dataplate output (i.e. a 5MW turbine will produce about 13 GWh over the period of a year) with wide random fluctuations in output over any time period greater than three days. I've seen the British wind grid power generation output swing from 50MW total to 5GW in a few weeks, for example

Placebo effect

[gwendally]

Some one I respect tried to explain to me once that the placebo effect is real and scientifically provable and can cure people.

So if the homeopathic remedy causes a placebo effect, it is doing pretty good for a nearly free medicine.

Mothers typically give homeopathic teething remedies on the basis that it is better for them to feel like they are responding to the kid's pain.

I used to do something similar: I used to treat children's minor scrapes and bruises with a wet cotton puff. The children used to go get one for me to treat them with. It was the act of caring that helped, not efficacy of slightly cool dabs of tap water.

[alextfish]

Thought you might be interested in this:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/father-io-first-real-life-massive-multiplayer-fps--2#/

Augmented reality multiplayer Ingress-style game, but with "shooting" at other people who've gone to hack the same location as you.