Al Gore – Didn’t You Notice The Zig Zags?

On his global warming lecture, Al Gore is displaying CO2 levels spanning 650 000 years. On the graph behind him, CO2 levels go up and down and backward and forward in time. In other words, there are occasionally two or more CO2 levels at the same time.

Al Gore, how is it possible? Didn’t you pay any attention to the massive screen behind you?

You can see the full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxi-OlkmxZ4 [the graph is at 7:30]

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Some background for this post. I watched An Inconvenient Truth movie two years ago, and believed every word of it. After studying the issue more carefully, I was surprised: the movie has been proved to contain material which is misleading, incorrect and false. All in all, it is full of scaremongering without any science to back it up. Almost every segment of it.

Yet, governments are making large decisions based on false theories promoted by non-scientists who can not even produce a simple graph correctly. Yet, even Barack Obama – whom we all regard highly and is currently the man with the most power on this planet - is being misinformed and misled.

Al Gore says the science on man-made global warming is settled; there’s a consensus, scientists stand behind it. That’s an easy argument to validate. Just search the web to see whether it’s true. You will see how the whole house of cards begins to crumble.

Onion Joke That’s Not

Uncannily good prediction from The Onion archives, dated January, 2001.

Something Wet Is Out! Really Wet…

It’s quite natural for a guy nicknamed raindropper to create a book covering all aspects of water, don’t you think?

So, point your browser to The Book of W and start exploring. There will chapters and postings about science, business, arts, cultures and religions – all of course water-related.

It looks like a mish-mash of blog postings and book chapters. But there’s a simple, common theme underlining all of those – and it’s clear as water.

Ponzi Scam in Finland

The pyramid scheme named Wincapita made a few happy people and thousands of angry ones. According to some news, the happy ones are in Thailand. Angry ones are reporting to the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, or silently cursing their losses. 

Here’s a good wrap-up of the issue. The scheme started in 2005 with the prop of Forex trading; the high interests for investments (400%) would come from currency exchanges. The Wincapita website went offline in March, company vanished and damage assessment began. Details are scarce as usually, but in essence top 50 or so got huge gains, 10000 or so lost packs of money. Estimated 50 million euros were invested to the company.

Interestingly, the brochure of Wincapita clearly stated that “Invest only the amount of money you are capable of losing.”

Internet has made the spreading of Nigerian letters and building of Ponzi companies easy. Nowadays, one can easily hire a person who under different fake names hoax the Ponzi company in newsgroups and message boards etc.

Why do people fall in to these traps, time and again? I’d see that at least some of the persons who give their money to these kinds of games know the odds, know the risks, and have a thought: what if I’m one of the inner circle winners, let’s try this, I might make a huge profit! 

As the pyramid scheme mechanism works, latecomers’ money goes to the top members’ – early adopters’ – pockets. Could the same happen in stock markets – in real estate business? Is the role of a latecomer always to make a loss?

[Update 12.12.2008] Yes, it can happen on stock markets also. WSJ article: Top Broker Accused of $50 Billion Fraud – His Investment-Advisory Business for the Wealthy Was ‘Giant Ponzi Scheme’

I Am Legend – And I’m Driving a Ford

Just came back from watching “I Am Legend” movie with my wife. If you liked Spielberg’s ”War of The Worlds”, you’ll probably like this movie also. They both decipit a ruthless, dismal and dark world with people turned to violent animals.

Will Smith does a marvellous job in portraying a man in the brink of insanity.

My wife’s reaction? Well, she almost puked. Too much exploding low frequencies and too little steadicam. Don’t go to this movie with your girlfriend. It takes all the fun out of your evening.

Product placement thanks go to Apple and Ford.

Thoughts on OpenSocial API and Social Applications

This week, Google introduced OpenSocial API. It is a set of common interfaces for building social applications. Scobleizer’s blog post led me to more information about the OpenSocial API, here:

http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

I watched the Campfire One video – almost from beginning to end - and browsed through some Developer’s Guide docs. I appreciate Google’s simple and straightforward, hands-on approach. They have not created a “Meta-Reference Application Framework for Interfaces of Social Network Applications” and dozens of new acronyms. Instead, they show working code and the classic “Hello World!”, written with a vanilla text editor.

Why are Google and other companies allocating resources to social media? The way I see it, that is because their main revenue streams come from advertisers. Social applications are filled with data of people’s activities, interests, daily patterns, schedules, locations, networks etc. This data provides juice for building highly targeted marketing systems, which in turn generate happy advertisers.

The more data people put into the system, the better the system will serve the people. It’s a win-win for us all, don’t you think?

Web 2.0 Summit Videos on blip.tv

If you’re interested in anything Web 2.0, you should check the videos of the recent Web 2.0 Summit held in California.

Excellent roster. Excellent discussions. Some of the questions just splat on the faces of the interviewees, politely and with a smile, of course. John Battelle’s way of carrying the conversation is particularly good.

[Update 1.11.2007] Excellent? Nah, not all. What’s the reason for not showing the screens of the presenters? It’s not stimulating to watch a talking guy looking down at his laptop, enthusiastically giving a pitch for something that one can not see even a glimpse of.

An Inconvenient Truth – Too Important to Miss

Watched the Inconvenient Truth movie. I was surprised by how clearly and softly it carried its massively important message. I was expecting a sensationalistic blast, but got a delicate whisper instead.  

The movie is also a portrait of former Vice President Al Gore. He comes through as a scarred, caring man, learning from mistakes. Future votes will find their way to him. 

During watching the movie, we were heating our sauna. The temperature of our electrically powered stove was around 86 Celsius degrees for over an hour.

I’m still eager to know: what is the role of heat generated by stoves, car engines, factories, central heating systems, computers etc. in changing the global climate? Do they increase the temperature and make the wiggling red lines of the film go up? We took a sauna – did we cause a tiny part of a glacier to melt?

[25.05.2009] Watched The Great Global Warming Swindle and felt totally betrayed.

NASA: Images Suggest Flowing Water on Mars

Full story here. And check this good interview, which gives FAQ-type answers about the finding.

Drill a hole to the crust of Mars, and start fishing.