MMFy

The Lisbon Half Marathon on Sunday.  Absolutely cracking weekend in Portugal (mostly in Cascais), and my first significant distance run.  I'm loving life at the moment...

Go Plastic! by Squarepusher.  Try being tired on the way to work with this on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13HM-bmKW2U

BMI seems like such utter horse shit.  Mine is currently about 25.5 - 26.  I've got down to this from 33, which was understandably in the wrong region, but considering how much I swim, cycle and run, I can't see myself getting below the elusive 25 any time soon.  There's not a lot of fat on me, so I don't know where I'm supposed to lose approximately one stone from...

Lord Monckton is a political advisor, journalist and an idiot. He's not a scientist. The views of people trained in the fields of climatology, meteorology etc who peer review papers surely carry more weight? That's how the scientific consensus has been reached.

Attempting to discredit another person's opinion devalues your own opinion.  Monckton is however the public face of CFACT, an organisation that does include scientists and climatologists.

And if we're causing the Arctic ice cap to melt, why is there record coverage of ice at the Antarctic ice cap?  And why is this not getting reported in the media?

http://www.livescience.com/39720-antarctica-ice-record-highs-2013.html

The IPCC are now 95% certain that climate change is man-made. 

This 95% figure is based on a show of hands, and nothing at all to do with scientific evidence.  I suggest reading this letter by Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley which he sent to the IPCC this week:

Dear Mr. Borenstein, - It would be appropriate to assign a statistical confidence interval as part of a statistical analysis of data, and only then. As you will know, a confidence interval of .95 corresponds to two standard deviations from the mean, and .99 to three standard deviations. However, there was no statistical analysis of the question whether most of the global warming since 1950 was attributable to us: therefore, no statistical confidence interval was appropriate, and the IPCC's attempt to assign a quantified statistical confidence interval to a non-statistical process was inappropriate and, mathematically speaking, contemptible.

As you will also know, the IPCC was rightly criticized for having assigned a 90% confidence interval (not even a standard interval) to its "consensus" proposition in the Fourth Assessment Report. On that occasion, the political representatives of governments took the decision. Many nations wanted to plump for 95%, for purely political reasons (for there was and is no scientific basis for assigning any quantitative value to such a proposition), but China, for purely scientific reasons, wanted no confidence interval at all. In the end, 90% was settled upon as a compromise, and by no more scientific a process than a show of hands. And these people expect to be taken seriously when they demand the shutdown of the West in the name of Saving The Planet.

By the same token, Mr. Severinghaus' assertion of a 99% confidence interval to the proposition that CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect is meaningless. It is demonstrable by simple experiment that adding CO2 or other greenhouse gases to an atmosphere such as ours will cause a radiative forcing that, ceteris paribus, can be expected to cause some warming.

However, temperature feedbacks, non-radiative transports, temperature homeostasis, and chaos in the climate object are among many complicating factors that make it near-impossible to determine with any reliability - even using probability density functions - how much warming will result from a given quantum of forcing, or when it will result, or how long-acting any temperature feedbacks will be. These and many other uncertainties - including the use of a feedback-amplification function at the heart of the climate-sensitivity equation that manifestly has no physical meaning in the real climate - render it impossible to determine whether most of the warming since 1950 was manmade. Accordingly, the IPCC's pretence that it is 95% confident that most of the warming since 1950 was manmade is transparently rent-seeking guesswork, to which no intelligent journalist should lend the slightest credence.

Frankly, this entire business of the fictitious confidence intervals has become a joke, particularly now that it transpires that just 0.3% of 11,944 papers on global climate change published since 1991 explicitly state support for the IPCC's version of "consensus".

In any event, only a Socialist who placed politics before science would believe or assert for an instant that scientific results are determined or reinforced by any form of mere head-counting among scientists. Aristotle demonstrated that argument by mere head-count was a fallacy 2350 years ago. The sheer dumbness of the IPCC's approach should at least be questioned by journalists, not merely paraded as though it were some sort of Gospel truth. The Holy Books of IPeCaC are no Bible.

There is a huge and fascinating story behind the loutish distortions of scientific, mathematical, physical, and statistical method that have led today's scientifically-illiterate classe politique to place their faith in propositions - such as the "95% confidence" proposition - that are obvious nonsense. Surely it would be better to start asking real questions than merely to parrot uncritically the innumerate absurdities of a politicized clique of profiteers of doom in the scientific establishment. Time to raise your game. This once-fashionable scare is going down and you don't want to be dragged down with it. Global warming is no longer cool. It is no longer a happening thing. Indeed, it is no longer happening. - Monckton of Brenchley

 

Page 36 of this thread is why I never take anything I read on here seriously.  It summarises VT player threads in 20 tidy posts.  

 

 

The swap deal involving Baros and Carew was initiated by Houllier apparently.

 

Probably true seeing as Carew came from abroad. Best thing Houllier ever did for us if so.

 

 

The best thing Houllier ever did for us was sign Darren Bent, saved us in 10/11.

 

In all honesty, was Carew even that good for us? He had a good first season or two, but went off the boil pretty quickly and looked lazy ever since the nightclub incident.

 

I still love him though

 

Carew and Agbonlahor were great together, but MON put a stop to that by forcing Emule Heskey into the equation.

Using the DX AF-S 35mm 1/1.8G on my Nikon D5100.

Another Instow sunset as the summer is drawing to a close...

This doesn't prove anything. Actually says very little. Posting this out of interest in case the thread gets saved.

 

looool

 

Just finished my first triathlon.  Absolutely loved it.

Why is Robert De Niro watching you run a triathlon?? 

 

I got exactly the same comment on Facebook.  

I'm starting to believe Paul Lambert is the manager Martin O'Neill purported to be throughout his entire career.  He has worked wonders with the players that were already here, and has brought in some excellent players at a fraction of the cost of some of the dirge O'Neill signed.  The development of Delph is a stunning display of this, but others who were overlooked are standing up and being counted.  Weimann, Baker and Guzan would most likely have disappeared without trace without the intervention of Lambert, and now all are established Premier League players.

Delph had an excellent game last night, capping it with a goal that will be a massive boost to his morale and performance.  One I am incredibly proud of.

I've got some old Villa shirts from 98-00 - can I advertise them on here?  I'm not fixing a price on them and I can't be arsed with eBay, but the right offer could see them coming your way.

Always ride in cleats, but shorts were too wet after Sunday's weather. The lady leg was only Cergy to Paris, so it was OK.

I'm the fat word removed in the grey wifebeater.  Before anyone asks, the lass in the middle has been mentioned in a previous thread...  

Legend. But where’s the Strava data ?

Strava **** up royally.  We parked up and stayed at Heathrow T5 Holiday Inn the night before the ride, then rode to Slough, got the train to Paddington and rode to Trafalgar Square from there.  I stopped Strava while we were on the train, and it was fine when we got to Paddington.  However, by the time we got to Trafalgar Square it was on 55km.  I've lazily clocked the ride on google maps since getting home, and I can provide the mapmyride maps which we loosely followed to Newhaven, and strictly followed on the other side of the channel.

The weather was shit in London, so I haven't even got a start photo.  But here's a celebratory success photo...

London to Paris - Check.  It's an easy ride over four days.  There were a lot of highlights to the trip, and only a couple of low points, one of which was some khant trying to steal all our bikes in Paris.  I'd recommend this ride to anyone with a bike.  It's not difficult, but it is great fun.

Now I have a triathlon to complete on Sunday...

*actually, maybe it's because Lambert hasn't been training Bannan with the main squad and he hasn't been getting friendly games. that would affect his performance level.

Yet Anal Hutton plays the full match.  Sir, you can never be taken seriously ever again.

Time to dig this one up...

Friday will see me commence my London to Paris ride.  I've done the training and shifted 1/4 of my body weight in about 5 months.  It's going to be easy, if I can stay sober enough!  Has anyone else done this ride?

 

Did you beat Boris ?

2 of my friends did it as well sounds like they enjoyed it .. They are trying to rope me in for next year .... Yikes !!

I don't know what time he did.....I saw a few of his team but not him.

Do it....it was a cracking day out and bar the middle 40miles it was pretty easy.

 

I didn't know anything about 'RideLondon' until saw it was on the telly.  I would have been happy to take that ride on...

 

no claim here for this to be technically competent, I haven't even squared it up, I just love it!

 

taken from a moving open top bus on one of those cheesey tourist, er, tours

I reckon this would look quite good in greyscale...

Luis Suarez is possibly the most controversial player in Premiership history. He makes Cantona look like a saint.

He's a better player than Barton, but surely that title goes to  Barton?!

Shit, sold in 20 minutes on Facebook...