Category archives: Polis

It is unreasonably frustrating to me that discussions of the Social Cost of Carbon by Economists are seemingly using models that read like a Libertarian's Fancy Footwork to Excuse Desired Behaviour. Basically, by deciding that we value the lives of our children and children's children less than our own comfort, we can deprecate the loss-in-value ...

So if we (Canada) were to set flat carbon cost at a reasonable $.6/kg ($600/ton) instead of our current $.02 rising to $.05 in two years with the big polluters excluded, what would happen? Would it be effective at changing people's behaviour?

Fuel

• Crude would go up by $258/barrel (currently $60)
• Oil Sands crude up ...

So somehow instead of working tonight I found myself reading through the Hyperloop plans from Elon Musk. Basically it's a very-low-pressure, but not true vacuum, steel tube held up on pylons from LA to San Francisco.  Linear accelerators (magnets) push cars through the tube by acting on aluminium blades on the bottom of the cars. ...

Why the heck is wikipedia *deleting* articles for not being universally notable rather than simply assigning a "notability" level to them?  It's a computer system, and you store all of the revisions anyway, so why delete something rather than simply marking it less-widely relevant (and thereby decreasing search-result ranks and the like)?  I gather somebody ...

Have been seeing weirdly trivial blog-post spam lately.  Someone will post a single-line comment that is entirely generic, no real content, just a bland "nice post" or "thanks for the article" where the user's URL is a link to what looks like a SEO page.

Turns out that there's a set of sites that "markets" ...

Headed out to the "Net Change Week" event this evening.  Got to ranting to Alfonso before the presentations about a few of my pet theories and wound up with this chain:

• we've got a maximum of maybe 50 years before any rogue nation or disgruntled group can acquire the knowledge required to create nuclear weapons ...

Some thoughts on the Canadian elections under way:

    o C's response to job losses in Ontario and Quebec
          o "Last place to invest"
          o We'll create jobs elsewhere (read: Alberta)
          o Encourage low-value export of raw materials because that makes money today

          o We've created more jobs than we've lost (read: service jobs (low-pay) and ...

Wanted something to stretch my mind a little this evening, so I figured I'd listen to some of the lectures from the TED conference.  Started off with "The Universe on a String", "Open Source Economics" and "Bringing World Class Health Care"... and was rather non-plussed.  From the depth and tone of the talks I ...

One of my colleagues was mentioning a book he'd read in which the author claimed that the most important thing we should be doing was figuring out a way to deflect "killer asteroids" (I assume or meteorites) intent upon destroying the Earth.  The author was apparently saying our greatest need as a society was to ...

Had a conversation a little while back that keeps echoing.  The topic was a mildly racist event of some sort, I don't particularly remember what.  The key question was this: "what's the big deal?"  After all, the event didn't particularly change anyone's life.  My answer at the time was along these lines: "the (nuclear) genie ...