Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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I have just been referred to the article by Kaplan (in a journal I do not read regularly, thanks Bernie), who has reevaluated the extent of human induced landscape change in the Holocene. It seems that, as I said on 2016-01-23, Ruddiman’s hypothesis looks well established by now and we should perhaps begin calling it a theory.

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Having next to no previous knowledge about Alfred Rust for evaluating Ickerodt’s comments about him, the article itself is all I have to go by. But that alone is fully sufficient to tell the difference between reasoned argument and prejudiced denigration.

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Lonely people die younger, social contacts help to live longer. Digital “social” media are said to make you lonely. So Hobbs et al.’s headline, claiming online socialising to work nearly as well as in real life, must come as a godsend to all those digital entrepreneurs out there. As so often happens, their real result is well hidden near the end of the introduction, the least read part (more…)

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In discussing direct, human observable cause-effect relationships correlations of R²≈.2 or R²<.05, as used by Key et al., ought to be seen as utterly beyond the pale. Both their main regressions in figure 4d and e seem to stem from the group of outliers above 150 and 250 seconds alone. (more…)

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As far as I can tell the results derived by Krupenye et al. and concisely explained by de Waal are meaningless and tell us nothing. (more…)

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I wish psychologists would extend the careful preparation of their experiments and their specificity to precise and limited circumstances as claimed by Bryan et al. to the reporting of their results, which quite to the contrary often come out generalised and overblown as Gerber et al. rightly point out.

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Just like Epstein et al. (list of 2016-09-09) Knapp et al. demonstrate the remarkable resilience of nature. The short-term response to change often looks catastrophic but turns out not to be in the longer term. Viewing the vast climate swings of the past it obviously has to be thus. Of course single species or even large numbers of them may easily fall by the wayside, and in the larger picture of things this may well include humans.

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Alright, what do we have in Mason? There is a new phenomenon, first observed in the 1960ies and with a cycle length of about 28 years months, yielding a grand total of two twenty-four observed cycles so far. Now, in the third twenty-fifth cycle something different happens and, guess what, we have a new shocking consequence of Global Warming, what else?

Correction (2016-10-18)

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Woodley adds to my criticism of Beauchamp’s result in the list of 2016-07-17. In his answer Beauchamp admits the main underlying fact that he had done his best to hide in the original article.

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I’m still convinced that early Neolithic people did not have the means to transport and exchange staple foodstuffs in bulk. So if grain becomes visible as food, as Cristiani et al. seem to demonstrate, something else must be going on.

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