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Wanted: Moral Courage
powered by Surfing Waves “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare,” wrote Mark Twain more than a century ago. If moral courage means knowing what’s right and both doing it and defending it in spite of fear or obstructions, would you say we’ve improved over the years? My heart wants to say yes but my head tells me no. Every day seems to bring distressing news of moral courage in decline. When we see acts of moral courage, we should recognize and applaud t…
Smaller fists of fury, not monsters of the past, more likely with hurricanes
powered by Surfing Waves Unlike the 1930s through 1950s, when longer tracked storms would hit the US near their peaks, not since Hugo in 1989 has a storm that was a major for 3 days or more out, reached the coast at peak intensity. The list is amazing. Let’s start with Opal 1995. Georges had been a 4/5. made landfall as a 2/3. Floyd weakened to a 2 from a 4. Lily was a generous 2 from a 4 after having been called 12 hours before the worst hurricane ever to hit Louisiana. Remember. we are saying more than 3 …
Is hot yoga good for you? Exploring the science behind the sweat
powered by Surfing Waves Hot yoga also known as Bikram yoga (more on that later) has gained significant popularity in recent years as a fairly ferocious form of exercise. It combines yoga poses and breathing exercises and is practised in a heated studio – with room temperatures close to 40°C. This style of yoga is designed to replicate the environmental conditions of India and is typically practised for around 90 minutes, leaving students (and teachers) dripping in sweat come the end of class. Practising…
Offshore wind costs bound to go up
powered by Surfing Waves If reducing CO2 emissions is the justification for industrializing the ocean with offshore wind, then we need to know what the cost per ton of CO2 reduction is. This number is likely to be ridiculously large, on the order of thousands of dollars a ton. We have already discussed the reduction analysis part, finding that the reductions are likely to be relatively small per MW of wind generating capacity. See my https://www.cfact.org/2023/05/31/offshore-wind-may-not-reduce-co2-emissions/ . …
AI is already being used in healthcare. But not all of it is 'medical grade'
powered by Surfing Waves Shutterstock Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days, and healthcare is no exception. There are computer vision tools that can detect suspicious skin lesions as well as a specialist dermatologist can. Other tools can predict coronary artery disease from scans . There are also data-driven robots that guide minimally-invasive surgery. To precisely diagnose diseases and guide treatment choices , AI is used to analyse patients’ genomi…
Republican Presidential Candidates Lining Up in Support of War on Mexico
powered by Surfing Waves On April 10, I wrote about Republican presidential candidates being open to pursuing war on Mexico — sending the US military into Mexico to fight drug cartels despite the opposition of the Mexico government to such intervention. Mexican-American War II advocates, I noted, included candidates Donald Trump, Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy. It turns out the list of Republican presidential candidates open to such US military action is longer. Republican presidential candidates Tim Sc…
Dethroning the Almighty Dollar?
powered by Surfing Waves This is the text of a talk by AIER Research Faculty Peter C. Earle at the June 7, 2023 Meeting of Alder Unplugged. Good afternoon and thank you for having me. I’ve planned for these remarks to take no more than ten minutes, but economists are about as good at forecasting as politicians are at budgeting. So, it may run a slight bit longer – apologies in advance if it does. About two months ago, on April 4th, I wrote an article entitled “ De-dollarization has Begun ” which w…
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