I couldn't fit this is to my little selection of candid shots based on wot people do in Japan, because I am not sure wot he was doing. He works for Japan Railways, and appeared to be photographing the railways tracks at Ishikawacho station.
Let me say that this is one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen, and the so-called tsunami of accusations made in regards to climategate are nothing in compared to the attack on Wegman.Hyperbole much, Professor Curry?
On comment regarding my comments on Wegman (not the Wegman report per se). The whole host of issues surrounding whether or not he is biased, the plaigarism accusation, and whatever else, are issues that I have not investigated in any detail (and don’t intend to). So my comments on this should not receive any undue consideration; they were made when i thought my mention of the Wegman Report was going to be hijacked by the plaigarism issue being raised at deepclimate. This is last word on that subject, and request that Keith not allow any more comments on this topic of plaigarism.[...]
Bottom line is that I just don’t know that much about the Wegman situation, I have acknowledged this several places in the thread. Given this, I hope we can move off the Wegman topic.Yeah, I bet you do. Some might consider an apology would have been much more appropriate.
In my opinion, there needs to be a new independent effort to produce a global historical surface temperature dataset that is transparent and that includes expertise in statistics and computational science.Good luck with that. It's not like there are already 3 or 4 major groups around the world with decades of experience in this work. Oh wait, actually there are. And they all get the same results (modulo a few details for which there are well-known explanations, such as GISS extrapolating over the Arctic). Oh, but that just means they are all in the conspiracy together, right? And they are all discredited because of Jones being rude about someone behind their back, or the hockey stick, or something like that. Really, I have to wonder whether she has investigated the other issues in more detail than the ones relating to Wegman, that "should not receive any undue consideration"...
Cherry blossom was all over a while ago, but it took me all this time to decide which picktur to blog. This one is from my new girlie-weight "full-frame" camera. ...a Nikon N80.
Took my ace wide-angle lens* up the mountains at the weekend, which enabled me to photograph the local architecture - mountain huts
[*Tokina 11-16mm]
Yesterday sister-in-law Helen had another last day in Japan. We spent much of it gawping at Fuji-san.
Time for some more flowers. Red stuff comes out really rubbish on my digital camera. I knew there was no way I'd get the blood red petals of our little boke bush to look sharp. Even with lots of underexposure, red come out kind noisy and fuzzy looking. So instead I decided to just let go and make everything noisy and fuzzy. Did this my cranking the iso up to 1600 and the focal length to 300mm. I think the result is quite interesting....especially viewed small from a distance :-)
The trunk of the ginkgo tree which has been on display at Hachimangu since the tree fell down, was tonight wrapped up and lifted by crane onto the back of a very large truck. I wonder where it is going...
Number 3 in the series "the toxic waste part of town where we work".
Numbers 1 and 2, here and here.
It's raining all day today, and the steerer of the tandem refused. That's him in the distance. The azaleas are just outside our workplace. While the flowers are bright, it is no where near enough that one could say they "brighten up" the dismal surroundings, even though I hope the illusion caused by this wide-angle photograph may lead you to think otherwise.
I wonder if I could make even better illusions with one of these...?
While enjoying your luncheon of a great big squiddy on a plate don't forget to leave room for a little fish-on-a-stick-dessert.
The problem with fish-on-a-stick is that it is often not gutted. The bitter gutty taste contaminates the whole fish and makes it taste quite horrible.
Happy to report that my digestion is now fully recovered from this delicious luncheon, consumed a mere 10 days ago.
[Historical accuracy note: My main meal was a whole raw horse mackerel, while the photo is of sister-in-law's squid, which I helped her finish.]
Nicolas Ribard, 29, from Avignon, France, was among about a dozen stranded tourists squatting on sleeping bags that Narita airport officials had lent them. He and three other friends had about 3,000 yen between them, and were surviving on airport-issued crackers, bottled water and coupons for one free shower a day.Hard to see how Helen could have deserved to jump the queue so comprehensively. Perhaps her mistake was to buy a "Premium Voyager" ticket (but only cos the cheapest ones were sold out by the time she got round to booking...).
Their earliest possible flight would be Taiwan’s EVA Airways on May 12—but only if they are willing to pay an extra 150 euros ($200). Otherwise, they have to wait until June, Ribard said.
Crab apple (kaidou) flowers at about the same time as cherry blossom. A few temples in Kamakura have special kaidou trees, although many trees can be spotted in gardens once you know what you are looking for: hot pink buds and distinctive groups of leaves behind the clusters of blossom. The blossom in this picture was just about the first to open on one of two feature trees positioned in front of the main temple building at Myohonji .
Myohoji was Nichiren's base, from where he went street preaching in Kamakura. While the front garden and buildings of the temple seems normal enough, behind the Deva gate is a damp dilapidated world of green whose centrepiece is a very green staircase.
The inquiry, the second of three set up in the wake of the controversy, found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever", according to Lord Oxburgh, who led the investigation.That follows hard on the heels of the previous exoneration. I suppose this must prove the great climate science conspiracy is still growing! But though I am sure there are some ongoing sighs of relief that the charade is at least coming to a sane conclusion, there actually isn't anything of interest that the climate science community hasn't been saying for months if not years. See mt, Stoat and RC for more on the story. Or perhaps I should say, more on the nothing that has been turned into a story.
What with all the tour guiding, we saw a lot of cherry blossom this year. Unfortunately for the inlaws, it was not such a good season as last year. Not only were the skies rather grey, but the unreasonably cold weather prevented the flowers from blossoming simultaneously. Nevertheless, many people enjoyed cherry blossom viewing.
Helen, my tall sister in law, is very good at spotting birds. Here is one she found yesterday on the Hakone side of Myojin ga take. Japanese white-eyes are fairly common here, but this was bigger, browner, with a bright yellow beak and different shaped spectacles.
Does any one have any idea what it is?
Update 16/04/2010: It's a Hwamei or Melodious Laughingthrush. Thanks to andrewt.
--Experimenting with life as tour guides. Perhaps we won't give up the day jobs quite yet. Here is Matsumoto castle, which is very nice. The only other place in Japan that I've seen such a high proportion of white people as in Matsumoto, is on Mount Fuji. We have travelled through Matsumoto railway station many times on mountain climbing trips, but have never before passed beyond the ticket barrier. Tomorrow another first - we hire a car - thanks to James' recent acquisition of a license.
After a few days of in-law visitation one may start to feel a little frazzled.
"But the downside of early online publishing is a confusing array of publicly available article types, awaiting print publication in various stages of editorial preparation. Adding to the confusion, interactive journals such as Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics place papers online first for peer review, and then in their final form."ACP is the most well-established of the EGU journals, increasingly preferred by high-profile (indeed all) scientists over more traditional routes to publication. Could it be that Nature feels a a little threatened by their huge success? One can only hope so. Of course putting the submitted manuscripts online is a bit of a pre-requisite for any open review system, so their unsupported claim that this is "adding to the confusion" is just a handy way of predetermining their preferred conclusion - that open peer review is a bad thing. Perhaps a watermark on the pdfs - "DRAFT" or similar - would be a sensible step, but surely this is a minor point hardly worthy of editorialising.
What needs to be decided is how much a preliminary paper published online should be allowed to change before it constitutes a new paper.Huh? What actually is the problem here that needs solving?
