myBlogs

Bill Howell's Blog :
This web-page is a reverse-chronological listing (new items first) of items that I post from time-to-time. A fair proportion is material into which I put considerable time (projects etc).

28Aug2020 Lawrence W. Reed's analysis "Great Myths of the Great Depression"
(01Jan1988, updated 2010) provides a very different and fascinating analysis of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.

Coolidge-Hoover years : substantial cuts to high marginal tax rates, bloating of money supply 1921-1928? (+60%?) followed by strong contraction late 1920s, substantial sales of government securities post-crash, and Smoot-Hawley tariff of Jun1930 igniting international trade war (eg loss of 1/3 of agricultural markets from foreign import restrictions. Adolf Hitler : "When goods don't cross frontiers, armies will"). In 1932, Hoover doubled the income tax (top marginal rate from 24 to 63%).

Roosevelt years : During the 1932 election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt criticised Hoover for "leading the country down the path of socialism". One of Roosevelt's policy architects of 1930's, Rexford Guy Tugwell "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started". Roosevelt's early initiatives included the Works Progress Administration, gold seizure, the strong-arm National Recovery Administration (NRA, outlawed by Supreme Court in 1935), and strong tax increases. In the next phase, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was passed, and punitive treatment ensued for "high income earners responsible for making the bulk of the nation's decisions about private investment". The top tax rate was increased to 79% then 90%, and banking reserve requirements were doubled. Economic historian Robert Higgs : "The relentless assault of the Roosevelt administration - in both word and deed - against business, property, and free enterprise guaranteed that the capital needed to jump-start the economy was either taxed away or went into hiding." Lawrence Reed concludes his report stating "... The Great Depression finally ended, but it should linger in our minds today as one of the most colossal and tragic failures of public policy in American history. The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies of the US government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. ..."
(first posted 28Aug2020 on this blog and MarketWatch, but MW dropped the content about Roosevelt)
28Aug2020 Similarities between stock markets in 1929 and 2020
Below I've provided a few TradingView references and two other sources that have plotted strong similarities between stock markets in 1929 and 2020, including (lead, lag) times involved. I expect that there are thousands of others references proving comparitive plots. Several MarketWatch comments pose the question - will the Fed new accommodation of inflation lead to Japan-like post-1989 moribund conditions?

TradingView postings :
26Mar2020 TexasWestCapital, Amjad Farooq 1929 versus 2020
15Apr2020 PassiCoin, S&P500 1929vs2020- short-mid-long term Forecast. Conclusion- We are fucked

Two other subscribed sources :
28Mar2020 Steve Puetz newsletter, Economic Depression - (1929,1987,2020) comparison of Dow Industrials versus (NASDAQ,railroads)
25Apr2020 Steve Puetz newsletter, The Greatest Depression - (1997,2020) comparison of (DJIA, NASDAQ) versus 1997 Hang Seng (Hong Kong) crash
05Jul2020 Steve Puetz newsletter, Quadruple Whammy - (1637 Tulips,South Sea Bubble,1869,1929,1980 Gold,1982,1984,1987,2000,2008,2018,mid 2020) (DJIA,S&P500,NASDAQ) full moon before solar eclipse preclude to crashes
27Aug2020 Harry Dent subscriber update, Dow 1929 scenario - Dow first crash with 5-month bounce
(28Aug2020 first posted on TradingView and on this blog)
14May2020 Howell - COVID-19 : [incomplete, random, scattered] cart [information, analysis, questions]
Information from many reliable sources is posted, including some of my own work to make [case, death] rates per million population for several countries. I have added my own [questions, comments, opinions] to provoke thinking. In general, the US is performing like most other caucasian countries, which seem to be having a particularly hard time with the virus. Canada is doing exceptionally well so far, but we'll see what happens ofver the next 6 months. Do our [self-isolation, social distancing] measures kill more people than the virus? In other words, is the cure worse than the cause? Is the virus really the cause of the [market crash, recession]? Food for thought...
(first posted 14May2020)
28Dec2019 Milky Way current sheet progression indicators, plus : Birkeland currents, NOT dark matter?
Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observers posted 3 brilliant videos on nearby stellar flaring, as further support for a potential "micro-flare" or other solar disruption to explain the 12,000 year [mythological observations, paleontology, geology, planetary] quasi-periodicity of disruptive events on Earth, which by appearances may be "imminent". I like Ben's <=50 to >=200 year uncertainty - and even though that is still a bit of guess, he is meticulous in pointing out the uncertainties.

But can stellar [birth, ignition, extinction] progression also provide further potential evidence of an approaching period of super-activity for the Sun? What has long fascinated me is the statement that the spirals of the galaxies move more rapidly than the stars in the galaxy, and how that might relate to the [Newtonian, General Relativity] problem at large scales. If I remember correctly, it is thought that this may be the result of "compression waves" moving though the stars. But there may be other explanations.

If we take an "Electric Universe" perspective, then perhaps shifts in the galactic currents could be expected to "light up" or "extinguish" stars to various degrees as the currents shift and move. In other words, the "lit-up regions" motions may relate more to drifts of galactic currents than to the motions of the stars themselves? My own [cheap, crappy] animation for the spiral currents moving though stations stars is shown in my video (mpeg format) : Bill Howells videos/Birkeland rotation in galaxy - not dark matter/Dark matter video 1 - initial, simple.mpeg

From the perspective of the Milky Way current sheets, are there long-term historical records of local stellar regions [brighten,darken]ing within the range of "parallax" (distance estimates based on the varying Earth position as it revolves around the Sun), which can show indications of an approaching current sheet? While it may be next to impossible to single out stars in distant galaxies to see this, is there enough data on changes to stellar brightness to detect this locally in the Milky Way? As a side comment to explain my emphasis on parallax, I don't trust red shift, as even though it may be a [simple, handy] means of guessing [location, radial speed relative to Earth], and though is is a near-religion in astronomy, Halton Arp proved that it doesn't work in many cases (perhaps most?) and was was severley punished for pointing this out. Even Hubble cautioned against over-confidence in his Nobel-prize-winning concept.

(first posted 28Dec2019, see also my blog below "27Jun2015 Howell - Electric Universe : Climate & Svensmark Milankovic, Dark matter & Veizer-Shaviv")
The Demise of "Moby Dick"
Moby Dick, age 11 of Hussar Alberta, passed away ~14:00 Tuesday 11Dec2018, by the John Deer dealer just outside of Rosedale Alberta, in the company of his loving and stupid owner still sitting in the drivers' seat. Born in Ottawa Ontario of uncertain first owners, an orphaned Moby was adopted by the current owner, Captain Hook (apologies to Captain Ahab, but I have an amputated right hand, not leg) in July 2008, with the primary intent of hauling around OH^3 members (the drinking club with a running problem).
      Moby will always be remembered as a first class and dependable ride, accomodative of up to 15 passengers (including driver), and leaves us with fond memories of travels throughout Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, Massachusettes, Ottawa-to-Washington DC, and wherever else I've forgotten.
      Three of the four benches still serve loyally as front room furniture in the house. Additionally, Moby is survived by a rich set of tools, emergency gear and clothing, a broom, and my gym gear.
      Moby's lifelong friend and owner is dressed in black (and blue and red) as a sign of mourning and respect.
"... Thar she blows ..."
(first posted 20Dec2018)
27Aug2018 Howell - LibreCalc bank account macro system
(link doesn't work - I lost my file)
The "LibreCalc bank account macro system" is a [small, simple (2 day to write, document), general, easily apdaptable] system to semi-automatically assign [KeyWords, CatWords] (classes or categories) to rows of data that are copy-pasted from online reports. The example provided is a my monthly spending bank account, which receives intentionally small amounts monthly to force me to control my spending (not so successfully).
Automatic [KeyWords, CatWords] are generated based on exact text phrases that appear in a column of electronic bank reports. But these automatic results are easily over-ridden manually assigning KeyWord, without corrupting the regeneration of [KeyWods, CatWords] for all transactions by the macro.
The [description, instructions] text file (click on link above), provides links to other macros and spreadsheets, but the other macros aren't explained, nor are the example workbooks yet posted. Click for LibreOffice macro directory listing
(email dated 14Aug2018, first posted here 14Aug2018)
14Aug2018 Howell - Paradigm shift examples
Here is a [random,scattered,incomplete] listing of paradigms, some with short descriptions. Themes include :
- Self-development, self-image
- Family
- Health, Food, Environment
- Energy, Materials
- Management, Jobs, Markets
- History, War, Politics
- Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Mathematics
- Precedents & Beyond paradigms
As I state in the Introduction of the email :
"... Only a few of my examples below are conventional paradigm shifts. Perhaps just as well, as it's hard to fit my thinking into what excites others, and the diversity of what's below may be more useful than a recant of conventional examples. None of this is original - it is my expectation that "multiple, time-distended-or-simultaneous invention" is the norm across historical time-periods even for much modern thinking. Nor is any of it [true,false,right,wrong] - I find that a self-imposed "multiple conflicting hypothesis" makes those criteria less relevant, if still present. ..."
and :
"... In any case, there is no way to make the lists or explanations complete within a "practically finite" amount of time. ..."
(email dated 14Aug2018, first posted here 14Aug2018)
24Jun2018 de Jager, Nieuwenhuijzen, Nieuwenhuijzen, Duhau, northern hemisphere ground temperature and solar [polar,equatorial] magnetic activity
This paper is an important updated analysis of the sun's contributions to Earth temperatures, and how one might attempt to predict future solar activity and therefore Earth's climate. Their work is important because it does not simply follow the herd, they have the courage to be different and speak out, and their results are vastly superior to the mainstream scientific thinking. The main findings are nicely summarized in de Jager's statement below.
I took a couple of days to go through some of the papers that de Jager and Duhau sent in the past. My own detailed comments appear at the end of the note.
(first posted here 24Jun2018)
26May2018 Questions related to cosmic-galactic rays and the Van Allen Belt layers.
Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observer's video "F4 Ionosphere : A Sign of Higher Energy" extends a Brazilian news release of 22May2018, "New network is installed to investigate space weather over South America : New layer of the ionosphere (F4)". Ben points out that this is very reminiscent of the multi-layer plasma shells in SAFIRE experiments, and how these increase in number with increasing current and voltage.

In his effective style of thinking and presenting, Ben Davidson raises excellent questions about this discovery, and ties it to the Electric-Universe-related SAFIRE project, in addition to the rapidly-declining Earth's geomagnetic field and possibly oncoming reversal in the "near" future [years,decades], and possible [health,industry,Climate, Earthquake-Volcano, etc] impacts, for which he has posted many insightful comments and videos over the last years-to-decade. The main points that Ben emphasizes are that the new F4 Van Allen belt observed by the Brazilians may reflect : 1) New technology allows the F4 discovery; 2) Increased radiation lead to an enhanced F4 signature; and 3) Increased radiation has created the F4 layer (rather like the SAFIRE project). He favours points 2 & 3.

However, I raise another possibility, that the increased radiation is not solely from increased cosmic rays, but that the effect may result from RELATIVELY much higher negative Earth potential compared to the Sun. That is, if it takes time for the Earth's potential to equalise with that of the Sun, then a rapid drop (eg over the sunspot cycle, and in particular for a very week cycle) in the Sun's potential could alone account for extra plasma double layers to balance the potential around the Earth. In effect, the Earth is like a very large capacitor. This could happen the other way around as well, for a rapid increase in the solar potential, which would encounter a RELATIVELY weak and slow-adjusting Earth potential.

Furthermore, this makes one think of the counter-correlation between sunspots and cosmic rays. Here, maybe a factor isn't just [Sun,Earth] magnetic field overall strength levels, but that a RELATIVE change in the Earth's field might "channel" more cosmic rays to the Earth in relation to the sun. That would make no effect on the Sun's reception of cosmic rays, but perhaps could be significant for the Earth?.

Returning to Ben's theme of the Earth's geomagnetic field and its impacts, he often points out in his daily 5-minute solar video that weak [solar,geomagnetic] fields make the Earth far more vulnerable to much smaller solar events. Maybe the questions I've posted above may also add to the many observations and questions that Ben has posed about these themes (far example Sunspots and Earthspots : Electromagnetic similarities, and also see QuakeWatch.net, 27May2018 update.

27May2018 update : Missing from yesterday's posting is: 1) the RATE of change of electric potential, current, and magnetic fields (derivatives >=1), a concept so often missing in commentaries, but well pointed out by Paul Vaughan a decade or two ago, and also rarely commented on by others.; 2) ?Hienrick? Svensmark's work on cosmic rays and climate, which to me appears to be one of the better correlates across all time scales (I can't find a graph of the last glaciation cycle, which I believe Jan Veizer mentioned felt was one of the best models for it, and perhaps would apply back further if longer half-life isotopic data was available). Both points are very pertinent when looking at the F4 Van Allen belt.
(first posted here 26May2018, also posted to YouTube)
18May2018 Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observer's video "Cancer in Science"
Ben's video extends a Nature journal News Feature of 16May2018 "Some hard numbers on science's leadership problems A Nature survey of 3,200 scientists reveals the tensions bubbling in research groups around the world." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05143-8
This article just focuses on concerns expressed by junior scientists "... (that is, those who don't lead the group, such as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) ..." regarding their supervising Principal Investigators and how science gets done in the labs. Better training for lab leadership seems to be the main focus of the article and underlying research (I did not retrieve the full study).
Ben Davidson extends the issue to a much more general "Cancer in Science" theme for much deeper and more serious problems "EVERYWHERE" in science.

Bill Howell's blog reply (this disappeared over the same day it was posted) :
After several decades of complaining about these problems, with only rare [comments,writing] by scientists to take as comfort, it is heartening to see this article being published in a major science journal, albeit a journal that has been forefront in promoting favoured mainstream concepts while repressing alternate [concepts,scientists].
However, I disagree with at least a couple of points in the "Cancer of science" : 1) This isn't a limited or moderate problem, but is seemingly pervasive to all areas of science (I am mostly tracking [physics, astronomy, geology, history, environment] and see occasional material in medicine), but find it everywhere that I take the time to look closer. ; 2) It's NOT primarily the [money,profit,career], although those factors can [accelerate,deepen] the problem. Most scientists don't receive huge funding to promote mainstream science [fashions-cum-cults-cum-religions] of which they are not experts, and yet they normally jump on the bandwagons and strong believe in an support problematic science. The [funding,profit,career] argument is what I consider to be a recurring failure of Western thinking, that prevents us from digging deeper to understand the problem, which to me is that humans (scientists) function mainly according to conformant belief systems (principle of locality - the ideals of science), not [strong, critical] thinking (principle of generality - the reality of scientists). In that, I agree with postings by [IamTranslation, Fred farquar] below.
Ultimately, I don't think the situation will change much, as it is based on normal human behaviour. The Computational Intelligence (CI) capabilities will likely make it worse, as they can be exploited to bend [data, analysis, results, implications] (already there is movement to force correct responses from these technologies). Current momentum indicates that this will get much worse rather than better, perhaps leading to another era of scientific stagnation (lmwrt's dark ages post below), but hopefully leading to a culminating crisis that might force [reform, re-direction]. Being conquered and crushed has been a frequent historical remedy.
(first posted 18May2018)
24Feb2018 Fires - cities and forests - I haven't yet put together comments etc, but a few pointers are :
- The Great Fire of Chicago 1871 - descriptions and comments Here is a fascinating collection of eyewitness accounts and comments about the fire, taken from : Charles Ginenthal 1990 "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky" Ivy Press Books, New York 359pp (Amazon shows 1995 paperback)
- Milan M. Radovanovic, Tomislav M. Pavlovic, Gorica B. Stanojevic, Misko M. Milanovic, Mila A. Pavlovic, Aleksandar R. Radivojevic 2014 "The influence of solar activities on occurance of the forest fires in Southern Europe"
- Ben Davidson 25Jun2014 "2012 Serbian Wildfires"
- Douglas V. Hoyt, Kenneth H. Schatten ?year? "The role of the sun in climate change", citing Auclair 1995 Forest fires versus sunspots
(first posted 24Feb2018, annotations in Ginenthal book circa 23Nov2012)
05Jul2017 Modern recognition for a Ukrainian [mathematician, scientist] Alexey Grigorevich Ivakhnenko? - I haven't yet put together comments etc, but a few pointers are :
While I certainly no expert, I have been casually following "Deep Learning Neural Networks" (DL-NNs) since ~2013, a few years after it began to have a serious impact on [computational intelligence, science, engineering, commercial implementations at Google, Facebook, Siemens, and others]. It is perhaps a major contributor (along with other techniques) to the current interest in AI (Artificial Intelligence, although it is actually Computational Intelligence - CI), and the current rennaisance of neural network interest, which has occurred roughly every 20 years since approxmately the 1940s. [Driverless cars, language translation, speech recognition, social media capabilities and marketing] are a few of the areas of impact of Dep Learning.

For several years, a leading (giant) scientist in the area, Jeurgen Schmidhuber http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/ has repeatedly stated that the conceptual roots of Deep Learning (neural network (NN) based) can be traced back to at least the work of Ukrainian ?scientist Ivakhnenko in the 1960's :
Although I can't find the [blogs, interviews] mentioning the lack of recognition for Ivakhnenko (Juergen has stated that verbally in conference plenaries), here are couple of examples of Jeurgen's statements about Ivakhnenko's importance historically :

J. Schmidhuber. Deep Learning in Neural Networks: An Overview. Neural Networks, Volume 61, January 2015, Pages 85-117 (DOI: 10.1016/j.neunet.2014.09.003) http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Q3Bc3BBjKFZVN
Online version : http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/DeepLearning2July2014.pdf
Overview : http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/deep-learning-overview.html
Juergen Schmidhuber - Machine Learning https://plus.google.com/100849856540000067209 "... Who introduced the term "deep learning" to the field of Machine Learning (ML) and Neural Networks (NNs)? Just a few days ago we had an interesting discussion about this on the connectionists mailing list http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/connectionists Although Ivakhnenko had working, deep learning nets in the 1960s (still used in the new millennium), and Fukushima had them in the 1970s, and backpropagation also was invented back then, nobody called this "deep learning." ..."

However, it seems that Ivakhnenko never has received recognition for his work, which did not really become a reality until decades later (work of Paul Werebos' "Ordered derivatives" (the [simpler,incomplete,generally incorrect] version "backpropagation came in ~1986 via three groups) and models dating back to 1974, Kuhino Fukashima's ?1981? "Neocognitron", Jeurgen Schmidhumer's 1991 "Long Short-Term Memory" (LSTM), and 2006-2012? popularisation by Yan LeCunn via simpler Convolutional Neural Networks, as well as Geoffrey Hinton) are some of the steps along the way (Schidhuber's review provides a wealth of information on this). But Ivakhnenko might be considered to be a giant as well.

I am not going to pursue this issue myself, but I thought that someone within the Ukrainian community might be interested in doing the background confirmation of this story, find out if there is already an effort to recognize Ivakhnenko's contributions, and if not either do something about it, or find someone that will. Who knows, it could be another inspiration for young Ukrainian [students, mathematicians, scientists, engineers].

(first posted 01Jun2018, taken directly from my comment of 05Jul2017 21:06 to ?http://ukrainiancalgary.blogspot.ca/? and I may have commented to https://www.facebook.com/SUSKNational. Neither (mis-)communication was posted)
28Oct2017 Past and Future Worlds - a STEM presentation for kids This presentation was prepared for the Drumheller Library, Alberta, Canada, as part of their Science, Technology, Engineering, Technology (STEM) project for kids 8-12 years old. A few selected themes, many will simple "experiments" are presented, and includes the themes :
1. What do you do with theories that are wrong?
2. Expanding Earth hypothesis versus Continental Drift
3. Computational Intelligence versus Artificial Intelligence
4. Hearing Aids
5. Language translation
6. Human Cognition
Toolsets can be browsed via: Past and Future Worlds directory. Perhaps these may be of interest, help] to others putting together a film from Linux-based free software.
(first posted 28Oct2017)
01Sep2016 Big Data, Deep Learning, and Safety This is a video made from a presentation that I gave on 01Sep2016 at ACM Facility Safety, Calgary, Canada. While I had essentially all of the material (including voice recordings at the time of the presentation, I converted the entire presentation to video to have a compact, useable format to post of the web. ACM, holds regular meetings each month
The video is in ".ogv" format (Open Graphics Group - related, I think), which will be problematic to many MS Windows and Mac users (you will have to download a video player that can use ogv format).
In addition to the video of the presentation, "Howell 161220 Big Data, Deep Learning, Safety.ogv">, I have also posted the [software, scheduling/coding spredsheet, slides, etc] used to produce the video, but not any proprietary video segments (to reduce space). This may be of use to others who produce videos and would like to kow how I approached this. It won't be directly adapatable, as I have used a little-known language, Queen's University of Kingston "Nested Interactive Array Language (Q'Nial) to actually run the playing of [slides, references, images, videos, etc] of which it is composed. Although there is some documentation, it is very limited.
As far as I know, ACM closed its operations later that year due to the collapse in their oil&gas related safety consulting business following the combined double-whammy of the oil price collapse and a provincial government hostile to the oil&gas (and essentially all other) industries.
(video first posted 08Dec2015, software, slides etc used to produce video posted 26Sep2017)
28May2016 Paul Vaughan - Ring_of_Fire and Volcano_Explosivity_Index versus El_Nino_La_Nina Here is a breakthrough graph from Paul that relates volcanic activity to El Nino/ La Nina. This makes an interesting century-scale [compliment, contrast] to a "short term" model for major earthquakes by Ben Davidson and colleagues of Suspicious0bservers.org (that's a "zero", not a capital "O"). The public website is Suspicious 0bservers, which has daily space weather comments. You will have to subscribe (~5$/month) to see Davidson's impressive video : Citizen Science - Model of Solar-triggered earthquakes confirmed and Related papers : The sun triggers large earthquakes.
Davidson's earthquake model depends on maxima/minima in the Solar Polar Fields/Coronal Hole IMF. This reminds me of several of Paul's climate models, where effects are related to the rate of change of solar and other variables.
(received 27May2016, posted 28May2016)
08Dec2015 Howell - The Greatest of cycles : Human implications? - ... draft document in prep - posting within a day or two ...
Here is an [initial, random, scattered] framework of human-related "quasi-cycles", as background thoughts to the work of Puetz, Prokoph, Borchardt, Mason 01Apr2014 (see my 07Dec2015 posting below). I use the term "quasi-cycle" as complex natural cycles tend to be non-stationary, meaning that they do not always adhere to a fixed pattern, and that is one of many excellent points on the reliabilitities and errors of analysis that Puetz etal bring out far better than the vast majority of scientists.
(first posted 08Dec2015, random, scattered framwork document, 06Oct2016 - oops added the file&link)
07Dec2015 Alert! awesome, beautiful paper! : Puetz, Prokoph, Borchardt, Mason 01Apr2014 Evidence of Synchronous, Decadal to Billion Year Cycles in Geological, Genetic, and Astronomical Events - It's rare that I put an "Alert" on a posting, but this one may deserve it. Based on Glenn's neo-mechanical assumptions (the 10 Assumptions of Science), and at odds with several "Great Religions" of modern scientists, this paper provides a breath-taking model for [astronomical, geological, genetic, climate, etc] cycles from 57 ky to 14 Gy - a vastly greater span than I've seen before. Furthermore, the concept seems likely to be extensible to much shorter times-scales. For example, authors do discuss sunspot cycles, and I'll take a wild guess that this will work at least down to semi-annual timescales, but likely to tiny fractions of seconds (ad-inifitesimal?).
Comments:
- The Bill Howell in the acknowledgements is NOT me. Apparently he is a friend of Glenn Borchardt's, possibly a geologist.
- Both Prokoph (one of the authors) and Paul Vaughan do great wavelet transform analysis. Vaughan (see elsewhere on my website) does what I consider to be the best modelling of short-term climate (<=150 years) of anything that I've seen in detail. It will be very interesting to see the application of Puetz etal to timescales <57 ky, and whether Paul Vaughan will have important critiques of, and contributions to, that analysis.
- Although the Borchardt's underlying concept is based on fractals, I don't think the authors have addressed "fractional order calculus", a growing topic of interest to me. Paul Vaughan has addressed that in his own way.
- Human [history, markets, etc] effects are of interest to the authors.
(first posted 07Dec2015, incomplete quick comments)
27Jun2015 Howell - Electric Universe : Climate & Svensmark Milankovic, Dark matter & Veizer-Shaviv - Richard Moore's presentation of "Pulsating universe and planet Earth" at the Electric Universe 2015 conference in Phoenix Arizona, 26Jun2015, tied concepts from the Electric Universe to climate cycles for glaciation, Dansgaard/Oeschger ice rafting events, and other events. It was a refreshing and thought provoking presentation, pregnant with great questions.
The following is a very incomplete, rapid fire response to the presentation, hopefully in time to provoke a response before the end of the conference. I've attempted to tie Richard Moore's presentation to some other related work from outside the Electric Universe (EU) community.
Perhaps a key idea is the "flexibility" offered by the EU context for dark matter and energy - the only resonable description I've seen so far, other than simply serving as a salvage of theories that may not work. Furthermore, it evokes beautiful images and descriptions (not provided!) of whole new processes in astronomy, and may tie in well with Dwardu Cardona's Saturn concepts in mythology.
(first posted 27Jun2015, incomplete quick comments)
25May2015 Howell - Icebreaker unchained : We should have lost World War II - Here is a crazy re-interpretation of the [origins, drive, planning, organisation, execution] of World War II, in the form of background material for a series of videos. The current video series are from the perspective of the Nazi campaigns leading up to Operation Barbarossa (the initial Nazi invasion of Russia), and I have produced a [DRAFT, incomplete, uncorrected] version of Part I of the video series. As the content draws substantially from copyrighted film segments and images, it cannot be distributed. However, the incomplete script (part of which is incomplete outline form) is posted, as are the toolsets I have been using to build the film [programs, spreadsheets, script files, my voice recordings, etc]. I am posting this now, as I can only work on the film for part of two months or so out of a year, and it will take at least several years to finish.
The main theme is that much of WWII progressed as planned and prepared by the Soviets - as manifested by the timing and direction of both the Nazis and Japanese during the initial part of the war, and even by the [timing, direction] of actions by the Americans and British. That's a bit of a stretch for sure, and I am not proposing that the theme is correct. But it just may be more correct in many ways than the overwhelming mainstream historical interpretations, at least on key points and the big picture of the war.
Toolsets can be browed via: Icebreaker unchained directory. Perhaps these may be of interest, help] to others putting together a film from Linux-based free software.
(first posted 25May2015, incomplete & full of errors, based on work still in development since 23May2009, 22Dec2017 fixed broken links)
27Apr2015 Howell's Reincarnation : Speculations on a possible mechanistic context - From recent discussions, my old concept related to a possible explanation of, and a mechanistic context for, reincarnation has again surfaced. A short "joke" on this theme, "A Riddle by, for, of, on, and with the Mind" was posted to my website circa 31Jan2007, and emails (hard to track in my old drives, possibly lost) relate to an earlier Toastmaster presentation or discussion in ~26Jun2006.
While the linked document is presented as a joke that you might want to pull on your friends, it actually is an interesting concept that I may some day address, given that I
08Dec2015 Howell - The Greatest of cycles : Human implications? - ... draft document in prep - posting within a day or two ...
Here is an [initial, random, scattered] framework of human-related "quasi-cycles", as background thoughts to the work of Puetz, Prokoph, Borchardt, Mason 01Apr2014 (see my 07Dec2015 posting below). I use the term "quasi-cycle" as complex natural cycles tend to be non-stationary, meaning that they do not always adhere to a fixed pattern, and that is one of many excellent points on the reliabilitities and errors of analysis that Puetz etal bring out far better than the vast majority of scientists.
(first posted 08Dec2015, random, scattered framwork document, 06Oct2016 - oops added the file&link)
07Dec2015 Alert! awesome, beautiful paper! : Puetz, Prokoph, Borchardt, Mason 01Apr2014 Evidence of Synchronous, Decadal to Billion Year Cycles in Geological, Genetic, and Astronomical Events - It's rare that I put an "Alert" on a posting, but this one may deserve it. Based on Glenn's neo-mechanical assumptions (the 10 Assumptions of Science), and at odds with several "Great Religions" of modern scientists, this paper provides a breath-taking model for [astronomical, geological, genetic, climate, etc] cycles from 57 ky to 14 Gy - a vastly greater span than I've seen before. Furthermore, the concept seems likely to be extensible to much shorter times-scales. For example, authors do discuss sunspot cycles, and I'll take a wild guess that this will work at least down to semi-annual timescales, but likely to tiny fractions of seconds (ad-inifitesimal?).
Comments:
- The Bill Howell in the acknowledgements is NOT me. Apparently he is a friend of Glenn Borchardt's, possibly a geologist.
- Both Prokoph (one of the authors) and Paul Vaughan do great wavelet transform analysis. Vaughan (see elsewhere on my website) does what I consider to be the best modelling of short-term climate (<=150 years) of anything that I've seen in detail. It will be very interesting to see the application of Puetz etal to timescales <57 ky, and whether Paul Vaughan will have important critiques of, and contributions to, that analysis.
- Although the Borchardt's underlying concept is based on fractals, I don't think the authors have addressed "fractional order calculus", a growing topic of interest to me. Paul Vaughan has addressed that in his own way.
- Human [history, markets, etc] effects are of interest to the authors.
(first posted 07Dec2015, incomplete quick comments)
27Jun2015 Howell - Electric Universe : Climate & Svensmark Milankovic, Dark matter & Veizer-Shaviv - Richard Moore's presentation of "Pulsating universe and planet Earth" at the Electric Universe 2015 conference in Phoenix Arizona, 26Jun2015, tied concepts from the Electric Universe to climate cycles for glaciation, Dansgaard/Oeschger ice rafting events, and other events. It was a refreshing and thought provoking presentation, pregnant with great questions.
The following is a very incomplete, rapid fire response to the presentation, hopefully in time to provoke a response before the end of the conference. I've attempted to tie Richard Moore's presentation to some other related work from outside the Electric Universe (EU) community.
Perhaps a key idea is the "flexibility" offered by the EU context for dark matter and energy - the only resonable description I've seen so far, other than simply serving as a salvage of theories that may not work. Furthermore, it evokes beautiful images and descriptions (not provided!) of whole new processes in astronomy, and may tie in well with Dwardu Cardona's Saturn concepts in mythology.
(first posted 27Jun2015, incomplete quick comments)
25May2015 Howell - Icebreaker unchained : We should have lost World War II - Here is a crazy re-interpretation of the [origins, drive, planning, organisation, execution] of World War II, in the form of background material for a series of videos. The current video series are from the perspective of the Nazi campaigns leading up to Operation Barbarossa (the initial Nazi invasion of Russia), and I have produced a [DRAFT, incomplete, uncorrected] version of Part I of the video series. As the content draws substantially from copyrighted film segments and images, it cannot be distributed. However, the incomplete script (part of which is incomplete outline form) is posted, as are the toolsets I have been using to build the film [programs, spreadsheets, script files, my voice recordings, etc]. I am posting this now, as I can only work on the film for part of two months or so out of a year, and it will take at least several years to finish.

The main theme is that much of WWII progressed as planned and prepared by the Soviets - as manifested by the timing and direction of both the Nazis and Japanese during the initial part of the war, and even by the [timing, direction] of actions by the Americans and British. That's a bit of a stretch for sure, and I am not proposing that the theme is correct. But it just may be more correct in many ways than the overwhelming mainstream historical interpretations, at least on key points and the big picture of the war.

Toolsets can be browed via: Icebreaker unchained directory. Perhaps these may be of interest, help] to others putting together a film from Linux-based free software.
(first posted 25May2015, incomplete & full of errors, based on work still in development since 23May2009, broken links fixed 23Dec2017)
27Apr2015 Howell's Reincarnation : Speculations on a possible mechanistic context - From recent discussions, my old concept related to a possible explanation of, and a mechanistic context for, reincarnation has again surfaced. A short "joke" on this theme, "A Riddle by, for, of, on, and with the Mind" was posted to my website circa 31Jan2007, and emails (hard to track in my old drives, possibly lost) relate to an earlier Toastmaster presentation or discussion in ~26Jun2006.
While the linked document is presented as a joke that you might want to pull on your friends, it actually is an interesting concept that I may some day address, given that I am again trying to re-start work on my old "MindCode" project that was its inspiration. MindCode ("Given that computer code is used to program computers, then Mindcode ...") deals with DNA and epi-DNA (I am careful to avoid use of the over-extended and incorrect term "genetics") and how that might be used for Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), with a little whistful reference to real neuroscience (beyond the holy grail in a sense, but this is the great foundation of ANNs). Starting from my old resulting side joke, I hope some day to elaborate "speculations on a possible mechanistic context" for reincarnation.
No, I'm not a "believer" in re-incarnation, but this is just too fun to skip over, and to a limited sense is possibly quite real - think of instinct and heredity as a starting point.
(re-posted 27Apr2015, background document from 31Jan2007)
31Mar2015 Howell Lies, Damned Lies, and Scientists - Summary & context This document is a rush job to clarify a context for my dark and foreboding "Principle of Generality", that relates to the catastrophic failure of [rational, logical, scientific] thinking of essentially all government and academic scientists in high-profile areas of high public interest. This is characterised by [dishonest, dysfunctional, delinquent, hypocritical, back-stabbing, cowardly] * [thinking, behaviours] that one think should be clear to all, but perhaps not to religious disciples of science fashions that have progressed through the cult stage to become full-fledged religions. Furthermore, this situation seems to be the rule rather than the exception, and persists for [years, decades, centuries, millenia].
I don't believe this concept, nor do I believe that mainstream scientific consensus lives up to its claimed process and standards in many high-profile areas of interest to the public. I do like science and scientists, so this is a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to explain and reconcile my thinking on the matter. (posted 01Apr2015)
27Apr2015 Howell - MindCode Manifesto.odt This document is a rush point-form job to re-start work on my old "MindCode" project that was its inspiration. MindCode ("Given that computer code is used to program computers, then Mindcode ...") deals with DNA and epi-DNA (I am careful to avoid use of the over-extended and incorrect term "genetics") and how that might be used for Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), with a little whistful reference to real neuroscience (beyond the holy grail in a sense, but this is the great foundation of ANNs).

Starting from my old resulting side joke, I hope some day to elaborate "speculations on a possible mechanistic context" for reincarnation. No, I'm not a "believer" in re-incarnation, but this is just too fun to skip over, and to a limited sense is possibly quite real - think of instinct and heredity as a starting point.

27May2018 Note : I guess I never finished this posting, nor was I able to get back to the MindCode project due to other pressing priotities (until at least 31Dec2018 I will be working on my fundamental theoretical physics project "Bill Lucas's Universal Force). It will be at least 6 to 9 months before I can get back to it.
(re-posted 27Apr2015, background document from 31Jan2007, 27May2018 fixed this posting)
12Dec2014 Don Scott's Birkeland current magnetic structure, Howell's review and comments Don Scott has developed a very creative and solid model of Birkeland current structure, yielding surprising results with extremely important potential relevance to a wide number of areas including [astronomy, Earth sciences, biological and evolutionary processes, human health (pandemics, accidents), history and war, engineering, alternative energy systems, etc].
- Donald Scott 141114 "Magnetic Structure of Force-Free Currents" 14Nov2014 http://electric-cosmos.org/FFCPaper.pdf
- Donald Scott 140320 "A New Model of Magnetic Structure in Space | EU2014" posted 09Sep2014 on https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014/09/09/donald-scott-a-new-model-of-magnetic-structure-in-space-eu2014/.
On the basis of "a first pass through reading, but complete and in detail", with limited step-by-step re-derivations to check the mathematical work (p7), and relying on my very-rusty memory of Bessel functions and the Lorentz force law, this paper is serious, well thought out, and imaginative. The derivations that I have checked are competent, even though at present I have a few non-critical reservations about a few steps and assumptions.
(posted 12Dec2014)
04Jul-31Aug2014 Travel Log : From Hussar, to Beijing, to Singapore, Malaysia, and Auckland I don't know how everyone else picks their vacations, but for me, almost all of my "fun time off" exceeding 4 days since 1992 has gone towards two goals : family; and neural network conferences. But it's never been the case before that these goals aligned geographically, as my two post-university daughters are usually at opposite ends of the planet, and the neural network conference jumps between North America, Europe, and Asia. In July 2014, the timing and locations lined up like some kind of astrological conjunction : the annual neural network conference took place in Beijing; my younger daughter, Sarah, and her partner Marcus, had recently moved from Lima Peru to Signapore; and most pressing (the imperative!), my first grandchild was born to my older daughter Catherine and her husband James in Auckland. My mother Irene joined me for the Singapore-Auckland legs of the trip, making for a great four-generation family trip. Health and insurance limitations constrained my father to staying behind in Calgary.
(posted 30Sep2014)
21Jun2014 Paul Vaughan - Sunspot Integral & Southern Annular Mode (SAM) Fatal, permanent, intractable corruption of solar & climate science obscures a simple & ultimately inescapable truth: The sun governs terrestrial climate. Paul's note compares his results using the Sunspot Integral, to the results of Abram, N.J.; Mulvaney, R.; Vimeux, F.; Phipps, S.J.; Turner, J.; & England, M.H. (2014). "Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium." Nature Climate Change.
(received 21Jun2014, posted 22Jun2014)
24May2014 Paul Vaughan - Misinterpretation of the Atlantic Meridonial Oscillation (AMO) as being similar to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO)? Paul's attached note, targeting advanced members of the audience, shows through a sequence of graphical results, that "... EOFs (Empirical Orthogonal Functions) 1 to 4 of ERSSTv3b2 (Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature) unambiguously underscore solar & lunisolar governance of climate ..." Paul also makes the intriguing comment that "... At interdecadal timescale, accurate IPO forecasting appears feasible. ..."
(received and posted 24May2014)
06Apr2014 Steven Yaskell - A letter to the Vermont state government - Climate history Here is a well-considered and composed letter from Yaskell to the Vermont state government, intended to highlight errors in the thinking of modern scientists as related to climate, and to highlight the important historical impact of solar activity. An especially haunting comment is (in reference to the Maunder Minimum) :
(received 02Mar2014, first posted 06Apr2014)
25Feb2014 Howell - How the Nazis saved Norwegian lives, at least the ones they didn't shoot (13 Mbytes) With 25% Norwegian blood in my veins, I couldn't resist aggravating my relatives. It is taken from "Forks over knives", a DVD that presents a case for "full food value vegetarianism". Unfortunately, in doing a format change from ogv to flv video format, the sound has become de-synchronized from the video (the ogv version at the link below is much better, but many PC and MAC users will not be able to play it). For a hard case like me, who is in dire need of a drastic dietary and lifestyle change, the film is very thought-provoking and I highy recommend it. That doesn't mean that I agree with everything preented in the film, nor even with their final conclusion, but as I try to force a "multiple conflicting hypothesis" approach on myself (to avoid becoming a disciple of smart or stupid throries), I hope I can appreciate their message, and perhaps with time extract what I may need from it. Of course, there is really nothing funny about the Nazi occupation, and I apologize in advance to all of those who I offend.
This short DVD extract was important in rebuilding my (very primitive) video-making capabilities from two years ago, which involved several days of frustration, anger, whining/complaining, and head banging. This opens the way to producing (sometime in the future?) my next crappy film on "Adolf Hitler : Joseph Stalin's unwitting puppet on a string?", a very dark and foreboding theme. I will probably give it the title "Icebreaker unchained", highlighting Viktor Suvorov's thinking and work.

("How the Nazis saved Norwegian lives" was first posted 25Feb2014)
03Feb2014 Paul Vaughan - Multidecadal Sun-Climate-Change 101: Solar-Terrestrial Spatiotemporal Aggregation Primer on Trivial Extension of Milankovitch Here is a quick one-pager introduction from Paul for his Sun-Climate 101 work.
(received 03Feb2014, first posted 08Feb2014)
20Dec2013 Paul Vaughan - Sun-Climate 101 Solar-Terrestrial Primer, version 2 As food for a great deal of thought, here is a second, significantly-expanded version of Paul's powerful Sun-Climate 101 document-in-development, that includes the contents of the earlier version from 04Aug2013 (pumping, persistence, Solar-Pulsed Decadal Terrestrial Circulation and the Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave)
(first posted 18Jan2014, FOUR weeks after receiving this from Paul 21Dec2014 (my apologies to the author!), this description has been simplified 02Feb2014)
13Oct2013 Robots, Signal Processing and Control Theory - Random, stray thoughts Here is a quick overview of some of the neural network [concepts, themes] that interest me in relation to control theory, with some mention of robotics and signal processing. The intent is to have something on hand for occasional discussions with friends, and perhaps more importantly as a "conceptual snapshot" for my own use. The snapshot will be a reminder of key themes I may want to revisit in several years, and as a benchmark of changes in my own thinking and progress with time, and whether or not I had "focused on the right things" (for me).
Many of the examples in this note come from the Aug2013 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) in Dallas TX. Topics (sub-topics) briefly mentioned in this note include :
- Key themes that come to mind for really advanced control theory
  - Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) : Self-[Adapting & Optimizing] systems
    Frank Lewis - A unification of the Adaptive AND Optimal control communities
  - Lydia Kavricki - Robotics for Proteomics
  - Walter Freeman's "stochastic chaos", EEG, and the brain
  - Machine Consciousness
  - MindCode, Howell's long-time, never-advancing hobby project
  - Jun Wang of Chinese University of Hong Kong - Tutorial on hand-crafted neural networks for robotic control
  - Molecular memory, from Francis Crick through Bernie Widrow
  - Gary Marcus' "Kluge"
- Basic Tools
  - Signal Processing
  - Information Theoretics (Thermodynamics of information processing) - including Harold Szu's derivaton of Hebbian Learning (a foundation of neural networks and neuroscience)
  - Randomness is your friend
    - Reservoir Computing - Echo State Networks and Extreme Learning Machines
    - Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
    - Chaos theory - eg Walter Freeman
- Fun topics
  - Cheating theory, Game theory
  - Social Media
  - Telerobotics (Mining Automation Program (MAP))
  - Anti-Engineering and Anti-Murphy's Law
  - Confabulation versus Baysian Statistics
  - Throwing out the foundations of 20th Century Physics?
- Evolutionary Computation and Fuzzy Systems : Quick comments
(first posted 22Oct2013)
11Oct2013 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - Random, stray thoughts Following an interesting conversation at a dinner, I composed the following email just in case some points might be of interest to "Phils" wife, who was doing Post-Doc work on fMRI, with some link as I understand it to her main interest of neuro-psychology. Although I have no expertise in fMRI, the subject is of some interest to me given that neural networks (and to a lesser extent evolutionary computation) have been, and remain, my priority "hobby interests" since ~1988 when I joined the INNS, (or at least started subscribing to Neural Networks journal.
Topics (sub-topics) briefly mentioned in this note include :
- Directly related to fMRI (Blind-Source signal processing, Olaf Sporn's IJCNN 2013 Dallas plenary talk "Neural Models of the Human Brain", The Perils of fMRI)
- Indirectly related to fMRI? (Cause-and-effect studies of the brain, Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation & fMRI?, Opto-genetics, Hybrid experimental techniques, The Jenifer Aniston neuron, Walter Freeman's "stochastic chaos", EEG, and the brain)
- Off-topic, but possibly pertinent? (Epigentics - chemical changes to mimic environmental influences on behaviour, Neurotransmitters, BOLD and "Exclusion Zone" (EZ) water?)
(first posted 22Oct2013)
04Aug2013 Paul Vaughan - Solar Terrestrial Climate 101 Paul pulls together and updates a series of powerful graphs from his earlier work, plus he adds some new results, together showing how the Sun relates to climatic trends :
- "Pumping" in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) - As the NH has lots of land, and land has low heat capacity, the NH ocean surface is responsive to land-ocean circulatory pumping rate changes
- "Persistence" in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) - As the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by water, and water has high heat capacity, there is a delayed SH equilibrium (like a pot of water on a heating element)
- Paul estimates that "... 65% of the global sea surface temperature (ERSSTv3b2) variation is governed by multidecadal solar pulse & persistence. 20%'s interannual. 15%'s linear rise. Due to the current asymmetric distribution of continents, Earth's solar pulse / persistence response
- Over the past several years, Paul has developed many strong relations between astronomical (including) solar and Earth Climate variables. He repeats graphs from his past work, plus key work by others (notably a key paper by Le Mouel, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010)), and adds a new graph (actually, I may have seen it in earlier work of his) showing a very interesting showing a strong correlation between the structure of the heliospheric current sheet and Sea Surface Temperatures (SST).
- Also repeated from past work is Paul's very powerful and beautiful "Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave" graph.
- Paul sums it up nicely by saying that "... Multidecadal climate waves perfectly match multidecadal heliosphere waves. ..."
As a practical example, Paul provides :
- "... In the past I've emphasized that changing solar cycle length impacts on terrestrial climate are generalizable. My awareness is now reaching a level that empowers contextual specificity. Here's an example -- multidecadal Atlantic hurricane rates: ..."
  blog comments : http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/17/open-thread-weekend-28/#comment-366064 graph : http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/6093/laqs.png
- The above graph was first referenced on Judith Curry's blog, 17Aug2013. It is interesting to note that the decadal trend is "mild" compared to the ?El Nino? timescale excursions, and my guess is that Paul will have much more to say at some time in the future. Working on his spare time without support (he sure could use $ubstantial $upport for his work!!), and with a special [interest, imperative] in advanced spatio-temporal wavelet analysis, many, many examples are waiting on the sidelines, as is a comprehensive [description, "course"] of his mathematical techniques.
From my perspective, more and more I find that Paul's work reminds me very much of concepts from the "Electric Universe" and "Natural Philosophy Alliance" groups. The "rate of change" (acceleration, deceleration) of the solar cycle is a key clue that may help make the link, and/or push the focus from gravitation-only frameworks of analysis. There are other metrics that also give the same impression (I forget the details off-hand). Perhaps it will help to provide a strong link between those groups and various areas of Climate Science, as well as provide another basis of support for some of their work.
(first posted 18Aug2013, two weeks after receiving this from Paul (my apologies to the author))
26Jul2013 Deer collison I hit a deer crossing the highway when returning from a rodeo in Rockyford Alberta. It was midnight,and I was travelling at 100 km/hour on the two lane highway (I always use speed control for highway driving), when the deer came out of the side of the road, and inspite of bright headlights and the noise the car must have been making, it just continued stright ahead at a run. This was strange for me - kind of like watching the inevitable happen. I wasn't going to take a chance at careening around the deer, so I plough straight through, hitting it with the left front of my van. I slowed to a stop, but didn't see the deer, so I started picking up plastic vehicle parts strewn over the rod (headlight and turn signal plastic enclosures, and half of my plastic grill in pieces). Halfway through, I finally saw the deer lying absolutely motionless in the ditch on the side of the impact, clearly dead. Follow the link for more details, plus photos and a video taken the next day. (first posted 28Jul2013)
13Oct2013 Robots, Signal Processing and Control Theory - Random, stray thoughts Here is a quick overview of some of the neural network [concepts, themes] that interest me in relation to control theory, with some mention of robotics and signal processing. The intent is to have something on hand for occasional discussions with friends, and perhaps more importantly as a "conceptual snapshot" for my own use. The snapshot will be a reminder of key themes I may want to revisit in several years, and as a benchmark of changes in my own thinking and progress with time, and whether or not I had "focused on the right things" (for me).
Many of the examples in this note come from the Aug2013 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) in Dallas TX. Topics (sub-topics) briefly mentioned in this note include :
- Key themes that come to mind for really advanced control theory
  - Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) : Self-[Adapting & Optimizing] systems
    Frank Lewis - A unification of the Adaptive AND Optimal control communities
  - Lydia Kavricki - Robotics for Proteomics
  - Walter Freeman's "stochastic chaos", EEG, and the brain
  - Machine Consciousness
  - MindCode, Howell's long-time, never-advancing hobby project
  - Jun Wang of Chinese University of Hong Kong - Tutorial on hand-crafted neural networks for robotic control
  - Molecular memory, from Francis Crick through Bernie Widrow
  - Gary Marcus' "Kluge"
- Basic Tools
  - Signal Processing
  - Information Theoretics (Thermodynamics of information processing) - including Harold Szu's derivaton of Hebbian Learning (a foundation of neural networks and neuroscience)
  - Randomness is your friend
    - Reservoir Computing - Echo State Networks and Extreme Learning Machines
    - Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
    - Chaos theory - eg Walter Freeman
- Fun topics
  - Cheating theory, Game theory
  - Social Media
  - Telerobotics (Mining Automation Program (MAP))
  - Anti-Engineering and Anti-Murphy's Law
  - Confabulation versus Baysian Statistics
  - Throwing out the foundations of 20th Century Physics?
- Evolutionary Computation and Fuzzy Systems : Quick comments
(first posted 22Oct2013)
11Oct2013 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - Random, stray thoughts Following an interesting conversation at a dinner, I composed the following email just in case some points might be of interest to "Phils" wife, who was doing Post-Doc work on fMRI, with some link as I understand it to her main interest of neuro-psychology. Although I have no expertise in fMRI, the subject is of some interest to me given that neural networks (and to a lesser extent evolutionary computation) have been, and remain, my priority "hobby interests" since ~1988 when I joined the INNS, (or at least started subscribing to Neural Networks journal.
Topics (sub-topics) briefly mentioned in this note include :
- Directly related to fMRI (Blind-Source signal processing, Olaf Sporn's IJCNN 2013 Dallas plenary talk "Neural Models of the Human Brain", The Perils of fMRI)
- Indirectly related to fMRI? (Cause-and-effect studies of the brain, Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation & fMRI?, Opto-genetics, Hybrid experimental techniques, The Jenifer Aniston neuron, Walter Freeman's "stochastic chaos", EEG, and the brain)
- Off-topic, but possibly pertinent? (Epigentics - chemical changes to mimic environmental influences on behaviour, Neurotransmitters, BOLD and "Exclusion Zone" (EZ) water?)
(first posted 22Oct2013)
04Aug2013 Paul Vaughan - Solar Terrestrial Climate 101 Paul pulls together and updates a series of powerful graphs from his earlier work, plus he adds some new results, together showing how the Sun relates to climatic trends :
- "Pumping" in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) - As the NH has lots of land, and land has low heat capacity, the NH ocean surface is responsive to land-ocean circulatory pumping rate changes
- "Persistence" in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) - As the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by water, and water has high heat capacity, there is a delayed SH equilibrium (like a pot of water on a heating element)
- Paul estimates that "... 65% of the global sea surface temperature (ERSSTv3b2) variation is governed by multidecadal solar pulse & persistence. 20%'s interannual. 15%'s linear rise. Due to the current asymmetric distribution of continents, Earth's solar pulse / persistence response
- Over the past several years, Paul has developed many strong relations between astronomical (including) solar and Earth Climate variables. He repeats graphs from his past work, plus key work by others (notably a key paper by Le Mouel, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010)), and adds a new graph (actually, I may have seen it in earlier work of his) showing a very interesting showing a strong correlation between the structure of the heliospheric current sheet and Sea Surface Temperatures (SST).
- Also repeated from past work is Paul's very powerful and beautiful "Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave" graph.
- Paul sums it up nicely by saying that "... Multidecadal climate waves perfectly match multidecadal heliosphere waves. ..."
As a practical example, Paul provides :
- "... In the past I've emphasized that changing solar cycle length impacts on terrestrial climate are generalizable. My awareness is now reaching a level that empowers contextual specificity. Here's an example -- multidecadal Atlantic hurricane rates: ..."
  blog comments : http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/17/open-thread-weekend-28/#comment-366064 graph : http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/6093/laqs.png
- The above graph was first referenced on Judith Curry's blog, 17Aug2013. It is interesting to note that the decadal trend is "mild" compared to the ?El Nino? timescale excursions, and my guess is that Paul will have much more to say at some time in the future. Working on his spare time without support (he sure could use $ubstantial $upport for his work!!), and with a special [interest, imperative] in advanced spatio-temporal wavelet analysis, many, many examples are waiting on the sidelines, as is a comprehensive [description, "course"] of his mathematical techniques.
From my perspective, more and more I find that Paul's work reminds me very much of concepts from the "Electric Universe" and "Natural Philosophy Alliance" groups. The "rate of change" (acceleration, deceleration) of the solar cycle is a key clue that may help make the link, and/or push the focus from gravitation-only frameworks of analysis. There are other metrics that also give the same impression (I forget the details off-hand). Perhaps it will help to provide a strong link between those groups and various areas of Climate Science, as well as provide another basis of support for some of their work.
(first posted 18Aug2013, two weeks after receiving this from Paul (my apologies to the author))
26Jul2013 Deer collison I hit a deer crossing the highway when returning from a rodeo in Rockyford Alberta. It was midnight,and I was travelling at 100 km/hour on the two lane highway (I always use speed control for highway driving), when the deer came out of the side of the road, and inspite of bright headlights and the noise the car must have been making, it just continued stright ahead at a run. This was strange for me - kind of like watching the inevitable happen. I wasn't going to take a chance at careening around the deer, so I plough straight through, hitting it with the left front of my van. I slowed to a stop, but didn't see the deer, so I started picking up plastic vehicle parts strewn over the rod (headlight and turn signal plastic enclosures, and half of my plastic grill in pieces). Halfway through, I finally saw the deer lying absolutely motionless in the ditch on the side of the impact, clearly dead. Follow the link for more details, plus photos and a video taken the next day. (first posted 28Jul2013)
18Apr13 Paul Vaughan "Jupiter-Earth-Venus (JEV), solar rotation, & sunspot phase" Here is a fun follow-up to Paul's note below (16Mar13). The 22.2 year Jupiter-Earth-Venus (JEV) cycle and the sunspot cycle are superposed on Figure 3 (click to see Figure, the flashing graphics indicate residuals) of:
A related blog discussion can be followed on "TallBloke's" site. TallBloke's opening comment on his site-page is :
It is almost strange to see a blog so courteous, with contributors obviously doing their (substantial) homework and keeping their minds open. It's also VERY interesting to see a community that has some focus on the JEV correlations. It's a real pleasure to go through this.
This is also a reminder for me, as hopefully when I'm more settled down in a month or so after 9 months of personal chaos, I'll be able to start working on at least 2 related concepts I've been talking about for about a year :
- Birkeland current end-effects (torsion, tension, shear) : zero order with distance?
- Proofs, Dis-Proofs, and Non-Proofs : This a theme to address the constant failures of so-called "proofs, and disproofs", whether they are mathematical, statistical, physics, or whatever. It was actually inspired by neural network mathematics, but took on another dimension when I noticed 150 years of physics proofs that planetary motions cannot affect solar activity, and similar statements presuming "all-seeing-understanding" in many other areas.
However, these will likely just be quick notes for now, as the foundation work involves a follow-up on Bill Lucas' (and others') concepts to replace Heaviside's 4 vector form of Maxwell's equations, and the cinsequences for plasma physics for astronomy. (first posted on this site 01May2013)
16Mar13 Paul Vaughan "~60 Year Cycle of ~27 Day Terracentric Solar Rotation" Paul further ties together the "weave" of several well-known climate-related "quasi-cycles" in this note. Using as a basis a 27.03 day solar cycle of Neugebauer, M.; Smith, E.J.; Ruzmaikin, A.; Feynman, J.; Vaughan, A.H. (2000), Paul "crudely but clearly reveals multidecadal phase cycling" of ~64 years (with slight adjustments of the results, and which is of the order of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO - this is discussed in previous work of Paul)).
Paul then shows that many key quasi-cycles fall out, including 2.37 years [Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)], 1.185 years [Chandler wobble of the polar axis], 12.8 years [solar system radial acceleration], and 6.4 years [terrestrial polar motion envelope].
Several questions arise :
- What's driving?
- What's resonating?
- What was resonating in the past?
- What confounded pairs share a common driver?
- What coherent pairs are statistical echoes of past physical driving?
The cumulative effect of several notes by Paul Vaughan over the last year or two seems to be both deep and broad - one of the best that I've seen of clarifications of the relationships between key short-to-mid-term (< 400 year) climate processes. Paul is really pulling things together, by identifying and extending key work by others, combined with his own analysis! The breadth & depth, but more so the "living in the numbers", reminds me of the late Timo Niroma of Helsinki, Finland, but with much more advanced analysis.
24Feb13 Paul Vaughan "Solar-Terrestrial Volatility Weaves" - Here are some more great, stimulating climate data-analysis from Paul Vaughan. The focus is on [internanual, decadal, multi-decadal] hierarchically [structured, nested :: spatial, temporal] data relationships. As with earlier work, core variables include: solar activity, Earth's "Length Of Day" (LOD), planetary (in this case Jupiter-Neptune), wind-ocean oscillations (eg "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO)). As usual, dynamic (rate of change) variables are important in his work. Key sub-themes include :
- Extremes and volatility clustering
- central limits and cyclic heteroskedasticity
- volatility weave rate shifts
- phase residuals and envelope decomposability
Paul is making steady progress with his dat-based climate analysis, albeit slower than he would like as he has a real job to take care of as well. Significant financial support for his work would always be greatly appreciated. (first posted on this site 27Feb2013)
25Dec12 Bill Howell - Big changes in my employment and location - Following budget cuts (which I totally agree with - they were even smart enough to cut me! (grin) ), I have left the federal government of Canada, and I'm moving to the Calgary area. Once I get a permanent address and phone number, I'll post them on my website. My email address and website (www.BillHowell.ca) will of course remain the same. More boring details can be found in the link.
08Sep12 Anthony Peratt's "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z -Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source" - I've been a huge fan of Peratt's Dec2003 paper on petroglyphs (actually, he has many papers) since I first saw it in perhaps 2008 or 2009, and only when I read Paul Anderson's paper (end of August 2012) did I find out that he published Part II, with a Part III coming out as well (I couldn't find it via Google search so I assume it is still pending). Apparently David Talbot and other Electric Universe mythologist had initially convinced Peratt to look at petroglyphs from the perspective of high energy atmospheric plasmas, and it looks like Peratt really grabbed the ball and ran with it!
Both papers are ingenious in terms of their creativity, scientific thoroughness and insight, and in terms of how well they tie the hypothesis (that high energy z-pinch auroras were the inspiration for as many as 40% of ancient petroglyphs and megaliths like Stonehenge) to ancient societies right around the world. The 3D holographic reconstruction of ancient plasma phenomena from thousands of petroglyphs around the world is unbelievable - rarely do I see such a combination of science, talent, and imagination!
It's great to see the degree of international assistance, often by enthusiastic volunteers, native groups, and retired professors. Obviously the theme has really touched a human chord.
One key question, though : The 3D image of the plasma system that was supposedly "holographically" recontructed from thousands of petroglyphs around the world, resembles very closely "polar alignment structures" derived from mythology and proposed by ?Velikovsky", David Talbot ("The Saturn Myth"), Duardu Cordonna (?spelling - my books are in storage?), and probably others as well. So is that configuration truly "data driven", or are several alterantive interpretations possible depending on how one does the holographic reconstructions?
Click here for accumulated comments on this theme.
02Sep12 Paul E. Anderson "Electric Scarring of the Earth's Surface" - As described by the NPA's description of his talk "... This paper explores the hypothesis that most canyons and riverbeds were initially formed by electrical events and not by fluvial erosion. The macroscale appearance of river beds, mountain ranges, and other geological features exhibit characteristics which are typical of electric scarring on a die. ..."
Link to Video Lecture as presented at NPA 19 in Albuquerque New Mexico 26Jul2012: http://youtu.be/X9C4Tx2zC3c.
I've drafted a document with images, hyperlinks, and context related to this awesome presentation at the Natural Philosophy Alliance's NPA 19 conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 25-28Jul2012. Howell 120903 Paul Anderson's Electric scarring of the Earth.pdf
I've added Google Earth photos from several sites in Alberta, plus context for Anderson's concept.
29Jul12 Why was France's King Louis XIV called the Sun King? - Casual conversations with colleagues at work confirmed my impression that the "conventional explanation" for the "Roi Soleil" (Sun King) title of Louis XIV was because he brought great wealth, culture, and influence to France during his reign. Here I suggest that the REAL reason for his title was that during the reign of Louis XIV, occasional, or even longer respite from the heavy clouds, darkness and cold of the Maunder solar hibernation (Grand Solar minimum 1610-1710) greatly brightened the lives (souls) and livelihood of people who may have spent much of their lives in the relative darkness and cold.
29Jul12 Fort St. Louis in Quebec city - archaeological interpretation of food storage room - Here is a collection of emails and comments about Parks Canada's on-site description of the food storage room in the archaeological dig of the old Fort St. Louis, just in front of the Chateau Frontenac. When I visited ~08Jul2012, I felt that the drawing of how ice was stored in a stone-lined pit in the food locker was probably incorrect, so I provide my own speculation and drawings.
29Jul12 Gerald Pollack's Exclusion Zone water, Rob Johnson's electric bio-processes - Here is a collection of emails and comments about a DVD by Mikamar Publishing from te Electric Universe conference in Las Vegas, January 2012. Gerald Pollack applies his fascinating theory for the structure of water near hydrophilic surfaces to the "Electric Body" - as stated in the summary for the DVD, "...His discoveries will have a profound impact on the nature of disease and healing ...". Rob Johsnon presents speculative but beautifully thought out new theories for how sap flows in trees, and how blood flows in capillaries - concepts that if correct will have profound implications in those areas and other applications. In a sense, I still haven't done my homework, but I do have some confidence in both Gerald Pollack and Rob Johnson, and right or wrong their ideas are tremendously stimulating and very useful in the context of "multiple conflicting hypothesis" that I like to maintain.
14May12 Immanuel Velikovsky : Quack or genius? - Velikovsky is probably one of the most controversial scientists of the last 100 years or so. He was repeated attacked and denigrated by entire scientific communities (geology, astronomy, physics, archaeology, paleontology, etc) over decades, including ORGANISED attacks (orchestrated as a debate, for example) by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Part of the problem relates to the seemingly outlandish concepts that he proposed (eg, that Venus was ejected by Jupiter within historical times), and another problem for essentially all scientists is that a great deal of Velikovsky's inspiration and data came from ancient mythology. I have read a substantial number of Velikovsky's books, plus books and articles attacking Velikovsky, plus analysis of the attacks against Velikovsky.
13May12 The Ark of the Covenant - Is the "Ark of the Covenant" shown explicitly on an engraving of the Temple at Karnac, and labelled as "Item #9" in Figure 8 (a drawing by W. Wreszinski) in Immanuel Velikovsky's "Ages in Chaos I: From the Exodus to Akhnaton"? According to [Velikovsky 1952] this drawing was made as a recording of the loot taken from the Temple of Solomon during Pharoah "Shishak's" conquest of Jerusalem. (revised 14May2012)
24Mar12 Solar-Terrestrial Resonance, Climate Shifts, & the Chandler Wobble Phase Reversal, Paul L. Vaughan - Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) uncompromisingly emphasize that solar-terrestrial relations don't work the way most (whether lay, academic, mainstream, eccentric, alarmist, skeptic - or whatever) have assumed. In a coupled oscillator spatiotemporal network synchronization framework, there are an infinite number of coupled terrestrial annual cycles. When Earth is thrown locally, regionally, or globally for hydrologic spatiotemporal flips, this isn't well-characterized by temperature anomalies. According to EOP, the synchronization illustrated in the Tsonis framework indicates global constraints of solar & lunisolar origin. This will be the subject of a more detailed article educationally emphasizing some of the nuts & bolts of complex wavelet methodology & interpretation. (first posted on this site 27Mar2012)
24Mar12 The Solar Cycle's Footprint on Terrestrial Climate, Paul L. Vaughan - The solar cycle's footprint on terrestrial climate manifests as anomalies in the seasonal switching of the hemispheric westerly winds, as indicated by semi-annual lunisolar- integrated variations in the rate of change of length of day. North-south asymmetry (due to the current distribution of continents) is evident. (first posted on this site 25Mar2012)
14Feb12 Venus et Mars - au dela d'une histoire d'amour (video 240 Mbytes) - Voici une presentation de Saint Valentin en francais, decrivant les concepts mythologiques de David Talbot et d'autres, et fonde sur des idees d'Immanuel Velikovsky. Venus et Mars c'est beaucoup plus d'une histoire d'amour, raconte par presque tous les civilisations. Bien que les detailes different et se transforment avec le temps, les archetypes originaux des mythologies se ressemblent.
L'approche du montage du video est mi-chemin entre Powerpoint et un format video, presentant certaines avantages, surtout la voix pre-enregistre, pour ce qui donnent des presentations dans une langue autre que leur langue maternelle. Bien que ce travail n'est pas finit a point, l'effort demontre des possibilites, et l'effort ne depasse pas de beaucoup l'effort pour monter un PowerPoint.
(first posted 08Mar2012, flv file format posted 25Feb2014 with minor changes to wording above)
30Dec11 Social graphs, social sets, and social media (1 Mb) - [Social graphs, social sets] represent relatively new foundation concepts for building workplace [toolsets, applications, processes, systems]. One might consider [Client Management Systems, Contact Managers] as early precursors of "things to come", but at a very primitive level. This paper discusses a random selection of potential [themes, implications] of [social graphs, sets] for social media in the workplace, organized according to readers of a variety of not-necessarily-overlapping interests, namely [applications users, conceptually-oriented, tool builders, system designers, star gazers]. (first posted 10Mar2012)
17Nov11 How to set up & use data mining with Social media (168 kb) - A very large and diverse set of data-mining tools and systems are available for a wide range of needs, and it is not the intent of this document to overview the toolsets for data-mining. Instead, several "under-the-hood" capabilities (HOW) are discussed as are WHAT we might be seeking to achieve with Data-mining and Social Media. (first posted 10Mar2012)
12Oct11 Systems design issues for social media (early stage outline, 165 kb) - In discussing social media with IT/MIS professionals, it has been my experience that they tend to look at the new capabilities as yet another relational database system to fit into the Management Information System, Enterprise System, Business Plan and standard systems analysis tools that they have become accustomed to. To me, these approaches are well suited (or well-practiced, which isn't the same thing) to "stagnant, established" technologies that are extremely well understood, and which are highly predictable. But they are poorly suited to breakthrough technologies with very different conceptual and theoretical capabilities and impacts, and which by definition are immature and rapidly changing.
12Oct11 Semantics beyond search (354 kb) - While "Semantics" is the concept central to this paper, the overall objective of this paper is not to provide a review or roadmap for semantics experts who are building social media toolsets and systems, but rather to greatly expand the awareness of the social media and collaborative communities concerning the "larger world of capabilities" beyond improved search engines that semantics will help to enable. Furthermore, it is my gut feel that there are fundamental limitations to semantics (and logic), so it is important to be aware of these, and to be aware of completely different concepts and toolsets that pick up where semantics and logic fall apart.
17Jul11 Natural Philosophy Alliance conference, College Park Maryland 05-08Jul11 - As I could not afford to go to my annual IJCNN neural network confernece this year, I went to the NPA conference, which this year accomodated the "Electric universe" community, which I have beeen looking at for both Historical modeling and Solar system - Earth Sciences modeling (especially climate). Many (not all) in the NPA are critical of Secial Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR), as I am, and hosts a great diversity of concepts on gravity, structural physics, and other topics. This documents summarizes many key points that interested me, and is dedicated to my mother and father's 60th wedding anniversary in September 2011.
17Jul11 END of Backlog of "Lost Material" - From approximately October 2009 through January 2011, I lost two computers and three or four hard drives. I was too busy rebuilding my systems and dealing with the July 2008 purchase of an old "fixer-upper" house to update my website. As a result, there is a huge backlog of material that will take some time to post.
24Aug11 Confabulation Theory for Cognition: "Next Plausible Sentence" survey -
Confabulation is a biologically-inspired theory for cognition that was developed by Robert Hecht-Nielson of San Diego. It is described in an overview fashion in Section I, and in much greater detail in his 2007 book "Confabulation Theory: The mechanism of thought" As a gross overview, Confabulation Theory assumes that information is held within "attribute classes" in roughly 4,000 thalamocortical modules (carrying information about "mental object attributes") and roughly 40,000 cortical knowledge bases (establishing "meaningful co-occurrences" between thalamocortical modules). Confabulation DIFFERS from Bayes theorem in statistics, and these simple differences make confabulation a superior form of reasoning for the real world, where information is often incomplete, erroneous, or event misleading (predator - prey). The "Next Plausible Sentence" exercise as presented in Part II of this paper was a critically important eye-opener for me, and gives a very strong "hands on" sense that while technology has a very, very long ways to go, it is a very, very long ways further along than commonly thought.
(This survey and compilation was finished in Nov2008, but was cleaned up and first posted in Aug2011, re-posted with changes 10Mar2012).
30Dec10 Lies, Damned Lies, and Scientists
Something is rotten in the state of science. Or perhaps what is dreadfully wrong, and what scientists illustrate in a spectacular fashion, is that there is something rotten with our image of ourselves, or more to the point, with how we would see others see us. We are not GENERALLY good at [rational, logical, and scientific] thinking, and there are very good reasons for that. For example - [rational, logical, and scientific] thinking isn't GENERALLY appropriate, especially outside ofthe realm of [simple, dead] systems, and certainly not in GENERAL for living or human systems. While my analysis may initially appear dark and ugly, I actually think that this leads to a more realistic, encouraging and ultimately positive view of homo sapiens and the "small worlds" we've built.
27Sep09 START of Backlog of "Lost Material" - see 17Jul2011 END note.
27Sep09 The Sun and civilisations - Echos of the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar Great Cycle of 5,126 years? - Here is a revised, high-detail chart relating the sun-barycenter hypothesis for solar activity to the rise and fall of civilisations. Radioisotopes carbon 14 (C14) and berylium 10 (Be10) are used as proxies for solar activity. (Note: slight upgrade 04Oct09 - put in radial graphs and table of climate/temperature periods).
It is interesting to note that the Mayan Great Cycle period of roughly 5,126 years is one-quarter of the Mayan Grand Cycle of 25,630 years, which is approximately the precessional cycle of the Earth's axis, which is one of three cycles commonly associated with Milankovic cycles (Earth orbit eccentricity (~100 ky and 400 ky), Earth axis obliquity (40+ ky) and precession (26 ky)).
25Sep09 The End of Enlightenment? - To suggest that we could lose Enlightenment in our era is madness. With perhaps tens of thousands of universities, tens of millions of scientists, and billions of people aware of the ongoing successes of science, together with wonderful and astounding advances in genetics and all other fields, there would seem to be little chance of falling into a Dark Ages. But that is probably what the ancient Greeks thought as well, and it took 1,500 years to get it back. The "Strategically Evil Scientists" suggest in this presentation that not only is the Loss of Enlightenment a possiblity in the "near future" (0 to 200 years), it will likely be caused by the behaviour of scientists and NOT by religious groups, most likely during a period of great societal stress. I may be right, you may be crazy, but it just may be lunatics we're looking for...
19May09 Anthony Peratt's theme of Petroglyphs and Auroral phenomena - Here's an interesting hypothesis regarding high-energy auroral phenomena as an explanation of petroglyphs (rock drawings)around the world.
21Aug08 Solar activity, climate and history over the last 7 ky using Charvatova's hypothesis and 14C & 10Be radio-isotopes - Will we be able to forecast solar activity 3,000 years into the future?? Climate?? The course of human history?? Probably not with what we have at hand, but we can try.
This paper and its supporting files are in a very incomplete, preliminary draft. However, Figure A.2 in Appendix A is especially interesting, as it suggests at least a "phase synchronization" between Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) and solar activity, with the 2,402.2 year Charvatovan "long cycle".
15Jun08 An Independent verification of Charvatova's Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) hypothesis - I've provided a detailed, but non-quantitative, verification of Charvatova's graphs of SIM curves from 1990, 2000, and 2008, plus of the timing of susnpot series related to distinct SIM periods. While the hypothesis that planetary motions has been re-proposed for 150 years without a solid statistical and phenomenological base, the relations are still suggestive, and Charvatova's approach is exciting.
16Mar08 Neil Howell's web-pages - this is a "hosted website" (see the permanent link below), which currently contains pictures of most of the artist's oil paintings.
11Dec07 Climate and food production - this is based on preparations for a presentation to the Alberta Potato Growers Association 13Nov07. Only a third of the slides were shown during the meeting, given the time available, and several slides have been updated. A solar-centric perspective dominates (again given the time available), and key failures of the Kyoto Premise are pointed out, which leads into a questioning of "thinking versus belief systems" by a vast majority of scientists.
24Oct07 A Preliminary note on Holocene climate - sun-solar system barycenter motions and a rough, initial estimate of the insolation changes that implies on Earth. As suggested by Charvatova and others, many known climate and solar short-term "quasi-cycles" (< 1000 years) seem to relate well to sun-barycenter movements (visually at this stage).
23Sep07 Glaciation models for the last 6 million years - draft version and very incomplete paper, but at least it gives you an idea of the direction my recent work is going to provide background to the "Mega Life" paper (now on hold to Q1 2008)
The extensive data tables could save you some programming and digging around?
23Sep07 Solar insolation from Milankovic cycles - software from Laskar etal ported to the QNial programming language
08Aug07 Mega Life, Mega Death, and the invisible hand of the sun: Towards a quasi-predictive model for the rise and fall of civilisations. This is an update of our document first posted ~05May07, still in early draft, incomplete stage but lots of fun stuff! The underlying theme in "poetry form" is "Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milankovic wandering of greener pastures and glaciers" Forget that little butterfly in Indonesia that destabilized the thinking of a whole generation of scientists merely by flapping its wings :-), and find out about the real "Monster buttlerfly of solar chaos" and other chaotic processes that compliment more regular, predictable astronomical processes.
04Jul07 A Galactic Theory of Climate - by Steve Wickson. mass extinctions, glaciations etc over the last 540 million years or so!
05May07 Pandemics and solar activity - by Tapping, Mathias, & Surkan. This is an unpublished, expanded version of their 2001 paper on influenza pandemics since ~1730. Quite the subject, and there is more elsewhere on my website - bubonic plague, malaria, cholera etc..
05May07 Pandemics, health, and the Sun. webpage updated from 06Oct06