Month: November 2019

Watch a Dog-Like Robot Climb Straight up a Ladder

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By Kristin Houser – Re-Blogged From Futurism

We’ve seen four-legged robots dance, crank out some push-ups, and even backflip through autumn leaves.

But now, IEEE Spectrum reports that a team of Japanese roboticists has taught a dog-like robot a new trick: how to autonomously climb a vertical ladder.

Thumbs Up

The team from Tokyo Metropolitan University and Okayama University presented their quadruped robot at the 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems on November 5.

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Gold and the Lender of Last Resort

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By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

Investopedia says, “In the United States, the Federal Reserve acts as the lender of last resort to institutions that do not have any other means of borrowing, and whose failure to obtain credit would dramatically affect the economy.”

The Fed has created $billions in the past ten weeks (more on the way) and fed those billions into troubled banks, hedge funds, foreign banks and others. Lack of Fed transparency forces us to guess which institutions the Fed helped with $billions of nearly free currency units.

The Fed “Party Line:” We don’t disclose the recipients because it might cause a run on that institution. The Fed is important because it protects the economy from massive and destabilizing failures.

This is like announcing that we ignore graft and corruption in congress because telling the truth about our “leaders” could destabilize trust in congress.

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The Silly Notion of “Speed Limits for Ships”

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By Steve Goreham – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Occasionally a report appears which claims to be wisdom, but after careful analysis, offers solutions that don’t make much sense. Such a report was issued earlier this month by United Kingdom consulting firm GL Reynolds, titled “The multi-issue mitigation potential of reducing ship speeds.” The report proposes that we can reduce global warming by imposing speed limits on ocean-going ships.

The GL Reynolds report concludes that a 10-20 percent reduction in ship speeds would have a “highly positive potential impact” on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and nitrous oxide (NOx) and sulfur oxide (SOx) pollutants. The report also projects that a ship speed reduction may reduce fatal collisions with whales.

Container Ships Article

Originally published in TheT&D.

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How Much Sun Could A Sunshine Shine?

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

It has been pointed out that while many of the global climate models (GCMs) are not all that good at forecasting future climate, they all do quite well at hindcasting the 20th-century global temperature anomaly [edited for clarity – w.]. Curious, that.

So I was interested in a paper from August of this year entitled The energy balance over land and oceans: An assessment based on direct observations and CMIP5 climate models. You’ll have to use SciHub using the DOI to get the full paper.

What they did in the paper is to compare some actual measurements of the energy balance, over both the land and the ocean, with the results of 43 climate models for the same locations. They used the models from the Fifth Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).

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Why Worse Wildfires? Part 1

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

What’s Natural?

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There are several theories trying to explain the recent uptick in wildfires throughout the western USA. Some scientists blame increased human ignitions. Others suggest accumulating surface fuels due to a century of fire suppression. Others argue landscape changes and invasive grasses have amplified the amount of easily ignited vegetation, while still others blame climate change. What’s the Sage Grouse connection? Like human communities, the Sage Grouse’s habitat is being threatened by fast spreading wildfires, and that increase in bigger wildfires in sagebrush country is due to invading annual grasses, like cheatgrass.

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Holiday Sales May Be Missing In Action

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By Dave Kranzler – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

I’m sure most of you are inundated with “Black November,” “70% off” and “clearance” email promotions from the usual cast of brick/mortar/online chain retailers. It started with my inbox in October.   This is because retailers are terrified of what could be one of the worst holiday spending seasons in years.

The mainstream financial media, planted with sound-bytes from Wall Street snake-oil salesmen, have already created this year’s “the dog ate my homework” excuse for poor holiday spending with the absurd notion that the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is shorter this year.  Quite frankly, I would not be surprise if many households used Amazon’s Prime day and easy Amazon credit lines offered to buy holiday gifts early this year.

Speaking of AMZN, it warned that its expected holiday sales would be lower than previous guidance.  And Home Depot lowered its Q4 revenue estimates for the second time in three months.

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