Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Jerry Coyne Attacks Jim Al-Khalili and Gets Free Will Wrong Again

Jerry Coyne continues his naive nineteenth century mechanistic materialist denial of modern compatibilist views on free will.  He has launched a determinist attack on Jim Al-Khalili's ideas on free will, whose views I personally agree with.  Jim Al-Khalili is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey and he has hosted several BBC productions about science.  He is currently President of the British Humanist Association.

It is late in the evening and I am tired and about to go to bed.  So I won't write a critique of Jerry's position, but instead I will post a link to one post on this thread on his blog where I think the poster got it just right as a substitute here

He quotes Jim Al-Khalili:



“our actions still determine which of the infinite number of possible futures is the one that gets played out.”

What Jerry fails to understand in his Jihad for determinism is that for modern quantum cosmology only the ensemble is deterministic so we face an "infinite number of possible futures".  That is the wonder of the world we live in.




When I get it together I intend to discuss Jim Al-Khalili's ideas on quantum biology.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Reading a Champagne Label

BEAUMONT DES CRAYÈRES GRAND PRESTIGE BRUT CHAMPAGNE

This weekend we opened a bottle of this champagne. The  Beaumont des Crayères Champagne was born in 1955 when a group of winegrowers from the village of Mardeuil near Epernay, formed a cooperative.  The Grand Prestige Brut is made from; 40% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir and 20% Pinot Meunier grapes.

This Champagne is crisp with powerful apple and citrus fruit notes, pale straw yellow with a lively and persistent mousse.  Overall an excellent Champagne.   We have found that often the best value for money, on a quality to price ratio is to be had from the Champagne cooperatives, beating the big better known Champagne houses hands down.   Not that the Beaumont des Crayères Cooperative is small, with 240 members it produces half a million bottles a year.

"My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough Champagne“
John Maynard Keynes

Reading The Label

The main parts of the label are relatively obvious; The name of the brand, Champagne the wine's Appelation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) and an alcohol content of 12%  etc are all shown.  At the bottom of the label a line containing lot of specific content in small print is present:

"Elaboré par Beaumont des Crayères à Mardeuil, 51530, France, CM-826-001 Produce of France"

First is the name and address of the producer, here showing that the origin of the grapes is the village of Mardeuil.  CM-826-001 is the producers Professional Registration Code.  The letters CM denote that the producer is Coopérative-manipulant that is a cooperative of growers who also make and sell Champagne under their own labels.  The first two letter of the code shows the type of champagne producer.  Most of the champagne you will see on the shelves is NM (Négociant-manipulant) meaning it is from a Champagne house.  Here is a list of the two letter codes:

ND (Négociants-Distributeur) – A  company selling Champagne it did not make
RM (Récoltant-Manipulant) – grower producer – A grower who sells grapes to the houses as well as buying grapes from other growers and making his own Champagne
CM (Coopérative-manipulant) – cooperative producer – A coop of growers who also make and sell Champagne under their own labels
NM (Négociant-manipulant) – a Champagne house – Producer who buys grapes in volume from growers to make Champagne
MA (Marque d’Acheteur) – a buyers own brand – A brand name owned by the purchaser such as restaurant, supermarket, wine merchant


If you live in Ontario Beaumont des Crayères is available from the LCBO

Monday, April 8, 2013

The Wicked Witch is Dead



As Berthold Brecht wrote of his character Arturo Ui,  "the bitch that bore him is in heat again "  For Thatcher the bitch that bore her is in heat again with so called austerity policies designed to transfer wealth from the 99% of the population to the richest 1% being rampant throughout the world with heirs like Cameron in Britain and Harper here in Canada implementing them.



As I said to an Argentinian fellow graduate student over twenty years ago now.

"it is a pity we couldn't both have lost the Falkland's war, you would have still got rid of the generals and we would have got rid of Thatcher."

It is a pity that Britain's first woman prime minister will be remembered for the destruction of all civilized norms in her country rather than helping to save it like Argentina's first woman President Cristina Fernandez.




Here is Billy Bragg's Comment on her death:

"This is not a time for celebration. The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing; of why domestic growth is driven by credit, not by real incomes; of why tax-payers are forced to top up wages; of why a spiteful government seeks to penalise the poor for having an extra bedroom; of why Rupert Murdoch became so powerful; of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society.

Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate - organise!"

It is ironic that the mad cow who through her agricultural policies gave the world mad cow disease should die in the throws of dementia.  I will never forgive her for destroying the country I grew up in.