Further info: Experts back Sarah Palin’s historical account

From transcript:

If somebody told me I was about to encounter several hundred armed opposition, I would take that as a warning. Advice, at least.

The problem being encountered is one I've faced often in 30 years of weather forecasting: Ambiguity Management.

The weather business deals with reams of data from thousands of sources and all the complexity of trying to follow a single swirl within a flowing river to figure out where it will be tomorrow. Decades of research and modeling have evolved into dozens of primary rule-based tools available to forecasters which are applicable to most situations. Objectively, you should be able to follow the rules, weed out the conflicting or contradictory ones, and get a reliable answer. Realistically, you don't. Why? Two reasons:

1. The dataset is incomplete.
2. The tools are imperfect.

You simply can't have perfect knowledge of all the relevant details in the atmosphere to feed a completely objective tool (computerized model or whatever) to get your perfect prediction. Like Rosanne Rosannadana's mother said, "It's Always Something!"

The trick then in being a good (aka reliable) weather forecaster then is how you manage the ambiguity of incomplete data filtered through inherently biased tools. Some weather stations run hot or cold, have local effects enhancing or reducing pressure or winds, etc, etc, etc. Good models account for this, but that's a static adjustment, not a dynamic one. Models run hot or cold, fast or slow, depending on their structure and assumptions, and they reval their strengths and weakness over time compared to other models and reality at verification time.

The basic forecasting questions are - Where is it, Where is it going, an what will happen when it gets there? Because the models are perfect (100% replication of output from identical starting states), but are always wrong (inherent model and data limitations), you make your money examining the consistency. The model(s) are running slow and cold recently due to the whatever event going on? Ok -- warm it up a few degrees and expecting things a few hours earlier than it forecasts tomorrow. Some models handle well in winter but get klutzy with large thunderstorm events. One model I worked with covered the world in clouds if you waited long enough. Solution? Don't trust it past X number of hours. And so on for the family of models through the decades and to today. Some models have high skill up to a certain point then it drops off quickly. Others show less skill, but are decent for the long haul. You get the idea. You can make a forecast using only one tool, but you can make a better one using several and sorting out their differences by using ambiguity management.

Needless to say, you needed a solid understanding of the physics and dynamics of the atmosphere to help make good decisions to do all this effectively. The modelers and users now data mining these huge collections of information likewise need a solid understanding of Statistics and the event mechanics they're examining to make any good sense of it all. At the very minimum, a large poster announcing "Coincidence is not Causation" needs to be in every office, otherwise you start getting breathless announcements about how underarm deodorant "causes" cancer because people eating hamburgers had a lower incidence rate by comparison.

Your Mileage May Vary -- a lot. That's the point.

Yes, but can they build a Beowulf cluster out of... --- oh, never mind...

No -- they just want their Trench Warfare bonus pack to be a nice surprise!

Indeed! Do we want the Internet run (or overseen) by the Post Office? DMV? Medicare? Etc...

From the 2400baud days, Blue Wave was a store-and-forward e-mail system. BBSs were part of a network which would call each other a few times a day, and Blue Wave would pass mail packets back and forth. It also served as a mail reader, so you could log on, up/download your mail, and read at your leisure later.

From the mid-90s, I remember joining some E-mail games where some BBS hosted the game and 3-8 other people turned in moves. Operations was very similar to a D&D game master leading the people on a quest, following a game template, all by e-mail.

I think one was called Toonville or Toon Town (something like that) where you chose your character (literally anything), chose a few unique skills, and others provided by the game master. I was a radioactive fuel rod with a beret, beard, and electric Hupmobile. Another character was a constantly angry wheel of Cheddar cheese with a slingshot and a pet moray eel. Simply boarding the plane enroute to Banana Island took a dozen hilarious moves. "Welcome aboard Trans-Debris Airline! We try to fly, and it shows!"

Talk about adventure fiction -- Good days those...

Hear hear! Mod parent up.

Being a soldier is not the same a being a brain dead grunt. The officers exist to understand the big picture (as much as they can see, anyway) and set the wheels into motion toward some goal and provide the resources to achieve that goal. The NCO's exist to ensure the people are properly trained to use those resources, can achieve those goals, and manage things while they do it. The rest of the enlisted force are the bullets, boots and brains that make it happen. And every one of us knows we're expendable.

Damn straight.

The death of the 600 was due to a communications screw up. The commander got his orders and set about to do it, and the men did their job.

What if it had been the proper thing to do? The cavalry attacks the line and forces a pivot to face them. The line is poorly trained or led and overdoes the pivot. This allows the battalion to attack the weak end of the emplacement and capture the line. Now the defenders have a huge hole where their vaunted cannon battery used to be and a full brigade pouring in the gap.

Sacrifice a company to rout the enemy? Yes. That's how it's done, and it does not require the company commander to know the big picture. It requires people on the scene who know how to work together and achieve the targets given, even at the expense of their life. Such is war.

You can't wait until you line up your ducks. The ducks are trying to kill you!

You're not alone! Ah, the skills of making alliances with other races (Borg/Crystal -- Colonial/Cylon, etc) and trying to plan three moves ahead at least... and then winning because the other team simply ran out of fuel! Ha!

Good times for the novice web surfer and gamer!

Comcast here in central Pa has just swapped over to all digital, so the basic package went from the 8 local channels and another 20+ bleed-overs I could see for free to just the locals. So.. $10 for basic and $40 for InnnerTubes, or cough up another $60+ for extended basic and a box? Nah... I've got Hulu, etc if I really want to see something.

Ok -- I'll miss MythBusters.. just have to wait for the streams..

The Wonderful World of Eamon!

This is the game that taught me how to hack -- by making my own dungeons, monsters, and weapons. The last one is where I got my nick, by making a magic wand which progressed in power from the Snarl, the Super Snarl, the Ultra Snarl, and finally the Atomic Snarl!

There is a black rat, a brown rat, and a tan rat....

So, if you measure it at 5 feet, then 10 feet would be half that power, and 20 feet 1/16 power.

Oh, try 1 foot! Then it's half at two feet, 1/16 at 4 feet, and now just 1/400 at 20 feet!

Try using angstroms as your measurement base next time. You can manufacture a hugely small number that way! Not that it changes the actual power level at the distance in question...

This situation calls for professional testing and measurements, and whether or not the local codes on radiation load in living areas are both valid and being enforced.

For those wondering how wild colors and stripes on ships would hide them from U-Boats -- it didn't. It made it hard for the U-Boat captains to properly evaluate their targets. The colors and pattern would disrupt the length, angle, and speed clues seen though binoculars at a distance, and through the periscope when preparing to fire torpedoes.

Radar didn't exist during WWI, so U-Boats cruised on the surface with lookouts who could eyeball ships or ship smoke at 10 miles, maybe 20 on a good day. Given their 15-18 knot surface speed and 6-8 knot submerged speed, the U-Boat now had only 30 minutes or so to get into proper position ahead of the approaching ship -- about 4000-6000 yards (2-3 nautical miles) ahead and to one side of the approaching target. WWI German torpedoes could travel 6600 yards at 36 knots, for a max run time of just over 5 minutes. A target ship moving at 12 knots would move 400 yards in a minute. A 600 foot ship travels it's length in only 30 seconds. It's this tiny window that the Razzle-Dazzle would screw up. If the U-Boat captain guessed wrong on the ships movement due to painted false bow waves and extra bow/stern lines, the firing solution would be bad.

Remember that the ship view from the U-Boat was usually against cloudy skies of some sort in the North Atlantic. Add in the blue haze with distance, and the yellows, purples, and pinks start to blur into the background blue-gray sky. Now think of that sight through a wet periscope a few feet above the water, and you get the idea.

WWII had a brilliant camoufalge example in the bizarre sounding Pink Spitfires used for reconnaissance. The pink shade was selected to blend against the just-past-sunset twilight sky and clouds when those aircraft flew, and it was very effective.

Hear hear! For all the "Management Science" out there, what actually does work? The Waterfall method is hugely limited in software development, and upper management without a clear view is crippling. I was once part of a project where six teams had each developed their own printer drivers for their modules because management neither thought of it or noticed the duplication. Team isolation prevented sharing as well, so six freshly re-invented wheels.

What is it they are crunching on anyway? Did somebody's new skin break the display engine? Did fixing a wall error crump edge detection or LOS calculations? Did a weapons tweak make the ballistics engine puke? Was there a pent-up demand for crawling ants lighting on a display instead of just a glow? Where are the edges of accountability for these things, and which manager is (not) paying for their miscues?

Granted, starting with a well behaved engine or other project module is always going to be risky when you push it to do new or different things. The upper echelons should be aware of this in their design plans. But flogging the oarsmen when you're completely off course is the wrong way to go -- fix the navigator!

The second attempt caught fire, fell over, and sank into the swamp. The third attempt was more successful!

You forgot:

6 - Profit!