Wiped off the Earth

In 1989 a newspaper report said 'Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not stopped by they year 2000'.

This 30+ year old story regularly does the rounds by people who deny human caused climate change.

I am not sure this one story is even wrong though. It is not saying the nations will be wiped out by 2000. Just that increased warming of the seas will cause the water to expand and at some point in the future that expansion will be enough to put some low lying pacific nations underwater. The article itself talks about the changes taking place over long time periods 'We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.’'' 

'the ocean rose more than twice as fast (4.62mm a year) in the most recent decade (2013-22) than it did in 1993-2002, the first decade of satellite measurements, when the rate was 2.77mm a year. Last year was a new high, according to the World Meteorological Organization' ...'Not only is dangerous sea level rise “absolutely guaranteed”, but it will keep rising for centuries or millennia even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, experts say.'

This one gotcha article goes around regularly in spite of not being wrong.

Jimmy Magee's Memory

The Irish sports commentator Jimmy Magee was famous for his encyclopedic memory of sports facts. And not just stories he would use during commentating but he could be quizzed and was great at knowing the answers. How did he do it?

In this book he describes how he does not use mnemonic techniques like loci or memory palaces. He just had an interest in the area. And he tested himself.

How much can you learn from a Soap Opera?

I have noticed watching Ros na Rún has improved my Irish but how much could it really help?

Ros na Rún has 82 episodes a series each about 24 minutes long.  You could easily watch one a day over about 3 months. But how much could you learn from that? 

I extracted the Irish subtitles from one episode and it had 2964 words in it. 

Over an 82 episode series that would be 243048 total words. Heap's law says that is about 9860 unique individual words. 

'To be familiar with 98% of the running words in a novel or newspaper, you need to know around 8000-9000 different words.' What do you need to know to learn a foreign language? Paul Nation which is less.

Soap Operas are closer to how people talk than the words used in novels. And there is a fair bit of repetition as people spend several episodes talking about the events a hen night or something. But using words again means you are more likely to remember the word. Any decrease in unique words is an increase in the times you hear a word and your chances of remembering it. 

It is easy enough to extract TG4 subtitles and audio if needed. Which allows you to recheck and learn any section you found difficult. 

'Learn Irish with Series 26 of Ros na Rún' would be an entirely practical 3 month process.

Bribes for Defection of Russian Pilots

 It feels like Ireland cannot do much to help Ukraine in its fight with Russia. But I think that we can by bribing Russian pilots to defect with their planes. 

This is allowed under the normal rules of war. Here is a story about Ukraine trying to do it. 'Russian aviators who were in the midst of bombing Ukraine to defect with their warplanes in exchange for $1 million a piece'. And it seems to have worked at least once.

Theres a good few wonk game theory analysis out there of the best schemes and how much it would cost. Make Desertion Fast 

But at a simple level €10 million and an Irish passport would be pretty tempting for any pilot flying nearby to find they had an engine trouble and to ask to come in for an emergency landing. the passport reduces the worry of being repatriated back to Russia later. Of course not every pilot with the opportunity would defect for that money. But no plan is ever 100% effective.

Russia has lost about 300 aircraft in 2 years of war. At 10 million each that would be about €3 billion if offering defections doubled it. Which is not much more than Ireland, reasonably in my view, spends on helping victims of the war at the moment per year. 

A price of €10 million per plane to help bring about the end of the war would be cheap. And if the scheme does not work and no one defects it would not cost us any money.