Statistics Is Alarming And Depressing

So apparently this May was the 351st month in a row to have a global temperate higher than the 20th century mean temperature for the equivalent month. I figured it was worth doing a little noodling here.  Let's assume global warming isn't real, and test how likely we would be to see these results if that were true.

First, let's assume that each month has an equal chance of being above the average temperature and of being below the average temperature.  That's actually a pretty reasonable assumption, by definition. But we'll also include the much less likely assumption that each month's temperature is independent of the temperatures of the months before and after it.  Obviously this is problematic - a hot June implies a hot July - but we'll run with that for now.

Under these assumptions, the chance of 351 above average months in a row is equal to 0.5 to the power 351, or, expressed as a percentage, a probability of:

0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000022%

Winning the National Lottery seven weeks in a row is more likely.

But what about that terrible independence assumption? Well, we can compensate. Let's assume that if the month before was above average temperature-wise, there's a 95% chance this month will be above average too.  That's a number plucked entirely out of thin air, but it's deliberately high. Obviously I'm not a climatologist or a meteorologist, but from personal experience I'd be surprised if that were still too low - comments naturally welcomed.

So what do we do now? Well, since we know every month was above average, there was a 50% chance of month 1 being above average, and a 95% chance every other month was. That gives us a probability equal to 0.5 multiplied by 0.95 to the power 350, which is 0.00000080%.

The true chance almost certainly lies between those two extremes, but at the very best, the chance of seeing what we've seen without global warming being real is smaller than the chance of phoning three people at random and finding out they all share your birthday.

Your move, George Will.

(And since I've invoked the name of the bow-tied charlatan and rape apologist, I should really share this piece by Amanda Marcotte, which really got me chuckling.  Remember kids, if you write a column in which you worry aloud that men who "only" grope a girl and don't rape her might be getting too bad a rap, it's really unbecoming and evidence of simple-mindedness if you get upset about it.)

Hearts And Minds

Stannis Baratheon. On Dragonstone, they call him king. At the Iron Bank, they call him a risky investment. Jon Snow probably just thinks of him as "the cavalry". And Cersei Lannister/Baratheon, Queen/ex-Queen Regent, refers to him only as "my arsehole former brother-in-law". Presumably.

For me, though, there's no title that better describes his story this year than the Incredible Disappearing King.

(TV spoilers follow. Book spoilers have been set aflame by some punk kid who'd clearly have an ASBO shoved up both nostrils if she lived in Broken Britain).

Deep Thoughts: Wet And Wild Edition

 

So, in the world of The Little Mermaid, and of Finding Nemo, all the fish are sentient and can talk and demonstrate an awful lot of human-like behaviour, right? So does that mean they write stories? And when they do write stories, do they sometimes write, mainly for the juvenile fish, tales of things that don't really think and talk like fish thinking and talking like fish?  What are those things? Kelp? Phytoplankton?

And then, in the fictional worlds these fictional fish create, do their meta-fictional subjects have their own literature, with their own metaphors? Could Sebastian the crab write a story in which talking seaweed writes a story about a talking, er, chemosynthetic vent?

If it's turtles all the way down, what does each turtle think it is? And what do they think the thing they think it is thinks it is?

Actually, I may have to go and lie down...

In Which A Vicious Genius Rewrites The Past In Order To Be Mean To Chinese People And Women

This month's Doctor Who best companion was judged to be Leela, which then led to her "best story" being chosen as "Talons of Weng Chiang".  This, it turns out, was a disastrous move, basically explained by a very small voting pool and the fact that I'd only seen this and "Robots of Death", and clearly hadn't remembered the more complicated issues for Leela here. As a result, I've spent the last two weeks trying to put together a defence of Leela's character in this story. In the process I've created something that lacks the bite of, say, Phil Sandifer's comments on the story. I hope that nothing I say actively reaches the point of clueless mansplaining, but I guess we'll just have to see.

(I've also, after seeing friend of the blog hammard employ the idea, chosen titles for each of the episodes to keep things interesting).

Night

Well, that was all very shouty and stabby, wasn't it? It wasn't hard to understand why the showrunners decided they wanted Neil Marshall back after his work on "Blackwater" twenty episodes earlier, and he certainly put a lot into "The Watchers on the Wall", too.

And yet plenty of people aren't actually all that happy with the results. Thoughts on the hows and whys of this follow after the fold. As always, TV spoilers abound, but book spoilers have been banished behind a 700 foot wall of ice, and we don't expect any trouble from them.

Friday 40K: This Green And Pleasant Land

Hoorah! Twenty-five past eleven.  This still counts!

This time round, it's all about the scenery.  Specifically, a Realm of Battle gameboard and a Manufactorum.  With a few models scattered around for colour, of course (including my latest Red Corsairs cultist).  I'm clearly pushed for time here, so I'll stop typing.  Here you go!

"We'd Need To Model Them Crying And Having Periods, Or Whatever"

Not having played any Assassin's Creed games this recent inferno of irk over a total lack of playable female characters is something I'm experiencing second hand, but that doesn't mean I'm not astonished Ubisoft didn't see this coming.  It's been, what, a few months since the last time a game got dumped on for only providing male characters for a dungeon-sweeping title?

That time round the excuse was that a woman in a dungeon would be fundamentally ridiculous (a dragon in a dungeon being simple historical fact, of course). This time it's because it would be too hard to animate a female character.

Even if we leave aside the fact that this point is only true if you make assumptions which dig Ubisoft even deeper into a pet of thoughtless sexism - a woman can only be significantly more difficult to animate than a man if your idea of a woman necessarily includes long flowing hair and/or a large chest - the sheer stupidity of believing the excuse would wash is staggering, and revealing all on its own.  The only way arguments of such coma-inducing ineptitude ever get released beyond the ids of orangutans is when no-one the argument is being deployed against has been allowed within a hundred yards of the discussion.  It is as obvious a demonstration of the need for inclusion as anything you're likely to see outside of a George Will column.  Or this:



People, please, I'm begging you. If you're facing down a storm of controversy over gender issues, talk to actual women before you draft your response.  Hell, you could even talk to women before you finish designing your game, and head this crap off at the pass. But baby steps, I guess.  Not like this is twenty fucking fourteen, or anything.

Update: A friend of mine who makes a living creating video games had chimed in to explain that, whilst "aminating wimminz is hard" is a shitty reason to not include female characters, it isn't quite as ridiculous as I was thinking.  To quote the man:

Ubisoft's claim is almost certainly a valid one. To properly do a female character justice does require a substantial amount more in terms of animation resources. It depends on the game engine, but at the very least I'd imagine you'd be looking at 50% more individual animations. Running male anims on a female character can work but often produces very odd-looking results due to the differing body proportions. Sharing the animations can work (I'm pretty sure Mass Effect does a lot of that) but to get things looking 'right' probably does require new animations. Ultimately it's a cost issue: adding female characters doesn't actually add much in terms of gameplay but it can double the animation requirements. Now, personally, I think that's a cost worth paying and I find it hard to believe Ubisoft can't afford it, but as a reason for not implementing them, it is valid.