A trip to the Peloponnese

Last year we went to the the Peloponnese for our summer holidays. This year… we did again.

My only excuse for this post is for the bits vaguely related to the pol /econ stuff I’ve posted. There wasn’t much of that visible. Had I not known, I wouldn’t have suspected a country in crisis. We took enough cash to cover our bills, and paid everything except the car hire in cash, for which a few of the smaller places seemed restrainedly grateful, but I can’t recall anyone asking for cash rather than credit cards. We saw a local office of Golden Dawn (in Gythio)

and another one for New Democracy (pic, uninteresting) but that hardly amounts to much. And we bought a picture from a local artist to help the economy along a bit.

Oh go on then

I can’t resist adding a bit more econ stuff. As Timmy points out, the IMF is not being kind. OTOH, Greek 10-year bond yields are currently 12.1+, which is not substantially worse than the 11.1+ minimum they hit on the 17th of July; and the stock market “only” tanked 22+%, but at least they’ve managed to re-open. Let us hope for the best.

Refs

* Could Greece become prosperous again? – John P.A. Ioannidis has a harsh take on the competence of the current govt. But his solution – rule by scientists – is the same old Platonic mistake that scientists and philosophers have made over the ages.

“like being inside Hansens head”

One of my favourite journal-club comments, from back in the days when I did science, about a previous Hansen paper that failed to find favour. I’m hoping to actually read the Hansen Noveau, and hopeful that it isn’t just old wine in new bottles, but first a brief comment about comment policy. Blogs without a comment policy but with any degree of popularity tend to have a comment section full of mush. So what of the EGU open review journals? Generally, they’re saved by lack of popularity, but as Tamino points out, one of the recent comments is just raving nutjobbery. Revkin, in his much-updated article on the storm, posts an explanation of the policy from Ulrich Pöschl, Chief-Executive Editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics:

To keep the peer review process efficient and avoid diluting the scientific discussion, only members of the scientific community are invited to post expert comments in the scientific discussion forums of the EGU interactive open access journals. People from outside the scientific community are welcome to read and follow the public review and discussion in the scientific discussion forums, but should pursue further (non-expert) discussions in other more appropriate venues (blogs etc.). Speaking informally: “scientific community” can be broadly defined as scientific researchers with an expert knowledge on the subject of the study under discussion…

Which seems clear enough. So why hasn’t the drivel from Nabil Swedan been deleted¹, then? Perhaps a blogger or bloggers with a known close connection with the EGU journals might comment?

(I’m just back from holiday, BTW)

Refs

* EGU Open discussions – JA discusses EGU open access in the context of Hansen’s paper, but fortunately doesn’t cover the point I was talking about.

Notes

1. It got deleted from wki, which has higher standards.