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Yes, of course... And when it becomes inconvenient to take care of them anymore, we discard them. Let's face it, people only care because they don't want to be the ones that let an entire species die out under their watch. Once they become a nuisance, then everyone suddenly changes their moral opinions on the matter of killing animals.

Sometimes force and regulation is not the answer, so here's an alternative. How about farming them to make poaching too costly.

It's kinda funny how literally shitting on each other is the German national pastime, and yet only the NSA knows who exactly is shitting on whom.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Google Disagrees
So does merriam-webster
And Cambridge

IThe definition of "electrocution" is "death or injury from electric shock"

Really? In English? I don't know where you getting your dictionary, but the several I referenced stated:

Definition of ELECTROCUTE

1: to execute (a criminal) by electricity
2: to kill by electric shock

Here's an example: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/electrocute

Prefer a UK reference? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/electrocute?q=electrocute

Much as I hate to side with an AC, so far no one has recovered from an electrocution.

I'm going to start an organization called ICANN, which is a shortening of "I CAN Nick any name I want" and sue ICANN for icann.org. They can change their flippin' name to ICANNT for all I care.

Truth is no defense against libel in the U.K.

An interesting attack on U.K. libel law might be for foreigners to sue various MPs for things they've said.

Wrong, on all points. Comprehensively.

• There is no such thing as United Kingdom law. There's English law, Welsh law, Scots law, and Northern Irish law. They're all different.
• Under all of them, truth is a defence in a libel case.
• However under English law, the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove that the allegedly libellous statement was true (see People v Croswell, 1804).
• Because of parliamentary privilege, no member of parliament can be sued for libel for anything said in parliament.

I know that Slashdot is now primarily a place for the immature and ill-informed to run off at the mouth on topics of which they know little, but that was a particularly clueless contribution.

is it?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disorientating
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/disorientating
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/disorientate

The problem with people like Kurzweil, Jeff Hawkins, the folks at the Singularity Institute and the rest of the AI community is that they have all jumped on the Bayesian bandwagon. This is not unlike the way they all jumped on the symbolic bandwagon in the last century only to be proven wrong forty years later. Do we have another half a century to waste, waiting for these guys to realize the error of their ways? Essentially there are two approaches to machine learning.

1) The Bayesian model assumes that events in the world are inherently uncertain and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover the probabilities.
2) The competing model, by contrast, assumes that events in the world are perfectly consistent and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover this perfection.

Luckily for the rest of humanity, a few people are beginning to realize the folly of the Bayesian mindset. When asked in a recent Cambridge Press interview, "What was the greatest challenge you have encountered in your research?", Judea Pearl, an Israeli computer scientist and an early champion of the Bayesian approach to AI, replied: "In retrospect, my greatest challenge was to break away from probabilistic thinking and accept, first, that people are not probability thinkers but cause-effect thinkers and, second, that causal thinking cannot be captured in the language of probability; it requires a formal language of its own."

Read The Myth of the Bayesian Brain for more, if you're interested.

Part of the problem is that CFL's do color banding, whereas incandescent is full spectrum. So even if the color profile is tuned to a reasonable value, it's still lacking output in fairly large color bands. Which, incidentally, is probably why your wife doesn't like it... women are more likely to have better color sensitivity than the average male, especially in the red/green bands

Here you go:
Fast Particle-based Visual Simulation of Ice Melting
Dynamics of melting and stability of ice 1h: Molecular-dynamics simulations of the SPC/E model of water
Alcohol-water mixtures revisited

Now go find me a fucking peer-reviewed article that says AGW means a higher probability of storms, or go play somewhere else. Peer-review: it's how science works.

They haven't done anything that wasn't already being done by others. They're just doing more of it. Essentially, the approach consist of using Bayesian statistics and a hierarchy of patterns. Prof. Hinton pretty much pioneered the use of Bayesian statistics in artificial intelligence. With a rare notable exception (e.g. Judea Pearl), the entire AI community has jumped on the Bayesian bandwagon, not unlike the way they jumped on the symbolic bandwagon in the latter half the 20th century, only to be proven wrong fifty years later.

The Bayesian model essentially assumes that the world is inherently probabilistic and that the job of an intelligent system is to discover the probabilities. A competing model (see links below), by contrast, assumes that the world is perfectly consistent and that the job of an intelligent system is to capture this perfection.

See The Myth of the Bayesian Brain and The Second Great AI Red Herring Chase if you're interested in an alternative approach to AI.

In English judgment is spelt without the extra e when it refers to a legal judgment given by a judge. I don't know why, it just is. Usually the two spellings can be used interchangeably, but if it is an English legal thing, it never has the extra e.

In English judgment is spelt without the extra e when it refers to a legal judgment given by a judge. I don't know why, it just is. Usually the two spellings can be used interchangeably, but if it is an English legal thing, it never has the extra e.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/suit_2

suit
Definition
â a set of clothes made of the same material and usually consisting of a jacket and pants or skirt
â A suit is also a set of clothes or a piece of clothing to be worn in a particular situation or for a particular activity:
        a bathing suit
â slang A suit is also someone in business, esp. when compared with an artist or ordinary worker:
        The network suits donâ(TM)t care about the fans who show up at the ballpark.

I think you mean lawsuit.

Burn the suits. That'll take care of all problems.

The answer is pretty simple, really. The Organization of the Islamic Conference is a block of 56 countries plus Palestinian Arabs that works as a major power block in the world and the UN. They have a lot of cash, a lot of votes, and a lot of influence. They are going to keep pushing for this policy goal till kingdom come. All they need is enough votes, once, however gained. Oil concessions, perhaps? Job opportunities targeted at a particular nation? Development aid? Transit rights through a certain canal? They will keep shifting strategy until they find one that works. Now they seem to be aligning with certain predispositions of the progressives in the West to ban "hate speech". If they are able to get it passed, the real fun begins. You may want to either bind a keyboard macro to type out, "PBUH", or use the Arabic word phrase ligature in Unicode.

The OIC and the Caliphate - February 26, 2011 4:00 A.M.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference is the closest thing in the modern world to a caliphate. It is composed of 57 members (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority), joining voices and political heft to pursue the unitary interests of the ummah, the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Not surprisingly, the OIC works cooperatively with the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most extensive and important Islamist organization, and one that sees itself as the vanguard of a vast, grass-roots movement — what the Brotherhood itself calls a “civilizational” movement.

Muslims are taught to think of themselves as a community, a single Muslim Nation. “I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini famously said of his own country in 1980, even as he consolidated his power there, even as he made Iran the point of his revolutionary spear. “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah.” Muslims were not interested in maintaining the Westphalian system of nation states. According to Khomeini, who was then regarded by East and West as Islam’s most consequential voice, any country, including his own, could be sacrificed in service of the doctrinal imperative that “Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

The OIC vs. Freedom of Expression - Their change of tactics imperils speech worldwide. - April 7, 2011 4:00 A.M.

On March 24, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution aimed at combating “negative stereotyping” and “intolerance” against persons based on religion or belief. For the first time since 1999, this resolution does not include a condemnation of “defamation of religion,” by which the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has repeatedly sought passage of a global blasphemy law to protect Islam from criticism. This development has been heralded as a major victory for the West and human-rights organizations that have long campaigned against this attack on free speech.

The threat to freedom of expression is however, far from over, and the wording of the adopted resolution includes several worrying elements. That threats to the freedom of expression remain is also confirmed by a new OIC initiative. In a March 30 press release, the OIC promised to present a new draft resolution on the issue of “Islamophobia” at the General Assembly in September. The press release also insisted that the OIC “did not back down from its position” in the Human Rights Council. According to the OIC, it was in fact Western cou

Have you ever used LINQ?
Lambda calculus may be handy.

For multivariate calculus, you need to do something that requires physics. Aeronautical engineering, architecture (stress/strain analysis, harmonic modes, etc.), and signal processing (i.e. Fourier transform calculus) are examples.

If you do financial scam*cough*engineering, Ito Calculus would be useful.

Differential equations are much more useful for process controls.
Take that if you can.

Science isn't gay.

Actually, science is pretty gay, since science has lots of smart people and smart people tend to be gay.

There is published evidence (sorry, paywall) of a moderately strong correlation between very high intelligence and homosexuality. That is, very smart people are significantly more likely to be gay than people of normal or even just somewhat high intelligence (the numbers I've seen are a factor of ~2-3). This "large tail" isn't enough to bring up the IQ of gay people as a full group since there aren't that many really smart people. The cause of this correlation is unclear (but also irrelevant to my point that science is pretty gay).

Homosexuality has been associated with high intelligence for a long time apart from published research. I'm reminded of the movie Bedazzled where Brendan Frasier's character wishes to be smart and cultured ("isn't secular humanism yummy?") and the devil who grants the wish also makes him gay. I'm also reminded of Plato's Symposium, where he compared homosexuality to philosophy:

"Homosexuality," Plato wrote, "is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."

(Translation taken from here. It should be noted that Plato's views changed over time.)

Finally, my personal anecdotal evidence agrees with the conclusion that STEM people are far more likely to be gay than average. My college was highly competitive and had almost exclusively STEM majors. My dorm had a huge number of gay people, something like 1 in 5 compared to the national average of something like 1 in 20. I myself am a very intelligent gay mathematician.

I'll try to resume some data in this message.

Vitamin D supplementation was found in years-long, randomized interventional trials, to slash cancer incidence - by, for example, 77%. ( http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short [ajcn.org] , http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/451.short [oxfordjournals.org] ) Even mechanisms of action are known ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076010001822 [sciencedirect.com] , http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.24762/full [wiley.com] , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936945 [nih.gov] ), althought not all are fully understood.

Vitamin D RDA was 200 IU, which is a joke, almost the same thing as nothing. Specially if we consider the human body will produce 10.000 IU in a 15-minute tropical noon-day sun full-body exposure ( http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/3a0/1e8/00e/Cannell-Vitamin-D-study.pdf [nccdn.net] The FDA was faced with this new Vitamin D pleiotropic effects, and given that the RDA was old and obviusly innadequate, it asked the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review it. They dismissed a Vitamin-D -cancer connection in a completely biased, and non-scientific report, cherry picked some articles, ignored many articles. It shocked the vitamin-D research community, as this link is more than clear. ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.328/full [wiley.com] , http://brn.sagepub.com/content/13/2/117 [sagepub.com] ). The committee had conflicts of interest, and deliberately suppressed the favourable studies ( http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8225367 [cambridge.org] , http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/today-the-food-and-nutrition-board-has-failed-millions-111112159.html [prnewswire.com])

It's interesting to note that people in the committee were hand-picked to have conclicts of interest and are developing vitamin D analogs (that work the same way, but are patenteable), so their best interest is to keep natural vitamin D the lowest level possible. Like Glenville Jones, from Cytachroma, developing CTAP101, a medicine to treat vitamin D insufficiency. Or Hector F. DeLuca, that has 101 patents of vitamin D analogs. Or J. Christopher Gallagher, working for GlaxoSmithKline, that develops Sirilux, a vitamin D analog to treat psoryasis. There are other to cite, but you got the point.

Links or it didn't happen.

I'll try to resume some data in this message.

Vitamin D supplementation was found in years-long, randomized interventional trials, to slash cancer incidence - by, for example, 77%. ( http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short , http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/451.short ) Even mechanisms of action are known ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076010001822 , http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.24762/full , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936945 ), althought not all are fully understood.

Vitamin D RDA was 200 IU, which is a joke, almost the same thing as nothing. Specially if we consider the human body will produce 10.000 IU in a 15-minute tropical noon-day sun full-body exposure ( http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/3a0/1e8/00e/Cannell-Vitamin-D-study.pdf
The FDA was faced with this new Vitamin D pleiotropic effects, and given that the RDA was old and obviusly innadequate, it asked the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review it.

They dismissed a Vitamin-D -cancer connection in a completely biased, and non-scientific report, cherry picked some articles, ignored many articles. It shocked the vitamin-D research community, as this link is more than clear. ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.328/full , http://brn.sagepub.com/content/13/2/117 ). The committee had conflicts of interest, and deliberately suppressed the favourable studies ( http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8225367 , http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/today-the-food-and-nutrition-board-has-failed-millions-111112159.html)

It's interesting to note that people in the committee were hand-picked to have conclicts of interest and are developing vitamin D analogs (that work the same way, but are patenteable), so their best interest is to keep natural vitamin D the lowest level possible. Like Glenville Jones, from Cytachroma, developing CTAP101, a medicine to treat vitamin D insuficiency.

Or Hector F. DeLuca, that has 101 patents of vitamin D analogs. Or J. Christopher Gallagher, working for GlaxoSmithKline, that develops Sirilux, a vitamin D analog to treat psoryasis. There are other to cite, but you got the point.

I don't like queer - and you want to call that "homophobia"?

Well, my dictionary says that homophobia is "a fear or dislike of homosexuals". So yes, you're a homophobe.

As far as I'm concerned, bona fide means "real, not false". There's also a plural form that has some kind of "good faith" meaning, but that appears to be legal jargon.

Only one Slashdot do you need to be told that "metric tons" don't exist - they are tonnes, and require no prefix.

Authorities who disagree with you include:
The Encyclopedia Britannica
The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology
and about 16.5 million other hits on Google.

For some reason, having the homonyms ton/tonne variously refer to a short ton (907.18474 kg), a tonne (1000 kg), or long ton (1,016.0469088 kg a.k.a. English ton) vexes some people. They prefer to specify a "metric ton" rather than so overemphasize "tonne" that they sound as if they have a speech impediment.

The unit of measure exists by virtue of its pervasive use. The fact that you prefer an alternate equivalent does nothing to change that fact.

Men aren't sluts, they're womanisers.

Like it or not, English is gender-discriminatory at least in so far as there are specific words for the male and female versions of some things.

Actually, I am a Brit - and it is the standard English English use of the term I am defending.

Seriously?!? This makes it twice as disturbing as before. For your benefit I will copy my post from above just to make damn sure you see many examples of how wrong you can be:

I don't see what difference it makes having a qualifier attached to the word, as anyone with a basic grasp of conversational English will have heard the word state being used in this manner.

However, since you insist on an example, please see here
You'll probably complain about State Aid being a qualifier - but if you look further down you will see exactly the example you want, on a .Gov site from a State within the EU:

(I've emphasised the relevant parts just in case you are as daft as you seem)

Is the measure granted by the state or through state resources? As well as central government departments, this includes regional or local authorities and other public, or private sector, bodies designated or controlled by the state. State resources include tax exemptions and also funds not permanently belonging to the state but under state control, e.g. lottery funding.

There are a shit-load of examples of this use of the word 'state' all over that site and in everyday conversational English (UK English that is) that refer to 'the state'. Here's a few more:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/state

15. of or pertaining to the central civil government or authority.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state

5
a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign
b : the political organization of such a body of people
6: the operations or concerns of the government of a country

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/state

2: a nation, or a country
3: the government of a country

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/state_1

[C or U] a country or its government
The drought is worst in the central African states.
Britain is one of the member states of the European Union.
The government was determined to reduce the number of state-owned industries.
Some theatres receive a small amount of funding from the state.
formal His diary included comments on affairs/matters of state (= information about government activities).

in state
If a king, queen or government leader does something in state, they do it in a formal way as part of an official ceremony
The Queen rode in state to the opening of Parliament.

This is too stupid and arrogant to actually be a troll right?

I don't see what difference it makes having a qualifier attached to the word, as anyone with a basic grasp of conversational English will have heard the word state being used in this manner.

However, since you insist on an example, please see here.

You'll probably complain about State Aid being a qualifier - but if you look further down you will see exactly the example you want, on a .Gov site from a State within the EU:

(I've emphasised the relevant parts just in case you are as daft as you seem)

Is the measure granted by the state or through state resources? As well as central government departments, this includes regional or local authorities and other public, or private sector, bodies designated or controlled by the state. State resources include tax exemptions and also funds not permanently belonging to the state but under state control, e.g. lottery funding.

There are a shit-load of examples of this use of the word 'state' all over that site and in everyday conversational English (UK English that is) that refer to 'the state'. Here's a few more:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/state

15. of or pertaining to the central civil government or authority.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state

5
a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign
b : the political organization of such a body of people
6: the operations or concerns of the government of a country

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/state

2: a nation, or a country
3: the government of a country

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/state_1

[C or U] a country or its government
The drought is worst in the central African states.
Britain is one of the member states of the European Union.
The government was determined to reduce the number of state-owned industries.
Some theatres receive a small amount of funding from the state.
formal His diary included comments on affairs/matters of state (= information about government activities).

in state
If a king, queen or government leader does something in state, they do it in a formal way as part of an official ceremony
The Queen rode in state to the opening of Parliament.

just this (note location) and this were among the top 10 hits searching "alternative navigation systems." Coincidence???

Entice is not pejorative.

Actually, nobody said anything about anything abhorrent, the word used was aberrant. Of course if they had done as you ask, that really would be aberrant behaviour round here...

No - the figurative sense of ossified is correct and common. Petrified is usually used figuratively to mean something like "scared stiff". Ossified, in common figurative use, means that something has become stiff and inflexible (often through disuse or rot) - like tissue that has become bone.

If you check a reasonable dictionary (eg. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/ossify_1?q=ossified) you'll find this definition.

Haha, plebs.

There, fixed that for you.

(Dictated in Lynx.)

There, fixed that for you.

Haha, plebs.

There, fixed that for you.

(Dictated in Lynx.)

There, fixed that for you.

The article's claim that they returned as a result of higher temperatures isn't very well supported (it certainly doesn't provide any citations).

Here you go. Scheinin, A. P. et al. (2011) Gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) in the Mediterranean Sea: anomalous event or early sign of climate-driven distribution change? Marine Biodiversity Records, 4: e28. (Spoiler: they reckon it's probably climate-driven distribution change.)

I am baffled as to why Slashdot insists on linking to the shittiest, vaguest intermediary sites for any scientific research, but I find that 30 seconds with Google usually turns up the relevant paper.

Astrophysics has as tightly constructed empirical investigations as any laboratory science. See for example, http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2326793/

That you find astrophysics unpersuasive is itself unpersuasive.

So, no modern economies? Islamic Golden Age, lol.

And Victorian Britain had an abysmal growth, less than 1% a year - that would be considered a crisis in the modern world. And there was some inflation even then, including hidden one: http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521820370_CHOL9780521820370A002&cited_by=1

So, no examples of modern economies?

Not saying that it couldn't be done but a boycott might be a bit of a problem since these are three of the biggest peer-reviewed journal publishers. Consider the following lists of journals:

Cambridge
Oxford
Sage

The transition would also be met with an extreme amount of resistance from the professors working towards tenure. If they do not publish due to the boycott then suddenly you have another problem in the system that must be addressed. For doctoral students, they suddenly run the risk of not having access to seminal articles along with the latest upcoming research. That would have a significant impact on their ability to conduct high quality research and subsequently find a job after graduation.

Sure, many of those problems could be addressed but a united front in academia, oftentimes an egotistic political train-wreck, is unlikely.

Precisely, the OED is a record of language, not a guardian of it.

Obviously you are not British*. Of course Oxbridge's presses (OUP, CUP) are the guardian of English as much as L'Académie française is the guardian of the French (sorry, française) language. Don't let the Telegraph tell you any different.

* Wait, you may be. Sod it.

Ok, thanks and bye are all British English.

Also, Shakespeare had trouble spelling his own name and so while arguably a literary genius should perhaps not be held up as an example of a linguistic one.

Hope that helps.

Ok, thanks and bye are all British English.

Also, Shakespeare had trouble spelling his own name and so while arguably a literary genius should perhaps not be held up as an example of a linguistic one.

Hope that helps.

Ok, thanks and bye are all British English.

Also, Shakespeare had trouble spelling his own name and so while arguably a literary genius should perhaps not be held up as an example of a linguistic one.

Hope that helps.

Here you go. No need to thank me.

And no, that's not "supressing your desires" like most anti-Catholic people make it sound like. Self-control is never a bad thing, last I checked.

Suppressing your desire is exactly what self-control is. If you don't desire something then there is no self-control involved in the first place.

the Catholic Church's opinion on sexuality is a lot more reasonable than many people make it sound like

I don't doubt that, but in denying people the opportunity to enjoy sex except for the express purpose of procreation it is still not as reasonable as I personally believe it should be.

There are "bigots" out there like WBC, but please don't label the Catholic Church (whether or not you were) as one of them.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines bigot as follows:

a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong

I'm sorry, but in my opinion from what you have just said, the Catholic Church meets this definition of bigot, on this issue. The only question is whether the stance on homosexuality is "unreasonable"; again, appealing to the CALD definition:

Unreasonable: not fair or acceptable

Personally I find the Catholic Church's stance on sexuality in general to be neither fair nor acceptable; thus, I find it bigoted as per the definition above.

And no, that's not "supressing your desires" like most anti-Catholic people make it sound like. Self-control is never a bad thing, last I checked.

Suppressing your desire is exactly what self-control is. If you don't desire something then there is no self-control involved in the first place.

the Catholic Church's opinion on sexuality is a lot more reasonable than many people make it sound like

I don't doubt that, but in denying people the opportunity to enjoy sex except for the express purpose of procreation it is still not as reasonable as I personally believe it should be.

There are "bigots" out there like WBC, but please don't label the Catholic Church (whether or not you were) as one of them.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines bigot as follows:

a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong

I'm sorry, but in my opinion from what you have just said, the Catholic Church meets this definition of bigot, on this issue. The only question is whether the stance on homosexuality is "unreasonable"; again, appealing to the CALD definition:

Unreasonable: not fair or acceptable

Personally I find the Catholic Church's stance on sexuality in general to be neither fair nor acceptable; thus, I find it bigoted as per the definition above.

Counterfeit, n: made to look like the original of something, usually for dishonest or illegal purposes.

Sounds like the right word to me.

Couldn't and shouldn't are contractions, not concatenations (and the word is concatenation not concocation which isn't a word at all), and black mail most definitely is one word - unless you are literally talking about mail that is black in colour.

You are revealing WAY too much about your own intellect with your angry, uncontrolled ranting.

calling a software feature a "bug"

You seemed to have completely missed what is being discussed here, despite the extensive discussion over that exact subject. This isn't "bug" as in "software error". This is "bug" as in the following:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bug
"a concealed listening device"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bug
"a hidden microphone or other electronic eavesdropping device."

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/bug_4
"a very small device fixed on to a telephone or hidden in a room, that allows you to listen to what people are saying without them knowing"

a "web bug" is merely the web based version of an eavesdropping device.

So yes, the conversation is indeed ENTIRELY about only ONE form of the word....the form I just documented.

... the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. [Slashdot summary]

Here the summary implies that previously published GRACE ice mass balance estimates didn't take GIA into account. At first I assumed this ridiculous implication must have been a mistake on Slashdot's part. Then I read the article:

... according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment. ... Often ignored or considered a minor factor in previous research, post-glacial rebound turns out to be important, says the paper. [AFP, Sep 8]

No, previous research didn't ignore (see section 2.2.4) GIA/PGR. These news stories are reporting on a paper by Xiaoping Wu et al. (free PDF). In table 2, Dr. Wu shows that his estimates are half as big as those in papers published separately by Velicogna, Chen et al. and Luthcke et al.

Luthcke et al. corrects for GIA using the ICE-5G model which combines many proxies and other empirical evidence regarding ice history since the Last Glacial Maximum, mantle viscosity and the Earth's various Love numbers. Chen et al. used the similar IJ05 model. Velicogna used multiple independent models to estimate uncertainty in the GIA signal. After reading Dr. Wu's paper, it's clear he never claimed that previous research had ignored or failed to correct for GIA.

That would have been a real surprise, because he wouldn't make a claim that can be disproven simply by skimming the papers he referenced. Nor is he rude enough (or at all, for that matter) to imply that the rest of the GRACE community ignored this important issue. Coincidentally, Dr. Wu worked for my advisor as a postdoc in the 1990s, in the same office that I'm currently using. I met him several months ago at the WP-AGU conference in Taiwan, and as far as I can tell he's overwhelmed by the bizarre attention his paper has gotten from the general public:

RUSH: There's a global warming story out. Guess what? Greenland and some of the ice floes, they're only going to melt half as much as originally forecast. So the polar bears are still going to have a place to live. I don't think they're going to melt, period. All of this is a sham.

"Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming [hoax], should be halved, according to Dutch and US scie

Actually in this sense, transmit is correct. As a physics grad I would certainly never use conduct for anything other than heat or electricity.

Actually in this sense, transmit is correct. As a physics grad I would certainly never use conduct for anything other than heat or electricity.

You understand that the Earth is already out in the solar wind, right? With a surface area vastly larger than the proposed sail? If we were going to blow away, it'd have already happened.

Both you and GP are nearly right.

The earth is (near enough) a rotating sphere in the solar wind. As any aerodynamicist can show, a rotating sphere in a fluid flow generates a force (lift) perpendicular to the flow. Since the solar wind flows from the sun past the earth, the resultant force causes the earth to orbit around the sun.

Also, as any sailor can show, if you throw a sail connected to your ship into he sea, it will act as a sea anchor. Sea anchors are used as a type of break to counteract the forces of high winds.

So, if we have this rather large energy-collecting sail in the solar wind tethered to the earth, it will tend to inhibit the motion of the earth relative to the solar wind. This will slow down and eventually stop the earth's rotation. Once the earth stops rotating, the perpendicular lift force will stop, and the earth will stop orbiting the sun.

So, eventually we'll have the earth sitting motionless with one side in perpetual daylight and the other in permanent darkness.

But we can use the energy from the sail to power the lightbulbs for the darkside, so we've nothing to worry about!!

Receiving a good education does not ensure that you are right or wrong, but it means you are very highly trained in the existing hubris of your culture.

Great phrase! Have you read Masks of the Universe? Here are some excerpts from the introduction (pdf):

The theme of this book is that the universe in which we live, or think we live, is mostly a thing of our own making. The underlying idea is the distinction between Universe and universes. It is a simple idea having many consequences.

... the Universe is everything. What it is ... we never fully know.

... the universes are our models of the Universe. They are great schemes of intricate thought -- grand belief systems -- that rationalize human existence. ... Each determines what is perceived and what constitutes valid knowledge, and the members of a society believe what they perceive and perceive what they believe.

... This oldest of human conceits, which confuses universe with Universe, is alive today as much as at any time in the past. We are afflicted with the hubris that denies our descendants the right to different and better knowledge.

Receiving a good education does not ensure that you are right or wrong, but it means you are very highly trained in the existing hubris of your culture.

Great phrase! Have you read Masks of the Universe? Here are some excerpts from the introduction (pdf):

The theme of this book is that the universe in which we live, or think we live, is mostly a thing of our own making. The underlying idea is the distinction between Universe and universes. It is a simple idea having many consequences.

... the Universe is everything. What it is ... we never fully know.

... the universes are our models of the Universe. They are great schemes of intricate thought -- grand belief systems -- that rationalize human existence. ... Each determines what is perceived and what constitutes valid knowledge, and the members of a society believe what they perceive and perceive what they believe.

... This oldest of human conceits, which confuses universe with Universe, is alive today as much as at any time in the past. We are afflicted with the hubris that denies our descendants the right to different and better knowledge.