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Slightly on topic, and just posting this here for visibility:

This study was done with the premise of only screens, nighttime usage and specifically adolescence mental wellbeing. There has been a lot of studies but ruling the technology itself out can be helpful so care can be placed properly.

The CONTENTS or more specifically, the usage, of the screen might still be harmful, i.e social media use and mental health[1], video game use and lack of sleep and mental health[2], etc.

Citation: 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... 2: https://www.ingentaconnect.com...

Every assertion you have made is lacking the critical thinking 'Why?'

Why is a 97% cash based economy "just ridiculous?"

What is ridiculous and why is it bad?

It's bad because it facilitates corruption on multiple levels. Go to a store to buy something and inevitably the question pops up of whether you want a bill. The vendor offers you a discount if you pay cash and don't ask for a bill because that way he evades sales tax on that transaction. Most people would gladly pay cash and take the discount. With a card swipe the vendor has no choice but to account for the transaction and pay the tax on it. Multiply this across every store in the market, add gas stations, hospitals, basically anywhere money changes hands in cash and imagine the scale of tax evasion. Many people feel a sense of unfairness at the prospect of their income tax being deducted at source (@marginal 30%) when traders and business owners are getting by paying only a fraction of what they're supposed to.

Why should people not be allowed to purchase specific items with cash? Who decides that and why?

The majority of those paying cash aren't doing so just for the pleasure of it. They're doing it for a very specific purpose - to evade taxes. If the indirect tax net is broadened by discouraging these "off the books" transactions the government would be able (in theory at least) to rationalise direct taxes for the middle class who currently bear a good share of the income tax burden. Consider that over 50% of total tax revenues come from direct taxes (i.e. income tax) which are paid by less than 5% of the population. Note: this isn't the top 5% either.

Why is India an "annoying neighbor?" Why does that matter? Why is that relevant to what they do within their borders with their own currency system?

Okay, I'll count this one as a reading comprehension fail. My point was that India has an annoying neighbour that actively counterfeits Indian currency.

Why does it matter if people "can't be bothered to use the banking system?"

It matters because the promotion of a shadow economy has several drawbacks including rising tax rates, constraints on public sector spending and making econometric figures unreliable

Why is the banking system better? What does it provide that cash does not to the people that prefer cash?

How about security from theft and opportunities to earn interest?

Why do you believe interests rates dropping would be a good thing for people that can't take advantage of it?

It doesnt matter what I believe. The fact is lower interest rates are a significant factor in promoting and sustaining overall economic growth and economic growth leads to reduction in poverty levels

Why do you think that interest rates dropping would naturally lead to better infrastructure?

Not interest rates but increased tax revenues means more public funds available for infrastructure projects.

Why should someone that has cash let other people make money off of their work?

Oh I don't know - maybe because they benefit from public services like roads, sanitation and public healthcare?

Your post is

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/...

You can connect at the bottom of the page as of right now the link in the article above is not working for me.

I am not a glaciologist but i read the article and am a bit puzzled by the findings related to snowfall and "thickness". It looks as if only satelite data was used, so why can't Antarctica actually be losing massive amounts of ice and the resulting removal of mass cause uplifting of the underlying rock? Removal of large amounts of mass over wide areas tend to have that effect and I was not able to find reference in the references. ICESat only uses laser range finding.
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/icesat/glas.php

I also cite an article that cites a cooks illustrated study that found more residual nitrites in the celery-bacon than in traditional bacon, suggesting that they might use more nitrites in the curing process. However, I just found this abstract which says that bacteria growth was found to be higher in "no-nitrate-or-nitrite-added" meats than in traditional cured meats. This suggests to me that they might have *less* nitrites since the bacteria isn't being inhibited (it also suggests that you should avoid the alternative methods if you plan to store the meat for a long period of time before consuming).

You may be wrong yourself. If you look at the FBI Crime Reports, you will see that there are 37 criminal firearm based homicides for every self-defense homicide by a civilian. The USA has a much higher gun death rate than other developed countries, and when you look within the USA itself, you find that Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the U.S., where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide., or put simply more guns, more crime. All of the above citations go to original or academic sources. So what could be going on? Well, firstly, the NRA attempts to stop scientists from studying gun violence. (In a similar vein, the junk-food industry tries to limit the study of the health effects of sugar.) Secondly, the NRA keeps its own datasets to do it's own "research" to reach its own conclusions, which (call me crazy), keeps the donors happy. Those would be the gun manufacturers. Most large industries do this. I'm open minded on the issue, and follow it because I have an academic interest in cognitive bubbles. If you are interested learning a different perspective on the issue, then read this. You don't have to believe a word of it; however, if you *can* read it, and accurately repeat back the arguments made, then that would indicate enough cognitive flexibility to really be informed about the issue, and be an expert. Ideologues do not have this flexibility, but want to maintain the self-concept of being an expert, which explains most of what is wrong with politics.

You are a liar. Here, let me quote:

If you look at the FBI Crime Reports, you will see that there are 37 criminal firearm based homicides for every self-defense homicide by a civilian.

Homicides are not a good measure of defensive actions. Defensive homicides are what happens when the criminal does not back off when warned, is too violent too fast for a threat backed by a gun to work, etc. The vast majority of defensive gun uses are simply displays. Like the guy up thread with the gun on his lap. The criminals were there, and may have been working themselves up to act, but left because of the gun.

Your assertion that a gun has to kill to do it's job is both myopic and factually incorrect. Heck, often a simple display indicating this victim will not go down as easy as they thought is enough to prevent the crime.

Why would you need to LIE to support your position unless your position was wrong? You sir, are a LIAR.

You may be wrong yourself. If you look at the FBI Crime Reports, you will see that there are 37 criminal firearm based homicides for every self-defense homicide by a civilian. The USA has a much higher gun death rate than other developed countries, and when you look within the USA itself, you find that Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the U.S., where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide., or put simply more guns, more crime.

All of the above citations go to original or academic sources. So what could be going on?

Well, firstly, the NRA attempts to stop scientists from studying gun violence. (In a similar vein, the junk-food industry tries to limit the study of the health effects of sugar.)

Secondly, the NRA keeps its own datasets to do it's own "research" to reach its own conclusions, which (call me crazy), keeps the donors happy. Those would be the gun manufacturers. Most large industries do this.

I'm open minded on the issue, and follow it because I have an academic interest in cognitive bubbles. If you are interested learning a different perspective on the issue, then read this. You don't have to believe a word of it; however, if you *can* read it, and accurately repeat back the arguments made, then that would indicate enough cognitive flexibility to really be informed about the issue, and be an expert. Ideologues do not have this flexibility, but want to maintain the self-concept of being an expert, which explains most of what is wrong with politics.

Any citation for that?

Nope; as noted, "I haven't run across anyone in my personal life...", so this would fall under the "anecdote" category. :)

I want to see a proper double blind study done of this.

I look at an LCD all day, then sometimes some more at home. I do not suffer from any eyestrain I can detect.

Similar to the anecdote/data duality is the fact that not everyone is affected by things the same way. You may be one of the lucky few or lucky many who aren't negatively impacted by looking at an LCD all day. I know that my nearsightedness is markedly worse at the end of any workweek where I've been staring at the monitor all the time, and that my eyesight is noticeably improved after spending several days not staring at something only a couple feet away. YMMV, and all that.

The impact of backlit screens on circadian rhythms has been studied, if memory serves. Some quick googling pulls up a goodly number of hits, including a couple actual studies just in the first page of hits. Changing from regular web-wide Google to Google Scholar produces more hits for studies.

And more specific to eye strain are these hits. I haven't waded through, but the number of hits (524) and the titles of the first page of hits suggests that this is an area of study. This one in particular sounds like what you might be looking for: Comparison of eye fatigue among readings on conventional book and two typical electronic books equipped with electrophoretic display and LC display . This link to the paper is paywalled, unfortunately, but you might be able to ferret out an open copy of it somewhere.

Cheers,

If you want the real numbers, read the (free) pdf:
http://esa.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jee/2013/00000106/00000004/art00036

They actually did a pretty thorough job of testing them and various attractants in various levels, and have real numbers in the report.

To attempt to answer you question (which can't be answered 100% accurately because there were many scenarios tested and you and the summary didn't state which was referenced)... not all the bugs got caught; the bugs that did not get caught were generally inactive and lethargic (I'm guessing they were old, or not hungry, etc), so they didn't really count them; the new traps caught about 2.5 fold more bugs given the same lure (or lack thereof); tests were run in a variety of settings, including an arena made from a wooden door and several infested apartments while people were there.

Also, for those wondering, the new trap is:
* inverted plastic dog bowl (600ml volume, 18cm diameter, 6.4cm depth, from IKEA)
* outer wall of bowl was covered with a layer of paper surgical tape (caring international)
* tape was died black with Fiebing's Lether Dye (Tandy Leather Factory)
* Incide of bowls were coated with a light layer of fluoropolymer resin (Bio-Quip products, Rancho Dominguez, CA) to prevent the bugs from crawling out

And the best lure was:
* 150g yeast (Lesaffre Yeast Corp)
* 750g granulated cane sugar (U.S. Sugar Co. Inc)
* 3L water (40degree C)

Fill a plastic tub with the lure mixure, mix it up, put on a lid, and rest it on top of two traps.
Lower amounts of lure stil work (not as well as the above amount, but much better than none - see paper for full details).

Except you have lots of jaggy sawtooth peaks where there are NO glaciers and U shaped valleys where there are glaciers.

As for mountains eroding at a millimeter per, I'd like to know how they calculated that. If they simply measure the sediment in melt water and extrapolate that to cubit meters of rock and spread it over the entire watershed they would find that glaciated areas drop a lot more sediment than non-glaciated areas.

On the other hand if they are doing actual height measurements, how do they arrive at that level of precision, or explain the fact that there is no visible or measurable sign of millimeter depth erosion on the tops of mountains?

Commenting Anon to avoid undoing moderation.

Your correct about the training being the issue. Training and handling aspects are going to be very important when deciding if the dog and handler are 'doing their job'. The evidence for various breeds of canine having sufficiently developed nasal senses and intelligence to be trained is hard to refute. From centuries of hunting and tracking dogs as anecdotal evidence, to the long recognized work of bloodhounds for tracking people on the run ( including a well demonstrated mythbusters episode ), through to the scientifically analyzed work in medical testing and other more rigorous modern study. I have seen plenty of scientific evidence regarding the efficacy of dogs to smell several kinds of cancer and other assorted chemicals. A selection of Citations to show I'm not talking out my ass, and exonerate the humble canines sense of smell. One, Two, Three, Four,Five,Six.

Now the issue is clearly not the dog itself. Its the handlers. Handlers are fallible humans who need to be tested with a specific animal. If a handler over time trains his dog to signal at the wrong times, its the handlers fault, unfortunately it can be very hard to un-train this behavior and thus the animal is now a less effective tool for the job it was trained for, and the employee either needs to be reprimanded or given other duties. The application of an external performance pressure to the task, the handler 'wanting to find', is the root cause of the issue. Dogs cant be reliably used when their handlers get bonuses, prestige, or any kind of incentive that could bias the handler.

The short version of this is that organizations using sniffer dogs are clearly degrading the effectiveness of their sniffer dogs based on poor management practices either implicitly or explicitly encouraging the handlers to skew the behavior of the dog.

An example I can recall of good management (may not be an 100% correct recitation, since I heard it some years ago) is that the Australian Customs & Border Protection Services have a required level of accuracy, not exceeding thresholds set for both false negatives and false positives during training and on the job. Keep pulling over the wrong guy, you might loose the job. And they also have a degree of separation between the dog handlers and the people that do baggage inspections and other security tasks, a dog handler is primarily a dog handler, his job is to handle the dog as part of a team.

The IPCC directs no funding for research. The pay the expenses of scientists and others when they get together to discuss what to put in the reports.

The Amazon claims in the IPCC did have scientific research to back them up. To quote the author of the studies, Daniel Nepstad:

"In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. The report that is cited in support of the IPCC statement (Rowell and Moore 2000) omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement."

Rowell and Moore 2000 was the non-peer reviewed paper that the IPCC cited for the Amazon claims.

Here are the citations of peer reviewed literature that should have been in there to back it up:

Nepstad 1994
Nepstad 1997
Nepstad 2004

And other studies since the IPCC report:

Nepstad 2007
Phillips 2009

So the IPCC's claims about the Amazon weren't wrong, just poorly referenced.

Not that anyone cares, but I'm already in print about this: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/is/2010/00000011/00000002/art00003 or get it here http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/web/ai.html I actually argued that this process will be an important part of keeping robotics companies from overselling their products, and in fact the issue will be underselling to escape liability, so there will need to be consumer information dissemination about it.

I actually can't find a single bit of valid, scientific research pointing either way. Your link also doesn't back up that claim, it has one link that returns a 404. So I'm forced to use, admittedly flawed, anecdotal evidence.

Did you try very hard before you gave up and decided to use your anecdotal evidence?

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1997/00000012/00000002/art00006
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1994/00000009/00000002/art00002
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f14463456071g744/
http://www.narth.com/docs/domestic.html
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2037/Spouse-Partner-Abuse-Who-What-When-DOMESTIC-ABUSE-AMONG-SAME-SEX-COUPLES.html

No, you obviously didn't try very hard.

Also, 50% of gay relationships lack men, the chief abusers in relationships.

A lot of abuse is based off of old family paradigms ("I'm the MAN of the house, your the little subservient woman!"

gay people, by their very existence have moved past that, for the most part

Bullshit. More claims with no evidence, only your anecdotal experience.

Nope. Homosexual couples can be just as dysfunctional as heterosexual ones. I don't understand where the "masochist" bit comes in. I've been in a very happy (heterosexual) relationship for years, and there isn't much pain, or suffering in it, neither is there in the most of the other heterosexual couples I know.

Then by your own admission most heterosexual couples you know are, apparently, fine. Sheer volume might account for the fact that "a fair number" of heterosexual couples you've met had issues with domestic violence, and "only one" homosexual couple did. Do you know comparable numbers of gay and straight couples? And might there possibly just be more pressure on homosexual couples to gloss over issues with domestic violence, in the interests of trying to help themselves be perceived as a "normal family"?

I actually can't find a single bit of valid, scientific research pointing either way. Your link also doesn't back up that claim, it has one link that returns a 404. So I'm forced to use, admittedly flawed, anecdotal evidence.

Did you try very hard before you gave up and decided to use your anecdotal evidence?

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1997/00000012/00000002/art00006
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1994/00000009/00000002/art00002
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f14463456071g744/
http://www.narth.com/docs/domestic.html
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2037/Spouse-Partner-Abuse-Who-What-When-DOMESTIC-ABUSE-AMONG-SAME-SEX-COUPLES.html

No, you obviously didn't try very hard.

Also, 50% of gay relationships lack men, the chief abusers in relationships.

A lot of abuse is based off of old family paradigms ("I'm the MAN of the house, your the little subservient woman!"

gay people, by their very existence have moved past that, for the most part

Bullshit. More claims with no evidence, only your anecdotal experience.

Nope. Homosexual couples can be just as dysfunctional as heterosexual ones. I don't understand where the "masochist" bit comes in. I've been in a very happy (heterosexual) relationship for years, and there isn't much pain, or suffering in it, neither is there in the most of the other heterosexual couples I know.

Then by your own admission most heterosexual couples you know are, apparently, fine. Sheer volume might account for the fact that "a fair number" of heterosexual couples you've met had issues with domestic violence, and "only one" homosexual couple did. Do you know comparable numbers of gay and straight couples? And might there possibly just be more pressure on homosexual couples to gloss over issues with domestic violence, in the interests of trying to help themselves be perceived as a "normal family"?

I don't think you're the right person to teach paleoclimatology if you didn't immediately recognize the source I linked :) (Geocarb III)

My comment was, of course, that the biosphere can handle 380ppm (and much more) just fine.

As to your reliance on CO2 measurements from ice cores, you might want to have gas diffusion in mind:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/igsoc/jog/2008/00000054/00000187/art00012

I usually don't bother arguing with irrational, delusional psychopaths, but this caught my eye.

The gospels date to between 65 CE and 110 CE. The earliest of them references events that happen in 60 CE - 62 CE. Your line about "assumptions of usual first writing compared to date of first manuscript" is pure bullshit.

Right, and the gospels are dated to 65-110AD because the earliest papyrus found dates from 100-250AD. It's always assumed that your oldest copy of the document isn't the original, unless you have some way of knowing that to be the case. That's my only point: we're within the margin of error on the calculations, the gospels could have been written by the original disciples.

I also think that your dating at earliest referenced events being 60AD is a little... late. Pilate's reign ended in 36AD.

You're also forgetting the small matter of life expectancy. Until very recently, 25-28 years was all you could expect to get. 35 if you were very very lucky. That would be like living to 95 today. The numbers just don't add up. The authors of the gospels were not around to witness anything.

Herod the Great lived 70 years, reigning for about 40, and Herod Antipas lived beyond 60. It's not unreasonable that a group of religious ascetics in good physical fitness (nearly all were day laborers) and abstaining from unhealthy vices couldn't live to 50 and beyond.

It's not like they had to conspire, either. Christianity has been exploited for political gain by individuals CONSTANTLY since before it even got started.

I assume you would be referring to Christianity before it was written down? Otherwise, how do you use something that doesn't exist for political gain?

That's all I felt like saying. Not going to bother with more, people like you don't WANT to think.

I'm not trying to convince you that these are proofs of what I believe. However, I don't see any of these pieces of evidence so unlikely as to refute my view that the Gospels were written by first-hand witnesses. Unlikely, yes, but not disproven.

Of course, we're at an impasse, I'm starting with the assertion that Jesus was the son of God, you're starting with the assertion that the Gospels are a fabrication. All the numbers above make both answers plausible, but you're making just as many assumptions as I am, so don't presume yourself to be more 'logical'. You have just as much of a philosophical/spiritual/whatever axe to grind as I do.

This reference may be relevant: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/umte/1998/00000002/00000002/art00006?crawler=true "...Results from this study show that a small-scale heat engine fabricated from a low-thermal-conductivity material can be made with a length scale approaching 1 mm. Such a device would undoubtedly be composed of numerous microscale components. Below the 1-mm limit, efficiency suffers to such a degree that solid-state thermoelectric devices would become a better choice for a particular application. "

Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.

A quick google search of "michael nature global temperature" points to : "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859

This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.

Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:

Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time-dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) ad 1400.

Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".

Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published (*gasp*) Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, whose abstract reads:

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, "MBH98" hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects. We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular "hockey stick" shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."

Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy, named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly

Well... Palin doesn't have a chance in hell of winning a presidency, but you're right she's no dumber than Bush Junior. Probably smarter. And Obama, intelligent as he is, demonstrates that that doesn't make you a good president either. In fact here's a rundown of presidential IQs (estimated). I'm just going to offer my opinion of which presidents were good or bad during their office term. Hmmm. It appears the smartest are also the worst (IMHO)

Summary:
bad - 1. John Quincy Adams, IQ 175 - protective tariffs - single termer - split Democrats in half
good - 2. Thomas Jefferson, 160 - our best president
bad - 3. John F. Kennedy, 159.8 - got us into Vietnam War; makes him no better than Bush imho
bad - 4. Bill Clinton, 159 - scandal; failure to deal with Bin Laden; crash of 2000
bad - 5. Jimmy Carter, 156.8 - duh
bad - 6. Woodrow Wilson, 155.2 - promised to keep us out of WW1 - lied; arrested protesters against the war; imprisoned women asking for voting rights

bad - 7. Theodore Roosevelt, 153 - broke-up corporations- unconstitutional; took land from states without just compensation
good - 8. Chester A. Arthur, 152.3 - ended the spoils system of governance; replaced it with a merit system
bad - 9. Abraham Lincoln, 150 - suspended habeas corpus to jail American citizens without trial; ignored Supreme Court decisions; basically he acted like Bush

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/pops/2006/00000027/00000004/art00001;jsessionid=1i07kdv5wgn5p.alexandra?format=print

All of our presidents have had high IQ: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/pops/2006/00000027/00000004/art00001;jsessionid=1i07kdv5wgn5p.alexandra?format=print

Summary:
1. John Quincy Adams, IQ 175
2. Thomas Jefferson, 160 ----- my favorite
3. John F. Kennedy, 159.8
4. Bill Clinton, 159
5. Jimmy Carter, 156.8
6. Woodrow Wilson, 155.2
7. Theodore Roosevelt, 153
8. Chester A. Arthur, 152.3
9. Abraham Lincoln, 150 ------ I thought he'd rank higher, but he is just a "dumb" Republican after all (just joking)

And here's the bottom of the barrel:

Harry S. Truman, 140
George W. Bush, 138.5
Ulysses S. Grant, 130
average college graduate, 109

"In a common greenhouse global-warming scenario, the Maldives have been condemned to become flooded in 50 years or, at the most, 100 years. However, our study of past and present sea-level changes shows no sign of any sea-level rise. On the contrary, the Maldives have seen a sea-level fall in the past 30 years. This sea-level fall is likely to be the effect of an increased evaporation and intensified northeast monsoon over the central Indian Ocean. We are confident that the people of the Maldives are not condemned to become flooded in the near future."

"Sticks and stones make break my bones, but words will never hurt me!" is absolutely false.

Bullying causes long term physiological and psychological harm to the victim including Post traumatic stress disorder. Physical Bullying is illegal, we call it assault. It is immaterial to the victim if the bullying was conducted first hand or remotely, it is wrong and should be punished.

"Sticks and stones make break my bones, but words will never hurt me!" is false, bullying causes long term physiological and psychological harm including Post traumatic stress disorder.

How ironic. You accuse me of stupidity while, apparently, not understanding the term "mean global temperature".

Imagine the solar output doubles. What do you figure will happen to the mean global temperature? Assume it halves. What will happen? In what way is that not a correlation?

We've had satellites studying the sun for decades.

Indeed, and guess what: we have found strong variations in UV output http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/sola/1998/00000177/00000001/00134956?crawler=true. The shorter the wavelength, the more extreme the variations.

The variations are definitely correlated to the solar cycle which is not surprising: coronal conditions are strongly influenced by the entangled magnetic field loops pinned to sunspots since the charged particles in the corona track those loops on account of the Lorentz force. And it is known that the sunspot number rises and falls as to sun goes through the solar cycle maximum and minimum. However, the current cycle has an anomalously low number of sunspots and an extended minimum.

To get some idea as to what fraction of the short wavelength flux stems from the corona, have a look at the following images: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/images/

No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word :) We do not have excellent data (gas diffusion in ice cores is a bitch!) and current models lack incredible amounts of algorithmic data which is instead made up as we see politically fit at the moment :) (for example, the influence of clouds)

We do not have an unusual trend of global warming at all. On the contrary, there might not be a trend to speak of when removing measurement uncertainties. (http://surfacestations.org should scare anyone who believes the tempereature data we're soon basing our whole economy on)

The best fit for the temperature changes over the last century is not with CO2 levels but with ocean cycles btw.

On gas diffusion: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/igsoc/jog/2008/00000054/00000187/art00012

On ocean cycles: http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/05/14/timescale-of-the-pdo-nao-and-amo/

Why are you not interested in doing actual science? We simply don't have data to support Hansen's and Gore's wild accusations.

In other words, higher levels of CO2 really did cause all plants to grow more, until they started screwing with other environmental variables based on what they THINK a future atmosphere (and temperature) will be like. In other words, they screwed with the gas and baked the plants in the oven until they stopped growing so they can say, "See, GW is bad!"

So when you say, I should do the same, I already did.

And what of this; "Thirty years of in situ tree growth under elevated CO2: a model for future forest responses? Like they controlled CO2 and heat in an unnatural setting? Sure some studies may of used potted or greenhoused plants but others studied plants in their natural environment.

Falcon

The one drawback of Lincoln was that he was racist - as were most people of his time. He used the word "nigger" in his 1860 campaign, and he once was remarked that he did not care if slavery ended or continued. "If freeing the slaves would preserve the Union, I would do it. If keeping slavery would preserve the Union, I would do that." (Source: CBS News Morning show, this past Thursday)

>>>self educated man with a ferocious curiosity and probably one of the highest IQs of any president we've ever had.

1. John Quincy Adams, IQ 175
2. Thomas Jefferson, 160 average college graduate, 109

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/pops/2006/00000027/00000004/art00001;jsessionid=1i07kdv5wgn5p.alexandra?format=print

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/pops/2006/00000027/00000004/art00001;jsessionid=1i07kdv5wgn5p.alexandra?format=print

Summary:
1. John Quincy Adams, IQ 175
2. Thomas Jefferson, 160 --- my favorite
3. John F. Kennedy, 159.8
4. Bill Clinton, 159
5. Jimmy Carter, 156.8
6. Woodrow Wilson, 155.2
7. Theodore Roosevelt, 153
8. Chester A. Arthur, 152.3
9. Abraham Lincoln, 150 ---- I thought he'd rank higher, but he is just a "dumb" Republican after all (just joking)

And here's the bottom of the barrel:

Harry S. Truman, 140
George W. Bush, 138.5
Ulysses S. Grant, 130
average college graduate, 109

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/pops/2006/00000027/00000004/art00001;jsessionid=1i07kdv5wgn5p.alexandra?format=print

Summary:
1. John Quincy Adams, IQ 175
2. Thomas Jefferson, 160 average college graduate, 109

I work in Criminology and know that studies that focus on drug dealers show that they make far less than what most people imagine. Instead, many are in it because they need to add to their existing, legitimate, source of income or because they are attracted to the lifestyle. Its very possible that many phishers are tolerant of the low income simply because they enjoy living the lifestyle. Anyone interested in looking into the other possible links might want to read this.

In many parts of the world, the sunlight contains enough UV radiation to kill off influenzae virus in reasonable time http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/php/2007/00000083/00000005/art00034 (up to several days in the winter). This will of course depend on your location, time of year and weather. Of viruses in visible (irradiated) parts of your computer will be killed, but other parts are probably not touched by other users anyway.

Note that viruses are sensitive to UV radiation. Other "bugs" may still be active.

You're well behind - for at least 3 or 4 years now, the vast majority of journals these days ARE online.

They're either distributed electronically on a paper by paper basis (usually through the gigantic databases like jstor or Ingenta, and many of them do not have print versions at all anymore.

As it so happens, you are entirely correct.

I became aware of this through a friend. He became aware of it while working on such a project. There is in fact a relevant patent. You probably would be more interested in reading ADVANCED INTEGRATED WASTEWATER POND SYSTEMS (AIWPS) By Tuba Ertas and Victor M. Ponce or Methane fermentation, submerged gas collection, and the fate of carbon in advanced integrated wastewater pond systems (the basis for the patent, I believe?)

The EPR (European Pressurised Water Reactor) developed by AREVA is a new nuclear reactor designed to achieve greater output (1600 MW) and longer plant life (60 years) than conventional nuclear reactors. The first one is currently under construction in Finland at Olkiluoto. For this new design, an integrated forging was applied for the nozzle shell, including an integral flange (Fig. 1). A 500 t ingot is necessary to manufacture this part, which was the first large part manufactured on a new 14 kt press installed at JSW in 2003. The part was completed 11 months after pouring. The technologies of each manufacturing step and the properties of the part are described.

According to this, Russia can produce two reactor pressure vessel forgings per year, with plans to double by 2011.

But all this delay in "evolutionary" boiling water reactors could be good news for pebble bed reactors. This Blog has a handy summary of the advantages and disadvantages of pebble beds. Last November, Westinghouse bought a pebble bed company called IST Nuclear. Some nice diagrams.

Sure but they'll start to tolerate standing in your vicinity and even pat you on the back from time to time ;).

"In the social phase of the trials the non-specialists gave more grooming to the food producers and maintained spatial proximity even in this second phase."

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/beh/1988/00000107/F0020003/art00006;jsessionid=3djuvxsodqd59.alexandra?format=print

Now if some attractive lady started giving me "more grooming" because of my "special skills", I won't care if I didn't achieve a rise in my dominance status, but I'm sure I'll get a rise somewhere else :p.

They are hosted on ingentaconnect.com (who I happen to work for) A particularly fine article that is available for free there is this one on chickens. You can also see it being presented on youtube

Well, the "signal to noise ratio" of moderation down here is low (replies of replies of replies a while after the article was posted).

On topic (in case anyone is still reading this). My best source for information on this issue is this report from 2005: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/schweiz/mz/2005/00000014/00000004/art00013

Back in 2005 the contribution to radiative forcing from contrails was still considered to be positive (contributing to warming). The net radiative forcing of an aircraft was estimated to be 1.9 times the RF of CO2 alone. But this does not take cloud formation into account. The error bars are huge, but unfortunately they don't allow for any negative RF. Unless the theory is wrong and has been replaced by something completely new lately.

Not much has changed in 10 years it seems. In '99, a paper appeared describing the abysmal state of statistical accuracy in MS excel. Nobody requiring 100% reliability of the results should trust *any* version of excel without carefully double checking the calculations independently.

I am amazed that even people here are surprised that spreadsheets have bugs.....

Uh, you're conflating two statements of mine. One was about 2 hour delivery around the world. If current delivery was proof of demand, then you have an analogous situation today. So by your own statement, there's proven demand there. My second statement was about the costs of the satellites. The reliability requirements are no longer ironclad. If you can have a cheap commodity backup already in place, then you do not need it! (Example: Google servers.)

For your example of undersea cables, you need to show analogous factors. Namely, has the technology for laying (launching) undersea cables advanced? Is there demand to drive the price of the better cable laying technology? Has the price of the better cable laying technology reached a threshold where cheap redundant cables can be in place? And finally, are there other technologies that make cables less valuable, which would confound your analogy?

Also, your logic is partly circular. Reliability requirements are ironclad, in part because those birds are expensive, and they are expensive in part because the reliability requirements are ironclad. What if reliability is not ironclad? What if you can have arrays of redundant independent satellites? Your logic does not hold then, unless the space environment is somehow insurmountably extreme. (Apparently the Chinese are looking at COTS components for space. Radiation hardness is a problem, but not one that seems insurmountable for economies of scale.

What in particular about the space environment is *so* insurmountable that economies of scale can never apply to communications equipment? What in particular about the deep undersea environment makes cables inherently expensive? If your analogy really has merit, then the answer to these questions will be very interesting.

Oxford does seem to have that as a mistake.

Ingenta is NOT a mistake, by any means.

Take a look... only 36.97 USD for full text

Ok...

Here's the Oxford website in question: Here

Try clicking on full text. You get full text without rightslink garbage.

If you look through the source for copyright.com (as seen in image), it's related to a javascript and is onclick a certain element that is NOT in the site.

After reading this, it seems an honest mistake.

Scholar.google does have 3 other sources for this document.

Ingenta DOES require payment in the line of $36.97 to view this. Hmm.

Really? Then
why is technical
and industrial know-how
locked up in
pay-to-view websites
in the US?

anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis; there's no secrets there.

Great. Now where are the directions for extracting stigmasterol from soybeans and using it to make corticosteroids?

I work on oncogenomics, but I studied GMOs: it is wrong to assume that since I don't work in that specific field, I do not know anything about it. Also some of my colleagues used to work or still work in the field of GMOs (mostly related to tracing their presence in food for legislative purposes).

And what I meant about GP being correct, yes, I meant that Greenpeace follows an agenda that is dictated by ideology, false facts or plain ignorance, and not by accurate knowledge. I don't mind if they object to GMO usage, as long as they have proper facts to back their claims (and not this report which is - according even to them - not conducted using all the necessary scientific methods). The case of the Golden Rice is a perfect example. Here are some links:

A commentary on BioScience, September 2005
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aibs/bio/200 5/00000055/00000009/art00003 (full text is free)

Greenpeace's claims on Golden Rice (German)
http://de.einkaufsnetz.org/presse/16102.html?PHPSE SSID=43000e1dc9f08ba97f1d53c624f16299

A rebuttal to Greenpeace's claims on Golden Rice (German)
http://www.welt.de/data/2005/04/05/621872.html?sea rch=greenpeace&searchHILI=1

Personally, I don't mind the use of GMOs. Given the paranoia around them, they will be the best controlled food ever, always under a rather rigorous watch (and if it's not for "the good of the general public" it can also be to avoid bad PR)

There have been plenty of studies, but apparently most people aren't really aware of them.

Two big factors:

1. Our culture stereotypes women as poor at math and technical subjects. This actually causes many women to perform more poorly than men in math and technical subjects.
2. For those who are confident of their abilities, many find aspects of the male-dominated tech culture distasteful, especially on OSS projects.

For number one, see Stereotype threat, and regarding women, specifically Stereotype Threat and Women's Math Performance. In that paper, they took a standard engineering aptitude exam and randomly chose some questions. Then they took sample populations of men and women, and told them different things about the test. One group they told that the test was an aptitude predictor; another they told that they were just helping to test the test itself; another were told specifically that the test had been designed to be gender-neutral. What they found was that women did significantly worse than men when they thought it was an aptitude test; and they did best when they were told that it was gender-neutural, even though the questions were exactly the same.

For number two, see some of the findings from the FLOSS Gender Integrated Report of Findings. One of the findings was that in many OSS projects, reputation is built by "flaming". This is off-putting to a lot of people, but especially to women. One of the stories in the report is from a woman developer on the Debian project, who after rebuking a younger person for making a joke about rape, was told "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Obviously there are some women willing to put up with this crap, but there are probably a ton of women who could excel in OSS, but never get involved or leave because of the culture.

The solution? To number one, probably just more widespread information.

Number two is harder -- it involves, in part, men changing their culture. Men and women are different, and that difference is valuable; so if men want more women in tech, they're going to have to change the way they operate.

As much as I agree that most of our gadgets need to be made more efficient, I don't think it will necessarily lead to reduced consumption. When tungsten light bulbs replaced carbon ones early in the last century, electricity use went down immediately because tungsten bulbs were significantly more efficient. However, this brought the possibility of electric lighting to the masses, and quite quickly the electricity usage skyrocketed.

You can check out The Jevons Paradox. Horace Herring has done quite a bit of work in this area. I can't find a free version, but there is a good paper here.

Hell, if this goes pear shaped, you could drop the core miles beneath the sea never to be seen again.

Well, never to be seen again except for the massive Radioactive Steam explosion.

You are a little misinformed here. The monarch butterfly was never close to being lost. AND the crop wasn't wheat it was corn. I'm an entomologist and at Iowa State we have an entire USDA unit devoted to risk assessment of crops and the environment and the follow-up research regarding the "monarch butterfly issue" detailed that the risk of GE on monarchs was near 0. Want some more, scientifically-based reading to bone up on It might improve the value of your opinion here. ;-)

Think about this... Genetically engineered food is in response to a need to reduce the usage of chemical controls on crops. What do you suppose the LD-50 (or an LC-50 for that matter) is for even a mild insecticide like a modern pyrethroid is on a monarch butterfly? Much, much lower than a GE crop I assure you.

All in all the discussion on Slashdot regarding copyright issues and GE crops is probably closer to a real issue of concern now and for the future. However, "GE crops" is a term that applies to a vast array of GE strategies and it's possible that some GE strategies may be of more concern for the environment (take GE modified crops to produce medicine or antibiotics, for example), but those aren't the ones getting most of the media attention -- pretty butterflies and Bt genes do.

Got it, one peer reviewed paper

"The Zhoukoudian Upper Cave Skull 101 as seen from the Americas," Journal
of Human Evolution 34(1998):219-222., p. 219.

And the full text can be obtained from here

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/hu/1998/0 0000034/00000002/art00183

I'm not paying for the full text though

Fair point about co2science.org. But to be equally fair, realscience.org's main contributors seem to be Mann et el. so I wouldn't expect objective criticisms of MBH98.

Does it matter if we read the Yadav summary at co2science or here?

I think you misread me about MBH98 being a "cornerstone". Whatever it might not be, it certainly seems to be the cornerstone of the IPCC Report. Everything stems from MBH98. Without its 20th century anomaly there's no anthropogenic CO2 correlation.

realscience's answer to myth#1 is figure 1., of which four of the curves are other mann models so they're not from "other groups" at all. And anyway, the graph really tells us nothing about whether the temperature anomalies are natural or not.

I started out believing there was a link between warming and anthro CO2. But after I started digging a little I found it wasn't as easy to establish as I thought it would be.

I have no problem with the Vostok ice core CO2 data.