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how about the NASA PhD's who say the earth is already cooling again and CO2 concentrations lag 6 months behind temperature change, indicating the temperature change is causing the rise in CO2, not the other way around?

or the veritable explosion of dissenting climate scientists?

Go ahead, believe a self promoting politician ;) Of course the cooling is an even bigger problem than the warming because we won't be able to grow enough food within 20 years.

from http://www.drroyspencer.com/

"The Central Question of Causation

I believe that the interpretation of the Vostok ice core record of temperature and CO2 variations has the same problem that the interpretation of warming and CO2 increase in the last century has: CAUSATION. In both cases, Hansenâ(TM)s (and othersâ(TM)) inference of high climate sensitivity (which would translate into lots of future manmade warming) depends critically on there not being another mechanism causing most of the temperature variations. If most of the warming in the last 100 years was due to CO2, then that (arguably) implies a moderately sensitive climate. If it caused the temperature variations in the ice core record, it implies a catastrophically sensitive climate.

But the implicit assumption that science knows what the forcings were of past climate change even 50 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago, strikes me as hubris. In contrast to the âoeconsensus viewâ of the IPCC that only âoeexternalâ forcing events like volcanoes, changes in solar output, and human pollution can cause climate change, forcing of temperature change can also be generated internally. I believe this largely explains what we have seen for climate variability on all time scales. A change in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns could easily accomplish this with a small change in low cloud cover over the ocean. In simple terms, global warming might well be mostly the result of a natural cycle."

which coupled with this article, is pretty convincing.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Since this is a cause which has nothing to do with man, and is also cyclical it's breaks most of the "theories" of man made climate change.
Inconvenient truth? How about convenient mass stupidity? Al Gore has played ya'll and it went like this:

1. cause hysteria
2. create environmental companies
3. profit!

The results of a survey of climate scientists, conducted by the US Senate Committee on the Environment & Public Works revealed that less than half of climate scientists believe that the climate change has primarily anthropogenic cause any more and that number is shrinking very quickly.

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=10fe77b0-802a-23ad-4df1-fc38ed4f85e3

"
Israel: Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. âoeFirst, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!â

Russia: Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences has authored more than 300 studies, nine books, and a 2006 paper titled âoeThe Evolution and the Prediction of Global Climate Changes on Earth.â âoeEven if the concentration of âgreenhouse gasesâ(TM) d

I just emailed this to National Geographic:
We'll see what happens...

"I believe I have discovered circles similar to the ones referenced in your article 'Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"'.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090615-stonehenge-tombs-crop-circles_2.html

There are two 380-foot diameter circles located at Longitude/Latitude 50.977866,-1.963204
These may be seen at Google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=50.977866,-1.963204&sll=50.977866,-1.963204&sspn=177.15044,360&ie=UTF8&ll=50.977872,-1.963205&spn=0.01016,0.021865&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A
There are variations in the color of vegetation at this site that indicate that there may be other circles as well, of similar size.
There is also a serpentine color variation about 750 feet long and 60 feet wide.

Please forward this to the appropriate researcher."

Wow, a 404 page. That's awesome.

I think you meant http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

Wow, a 404 page. That's awesome.

I think you meant http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.htm

Canada geese are big. They start at 6 1/2 pounds and go up to just under 20 pounds. And not that this matters too much with a jet, but they're also fairly fast fliers: I've been passed by Canada Geese while taking off in a Cessna, which puts them in the 60 mph range.

Building a vehicle that can handle a 450 mph collision with a 15-20 pound object is intrinsically difficult. Military tanks can do it, but their acceleration over about 60mph is terrible. I don't know of any other vehicles that could handle this sort of impact without getting very bent and broken.

And you can't just use elevation, either: I've read pilot reports of birds seen at 37,000 feet above ground level.

What about using, instead of a grille, a cone in front of the engine? Think of a cow catcher, but much longer and more tapered: the idea is to deflect a bird away from the engine, not to actually stop the bird. If the cone is elongated enough, the tangential force imparted to the bird should be enough to deflect it without disintegrating it.

Human skin has a tensile strength of 7.5 MPa (i.e. 7.5 N/mm^2); birds should be similar. Skin can probably do better than this for brief periods. Consider a spherical, slightly elastic bird with negligible velocity that masses 9kg hitting an aircraft moving at 100 m/s (223 mph). If the bird accelerates to the speed of the aircraft in 0.1 seconds via a contact area of 10 square millimeters, then by the familiar F=MA equation, the bird experiences a force of 9,000 newtons distributed over those 10 square milliliters for a pressure of 900 MPa, and the bird explodes, sending bird-chunks into the engine.

However, if a bird hits the side of an 89 degree cone, then it doesn't need to accelerate to the speed of the aircraft, but can instead roll along the cone: in the instant the bird impacts the cone, it will need to accelerate in the forward direction by only cos(89 degrees), or 0.017 of the forward speed of the aircraft, or only 1.74 m/s, which in turn imparts a pressure of only 15.7 MPa: the bird is quite dead, but safely deflected away from the engine without disintegrating too badly.

The geek has been piping this tune since the launch of the IBM PC

- and we all still here.

Even if each failure is 99% safe, sooner or later we're going to have a major Warhol Worm that brings the entire Internet to its knees--along with large portions of the world's economy. Actually, I'd wager that the NSA already has the capability, and probably several other state actors, too.

If you want to bring the Internet down - and keep it down - what you really need is a dragline to snag the right cables.

The geek's magical - whimsical - Warhol Worm is little more than a distraction.

You can do far more damage by simply mismanaging the traffic that flows through Google.

The Windows client OS or app runs spends most of its time off-line or within the relatively safe confines of a corporate Intranet or a local ISP.

It should not be impossible to isolate the problem.

I'd take a small side bet that the clueless user on Automatic Updates will be adequately protected by the patch that has been sitting on the geek's PC for the last four months. The dinosaurs seemed incredibly successful, too, but too many of them were too similar--and look what happened. In diversity there is strength.

I'd say a 185 million year run is incredibly successful.

The dinosaurs were taken out by an event that erased more than 70 percent of Earth's living species.
"Dinosaur-Killer" Asteroid Crater Imaged for First Time

Plants. Animals. Proto-life forms.

When you get down to the basics we are not so very different after all.

That is the real lesson here.

Tech is the geek's Maginot Line.

It never reaches as far as it needs to. Impressive when seen head-on. Not so much from the backside.

So strike from the rear. You strike at weaknesses in the user. In the administrator. The developer. The man behind the curtain.

Point of clarification: I'm not arguing against standards--but they need to be open and agreed upon, not imposed by and for the sake of monopoly.

Of course you are arguing against standards.

It is rare when standards do more than codify practice. Standards create a monoculture of their own.

Standards emerge from committees who are ridden by internal political, ideological and economic rivalries and whose progress is glacially slow.

The entrepreneur takes the losses he must, but his real interest is in staking out new ground - and he moves very quickly.

I read a great article from National Geographic that helps illustrate some of the effects of light pollution. I'm an amateur astronomer because I find it more stimulating than television, and I feel that attempting to understand the universe we live in is something we ought to do as human beings. But I still have to drive 2 hours to find an astronomically dark sky. Light pollution is fixable and would be a trivial decision when lighting a building if folks think about it. I just simply don't turn on my house lights at night. "Earth Hour" is 24/7 for me.

I dunno, dogs have been trained to smell cancer. They might be able to smell the difference in the plastic of the disc or the printing if you gave them enough training. My guess is they gave the dogs plenty of examples of the legit discs and pirate discs they were trying to distinguish between. Who knows which smell they used to distinguish between them.

You can, and in some places of the world, they do. Oil is mixed with mud and baked in the sun into cookies. This is actual sustenance for the poor in Haiti. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080130-AP-haiti-eatin_2.html

you need to plug in as well, the solar part is purely to extend the life of the battery.

Like some of the proposed vehicles that put a panel up on the roof to run the AC? While not capable of keeping up with speeds approaching 40mph, much less the 65-75 I'd require for a standard commuter*, said solar panel could indeed provide a 'cripple charge' allowing you to creep somewhere where there's a power outlet. On the other hand, so couldn't a tow truck with a beefy alternator. Or a hefty deep cycle battery you 'jump' into the system.

And remember - I figured on covering the entire car with them when I made my area calculation. Cell placement wouldn't be optimal for power generation; you'd have to compromise to keep your windows usable, have decent aerodynamics, etc... Going paint on wouldn't get you any more surface area. You'd still be better putting the panels or paint up on your roof.

On to the paint itself - what's the efficiency? This site suggests 6%, with a maximum of 30% - which would be what I figured when doing my calculations. You see, I was being generous to the solar cells. Basically, by making the initial estimate generous, you determine whether the idea is worth a closer look.

Combining an EV with solar panels isn't normally going to be patent worthy. What would be worthy of a patent is if you came up with a new twist in the interfacing of the two. IE you designed a new charging system or some such. It would be 'engineering' in that you're actually working out the specifics and necessary design parameters.

How about i give you an idea off the top of my head...for a car that runs itself with almost no power source other then momentum.

One word: Flywheel. We're working on them. The issue is keeping the mass/weight down. If you drop the weight, you can compensate by increasing the rotation speed of the flywheel - 2X the velocity = 4X the energy. Thing is, interesting things happen if a flywheel breaks at 100k RPM. And by 'interesting', I mean 'explosive'. And at 100k rpm the flywheel is under a LOT of stress. It gets interesting(read: Expensive) trying to build a flywheel capable of lasting under those strains. When you're trying to replace the energy of a gas tank, even if you only need a third of the energy because your motor is 90+ percent efficient, you're talking about quite a bit of energy. At least gasoline is limited in it's burn rate to oxygen availability. A broken flywheel is quite happy to discharge all of it's energy at once, regardless of the situation. And you're looking at half a dozen to a dozen sticks of dynamite worth of energy.

The problem with comparing a car to a wound watch is that a watch only needs to move two or three hands and maybe a few date wheels. The energy demands are small. A car, on the other hand has a number of spots where energy is lost. You have engine losses, accessory losses(using your headlights, for example, increases the drag the alternator puts on the engine), rolling friction(train tracks have less friction, thus lower fuel consumption per mile), and air drag friction. It takes a significant amount of energy to satisfy all these demands and keep the car moving. Internal combustion engines didn't become dominant because they're efficient, they became dominant because their fuel source is relatively, both incredibly dense and cheap. Around 40mph, air friction becomes the biggest drain.

we could develop efficiency in establishing the system needed to run 12 alternators...or maybe even 20 alternators on the same car, using these gears and lever methods...so now you have a self powered car per say, with a battery that charges as you move....the more you move the more energy you reproduce.

Ohhhhkaaay... This is something of a head banger. You're basically talking about a perpetual motion machine, and they don't w

Assuming you're old enough to have used them, have you ever broken one of the old school mercury thermometers? If so, you've already released the same amount of mercury found in 100 fluorescent bulbs. 95% of the mercury in one of those bulbs can be recycled, so if you do recycle them, it would take 2000 bulbs to equal the mercury in that single broken thermometer. And of course, the additional power consumption means using more power, usually from coal, which is "the largest source of human-caused mercury emissions in the United States," making that incandescent release far more mercury over its lifespan than the fluorescent.

Assuming you're old enough to have used them, have you ever broken one of the old school mercury thermometers? If so, you've already released the same amount of mercury found in 100 fluorescent bulbs. 95% of the mercury in one of those bulbs can be recycled, so if you do recycle them, it would take 2000 bulbs to equal the mercury in that single broken thermometer. And of course, the additional power consumption means using more power, usually from coal, which is "the largest source of human-caused mercury emissions in the United States," making that incandescent release far more mercury over its lifespan than the fluorescent.

Or add a neurocontroller like they have done with rats, and then fly it remotely. And that was 2002. Who knows what they have going now.

It's been done. On August 11, 2003, a model airplane designed by famous aeromodeller Maynard Hill successfully navigated its way from Newfoundland to Ireland. In fact, a group from the university of Washington did it in 1998 with an autonomous aircraft but it weighed more than the allowed weight for a model aircraft. The Rutgers group is doing it underwater, but they are not nearly the first. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0805_020805_transatlantic.html Zigmun

the sleestak fossil revealed yesterday was a nice advertisement for the upcoming land of the lost will ferrell movie

and electing a vulcan as president of the united states was a nice pr coup for the star trek movie now playing

but when the armed forces start building real terminators just to plug the upcoming christian bale terminator salvation movie, this hollywood pr stunt business has gotten a little out of hand

i'm sorry i have to draw the line. what next? someone releases a global pandemic just to plug... oh wait

Consider the case of Ashkenazim Jews. Centuries of discrimination forced this ethnic Jewish group to evolve to adapt. In this case, adaption meant increasing intelligence. Albert Einstein is an Ashkenazim Jew.

By extrapolation, we can say that different races (and ethnic groups) have different levels of intelligence. For example, there are clearly differences in intelligence between Africans and, say, Japanese. The Africans turned a bounty of natural resources into abject poverty. By contrast, the Japanese turned a barren rock (that was devastated by 2 atomic bombs) into the 2nd wealthiest nation on earth.

Note that Japan is not in Europe. Note that the quality of life in Thailand (of all places) is better than the whole of Africa. There are substantial differences in intelligence between the Africans and both the Japanese and the Thai. Note that both Thailand and Japan have inhospitable geographies afflicted with things like earthquakes and the occasional tsunami.

Consider the case of Ashkenazim Jews. Centuries of discrimination forced this ethnic Jewish group to evolve to adapt. In this case, adaption meant increasing intelligence. Albert Einstein is an Ashkenazim Jew.

By extrapolation, we can say that different races (and ethnic groups) have different levels of intelligence. For example, there are clearly differences in intelligence between Africans and, say, Japanese. The Africans turned a bounty of natural resources into abject poverty. By contrast, the Japanese turned a barren rock (that was devastated by 2 atomic bombs) into the 2nd wealthiest nation on earth.

Note that Japan is not in Europe. Note that the quality of life in Thailand (of all places) is better than the whole of Africa. There are substantial differences in intelligence between the Africans and both the Japanese and the Thai. Note that both Thailand and Japan have inhospitable geographies afflicted with things like earthquakes and the occasional tsunami.

You need citations that show that we are cutting down forests? Um, OK:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/deforestation/effect.html

"The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the World Resources Institute, more than 80 percent of the Earthâ(TM)s natural forests already have been destroyed. Up to 90 percent of West Africaâ(TM)s coastal rain forests have disappeared since 1900. Brazil and Indonesia, which contain the worldâ(TM)s two largest surviving regions of rain forest, are being stripped at an alarming rate by logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle-grazing."

http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/envFacts/facts/deforestation.htm

"Of great concern is the rate at which deforestation is occurring. Currently, 12 million hectares of forests are cleared annually - an area 1,3 times the size of KwaZulu/Natal! Almost all of this deforestation occurs in the moist forests and open woodlands of the tropics. At this rate all moist tropical forest could be lost by the year 2050, except for isolated areas in Amazonia, the Zaire basin, as well as a few protected areas within reserves and parks. Some countries such as Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Costa Rica, and Sri Lanka are likely to lose all their tropical forests by the year 2010 if no conservation steps are taken."

And I fail to see why I got labeled as "troll"....

Polar bears and grizzlies do interbreed.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/bear-hybrid-photo.html

And in http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-neanderthals.html a paper published in 2006 states there is strong evidence of interbreeding. So, I suggest the matter is still very much up for debate and not to be assumed one side or the other, which was my (then) unwritten point.

Consider the case of Ashkenazim Jews . Centuries of discrimination forced this ethnic Jewish group to evolve to adapt. In this case, adaption meant increasing intelligence. Albert Einstein is an Ashkenazim Jew.

By extrapolation, we can say that different races (and ethnic groups) have different levels of intelligence. For example, there are clearly differences in intelligence between Africans and, say, Japanese. The Africans turned a bounty of natural resources into abject poverty. By contrast, the Japanese turned a barren rock (that was devastated by 2 atomic bombs) into the 2nd wealthiest nation on earth.

Note that Japan is not in Europe. Note that the quality of life in Thailand (of all places) is better than the whole of Africa. There are substantial differences in intelligence between the Africans and both the Japanese and the Thai. Note that both Thailand and Japan have inhospitable geographies afflicted with things like earthquakes and the occasional tsunami.

Consider the case of Ashkenazim Jews . Centuries of discrimination forced this ethnic Jewish group to evolve to adapt. In this case, adaption meant increasing intelligence. Albert Einstein is an Ashkenazim Jew.

By extrapolation, we can say that different races (and ethnic groups) have different levels of intelligence. For example, there are clearly differences in intelligence between Africans and, say, Japanese. The Africans turned a bounty of natural resources into abject poverty. By contrast, the Japanese turned a barren rock (that was devastated by 2 atomic bombs) into the 2nd wealthiest nation on earth.

Consider the case of Ashkenazim Jews. Centuries of discrimination forced this ethnic Jewish group to evolve to adapt. In this case, adaption meant increasing intelligence. Albert Einstein is an Ashkenazim Jew.

By extrapolation, we can say that different races (and ethnic groups) have different levels of intelligence. For example, there are clearly differences in intelligence between Africans and, say, Japanese. The Africans turned a bounty of natural resources into abject poverty. By contrast, the Japanese turned a barren rock (that was devastated by 2 atomic bombs) into the 2nd wealthiest nation on earth.

but it's still not a planet.

Sorry, karma burning a hole in my pocket

It was likely a meteorite, see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081231-new-york-tsunami.html This is discussed in TFA.

From the discussion in these news reports it seems that the findings can be explained by a much smaller event in which the impactor struck the coastline or an estuary since both onshore and marine debris was found (actually it wasn't specified if the shells were marine or freshwater). A much larger meteorite would be needed to generate a tsunami and this would have created debris layers over a much greater area.

recall that the spanish flu of 1918 came out in the summer, and was mild

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/next-killer-flu.html

In 1918, the final year of the savage trench fighting of World War I, something else began felling the soldiers. No one knows for sure when or where the Spanish flu emerged, though it certainly wasn't in Spain. As a neutral country, Spain had no wartime censorship, and the flu apparently got its false pedigree from news reports about outbreaks there in May 1918. In fact the disease was already spreading on both sides of the European front, laying low entire divisions through the spring and early summer. Then it seemed to subside.

In late summer, though, the Spanish flu returned, and this time its virulence was unmistakable. The sick took to their beds with fever, piercing headache, and joint pain. Many were young adults, exactly the group that normally shrugs off the flu. About 5 percent of the victims died, some in just two or three days, their faces turning a ghastly purple as they essentially suffocated to death. Doctors who opened the chests of the dead were horrified: The lungs, normally light and elastic, were as heavy as waterlogged sponges, clogged with bloody fluid.

then the cold weather came, and it came down like a scythe. we will experience media hype for a month or two, the swine flu will be forgotten, then it will suddenly resurge like crazy in october. the reason is the flu virus actually survives better in the cold air than the warm air, and travels greater distances. the warm summer air will help us fight the flu, for now. there was science a few months ago that proved that:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7276447.stm

The virus's outer membrane is composed chiefly of molecules known as lipids, such as oils, fats and cholesterol.

The researchers found that at temperatures slightly above freezing, this lipid covering solidified into a gel.

However, as temperatures approached 15.6C (60F) , the covering gradually thawed, eventually melting to a soupy mix.

The researchers concluded that temperatures in the spring and summer were too high to allow the viral membrane to enter its gel state.

As a result, at these temperatures the individual flu viruses would dry out and weaken - accounting for the end of the flu season.

thats why flu is always a cold month thing

so the thing to do is not worry now, worry later. the warm weather will mitigate the flu. then we should all keep a very wary eye come october, that's when the swine flu will prove if it is a superkiller or not

one more concern:

the cytokine storm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm

this explains why those who died of the spanish flu, and are dying of swine flu now, are young, healthy adults. perversely, the healthier you are, the more you will be prone to die of the swine flu: your body overreacts, like anaphylactic shock. less healthy immune systems mean you underreact, and your lungs aren't flooded to death by your won body. the very young, and the very old, they should be able to weather the swine flu. the worst case scenario (hopefully this just fizzles out like SARS), it is us in the prime of life, 25-45, who will bear the brunt of mortality when everyone gets it this fall, hospitals are swamped, and the tamiflu runs out. then you have children and elderly with no breadwinners to take care of them

prepare now, you have until fall until the scythe comes (hopefully, it won't, it could still fizzle out)

The items in your photo probably would cost less to build than this: Queen Mary 2

Expensive yes, but not really all that expensive these days.

From what I recall of the program, a series of blood tests were performed on a range of dead animals found in the jungle (somewhere in Africa).

A comparative study was performed with blood samples from the local tribes people. It's there they discovered a multitude of viruses that would otherwise have been assumed animal specific.

Here is a link which I believe is the episode: Explorer

The concept is rather frightening, if you think about it.

National Geographic had a piece about this in 2007: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html It does seem to be compelling evidence that the global warming trend is outside the scope of human activity

# Having an awesome friend in your pants is all you need in this life.

I couldn't agree more.

# Catch rapturous girls' looks on your zipper protuberance.

"Hey baby. Great set of hooters you got there. Wanna touch my tuber?

Zealots are those who use faith instead of reasoning to determine their acts.

So this, this, and this are all based on faith? Zealots are fanatics. I'm telling you, I don't qualify. The 10 minutes it took me to come up with some links hardly qualifies me as a fanatic.

The "market" has nothing to do with global warming. Communist countries are no better than the west and are generally far worse in regard to their non-respect of the environment.

What communist countries? Please tell me you're not thinking of China as a communist country.

What "flaw" do you think you pointed out? The only flaws so far in your posts have been in your reasoning. Global warming killed the dinosaurs? Nope, dinosaurs lived in a time of globally warmer temperatures than those prevalent today and were in fact warmer than those forecast in other than the most extreme "the sky is falling"/"we are all doomed" global warming forecasts. The first entry for ":define budgie" on google is: budgerigar: small Australian parakeet usually light green with black and yellow markings in the wild but bred in many colors I, like Freeman Dyson am upset that people like you who are incapable of looking up a words are pushing politicians who know even less into spending our limited resources on what will ultimately turn out to be a minor problem compared to others that confront us.

I'm not a climatologist, but I once stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.... BUT, I have been alive long enough to identify BS when I see it. Singling out CO2 as the evil is BS. John Coleman, another "heretic" has a petition signed by roughly 5000 scientists that have doubts about the current view of global warming. (I didn't know there were that many climate scientists in the world!) Just remember Galileo, they called him a heretic, they almost excommunicated him, they forced him to retract. Sounds much the same like anyone who speaks out against Global Warming. Remember, the nay-sayer was right, the Sun was the center of the solar system. We all could learn a little from history.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/17977/Mars_Is_Warming_NASA_Scientists_Report.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/legislative_issues/federal_issues/hot_issues_in_congress/energy/Al-Gore-Scours-for-Extraterrestrial-SUVs.htm

First, if you're going to rant to the whole world about going some place 'boring'. At least spell it right, it's Decatur, IL.

Second, while you may see Cedar Rapids and Decatur as 'boring' (and for the locale, they are) they are home to two companies that do some cool large stuff.(IMHO).

Rockwell Collins does a ton of contract work with the government and encourages all their employees to get a pilot's license.

Decatur is home to Caterpillar's off highway truck division (among others), at which the 797 (the world largest mining truck) is built. It was even a topic on one episode of Ultimate Factories.

Decatur also has ADM and is where The Informant was filmed about ADM's price fixing.

While it's always easy to bash politicians for doing something meaningless, to some extent that is inevitable in a system where powers of legislation are separated from powers of execution. Individual Congressfolk are not the ones hiring and firing the school chancellors, teachers, admins, etc., nor do they set the property tax rates (the most common way local school systems are funded in the USA) or school budgets. The effects they can have on education are at the broadest level only, like federal budget suppliments, standards setttings before such suppliments can be recieved (see the NCLB...), etc.

The reality is in the USA, the primary education system is a highly local affair, with standards set by local sensibilities. This is one reason you keep seeing movements to push creation 'science' (it doesn't deserve the word unless surrounded in scare quotes) pass or nearly pass school boards in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, to name a few. In the USA as a whole, about a third of the population rejects evolution outright (see National Geographic or a gazillion other polls). The evolution deniers are not evenly distributed across the USA, but more clumped. Certain congressional districts, I'm guessing, have half of their voters (or more) who would vote against a congressperson who declared that they would vote for a bill to promote science standards if the mandatory teaching of evolution was a part of those standards. With a constituency like that, the odds of passing (at the federal level) a significant, science-standards based education bill are slim. Remember, 1/3 of the USA population rejects evolution outright. That's a lot of people. So, instead, we get National Pi Day.

So, look on the bright side. Now that we have a National Pi Day, maybe we don't have to worry about attempts to legislatively redefine pi any more....

There would be licensing fees for using 'gene A' to select or exclude a baby.

one fifth of the human genome is patented, for uses such as diagnostic tests.

If you can patent a gene and prevent competitors from competing with your 'disease test' by testing from the same gene, then you can prevent people from screening for the gene and rejecting a candidate baby on the basis of that gene.

The key is it's not the sequencing you can't do -- it's the decision you aren't allowed to make based on the patented gene being present.

So this one has been explained away by Google, but the sunken city found near Cuba has never been explained. In fact, since National Geographic reported on it in 2002, everything has been all hush-hush -- promises of follow-up exploration, but no hard information to be found.

If you're curious about this, perform further searches using the following keywords: sonar, Zelitsky, Weinzweig, "Advanced Digital Communications".

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/player.html?channel=1797&category=5487&title=05068_00

Funny that the camera, the flag and the car on the moon are the last human traces to disappear.

You mean things like dykes to protect New Orleans, bridges that aren't falling down, health-care and education that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? - Now is the time to purchase those things and re-employ the tsunami of unemployed auto-workers that are on the near term horizon.

Many people will not like this but perhaps New Orleans should not be rebuilt. In less than 100 years New Orleans has been hit by hurricanes more than 8 tyme. Also the ground around New Orleans and in the bayou is subsiding ie sinking.

Falcon

It's an interesting theory, and could tie in to Middle Eastern flood stories. There has been some scientific research done suggesting that the Black Sea at one time was dry, until the swelling Mediterranean burst through the Bosphorus and wiped out the settlements in the valley and creating the coastlines that would one day become the playgrounds of Russian communists on holidays.

Meanwhile, an old dude in a boat was bobbing around aimlessly, and after he landed one of the first things he did was get really, really drunk.

There is a definite equivalence if you knew how to use Google.

It is hyperbole, and it's completely unnecessary given that there are in fact plenty of people who claim that global warming will cause a massive amount of disaster in the future. (B) is thus not by necessity hyperbole, nor is (A).

You should stick to hammering away on the Al Gore thing, because the sibling and I don't agree on that. When you try to take the argument as a whole it only takes two Google searches to show that there is an equivalence between elements of the climate change movement and the radically religious.

More than likely no one will ever know of anything we did if humans are extinct. If you read up on time capsules, data retention, and info on what would happen to the earth if mankind disappeared it is an sobering realization that after only 50,000 years most traces of humanity will be gone. And after only a few million years, which is minuscule on a galactic time frame, every trace will have vanished, even our weapons grade plutonium will have decayed to its normal state, and all of this long before the sun will obliterate our solar system.

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,351113,00.jpg
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/player.html?channel=1797&category=5487&title=05068_00

They've found COMPLETE frozen wooly mammoths in the Artic tundra in Russia, complete with hair and all
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_mammoth.html
So while this find is quite nice, it's by no means the best ever.

I suppose I did read your

this

broadly.

To properly address your point then, I offer you some examples where average scientifically-minded people think of evolution as a Darwin-centric idea, or where Darwin is a synonym for natural selection:

• Darwin Fish bumper stickers
• The infamous Darwin Awards
• The term Social Darwinism
• National Geographic's obsession with Darwin for the man's 200th birthday anniversary, including tonight's show Darwin's Secret Notebooks
• Various articles published in respected science journals like Nature, such as Kevin Padian's Darwin's Enduring Legacy, stating that "perhaps no individual has had such a sweeping influence on so many facets of social and intellectual life as Charles Darwin."
• The annual "international recognition of science and humanity," called Darwin Day Celebration

These are just a few examples of how Darwin is used to encapsulate the entire field of evolutionary biology. Sure, professional biology scientists may not use Darwin's name so casually, but is there any wonder why average people who support the theory of evolution also appear to idolize Darwin?

I suppose I did read your

this

broadly.

To properly address your point then, I offer you some examples where average scientifically-minded people think of evolution as a Darwin-centric idea, or where Darwin is a synonym for natural selection:

• Darwin Fish bumper stickers
• The infamous Darwin Awards
• The term Social Darwinism
• National Geographic's obsession with Darwin for the man's 200th birthday anniversary, including tonight's show Darwin's Secret Notebooks
• Various articles published in respected science journals like Nature, such as Kevin Padian's Darwin's Enduring Legacy, stating that "perhaps no individual has had such a sweeping influence on so many facets of social and intellectual life as Charles Darwin."
• The annual "international recognition of science and humanity," called Darwin Day Celebration

These are just a few examples of how Darwin is used to encapsulate the entire field of evolutionary biology. Sure, professional biology scientists may not use Darwin's name so casually, but is there any wonder why average people who support the theory of evolution also appear to idolize Darwin?

The main difference is that in the rest of the world they 1) don't get into positions of power (especially where education is concerned) or 2) are willing to live and let live as long as they don't have to teach evolution to their own children.

For example in the Netherlands evolution is not taught on some christian high schools and therefor isn't included as a subject on the country wide final exams. However since only the most fundamentalist parents would send their children there and since there is free school choice it has a lot less impact than when the board of education of an US county or state does the same thing.

Still seeing that *Iran* of all places is less religiously dogmatic than some US leaders is.... weird.

I can only hope that little Billy doesn't get involved with Farm Animals creating Methane Gas. Of course the Showmanship of Mooning the audience would be "Breath Taking".

Personally speaking, I fail to see the difference of talking about Malaria Carriers then opening a jar of them, and someone pointing a gun at my head screaming, "Give Me Your Wallet!"

If we could generate some form of anti-gravity machine, it would only work as long as it had gravity to repel it ? And the further away you get, the lesser the effect ? I'm thinking in terms of a method to escape the earth's gravity you understand. It would still require some form of energy input.

Well I was nailed dead-to-rights that if energy was required it didn't mean perpetual motion. Other articles say what I did though: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1111_051111_junk_patent.html/ "Antigravity Machine Patent Draws Physicists' Ire" The big deal is that as far as we know gravity is always an additive force and as a classical force (my weasel words for avoiding quantum navel gazing) antigravity doesn't exist. Of course, like everything else, this assumption is always subject to testing and refined understanding.

Patents never go wrong, right?