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So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass, and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).

You realize the article you posted doesn't say anything concrete about glass blocking UV (only passingly talks about UV and glass at all)? The fact is that only UVB is blocked by glass. UVA can pass through glass but a UVA blocker coating can handle that.

I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.

The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.

Don't be so quick to condemn Halogen. When you need a color spectrum that Halogen provides, only sunlight is better. Certain UV wavelengths are bad for skin, bad for eyes, even some tints of blue is bad and literally blinds, causes permanent eye damage. These wavelengths also come with sunlight, apparently. The color spectrum of LED is drastically different, usually shifted to the blue and cool end, and there is more blue than any other color... the UV might taper off, but if it is white LED, its brightness comes from blue, and most commonly, the very blue that causes eye damage leading to blindness.

The major point here is Halogen (and incandescent in general) is not necessarily bad, and LED can be worse. LED is commercially still kind of new and we are actually already bumping up against theoretical max efficiency of LED by 2020. Incandescent is lagging behind in efficiency, but theoretically and most likely, eventually... maybe in 50 years or less... incandescent lighting technology efficiency will surpass LED efficiency. But LED will always be cheap.

What turns out not to be cheap is to create artificial light that is natural, like the sun, which LED won't do (and the closer it gets the worse its efficiency becomes). Bulbs aren't that expensive, just compared to LED they are. How much is natural light worth to you? What are the long term effects of exposure to LED light (and its less than ideal color spectrum)? Looks like Europe is going to find out, hoping for the best.

So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass, and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).

Halogen is bad because we created the carbon/energy crisis (human industry polluted the carbon leading to climate change, and humans are energy hogs) and decent lighting takes energy. Fun fact, turns out how good anyone feels can be directly correlated to how much sunlight (or an identical color spectrum light, or one close enough, such as an ordinary Halogen) gets in their eyes.

Net Neutrality is a separate issue from the regional monopoly BS that most ISPs enjoy. That doesn't make it unimportant after we've already had blatant examples of both Verizon https://www.theverge.com/2017/... and Comcast https://consumerist.com/2014/0... throttling streaming video services like Netflix to try and get customers to subscribe to their services instead or to extort money from streaming video providers.

You're not wrong about how congress is supposed to work and how fragile policy put in place solely by the executive branch is. Unfortunately, our congress is almost completely broken, and has been for years, decades even. https://www.realclearscience.c... Maybe if we can accomplish goals like getting money out of politics, implement systems like ranked choice voting, stop voter suppression, make voting easier with early voting/no excuse needed absentee ballots or some other fix, and get a healthy five or six active political parties going we can have a truly representative democracy again. But that's a very big, and very long if.

37deg is easy to remember and it's marked on any body-thermometer. I just checked, body temperature is 98.6 in Fahrenheit, which is also probably marked on a thermometer.

Random fact: Average body temperature was first calculated in Germany, and reported as 37 degrees C, with error bars. In the U.S. they did a strict conversion and dropped the error bars. And it turns out the original measurement wasn't that great to begin with.

"Given it's size and diversity, it is highly likely that aliens exist."

Given that there's been a grand total of zero evidence to back this up, the odds are much slimmer. And you don't need to "know everything about the universe" to project that. Feel free to toss out the Drake equation...it's truly meaningless since much of it is only based upon conjecture, speculation and unmeasured parameters.

https://www.realclearscience.c...

That is like a bacterium saying that it is unlikely that birds exist because it has never seen one in the 1cc of dirt 3 feet down where it has spent it's entire existence. Lack of knowledge about the universe does not preclude the existence of something, and is in fact only evidence of our own lack of experience in the universe.

"Given it's size and diversity, it is highly likely that aliens exist."

Given that there's been a grand total of zero evidence to back this up, the odds are much slimmer. And you don't need to "know everything about the universe" to project that. Feel free to toss out the Drake equation...it's truly meaningless since much of it is only based upon conjecture, speculation and unmeasured parameters.

https://www.realclearscience.c...

Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years https://www.theguardian.com/sc... Nutrition Has a Consensus to Use Bad Science: An Open Letter to the National Academies https://www.realclearscience.c...

we don't really have any counter data to show them other than what we think will happen

I'm calling bullshit on your claim. Here's the data. Here's more.

Some of us remember things longer than four years.

Just like a Wine Connoisseur. As the average guy knows if he liked or disliked a wine, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart. the Wine Connoisseur has learned to tell the differences, so a wine they may had liked decades back is now poor to him, because of that one undertone that they have caught on to.

You might have chosen a different example because wine tasting is complete BS and has been repeatedly shown to be so in all sorts of studies. So called wine experts are routinely anything but experts and are easily revealed as such. They often cannot tell the difference between "good" and "bad" wines under any sort of rigorous scrutiny. Very similar to audiophiles who like to pretend they can hear things the rest of us cannot.

I have looked at that study (although it has been a while) and while I don't want to reject it there are also trends that contradict it(first google search didn't want to find source paper). Or at the very least allude to idea that there isn't sufficient evidence to suggest that the biases were followed or ignored. For all we know the biases may be circumstantial instead of systemic.

This is part of the problem with Heather Metcalf wanting to politicize science coupled with the reproducible problem. The simple fact that I can make the argument that the well is poisoned by politics and that there are conflicting studies is more than enough to not jump to conclusions for scientists or laymen. Yet, not only do we have conclusions we have actions to those conclusions which could be doing more harm than good.

We both agree that equal opportunity is what is important. Does that mean if women are making up the majority of college graduates do we take away female only grants? I would take diversity quotas more seriously if there was an inkling to say; "mission accomplished this is no longer needed, merit is all that matters.".

think the diversity argument is a separate thread of thought, and I'm not sure why I can put my finger on if diversity in the workforce is a good thing. I do, but I freely admit that is a personal opinion.

This is where I sit and I find your answer honest and refreshing instead of pushing a dogma like Metcalf. I think there a few places in science that are like this. The idea is good and nothing wrong with it so it is accepted despite clear evidence or reason to hold such view. One example, not picking on social science, is conservation biology. Clearly a good thing but why? If the Ice age killed off just as many species as AGM, changed environment to a similar degree and if we are trying to fix the issue (economics has its own pressures to help), why does it matter or why should we do something? The environment will recover it's just a matter of time. If we take the humanist point of view and plan for various impacts that should be enough. In our arrogance and quick decisions we cause more harm like Yellowstone forest fire (preventing fires built up dead wood and fuel which made the fire extremely bad. Now we let it burn and only save man made structures). We know that science will change yet we are so arrogant and impatient to act NOW when there is no evidence to support the action.

This whole story makes me think: bumblebees have very primitive, simple brains, with comparatively few neurons (I've heard reports which mention one million) yet they master the task which seems impossible for any "AI" invented to this day. I've got a feeling a modern CPU with 4 billion transistors running at 4GHz (at least 4 million times faster than brains in nature which work at up to 1000Hz a second) and having 128GB of RAM can easily replicate all the processes running in the bumblebee's brain yet no one is doing that to the best of my knowledge.

What's more I've heard that even extremely primitive earthworms show signs of intelligence yet we cannot recreate their AI. That makes me feel true or general AI is still nowhere close and all this talk about "AI", is really a talk about smart algorithms which cannot reason or create (new solutions, new behavioral patterns, new ideas, new concepts) which is the staple of any true intelligent entity.

The scary thing is there is a relatively large subset of the population who will believe any hype and trust technology easily. Using algorithms to make hard decisions is a the first step in the slow process of creating an actual, physical divide between the haves and the have nots. No longer will the rich and their corporations need to hire filthy humans with their humanity and judgement and empathy. They can use cold, calculating algorithms to be even more ruthless. The truly scary thing is that many of us know that this AI is just slightly better statistical algorithms that are still built by other humans. Once we accept AI everywhere, the rich can abuse us that much more easily.

This whole story makes me think: bumblebees have very primitive, simple brains, with comparatively few neurons (I've heard reports which mention one million) yet they master the task which seems impossible for any "AI" invented to this day. I've got a feeling a modern CPU with 4 billion transistors running at 4GHz (at least 4 million times faster than brains in nature which work at up to 1000Hz a second) and having 128GB of RAM can easily replicate all the processes running in the bumblebee's brain yet no one is doing that to the best of my knowledge.

What's more I've heard that even extremely primitive earthworms show signs of intelligence yet we cannot recreate their AI. That makes me feel true or general AI is still nowhere close and all this talk about "AI", is really a talk about smart algorithms which cannot reason or create (new solutions, new behavioral patterns, new ideas, new concepts) which is the staple of any true intelligent entity.

What strikes me is that Facebook is asking the very people that believe the fake news to point out it's fake news.

While this statement is true, it is very misleading. Facebook is asking a random sampling of everyone to point out news is fake (or misleading). Sure there will be people who believe the stories clouding the survey results, but that is what clustering algorithms are for, among other techniques. The work of relatively few paid meta-moderators could be multiplied a thousand time over by easily identifying the Facebook users who are overly biased and/or unable to read news critically.

In a very short period of time Facebook would know which sites and which users are propagating this garbage, and will have an army of millions of moderators who can police the content going forward.

Anyone who thinks Facebook couldn't identify partisan BS needs to look at Congress voting records. Partisan hacks are very easy to identify in even very basic clustering techniques. It wouldn't take many paid fact checkers to identify a large number of biased Facebook users, and then even a student in his first machine learning class could cluster these with millions of other biased users. The main reason to be mad that Facebook isn't already doing this is just how easy it would be to do this well.

Exposing Real_Climate_Science_Fraud Getting a little late for repeating this bullshit, is it not?
FIVE YEARS since your source was exposed as a fraud
Give it up !

Climate Experts Agree On Human-Caused Global Warming

With carefully redefined terms, it is possible to make any statement truthful. For example, if we denounce any "skeptic" as not an expert (and worse), the above-quoted statement automatically truthful.

And if the denounced non-scientists insist on voicing their ridiculous opposition, we prosecute them as racketeers. Surely, such felons can not be considered "experts", can they be?

Problem solved — 100% unanimity achieved...

Here are some things science is settled on:

The earth being round.

The earth is not round http://www.scientificamerican....

The earth orbiting the sun.

Technically, the earth does not orbit the sun. It orbits the central mass of the solar system.
http://www.realclearscience.co...

Science IS settled on a lot of issues. AGW is a new one, but something we can do something about (well, 10 years ago).

Just because there is a preponderance of evidence that our explanation of an observed phenomenon is correct, it does not mean the science is settled. It means that we have a good explanation. If a better explanation comes along and it fills in areas where the first did not, we adjust our understanding of the universe and the accepted scientific belief is changed.

Ill add that if you are getting your science from grade school or the news outlets, then you need to realize that you are not reading the science and are instead reading an opinion.

Free range chickens wander about over acres of grasslands eating bugs. Like wild caught salmon, eggs from these chickens are bright orange.

No, that just indicates what the chicken was fed, not whether it was allowed to walk around. Feeding them marigold flowers are enough to yield bright colored eggs, even if they were held in a feeder cage their whole life. Though some people claim the darker yolk is healthier. Personally I can't tell the difference in taste. Anyways, what the chicken is fed will obviously change the egg color and nutritional content, but that doesn't mean free range either tastes better or is healthier.

Organic food practices produce measurably better food (lower cholesteral, higher vitamins, lower saturated acids) with measurably lower results (50,000 survey in Britain showed lower weight and 9% lower lymphoma risk).

Hmm...While I haven't seen where you source this from, it doesn't sound likely.

First, dietary cholesterol (i.e. the cholesterol found in food that you eat) doesn't actually raise your blood cholesterol unless your liver determines that body is deficient in cholesterol, so I'm not sure how lower cholesterol is supposed to be a benefit. When people have high blood cholesterol, it's typically because they're consuming such a high amount of simple sugars (including "organic" sugar, if you want to go that route) that their liver is having to convert the excess glucose into lipids. If you've ever heard of how "foie gras" is made, this is basically what people with high cholesterol are doing to themselves. Simple sugars come from a lot of sources that you probably don't expect as well, like bread, fruit, rice, and pasta.

Second, you're going to need to be specific on vitamins, and more importantly, what the animal was fed. Yes, there will be a difference in nutritional content AND taste when it comes to say corn fed beef vs grass fed beef. Whether or not it's organic doesn't play a role in that however.

Third, saturated fats are actually not bad for you. The bad fats are trans fats, which aren't found in meat products unless they're fried or cooked using some kind of vegetable substance that has hydrogenated oils. The original fear for saturated fats came from the same false fear over dietary cholesterol. That is, they associated higher saturated fats with higher cholesterol. The reason this happened is because saturated fats from dietary sources help the body fill its own lipid needs faster, therefore when your liver produces its lipids, it creates more lipids that remain in the blood (cholesterol, triglycerides) thus making the numbers appear "worse".

Fourth and finally, you're going to see a reduction in disease among people who follow just about any controlled diet. The reason why is because these people tend to do less things that are well known to be dangerous like smoking, drinking, and drugs, and furthermore, they're more likely to exercise.

The largest cause of ecoli contamination is someone touched something's butt and then didn't wash their hands thoroughly. Use of recreational water on crops is another source of contamination.

No, it's not. There's actually a LOT of evidence that most e. coli and salmonella outbreaks are caused specifically by organic farming.

http://www.science20.com/scien...
http://www.realclearscience.co...

Organic spinach and sprouts in particular are especially risky. In fact, organic sprouts are so dangerous that big chain stores Kroger and Wal-Mart have an official policy to not carry them.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Ret...

Hate to break it to you

Here's a few more links for you:

http://www.realclearscience.co...

http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan...

Notice for example that Spinach is permitted up to 1mg of mammalian excrement (read: cow shit) per pound as per fda regulations. Tomatoes are permitted up to ten fly eggs per 500 grams, or five fly eggs and one maggot, or two maggots. Wheat is permitted up to 9mg of rat shit per kilogram. Ground oregano (a common additive in salads and salad dressings) can have up to 1250 insect fragments per 10 grams, in addition to 5 rodent hairs per 10 grams.

Meanwhile there are no allowed defects for meat, other than the meat product is allowed to be 65% of some other substance, aka fillers, such as cornstarch, or the "pink slime". While that's bad IMO from a food quality perspective, it isn't unhealthy. Unlike with plants, meat is easy to avoid contaminants because the slaughter and processing occurs in a very clean environment. I know because I once did routine IT work at a food distributor that had a meat plant. I've seen how clean the environment has to be if they want to comply with FDA regulations and ISO standards. It's just not possible to achieve that for veggies however as they inevitably have to be grown and harvested outside.

Have a nice day.

No, what I'm showing you is that we have agricultural methods that are known to cause harm:

http://www.realclearscience.co...

Meanwhile you choose to pick on the one method that is not known to cause ANY harm, and you do so just because you're religiously opposed to it, forgoing scientific rationale entirely.

"-American workers are simply too expensive compared with the rest of the world."
I think you mean "too expensive for my expensive taste/budget" *
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"-American education is simply too expensive compared with the rest of the world"
Maybe there is a reason for that? Take a look at the top 20: **
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"-America used to lead in science in technology, but the rest of the world catches up quickly"
http://www.realclearscience.co... ***
Or, if you like, the locations of the big revenue technology companies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

* The U.S. is third, and some of the countries you mentioned in other parts of your post do in fact make it into the top 10.
** I admit that some of these schools are private and have very high admission standards, but you should take notice that quite a few of them are State-funded universities. Besides, the State I lived in provided a free college-education. Most people I know that have student loans got them because they didn't want to work part-time while in college.
*** This one is hard to quantify, but if you're going to make a blanket statement like you did, at least try to back it up in some fashion.

I'm not anti-gmo

Bullshit.

but to suggest that putting Salmon genes in Tomato plants is the same as just selecting between different offspring is incorrect.

This is exactly why I despise the anti-GMO movement. You and the rest of them keep making up and/or spreading bullshit lies because you have this foolish belief that natural is better and/or you have competing economic interests.

First of all, no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another. The "frankenfood" is just another lie that keeps on getting repeated. But it's just that, a lie, usually spread maliciously by people who have an axe to grind against Monsanto, (sometimes they work for the snake oil organic industry who is struggling to compete with inexpensive GMO food) even though Monsanto isn't the only company that produces GMO plants. GMO foods are the result of a study called proteomics, and usually consist of fewer than 200 nucleotides (one pair of AT or GC is a nucleotide) which isn't anywhere near enough to create a full blown gene, let alone being transplanted from another organism.

Second of all, this actually happens in nature all the fucking time. In fact human DNA carries the placenta of some other animal. It permanently ended up in our genome via viral infection. It's a part of one of three full virus genomes embedded into our genome. We have some 100,000 other partial virus genomes embedded into our DNA.

Third of all, no person and no animal has ever gotten sick from GMO food. Ever. Not once. You know what though? Thousands have died and continue to die because they consumed organic food. That is, the organic farming process that produced the food that they consumed was the sole cause of their death. Tens of thousands more have gotten sick from organic food as well.

Sources: (and lots of them)

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~a...
http://www.cgfi.org/2002/06/th...
http://www.geneticliteracyproj...
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://www.science20.com/chall...
http://www.washingtontimes.com...

You know what though? Your stupid little anti-GMO movement doesn't make single a peep about the evils of organic food. Why the fuck do they demand warning labels for GMO food, but they never make any demands for warning labels for organic food?

Explain that one. Why the fuck do we need warning labels for GMO food, but not organic food, when organic food is the only farming process proven to actually kill people?

I like how the anti-GMO crowd comes out and speaks about potential damages, but then ignores the real damages (and deaths) caused by organic food:

http://www.cgfi.org/2002/06/th...
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://www.science20.com/chall...
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~a...

We've already had countless cases of people dying and getting sick from organic, and not a single case of anybody dying or getting sick from GMO, in spite of GMO already being consumed in bigger numbers than organic. Meanwhile we're supposed to listen to the food religion about the dangers of GMO.

Methane and Natural Gas are consumable in water. But no one has studied the amount of safe levels and the long term. For example if you're camping, drink some natural spring water that is also mixed with methane you'll be fine. http://www.realclearscience.co...

Could this explain why so many Americans do not understand science?

Does that explain America scientific ranking?

Shouldn't have said molten. This is what I was thinking of. Partial melts. You have to get to the base of the inner mantle to reach molten.

Zero empathy? So, a psychopath? Hmmmmm. Apparently, you treat them like animals and hope for the best.

To be fair, you're A Moron.

That is a compelling argument. I yeild to your obviously superior rhetorical skills that oh so obviously counter actual knowledge of military EMP devices.

But seriously. You should really stop listening to to Alex Jones and Infowars (yes, Im aware of who fear mongers over solar super storms and specifically name drops the Carrington Event). Satellite would suffer damage. It would blow some of the main grid transformers, maybe. We wouldnt have lights or A/C for a week, maybe two, in regions of the country...maybe. But it definitely wouldnt be the dark ages. People wouldnt starve. Civilization wouldnt collapse. Its even unlikely that people would die in hospitals.

Unfortunately, my response isnt the common one: yours is. IE, the response informed by bad hollywood movies, bad science, the "History" Channel, and crackpots like Alex Jones.

Further reading for the ignorant such as yourself: http://www.realclearscience.co...
It even addresses The Newt's bill specifically.

Yes:
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/122...
http://www.youngcons.com/texas...

All 3 of those were beaten with MATH as in, irrefutable proof that the camera was wrong and setup to intentionally give tickets to people that did not break the law. (unless the software itself is hopelessly flawed)
biatch

True, this is nothing novel, but IT does incorporate cool electron microscope pictures and sweet slow motion video set to music, so It must be high tech.

on the other hand, Its odd that this subject came up, because it instantly reminded me of this: http://www.realclearscience.co... Because my first thought when I read the headline was "because they are fuzzy on a tiny scale" I know that the wax needles are a shade smaller than the 13 nanometers of amplitude that the researchers in the article I linked discovered humans that can detect by touch, but I do wonder if its pure coincidence that most leaves feel 'fuzzy', even visually smooth leaves.

This looks like the original press release: http://news.unm.edu/news/new-evidence-for-oceans-of-water-deep-in-the-earth

Here's an explanation of what's going on.

The paper is already used as a reference on the Wikipedia page for Ringwoodite.

Here are the research pages of the various authors:

Brandon Schmandt, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of New Mexico

Steven D. "Steve" Jacobsen, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University

Thorsten W. Becker, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California

Zhenxian Liu, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington

Kenneth G. "Ken" Dueker, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming

Selective breeding relies on random changes to DNA. Over the past 60 years, we've accelerated the process through mutation breeding. That involves exposing plant tissues or seeds to radiation or mutagenic chemicals. Many of our most popular crop varietals have been generated this way, and are often grown and cheerfully marketed as 'organic'.

In contrast, genetically engineered plants have been modified at specific points on their DNA, incorporating known sequences of DNA that code for specific desired changes.

Which seems safer to you? A randomly scrambled DNA that, for all anyone knows, also expresses a slow cumulative poison, or a specifically modified DNA that expresses exactly the intended change with no other alterations?

The organic food industry, unable to succeed by running the race better, faster or smarter, now seeks to win by tripping the other runners. The whole anti-GMO effort is without scientific merit, and is simply a calculated money-grab by the organic food industry. Unfortunately, this shambling anti-GMO monster created by the organic food industry is now killing people by the hundreds of thousands.

The whole anti-GMO "movement" is funded in large part by the organic food industry. Finding themselves unable to win the race for consumer's hard-earned money by being better than their competition, the organic food industry is trying to win by tripping the other runners. There is essentially no scientific support for anti-GMO propaganda.