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So, since it's cigarette smoke that's the problem... Everyone switch to pot?

I know you're joking, but there's no conclusive evidence that nicotine itself causes cancer. It's particulate matter and other smoke residues that seem to drive lung cancer, and we know that there are just as many carcinogens in pot smoke as tobacco smoke.

Weirdly, however, large studies seem to indicate that there isn't an increased cancer risk from heavy pot smoking. Other research suggests that THC reduced lung cancer growth. However, pot smokers are at elevated risk for other lung diseases that come purely from breathing hot smoke all the time.

So, if you're going to switch from tobacco to marijuana, consider going with methods other than smoking. You may not get cancer from smoking, but it's still not good for you, and there are much safer ways to get high. (They are also ways that do not force other people in your presence to participate through second-hand smoke, which will bother others regardless of the long-term health risks or lack thereof.)

So, since it's cigarette smoke that's the problem... Everyone switch to pot?

I know you're joking, but there's no conclusive evidence that nicotine itself causes cancer. It's particulate matter and other smoke residues that seem to drive lung cancer, and we know that there are just as many carcinogens in pot smoke as tobacco smoke.

Weirdly, however, large studies seem to indicate that there isn't an increased cancer risk from heavy pot smoking. Other research suggests that THC reduced lung cancer growth. However, pot smokers are at elevated risk for other lung diseases that come purely from breathing hot smoke all the time.

So, if you're going to switch from tobacco to marijuana, consider going with methods other than smoking. You may not get cancer from smoking, but it's still not good for you, and there are much safer ways to get high. (They are also ways that do not force other people in your presence to participate through second-hand smoke, which will bother others regardless of the long-term health risks or lack thereof.)

You don't have to drill till its hot enough for your drillbit to melt.

You just have to drill till it's hot enough to turn pressurized water into superheated steam. Then you have a source of energy.

The other option of course is to drill without a drillbit:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090912144809.htm

Ummm, you do realize, that with Yellowstone, that's called "just below the surface" - as in "gee, look at the pretty surface geysers, where superheated steam flies out all the time..."

So... that solution seems to be solving nothing, as Yellowstone is already the most geologically active hydrothermal/geothermal area in the country, and one of the largest in the world.

The keywords for a search are "primate culture", in quotes. Here's one such example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112110058.htm with stone-throwers. This one http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2001-06-05-animal-usat.htm mentions different chimpanzees using different methods for termite-fishing, and various grooming methods, and a Japanese primate who learned to wash sandy human-cut potatoes, without humans teaching her about washing them, and then her tribe picked up the trick and her descendents do that to this day, which I think meets the "building on knowledge of previous generations" criteria.

You don't have to drill till its hot enough for your drillbit to melt.

You just have to drill till it's hot enough to turn pressurized water into superheated steam. Then you have a source of energy.

The other option of course is to drill without a drillbit:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090912144809.htm

The big difference between AGW and "being nice to the environment" is with CO2. With AGW CO2 is a dangerous pollutant, without AGW it is plant food and the earth is better off with MORE of it in the atmosphere (as has been the case through of most of earth's history!) since it would increase crop yields and thus support more animals and humans.

Yes, really. It's that important to not do the wrong thing "just because".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/08/000811062434.htm

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/

That's a valid argument. They've actually done a study finding that people can remember things better when doodling.

We all know we're supposed to work 9-5 completely focused on our tasks except for an hour for lunch and 2x15 minute breaks. But can anyone here actually do that?

Sometimes when I'm really focused on a task I'll stop the music, particularly if it has understandable lyrics which distract me from coding, but a lot of other times it's a choice between some slightly distracting music, or no distractions at all and just zoning out.

Why do people in their house with the blinds closed and the doors lock expect privacy?

With tech like this, even your locked doors and shaded windows won't do.

Science Daily has the full press release which is a bit more informative: Genetic engineering feat could greatly reduce costs and the full paper is at the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences: Nickel-inducible lysis system in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 (if you have access that is).

You're right, no other mammal has sent messages across the world. Unless of course you consider these funny lookin' fish to be mammals: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223140605.htm

Hell, it would seem that they even had a global communications network before we did.

First, it isn't clear how Al Gore would instantly become a billionaire if cap and trade becomes law. Second, you really think one man is more influential than several, already, multi-billion dollar industries?

It's quite clear how he would become a multibillionaire. He started a company that does nothing but buy and sell carbon credits. He'd be the founder and owner of the biggest company on the carbon credit version of Wall Street. I also never said he was more influential than multi-billion dollar industries. However he is one of the most influential people in the world in terms of environmental policy.

While this may be true, they already are the completely dominant force in commerce and so they'll make even more money if they don't have to retool anything.

Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world. The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking. They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term, level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen), or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way. These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win. If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.

What? Are you counting yourself and all the other posters on slashdot?

No I'm counting world renowned scientists:
Astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas
Statistician Stephen McIntyre
Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov
Geologist Astrid Lyså
Prof. Roy Spencer, NASA scientist
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT
a few dozen here...including an IPCC member.
and these 32 000 guys.
That should be enough people to show there is no "consensus" on global warming.

What cooling? The temperatures may be slightly cooler than the absolute peak, but to say there is a cooling trend is simply not true.

The "trend", as you call it, is a decade long...so far, and it's projected to last another few decades. How long was the warming that proceeded it? Twenty five years? I find it interesting that you quote a man (James Hansen of GISS) who was forced to retract falsified evidence that had claimed that the 2000s were the hottest decade in recorded history. And whose revised (i.e. more truthful) report showed that the world has cooled since the 1940s, while at the same time CO2 production skyrocketed. Additionally, wasn't he implicated in the CRU data manipulation? Yeah, he was. He's a trustwo

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129090218.htm

Some people wave their hands pretty vigorously...

It is true that anything can be used as a weapon, but we've had times where guns were pervasive, name Ye Olde West, and it simply wasn't that safe. People carried guns, because the law simply didn't exist there, and even then there was stringent gun laws in some towns, including no pistols allowed.

A recent study that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun. I haven't read the article, and obviously there's some demographics issues that need to determined. For instance, how often do the shooting victims have a history of crime, and so on. (e.g. to control for bad drug deals and the like), so I'll put this up to a "maybe."

But at the same time, I think some criminal I saw on Gangland or something that said, "If I think they have a gun, I'm going to shoot them first, then rob them."

But violent crime is at an all time low, it's just not worth it.

And this is coming from someone that grew up in the boondocks with the county sheriff being at least 30 minutes away. (No. We never owned a gun.)

For some reason there are those in the programming profession (usually the "we code to live" crowd who will slide easily into management as soon as possible) who cannot seem to get it into their thick skulls that "everybody wants to program a computer" is just about as true as "everybody wants to repair their own car." Non-programmers are that way because they are neither emotionally nor intellectually equipped by either nature or nurture to be a computer programmer (let alone a good one). Only 1% of the Earth's population are scientists or engineers. Making the tools employed by software engineers easier isn't going to make it (more) interesting or any easier for that 99% of the population who are not.

As far as making programming easier for programmers... Don't you get it? We like it hard. The harder the better. Most of us would be as happy as pigs in shit if our masters would let us program everything up in assembly language. If we could get away with it, every shell script would be written as one, big, fat, hairy regular expression. Real programmers don't want "easy," we want "control" and are more than happy to put up with the lack of ease having more control invariably entails. Programming languages that are more like human languages? That sounds like documentation to me. And you know how much programmers love writing documentation.

Computer programmers are not your typical breed of cat. To us, 200 milliseconds is a long time. Indeed, every day at work we manipulate space and time with hardly giving it a second thought. We are the poster children for OCD. We'd rather be "in the zone" struggling to craft an elegant solution to a very difficult problem than be in the real world struggling with very difficult people. We despise organized fun. We can't understand why "normal people" don't get the concept of indirection. We have working memories that rival those of Chimpanzees. To us, "average," "normal" and "easy" are swear words. And, truth be told, most of us would do what we do without pay if we could (and, judging by the number of open source programming projects on the Internet, a significant number of us can). We don't code to live, we live to code. We can't resist an intellectual challenge. If you want a programming project done quickly, just tell the programmer(s), "There's no way you can do that in a <pick-your-time-period>!" The best way to avoid a programmer at family gatherings? Give him or her a book of (mathematical) puzzles. You won't see him/her again until every puzzle in that book has been solved. Does any of this sound like (part of) a description of "your typical business person?"

Programming computers isn't difficult because the tools aren't close enough to English (or whatever human language you prefer). Programming computers is difficult because highly-structured problem solving is difficult. And its not really something they teach in school. Probably because its as hard to teach as are the problems it is most suited to solve. It may, indeed, be something you can't teach because the student either has "it" or doesn't. To do it well requires mental discipline, above-average intelligence, attention to detail, the willingness (indeed, insatiable desire) to continually learn new concepts and tools and, most of all, an insane amount of persistence. Most people don't have that particular constellation of traits. Making programming tools simpler will not turn these people into programmers any more than the advent of power tools and embedded, computerized control/diagnostic systems turned people who weren't auto mechanics into auto mechanics.

Since I think the Polar Bear thing is particularly funny (I think a lot of teen girls think they are so cute, in spite of the fact that they are apparently some of the most aggressive and violent bears), this is certainly not Fox News. nor are these folks. But with proof like simply SEEING them so far off shore and presuming global warming is the reason, it's so obvious that any criticism must be wrong! I guess since the food that Polar Bears eat - like seals - are remaining completely stationary while the snow/ice presumably recedes. I've seen reports that polar bears can swim anywhere from 60 to 100s of miles, so apparently they aren't completely sure....

Incidentally, from here [reason.com]:

All the articles you link to follow from the same exact flaw which renders them rather meaningless - they claim that polar bears are not threatened because present numbers are stable or increasing (polar bears are lucky animals, living far as far away from human settlement as they do); yet they miss the point that it is the future that matters - what will happen in 50-100 years time when the arctic is ice-free? This style of nonsense reasoning is typical of the obfuscation performed by denialist pundits.

The Daily Telegraph by the way is the FOX News of the UK. If you think the CRU team are bending the truth, they can't hold a candle to the Daily Telegraph.

[Fish farming] "requires huge amounts of wild fish to be caught, mulched and processed to be fed back to the "desirable" fish species that is being farmed."

Fish have prions. Using fish as a feedstock for other fish could lead to prion diseases -- "mad fish".

This article --
Farmed Fish May Pose Risk For Mad Cow Disease
-- concerns the possible risk of prion transmission from rendered cows to farmed fish. It stands to reason that if prions can jump from rendered cows to farmed fish (which isn't proven -- the above article is speculative), then feeding fish to fish also poses a risk of prion transmission.

Except that the oceans are reaching their limits. In fact according to the NOAA the oceans may stop being a sink soon and start releases CO2 back out into the atmosphere. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127163403.htm *warning do not read if you possess a handgun or large bottle of sedatives.

And furthermore, the claim that working on such a thing might constitute a bio-hazard might not be far-fetched:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119121300.htm

as a recent study shows tobacco harboring several human pathogenic bacteria.

You sound like you're arguing from information given to you by Al Gore. I'm not sure he's a trustworth source.

Since I think the Polar Bear thing is particularly funny (I think a lot of teen girls think they are so cute, in spite of the fact that they are apparently some of the most aggressive and violent bears), this is certainly not Fox News. nor are these folks. But with proof like simply SEEING them so far off shore and presuming global warming is the reason, it's so obvious that any criticism must be wrong! I guess since the food that Polar Bears eat - like seals - are remaining completely stationary while the snow/ice presumably recedes. I've seen reports that polar bears can swim anywhere from 60 to 100s of miles, so apparently they aren't completely sure.

To me, the Polar Bear thing is a good example of someone seeing something and it getting blown completely out of proportion and people like Al Gore picking up on it and trying to use it for their own gain. Al Gore does not appear to be struggling financially.

Incidentally, from here:

Gore shows an animation of a polar bear (very reminiscent of the Coca Cola bears) swimming pitifully in the sea trying to haul itself up onto the last piece of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund issued a report warning that global warming was endangering polar bears. Arctic sea ice is thawing sooner and this means that the bears who hunt seals on the ice have fewer opportunities to feed themselves. This week saw an alarming report that hungry polar bears are turning cannibal. Yet, the WWF report itself found that most bear populations are either stable or increasing (see page 9 of the report). And remember, polar bears evidently survived when Arctic temperatures were warmer 6000 years ago. Of course, if predictions that the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in 100 year turn out to be right, then the polar bears will have a problem.

(emphasis mine)

That "ice free" bit was a link to "sciencedaily.com."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091109173356.htm

This made me laugh. Mostly becaues I've lost about 7 pounds reccently (not quite 12 weeks, more like 16) and a significant improvement in my general well being. I'm not overweight, not an over-eater, but my weight as creeping up and I was developing a beer gut. The solitary change I've made is making a point of boosting fibre and protein intake skipping the junk food. I do have some exercise.

But really, the secret to being healthy is quite simply to stop beating around the bush, prosetylizing and making excuses. An attitude change, together with getting a freaking clue is the single real solution.

Here is the multi step approach to a fitter you and keeping the weight off:
1. Do or do not, there is no moderation. Don't eat bullshit food and don't prosetylize about it if you do give in to temptation. Embrace your guilt, harden up and resolve to better.
That includes sugary drinks, salty fatty chips, snack foods, white pasta, white rice, white bread, butter/margarine, foods loaded with thickeners and no reall food content. These foods are bad even in very small quantities. They are for all practical purposes, poison. Moderation is trying to sugar coat it, and guess what you'd eat that too. These are addictive foods, the less you eat of them the more you'll not want them.

*The low fat varieties are even worse than full fat, becaues the glycemic index goes up. *

2. Avoid foods loaded with artificial flavours, MSG, artificial sweetners, food acids etc. Becaues these foods lie to your brain and your palate. MSG is cheating, used where there is little actual food content. Same with flavours and food acids, these substitute for natural ingredients that could have potentially given you some nutritional value. Artificial sweetners are purely demonic. They still send all the same signals to your brain, but without the calorific hit, thus making you crave more carbohydrates. There is research showing sweetners can permanently reset the calorie gauge in rats, and research in humans showing ditching the sweetners alone, resulted in weight loss. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080210183902.htm (one example)

Interestingly natural sweetners such as Xylitol have been shown (by multiple peer reviewed studies) to have health benefits

3. Get a clue on what a portion size is - because this is assuredly the main problem with the North American diet. It explains the french paradox, and how my American plates don't fit properly in my European dishwasher. Don't supersize that combo, unless you want to feed 3 adults with it. Better yet go home and make a wholegrain sandwhich.

4. Learn to cook, because you'll learn to love food, you'll learn to actually taste things for flavours and recalibrate your palate for texture, flavour, spice, rather than sweet/salty/fatty and flavourless shite which is what contemporary palates have adapted to. You need food to live, and paradoxically it'll slowly kill you if you get it wrong.

Most kids these days are growing up unable to name many vegetables let alone know how do to much more than rip a seal off a microwave dinner or open a packet of crisps. Don't let your kids end up like that.

5. Healthy food does not taste bad, get this into your head. If you think good food is bad, you are brainwashed by the gazillion marketting messages for junk food that hit you every day. Last time I checked I'm cooking with herbs I grow and fresh whole foods, lean meats, lots spices, and this stuff and the things you can make with it are delicious, especially if you have a sodding clue how to cook.

6. Hack your food. Sure I have porridge for breakfast, yuck you say. Well my porridge is hacked, I have wheat germ, wheat bran, a seed mix with flax seed (killer omega 3 hit), thats the nutrition taken care of, tastes ok kind of hearty. What makes it taste better than any store brought

if you are still munching your way through 6 soft drinks, 2 packets of doritoes, a couple of chocolate bars and fried chicken each day you are still sucking in a hell of a lot more calories than you can burn off with just exercise?
The main role of exercise in weight loss is to help you maintain your metabolic rate ( or increase it a bit) while eating a normal amount of calories.

For a regular guy this should be about 2500 to 3000 Calories depending on your body size.

If you just cut your calories, your body is going to tend to just drop it's metabolic rate, so it's harder to lose weight with diet alone.
Oils and fats have 4 times the energy packed in them as carbs and protein, so if you are eating a lot of fatty food it is going to give you a lot of calories without filling you up much.

a normal healthy diet (ie. balanced protein/carbs and healthy fats, like from nuts, fish & avocados) plus exercise is the way to really succeed. Have a big heap of non-starchy veggies and it will really help fill you up without too much extra calories compared to having say, fries with your steak.

Oh. and diet drinks have been found to have a tendancy to fool your body it is starving, which gives you a bigger appetite, so avoid those & just drink fewer sugary beverages instead.

Losing weight isn't rocket science. Increase /maintain your metabolism a bit with 30 min excercise a day and reduce your calorie intake to below what your body burns is all you need to do - and be patient. Don't expect to lose more than about 2 pounds a week - any more is too fast and unsustainable in the long term.

The muscle you put on with exercise also helps you maintain your weight loss because muscle burns more energy than fat.

Break out of the overweight geek stereotype and be a healthy fit geek - you will think better too when you improve your circulation.

despite the fact that the human eye doesn't see it as particularly distinct from its neighbors

Color is culturally based. It's not so much that the human eye doesn't distinguish the color, but that our culture doesn't treat it as a distinct color. For example, Russians have distinct words for light blue and dark blue, segregating them into distinct colors where English speakers tend to just see 'blue' and not distinguish as much on hue.

There have been several studies about how perception is influenced by language. It's not that the eyeball works differently in different cultures, rather that the arbitrary lines our different cultures have between regions of color space determine how we define various colors.

In Newton's case, it's possible that Indigo was a separate, well-defined color region that we've since lost in common usage. The color still exists, we can still distinguish it as unique when placed between it's neighbors, but on it's own we'd probably just call it either blue or purple. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is wrong about the history of ROY G BIV and Newton's fondness of the number seven, just that language defines our perception of color simply because in English, we have common words for those colors. Seven is pretty arbitrary, but so is three (RGB), four (CMYK), or five (Hexachrome). It all depends on why you're categorizing colors. This isn't even getting into gamuts or color theory. The human eye is based on red, green, and blue receptors, but that's just a physical adaptation to allow us to see all colors in our visible spectrum. We're more sensitive to some colors over others, but there's no reason we couldn't see indigo as a distinct color other than that in our culture it's not all that common to distinguish it as separate. There's no reason there should be six arbitrary colors in the rainbow rather than seven, eight, ten, or twenty.

Take teal, for instance, another rarely-used color. Some people will call it blue, others green. Still others will just call it teal. Our language doesn't change the color itself, just how we categorize it.

The idea that there are only seven distinct colors (or any arbitrary number) is silly when you take language out of it and just apply numerical values to colors. What color is #fc0? Yellow? Orange? Orangish-yellow? What is the exact wavelength of 'red'? What color is at 450nm? (Hint: it's somewhere between yellow and green). The seven traditional colors of the rainbow are all about 20-40 nm apart except yellow and green, and red and orange. There really should be a color in between, and in some cultures there are.

Seems there is a more mundane explanation.

If we were really patient, we could knock out p16 in these moles and see if they get cancer. That would pretty well establish whether or not it was just p16 that was responsible for the relative resistance to cancer. On the topic of mice, there is a line of mice that is quite resistant to cancer as it is. As of yet, it is unknown what factors are responsible for this immunity. Other mice have been genetically modified to be highly resistant to cancer using other tumor suppressor genes. The article is from sciencedaily so take it with a grain of salt.

I actually meant "mouse embryos", since that's what TFA and our lab's work was about. Yes, zebrafish are easier -- in fact, you can get varieties that stay transparent into adulthood, which opens all sorts of possibilities. But there are a lot of things you can do in mouse models that you can't do in fish or whatnot.

I don't know that going along with your pseudo science ( and that all it is, given 80% of the temperature monitoring stations have been found to be to close to man made radiators to produce ANY useful information )

Really?. Have you also considered that there are satellite and sea measurements, those scientists are crafty. So what we do now won't affect the future?.

I'd rather spend the resources on something with a better chance at real pay back, and yes that includes laughing at, and campaigning/voting against people like YOU.

Oh OK, as long as you are having a good time I suppose future generations won't matter!

Where is my champagne!

I never took flu shots my whole life. I would get the occasional cold or flu, but nothing severe lasting more than 3 days or so that bed rest and lots of fluids and chicken noodle soup couldn't take care of.

One time, 5 years ago I came down with Pneumonia, and that was by far the sickest I have ever been in my life, and the most physically exhausting pain i have had to endure for a week and a half straight. My doctors didn't diagnose it correctly until after my temperature hovered for 103 degrees for two straight days. I almost could feel myself passing out from my body heat. It was horrible. They gave me the correct antibiotics and my temperature dropped within 24 hours.

5 years since then i have not had any seasonal flu/sickness and still refused to take flu shots. I see no need to since i don't see a large risk of becoming very sick and missing out on work or dishing out money on OTC/prescription meds unless necessary. I'd rather let my body get exposed to it if it happens and deal with it as it comes. I am fairly healthy and always up and moving at work so I get tons of exercise throughout the day without even trying. FYI, I am an IT Director, and yes I am at peoples desks every day, touching keyboards, laptops, monitors, etc. I am never the one getting sick in both of the building complexes I manage. I'm always washing my hands before eating and often throughout the day. Its always the sales/accounting/marketing departments where people end up going missing for days because they are at home sick with the flu; the same people that were the ones that jumped on the chance to get the company sponsored flu shots; and also the same people sitting all day at their desks eating donuts for breakfast and only getting up out of their cubicle to refill their coffee cups. See the relation...?

I also don't trust pharmas that spend more money every year on Marketing then they do on R&D, and I sure as hell won't trust them to stick a needle full of a product they produced for the sole purpose of capitalizing on this "pandemic" and inject it into my body. I'll take my chances...and so far for 27 years, I've been doing pretty good without their annual "miracle" shots.

Your first premise is false. I cite myself as a counter-example.

This is not discrete math. One counter-example doesn't prove me wrong.

I believe that they are an important key to a broad field of study.

Debatable, but clearly just your opinion.

The second result from your link...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050624102413.htm
"PITTSBURGH (June 23, 2005) -- In a ground-breaking study, scientists at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh have discovered that adult, or post-natal, stem cells have the same ability as embryonic stem cells to multiply, a previously unknown characteristic indicating that post-natal stem cells may play an important therapeutic role."

Of course, you're too stupid to look at the pages that you reference.

I know that this *is* the Internet, but theoretically Slashdot is supposed to attract the more intelligent and mature among the net denizens. (though looking at some of the trolls posting NSFW stuff, that's really not saying much)

You MUST be new here. Goatse, GNAA, Natalie Portman... This is the high school bathroom where the geeks hang out. Most of us are of above average intelligence, but this is the place where we come to be kids.

LK

Fossils are not necessarily indications of dead ends. We certainly have found fossils of creatures whose offspring evolved into something that is still around. For example we have found fossils of rabbit-sized things with big teeth whose offspring evolved into pig-sized tusked things whose offspring evolved into 50,000-year-ago elephants, whose offspring evolved into modern elephants.

And as the last example shows, the existence of fossils of a species doesn't necessarily mean the species is extinct. Most fossils are so old that their offspring have changed so much that we would not call them the same species. But in cases of recent fossilization (which is unusual, of course) it's possible that there could be fossils of a species as well as living modern examples of it.

There were reports at the time, that the recent Station Fire (the one that threatened Mount Wilson Observatory) put our more CO2 every two to three days as all the cars in the US do in a year. Of course, the AGW people either ignore or deny this because it doesn't fit their dogma.

And how was the fire started? By humans? Indonesia became the third largest CO2 emitter, after China who passed the US last year, and the US. How did they do it? By burning down forests and draining wetlands so that oil palm tree plantations could be planted. They want to feed Europe's biofuels hunger. All Europe did was shift production of GHGs. And by doing so they are endangering Orangutans in Borneo. And of course I expect others to deny that because it doesn't fit their dogma.

Oh, and from 2007: "Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years".

Falcon

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091012121331.htm

" with hints of males helping to care for eggs and young, another behavior that is virtually unknown among spiders. "

I'd love to see actual research that backs up this claim. The claim may be correct, and I may be unique, but I don't feel any less distracted dealing with ATC when flying then I do when I'm talking on bluetooth while driving. Having seen no research one way or the other, it's difficult to say who's right here.

I'm not aware of any studies comparing general cell phone usage with task specific radio usage. In that respect, I'm just an asshole with an opinion. There has been a fair bit of research into the distraction effect of handsfree cell phone use though. Here's one http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030129080944.htm to start with.

One thing to think about - if you *felt* distracted, it wouldn't be (as) dangerous, because you would tend to compensate for the risk in some way.

I think it's similar to the self-perception distortion associated with drunk driving. I know I personally have to give away my keys before the third drink, because somewhat tipsy me doesn't recognize that he's a danger behind the wheel the same way sober me would. Interestingly though, completely slaughtered me wouldn't try to drive even if he did have the keys.

They've done numerous studies that say you're wrong. Holding the phone is an additional distraction, but there is still a significant difference between talking on a cell (hands free or otherwise) and talking to a passenger. For one, your passenger can say "watch out!" if you lose focus and start to drift; your phone cannot. For another, people need to focus more on phone calls; the fidelity isn't as good on either end so they need to focus on hearing and being heard more than in an in person conversation. You know all those people who talk 20 decibels louder than normal on a cell, even though no recent cell phone benefits significantly from the additional volume? They've focused on the call (and being heard) so much that they forget to self-regulate. If they can't regulate the volume of their voice (a task related to the conversation), why do you think they'll be able to drive effectively?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930165038.htm

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001JD000560.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217075138.htm

The Maunder minimum was a period of low sunspot activity in the mid 1600s to early 1700s. The "Little Ice Age" lasted from about 1250 (when the arctic ice pack started to grow at an accelerated rate) to about 1820. What does something that happened around 1650 have to do with something that started in 1250?
We've been experiencing a low sunspot activity period since about 1985, during which time we have experienced the highest temperatures on record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg

I mean, whether we like it or not, with or without us, the climate will change. We have proof of this from Ant/arctic core samples and other sources that point to prehistoric changes in the Earth's atmosphere. It was warmer during the time of the dinosaurs and colder during the reign of the mammoths.

No one disputes this -- at least not on the side of people who accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The important difference is that the changes you list took VERY long times to happen; even so, many species couldn't adapt.

Maybe it's time to start testing those orbital solar reflectors or beefing up our Near Earth Asteroid Tracking efforts?

Maybe it would be actually much cheaper to change things on the ground rather than to attempt a MASSIVE orbital engineering project. You think it's a bitch getting modern industrial societies to pay to save energy and switch generation sources? Imagine trying to fund a project to put a structure large enough to shade the Earth in a stable position between us and the Sun (i.e. the L1 point).

So, yeah, no. But it's not like we can do a damn thing about cosmic rays, and it's not like they have much influence on global warming, anyway.

The high energy rays and penetrate deep into the atmosphere where they create nucleation points which increase cloud over. The inreased cloud cover reflects more energy into space and the planet will cool.

Why didn't you provide any citations? Perhaps because it was disproved in 2007.

Thirty seconds with google and the keywords "cosmic rays global warming" brought a wealth of stories describing research which found no correlation of any kind between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Sure, you'll find articles describing this theory, but it's called a "hypothesis," and "controversial" at best. And all those stories are older than the 2008 analysis of MODIS data.

I think $59.99 may be a cap price for a while.

The left-digit effect: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223221526.htm

Although arbitrary, I'd say it's common for consumers to think of "round" price points like $50 and $100 when it comes to entertainment (games, a night at the movies, dinner out, etc). The left-digit effect would make $59.99 the highest price to still "feel" like it belongs to $50, whereas the left-digit change of $60.00 would remind consumers they're "approaching" what they might consider an off-putting number.

It's that tricky rights-of-the-children vs. rights-of-the-parents thing. I think it's pretty clear that more children will get sick from drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk, given that quality control has to vary among dairies.

First, I disagree, but actually it's more than just that. At least for infants. For infants add in mother's milk and formula. As for raw milk, I firmly believe hygiene and how the milk is handled plays a big roll. In a free market when one farmer doesn't exercise care in the handling of milk word will get out the farmer sells bad milk, especially with law suits thrown in.

I'm glad the raw milk economy is alive, my favorite creamery depends on it, but I'd also not give it to my kids unless I was really sure about the conditions it came from. Local isn't sufficient - I've gotten some milk from our local dairy on (rare) occasion that tasted of cow shit.

In part I agree. At least with a local farmer you should be able to see how operations are conducted and if you don't like them you could use another one. I don't have children myself, though I wanted 2 of my own and wanted to adopt 2, but I'm a firm believer in mother's milk and would rather use it as much as I could. Perhaps mix it and raw cows milk as well.

Oh, as for buying locally, I came across something on this earlier tonight: "Buying Local Isn't Always Better For The Environment". ScienceDaily also had this: Organic Or Local Fruits and Vegetables?" And those aren't the only ones like them I've read. I support buying locally but not when it takes more resources.

Also, education is far more effective than regulation.

I agree most of the tyme, but not all the tyme. Actually I believe that sometimes regulations are created to reduce or artificially keep low competition. Make staying within regulations expensive then you raise the bar on starting a business in the field being regulated. Some supporters of raw milk believe that's why laws and regulations were passed requiring milk to be pasteurized. Small dairy operators may not be able to afford to pasteurize milk, so they either stop dairy farming or they sell raw milk to someone who buys milk from a bunch of other dairy farms as well and can afford to pasteurize the milk.

Moms who are feeding their very young kids raw milk instead of breast feeding just aren't on my list of 'OK parents'.

Here I fully agree.

Falcon

It's that tricky rights-of-the-children vs. rights-of-the-parents thing. I think it's pretty clear that more children will get sick from drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk, given that quality control has to vary among dairies.

First, I disagree, but actually it's more than just that. At least for infants. For infants add in mother's milk and formula. As for raw milk, I firmly believe hygiene and how the milk is handled plays a big roll. In a free market when one farmer doesn't exercise care in the handling of milk word will get out the farmer sells bad milk, especially with law suits thrown in.

I'm glad the raw milk economy is alive, my favorite creamery depends on it, but I'd also not give it to my kids unless I was really sure about the conditions it came from. Local isn't sufficient - I've gotten some milk from our local dairy on (rare) occasion that tasted of cow shit.

In part I agree. At least with a local farmer you should be able to see how operations are conducted and if you don't like them you could use another one. I don't have children myself, though I wanted 2 of my own and wanted to adopt 2, but I'm a firm believer in mother's milk and would rather use it as much as I could. Perhaps mix it and raw cows milk as well.

Oh, as for buying locally, I came across something on this earlier tonight: "Buying Local Isn't Always Better For The Environment". ScienceDaily also had this: Organic Or Local Fruits and Vegetables?" And those aren't the only ones like them I've read. I support buying locally but not when it takes more resources.

Also, education is far more effective than regulation.

I agree most of the tyme, but not all the tyme. Actually I believe that sometimes regulations are created to reduce or artificially keep low competition. Make staying within regulations expensive then you raise the bar on starting a business in the field being regulated. Some supporters of raw milk believe that's why laws and regulations were passed requiring milk to be pasteurized. Small dairy operators may not be able to afford to pasteurize milk, so they either stop dairy farming or they sell raw milk to someone who buys milk from a bunch of other dairy farms as well and can afford to pasteurize the milk.

Moms who are feeding their very young kids raw milk instead of breast feeding just aren't on my list of 'OK parents'.

Here I fully agree.

Falcon

I wonder if radiation is the reason teenagers to day are so messed up. Maybe all the cell phone use is what's screwing up their brains. I wonder where I could get a grant to do the research.

No, I don't think so. I doubt cellphones are screwing up teenagers brains, but would like to see studies. Since at least the 1990s prescriptions for teenagers with and without AHDH, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have gone up.

To balance that Huffington Post article, a study by Mayo Clinic researchers found that treatment with prescription stimulants is associated with improved long-term academic success of children with ADHD."

Last time I checked, the laws of physics still reigned supreme, and microwaves will not cause genetic damage to his plants.

You'd better tell all the scientists you know better than they do. They have studies that conclude that microwaves do affect DNA. Then again there are disagreement even between those who research the subject, and with it being like that saying there is no affect is not scientifically accurate.

Falcon

Even if that's true, most people aren't CEOs, and you're more likely to make a decent living with A+ grades, especially in maths and science.

I assume we're talking about the general population, for "geeks" will be geeks no matter what.

While grades make *some* difference out of college, over time their importance dwindles and social and management skills make a bigger difference in my observation. Surveys about high-school "popularity" tend to show this is the case.

And in a similar story from the North West of the U.S. Young Arctic Muskoxen Better At Keeping Warm Than Scientists Thought, I really didn't know that Scientists of the North West thought of "Young Arctic Muskoxen",

However, its a question whether the climate reacts to warming by positive feedback, and if so how strongly, or by negative feedback.

There's a debate about how much positive feedback exists, but the case for negative feedback is very weak. For example, events such as Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events are the best examples of abrupt climate change in the paleoclimate record. These ancient events are worrying because they show the climate has a propensity to shift quickly from one state to another, given even small forcings. That requires positive feedback.

Also, the estimated magnitude of the Milankovitch cycles and other forcings are insufficient to account for the temperature variations observed in ice cores from Vostok and EPICA. This requires positive feedback. In fact, the estimates of positive feedback are too small to bridge the gap.

The decisive evidence for feedback would be if the climate were now genuinely warming faster than or differently from ever before.

Approximately 35x faster, which isn't surprising because of the unprecedented (in the last 2 million years) CO2 levels. Also, the warming is happening after the CO2 increase, which makes this warming qualitatively different from all previous deglaciations.

And this is where the question of the refusal of the climate science community to reveal their data becomes important.

Proxy data are available, Wahl and Ammann have made their code available, the CMIP3 database makes model output public for researchers to perform comparisons, etc. I've previously complained about the (widespread) tendency of scientists to keep their data private to wring every last discovery out of it before making it public. It's worrying, but not a problem unique to climatology. Nor ar all climatologists so hesitant to release their code and data. I publish all my code under the GPLv3, for instance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090908132944.htm

Liar.

Bacteria Used To Make Radioactive Metals Inert, published 9/9/09

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418091932.htm

It's the first thing that came up when I looked into getting oxygen from carbon dioxide, it looks like they can run CO2 past this device to decouple some CO which can be used industrially with an O. Either way I agree compressors will be critical to using the atmosphere for anything, since the existing atmosphere is 1% of earth's. I agree, large amounts of energy will be required, and nuclear is probably the best bet. Solar won't produce enough power to allow the processes required to make a settlement function. Such a settlement will use obscene amounts of energy per-capita.

I just realised, getting nitrogen will be deceptively easy. Cool outside air to -80 to form CO2 ice that can be processed using the aforementioned process to generate oxygen and CO feedstock, and compress the remaining gas. The remainder will be mostly nitrogen and argon. You'll need to process one hell of a lot of atmosphere to get the sort of N2 you'll need, but it'd do the trick. To prevent erosion from utterly destroying the compressors, a large electrostatic precipitator would be the best bet, with a conveyor belt taking the dust somewhere else. Earth industry has a lot of experience with removing particulates from stack emissions, which I think would be useful there.

Humanity has picked all the low hanging fruits of technology. Penicillin was discovered by accident exuding from a common mould. Radioactivity was discovered by observing phosphorescent rocks. Rockets were essentially an engineering problem. The elements of electricity were discovered by men using scientific instruments they could build themselves.

The rate of discovery has not necessarily slowed, but i contend that it has become more difficult to discover and propagate new things. The cost to fundamental discovery ratio has risen considerably. People are no less intelligent then they were 20,50, 100 years ago, but to find something new takes considerably more man hours and investment. Take the memristor for example, a recent discovery, just reading the course of its discovery will help anyone understand why we don't have flying cars, teleporters and intelligent robots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor. The Genome project is another good example of the scale needed to make important discoveries nowadays. Just ask anyone in medical research "what's taking so long" and you'll immediately understand the scale of the problem.

There's also the cultural issues. The public is disinterested in science, roughly 50% of Americans don't believe in evolution, Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun!. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090312115133.htm . There has also been a considerable shift since the 1970's away from basic research which is now seen as long term and unprofitable, when shareholders must have their profits now! http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/28/209220 http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/30/1512213/Where-Have-You-Gone-Bell-Labs?from=rss

But let us not repeat the mistakes of past generations. A English scientist, I forget the name, once said at the turn of the 20th century that everything that can been discovered has been discovered, and all that was needed now was simply to dot the i's and cross the t's. How wrong he was.

Lets also not be ignorant of the power of the technology we hold in our hands now. For a price a person can own a phone that can take an incredibly clear image, tag it with the exact location on earth where it was taken and send to anyone anywhere reasonable speaking. A MRI machine can take incredible images inside the body without a single cut. Many of us take what we have for granted. Some might remember: everything is amazing, nobody is happy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXStPqhLmIk

The challenge now is propagation. Clean water, abundant food and shelter are still discoveries waiting to happen for a large portion of our species. Flying cars, e-ink newspapers and quantum computers are no concern to the child looking for food in a rubbish tip in Africa.

Still... many nerds hold onto hopes of a Singularity. Perhaps not to the scale many of its proponents imagine, but a AI may be able to deal with relationships and datasets that human brains simply cannot understand or have the patience for. Infact as slashdot covered earlier its already here: http://www.findmysoft.com/news/Artificial-Intelligence-Robot-Scientist-Adam/