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Of course I'm pretty sure you also realize that the presence or absence of rafts of pack ice in some part of the Antarctic on any particular day has about as much to do with climate change as whether or not it will rain on Friday has to do with climate change...which is to say next to nothing. Pack ice accumulation is mostly a factor of wind, waves, and currents interacting with coastal topography and other local factors. Summer pack ice in the Antarctic has periodically trapped ships for as long as ships have been visiting the Antarctic in the summer, and will probably continue to do for as they keep going there. So if the news report sensationally tried to link climate to this ship getting stuck in this particular spot at this particular moment as evidence for or against climate change, it would be as dim-witted as arguing that because it's cold outside climate change isn't real, which fortunately we're clever enough not to do -- unless we happen to be politically aligned as an "independent", in which case we're not that clever, which is depressing.

At any rate, it would certainly be nice if the news report had said something about the purpose of the expedition as retracing the steps taken by explorers 100 years ago to better understand the changes since then (be they from climate change or anything else since the Antarctic is a very dynamic environment), but I'm sure you wouldn't blame the news for trying not to insult the intelligence of its audience by lying through insinuation, even if the way you phrased your comment might have accidentally led some hurried or unsophisticated readers to think you might have preferred as much.

Sure, as the moon does exactly what to warm or cool the earth?

Let me introduce you to the concept of tidal forces and their effect causing significant heat as as the mass of a planetary body, especially the crust, flexes in response.

Check out Europa and the Jovian tidal forces that generate enough heat energy to keep water liquid that far from the sun, and even cause huge geysers, for an example.

Hm, strange as a matter of coincident I had checked that yesterday. Nearly burned my fingers, damn hot down there. Now as you mention it, I checked the rotation of the core again. I see no difference.

We are actually becoming quite good at being able to analyze and gather data from the passage of shock waves through materials, thanks in large part to military-driven research.

We are just beginning to understand what lies far beneath our feet. In fact, they've relatively recently come up with an almost entirely new structural opposing-spins model for the inner and outer cores.

Here are a couple of articles briefly describing it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220142817.htm

This part I found interesting:

In particular, as the inner core grows, the heat released during solidification drives convection in the fluid in the outer core.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423629/Earths-inner-core-spins-eastward-direction-faster-rate-planets-surface.html

Now, where do you suppose all that convection is eventually transferring all that heat energy to? Heck, that's almost an entirely separate climate system in itself which we have extremely little understanding of.

Are you saying that we know and understand enough about this to safely rule it out of climate models?

Look, we simply have not been around to collect enough data or advance our understanding enough about the myriads of systems and even basic structure of the planet to make reliable predictions. The only prediction we can make with certainty is that climate will change on the planet. Anything more is an educated guess, at best.

Humans should be concentrating on becoming a space-faring species that can concentrate most of it's energy collection/generation and resource collection and processing off-planet, along with self-sustaining colonies, possibly either space habitats at Earth/moon La Grange points or on Mars or elsewhere.

The hoarding mentality that would have humans increasingly restricted in their energy and resource consumption is based on assuming that we must continue to only exploit the resources here on Earth and that humans will never live independently off of Earth, nor provide energy or resources to humans on Earth from off-planet.

If you truly want to be "green", push for full-on private and commercial exploitation of space and the establishment of colonies with the goal of eventual self-sufficiency. This will do more to eliminate the negative effects of humans on the Earth in a permanent way than anything else (short of killing ourselves and/or returning to hunter-gatherer level) we could possibly do.

Now, *that's* what I call "forward"!

Strat

When there is a method that can be used in a much more targeted fashion?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130910140941.htm

In the near future, it could be as simple as take a pill, interview an analyst about your most disturbing memories and be free of them. The trick is not to recall anything you don't want to forget before the pill wears off.

Taboos against inbreeding are hardly the result of intolerance since inbreeding drastically increases the probability of recessive genes becoming expressed. Since recessive genes are rarely expressed they're not exposed to the same selection pressure and tend to be less fit as a result.

So your claim is that by engaging in inbreeding, we are putting evolutionary pressure on the recessive genes, thus removing them from the gene pool, and that this is beneficial?

Beneficial for the species possibly, but not for the poor individuals who are tasked with the job of carrying those genes out of the pool.

(though it might be bad of the species as you'll lose some diversity too, recessive genes still get selection without inbreeding)

You are aware that, if you have a single gene for sickle cell anemia, rather than coming down with the disease, you're effectively immune to Malaria, since the blood cells will sickle in the presence of Malaria, but not otherwise, right?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110428123931.htm

Recessive genes are less fit on average, that doesn't mean in some instances they can't be as or even more fit than their non-recessive counterparts.

The sickle cell gene example, aside from being fascinating, actually proves my point. It would not have survived as a dominant gene in that form since the side effects of full expression are too harmful, it either would have been removed from the genepool, mutated to only go sickle with Malaria, or another gene would have popped up that made it only go sickle with Malaria. It's the fact that it's recessive that's allowed it to retain such poor fitness.

They probably didn't have intolerant idiots telling them who they could mate with, either.

Taboos against inbreeding are hardly the result of intolerance since inbreeding drastically increases the probability of recessive genes becoming expressed. Since recessive genes are rarely expressed they're not exposed to the same selection pressure and tend to be less fit as a result.

So your claim is that by engaging in inbreeding, we are putting evolutionary pressure on the recessive genes, thus removing them from the gene pool, and that this is beneficial?

You are aware that, if you have a single gene for sickle cell anemia, rather than coming down with the disease, you're effectively immune to Malaria, since the blood cells will sickle in the presence of Malaria, but not otherwise, right?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110428123931.htm

We do need to worry about it because increased temperatures means increased humidity in the atmosphere which leads to positive feedback.

That clorflourocarbons and their halon subsititues are inense greenhouse gases. here

Yes, because we know no other people in the world get cancer. Not in the third world. Of course sharks also can't get cancer: Or animals: Have your shark fin soup lately to help ward away the cancer? The only animal that apparently doesn't get cancer is The naked mole rat:

I've kind of been thinking of something similar to that. I'm not sure it would have to instantly cause all combustible materials to burn up immediately, but suppose a strong laser was mounted to the back of trucks and they used them to sort of back-burn brush at the edge of cities and residential areas when a wild fire is encroaching. You could likely cover a large area and with the intense heat of the laser, possibly cause the fire to burn faster then normal and reduce the risk of it getting out of hand too. Just follow it up with a tanker spraying the burnt area with retardant.

The trucks could use roads and if perched on top of a hill, it should be able to get a good ways down the valley before becoming inefficient. And if the wild fire is large enough to have it's own weather system, the lasers could possibly be used to somewhat direct the heat and therefore disrupt the weather system to the advantage of fighting it.

Of course this is already being investigated with electrical fields I guess.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110327191034.htm

The postulated AGW effect, far from being uniquely rapid, is in fact, much more gradual than some naturally caused pronounced climate effects. By orders of magnitude.

The Younger Dryas of just 12 thousand years ago caused a mini ice age lasting 1300 years. It had long been thought to be about a decade in onset (still much more rapid than AGW effect), but recent evidence now suggests that it transformed a warm and sunny Europe into an icy, near-glacial freeze in only six months.

Thee were several dramatically rapid such climatic changes during the period from 17,000 to 8000 years ago. Note on the chart (Figure 1) the difference in degree between these changes and "present global warming". The latter is all but invisible in comparison.

Science Daily has a piece on recent findings that suggest we throughput much more information than we're consciously aware of.

the brain processes and understands visusal input that we may never consciously perceive. ...Sanguinetti showed study participants a series of black silhouettes, some of which contained meaningful, real-world objects hidden in the white spaces on the outsides. ..."The specific question was, 'Does the brain process those hidden shapes to the level of meaning, even when the subject doesn't consciously see them?"
The answer, Sanguinetti's data indicates, is yes. ...Study participants' brainwaves indicated that even if a person never consciously recognized the shapes on the outside of the image, their brains still processed those shapes to the level of understanding their meaning. ...

"There's a brain signature for meaningful processing," Sanguinetti said. A peak in the averaged brainwaves called N400 indicates that the brain has recognized an object and associated it with a particular meaning.

So it's not just that AI can't process all that we can in the variety of ways we can. It's also that our brains are processing a bunch of stuff we're not consciously aware of.

Video games don't cause people to be violent, nor do they cause them to be peaceful.

"the researchers found that the playing of such games actually had a very slight calming effect on youths with attention deficit symptoms and helped to reduce their aggressive and bullying behavior."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130826123134.htm

That's a fair question.

I was afraid somebody might ask that (because I think I could find a study to back it up, but it might take a long time).

I was extrapolating from the statements by scientists who study these things that poorly-ventilated wood stoves are as dangerous for the lungs as cigarettes, car exhaust, or coal power plant emissions. It's impossible to calculate these things precisely, but one of the data sets I use, because it's a classic study, is in the 1964 Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, which found that military veterans who smoked cigarettes died about 10 years sooner than veterans who didn't smoke. There are lots of studies since then that come up with comparable numbers. There are studies of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is one of the big killers among lung diseases, which found a high incidence of COPD among women who use traditional wood and charcoal cooking stoves indoors.

Now realize the dangers come from traditional wood stoves, and it's possible to make clean-burning stoves that don't have those dangers.

Here's one from Fox News (which sometimes gets a bad rap), comparing wood stoves to car exhaust:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/02/07/wood-stoves-cause-cancer-heart-disease/

Wood Stoves May Cause Cancer, Heart Disease
Published February 07, 2011
FoxNews.com

A wood-burning stove in your home may be a great source of heat during the cold winter, but new data shows that invisible particles produced by burning wood may cause cancer and heart disease, the Telegraph reported.

Wood-burning stoves are becoming more popular because of the rising price of oil, gas and electricity prices. But researchers at Copenhagen University in Denmark said that breathing in air around the stoves is the equivalent to inhaling car exhaust—with the wood particles being small enough to breathe into the deepest parts of the lungs.

"The particles that come from wood smoke can certainly cause fatal heart or lung disease. In human cells that were exposed to the particles, substantial DNA damage and mutation took place. It was comparable to the effects of particles given off by traffic," said professor Steffen Loft, of the Department of Public Health at Copenhagen University....

Here are some other studies:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095814.htm

Wood-Burning Stoves: Harmful or Safe?

Jan. 16, 2012 — Wood-burning stoves are a popular source of heating in many countries. However in recent years there has been much debate about the potential negative health effects associated with wood smoke. A Norwegian researcher has studied the influence of combustion conditions on the emissions and their health effects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820102516.htm

Traffic Pollution and Wood Smoke Increases Asthma in Adults

Aug. 20, 2013 — Asthma sufferers frequently exposed to heavy traffic pollution or smoke from wood fire heaters, experienced a significant worsening of symptoms, a new University of Melbourne led study has found....

"Our study also revealed a connection between the inhalation of wood smoke exposure and asthma severity and that the use of wood for heating is detrimental to health in communities such as Tasmania where use of wood burning is common," Dr Burgess said.

"Clean burning practices and the replacement of old polluting wood stoves by new ones are likely to minimise both indoor and outdoor wood smoke pollution and improve people's health," he said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110205204159.htm

Air Pollutants from Fireplaces and Wood-Burning Stoves Raise Health Concerns

That's a fair question.

I was afraid somebody might ask that (because I think I could find a study to back it up, but it might take a long time).

I was extrapolating from the statements by scientists who study these things that poorly-ventilated wood stoves are as dangerous for the lungs as cigarettes, car exhaust, or coal power plant emissions. It's impossible to calculate these things precisely, but one of the data sets I use, because it's a classic study, is in the 1964 Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, which found that military veterans who smoked cigarettes died about 10 years sooner than veterans who didn't smoke. There are lots of studies since then that come up with comparable numbers. There are studies of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is one of the big killers among lung diseases, which found a high incidence of COPD among women who use traditional wood and charcoal cooking stoves indoors.

Now realize the dangers come from traditional wood stoves, and it's possible to make clean-burning stoves that don't have those dangers.

Here's one from Fox News (which sometimes gets a bad rap), comparing wood stoves to car exhaust:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/02/07/wood-stoves-cause-cancer-heart-disease/

Wood Stoves May Cause Cancer, Heart Disease
Published February 07, 2011
FoxNews.com

A wood-burning stove in your home may be a great source of heat during the cold winter, but new data shows that invisible particles produced by burning wood may cause cancer and heart disease, the Telegraph reported.

Wood-burning stoves are becoming more popular because of the rising price of oil, gas and electricity prices. But researchers at Copenhagen University in Denmark said that breathing in air around the stoves is the equivalent to inhaling car exhaust—with the wood particles being small enough to breathe into the deepest parts of the lungs.

"The particles that come from wood smoke can certainly cause fatal heart or lung disease. In human cells that were exposed to the particles, substantial DNA damage and mutation took place. It was comparable to the effects of particles given off by traffic," said professor Steffen Loft, of the Department of Public Health at Copenhagen University....

Here are some other studies:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095814.htm

Wood-Burning Stoves: Harmful or Safe?

Jan. 16, 2012 — Wood-burning stoves are a popular source of heating in many countries. However in recent years there has been much debate about the potential negative health effects associated with wood smoke. A Norwegian researcher has studied the influence of combustion conditions on the emissions and their health effects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820102516.htm

Traffic Pollution and Wood Smoke Increases Asthma in Adults

Aug. 20, 2013 — Asthma sufferers frequently exposed to heavy traffic pollution or smoke from wood fire heaters, experienced a significant worsening of symptoms, a new University of Melbourne led study has found....

"Our study also revealed a connection between the inhalation of wood smoke exposure and asthma severity and that the use of wood for heating is detrimental to health in communities such as Tasmania where use of wood burning is common," Dr Burgess said.

"Clean burning practices and the replacement of old polluting wood stoves by new ones are likely to minimise both indoor and outdoor wood smoke pollution and improve people's health," he said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110205204159.htm

Air Pollutants from Fireplaces and Wood-Burning Stoves Raise Health Concerns

That's a fair question.

I was afraid somebody might ask that (because I think I could find a study to back it up, but it might take a long time).

I was extrapolating from the statements by scientists who study these things that poorly-ventilated wood stoves are as dangerous for the lungs as cigarettes, car exhaust, or coal power plant emissions. It's impossible to calculate these things precisely, but one of the data sets I use, because it's a classic study, is in the 1964 Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, which found that military veterans who smoked cigarettes died about 10 years sooner than veterans who didn't smoke. There are lots of studies since then that come up with comparable numbers. There are studies of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is one of the big killers among lung diseases, which found a high incidence of COPD among women who use traditional wood and charcoal cooking stoves indoors.

Now realize the dangers come from traditional wood stoves, and it's possible to make clean-burning stoves that don't have those dangers.

Here's one from Fox News (which sometimes gets a bad rap), comparing wood stoves to car exhaust:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/02/07/wood-stoves-cause-cancer-heart-disease/

Wood Stoves May Cause Cancer, Heart Disease
Published February 07, 2011
FoxNews.com

A wood-burning stove in your home may be a great source of heat during the cold winter, but new data shows that invisible particles produced by burning wood may cause cancer and heart disease, the Telegraph reported.

Wood-burning stoves are becoming more popular because of the rising price of oil, gas and electricity prices. But researchers at Copenhagen University in Denmark said that breathing in air around the stoves is the equivalent to inhaling car exhaust—with the wood particles being small enough to breathe into the deepest parts of the lungs.

"The particles that come from wood smoke can certainly cause fatal heart or lung disease. In human cells that were exposed to the particles, substantial DNA damage and mutation took place. It was comparable to the effects of particles given off by traffic," said professor Steffen Loft, of the Department of Public Health at Copenhagen University....

Here are some other studies:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095814.htm

Wood-Burning Stoves: Harmful or Safe?

Jan. 16, 2012 — Wood-burning stoves are a popular source of heating in many countries. However in recent years there has been much debate about the potential negative health effects associated with wood smoke. A Norwegian researcher has studied the influence of combustion conditions on the emissions and their health effects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820102516.htm

Traffic Pollution and Wood Smoke Increases Asthma in Adults

Aug. 20, 2013 — Asthma sufferers frequently exposed to heavy traffic pollution or smoke from wood fire heaters, experienced a significant worsening of symptoms, a new University of Melbourne led study has found....

"Our study also revealed a connection between the inhalation of wood smoke exposure and asthma severity and that the use of wood for heating is detrimental to health in communities such as Tasmania where use of wood burning is common," Dr Burgess said.

"Clean burning practices and the replacement of old polluting wood stoves by new ones are likely to minimise both indoor and outdoor wood smoke pollution and improve people's health," he said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110205204159.htm

Air Pollutants from Fireplaces and Wood-Burning Stoves Raise Health Concerns

"Some of this going to be generational... some people who are very attached to it are still alive."

Weak argument in a lot of ways. You seem to make the assumption that DST is some kind of majority-rules thing, when it's not. DST is one of those fairly boneheaded ideas that come up once in a while in a representational Congress (kind of like setting pi to 3), which is dumb but so low-priority that there's no major political pushback against it. And it's led by a fairly small group of marketers who think there's more shopping time from it. I bet that right now or any time in the past if there was a general vote on the issue it would be abolished.

At any rate, the lack of economic benefit and demonstrated increase in heart attacks around DST makes it unwarranted if not downright cruel. But, you know, America.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307162555.htm

It seems there might be a typo in the article. 320 gigaflops/second is not that much, and can be gotten on a GPU for maybe $100 now. According to this page (http://n8hpc.org.uk/about/facilities), 320 gigaflops/second is the peak performance of each 2-cpu, 16-core sandy bridge node in the cluster, while the entire cluster has a peak performance of 110 teraflops/second.

Ah now http://www.sciencedaily.com/ claims it's the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers :}
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030125538.htm

It seems there might be a typo in the article. 320 gigaflops/second is not that much, and can be gotten on a GPU for maybe $100 now. According to this page (http://n8hpc.org.uk/about/facilities), 320 gigaflops/second is the peak performance of each 2-cpu, 16-core sandy bridge node in the cluster, while the entire cluster has a peak performance of 110 teraflops/second.

Ah now http://www.sciencedaily.com/ claims it's the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers :}
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030125538.htm

If they made the sentence for stealing a car, twenty years in prison, you would see almost ALL car theft stop within a few months, would you not?

Not really. Most criminals are not fully rational actors; after all, if crime were rational in spite of the costs, more people would do it. Impulse control, desperation, and an inflated sense of the ability to get away with it are major factors in the commission of crime that are completely unaffected by sentence length. Otherwise, who would kill someone in a death penalty state unless they thought their life was worth the other person being dead?

The evidence on deterrence is generally a wash. We don't have good info on what people would have crossed the line from ordinary citizen to criminal without the laws as they are. The best thing we can study is effects of prison length on recidivism rates (i.e. on people who have already demonstrated themselves to be willing to break the law in spite of the current sentences).

This meta-analysis suggests that longer prison sentences increase recidivism rates slightly. In contrast, this Italian study suggests that a threat of longer sentences upon return to prison *does* deter released inmates who have committed minor offenses but has no effect on more hardened criminals. Bringing economic rationality into the picture, a review of going rates for drug mules in markets with varying sentences shows that deterrence can be overriden by offering to pay more to compensate for the riskier service. Like I said, a wash.

It acts like a material discriminator, in that certain interesting materials, such as wires or micro-circuitry, invert only one of the reflections, so instead of cancelling each other out, they amplify.

The discussion of "twin inverted pulse sonar" clearly states that one signal is inverted from the other. So if only one signal gets inverted during reflection they aren't amplifying, they are canceling.

Seems more likely that "hard" objects cleanly invert both signals while "noisy" ones like bubbles or brush fuzz up both signals, essentially adding noise that the receiver can then subtract by subtracting the two signals. In which case this is classic differential signaling.

"As its name suggests, TWIPS uses trains of twinned pairs of sound pulses. The first pulse of each pair has a waveform that is an inverted replica of that of its twin. The first pulse is emitted a fraction of a second before its inverted twin."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117104502.htm

Or maybe it's a bacterium. Here's another one from the DIPP-Finnish Type 1 Diabetes and Prediction study:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111028081949.htm

Specific Bacteria That Precede Autoimmune Diabetes Identified: New Potential Avenues for Early Disease Detection and Prevention

Dec. 7, 2011 — A study led by Matej Orei from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland suggests that autoimmune diabetes is preceded by diminished gut microbial diversity of the Clostridium leptum subgroup, elevated plasma leptin and enhanced glucose-stimulated insulin secretion.

In collaboration with the DIPP-Finnish Type 1 Diabetes and Prediction study, VTT researches have previously found that specific metabolic disturbances precede early -cell autoimmunity markers in children who subsequently progress to type 1 diabetes. However, the question remained what are the environmental causes and tissue-specific mechanisms leading to these disturbances?

Matej Orei from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and collaborators Eriika Savontaus from the University of Turku, Samuel Kaski from Aalto University and Mikael Knip from the University of Helsinki set out to address this question, and the results were published on October 27, 2011 in PLoS Computational Biology Journal.

The team carried out a study using non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice that recapitulated the protocol used in the DIPP clinical study, followed up by independent studies in which NOD mice were studied in relation to the risk of diabetes progression. Researchers found that young female NOD mice that later progress to autoimmune diabetes exhibit the same metabolic pattern as prediabetic children. These metabolic changes are accompanied by enhanced glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, upregulation of insulinotropic amino acids in islets, elevated plasma leptin and adiponectin, and diminished gut microbial diversity of the Clostridium leptum subgroup.

The elucidation of early metabolic pathways associated with progression to Type 1 diabetes points to novel avenues for early disease prevention. The ongoing efforts of VTT researchers are focused on the potential of specific bacteria from the C. leptum subgroup to help prevent Type 1 diabetes.

This study was supported by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation Tekes, the Seventh Framework Program of the European Community, and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

The environmental factors and molecular mechanisms leading to Type 1 diabetes are poorly understood and of great public health interest. The incidence of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases is rising faster than for any other major disease, and these diseases are affecting a wide spectrum of the population. The number of new cases of Type 1 diabetes in European children less than 5 years of age is expected to double between 2005 and 2020.

Journal Reference:

        Marko Sysi-Aho, Andrey Ermolov, Peddinti V. Gopalacharyulu, Abhishek Tripathi, Tuulikki Seppänen-Laakso, Johanna Maukonen, Ismo Mattila, Suvi T. Ruohonen, Laura Vähätalo, Laxman Yetukuri, Taina Härkönen, Erno Lindfors, Janne Nikkilä, Jorma Ilonen, Olli Simell, Maria Saarela, Mikael Knip, Samuel Kaski, Eriika Savontaus, Matej Orei. Metabolic Regulation in Progression to Autoimmune Diabetes. PLoS Computational Biology, 2011; 7 (10): e1002257 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002257

Nope. Well, not unless you're really into surfing. But all that nonsense about hospital rooms visits and the like syncing with lunar cycles has been debunked time and time again. For example: Bad Astronomy Science Daily

The reason why people get flu more often in bad weather conditions is because they all crowd inside and the contamination risk is much higher when the people density is up.

There is some evidence that is does actually relate to the bad whether. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121204162125.htm

WTF !!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829193436.htm

This is just nonsense. Regardless how "true" it could be considered it will happen over a timespan of 20,000 years or more. Who the fuck cares how the world looks like in 20,000 years if you ae not even able to consider the next 20 years?

And whether global warming is dangerous depends on the magnitude and speed of those releases. Mathematics doesn't tell you that. In fact, there is little experimental data or observation to make any clear predictions about that, just a lot of wild guesswork and FUD.
The worst case scenario is: all is released. If we run into a "runaway" feedback we obviously can't stop it. This is clear by math. That is how math works. I would not call that FUD. The only valid question is: how likely is that to happen. Answer: we don't know yet. But what we know is: if we continue to produce so much CO2: it will happen. Can we stop it? No idea. It depends whether stopping CO2 production "right now" is enough.

And we can never "stabilize" the CO2 level because they naturally undergo wide swings. If it weren't going up rapidly now due to human activity, it would likely start going down:
Playing with words again? What is that for? To extend an argument so long that one party forgets how it started?
Stabilizing: keeping it as it is (as good as you can). Means: don't enforce it, don't reduce it.
We don't really care about natural effects here as they are beyond our might to "change".
Wide swings: oh, really? I'm 1,70m tall. In relation to my size, what is a wide swing? 0 obviously is the bottom. So if we add 1,70 to the other direction we get a span of 0 to 3,40. Is that a wide swing for you? CO2 concentration reached now 400ppm. Since the 1700ds CO2 concentration has more than doubled. That is AFAIK the highest level since 25 _million_ (not thousand) years.
Claiming that we are close to an ice age/glacier period/ice aeon/ice epoch (how ever you want to call it) or ever have been the last 2000 years is just utter nonsense. (And those claims from the 1970ths where already debunked at that time).
Especially if people would look on the history of glacier periods. The previous one is just how long ago? 20k years? 15k years? If we assume there would be a regularity the next one would be due in something like 45k to 150k years or even 650k years.

both lead to more methane which also leads to more heating (melting of perma frost areas, release from the oceans etc.)

And whether global warming is dangerous depends on the magnitude and speed of those releases. Mathematics doesn't tell you that. In fact, there is little experimental data or observation to make any clear predictions about that, just a lot of wild guesswork and FUD.

Nevertheless exactly that will happen if we can not stabalize the CO2 level.

Yes, some CO2 will get released from permafrost, and some clathrates will melt. There is no reason to believe that that's going to be more than a negligible blip.

And we can never "stabilize" the CO2 level because they naturally undergo wide swings. If it weren't going up rapidly now due to human activity, it would likely start going down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

We do know what our pre-industrial climatic fate would have been, and, frankly, I prefer that we seem to be avoiding that:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829193436.htm

I prefer quantum-mechanical energy conversion ;)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620142932.htm

One astrophysicist now claims Black Holes are made by Freaking Magic...

This comes after NuSTAR found Black Holes "wherever it looked" {my words}, ""We found the black holes serendipitously," explained David Alexander, "We were looking at known targets and spotted the black holes in the background of the images."" anywhere between 0.3 and 11.4 billion light-years from Earth. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130909154918.htm

NuSTAR http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/main/index.html#.UjDw25I03n0

Now it's a race to explain this, and in the lead is Marco Spaans with mini black holes aka "Quantum uctuations in the form" that I would
tend to think would of made itself more pronounced than just adding substance to a Black Hole.

• Is supposedly destroyed by most stars, especially stars with planets
• Is the gold standard treatment for bipolar disorder.

From what I understand, there actually is something special about high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as opposed to cane sugar. High fructose corn syrup has most of the sugar content (ranging from 60-90%, as I recall) as fructose which our bodies have a more difficult time processing than cane sugar. As I understand the fructose sugar gets processed by the liver and thus the fat generates by HFCS products tends to accumulate around your liver. There is evidence that suggests that diets high in HFCS can lead to liver scarring and type 2 diabetes.

The rise in HFCS in the processed food industry also correlates well with the rise of the obesity. It is, most likely, only one of many contributing factors, but I really don't need a fatty, scarred liver and diabetes regardless of whether it's also making me fat.

Well, in my reading, that seems to be the conclusion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/11/981112075159.htm

Although suicide rates are lower among women, women lead men two to one in suicide attempts. So, Murphy says at least 200,000 women are involved in suicide attempts annually. But he points out that attempted suicide most often is not an attempt to actually end one's life. Its purpose, he says, is to survive with changed circumstances.

"An attempted suicide is not really an attempt at suicide in about 95 percent of cases. It is a different phenomenon. It's most often an effort to bring someone's attention, dramatically, to a problem that the individual feels needs to be solved. Suicide contains a solution in itself," he says.

In attempted suicide, both men and women tend to use methods that allow for second thoughts or rescue. Murphy says that when people intend to survive, they choose a slowly effective, or ineffective, means such as an overdose of sleeping pills. That contrasts to the all-or-nothing means like gunshots or hanging used by actual suicides.

Although that is an older article.

More humorous, the more current articles are saying women have attractiveness issues and choose the method that won't disfigure them and point out that men succeed more often because men use more violent methods.

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

[John]

You can have type 2 diabetes with or without differential insulin resistance - I've known some type 2 diabetics to remain thin and fit, while others are grotesquely obese. I'll assert that for the differential insulin resistance type 2 diabetics, fat is accumulated, and muscles are starved, in a way that overwhelms any hunger suppressing effect high blood sugar levels may have - but that certainly would be an interesting experiment to determine the biological basis of hunger.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130730101715.htm

Now please start working on a replacement for my liver.

We've got it!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130225153130.htm
Liver Stem Cells Grown in Culture, Transplanted With Demonstrated Therapeutic Benefit

You are a mouse, aren't you?

Why are we not pushing hard towards bacteria based production of biofuels instead of these huge complex pants? Seems to be that bacteria given the right conditions could convert a lot more CO2 into O2, eat a lot more waste, and produce a lot more complex fuels then corn, sugarcane, or other big plants...

Heck I think a few are going this direction, but to me it is the only way it makes sense at all..
Engineered Bacteria Make Fuel from Sunlight
Electrofuels: Charged Microbes May "Poop Out" a Gasoline Alternative

I like the idea of going all solar, and for individual houses, I can understand it, but for oil (you know, grease), plastics(you know, for our 3D printers), and even yes energy storage for some vehicles we are going to keep needing large quantities of hydrocarbons for a long time to come. Add to that the need to scrub our air of CO2 and other pollutants, and we have a great symbiosis.

As much as I am in favour of eliminating environmental lead where possible, at least some research shows that firing range lead does not migrate into the surrounding environment or leach into ground water; it basically stays put. Containing and covering may be sufficient for rehabilitation purposes although leaving the lead in place may not be a good thing in the long run. You never know when there will be a price to be paid because of an unforeseen issue.

Like my mom told me: "Always wear clean underwear in case you die in an accident".

You might look at a report from 2004 from Virginia tech, although I don't know what bias the researchers brought to the study:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041104005801.htm

Donald Rimstidt, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, College of Science at Virginia Tech, will report the conclusions of a five-year study at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Sciences of America in Denver Nov. 7-10. [2004] ...
"We were invited by the U.S. Forest Service to look at the shooting range in the National Forest near Blacksburg."

The researchers' survey found 11 metric tons of shot in the shotgun range and 12 metric tons of lead bullets in the rifle range. "These ranges are 10 years old. Most of the lead shot has accumulated on about four or five acres. Some shots have been into the woods, which cover hundreds of acres," Rimstidt said. ...
However some lead escapes, he said. "But we learned that it is absorbed in the top few inches of soil and does not migrate beyond that," Rimstidt said. "Lead is not very mobile. It does not wash away in surface or ground water."

Another finding is that there are large amounts of lead in the trees near the shooting range – but not in a large percentage of the trees, Rimstidt said. "If and when those trees are harvested, they would be contaminated with lead "

Fisheries and Wildlife professor Pat Scanlon was an investigator on the project until his death in 2003. "He found no evidence that birds were eating shot, but this portion of the research was not completed," Rimstidt said. "We are not saying that wildlife would not ingest lead, but it does not appear to be a problem on this range. Other shooting ranges may be different."

If a complete cleanup is required then it can be costly. A 15 hectare site near Edmonton cost about 6.5M CAD to fix up in 2006.

BTW: That range had been in use for over 20 years and there was no spread of contamination off of the site on the surface or into the ground/water table.

Just sayin'

What could go wrong is massive dead zones from fertilizer use. This doesn't have to be perfect, just better. Biological agriculture is the future.

Suppose those nanoparticles acts as a catalyst for some dreadful consequences to show in 10 years in the future. If it happens to be so, how can anyone show a need for protection from them now?

Well, we'll know in ten years (or actually much less since these devices have been around for some time). But this is a case of arguing from ignorance. We can't know that the particular combination of things we do today won't kill us in 10 years.

But ask yourself, why did some people -- scientists, nonetheless -- even raise the possibility of danger?

I think it's a psychological thing. Some people are naturally risk adverse about unknown things that they are made aware of. I think such an outlook is a poor fit for technology development.

I think it's pointless to be cautionary about something merely because we're somewhat ignorant of relevant details. A reasonable response is to ask how much of this sort of thing are we currently exposed to? For example, terrestrial dust contains glass fragments known to be as small as 2000 nanometers. So there's exposure to nanoparticles in our current environment.

Second, as I keep saying, there's no consideration of concentration or toxicity.

I hate to buy into the conspiracy / big pharma message but there are plenty of studies that suggest mega doses of certain vitamins can suppress or reverse certain auto immune diseases. But, since you can't patent a supplement, why would you cannibalize your other patented products with supplement research? This is not my only source, but I am too lazy to find my original research: http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/vitamin_d/

And also reinforces the importance of not abusing antibiotics, breastfeeding babies, and your appendix

Well, if you'll put on your cyncial hat, the in-utero treatment you wish for already exists: plannedparenthood.com

In America, about 90% of diagnosed DS fetuses are aborted. That is an interesting percentage, since polls indicate that more that 20% of Americans think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances.

Since we're talking statistics, amniocentesis, the invasive test for Down Syndrome, has a 0.75% chance of ending the pregnancy so we opted for a lower risk combination of an ultrasound scan and blood test. The results (along with our age and other factors) gave a 1 in 40 (2.5%) chance of a baby with Down Syndrome. But the nurse who read the results to us didn't say once chance in 40 and she didn't say 2.5% chance. She said 40% chance! (Is mathematic literacy a medical training requirement.) Fortunately we did the tests merely to inform ourselves of what special preparation we might need to make. Abortion for eugenic purposes is not legal here in Ireland as it is in the US. Unfortunately this same nurse trained in Boston. Heaven only knows how many pregnancies were ended based on this. We're thankful for a healthy little boy who doesn't have Down Syndrome but we may all owe a debt of gratitude to people with Down Syndrome. Studying the characteristics of this syndrome may help us understand Alzheimers and studying the fact that cancer is much rarer in people Down Syndrome may help us understand and cure this terrible disease.

The take no prisoners battle between the anti-life and anti-choice people have left us in a state of anti-science, anti-compassion and anti-love.

When is google maps going to have this? I want to trace where my house was back then.

Google???

I would have been happy just to have the Summary link to the actual map instead of something several clicks removed.

The actual story is HERE
and a video of the breakup is here

Why do posters link to things that are simply Click-Frauds for some advertiser campaign? And why do editors let them?

I'll see your 500, and raise you 14500....
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090108121618.htm

Yes, the mortality rate for stem-cell transplants is improving, but it is still not zero. I believe the rate was ~20% in 2009. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130528180857.htm

I was just reading this article and I stopped at this paragraph, unable to understand it:

"Standing Accretion Shock Instability," or SASI. This term expresses the fact that the initial sphericity of the supernova shock wave is spontaneously broken, because the shock develops large-amplitude, pulsating asymmetries by the oscillatory growth of initially small, random seed perturbations."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130627083034.htm

No clue if that could be expressed in a more simpler form.

You stopped just short of where I was hoping you would go - Narcissism.

Facebook is a mirror and Twitter is a megaphone, according to a new University of Michigan study exploring how social media reflect and amplify the culture's growing levels of narcissism.

Facebook offers the chance to seek approval and validation, as well as feedback to alter your behavior - the link refers to this as "curating" your online presence. If you do curating that steps over into reputation management, you can look like you're trying to hide something instead of show something.

LinkedIn and similar sites about careers and such are still social media, but they are more about professional networking to increase the chances of you knowing the right people for a job change. Almost goes without saying these sites are not helpful when you are new to a career, unless you know key people, in which case you're already set.

The specific personality they want may be a narcissistic extrovert, who would do well in banking and finance, or as a CxO. Perhaps they are looking for sociopathic tendencies, because they tend to rise to the top. Or maybe they know better.

It's not just about introversion/extroversion - there is a huge amount of insight that a person will get in how you choose to express yourself, maybe not to the point of individual personality disorders, but just a gut feeling that someone is a little too this or that.

I have a tendency to detect flaws in logical arguments, or basic failure to reason, and it drives me nutso. I have posted many a tirade here pointing out those flaws, even when I agree with the premise. Sometimes people correct me, and I learn. I post mostly anonymously so I can float some trial balloons from time to time and see what gets shot down. My online presence is finding and pointing out flaws, or arguing the other side so that people can either see their own flawed rationalization or actually strengthen their argument. My job involves finding problems with requirements, design, or architecture, and being able to argue that point, so now that I've considered it for the first time, I see it as a natural extension.

1. Do not create an unnatural online presence - only do what feels right, which could be nothing at all
2. Do not create something that feels burdensome to manage, as it will go stale and you will look silly when I interview you
3. Do look at what other people have done. A lot of it has built up over time, time that you may not have. Nothing you can do about that.
4. If your employer wants your online passwords, and you don't have them, they may not believe you. You don't want to work for that company, not one bit
5. To follow from that, if your online presence helps you get a job, did you really want that job? Or would you prefer a harder-to-find employer that fits your style better?
6. Online presence means people can troll or otherwise make you look bad. Even if you do not allow comments, or use a platform that lends itself to discussion, they can show up in search results with a clear link back to your presence. It's just something to consider when you decide where and now to set up, or not to.

The problem is that there's a lot more information held in a brain, than just the "layout of the neurons". Lots of molecular-scale detail which wasn't captured by this scan (e.g., the number of Dopamine D4 receptors at a particular synapse). There's lots of information held within each neuron, including epigenetic changes acquired through learning.

> Both Sweden and Iceland are actually atypically warm for their Latitude due to the Gulf Stream.

That would be Norway's coast you're talking about, Sweden has little or no Atlantic coast line and mainly faces the Baltic Sea.

- Iceland is a good suggestion with regards to power, except for the distance to core markets and network capacity.
- Scandinavia is closer to mainland Europe and can more easily add new cables at much lower cost.
- We have more hydroelectric power than anyone could ever use; Norway has been >99% hydro for the last 100 years (homes and heavy industry).

Recent research shows that it's not just the Gulf Stream that makes the climate in Scandinavia comfortable; try the Rocky Mountains

The burden of proof rests on the prosecution. If we require a statement, the burden is either partly shifted to the defendant (not the defense, just the accused), or the threat of perjury is now very real. While typically not prosecuted, a reasonably solid case plus threats of additional charges like perjury and obstruction of justice make it easier, and more affordable, to plead guilty or no contest.

(btw parent - torture is explicitly off the table, as apparently its no big deal to society if a confession is tortured out of someone because they can always come back and get justice, in every case, without fail, so your comment is irrelevant. instead you should have gone with "any coercion other than what is not legally considered torture nor duress" which I think OP has some other weasel requirements to invalidate but can't be arsed to figure out which)

You (OP) have to consider this within the structure of the justice system, and all of its leanings toward potential abuse. As a defendant, with little or no power, a lengthy appeal process, and if vindicated a lengthy and expensive road to exposing abuses, you are automatically at a disadvantage even if you don't self-incriminate.

Scenario: I talk with the police, or prosecutors. At any point in the future, I mis-remember or mis-state something, on the record. Immediately anyone can say we have evidence that you are at best unreliable and more likely lying. Nothing I say at that point holds any water. I have damaged my own case, and it would be far better had I not said anything if it were optional.

In this example, we can consider the types of evidence that lead to Innocence Project victories because DNA evidence proves that the evidence was really just circumstantial. This isn't just clearly circumstantial evidence, which cannot be used as the sole evidence in a criminal case. This is the kind of rock-solid, 5 eye witnesses, your vehicle leaving the crime scene, you are guilty of murder evidence. But you didn't do it, and you are set free after years in jail.

Let me interrupt you and say that Innocence Project victories are not the subject here, they are only proof that people get convicted of Very Serious Things (c) on very shaky evidence, so don't claim that this type of scenario is impossible.

Instead of mis-stating, I can remember more details which are relevant, and share those when I have to. Either I was hiding them originally, or I'm making them up now. I am undermined, and two eye witnesses who claim it was me now outweigh me, an obviously guilty person lying to stay free.

False memories are surprisingly easy to create, especially accidentally. Depending on the timing and nature of the questions, you could develop a false memory. Your statements will be different because you remember what happened differently. Better to write down what you remember and put it in a locked, unpredictable location.

Any number of variations on scenarios like this boil down to one thing: the moment you appear to contradict yourself, your ability to defend yourself is diminished.

Very clearly, "frequent contributor Bennett Haselton" has never been in a situation with another person where he/she had to say "that's not what I meant." And even more clearly, has not uttered the words "that's not what I meant and you know it." I'm going off into the gender stereotypes here, but I'm fairly certain that everyone over the age of 15 has met that one super-bitch who decides what your words mean, and can recite everything you have ever said when it best suits her argument. Even if that super-bitch is a dude. When the police or prosecution have a record of your statements, "that's not what I meant" works never.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

That's all there is to it, really. But I'll ramble more.

I'm having an affair, and my lover is the only alibi I have, along with hote

At least two: Sickle cell anemia provides resistance against malaria. Hemochromatosis can be beneficial for people at risk of anemia from insufficient iron in their diet (and might provide some resistance against tuberculosis).

And quite often the antibiotics used in farm animals aren't considered safe for humans.
See also: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130513095030.htm
I also wonder about how the concentrations of arsenic vary throughout the chicken - e.g. if you make pate from the chicken livers do you get a higher or lower dose? I suspect significantly higher.
Some people may also be allergic to the antibiotics or other stuff used and not actually allergic to the meat/vegetable itself.

You are a dumb knee-jerking fuck who hasn't a clue what he's talking about.

The driving ability of chronic pain patients, for example, is not affected by narcotic pain killers This is empirically known amongst patients and doctors, also known as chemical tolerance. The result is that they have no side effects, only the required pain killing effect. In fact, it's arguable that they are better drivers with pain killers as they will be undistracted by the pain they would otherwise have.

As for other chemical agents, the problem is that everyone has different limits and tolerances that are all over the map. Absolutely defined limits are a completely back-asswards way to go about it. We need a system that considers circumstances, employing compassion and deliberation, not this adversarial system of gamemanship and silly playground rules.

Law cannot possibly cover the infinite myriad of ways to define "distracted" and "impaired". The attempts to make that happen continually erode our rights as citizens to move about the country. This relentless march towards absolute road safety will ultimately result in empty roads ... because no one will be allowed to drive anymore. Oh, we'll be safe, but not free. Take your pick.

It amazes me how the Slashdot crowd, who typically froths at the mouth against overbearing law and government, can behave in the absolute polar opposite manner when it comes to this particular issue. No one dares to speak out against it for fear of behing perceived as pro drunk driving, which is absolutely absurd. Nobody is in support of drunk driving, they are against the continual errosion of our rights by blindsiding, deceptive lawmakers who hold up scant few edge-case examples as trophy pieces to tout their "tough-on-whatever" policies that garner votes by a mostly shortsighted citizenry.