Slashdot Mirror

Well, keep in mind those sorts of maps are a bit misleading, as it just shows any preference for Republicans above 50% in lower population areas. It does look visually striking, though.

I found that maps that show the difference in shades between red and blue tend to represent the difference a bit better. Here's a page that demonstrates several ways to represent the electoral split with more accuracy.

Have you even looked at election maps?

http://www-personal.umich.edu/...

The cities are reliably Democrat.

It would actually be worse, they'd only care about certain counties/cities. The following link has the election shown by counties for the 2012 Election.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/...

The 2016 election is even more red.

Lincoln doesn't seem to agree with you:

Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity

        July 31, 1846

        To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.

        FELLOW CITIZENS:

        A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the "Doctrine of Necessity"—that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.

        I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.

        July 31, 1846. A. LINCOLN.

Source

> "The jury verdict on each issue is supported by substantial evidence in the record," Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore wrote for the majority.

Oh Rubbish. Now take that headline:
BEFORE: "Apple Appeals Court Reinstates Apple's $120 Million Slide-To-Unlock Patent Win Over Samsung"
AFTER: "AMERICAN APPEALS COURT Reinstates AMERICAN COMPANY'S Apple's $120 Million Slide-To-Unlock AMERICAN Patent Win Over KOREAN COMPANY Samsung"

When American companies step outside off American soil and try and launch patent suits overseas they almost always fail. Look at some of the patents that trolls like Apple have been celebrating in the US, but when they tried to do the same with patents in Europe and Asia they lost. American patent juries are notoriously biased towards American companies. That's how the whole East Texas Patent Troll County thing came about: Companies knew the judges and juries would give them the result they wanted. The courts can dress it up however they like, but the judicial bias in East Texas has been terrible: https://www.google.com/search?... https://www.law.umich.edu/cent...

My Challenge to Crapple: Contest that same patent in Korea and see how far you get.

Well, one way to reply to a post calling out confirmation bias ... is to double down on the confirmation bias. Apparently I get to represent all liberals now (or at least the ones you don't like, with that bit of no-true-scotsman mixed in under cover of "I didn't mean everybody").

Let's get back to your original claim, which can be distilled to 'liberals conform more than conservatives'. A few minutes of googling turned up no shortage of studies which appear to have reached the exact opposite conclusion. Here are a few studies and some related articles:
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://link.springer.com/artic...
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu...
https://www.researchgate.net/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.psychologicalscienc...

History is more than anecdotes teachers tell students and students repeat their whole lives.

No, the US military did not hand out small-pox blankets; pure unadulterated horseshit, that one. And recently invented.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pl...

No, you asshole, this is how feminists operate. I'm actually surprised that this came from one of the coasts instead of Grand Valley State University or University of Michigan.

jfyi, in case other feminist elements haven't been in communication with you, GVSU is a hotbed of TERF and anti-gay santiment, so I guess anti-GBT, as if you fucking lesbians have anything to lose by accepting us assigned males who aren't good little sex objects for you as equals. University of Michigan has a famously gatekeeper-driver program to discourage assigned males from transitioning while marketing itself as something that's supposed to fucking help trans women.

In short, you're a fucking asshole. You know why C+= came about? Because of gaslighting assholes like you. You know why this paper exists? Because gaslighting assholes like you are desperate to find some fucking reason why the rest of us should listen to airhead cisgendered women on topics they have no chance of understanding. So you cisfemale feminists post shit like this paper and call the rest of us sexist when we point out how much of a piece of stinking shit it is.

I helped give Sanders the win in Michigan last night, but I know you cisfemale assholes (yeah, you claim to be a guy) are going to try to give Clinton a coronation. I've made up my mind. I'm tired of you feminist cisfemale assholes fucking with my access to meds and fucking with my life in general because you, for some airhead feminist reason, think that my having breasts means I've metaphysically raped you.

As a Sanders supporter, fully aware that Trump is repeating the same mistakes of 1930s Germany, I will vote for Trump in November if I have to keep putting up with discrimination and general fuckery from you cisfemales.

Thank you.

Sure, there's no way you can construe "males" to mean "white males" based on your sloppy writing. The educational data certainly does account for income and race. Whites do better in both, with less poverty and more opportunity when in poverty.
http://www.npc.umich.edu/publi...

That's not to say there aren't plenty of whites with problem worse then plenty of other colors, but your blanket statement alleging lack of opportunity for white males is simply not true.
Maybe there is a lack of opportunity for assholes, that would explain your problems. If I had more time I would look for some data for you, since you appear to have substandard analysis skills.

Actually, the environment has changed since C was created. C is still wonderful for programs that are small. It's perfect for an environment of static allocation. It gets its speed *precisely* from assuming that undefined behavior does not happen. This alone makes it terrible a terrible choice for large programs that must stand up to malicious input (let alone bad coding - and even sabotage that slips past code review). The world's cryptography libraries are a fantastic case in point, where the best developers in the world are constantly having their security broken The input that modern programs must consume generally requires Turing Complete recognition. It asks the code to solve NP-complete problems and Undecidable problems at the time the code is written, and at runtime. On Windows systems, more CPU time is wasted running Virus scanners and ad-hoc security checkers than would be consumed by simply having applications just be written in more verifiable languages. This mostly boils down to having type systems which can be verified. https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~pr... Rust has issues in embedded settings, but it's not a fat and lazy language. You can run Valgrind on Rust binaries, as its output is essentially the same as C. There is a lot wrong with C from the point of verification. At the moment, you can't simply assert to the compiler (in C) that if there are type system violations that you don't even want the binary to be produced. Not even for small programs. The software industry needs to grow the hell up and start making systems that can be certified for safety.

I'd like to see the political demographics of people who get emissions control bypass mechanisms are

Some of them are "ecomodder" types whose idea of "performance" might still be laudable efficiency, albeit prioritizing goals slightly differently than the EPA does.

For example, as delivered from the factory these 2009+ VW TDIs cannot safely use more than 5% biodiesel. However, with [illegal] modifications to the emissions system they could use 100% biodiesel, which can arguably provide "better" emissions than the EPA-mandated controls could. In particular, such a modification would reduce sulfur oxides to zero (since biodiesel contains no sulfur), reduce gross CO2 emissions (since removing the more onerous emissions controls would increase MPG) and -- most importantly -- reduce net carbon emissions to zero (since biodiesel is carbon neutral).

This would come at a cost of increased nitrogen oxides and potentially increased large particulates, which might sound bad until you realize that in VOC-sensitive areas increased NOx could be good and that recent studies suggest it's actually the small particulates (produced equally by diesel and gasoline engines) and not the large particulates (which diesel particulate filters are designed to trap) that are harmful. (Sorry, I can't find a link to the study supporting that last claim.)

The worst radiation event known in history, a 775 AD event, would cause a dose of 0,09 gray over 20 hours - and that's at the top of the "habitable zone", 62km. Based on on Fig. 6, at 53km the dose would be something like 1e-6 to 1e-4 Gy. Radiation sickness requires a whole body dose of over 2 gray. So not even close. The constant GCR flux looks to be about 1e-7Gy/20h, or about 0,00438 Gy/yr.

Think of it this way: Venus's atmospheric shielding depth at Denver air pressures is basically roughly the same as Earth's at Denver; Mars's thin atmosphere provides little shielding. Neither Venus nor Mars have magnetic fields, so they're both at the same disadvantage - but Venus still has its thick atmospheric shielding. The only disadvantage Venus has to Mars is being closer to the sun - but that's completely overwhelmed by its significant advantage in terms of atmospheric shielding (and the distance to the sun has no effect on GCR).

As to why one would colonize Venus, it's the same reasons one would want to colonize Mars: to become a multi-planet spacefaring civilization. It also, as mentioned, offers some benefits in terms of scientific research, more than sending humans to Mars does. And if Venus's unusual extreme surface environment has perchance provided concentrations of rare, valuable minerals, it could potentially be useful for mining for export, which would benefit from having humans on-site for low latency operations and maintenance.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/... http://www-personal.umich.edu/... Yet there are still pop-psychologists who recommend hitting your pillow...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/... http://www-personal.umich.edu/... Yet there are still pop-psychologists who recommend hitting your pillow...

SARC: How about jail time for retweet-whores in general? (for background see this article and this original paper)

You know those folks who hear something astounding and re-tweet or re-mail or 'LIKE' or post it right away --- without taking even a MOMENT to attempt to verify or corroborate the story? A week after the Boston marathon bombing, hackers sent a bogus tweet from the official Twitter handle of the Associated Press. It read: "*Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured*." Before the AP and White House could correct the record, the stock market responded, dropping more than 140 points in a matter of minutes (almost completely recovered after).

Apr 23, 2013 1:07 pm - AP Twitter account hacked, Bogus Tweet appears.
Apr 23, 2013 1:08 pm - DOW stock average drops 150 points
Apr 23, 2013 1:10 pm - AP employee tweets, ignore message, we've been hacked
Apr 23, 2013 1:13 pm - AP tweets retraction message, suspends account

Here's how it looked ONE MINUTE LATER. Red dots are folks just sending it along. Blue are those inquiring back to the source about its veracity, and yellow are those directly expressing doubt.

THREE MINUTES AFTER it looked like this. The clumpy red crescent in the image below represents the first wave re-tweeters portrayed above, with a continually branching network of successive waves.

Note the successive chains of red dots and whole regions without blue or yellow. This is a map of just Twitter. For hours copies of the item were still expanding on all major social networks without markup or even direct questioning. Who are these people?

1. Those who knew (by then) it was a hoax and were spreading it anyway (few if any). Heh heh.
2. Those who honestly thought the single message, though astounding, was properly 'sourced'.
3. Mostly, these are the people who repeatedly send you un-researched chain letter hoaxes.

Some form of digital castration may be necessary. There has been concern of late that some day there may be robots who act like people. We should also strive not to act like robots. /SARC So... what if the re-tweeters of jihad junk simply mean, "This is surprising. I am flabbergasted and twitterpated. Have a look." I've argued for a Facebook HATE button so people can call attention to things they do not like to slap a gritty edge on the touchy-feely romper room that it has become. This would be especially valuable to the FBI who would then know for absolute sure that a person is not a terrorist. Twitter should have a TWAT button... so you could TWIT a low-carb miracle diet, or TWAT Hitler's Final Solution.

The mosaic theory wikipedia page (on the intelligence strategy) from the summary is not even REMOTELY close to the Fourth Amendment mosaic theory from the article, that the opinion relies on: http://repository.law.umich.ed...

So whoever made that mistake should also know the Fourth Circuit is talking about the paper, not the D&D stat.

The majority of the American people are sufficiently well-off that there is no way in hell they are going to risk their lives rebelling against the government.

I think you are wrong about this. Very wrong.
Reality check: http://npc.umich.edu/poverty/ (have a close look at those thresholds.)
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

So if in 2014 a single person made less than $12316, they are considered to be in poverty. If they made $12317 they are not considered to be in poverty. Can you live on $12317 a year?

"In 2013, the official poverty rate was 14.5 percent ... In 2013, there were 45.3 million people in poverty."
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/

Given the thresholds being so low, you can rest assured that the majority of the US population is working their asses off to just barely survive. There will come a breaking point eventually.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs...

State schools aren't cheap.
Annual in-state tuition only for some well-regarded public schools:
University of Washington: 12.4k
University of California: 14k
University of Michigan: 13.2k
Also interesting that out-of-state tuition at these schools is just as high as at private schools, and all are increasing their percentage of out-of-staters. A very different education market than a few decades ago.

Some of the points the men's right movement are valid and worth debating, such as disparity in prison sentencing and child custody. However, this Return of Kings guy is a fucking moron.

Maybe, but there is also a bias in favor of women during sentencing.

If you're a criminal defendant, it may helpâ"a lotâ"to be a woman. At least, that's what Prof. Sonja Starr's research on federal criminal cases suggests. Prof. Starr's recent paper, "Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases," looks closely at a large dataset of federal cases, and reveals some significant findings. After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen areâ¦twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper.

https://www.law.umich.edu/news...

For reducing anger and aggression, the worst possible advice to give people is to tell them to imagine their provocateur’s face on a pillow or punching bag as they wallop it, yet this is precisely what many pop psychologists advise people to do. If followed, such advice will only make people angrier and more aggressive.

Source: http://www-personal.umich.edu/...

The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives
Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=186351
The University of Michigan Press

https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472070077-fm.pdf

The reason there are mandatory appeals, a long pre-execution process, and significant legal expense above and beyond life imprisonment is simple: executing someone cannot be reversed and cannot be adequately compensated should an innocent person be executed. "Blatantly obvious" is not a legal standard, and the United States constitution requires that states afford their citizens equal protection under the law.

Unfortunately, even the current expensive process has proven inadequate. Carlos DeLuna [1] was executed in 1989 despite provably not committing the crime. Cameron Todd Willingham [2] was executed for an accidental fire in his own home, based on the testimony of "arson investigators" whose conclusions were not based on scientific evidence or best practices. If you really want to see how bad it can get with reduced legal barriers to execution, George Stinney (1944) was propped up on phone books at age 14 and electrocuted to death after a two-hour trial. His conviction was officially vacated 70 years after his death. Though not documented specifically in this case, the electric chair frequently causes eyes to dislodge from their sockets or explode.

There are thousands of cases where "convicted criminals" were later found to be innocent; many of these were crimes like murder that would be eligible for the death penalty [4].

I don't want to live in a country that shrugs off the risk of murdering innocent people. Bringing the cost of an execution and life imprisonment to parity would only serve to magnify this already-tangible risk. The marginal (supposed) increase in victim closure between an execution and life imprisonment is not worth this risk, regardless of its magnitude.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...
[2] http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
[4] http://www.law.umich.edu/speci...

Look, I understand why you might find it's the wrong thing to do. For most "normals" it absolutely would be. And then there are those who want it for all the wrong reasons. The typical "wrong" candidate is what I call a "transvestite that went too far." They game the system, and get what they want, instead of what they need. They're not happy afterwards, they blame everyone else but themselves for the negative outcome, join some religion that will back up their need to blame the doctors, the "system", everyone else but themselves.

A few famous cases have shown that it isn't for everyone. Still,with proper screening, it works. (more reading). And there are a lot more of us than the official numbers indicate. Other countries have upped the prevalence by several orders of magnitude after trolling through their medical databases (single-payer universal health care makes that easy) to between 1 in 500 and 1 in 50!!!

On the knee: Surgeons did my left knee the old way (a 4-inch cut to get access) to fix a torn meniscus when draining off the fluid didn't work - but it's lasted decades with no real problems. Maybe it's because I was younger (19) so I healed better. The scar is pretty much invisible now, even with a tan.

Now on the question of advertisers and host files, it's not a question of proving anything. I'm just saying you'll have a better reception by being less "loud" in how you offer it. If you don't want to put it in a .sig, another way would be to post one paragraph that says "you might want to consider this as well" with a link. Posting those long challenges just makes it look like you're shouting. Give a chance for people to make up their own minds instead.

You might be surprised :-) TTYL

Look, I understand why you might find it's the wrong thing to do. For most "normals" it absolutely would be. And then there are those who want it for all the wrong reasons. The typical "wrong" candidate is what I call a "transvestite that went too far." They game the system, and get what they want, instead of what they need. They're not happy afterwards, they blame everyone else but themselves for the negative outcome, join some religion that will back up their need to blame the doctors, the "system", everyone else but themselves.

A few famous cases have shown that it isn't for everyone. Still,with proper screening, it works. (more reading). And there are a lot more of us than the official numbers indicate. Other countries have upped the prevalence by several orders of magnitude after trolling through their medical databases (single-payer universal health care makes that easy) to between 1 in 500 and 1 in 50!!!

On the knee: Surgeons did my left knee the old way (a 4-inch cut to get access) to fix a torn meniscus when draining off the fluid didn't work - but it's lasted decades with no real problems. Maybe it's because I was younger (19) so I healed better. The scar is pretty much invisible now, even with a tan.

Now on the question of advertisers and host files, it's not a question of proving anything. I'm just saying you'll have a better reception by being less "loud" in how you offer it. If you don't want to put it in a .sig, another way would be to post one paragraph that says "you might want to consider this as well" with a link. Posting those long challenges just makes it look like you're shouting. Give a chance for people to make up their own minds instead.

You might be surprised :-) TTYL

Look, I understand why you might find it's the wrong thing to do. For most "normals" it absolutely would be. And then there are those who want it for all the wrong reasons. The typical "wrong" candidate is what I call a "transvestite that went too far." They game the system, and get what they want, instead of what they need. They're not happy afterwards, they blame everyone else but themselves for the negative outcome, join some religion that will back up their need to blame the doctors, the "system", everyone else but themselves.

A few famous cases have shown that it isn't for everyone. Still,with proper screening, it works. (more reading). And there are a lot more of us than the official numbers indicate. Other countries have upped the prevalence by several orders of magnitude after trolling through their medical databases (single-payer universal health care makes that easy) to between 1 in 500 and 1 in 50!!!

On the knee: Surgeons did my left knee the old way (a 4-inch cut to get access) to fix a torn meniscus when draining off the fluid didn't work - but it's lasted decades with no real problems. Maybe it's because I was younger (19) so I healed better. The scar is pretty much invisible now, even with a tan.

Now on the question of advertisers and host files, it's not a question of proving anything. I'm just saying you'll have a better reception by being less "loud" in how you offer it. If you don't want to put it in a .sig, another way would be to post one paragraph that says "you might want to consider this as well" with a link. Posting those long challenges just makes it look like you're shouting. Give a chance for people to make up their own minds instead.

You might be surprised :-) TTYL

There are other properties of very dark chocolate that potentially make it healthy, other than the heat-sensitive flavanols. From U Michigan Med:

http://www.med.umich.edu/umim/...

Exactly.
Manufacturing a car produces a significant amount of pollution. If the recession means that fewer cars were sold, and instead the existing cars were used longer, this would reduce pollution.
Unless this effect is accounted for, the headline here is meaningless.

from www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Overview/E_Overview2.htm:
"Historian Mark Foster has estimated that “fully one-third of the total environmental damage caused by automobiles occurred before they were sold and driven.” He cited a study that estimated that fabricating one car produced 29 tons of waste and 1,207 million cubic yards of polluted air. Extracting iron ore, bauxite, petroleum, copper, lead, and a variety of other raw materials to process steel, aluminum, plastics, glass, rubber, and other products necessary to construct automobiles consumes limited resources, uses great amounts of energy, and has serious environmental repercussions."

see also:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

Four lampreys are native to the Michigan Great Lakes region. Two are parasitic; two not. The two parasitic species, while they cause deep wounds, rarely kill their hosts.

The Sea Lamprey is the relatively recent invader (1930s-40s) which has caused ecological havoc.

THE FIVE LAMPREYS OF MICHIGAN' 5 GREAT LAKES

Interestingly this article, also from U Mich, talks about observing Dirac electrons: http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/re...

I'd have more belief in the competence of a male surgeon, yes. It would seem there is an interesting dropout among female would-be specialist http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gs... or http://jbjs.org/content/92/13/... . Unsurprisingly, female ratio gets higher in family medicine, and is at a majority in pediatric medicine. This could be explained by these roles being closer to motherhood. Inversely, general surgery is closer to technical medicine (body equivalent of plumbing or car repair), and see a male dominance.

Meanwhile, some other academics tried something similar and came up with a different result, which they describe as "unintentional gerrymandering". Essentially, Democrats dominate in urban areas and Republicans in rural areas, in a way that ends up inefficiently concentrating Democratic votes.

See: http://www-personal.umich.edu/...

University of Michigan does this with their Google Apps, though it's a specific contract and not just the generic GAFE. You might want to try contacting ITCS to see if they can provide any advice: https://sites.google.com/a/umi... (And just to show that I understand what you're talking about: http://www.itcs.umich.edu/itcs...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/...

"I've gotten" meaning "I have received," not "I currently have."

I trust you'll be relieved to read this paper:

Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill's Genocide Rhetoric

Abstract

In this analysis of the genocide rhetoric employed over the years by Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado, a "distressing" conclusion is reached: Churchill has habitually committed multiple counts of research misconduct—specifically, fabrication and falsification. While acknowledging the "politicization" of the topic and evidence of other outrages committed against Native American tribes in times past, this study examines the different versions of the "smallpox blankets" episode published by Churchill between 1994 and 2003. The "preponderance of evidence" standard of proof strongly indicates that Churchill fabricated events that never occurred—namely the U.S. Army's alleged distribution of smallpox infested blankets to the Mandan Indians in 1837. The analysis additionally reveals that Churchill falsified sources to support his fabricated version of events, and also concealed evidence in his cited sources that actually disconfirms, rather than substantiates, his allegations of genocide.

WARD CHURCHILL

Ward Churchill was a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 until 2007, when he was fired for research misconduct.

Nice idea, but as others have suggested, ISPs need to upgrade first.

I can't even get my employer to deploy IPv6 services. I work for the University of Michigan! http://www.itcom.itd.umich.edu...

We haven't gotten adoption by large ISPs.. Comcast did it in 3 cities, wow.. i should be impressed. My comcast provided router doesn't support IPv6 on business class cable.

I think ARIN should start taking back IPv4 allocations to large ISPs and force them on IPv6 at this point.

Good thought, and in many circumstances, that's what we would do. The problem is that the calcium in both LR and Hartmann's are "incompatible with blood". Packed red cells use sodium citrate to bind calcium so that and residual clotting factors don't clot the blood and the small amounts of calcium are thought to override this. [The rule for normal saline is controversial, but currently the FDA basically mandates normal saline]. Now you could use a special solution that buffers the saline with sodium bicarbonate, but that would be expensive and time consuming. It might end up being required, but we're not there yet. And bicarb is not a benign substance for the body either.

That raises another question. How much of the rain forest is being cut down by farmers? Perhaps there's a negative effect on the environment there. Perhaps there's a CO2 increase/decrease argument there?
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sec005group6/introduction

You want a long-term pattern?

Here's one.

That's a plot of CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere over the past 1/2 a BILLION years. Not 10,000. Not 300. Half a fucking billion.

If you have the balls to look at that, you'll see today's concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere - about 400 ppm, is at the EXTREME LOW END of where it's been over the past 1/2 a billion years - where it's ranged from 200 ppm to a full FUCKING 6,000 ppm. NB that the highest concentrations of CO2 predate SUVs.

In geological time frames, we're now at the very bottom of the range CO2 fluctuates over - naturally.

And guess what? When there was 6,000 ppm CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, Earth DIDN'T turn into a copy of Venus - life went on just fine, thank you.

The dustbowl wasn't a one-time event - soil erosion on a massive scale continues to this day, and is a world wide problem:
http://www.globalchange.umich....

You want sustainable efficiency?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

This is a design system that is not only sustainable, but improves fertility and efficiency over time. Rather than design a system based on multiple inputs and a single yield, you design it based on the interaction of a complex web of natural systems and the yield is the surplus.

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system." - Bill Mollison [4]

Want actual references to working systems? Here's the best example: Sepp Holzer
http://www.celsias.com/article...

Want more? See my original post.

Scalability? "If anybody ever suggests that permaculture does not scale, just
point to Willie Smits." - Paul Wheaton

this page sites a 2002 study stating there were 214 unintentional deaths of children 0 to 19 in 1999. and 83 where they could not determine intent.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html
along with seasonal co2 levels
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
the first url shows where active forests are mostly the northern hemisphere. the second shows how winter co2 spikes globally as measured as far away from humanity as you can get. deforestation without replanting is unsustainable since the industrial revolution global forest have been 50% cleared. this is in 200 years of deforestation, another 200 and even the best efforts to replant forests will be irreversible, as charts show this will cause temperature rising and water resources dwindling as freshwater is pumped out of aquifers for human and crop consumption. animals don't use nearly as much water as humans do. so if more and more people are born more and more drought will hit especially as heat rises. which will lead to humans airconditioning more and more, which will raise the temperature.

no the 'system' is not perfect and capitalism doesn't 'solve' global warming at best it makes companies greenwash the public and it is clear that unrestricted growth will lead to the extinction of humans, unless something is done, and i don't trust humans to do this on their own. computers need to do it and have the respect for creating a better world through more efficient recognition of real problems and real solutions.

So on the philosophical level you're very confused about what science is and the scientific method, but you're also confused about the specific examples.

This article should help you dispose of this idea of scientific "proof". I might also recommend Philosophy of Science and Empiricism. We don't wake up one day to find that the sun is green and that apples fall up, we're really pretty sure that relativity describes how the universe works (really accurately) in many different situations.

More to the point, relativity is a description of the geometry of the universe and what it means to move around in it. The speed of light is more like the universe's clock rate, it's the rate at which events propagate and massless particles travel. One of the consequences of this is that moving faster than the rate at which events propagate is equivalent to time travel. It means that an event could precede its cause, which would be bad news for anyone who was interested in what causes things to happen. No one is saying this is impossible, but many people would be unhappy to learn that it was true, and we have always observed the speed of light being adhered to, so far. There may be effects that propagate faster than the speed of light, but relativity will pretty much always apply as far as humanity is concerned -- in much the same way that we will always expect that gravity and electricity will always apply.

Transmutation is the other side of the energy equation, and it's really simple to accomplish: you just need a ton of energy. That whole "c squared" thing, yanno? Your best bet for making this "economic" would be to find a way around the conservation of energy. Nature takes the simple expedient of using the most energetic reactions known in order to transmute matter. On Earth, you get a nuclear reactor instead of a ray gun, but we can totally turn lead into gold that way. I'm totally down if you want to start creating mini-supernovae with your over-unity generator, of course -- what could possibly go wrong?

You must be confused about what I wrote. Why would I explain how absolute truth is not scientific, and then claim something as absolute truth. "Well supported by empirical evidence" is as close to truth as science gets.

I'm getting the idea you're using "verify" in the sense of "prove." To dispense with this idea, I present this article for your perusal (it was the first google result for 'scientific verification').
I'll excerpt some relevant bits for you:

Verification: The use of empirical data, observation, test, or experiment to confirm the truth or rational justification of a hypothesis. Scientific beliefs must be evaluated and supported by empirical data.

One of the most important consequences of this extended and complex debate is the conclusion that theories cannot be "verified", but they can be "confirmed," "warranted," or "falsified."

It is rare for a scientific hypothesis to be amenable to direct and certain confirmation along these lines: given E, H is certainly true. That is, it is rare that there is a finite body of observations that suffice to establish the truth of a given scientific hypothesis. This is so for two reasons: First, because scientific hypotheses normally refer to entities, mechanisms, or processes that are not directly observable; and second, because hypotheses and theories normally make universal claims (laws) that go beyond any finite body of observations. Instead, verification normally takes the form of indirect inductive or hypothetico-deductive support for the hypothesis: given E, H is likely to be true.

Thanks for playing, have a nice day.

Just like those Blankets donated to the Native Americans.

Except that the tale is incorrect.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pl...

According to page 43 of this study, men drive about 50% more miles per year than women.

The GP's link shows that men account for 2.5x as many traffic fatalities.

So men are clearly still worse according to these statistics. But why trust these numbers? Insurance companies make their money by having teams of extremely smart, highly trained statisticians pore over more data than you'll see in a lifetime, and they charge women less. I don't see how anyone could rationally argue that women are worse drivers while knowing that fact.

Women have more more accidents overall and much more likely to have an injury accident than men per mile driven (source). Males, particularly young males are much more likely to take risks than females. Young males are 2.1 more likely to be in a fatal accident but the rates start converging and by age 60 there isn't a difference in the fatal accident rate. But for non-fatal accidents females consistently are more likely to be involved. I couldn't find any data on insurance rates by gender, do you have a source for that?

Martial law within ten years... The population and technology curves are virtually identical and look like asymptotes... http://www.globalchange.umich.... Gird your loins Geeks,,, ;-D

The parent posted the text of the law and while likely isn't quoting exact %s the gist of what he says is supported by other sources. http://www.torys.com/Publicati... - see "Recovery of Legal Fees" and http://www-personal.umich.edu/... and http://millsandmills.ca/2011/0... and... I could go on but you probably won't read any of those links.

Read this blog post which references actual studies and then tell me gender bias is not real. Can't read? I'll summarize it: send out a resume to a bunch of people. Sometimes use a male name, other times use a female name. Have the recipient rate the candidate and guess what? The resume with the male name scores higher in their estimation. When asked how much they would pay the candidate, the male is always valued higher. Even if the person evaluating the resume is a women.

Many orchestras now perform blind auditions, because they discovered that gender and physical appearance of the candidate skewed their perception of the candidate's performance. There are studies that test people's cognitive abilities after the most subtle forms of "priming." Stereotype susceptibility is a real thing, proven in study after study. Remind a group of asian girls they are asian before they take a math test, their scores increase. Remind them they are girls, their scores go down.

We are social animals, even those of us that lack social skills, and constant social pressure has real world ramifications. It amazes me that a site of self-professed nerds is populated with so many people that don't question their own biases.