Nothing I see in that article suggests that this is a new phenomenon...aside from the hyperbolic statements of the scientists.
The author is astonishingly remiss in not asking the obvious question: did this just start?
I thought it obvious from sentences like "...said that he has never before witnessed the scale.." "This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter" "the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the true scale of the phenomenon" that this is known about. The article is about the fact that this year it is on a larger scale than in the past.
This is the EIGHTH such cruise/survey. They should be able to conclusively say "we checked this area in at least one or two previous instances and such seeps weren't observed", no?
It seems logical that there must have been plumes like this for a while, to prompt (and justify) such a large-scale survey.
Yet both the scientists and article author seem to gloss over the fact that "never seen before" != "never happened before".
It is the 8th joint Russian-American survey. There have more than likely been other surveys conducted; I don't know. It does say that this guy has been conducting surveys for 20 years in the region. Nowhere does it say that they have not previously witnessed this phenomenon. All it says is they have not seen this scale.
These Iranians..... diabolically opposed to the Jewish state of Israel for thousands of years by their very nature. That should be puzzling to a lot of people in and of itself. It is very likely that they come from the long ago bloodline of Cain and ~not Able.
Ah yes, they're a devious bunch. I especially liked the way they freed the Jews from their enslavement in Babylon 3000 years ago, classic misdirection of public perception from their true intentions. They're not fooling me!
How do you explain away Jews living inside Arab countries if that is in fact the truth? In the specific case of Iran, which as it happens is Aryan, not Arab, the Jewish faith, along with Christianity and Zoroastrian, is state protected. I'd rather be Jewish than Hindu or Bahá'í if I lived in Iran.
Such metrisc also disincentivize people taking proactive steps to reduce the number of incoming tickets (i.e. making the system/environment more robust or your users more educated)
Tell me about it. The job I'm in is support/maintenance/administration/installation etc. for companies too small to have their own IT depts. I'm constantly saying "we should do this because it will prevent xxxxx in 6-12 months time". I'm sometimes listened to. "Has the customer logged a problem? No? Well we're flat out, there are more important things that need to be done". Usually true, but if we always did the things I recommend we'd have far fewer sudden customer crises demanding immediate attention. Of course, instant attention for a problem gains brownie points with customers that invisible background work doesn't, but systems running smoothly costs less in the long term and customers do sometimes say things like "well, we never had any problems when xxx were running things".
On the metrics thing, yeah its bullshit. We recently got in a new CRM package with all types of nice metrics reporting built into it. I'm sure they're all very good, but me having 2-3 tasks assigned to me at a time instead of 20 really doesn't help, particularly when some of those are jobs that involve 8 hours of looking in every 30 minutes for 10 seconds. And it doesn't take into account the bosses completely ignoring their fancy new system and dropping down to my corner of the dungeon and asking me to look at something for whatever customer is chewing their ear off. Or the fact that I spend 40% or more of my day giving advice to my fellow techies. I suppose at least I can find consolation in the fact that 1 of the 3 guys running the show is a former programmer and veteran support person, and knows that if there is a problem, you talk to me.
That is a terrible way of looking at it. The US has a population 75 times the size of the country I live in, and a per capita CO2 output 1.8 times as high. Are you suggesting that us increasing ours by a factor of 135 would be acceptable?
You would have a great deal of difficulty with such an argument if you were trying to base it on facts anyway. This picture tells a slightly different story to the one that the crowd who complain about India and China would have you believe.
I think the obvious thing is that we need to have a fully operational and self sustaining (barring energy source) habitat on Mars before we send any people. Send whatever cannot be manufactured on Mars, and machinery to make what can be manufactured there. We would need shelter for humans, so earth moving machinery for construction would be needed. We would probably want machinery for production of heavy glass and sealants, both for keeping the place reasonably airtight and for some kind of greenhouse. You could build hydroponics underground but overground and with whatever sunlight is available would probably be better. Air processing for maintaining the correct atmospheric mix and pressure. Water extraction machinery. Recycling. Most importantly, in terms of life support, you'd need to figure out what plants you could grow there, and what microbial life you would need to culture to provide the correct soil for those plants. Something like this could probably be done over the course of, say, 20 years. When you have an operational base, then send out a bunch of 60 year old scientists who have lived the best years of their lives and are looking for something cool and groundbreaking to do, secure in the knowledge that, even if its a one way trip, they'll have some measure of comfort out there. Return journeys can wait until the place has a proper colony going.
Interesting read. One line in the article, on the #1 most dangerous job, fishing, really caught my eye though....
In June, a rogue wave swamped three fishermen as they were leaving the Dangerous River in Alaska. Two of the fishermen died of hypothermia before they could swim to shore.
Besides, any occasion encouraging us to help each other through the long darkness is a good one.
Even if it's a pagan celebration of the winter solstice?
Who cares really. All the celebrations are about the same thing, the fact that the bad times will go away. The pre-christian celebration was about the solstice, after which the days would start getting longer and the winter would eventually go away. Christians celebrate the birth of their messiah, which is all about the good times coming. Athiests like me celebrate merely being able to stay at home and eat nice food with my family for a few days, a break from the winter drudgery of both leaving for work and coming home from work in the dark.
Because there is not much difference between IT and the plumber.... and like the plumber they are also not central to the core business of the organisation - they just provide required services to it.
When a pipe bursts and is causing water damage, people don't blame the plumber. They get him there to fix the problem, and are thankful when he manages to minimise the damage. IT involves systems with several magnitudes more complexity, yet the plumber gets more respect. Possibly more pay too.
Do you mean knowing of some ancestors from 1000 years ago, or all of them? I can trace my family to a man who died in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. But that's 30 or more generations ago. I don't expect anyone to know who all 1,073,741,824 of their ancestors from 30 generations ago were, or how many times each individual will appear in there (several thousands of times each when you go back that far).
On the subject of the dark ages... that was a few hundred years. Europe has thousands of years of history. I'm sure if you want to read through the history of China, you'll find some pretty damn grim periods too.
A German copyright group called GEMA told the organizers that to be certain that no rights were infringed, it would need a list of all artists including their full names, place of residency and date of birth.
So, to be sure no rights are violated, they need to be given private details about 3rd party individuals that they have no right to know?
China surpassed US both in absolute amount and in relative amount, by the way.
What do you mean by relative amount? That graph shows China 15-20% above US. China has a population ~4.3 times the size of the US. Relatively speaking, that puts the US at about 360% of China's CO2 production.
I don't think many would agree with that. Concentration of wealth is undesireable. Obscene wealth is... well, obscene. I have nothing against people being comfortable, or independently wealthy, etc. Able to retire at 35? Well done. Able to buy your own country? Should not be allowed.
The television station's choice of pundits & commentators is pretty easy to get around. I know of a radio station that encourages their listeners who have Sky Sports to watch the games on it muted, while listening to them on the radio. Many people do.
There might be nothing wrong with the detector, or with their measurement of the distance traveled or the time. I'd say it's pretty likely they've overlooked something. There are lots of obvious things that would affect the measurement. Over the time period for light to travel 732km, the earth will have moved almost 73m in orbit around the sun, points on earth will have shifted around it's axis a much smaller distance (about 1m at the equator), and the earth as a whole will have wobbled a tiny distance due to the moon's gravity. I doubt any of those things will be what caused the discrepancy, but something similar could be at play that has simply not been thought of. What did strike me when I read the two linked articles, is that both mention a one way test. Errors involving unknown ignored factors of the type I mentioned would be noticed if the test was conducted in both directions, as the discrepancy should be in the other direction on a return journey if it is a distance measurement error of some kind.
Slashdot Mirror
Or better yet, Cthulthu particle?
Hasn't been seen for aeons, lives in a realm where nothing makes sense, extremely massive. Nah, we have nothing to worry about.
Nothing I see in that article suggests that this is a new phenomenon...aside from the hyperbolic statements of the scientists.
The author is astonishingly remiss in not asking the obvious question: did this just start?
I thought it obvious from sentences like "...said that he has never before witnessed the scale.." "This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter" "the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the true scale of the phenomenon" that this is known about. The article is about the fact that this year it is on a larger scale than in the past.
This is the EIGHTH such cruise/survey. They should be able to conclusively say "we checked this area in at least one or two previous instances and such seeps weren't observed", no?
It seems logical that there must have been plumes like this for a while, to prompt (and justify) such a large-scale survey.
Yet both the scientists and article author seem to gloss over the fact that "never seen before" != "never happened before".
It is the 8th joint Russian-American survey. There have more than likely been other surveys conducted; I don't know. It does say that this guy has been conducting surveys for 20 years in the region. Nowhere does it say that they have not previously witnessed this phenomenon. All it says is they have not seen this scale.
These Iranians ..... diabolically opposed to the Jewish state of Israel for thousands of years by their very nature. That should be puzzling to a lot of people in and of itself. It is very likely that they come from the long ago bloodline of Cain and ~not Able.
Ah yes, they're a devious bunch. I especially liked the way they freed the Jews from their enslavement in Babylon 3000 years ago, classic misdirection of public perception from their true intentions. They're not fooling me!
Must be scary for the American troops on horseback with muskets, looking across their vast land border at all those sophisticated Iranian tanks.
How do you explain away Jews living inside Arab countries if that is in fact the truth? In the specific case of Iran, which as it happens is Aryan, not Arab, the Jewish faith, along with Christianity and Zoroastrian, is state protected. I'd rather be Jewish than Hindu or Bahá'í if I lived in Iran.
Such metrisc also disincentivize people taking proactive steps to reduce the number of incoming tickets (i.e. making the system/environment more robust or your users more educated)
Tell me about it. The job I'm in is support/maintenance/administration/installation etc. for companies too small to have their own IT depts. I'm constantly saying "we should do this because it will prevent xxxxx in 6-12 months time". I'm sometimes listened to. "Has the customer logged a problem? No? Well we're flat out, there are more important things that need to be done". Usually true, but if we always did the things I recommend we'd have far fewer sudden customer crises demanding immediate attention. Of course, instant attention for a problem gains brownie points with customers that invisible background work doesn't, but systems running smoothly costs less in the long term and customers do sometimes say things like "well, we never had any problems when xxx were running things".
On the metrics thing, yeah its bullshit. We recently got in a new CRM package with all types of nice metrics reporting built into it. I'm sure they're all very good, but me having 2-3 tasks assigned to me at a time instead of 20 really doesn't help, particularly when some of those are jobs that involve 8 hours of looking in every 30 minutes for 10 seconds. And it doesn't take into account the bosses completely ignoring their fancy new system and dropping down to my corner of the dungeon and asking me to look at something for whatever customer is chewing their ear off. Or the fact that I spend 40% or more of my day giving advice to my fellow techies. I suppose at least I can find consolation in the fact that 1 of the 3 guys running the show is a former programmer and veteran support person, and knows that if there is a problem, you talk to me.
...Department comes: the world's 57th richest man in the world
If the company is successful, he can become the moon's 57th richest man in the world!
You matching our per capita CO2 emissions would have no real effect on the CO2 problem.
China or India doing so would be bad....
I agree. It would be very bad. But America refusing to cut down is hardly going to encourage India and China to slow down.
That is a terrible way of looking at it. The US has a population 75 times the size of the country I live in, and a per capita CO2 output 1.8 times as high. Are you suggesting that us increasing ours by a factor of 135 would be acceptable?
You would have a great deal of difficulty with such an argument if you were trying to base it on facts anyway. This picture tells a slightly different story to the one that the crowd who complain about India and China would have you believe.
I think the obvious thing is that we need to have a fully operational and self sustaining (barring energy source) habitat on Mars before we send any people. Send whatever cannot be manufactured on Mars, and machinery to make what can be manufactured there. We would need shelter for humans, so earth moving machinery for construction would be needed. We would probably want machinery for production of heavy glass and sealants, both for keeping the place reasonably airtight and for some kind of greenhouse. You could build hydroponics underground but overground and with whatever sunlight is available would probably be better. Air processing for maintaining the correct atmospheric mix and pressure. Water extraction machinery. Recycling. Most importantly, in terms of life support, you'd need to figure out what plants you could grow there, and what microbial life you would need to culture to provide the correct soil for those plants. Something like this could probably be done over the course of, say, 20 years. When you have an operational base, then send out a bunch of 60 year old scientists who have lived the best years of their lives and are looking for something cool and groundbreaking to do, secure in the knowledge that, even if its a one way trip, they'll have some measure of comfort out there. Return journeys can wait until the place has a proper colony going.
In June, a rogue wave swamped three fishermen as they were leaving the Dangerous River in Alaska. Two of the fishermen died of hypothermia before they could swim to shore.
Helps to know the territory I guess.
Besides, any occasion encouraging us to help each other through the long darkness is a good one.
Even if it's a pagan celebration of the winter solstice?
Who cares really. All the celebrations are about the same thing, the fact that the bad times will go away. The pre-christian celebration was about the solstice, after which the days would start getting longer and the winter would eventually go away. Christians celebrate the birth of their messiah, which is all about the good times coming. Athiests like me celebrate merely being able to stay at home and eat nice food with my family for a few days, a break from the winter drudgery of both leaving for work and coming home from work in the dark.
This is. http://www.jokes2go.com/06/4/j24.html
Because there is not much difference between IT and the plumber.... and like the plumber they are also not central to the core business of the organisation - they just provide required services to it.
When a pipe bursts and is causing water damage, people don't blame the plumber. They get him there to fix the problem, and are thankful when he manages to minimise the damage. IT involves systems with several magnitudes more complexity, yet the plumber gets more respect. Possibly more pay too.
Do you mean knowing of some ancestors from 1000 years ago, or all of them? I can trace my family to a man who died in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. But that's 30 or more generations ago. I don't expect anyone to know who all 1,073,741,824 of their ancestors from 30 generations ago were, or how many times each individual will appear in there (several thousands of times each when you go back that far).
On the subject of the dark ages... that was a few hundred years. Europe has thousands of years of history. I'm sure if you want to read through the history of China, you'll find some pretty damn grim periods too.
A German copyright group called GEMA told the organizers that to be certain that no rights were infringed, it would need a list of all artists including their full names, place of residency and date of birth.
So, to be sure no rights are violated, they need to be given private details about 3rd party individuals that they have no right to know?
China surpassed US both in absolute amount and in relative amount, by the way.
What do you mean by relative amount? That graph shows China 15-20% above US. China has a population ~4.3 times the size of the US. Relatively speaking, that puts the US at about 360% of China's CO2 production.
Lots of it.
I don't think many would agree with that. Concentration of wealth is undesireable. Obscene wealth is... well, obscene. I have nothing against people being comfortable, or independently wealthy, etc. Able to retire at 35? Well done. Able to buy your own country? Should not be allowed.
The television station's choice of pundits & commentators is pretty easy to get around. I know of a radio station that encourages their listeners who have Sky Sports to watch the games on it muted, while listening to them on the radio. Many people do.
Maybe you are right. What would the guy who authored and pioneered the scientific method know about science?
Less than we know today. Otherwise, you know, he wouldn't have had to do much pioneering.
There might be nothing wrong with the detector, or with their measurement of the distance traveled or the time. I'd say it's pretty likely they've overlooked something. There are lots of obvious things that would affect the measurement. Over the time period for light to travel 732km, the earth will have moved almost 73m in orbit around the sun, points on earth will have shifted around it's axis a much smaller distance (about 1m at the equator), and the earth as a whole will have wobbled a tiny distance due to the moon's gravity. I doubt any of those things will be what caused the discrepancy, but something similar could be at play that has simply not been thought of. What did strike me when I read the two linked articles, is that both mention a one way test. Errors involving unknown ignored factors of the type I mentioned would be noticed if the test was conducted in both directions, as the discrepancy should be in the other direction on a return journey if it is a distance measurement error of some kind.
You got there before me. Cheap UPSs have a mechanical switch. Inline UPSs are much more expensive.
Um I don't know where that came out of. I'm tired and reading things that aren't there. Sorry