I hate advertising and block it every chance I get. I'm not a hypocrite either since I would simple stop using the ad supported free services if they were no longer free. The ads are absolutely useless. I just resent them and since the likelihood that I would buy anything advertised is very small I don't think they apply to me (or to most people). Ad supported goods and services are sitting atop an unstable pyramid of lies and suggestions not on any good empirical, evidence based models. I think almost everyone hates ads, except those who make them apparently. It's a horrible model to use. Invest in something that you have no real idea of what the return will be and that will irritate countless people and that is being sold to you by present day snake oil sales people. One would think that the internet would be a great place to advertise since in principle you could know exactly what was happening with each impression. Is it working? Unfortunately, people hate being watched and tracked so targeting of ads will just make the victims feel violated. As an advertiser you hope that you'll finally be able to get some real answers to the question of whether or not your ads actually work. Are you throwing that money away by paying for ads? Unfortunately (and I admit I'm going with instinct here) I'm sure that the people you are paying are doing everything they possibly can to show you data that encourages you to spend more no matter what. Your ads are working! There is slime dripping from the whole advertising culture.
If the free services and products that are supported by advertising disappeared it is possible that the world would become a better place. In that case maybe people would ask for things they want instead of accepting whatever was offered. I wonder if that be better or worse than what we have now. Instead of 500 channels of dreck, we might have a much smaller number of options with higher quality throughout (I can dream -- it probably wouldn't happen, too many morons would ask for buff women fighting in a cage).
What about the problem of poor Joe Home Business who can't sell his valuable merchandise to people who don't know he exists? I think this is why people invented directories and indexes. If you want a widget go to the valuable merchandise section of the directory and pick someone. Maybe someone is close by! Huzzah! The internet is great for this. If Joe doesn't get any calls (emails, whatever) maybe the valuable merchandise business isn't right for him. There is no need for Joe to inflict pictures of his merchandise on me. I don't want his merchandise!
If you mean that there are friendly religious people who will listen you are probably right. There are a few. If you mean that religious people are capable of reason then I think that you are basically wrong. By the very nature of their chosen (in most cases chosen by others such as parents) belief system they are incapable of reason.
"You can't argue facts with people who base their stance on dogma. They have no factual basis to disprove, and no matter how convincing or simple your argument, they can always respond "god did it"."
This is the the entire problem expressed exactly. Well done. We need to work on the few smart people who are already sort of convinced that their faith is wrong and push them over the edge. They they'll help two friends and they'll help two friends...
Lead by example. Eventually it will trickle down to the majority (one hopes, the majority isn't too bright).
I once worked with someone who claimed that, as a lad, he lived on the same street as Clarke in Sri Lanka and was treated to an evening out with him and his telescope. He wasn't overly impressed. I was totally overwhelmed by the idea and _wished_ it could have been me. I had no reason to disbelieve this claim as the fellow didn't seem to know who Arthur C Clarke really was, just that he was a famous old guy.
"There are religious people who are sensible and considered"
No there aren't. Any sensible and considered person will soon lose their religion. The universe outside religion is so self-consistent and the evidence-based reasoning we use to solve all of our basic problems in life, as active scientists, or simply as humans trying to get through the day, is so overwhelmingly powerful compared to _anything_ that religious beliefs can do that any reasonable person with more than half a high school diploma must either decide to keep lying about what their own senses tell them or use their senses and abandon their pointless, illogical faith. I secretly hope that most religious people with half an education really do understand this and are just waiting for a critical mass of admission to occur so that we can finally put a stake into the heart of these pointless belief systems.
Bitter? A bit, I admit it. Also, however, saddened by the waste.
You simply cannot make any rational argument using the bible or any other mythology as a starting point. There is no logical argument that can be constructed from a religious perspective. Starting from verifiable observations of the universe (evidence) we end up with an age for the universe (and cars, airplanes, medicine, skyscrapers, GoreTex etc.).
Anyone who chooses to believe otherwise is deluding themselves.
The statements "While teachers should be allowed to teach what they please" and "Teachers need to stick to a standardized curriculum" appear to be in direct contradiction.
The author may write the story in any way they wish. It doesn't even have to be logically consistent. Why is this not clear? The author may write to illustrate a political point of view. Do Americans see how critical this series is of the current perceived or real behaviour of the United States? It is filled with references to current events. In fact it's so heavy handed that sometimes it spoils the story for me.
Ultimately there are many motives that an author of fiction might have when they concoct a story. Entertainment and political commentary are just two that this show certainly illustrates.
Why do you feel it is necessary to "respect their point of view"? Religious people who refuse to accept evolution base their understanding of reality on their belief system which not only is not based on the evidence that experts can attest to it actively seeks to ignore the evidence of their own experiences. Any argument they make from this perspective is therefore irrational. Their point of view has no basis in reality. Ignore it. Refuse to argue (in the "I'm going to now present you with a logically constructed argument" sense) with them. They will ignore it in any case.
The difference observed between any two January averages doesn't provide any evidence of climate change. It just tells you what you already know. Weather is variable. Try taking a look at the standard deviation of January averages at just about any mid-latitude location. It's large compared to the numbers in the plot referred to in the article.
For example here is some _data_ from Winnipeg, MB (from Environment Canada).
Daily average (std. dev.) for January -17.8 C (3.9 C)
Extreme maximum 7.8 C Extreme minimum -42.2 C
The range of the possible (observed) temperature extremes for January is huge. It's 50 C! The range for February is even larger.
That's weather.
Imagine a Gaussian curve centred on the average with the tails reaching out to these extremes. Anything in that curve is possible. The centre, and the width are the climate variables. Either one or both could change. Weather still does it's thing with individual observed events occurring anywhere within the curve. If the climate warms it means that the average moves up the scale. The width might not change or it might narrow or increase.
Sunspots are not responsible for our changing climate.
"It's widely known that the ultimate driver of the earth's climate system, the sun, has a variable output. Short-term variations and an 11-year solar cycles have been observed, and hints of longer-term cycles appear in the records. It's tempting to speculate that this variability can account for the rise in temperatures that we've seen over the last 50 years; indeed, editorials in business journals and local papers have done just that. But attendees of last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting were told in no uncertain terms that this speculation was badly misguided." -- from ArsTechnica.
Perhaps this has never been pointed out to you but in general, in English, one uses less for nouns in bulk (e.g. sugar, air, mess, sorrow) and one uses few for nouns that are individually countable (e.g. people, programmable keys, shiploads of bananas, stars in our galaxy, cubes of sugar). The OED supports this by indicating that less is "used as the comparative of little" and few is "amounting to a small number". I'm afraid I became less interested in what you had to say when I encountered this error. If you made fewer mistakes I would be happier. See, it's easy.
How about something like the Zenn car for driving in the city? I am sure most people do the vast majority of their driving in an urban setting in mostly empty, large vehicles.
The Zenn is electric and has to be charged from the grid which may introduce other problems and in any case pushes the car emitted pollution to a more distant source. But still, the size and scale of the car is the point I think. The Zenn is also limited to 40 km/hr. We certainly need to get more people into smaller cars.
I must say I find myself agreeing with Mark Moody-Stuart with regard to banning vehicles that don't meet some mileage threshold, "When we eliminated coal fires in London we didn't say to people in Chelsea you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire - we said nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire."
Slashdot Mirror
I hate advertising and block it every chance I get. I'm not a hypocrite either since I would simple stop using the ad supported free services if they were no longer free. The ads are absolutely useless. I just resent them and since the likelihood that I would buy anything advertised is very small I don't think they apply to me (or to most people). Ad supported goods and services are sitting atop an unstable pyramid of lies and suggestions not on any good empirical, evidence based models. I think almost everyone hates ads, except those who make them apparently. It's a horrible model to use. Invest in something that you have no real idea of what the return will be and that will irritate countless people and that is being sold to you by present day snake oil sales people. One would think that the internet would be a great place to advertise since in principle you could know exactly what was happening with each impression. Is it working? Unfortunately, people hate being watched and tracked so targeting of ads will just make the victims feel violated. As an advertiser you hope that you'll finally be able to get some real answers to the question of whether or not your ads actually work. Are you throwing that money away by paying for ads? Unfortunately (and I admit I'm going with instinct here) I'm sure that the people you are paying are doing everything they possibly can to show you data that encourages you to spend more no matter what. Your ads are working! There is slime dripping from the whole advertising culture.
If the free services and products that are supported by advertising disappeared it is possible that the world would become a better place. In that case maybe people would ask for things they want instead of accepting whatever was offered. I wonder if that be better or worse than what we have now. Instead of 500 channels of dreck, we might have a much smaller number of options with higher quality throughout (I can dream -- it probably wouldn't happen, too many morons would ask for buff women fighting in a cage).
What about the problem of poor Joe Home Business who can't sell his valuable merchandise to people who don't know he exists? I think this is why people invented directories and indexes. If you want a widget go to the valuable merchandise section of the directory and pick someone. Maybe someone is close by! Huzzah! The internet is great for this. If Joe doesn't get any calls (emails, whatever) maybe the valuable merchandise business isn't right for him. There is no need for Joe to inflict pictures of his merchandise on me. I don't want his merchandise!
Excellent!
"its a FBI"
... it's an FBI ...
Please, please, please
"Yes, there are reasonable religious people"
If you mean that there are friendly religious people who will listen you are probably right. There are a few. If you mean that religious people are capable of reason then I think that you are basically wrong. By the very nature of their chosen (in most cases chosen by others such as parents) belief system they are incapable of reason.
"You can't argue facts with people who base their stance on dogma. They have no factual basis to disprove, and no matter how convincing or simple your argument, they can always respond "god did it"."
...
This is the the entire problem expressed exactly. Well done. We need to work on the few smart people who are already sort of convinced that their faith is wrong and push them over the edge. They they'll help two friends and they'll help two friends
Lead by example. Eventually it will trickle down to the majority (one hopes, the majority isn't too bright).
I once worked with someone who claimed that, as a lad, he lived on the same street as Clarke in Sri Lanka and was treated to an evening out with him and his telescope. He wasn't overly impressed. I was totally overwhelmed by the idea and _wished_ it could have been me. I had no reason to disbelieve this claim as the fellow didn't seem to know who Arthur C Clarke really was, just that he was a famous old guy.
"There are religious people who are sensible and considered"
No there aren't. Any sensible and considered person will soon lose their religion. The universe outside religion is so self-consistent and the evidence-based reasoning we use to solve all of our basic problems in life, as active scientists, or simply as humans trying to get through the day, is so overwhelmingly powerful compared to _anything_ that religious beliefs can do that any reasonable person with more than half a high school diploma must either decide to keep lying about what their own senses tell them or use their senses and abandon their pointless, illogical faith. I secretly hope that most religious people with half an education really do understand this and are just waiting for a critical mass of admission to occur so that we can finally put a stake into the heart of these pointless belief systems.
Bitter? A bit, I admit it. Also, however, saddened by the waste.
"At least in linguistics, there's a few scholars"
Really? I'm sure in linguistics there _are_ a few scholars.
You simply cannot make any rational argument using the bible or any other mythology as a starting point. There is no logical argument that can be constructed from a religious perspective. Starting from verifiable observations of the universe (evidence) we end up with an age for the universe (and cars, airplanes, medicine, skyscrapers, GoreTex etc.).
Anyone who chooses to believe otherwise is deluding themselves.
A lot fewer people all the time.
Sorry. It's a pet peeve.
It's a stupid irregular verb but in this case "This all sprung up" should be "This all sprang up".
The statements "While teachers should be allowed to teach what they please" and "Teachers need to stick to a standardized curriculum" appear to be in direct contradiction.
If it were such "common sense" wouldn't the problem go away? Too many drivers are selfish. They don't see what they are a part of or don't care.
Stop following so closely!
The author may write the story in any way they wish. It doesn't even have to be logically consistent. Why is this not clear? The author may write to illustrate a political point of view. Do Americans see how critical this series is of the current perceived or real behaviour of the United States? It is filled with references to current events. In fact it's so heavy handed that sometimes it spoils the story for me.
Ultimately there are many motives that an author of fiction might have when they concoct a story. Entertainment and political commentary are just two that this show certainly illustrates.
"The ore processor's got moved to other jobs" should read, "The ore processors got moved to other jobs".
Note that you didn't write "job's".
Excellent.
Thank you.
Why do you feel it is necessary to "respect their point of view"? Religious people who refuse to accept evolution base their understanding of reality on their belief system which not only is not based on the evidence that experts can attest to it actively seeks to ignore the evidence of their own experiences. Any argument they make from this perspective is therefore irrational. Their point of view has no basis in reality. Ignore it. Refuse to argue (in the "I'm going to now present you with a logically constructed argument" sense) with them. They will ignore it in any case.
We should probably take away their children too.
The difference observed between any two January averages doesn't provide any evidence of climate change. It just tells you what you already know. Weather is variable. Try taking a look at the standard deviation of January averages at just about any mid-latitude location. It's large compared to the numbers in the plot referred to in the article.
For example here is some _data_ from Winnipeg, MB (from Environment Canada).
Daily average (std. dev.) for January -17.8 C (3.9 C)
Extreme maximum 7.8 C
Extreme minimum -42.2 C
The range of the possible (observed) temperature extremes for January is huge. It's 50 C! The range for February is even larger.
That's weather.
Imagine a Gaussian curve centred on the average with the tails reaching out to these extremes. Anything in that curve is possible. The centre, and the width are the climate variables. Either one or both could change. Weather still does it's thing with individual observed events occurring anywhere within the curve. If the climate warms it means that the average moves up the scale. The width might not change or it might narrow or increase.
The nostrums might be used to stifle debate. Stiffle sounds like something completely different.
Sunspots are not responsible for our changing climate.
"It's widely known that the ultimate driver of the earth's climate system, the sun, has a variable output. Short-term variations and an 11-year solar cycles have been observed, and hints of longer-term cycles appear in the records. It's tempting to speculate that this variability can account for the rise in temperatures that we've seen over the last 50 years; indeed, editorials in business journals and local papers have done just that. But attendees of last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting were told in no uncertain terms that this speculation was badly misguided." -- from ArsTechnica.
"Tides would certainly change"
Just how large a body do think the author was writing about?
Perhaps this has never been pointed out to you but in general, in English, one uses less for nouns in bulk (e.g. sugar, air, mess, sorrow) and one uses few for nouns that are individually countable (e.g. people, programmable keys, shiploads of bananas, stars in our galaxy, cubes of sugar). The OED supports this by indicating that less is "used as the comparative of little" and few is "amounting to a small number". I'm afraid I became less interested in what you had to say when I encountered this error. If you made fewer mistakes I would be happier. See, it's easy.
Otherwise I think you make some very good points.
I think you're on to something here.
How about something like the Zenn car for driving in the city? I am sure most people do the vast majority of their driving in an urban setting in mostly empty, large vehicles.
The Zenn is electric and has to be charged from the grid which may introduce other problems and in any case pushes the car emitted pollution to a more distant source. But still, the size and scale of the car is the point I think. The Zenn is also limited to 40 km/hr. We certainly need to get more people into smaller cars.
I must say I find myself agreeing with Mark Moody-Stuart with regard to banning vehicles that don't meet some mileage threshold, "When we eliminated coal fires in London we didn't say to people in Chelsea you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire - we said nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire."
The horrible memories that are now replaying themselves in my mind are almost unbearable.
Thanks so very much for forcing me to remember that song.