I'm Brazilian and have lived most of my life here, although I've also been in rather long business trips, months at a time, to the USA, France, and Sweden.
Comparing Brazil to the USA and Europe depends on where you are economically. Upper-middle class people are better off in Brazil, lower-middle class are worse off. Rich people are well off everywhere and it sucks being poor anywhere.
As for the future, I'm not so optimistic about Brazil. The reason is that the Brazilian Constitution is a piece of shit. It's 300+ articles long, crammed with conflicting rules, grants plenty of benefits to everyone without establishing corresponding obligations.
With no distinction between basic rights and benefits, the Brazilian judiciary is bogged down in countless demands from everyone. One example of a very stupid "right" is that students are allowed to pay half price at any entertainment event. This means that, either you get some fake ID which says you're a student, or you pay double price to watch a movie, sports event, etc.
Making it worse, Brazilian courts are based on Roman law, vs, the Anglo-Saxon system used in the US. This means most trials are decided by the judge alone, without a jury, which causes rampant corruption. The "solution" to this problem in the last years has been to raise judges salaries to absurd levels, typically a judge gets ten times as much as a lawyer will get working for a private firm.
The reasoning behind this is that, in theory, if a judge gets a high enough salary he will have no motivation to be corrupt. In practice, instead of attracting lawyers who are actually interested in becoming a judge, this assures that it's the most greedy who will become judges.
A court system where idealist lawyers argue the case while a judge whose only interest in sitting in the bench is money makes all decisions cannot end well.
Oh, so the purpose of a date is to get sex, and you're a "victim" if the other person doesn't put out?
In a society where sex is regarded as a normal and important part of life, no.
In a puritanical religious society where sex is regarded as sinful, yes.
If sex were like, for instance, playing cards -- you're willing, I'm willing, let's do it -- then there would be no need for subterfuges. However, since sex demands such expensive efforts, accepting those efforts and not providing sex is fraud.
My daddy used to mix up potassium perchlorate and sulfur, and then stuff it into tin foil, about the size of a silver dollar. Then he would hit it with a sledge hammer, and, that noise will wake the neighbors!
To go from "our test found no DNA" to "there is no DNA" to "they must be extraterrestrial" to "they look like the dust clouds in Monocerous" is a series of leaps that go wayyy ahead of the available evidence, in my view.
Awww, but Panspermia is so cute...
I don't know why people go through all this effort to defend a theory that creates another level of complexity. It looks like an inverted Occam's Razor. If life is too complex to have appeared on earth, then why would it have appeared somewhere else and then have drifted to earth?
OK, in principle one could argue that it's not impossible, but at least let's wait to see if there's any sort of plausible evidence for it, before we go stretching the arguments to the limit to defend it.
If heat dissipation in the brain was a problem, we wouldn't have evolved to have so much hair on our heads and so little elsewhere
Hair is insulation against the sun. The reason why Africans have curly hair is to provide insulation while letting cooling air circulate. In colder climates, straight hair still provides enough protection from the sun while letting some air circulate.
we only have to look at the post office to see that it can be done
Except that the post office works in exactly the opposite way.
The post office was created in the firs place to deliver letters. Later, to use available capacity, they divided their services into "first" and "second" class. If you send a horseman to some distant place to deliver one letter, it will cost as much as sending that horseman to deliver one letter and one magazine.
The post office offers discounts for second class mail, what AT&T is offering is to charge extra for "first class" content.
Before we know it these advanced pioneers of space flight might even get to 50 miles like the X-15 managed.... 40 years ago.
40 years ago men had gone to the moon, the X-15 was already flying 50 years ago.
However, the X-15 needed the infrastructure of the USAF. It was launched from the wing of a B-52 bomber and landed on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB. Probably, adjusted for inflation, $475,000 would be the cost of a single flight of the X-15.
The extraordinary claim is this : for very long geological periods the climate system has flown under the radar of a asserted catastrophic tipping point. But inspite of this, and inspite of the fact that climate changing variables (including but not limited to c02) have changed wildly during these periods, it is only now, with the advent of human industrial civilization that the Earth is now in serious trouble and only radical and immediate restructuring of our society is going to fix it.
The normal temperature variations before the industrial revolution were in the order of a half degree over a thousand years.
After we started drilling and burning fossil oil, temperature variation has been reversed from a generally negative trend to a positive one degree over a hundred years. Even without sophisticated analysis, isn't that factor of 20:1 extraordinary enough to warrant increased caution?
you can have cause to investigate something without anything ever being found to support the idea a law was broken
No.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Unless there's a reasonable cause to suspect a law has been broken, and unless that cause is proved by oath (meaning that if the oath is false whoever made it is guilty of perjury) no investigation at all can be initiated by any government agent.
First we have to ask ourselves, how many people can our planet sustain? 10 billion? 15 billion?
We don't know for sure.
Then we have to ask, how long before we reach that many? 100 years? 200 years?
We don't know for sure.
Then we have to ask, what resource is going to run out first? Drinking water? Food? Air?
We don't know for sure.
When we have those answers, we will be able to discuss which is best to spend money and effort on, mining the asteroid field or getting off this damn rock.
This we know for sure: unless we do serious research we will never get the answer to any important question. And unless we are ready to research many different alternatives we will never be sure of our answers.
I think we should consider all possibilities and chose which one has the better probability of success. Exploring the asteroids seems to offer some interesting possibilities. At least there's an intrinsic advantage in getting resources from them, compared to any planet or moon in the solar system, given the different gravity wells.
the argument could be made, it just wasn't on the warrant, to investigate the use of the one grant.
Is the Virginia Attorney General qualified to do that investigation?
A public officer needs to have some basis for any investigation he starts. Unless he has the proper scientific qualifications, or has received reliable information from an expert in the field, anything he does is nothing but political pressure.
And you have no clue if it's politicians bloviating with public resources or not until something is found or nothing is found
Unless something is found, it's the Virginia Attorney General who must prove he had cause to start that investigation. If he didn't have anything concrete, then he's at least guilty of wasting the state's resources.
If the word "skeptic" is supposed to be pejorative, the subject must be religion and not science.
Let's see what does "skeptic" mean:
- someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs - someone who demands physical evidence in order to be convinced (especially when this demand is out of place)
Okay, "skeptic" shouldn't be pejorative.
Now let's see who are the true skeptics. It's a well known fact (accepted even by skeptics who took the effort to do the experiments) that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. Therefore, physical evidence is there.
If you doubt it, you can do the experiment in your kitchen table: get two clear plastic bottles and two calibrated thermometers. Use some vinegar and baking soda to generate CO2 in one of the bottles, let the other be filled only by pure air. Seal the bottles, put them in sunshine, watch the temperatures in both.
Now, if a group of people accept the belief that an increased CO2 content in the atmosphere does not cause global warming, the true skeptic will doubt that. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.
I can't use my Encyclopædia Britannica DVD from a few years ago, because it's incompatible with modern operating systems.
Same here. I paid $100 for the CD version Britannica when it first came out. I don't remember if it was for Windows 95 or 98, but I cannot use it on XP or newer system.
Unless my home gets burned in a fire (unlikely in a brick construction) or I have a severe termite, moth, or other paper eating insect infestation, I see no reason why my 1984 hardcopy version wouldn't be readable for several centuries.
It is interesting (and very bigoted of you) to assume anyone who is a AGW skeptic is anti-science and pro-intelligent design
Well, an argument often seen here on Slashdot is that "correlation does not imply causation".
However, correlation is a good argument for further studies on causation. And there's a very strong correlation between being a global warming skeptic and having a strong anti-science and pro-creationist stance.
The difference is that if you fall sick, that's *your* problem
True. Doesn't mean it's my fault.
It isn't my fault either. It's still your problem, not mine. However, if I cause you to fall sick for any reason, then it's my fault and my problem and I think the government should make me pay for your health care.
If the Antarctic ice sheet melts, that's *our* problem.
Not really. I live (nearly) on top of a big bastard of a mountain.
If it melts by some natural process then it's not your fault and it's not your problem. However, if you cause the ice sheet to melt for any reason, (for instance by driving an SUV) then it's your problem and I think the government should make you pay for my losses caused by a rising sea level.
As you mention, this means around $6000 for a twenty years period, instead of $1165 for a printed version.
The times they are a'changing. Why should anyone want to pay $295/yr for something they used to get in printed form at $58/yr, assuming one bought a new edition of the OED once every twenty years?
Do the OED publishers really think it's worth paying five times the price, besides not getting a set of printed books, just to get the few slang words that appeared since 1989? Haven't they ever heard of Google? That's the way I learn about the new slang!
The article discusses several editions of a particular book.
Why, oh why didn't he just cite the book instead of Wikipedia!
Precisely, IMHO, the biggest value of Wikiepdia is that it's a "smart Google". It gives us a bunch of places where to look for further information. It's not without reason that someone always appends that [citation needed] tags when this requisite is not fulfilled.
Government intervention is always bad...unless it regulates something these people don't agree with.
People who want censorship of comic books and video games are not consistent, but that does not mean a minimal government is a bad thing.
I believe that everyone should have every possible liberty, as long as other people's liberties are respected. The trick is to define exactly where the line is drawn.
I'm totally for carbon taxes, for instance. Your right to own an SUV ends where my right to have a clean atmosphere starts. The government should not let anybody think that fossil fuels can be used endlessly without regard for the consequences.
In the same reasoning, I'm entirely against government mandated health insurance. You didn't believe you could get sick? That's your problem, now take everything you saved by not having proper health insurance and pay whatever you can of your hospital bills, after that try finding some charitable organization to help you.
The difference is that if you fall sick, that's *your* problem, if the Antarctic ice sheet melts, that's *our* problem. I don't want a nanny state telling us that we must have health insurance, but I do want a vigilant state that will not let anybody destroy the environment.
When I saw the title I read the summary hoping to get tips on building a humongously strong laser that fits into a cylinder the size of a sword handle.
To my disappointment, I found that the article should be named "How To Make Authentic Lightsaber props"
"Although she was an interesting and competent speaker, the most memorable part of these talks was her illustration of a nanosecond. She salvaged an obsolete Bell System 25 pair telephone cable, cut it to 11.8 inch (30 cm) lengths (which is the distance that light travels in one nanosecond) and handed out the individual wires to her listeners"
I've also read about someone else giving out "picoseconds" in the form of tiny mustard seeds to illustrate how much the speed of light limits data processing.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm Brazilian and have lived most of my life here, although I've also been in rather long business trips, months at a time, to the USA, France, and Sweden.
Comparing Brazil to the USA and Europe depends on where you are economically. Upper-middle class people are better off in Brazil, lower-middle class are worse off. Rich people are well off everywhere and it sucks being poor anywhere.
As for the future, I'm not so optimistic about Brazil. The reason is that the Brazilian Constitution is a piece of shit. It's 300+ articles long, crammed with conflicting rules, grants plenty of benefits to everyone without establishing corresponding obligations.
With no distinction between basic rights and benefits, the Brazilian judiciary is bogged down in countless demands from everyone. One example of a very stupid "right" is that students are allowed to pay half price at any entertainment event. This means that, either you get some fake ID which says you're a student, or you pay double price to watch a movie, sports event, etc.
Making it worse, Brazilian courts are based on Roman law, vs, the Anglo-Saxon system used in the US. This means most trials are decided by the judge alone, without a jury, which causes rampant corruption. The "solution" to this problem in the last years has been to raise judges salaries to absurd levels, typically a judge gets ten times as much as a lawyer will get working for a private firm.
The reasoning behind this is that, in theory, if a judge gets a high enough salary he will have no motivation to be corrupt. In practice, instead of attracting lawyers who are actually interested in becoming a judge, this assures that it's the most greedy who will become judges.
A court system where idealist lawyers argue the case while a judge whose only interest in sitting in the bench is money makes all decisions cannot end well.
Nice salary for a chemist.
In a society where sex is regarded as a normal and important part of life, no.
In a puritanical religious society where sex is regarded as sinful, yes.
If sex were like, for instance, playing cards -- you're willing, I'm willing, let's do it -- then there would be no need for subterfuges. However, since sex demands such expensive efforts, accepting those efforts and not providing sex is fraud.
Your daddy must have been great fun at parties...
Damn, I was hoping it was a typo for perchocolate
I can imagine the scene:
Boss- "Reimplement this usign XYZ"
Programmer- "Uh, OK, but we need to redo the strippers motion capture for that"
Awww, but Panspermia is so cute...
I don't know why people go through all this effort to defend a theory that creates another level of complexity. It looks like an inverted Occam's Razor. If life is too complex to have appeared on earth, then why would it have appeared somewhere else and then have drifted to earth?
OK, in principle one could argue that it's not impossible, but at least let's wait to see if there's any sort of plausible evidence for it, before we go stretching the arguments to the limit to defend it.
I'm a member of the Vampire Party, you insensitive clod!
I'd say that to erect an obelisk would me more appropriate...
Hair is insulation against the sun. The reason why Africans have curly hair is to provide insulation while letting cooling air circulate. In colder climates, straight hair still provides enough protection from the sun while letting some air circulate.
Except that the post office works in exactly the opposite way.
The post office was created in the firs place to deliver letters. Later, to use available capacity, they divided their services into "first" and "second" class. If you send a horseman to some distant place to deliver one letter, it will cost as much as sending that horseman to deliver one letter and one magazine.
The post office offers discounts for second class mail, what AT&T is offering is to charge extra for "first class" content.
40 years ago men had gone to the moon, the X-15 was already flying 50 years ago.
However, the X-15 needed the infrastructure of the USAF. It was launched from the wing of a B-52 bomber and landed on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB. Probably, adjusted for inflation, $475,000 would be the cost of a single flight of the X-15.
The extraordinary proof to that is in this graph.
The normal temperature variations before the industrial revolution were in the order of a half degree over a thousand years.
After we started drilling and burning fossil oil, temperature variation has been reversed from a generally negative trend to a positive one degree over a hundred years. Even without sophisticated analysis, isn't that factor of 20:1 extraordinary enough to warrant increased caution?
No.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Unless there's a reasonable cause to suspect a law has been broken, and unless that cause is proved by oath (meaning that if the oath is false whoever made it is guilty of perjury) no investigation at all can be initiated by any government agent.
We don't know for sure.
We don't know for sure.
We don't know for sure.
This we know for sure: unless we do serious research we will never get the answer to any important question. And unless we are ready to research many different alternatives we will never be sure of our answers.
I think we should consider all possibilities and chose which one has the better probability of success. Exploring the asteroids seems to offer some interesting possibilities. At least there's an intrinsic advantage in getting resources from them, compared to any planet or moon in the solar system, given the different gravity wells.
Is the Virginia Attorney General qualified to do that investigation?
A public officer needs to have some basis for any investigation he starts. Unless he has the proper scientific qualifications, or has received reliable information from an expert in the field, anything he does is nothing but political pressure.
Unless something is found, it's the Virginia Attorney General who must prove he had cause to start that investigation. If he didn't have anything concrete, then he's at least guilty of wasting the state's resources.
Let's see what does "skeptic" mean:
- someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs
- someone who demands physical evidence in order to be convinced (especially when this demand is out of place)
Okay, "skeptic" shouldn't be pejorative.
Now let's see who are the true skeptics. It's a well known fact (accepted even by skeptics who took the effort to do the experiments) that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. Therefore, physical evidence is there.
If you doubt it, you can do the experiment in your kitchen table: get two clear plastic bottles and two calibrated thermometers. Use some vinegar and baking soda to generate CO2 in one of the bottles, let the other be filled only by pure air. Seal the bottles, put them in sunshine, watch the temperatures in both.
Now, if a group of people accept the belief that an increased CO2 content in the atmosphere does not cause global warming, the true skeptic will doubt that. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.
Same here. I paid $100 for the CD version Britannica when it first came out. I don't remember if it was for Windows 95 or 98, but I cannot use it on XP or newer system.
Unless my home gets burned in a fire (unlikely in a brick construction) or I have a severe termite, moth, or other paper eating insect infestation, I see no reason why my 1984 hardcopy version wouldn't be readable for several centuries.
Well, an argument often seen here on Slashdot is that "correlation does not imply causation".
However, correlation is a good argument for further studies on causation. And there's a very strong correlation between being a global warming skeptic and having a strong anti-science and pro-creationist stance.
It isn't my fault either. It's still your problem, not mine. However, if I cause you to fall sick for any reason, then it's my fault and my problem and I think the government should make me pay for your health care.
If it melts by some natural process then it's not your fault and it's not your problem. However, if you cause the ice sheet to melt for any reason, (for instance by driving an SUV) then it's your problem and I think the government should make you pay for my losses caused by a rising sea level.
As you mention, this means around $6000 for a twenty years period, instead of $1165 for a printed version.
The times they are a'changing. Why should anyone want to pay $295/yr for something they used to get in printed form at $58/yr, assuming one bought a new edition of the OED once every twenty years?
Do the OED publishers really think it's worth paying five times the price, besides not getting a set of printed books, just to get the few slang words that appeared since 1989? Haven't they ever heard of Google? That's the way I learn about the new slang!
Precisely, IMHO, the biggest value of Wikiepdia is that it's a "smart Google". It gives us a bunch of places where to look for further information. It's not without reason that someone always appends that [citation needed] tags when this requisite is not fulfilled.
People who want censorship of comic books and video games are not consistent, but that does not mean a minimal government is a bad thing.
I believe that everyone should have every possible liberty, as long as other people's liberties are respected. The trick is to define exactly where the line is drawn.
I'm totally for carbon taxes, for instance. Your right to own an SUV ends where my right to have a clean atmosphere starts. The government should not let anybody think that fossil fuels can be used endlessly without regard for the consequences.
In the same reasoning, I'm entirely against government mandated health insurance. You didn't believe you could get sick? That's your problem, now take everything you saved by not having proper health insurance and pay whatever you can of your hospital bills, after that try finding some charitable organization to help you.
The difference is that if you fall sick, that's *your* problem, if the Antarctic ice sheet melts, that's *our* problem. I don't want a nanny state telling us that we must have health insurance, but I do want a vigilant state that will not let anybody destroy the environment.
When I saw the title I read the summary hoping to get tips on building a humongously strong laser that fits into a cylinder the size of a sword handle.
To my disappointment, I found that the article should be named "How To Make Authentic Lightsaber props"
There's an anecdote that admiral Grace Hopper gave "nanoseconds" as gifts:
"Although she was an interesting and competent speaker, the most memorable part of these talks was her illustration of a nanosecond. She salvaged an obsolete Bell System 25 pair telephone cable, cut it to 11.8 inch (30 cm) lengths (which is the distance that light travels in one nanosecond) and handed out the individual wires to her listeners"
I've also read about someone else giving out "picoseconds" in the form of tiny mustard seeds to illustrate how much the speed of light limits data processing.