Realclimate.org explains it -- basically, there are other factors besides CO2 that affect global temperature. CO2 is released when warming starts and drives the majority of the later warming. 800 years is a small part of the warming cycles and all this lag shows us is that historically, global warming has been triggered by other factors. There's no doubt that increased CO2 traps more heat and it's a fact that CO2 concentrations are at historical highs due to human emissions.
They "explain" it using a hypothesis. And yes, the 800 year lag doesn't disprove that CO2 traps heat, but then, their hypothesis doesn't prove that it traps all the heat needed for that further 4200 year warming. Instead, consider a simpler hypothesis, namely that whatever caused the initial 800 year warming, also caused most of the subsequent 4200 year warming. Otherwise, why else would temperatures eventually drop while CO2 remained high?
The fact is, global temperatures are strongly correlated with CO2 concentration. That's a mathematical fact, recorded in the ice of Antarctica.
But in those records the CO2 increases lag temperature increases by 800 years. So which causes which? Climatologists answer this by claiming that some unknown process starts the warming, and then, 800 years later, CO2 comes in and acts as a feedback to cause further warming. That's a rather murky explanation.
Mankind is contributing to this change. There is disagreement about how much, but don't be fooled - we are having an impact, and why shouldn't we? There are six billion of us, and rapidly growing.
This is the thing you see, we know we have an impact. Ever since man started making tools and having an advantage over other animals, we've been making an impact. The very specific question is, how does CO2 affect the environment and how much of it is being created by us? For example, water vapor is not considered a "forcing". There is a reasoned argument why it's not considered a forcing, which spells out why, despite water being present in much larger quantities than CO2, and it absorbing in sometimes similar and sometimes different ways to CO2, water is not a forcing. There is also a reasoned argument as to why it is that the sun's output is not a forcing on the environment. The sun's output has increased over hundreds of millions of years by 20%. This would imply that hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth should have been a snowball, and yet it wasn't. Again, there are reasoned arguments as to why the Earth has managed to remain pretty similar over that time, despite the sun, and why our input of CO2 is now going to tip us into catastrophic change. The point is that all these reasoned arguments may be missing something, that there may be additional hidden feedback systems that we as yet don't understand, and in point of fact, can we make any reasoned estimates as to how big or small these hidden systems may be?
I don't think *some* scientists *speculating* is quite comparable to the vast *majority* of scientists testifying as to actual *data.* But hey, believe what you want.
I've been trying to get a better idea about what the nature of the consensus is, at least beyond what's reported in the media. And a bit of reading is bringing up some disturbing issues. The IPCC "summarised" the consensus view in a more confident and certain way, a way that isn't supported if you read the whole report in detail. There's also questions around the methodology in the data, particularly the so called "proxies" where you get a tree to tell you what the temperature was a thousand years ago, and somehow do this by ignoring the changes in other variables like moisture, that also affect growth. Scientists "hand pick" certain sets of tree data because they think these are the ones that accurately reflect temperature, while ignoring others. And I couldn't tell you how they *do* that. Then there's the statistical techniques which some statisticians and mathematicians claim are being misused. Tree growth is non linear, but the stats methods being applied assume linearity. Also some of the stats methods actually mine the data for "trends"; they don't just take averages. They also splice together different portions of different data sets, and all this goes undocumented, making reproducing the studies near impossible. But what you do get to see at the end of it is a pretty graph that makes our current temperature seem abnormal. Meanwhile modern satellite data (not trees) is showing a small modest temperature increase across the globe, which may be consistent with the fact that we're still coming out of an ice age.
The only problem is, if by humanist you are saying it is for the greater good or some moral good, it is inherently against the profit model and the actions of greedy corporations who are always trying to increase profits or meet projected profit expectations and deadlines.
By 'humanist' he's probably referring to the person-centrered approach, where you put the person in the middle, as it were, and affirm that the person is perfectly ok as they are, and rather than imposing some method or system onto them, you look at what their own desires, needs and preferences are, and work to fit those when designing a machine interface.
However, there was an article recently by some interface guru saying that this approach hasn't really worked with computers, and that at the end of the day, people are naturally able to learn and adapt. We learn to drive cars, we learn to operate washing machines and toaster and all sorts of machines. So rather than worry about making the computer adapt to the human, let the computer be the best tool it can be, and let the human learn and adapt to use it. Don't take the sharp bits off the saw because sharp bits are not friendly to humans--let the saw have sharp bits because it's in the nature of the tool to work that way.
I think the latter approach might be more interesting. We've tried to use the GUI to "intuitively" show the user what to do, but frankly this only worked when you had like a dozen tool icons to pick from. Software now has so many features, so many file formats, so many protocols and stuff, that GUIs are just really complex. So what if there's a button for everything? Most people can't find the buttons because there so many layers to the GUI. People thought it would be easy because you could just "press a button", whereas a lot of the power is in scripting and modeling stuff.
We're stuck with bazillions of Word documents because we wanted to make the computer "natural" like typing a letter. Now with web pages we're desperately trying to get back to some semblance of meaningful and structured content, which unsurprisingly is going to be too complicated to setup for the average Word user.
Perhaps if we'd started by teaching people how to think about and organise information using a computer, we'd be further along today. Computers might cost more, but they might be used in smarter ways?
The main logical error Kurzweil makes is simply that he thinks computers will get smarter because they get faster.
Indeed. Consider how the human brain has had pretty much the same number of neurons for hundreds of thousands of years. Our modern intelligence is more than just raw processing power.
every time I read research that talks about "mixins" I cringe. it's like people are oblivious to the fact that they are trying to place a theory on a hack (a "mixin" is a hack developed at Symbolics for fudging with object inheritance... talk about hacks upon hacks). read enough research and it all begins to look like orwellian doublespeak. people write about things in a manner that suggests decades of research and a fundamental property of nature has been discovered. in reality they are merely inventing meaning and connections between overloaded symbols that others before them invented. a tower of babel indeed.
All I can add is that at college I took Architecture (buildings) and while I program only as a hobby, to me programming looks a lot like how you do a building, ie. you make stuff up in order to get some fudged and imperfect, but nonetheless practical benefit.
Architects have a vocabulary for describing "design patterns" (based on an architecture book about Italian towns--funny that) and it can be very clever and insightful, but it's not a science, it's more intuition and imagination. Like composing music, that sort of thing. So I've never understood the term "software engineer".
I don't care how many words it borrowed (and perverted) from the real science, the moment it has definitive truths that noone should dare question, it's nowhere _near_ being science any more.
You have a good point. I'l say that as your post got modded Troll. While I liked most of the GOOFUS/GALLANT story, the damming part is this:
GOOFUS draws scientific conclusions from the data he collects that usually come out in agreement with the scientific consensus.
Say I'm ill and see a doctor, and then I go get a second opinion and also a third. If they all agree that just means that no individual is wrong. But they could still all be collectively wrong. It could simply be that the science isn't advanced enough yet. And a way to advance science is to challenge it and try to prove accepted theories wrong.
So it's disingenuous to appeal to scientific consensus as a test of whether someone is a good scientist. It starts to verge on beliefs and accepted dogmas, as you say.
Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun? What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous? What happened to that soliton wave technology that was supposed to replace warp drive but would have made a dandy weapon? On two or three occasions we've seen technology that could destabilize stars! I've lost count of the number of near omnipotent races the Federation has run into--- lessee, the Metroids, the Organians, Trellane's parents, Charlie X's guardians, the spinning ball of that loved anguish, V'ger, Q's people, the Doud, the Traveler, the Cythereans... what about them?
Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest.
Amen.
I prefer and admire a sci-fi show where the universe is fantastic but consistent. For me that's what puts the "science" into the "fiction". Otherwise it becomes arbitrary and fairy-magic like; stuff just happens because it's in the script.
My main gripe about Space 1999 was the way the moon travelled, nay, drifted dozens of lightyears between episodes. But one of the things I loved most about it was the design of the Eagles; everything looked like it was there for a reason. It was so well done as a ship that you can actually spot the one mistake, which is that the command module's floor is higher when viewing the model from the outside, but appears level in interior shots. But again, the fact that you can build the model and spot the discrepancy is just great.
My favorite to date in terms of creating a consistent multi-layered universe is Babylon 5. Ok, ok, it has it's dire aspects--long meaningful speeches in lifts about generals who wanted to be painters--but the universe had rules and if you blew up a jump gate then that had specific tactical implications.
The same bits of alien tech kept coming back in different stories for different purposes. Just like in the real world, someone could discover an ancient artifact, start to exploit it causing curious ethical issues, and factions would later find out about it and try to weaponise it, which could happen in secret until it was discovered via another plot line by different characters. All that could happen over the period of months.
B5 even managed to include telepathic powers as a specific ability while keeping specific boundaries on what telepaths were able to do without it getting too magical and arbitrary. Rather, they added a social and political dimension to it so it actually became an important part of the B5 universe.
In contrast, one of the most annoying aspects of Trek is the abuse of so called "time travel stories". Putting aside that philosophically I don't see how time travel is possible--there's no timeline anyhow, it's just an ever-changing present--and putting aside the questions about, well, if you can travel in time, how come you appear to be so limited and dumb in what you accomplish Mr. 28th Century man?--putting aside those two issues--the stories just end up feeling really hollow and sickly.
Apple is only alive in its current state of health today because they took a monetary injection from Microsoft
Really? Well, you probably didn't dwell on the point for brevity but I'd just like to expand that a little lest it become misleading.
According to this article the deal helped to deflect anti trust charges from Microsoft, as the deal included continuation of Office for Mac, and it was also a settlement over disputes with Apple, after MS stole Quicktime code.
The justification for hating Microsoft is just that, a justification for hating Microsoft.
Some people 'hate' Microsoft simply because they dominate using unethical methods and that dominance with their mediocre products threatens the existence of more ethical companies with better products. It's better to deal with an ethical company because then you're less likely to get burnt.
With respect to India doing this, they're falling for the idea that free beats paid and that the fine points of useability and logical sense and stability will sort themselves out on the backs of the adopters.
I agree that there are plenty of people who champion Linux to such a degree that they pretend it's always easier and better. However, I wouldn't be too unkind about that because that 'faith' serves a function; it helps keep the focus and momentum. Linux has great potential to go much much further.
But if we simply sit back and 'rationally' dismiss Linux because sound doesn't work properly, that would be a poor analysis for it ignores the vast potential.
You've criticised the making of assumptions, but making assumptions is sometimes the smart thing to do when creating something new. If we'd all taken your 'sober' attitude, Linux would have died out years ago.
Russia broke down the old system, but with nothing to replace it, oligarchs and crime lords took over and people have generally been worse off than under communism. Likewise, the American attempt to knock down Iraq has proven to be misguided, since they had no plan for what was going to follow it. Destroying the old order is easy. Building the new one is what's hard. China's changing, but in a stepwise evolutionary fashion rather than an all-at-once revolutionary fashion.
Very insightful. And as your post is pretty much in line with a developmental model of change, and you see past the simpler dogmatic categorizing of "communism" and "capitalism", you may also be interested in Spiral Dynamics theory--it fleshes out more what you're talking about.
it is a FLAW, a big, huge, honking flaw the designers and their apologists steadfastly refuse to admit, probably for reasons of pride and irrational fandom.
One button is a flaw only if you prefer more than one button. I prefer just one button and at one time I used to use a puck with four buttons.
I'm sure there are lots of good reasons why you prefer two buttons.
You also have to take into account the studies that show that the sun it getting hotter, due to maturity.
Well, wouldn't that mean that global dimming was even more powerful? Recall that the rate of pan-evaporation has been going down. Or is that what you meant?
Where were those studies performed? I'm presuming that they were taken near very large cities with dense smog - not at the practical locations, which of course would be out in remote rural areas.
It's global. They've been measuring the pan-evaporation rate, a simple and reliable method that's been used for decades, and found that the pan-evaporation rate has been going down for 30 years. This has been found out on Australian farms, in Europe, Russia, USA, etc. The main thing that affects evaporation is sunlight.
After 9/11, a scientist who was curious about the effects of contrails checked the daily maximum and minimum temperatures fro N.America, and found that on account of the absence of planes in the following days, with the skies clear of contrails, the min-max temperature range shifted a whole degree--usually it shifts only very slowly, indicating that contrails alone were responsible for reflecting significant amounts of sunlight.
They did a major survey of some islands off of India, where the northern islands get the pollution from India blown across them, while the southern islands are out of the path of the pollution. So it's not just a question of "dense urban areas". The air borne particles travel a long way. They found something like 20% difference between the light on the north and south of the islands.
What's staggering about global dimming is that different researchers in different parts of the world have come to the same conclusion based on data collected using different kinds of experiments. In each kind of experiment, the trend was the same.
They think that the North African drought that has claimed millions of lives was due to global dimming shifting the rain belt. And they are worried that India's monsoons will be affected too, potentially threatening the food of a billion people.
I just hope it's not true. The trouble is that the Earth should be warmer already were it not for reflecting 10-30% of sunlight back into space.
I still believe it was the right thing to go in and allow the people in Iraq to create their own government.
Saddam was evil. And, Iraq is not a country. Iraq is a map drawn up by a British official. The land includes at least three distinct tribes. They are not united. Recall the history of other nations that required a process of unification? Even Saddam's predecessor gave each tribe much autonomy in laws and weapons.
Iraq is not one people. It is a very old land. And it's people have been there a long time, as separate tribes.
Democratic elections are a just way to elect a leader for "we the people". But what happens when there are three peoples? (Consider what if USA, Mexico and Canada had to elect a single leader together?) The real situation on the ground in Iraq is three tribes that believe and live separate identities. USA and Western Europe have had a long history of integrating different peoples into one people. This has not yet happened in the lands we collectively call "Iraq".
What will happen with elections in Iraq? In a winner take all system, only one tribe will be seen to win. Meanwhile the Kurds continue to demand their own state. Why should they not have it? It's better to be a united country if you are actually a united people. Then the life and spirit of the country can become a real force in it's own right. But if the lands are divided into tribes, each wanting it's own autonomy, how are you going to change these people? With brutal oppression?
i don't think you really understand human nature on a fundamental level, the good, the bad, and the ugly. i think you have a picture of human behavior in your mind that doesn't match with real human behavior. your depiction of of the problem that ocnfronts the us after 9/11 seems to be a very, very naive one.
Human nature has evolved from more barbaric, lawless, and dangerous times, to more ordered, socially responsible, religious times, to more individualistic, prosperity seeking "professional" and rational eras. We are not all barbarians. If we were then you'd have to admit that you are a barbarian and as such a terrorist thug at heart. So human nature has evolved. It has. We are generally better people today that we were a thousand or 10 thousand years ago. We ended slavery. We gave women equal rights. Human nature has evolved.
Bearing this in mind, not every part of the world had managed to develop at the same rate. Sometimes conditions are too harsh and regions are stuck in older more barbaric mind sets. Sometimes this is just because that's the best way to survive in those places. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm basically agreeing with you that yes, the liberal rosy tinted idea that the terrorists are just reacting to the bad stuff we did to them is pretty naive. The trouble is, to be accurate, is that a bunch of barbarians got pissed off with us You see, barbarians need someone to fight.
Now I'm not saying that the whole Middle East is like that. We have barbarians of our own, living in our city slums. They can be found everywhere. But generally the majority of the developed world is at least at the "law and order" stage of development. Some parts of the world, like Afghanistan, are still in the lawless levels, where you maintain the social order by taking bloody revenge. So yeah, there are "bad" people out there. I don't agree with the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" relativistic argument. It ignores that terrorists may actually be barbaric. And then some terrorists are more civilized than others--perhaps only attacking military targets. While others are more barbaric and evil and target civilians and dance on their graves. Again, it about the level that the people are at.
So yes, America needs to defend itself. And what is the best defense? The Bush rhetoric about "bringing terrorists to justice" is just naive and silly. You can't subjugate the millions of people throughout the world who are living in the dark ages and who could easily become terrorists. It only takes a handful to create a disaster. No matter how big you are you will suffer death by a hundred bee stings.
The US has to listen to the rest of the world like it listens to the weather channel to find out when a storm is likely. You have to understand the processes at work in the world. This notion that you can just go after a few organizations, after they've bombed you, and "bring 'em to justice" is facile. You will win no war doing that. Osama is still out there. Plenty are ready to take his place. They have been around for decades. It's not about a few figureheads. It's about the world forces and trends that bring forth these events.
Now you often hear people moan about how America should just back off and stop interfering and that like, that'll make us all live in peace. Yeah right. As you've said, that view is naive. But what's also naive is the idea that America can just kick a few countries into line by forcing regime change. Oh sure it looks big and tough, it looks like America is really "doing something". But what counts is results. America is not doing anything in the Middle East that's going to move those people out of their tribalistic ways. Iraq for Crist's sake is just a map that some British official drew up. It was never "unified" It is not one people. It's practically three different countries. But Americans think that giving them Democracy is going to improve their way of life. Such finery is only relevant once you have some security in the country. A
One thing to bear in mind with these sorts of bits of research is that there's the assumption that because a difference is found in the brain, then the brain must be the cause of the person's orientation. It's a subtle assumption but it overlooks an important distinction. Namely, what if the person's orientation and the change in the brain simply arise together?
We don't assume that it's the "smiling face" that causes the person's "state of happiness", but rather that smiling and being happy simply happen together. Indeed some people would find the notion that to make yourself happy you should just smile more is a bit odd and simplistic.
Likewise the idea that anything that the brain does must be causing the mental state of the person may seem a bit odd, because we then wonder whether we have any free will? But what if the brain changes along with our conscious intentions. Just like when you feel in love, your brain chemistry is changing. But is it that your brain chemistry is the cause of the "being in love" ? "Honey, I don't love you, it's just some chemicals messing with my brain" ?
Perhaps people who lean more towards conservative values and those who lean more towards liberal values really do have different things happening in their brains, and possibly if the person gradually and consciously starts to change their values then the brain will reflect that and change also.
Well, I think you have to be really really good at Aikido for it to be effective. It's very technical, and if a joint lock isn't applied properly it's fairly useless.
Having said that, there's a lot of "avoidance" work, and I imagine it can help your reflexes for getting out of the way if you're attacked.
Hey, that's absolutely wonderful for YOU. For it to be forced upon me as another way to bring up morale and productivity in the workplace?
Swimming, hiking, camping, and listening to music are my ways to relieve stress and bring up my productivity.
I hate sitting in one place basically doing nothing for more than 5 mins.
I agree that enforcing this stuff is pretty pointless. It takes inner motivation.
As for it's effectiveness, I'd add that swimming and hiking primarally work with the body, and so as you well know, you are getting the body based benefits. More energy, more relaxed, more vigour.
But these body things don't really touch on the mind that much. As you say, you can't stand sitting still for 5 minutes, and that's exactly one of the first things that anyone trying meditation is going to find. It drives them (and me) nuts. And that's why it's an exercise worth doing. It's the first hurdle. The mind just won't sit still. The mind wants to keep firing away with thoughts and impulses and so on. And you don't experience this barrier when you go swimming... although other hurdles come up there... it's a different barrier. Can I start to be present enough to just observe the mind's contents? -- Even if those contents are about how I want to kill someone and I hear the phone ringing and I'm getting real hungry and my knee is hurting and who is my wife seeing and why the new Matrix sux and why am I in this crummy job and does the woman at work fancy me and where did I loose the keys and I hope it doesn't rain today and will my boss give me a raise and... and...
Meditation is an exercise for training your consciousness like swimming is an exercise for training the body. It's not just about focus... Watching TV is a focussed activity, but it doesn't make you more conscious.
Meditation is more about being a witness of the mind and not being a puppet of it's whims.
This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Yeah, and Michelangelo threw buckets of dirt and paint at an easel just so he could have enough money to make real art.
I heard from an art guide that Michelangelo went round smashing many of his statues at the end of his life because he finally became so disgusted with the Church and it's abusive power (the Church had commissioned his work).
They always say that men do one task quicker, but women are better at handling multiple tasks.
As a result of this scientific study I say.
Macs are from Mars
Windows is from Venus!
Heh. But you reversed them. Venus is where women come from.
That's it. Reuters is being sued over something very much like calling an unlisted direct phone number inside some company. How they got the phone number is, well, irrelevant.
am curious how it compares to the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series in that does it have a story arc and continuity between each episode?
Compared to B5, Stargate doesn't have as rich a story arc. It's not as grand either. For example, in B5 you have all the Mimbari religious beliefs which they take very seriously, and much later (I forget which season) you discover that the founder was actually a human, genetically changed by the Vorlons and sent back in time 1000 years using the Great Machine aboard the B4 station (which mysteriously disappeared years ago) to help the Mimbari fight the first Shadow war.
Although, for my tastes, some of the "big answers" in B5 were a bit of a letdown. Like, the Shadows and Vorlons, advanced races that are a million years old, one as evil as the other is wise, with undefeatable technology, turn out to be just two divorced parents arguing over how to raise the children and using the children as pawns in their little spat.
Still, the death of Sheridan, and the episodes set in the far future were brilliant ideas and touching.
So you won't see any of that richness or complexity in Stargate. In the latter it's just good guys and bad guys. The system lords are just dumb arrogant war-lords who ride around the universe in stupid looking ships which despite being full of amazing technology, let themselves be captured and killed by a couple of humans with C4.
But then Stargate doesn't forget that it's a TV show, and meant to be fun. You won't see the "meaningful" tone of B5 on this show, which after watching avery episode of B5, is something of a relief.
But Stargate does give some depth to the characters feelings for each other, and it's here that the continuity is mostly seen. They are a group who have a good heart and help each other out a lot. They also save Earth a lot... but that's just because it's sci-fi.
OTOH, B5's characters changed a lot, especially those that through all their Machiavellian manipulations ended up transcended Good and Evil, becoming Greatness.
The other thing about Stargate as compared to ST, is that there's no counsellor Troy, no Neelix. I'd rather have dinner with a carrion eater than be in the cafeteria with Neelix looming over my plate.
Slashdot Mirror
They "explain" it using a hypothesis. And yes, the 800 year lag doesn't disprove that CO2 traps heat, but then, their hypothesis doesn't prove that it traps all the heat needed for that further 4200 year warming. Instead, consider a simpler hypothesis, namely that whatever caused the initial 800 year warming, also caused most of the subsequent 4200 year warming. Otherwise, why else would temperatures eventually drop while CO2 remained high?
But in those records the CO2 increases lag temperature increases by 800 years. So which causes which? Climatologists answer this by claiming that some unknown process starts the warming, and then, 800 years later, CO2 comes in and acts as a feedback to cause further warming. That's a rather murky explanation.
Mankind is contributing to this change. There is disagreement about how much, but don't be fooled - we are having an impact, and why shouldn't we? There are six billion of us, and rapidly growing.
This is the thing you see, we know we have an impact. Ever since man started making tools and having an advantage over other animals, we've been making an impact. The very specific question is, how does CO2 affect the environment and how much of it is being created by us? For example, water vapor is not considered a "forcing". There is a reasoned argument why it's not considered a forcing, which spells out why, despite water being present in much larger quantities than CO2, and it absorbing in sometimes similar and sometimes different ways to CO2, water is not a forcing. There is also a reasoned argument as to why it is that the sun's output is not a forcing on the environment. The sun's output has increased over hundreds of millions of years by 20%. This would imply that hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth should have been a snowball, and yet it wasn't. Again, there are reasoned arguments as to why the Earth has managed to remain pretty similar over that time, despite the sun, and why our input of CO2 is now going to tip us into catastrophic change. The point is that all these reasoned arguments may be missing something, that there may be additional hidden feedback systems that we as yet don't understand, and in point of fact, can we make any reasoned estimates as to how big or small these hidden systems may be?
I don't think *some* scientists *speculating* is quite comparable to the vast *majority* of scientists testifying as to actual *data.* But hey, believe what you want.
I've been trying to get a better idea about what the nature of the consensus is, at least beyond what's reported in the media. And a bit of reading is bringing up some disturbing issues. The IPCC "summarised" the consensus view in a more confident and certain way, a way that isn't supported if you read the whole report in detail. There's also questions around the methodology in the data, particularly the so called "proxies" where you get a tree to tell you what the temperature was a thousand years ago, and somehow do this by ignoring the changes in other variables like moisture, that also affect growth. Scientists "hand pick" certain sets of tree data because they think these are the ones that accurately reflect temperature, while ignoring others. And I couldn't tell you how they *do* that. Then there's the statistical techniques which some statisticians and mathematicians claim are being misused. Tree growth is non linear, but the stats methods being applied assume linearity. Also some of the stats methods actually mine the data for "trends"; they don't just take averages. They also splice together different portions of different data sets, and all this goes undocumented, making reproducing the studies near impossible. But what you do get to see at the end of it is a pretty graph that makes our current temperature seem abnormal. Meanwhile modern satellite data (not trees) is showing a small modest temperature increase across the globe, which may be consistent with the fact that we're still coming out of an ice age.
Thanks! That's seriously the most intelligent comment I've read lately.
By 'humanist' he's probably referring to the person-centrered approach, where you put the person in the middle, as it were, and affirm that the person is perfectly ok as they are, and rather than imposing some method or system onto them, you look at what their own desires, needs and preferences are, and work to fit those when designing a machine interface.
However, there was an article recently by some interface guru saying that this approach hasn't really worked with computers, and that at the end of the day, people are naturally able to learn and adapt. We learn to drive cars, we learn to operate washing machines and toaster and all sorts of machines. So rather than worry about making the computer adapt to the human, let the computer be the best tool it can be, and let the human learn and adapt to use it. Don't take the sharp bits off the saw because sharp bits are not friendly to humans--let the saw have sharp bits because it's in the nature of the tool to work that way.
I think the latter approach might be more interesting. We've tried to use the GUI to "intuitively" show the user what to do, but frankly this only worked when you had like a dozen tool icons to pick from. Software now has so many features, so many file formats, so many protocols and stuff, that GUIs are just really complex. So what if there's a button for everything? Most people can't find the buttons because there so many layers to the GUI. People thought it would be easy because you could just "press a button", whereas a lot of the power is in scripting and modeling stuff.
We're stuck with bazillions of Word documents because we wanted to make the computer "natural" like typing a letter. Now with web pages we're desperately trying to get back to some semblance of meaningful and structured content, which unsurprisingly is going to be too complicated to setup for the average Word user.
Perhaps if we'd started by teaching people how to think about and organise information using a computer, we'd be further along today. Computers might cost more, but they might be used in smarter ways?
Indeed. Consider how the human brain has had pretty much the same number of neurons for hundreds of thousands of years. Our modern intelligence is more than just raw processing power.
every time I read research that talks about "mixins" I cringe. it's like people are oblivious to the fact that they are trying to place a theory on a hack (a "mixin" is a hack developed at Symbolics for fudging with object inheritance... talk about hacks upon hacks). read enough research and it all begins to look like orwellian doublespeak. people write about things in a manner that suggests decades of research and a fundamental property of nature has been discovered. in reality they are merely inventing meaning and connections between overloaded symbols that others before them invented. a tower of babel indeed.
All I can add is that at college I took Architecture (buildings) and while I program only as a hobby, to me programming looks a lot like how you do a building, ie. you make stuff up in order to get some fudged and imperfect, but nonetheless practical benefit.
Architects have a vocabulary for describing "design patterns" (based on an architecture book about Italian towns--funny that) and it can be very clever and insightful, but it's not a science, it's more intuition and imagination. Like composing music, that sort of thing. So I've never understood the term "software engineer".
You have a good point. I'l say that as your post got modded Troll. While I liked most of the GOOFUS/GALLANT story, the damming part is this:
Say I'm ill and see a doctor, and then I go get a second opinion and also a third. If they all agree that just means that no individual is wrong. But they could still all be collectively wrong. It could simply be that the science isn't advanced enough yet. And a way to advance science is to challenge it and try to prove accepted theories wrong.
So it's disingenuous to appeal to scientific consensus as a test of whether someone is a good scientist. It starts to verge on beliefs and accepted dogmas, as you say.
Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun? What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous? What happened to that soliton wave technology that was supposed to replace warp drive but would have made a dandy weapon? On two or three occasions we've seen technology that could destabilize stars! I've lost count of the number of near omnipotent races the Federation has run into--- lessee, the Metroids, the Organians, Trellane's parents, Charlie X's guardians, the spinning ball of that loved anguish, V'ger, Q's people, the Doud, the Traveler, the Cythereans... what about them?
Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest.
Amen.
I prefer and admire a sci-fi show where the universe is fantastic but consistent. For me that's what puts the "science" into the "fiction". Otherwise it becomes arbitrary and fairy-magic like; stuff just happens because it's in the script.
My main gripe about Space 1999 was the way the moon travelled, nay, drifted dozens of lightyears between episodes. But one of the things I loved most about it was the design of the Eagles; everything looked like it was there for a reason. It was so well done as a ship that you can actually spot the one mistake, which is that the command module's floor is higher when viewing the model from the outside, but appears level in interior shots. But again, the fact that you can build the model and spot the discrepancy is just great.
My favorite to date in terms of creating a consistent multi-layered universe is Babylon 5. Ok, ok, it has it's dire aspects--long meaningful speeches in lifts about generals who wanted to be painters--but the universe had rules and if you blew up a jump gate then that had specific tactical implications.
The same bits of alien tech kept coming back in different stories for different purposes. Just like in the real world, someone could discover an ancient artifact, start to exploit it causing curious ethical issues, and factions would later find out about it and try to weaponise it, which could happen in secret until it was discovered via another plot line by different characters. All that could happen over the period of months.
B5 even managed to include telepathic powers as a specific ability while keeping specific boundaries on what telepaths were able to do without it getting too magical and arbitrary. Rather, they added a social and political dimension to it so it actually became an important part of the B5 universe.
In contrast, one of the most annoying aspects of Trek is the abuse of so called "time travel stories". Putting aside that philosophically I don't see how time travel is possible--there's no timeline anyhow, it's just an ever-changing present--and putting aside the questions about, well, if you can travel in time, how come you appear to be so limited and dumb in what you accomplish Mr. 28th Century man?--putting aside those two issues--the stories just end up feeling really hollow and sickly.
Apple is only alive in its current state of health today because they took a monetary injection from Microsoft
Really? Well, you probably didn't dwell on the point for brevity but I'd just like to expand that a little lest it become misleading.
According to this article the deal helped to deflect anti trust charges from Microsoft, as the deal included continuation of Office for Mac, and it was also a settlement over disputes with Apple, after MS stole Quicktime code.
The justification for hating Microsoft is just that, a justification for hating Microsoft.
Some people 'hate' Microsoft simply because they dominate using unethical methods and that dominance with their mediocre products threatens the existence of more ethical companies with better products. It's better to deal with an ethical company because then you're less likely to get burnt.
With respect to India doing this, they're falling for the idea that free beats paid and that the fine points of useability and logical sense and stability will sort themselves out on the backs of the adopters.
I agree that there are plenty of people who champion Linux to such a degree that they pretend it's always easier and better. However, I wouldn't be too unkind about that because that 'faith' serves a function; it helps keep the focus and momentum. Linux has great potential to go much much further.
But if we simply sit back and 'rationally' dismiss Linux because sound doesn't work properly, that would be a poor analysis for it ignores the vast potential.
You've criticised the making of assumptions, but making assumptions is sometimes the smart thing to do when creating something new. If we'd all taken your 'sober' attitude, Linux would have died out years ago.
Russia broke down the old system, but with nothing to replace it, oligarchs and crime lords took over and people have generally been worse off than under communism. Likewise, the American attempt to knock down Iraq has proven to be misguided, since they had no plan for what was going to follow it. Destroying the old order is easy. Building the new one is what's hard. China's changing, but in a stepwise evolutionary fashion rather than an all-at-once revolutionary fashion.
Very insightful. And as your post is pretty much in line with a developmental model of change, and you see past the simpler dogmatic categorizing of "communism" and "capitalism", you may also be interested in Spiral Dynamics theory--it fleshes out more what you're talking about.
it is a FLAW, a big, huge, honking flaw the designers and their apologists steadfastly refuse to admit, probably for reasons of pride and irrational fandom.
One button is a flaw only if you prefer more than one button. I prefer just one button and at one time I used to use a puck with four buttons.
I'm sure there are lots of good reasons why you prefer two buttons.
You also have to take into account the studies that show that the sun it getting hotter, due to maturity.
Well, wouldn't that mean that global dimming was even more powerful? Recall that the rate of pan-evaporation has been going down. Or is that what you meant?
Where were those studies performed? I'm presuming that they were taken near very large cities with dense smog - not at the practical locations, which of course would be out in remote rural areas.
It's global. They've been measuring the pan-evaporation rate, a simple and reliable method that's been used for decades, and found that the pan-evaporation rate has been going down for 30 years. This has been found out on Australian farms, in Europe, Russia, USA, etc. The main thing that affects evaporation is sunlight.
After 9/11, a scientist who was curious about the effects of contrails checked the daily maximum and minimum temperatures fro N.America, and found that on account of the absence of planes in the following days, with the skies clear of contrails, the min-max temperature range shifted a whole degree--usually it shifts only very slowly, indicating that contrails alone were responsible for reflecting significant amounts of sunlight.
They did a major survey of some islands off of India, where the northern islands get the pollution from India blown across them, while the southern islands are out of the path of the pollution. So it's not just a question of "dense urban areas". The air borne particles travel a long way. They found something like 20% difference between the light on the north and south of the islands.
What's staggering about global dimming is that different researchers in different parts of the world have come to the same conclusion based on data collected using different kinds of experiments. In each kind of experiment, the trend was the same.
They think that the North African drought that has claimed millions of lives was due to global dimming shifting the rain belt. And they are worried that India's monsoons will be affected too, potentially threatening the food of a billion people.
I just hope it's not true. The trouble is that the Earth should be warmer already were it not for reflecting 10-30% of sunlight back into space.
I still believe it was the right thing to go in and allow the people in Iraq to create their own government.
Saddam was evil. And, Iraq is not a country. Iraq is a map drawn up by a British official. The land includes at least three distinct tribes. They are not united. Recall the history of other nations that required a process of unification? Even Saddam's predecessor gave each tribe much autonomy in laws and weapons.
Iraq is not one people. It is a very old land. And it's people have been there a long time, as separate tribes.
Democratic elections are a just way to elect a leader for "we the people". But what happens when there are three peoples? (Consider what if USA, Mexico and Canada had to elect a single leader together?) The real situation on the ground in Iraq is three tribes that believe and live separate identities. USA and Western Europe have had a long history of integrating different peoples into one people. This has not yet happened in the lands we collectively call "Iraq".
What will happen with elections in Iraq? In a winner take all system, only one tribe will be seen to win. Meanwhile the Kurds continue to demand their own state. Why should they not have it? It's better to be a united country if you are actually a united people. Then the life and spirit of the country can become a real force in it's own right. But if the lands are divided into tribes, each wanting it's own autonomy, how are you going to change these people? With brutal oppression?
"We the people..."
i don't think you really understand human nature on a fundamental level, the good, the bad, and the ugly. i think you have a picture of human behavior in your mind that doesn't match with real human behavior. your depiction of of the problem that ocnfronts the us after 9/11 seems to be a very, very naive one.
Human nature has evolved from more barbaric, lawless, and dangerous times, to more ordered, socially responsible, religious times, to more individualistic, prosperity seeking "professional" and rational eras. We are not all barbarians. If we were then you'd have to admit that you are a barbarian and as such a terrorist thug at heart. So human nature has evolved. It has. We are generally better people today that we were a thousand or 10 thousand years ago. We ended slavery. We gave women equal rights. Human nature has evolved.
Bearing this in mind, not every part of the world had managed to develop at the same rate. Sometimes conditions are too harsh and regions are stuck in older more barbaric mind sets. Sometimes this is just because that's the best way to survive in those places. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm basically agreeing with you that yes, the liberal rosy tinted idea that the terrorists are just reacting to the bad stuff we did to them is pretty naive. The trouble is, to be accurate, is that a bunch of barbarians got pissed off with us You see, barbarians need someone to fight.
Now I'm not saying that the whole Middle East is like that. We have barbarians of our own, living in our city slums. They can be found everywhere. But generally the majority of the developed world is at least at the "law and order" stage of development. Some parts of the world, like Afghanistan, are still in the lawless levels, where you maintain the social order by taking bloody revenge. So yeah, there are "bad" people out there. I don't agree with the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" relativistic argument. It ignores that terrorists may actually be barbaric. And then some terrorists are more civilized than others--perhaps only attacking military targets. While others are more barbaric and evil and target civilians and dance on their graves. Again, it about the level that the people are at.
So yes, America needs to defend itself. And what is the best defense? The Bush rhetoric about "bringing terrorists to justice" is just naive and silly. You can't subjugate the millions of people throughout the world who are living in the dark ages and who could easily become terrorists. It only takes a handful to create a disaster. No matter how big you are you will suffer death by a hundred bee stings.
The US has to listen to the rest of the world like it listens to the weather channel to find out when a storm is likely. You have to understand the processes at work in the world. This notion that you can just go after a few organizations, after they've bombed you, and "bring 'em to justice" is facile. You will win no war doing that. Osama is still out there. Plenty are ready to take his place. They have been around for decades. It's not about a few figureheads. It's about the world forces and trends that bring forth these events.
Now you often hear people moan about how America should just back off and stop interfering and that like, that'll make us all live in peace. Yeah right. As you've said, that view is naive. But what's also naive is the idea that America can just kick a few countries into line by forcing regime change. Oh sure it looks big and tough, it looks like America is really "doing something". But what counts is results. America is not doing anything in the Middle East that's going to move those people out of their tribalistic ways. Iraq for Crist's sake is just a map that some British official drew up. It was never "unified" It is not one people. It's practically three different countries. But Americans think that giving them Democracy is going to improve their way of life. Such finery is only relevant once you have some security in the country. A
One thing to bear in mind with these sorts of bits of research is that there's the assumption that because a difference is found in the brain, then the brain must be the cause of the person's orientation. It's a subtle assumption but it overlooks an important distinction. Namely, what if the person's orientation and the change in the brain simply arise together?
We don't assume that it's the "smiling face" that causes the person's "state of happiness", but rather that smiling and being happy simply happen together. Indeed some people would find the notion that to make yourself happy you should just smile more is a bit odd and simplistic.
Likewise the idea that anything that the brain does must be causing the mental state of the person may seem a bit odd, because we then wonder whether we have any free will? But what if the brain changes along with our conscious intentions. Just like when you feel in love, your brain chemistry is changing. But is it that your brain chemistry is the cause of the "being in love" ? "Honey, I don't love you, it's just some chemicals messing with my brain" ?
Perhaps people who lean more towards conservative values and those who lean more towards liberal values really do have different things happening in their brains, and possibly if the person gradually and consciously starts to change their values then the brain will reflect that and change also.
Aikido. Let's face it, you're a geek
Well, I think you have to be really really good at Aikido for it to be effective. It's very technical, and if a joint lock isn't applied properly it's fairly useless.
Having said that, there's a lot of "avoidance" work, and I imagine it can help your reflexes for getting out of the way if you're attacked.
I agree that enforcing this stuff is pretty pointless. It takes inner motivation.
As for it's effectiveness, I'd add that swimming and hiking primarally work with the body, and so as you well know, you are getting the body based benefits. More energy, more relaxed, more vigour.
But these body things don't really touch on the mind that much. As you say, you can't stand sitting still for 5 minutes, and that's exactly one of the first things that anyone trying meditation is going to find. It drives them (and me) nuts. And that's why it's an exercise worth doing. It's the first hurdle. The mind just won't sit still. The mind wants to keep firing away with thoughts and impulses and so on. And you don't experience this barrier when you go swimming... although other hurdles come up there... it's a different barrier. Can I start to be present enough to just observe the mind's contents? -- Even if those contents are about how I want to kill someone and I hear the phone ringing and I'm getting real hungry and my knee is hurting and who is my wife seeing and why the new Matrix sux and why am I in this crummy job and does the woman at work fancy me and where did I loose the keys and I hope it doesn't rain today and will my boss give me a raise and... and ...
Meditation is an exercise for training your consciousness like swimming is an exercise for training the body. It's not just about focus... Watching TV is a focussed activity, but it doesn't make you more conscious.
Meditation is more about being a witness of the mind and not being a puppet of it's whims.
PS. This is Slashdot and I'm not an expert.
I know we're talking, but it feels like I'm having an out-of-body experience, and you're looking straight at me.
Maybe I shouldn't reply to sigs, but are you referring to something like this: On Having No Head ?
Yeah, and Michelangelo threw buckets of dirt and paint at an easel just so he could have enough money to make real art.
I heard from an art guide that Michelangelo went round smashing many of his statues at the end of his life because he finally became so disgusted with the Church and it's abusive power (the Church had commissioned his work).
(I think there's a parallel in there somewhere.)
They always say that men do one task quicker, but women are better at handling multiple tasks. As a result of this scientific study I say. Macs are from Mars Windows is from Venus!
Heh. But you reversed them. Venus is where women come from.
That's it. Reuters is being sued over something very much like calling an unlisted direct phone number inside some company. How they got the phone number is, well, irrelevant.
Probably the best summary and analogy.
am curious how it compares to the Star Trek and Babylon 5 series in that does it have a story arc and continuity between each episode?
Compared to B5, Stargate doesn't have as rich a story arc. It's not as grand either. For example, in B5 you have all the Mimbari religious beliefs which they take very seriously, and much later (I forget which season) you discover that the founder was actually a human, genetically changed by the Vorlons and sent back in time 1000 years using the Great Machine aboard the B4 station (which mysteriously disappeared years ago) to help the Mimbari fight the first Shadow war.
Although, for my tastes, some of the "big answers" in B5 were a bit of a letdown. Like, the Shadows and Vorlons, advanced races that are a million years old, one as evil as the other is wise, with undefeatable technology, turn out to be just two divorced parents arguing over how to raise the children and using the children as pawns in their little spat.
Still, the death of Sheridan, and the episodes set in the far future were brilliant ideas and touching.
So you won't see any of that richness or complexity in Stargate. In the latter it's just good guys and bad guys. The system lords are just dumb arrogant war-lords who ride around the universe in stupid looking ships which despite being full of amazing technology, let themselves be captured and killed by a couple of humans with C4.
But then Stargate doesn't forget that it's a TV show, and meant to be fun. You won't see the "meaningful" tone of B5 on this show, which after watching avery episode of B5, is something of a relief.
But Stargate does give some depth to the characters feelings for each other, and it's here that the continuity is mostly seen. They are a group who have a good heart and help each other out a lot. They also save Earth a lot... but that's just because it's sci-fi.
OTOH, B5's characters changed a lot, especially those that through all their Machiavellian manipulations ended up transcended Good and Evil, becoming Greatness.
The other thing about Stargate as compared to ST, is that there's no counsellor Troy, no Neelix. I'd rather have dinner with a carrion eater than be in the cafeteria with Neelix looming over my plate.