>And if you are not into preventative like eating right, exercising >and whatnot, you are indeed a higher risk to insure and should >pay a higher premium in my opinion.
I agree. There is a lot of research that suggests that vegetarian diets are healthier than meat-based diets. So, people who refuse to become vegetarians should be paying higher health insurance premiums.
I am not sure if Wired has ever been credible. I read it for a while in the mid-90s, not long after it started up, and it was not a reliable source of information even then. I have no idea what Wired is like now, but my early experiences with it were not good.
Yes, the accretion rate should be included too. A quick Google gives a terrestrial accretion rate of about 4 x 10^7 kg/year at present. That is about 0.01% of the claimed rate of loss of genetic material, which is not enough to save the Earth from blowing away in the Solar wind. The number in the original post just does not add up.
This sounds unlikely. The mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kg. If Earth is losing 2 x 10^12 kg of material every day then the Earth would lose all of its mass in about eight billion years, and this assumes that all of the material being lost is the genetic material.
>>"Comets could be the most significant impact hazard to Earth >Just what are the "other" impact hazards? I'm very curious about >this.
Asteroids are the other impact threat. There is also a small risk from man-made space junk. The biggest threat is comets because they tend to be moving far faster than asteroids typically do (near parabolic orbits vs low-eccentricity elliptical orbits), so the kinetic energy in a comet impact can be much higher than in an asteroid impact. Another problem with comets is that they can come at us from the direction of the Sun, so it can be very hard to detect them before the impact shockwave turns us to jelly.
Gas taxes in the US are not high enough to pay the annual costs of the US road system. The rest of the money for maintaining our roads comes from general revenue.
That "clip" takes Ms May's comment badly out of context. There are many problems with the current leader of the Green Party, but this is comment is not one of them. It is amazing what one can mash up with a bit of video editing software.
>Without a seat in parliament, I'm going to go out on a limb and >say effectively none.
The main influence that the Green Party has is that they tend to act as a bit of an anchor to stop the NDP from drifting too far away from a reasonable environmental policy. Many of the people who vote Green used to vote NDP, so the New Democrats are somewhat aware that they need to make an effort to stop more of their base from migrating to the Green Party.
I suspect that the first attempts at agriculture were probably ad hoc gardens of medicinal plants. It would not surprise me if this was happening 20,000 or more years. I would also not be surprised if Neanderthals were doing it too. However, I agree that it is very unlikely that either species were practicing anything even vaguely resembling modern agriculture during the Ice Age.
I recently heard a theory that humans may have had small-scale agriculture long before the neolithic revolution, but that it occurred on such a small scale that it did not significantly affect human culture. The idea is that agriculture did not catch on before about 8000 BC because the world's climate was not suitable for sustained agriculture. Year to year variations were much larger than they are now, which could have made it impossible to sustain communities based on agriculture.
I am not sure what to make of this. It's a radical hypothesis, and very hard to prove or disprove. One strike against it is that there is no archaeological evidence. However, if mesolithic agriculture was small-scale enough, and intermittent enough, there may be no evidence of it left.
Myths can live a long time. We have stories in our culture whose origins date back five thousand years, and perhaps more. It is possible that the European stories of trolls and ogres came from the days when humans and Neanderthals both use to live in Europe. We will never know if this is the case, but the possibility can not be completely ruled out.
Most people live fairly close to major cities. The majority of the US population lives within commuting distance of a major populate centre. Isolated rural areas are common, but they don't contain a lot of people.
>China's space weapons destroy 99% of the nukes before they >reach their targets.
China does not have this capability. Even the US does not have this capability. In fact, it is highly unlikely that that anyone is going to have this capability for decades.
>The whole problem with terrorism is that it's just too damn easy. >People spook too easily.
That is not correct. Historically terrorism has not been very successful, because people tend not to spook. The classic example is the IRA's campaign in the 1970s. Bombs were set off in British cities and people died. For the most part, however, the population did not spook or panic and all the IRA accomplished was to discredit themselves. There are many other examples. If anything, the US response to the attacks of 11 Sep 2001 was an anomaly, and it is questionable how successful it has been.
>Actually, Bananatree3 is right: we are the only species that >destroy our own world and lead other species to extinction
That's not really correct. Rats did as much damage to the ecology of Easter Island as humans did, which led to extinctions on the island. Goats are notorious for stripping areas bare of food. Cats have driven some species of birds to extinction. Humans are very good at wiping out other species, but we are not alone in doing it.
Evolution is a mathematical concept that can be applied to physical and biological (and other) systems. Saying that evolution is false is a lot like saying that optimization is false, or that group theory is false.
>We switched to digital TV long ago in Finland (Honestly, I can't >understand how you guys in the promised land of TV can be so >far behind in this matter.
My experience, from living in various countries, is that the US is generally a bit behind the curve when it comes to consumer electronics technology, such as tv. We do tend to have more interesting things to watch on our tvs though.
More precisely, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity postulates that a uniform gravitational field is equivalent to a uniform acceleration. They are not the same thing, they are just indistinguishable.
And she is absolutely right, one can see Russia from the Diomede Islands. However, those are a long way from her house. Palin said lots of moronic things, but the "I can see Russia from my house" comment was not one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
And walking is healthier for you than driving is, so people who own cars should be paying higher health insurance rates than people who do not.
>And if you are not into preventative like eating right, exercising
>and whatnot, you are indeed a higher risk to insure and should
>pay a higher premium in my opinion.
I agree. There is a lot of research that suggests that vegetarian diets are healthier than meat-based diets. So, people who refuse to become vegetarians should be paying higher health insurance premiums.
I am not sure if Wired has ever been credible. I read it for a while in the mid-90s, not long after it started up, and it was not a reliable source of information even then. I have no idea what Wired is like now, but my early experiences with it were not good.
>>as soon as os x for all pc comes out M$ will be carping there
>>pants.
>Why would MS put a fish in their pants?
Don't knock it until you try it.
Yes, the accretion rate should be included too. A quick Google gives a terrestrial accretion rate of about 4 x 10^7 kg/year at present. That is about 0.01% of the claimed rate of loss of genetic material, which is not enough to save the Earth from blowing away in the Solar wind. The number in the original post just does not add up.
This sounds unlikely. The mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kg. If Earth is losing 2 x 10^12 kg of material every day then the Earth would lose all of its mass in about eight billion years, and this assumes that all of the material being lost is the genetic material.
>>"Comets could be the most significant impact hazard to Earth
>Just what are the "other" impact hazards? I'm very curious about
>this.
Asteroids are the other impact threat. There is also a small risk from man-made space junk. The biggest threat is comets because they tend to be moving far faster than asteroids typically do (near parabolic orbits vs low-eccentricity elliptical orbits), so the kinetic energy in a comet impact can be much higher than in an asteroid impact. Another problem with comets is that they can come at us from the direction of the Sun, so it can be very hard to detect them before the impact shockwave turns us to jelly.
What's more important, someone's working conditions, or access to cheap electronics?
Gas taxes in the US are not high enough to pay the annual costs of the US road system. The rest of the money for maintaining our roads comes from general revenue.
That "clip" takes Ms May's comment badly out of context. There are many problems with the current leader of the Green Party, but this is comment is not one of them. It is amazing what one can mash up with a bit of video editing software.
>Without a seat in parliament, I'm going to go out on a limb and
>say effectively none.
The main influence that the Green Party has is that they tend to act as a bit of an anchor to stop the NDP from drifting too far away from a reasonable environmental policy. Many of the people who vote Green used to vote NDP, so the New Democrats are somewhat aware that they need to make an effort to stop more of their base from migrating to the Green Party.
I suspect that the first attempts at agriculture were probably ad hoc gardens of medicinal plants. It would not surprise me if this was happening 20,000 or more years. I would also not be surprised if Neanderthals were doing it too. However, I agree that it is very unlikely that either species were practicing anything even vaguely resembling modern agriculture during the Ice Age.
I recently heard a theory that humans may have had small-scale agriculture long before the neolithic revolution, but that it occurred on such a small scale that it did not significantly affect human culture. The idea is that agriculture did not catch on before about 8000 BC because the world's climate was not suitable for sustained agriculture. Year to year variations were much larger than they are now, which could have made it impossible to sustain communities based on agriculture.
I am not sure what to make of this. It's a radical hypothesis, and very hard to prove or disprove. One strike against it is that there is no archaeological evidence. However, if mesolithic agriculture was small-scale enough, and intermittent enough, there may be no evidence of it left.
Myths can live a long time. We have stories in our culture whose origins date back five thousand years, and perhaps more. It is possible that the European stories of trolls and ogres came from the days when humans and Neanderthals both use to live in Europe. We will never know if this is the case, but the possibility can not be completely ruled out.
Most people live fairly close to major cities. The majority of the US population lives within commuting distance of a major populate centre. Isolated rural areas are common, but they don't contain a lot of people.
>China's space weapons destroy 99% of the nukes before they
>reach their targets.
China does not have this capability. Even the US does not have this capability. In fact, it is highly unlikely that that anyone is going to have this capability for decades.
>The whole problem with terrorism is that it's just too damn easy.
>People spook too easily.
That is not correct. Historically terrorism has not been very successful, because people tend not to spook. The classic example is the IRA's campaign in the 1970s. Bombs were set off in British cities and people died. For the most part, however, the population did not spook or panic and all the IRA accomplished was to discredit themselves. There are many other examples. If anything, the US response to the attacks of 11 Sep 2001 was an anomaly, and it is questionable how successful it has been.
>Yesterday you rant about giving up too much piracy, today you >rant about them not being readable?
If I give up too much piracy then how will I find out about new music? Also, I prefer pirates who can read so that they will get the tags right.
>Actually, Bananatree3 is right: we are the only species that
>destroy our own world and lead other species to extinction
That's not really correct. Rats did as much damage to the ecology of Easter Island as humans did, which led to extinctions on the island. Goats are notorious for stripping areas bare of food. Cats have driven some species of birds to extinction. Humans are very good at wiping out other species, but we are not alone in doing it.
>Wrong. Evolution is false.
Evolution is a mathematical concept that can be applied to physical and biological (and other) systems. Saying that evolution is false is a lot like saying that optimization is false, or that group theory is false.
No, but this serious-looking fellow is asking where you are.
>The real solution is to stop voting for incumbents. Nothing's
>going to change until we get rid of career politicians.
We tried that in 1996. It did not work very well.
>We switched to digital TV long ago in Finland (Honestly, I can't
>understand how you guys in the promised land of TV can be so
>far behind in this matter.
My experience, from living in various countries, is that the US is generally a bit behind the curve when it comes to consumer electronics technology, such as tv. We do tend to have more interesting things to watch on our tvs though.
More precisely, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity postulates that a uniform gravitational field is equivalent to a uniform acceleration. They are not the same thing, they are just indistinguishable.
And she is absolutely right, one can see Russia from the Diomede Islands. However, those are a long way from her house. Palin said lots of moronic things, but the "I can see Russia from my house" comment was not one of them.