You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Well, yes, except that, killing nonbelievers, Islam excepted, hasn't really been a factor in Western civilization except for maybe a short period from the dark ages through the 30 Years War. Before that, wars were generally fought for plunder, as, indeed, wars after that were fought for plunder as well. Nazism is sort of the ultimate proof that you don't need a Godlike God to go and destroy other people. They did it using a hopped up form of social Darwinism as their shtick. And Communism certainly didn't have a God complex either, but, there's plenty of dead in that shtick's wake...
So yes, removing God from the equation accomplishes nothing.
Such individuals are clearly in the minority. Their opinion does not change the fact that the theory of evolution makes no statements whatsoever regarding the existence or nature of any deities.
It's a heck of a minority though, Dawkins comes to mind.
It does matter. Dismissing a "God" who demands human sacrifice, for example, could arguably improve human society.
Theoretically, not that I've been playing too much Rise of Nations and Age of Empires, the God whose people had the most villagers would ultimately win, assuming he withstood the rush strategies of other Gods.
This may shock everyone, but, he has said so in several interviews and books that he leads towards Democrats. He used to golf with Bill Clinton. Has he ever even been photographed with George Bush? I don't think so. Indeed, Gate more or less acts like a fairly progressive robber baron of old - ruthless in business, but having an enormous and positive impact on the world through his charitable foundations.
Also, stop calling Perens a Kook. That's MY territory, Mister!
I do not see how this is, in any way, an "evolutionary topic". The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever regarding the subject of deities.
There are those in the evolutionary camp that would argue that science displaces the need for God, and therefor, science itself should assume the social role of determining moral values.
To which "God", out of the thousans of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that particular deity to the exclusion of all others?
It doesn't matter, it's really, which ever one wins.
I do not see that one does need to do this at all. "Better adapted" is itself a relative condition, and there is no means to judge any one species as "fundamentally better" than another in an absolute sense.
I disagree with that. Take two people and put them in a pool and tell them to swim laps. One will last longer than the other, and is better.
You could, concievably, with more work, evolve a mathematical metric that values all of a person's probable contributions to society, and arrive at an empiracle definition of who is better. Of course, the definition would change over time as society evolves. That's why some people are paid more than others - in a free enterprise system, the masses of people decide who is better with their wallets, and in a socialist system, it's a committee. If there is no God, can you admit that you are a loser for not having a billion dollars? Can I? Boy, that's a tough, tough pill to swallow.
The flipside of the evolutionary topic is, well, what if we just say there is no God and move on? Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition.
Consider, why does one need to foolishly accept that a better adapted emergent species is not fundamentally better than a less adapted one? It's one thing to argue, correctly, that fossils form an evolutionary chain or that, we can witness the evolution of bacteria in near real time, but then to make the argument that because something is not as well adapted smacks of political correctness designed to avoid the obvious conclusion, that if some beings are better adapted than others, than humans must be too, and there ought to be scientifically determinable markers to measure which humans are better or which are worse. If we think macroscopically, we could also conclude that a culture forms an organism of sorts and different cultures evolve as well, with some naturally and deservedly displacing others, or, some others breeding weakness into a culture by virtue of exchange of information...
Not that I would ever troll, if there is no God, what is actually wrong with Western domination of the world, or, in particular, the American invasion of Iraq and its goals to inject Democracy into the middle east. If it works, then, would that not prove American Democracy was superior, especially considering that only 130,000 soldiers are tasked to correct a nation of some 25 millions, and, if so, then, wouldn't it simply be as natural as one strain of bacteria emerging that is better adapted to say, penicillin, than another?
IMO you are confusing science with that particular kind of optimistic technology that led to the fantastic slogan of "better living through chemistry", among other things.
Ah, but here's the catch: Either the whole point of science is to learn how to make new technology or it is not. If it is, then you have to have faith that living to be 1000 and having flying cars makes humanity "better". If is not, you have to have that science has some worth for its aesthetic value. In both cases, faith is required, and, only in the former case, is science really fundamentally different from churchgoing, because, science can be proven to be useful.
I clutch my stomach feverishly, the M13 virus is making batteries inside of my intestines. Must pass gas... must find bathroom, electric matter drops out, too late.... the current surges, my heart beats out of control wildly... I die of the M13 virus on a toilet with battery goop coming out of my ass.
I like your idea of drilling a core. Sounds like a worthwhile exercise to me. I'm not sure it will answer your question though
Thank you. At least it passes the laugh test. Just trying to invent more arguments to put Americans back on the moon. "Oh well, they have to drill cores to investigate global warming" seems trendy enough. "They are going there to help save the earth, so give me 100 billion dollars". I'm a total hypocrite. For all of my hype about science being guilty of making exaggerated claims and lacking credibility, I would glady go to that well of misrepresenation to get people back on the moon. The next generation can figure out ID is a joke on their own.
Read about history 250 years ago, at dawn of scientific age. Realize just how much life SUCKED back then by any imaginable measure.
Just to be the devil's advocate, 250 years ago, you could, if you were skilled or lucky or both, have a life where you could have hundreds of servants working for you, own an estate of thousands of acres without any taxation whatsovever, could charter your own private army and attempt to claim an empire for yourself, legally, and best of all, there was no income tax!
250 years ago, you could step outside with your kentucky rifle and hunt just about anything you liked without people complaining about it.
250 years ago, if you were well connected, you could persuade a king to give you an entire state. Who needs HDTV when you have that kind of life? Really, all these electronic goodies we have are designed to help us be content with an ever shrinking pool of land. "Sorry, we can't come up with real land, so, here's this imaginary land..."
You can have a lot more things today than 250 years ago, but you could not have Versaille!
Science is a religion because science is done with the faith that knowing more about the world will make humanity better, and better is a subjective term. Some would even argue, scientists in particular, that all science has done is teach us how to destroy the planet and each other, so, what's the point?
Experiment refutes scientist's idea.
But the experiment did not refute anything. Science is doing this any more and is relying far more on inferential arguments. The guy's experiment is 300 micrograms of lunar soil being used to characterize the composition of not one, but two celestial bodies. You call that science? If were asked to do a nitrogen sample in the average back yard, I would take thousands of times that in dirt to figure out where the fertilizer actually needed to go, or if you needed it at all, and those samples would only be good for your little back yard. You call this smidgeon of data falsifiability as to the composition of a star and an almost planet? If that's science, no wonder people buy into TV preachers instead.
Bottom line is, people buy Toyotas because they think they are a better product than GM cars, and its GM's fault, not Toyotas. People buy TV preachers instead of scientists, because of who? Scientists need to work on their credibility, and saying the moon is a certain way because of a sliver of a sample is another apalling example of how exactly not to do it.
Sucks, but they did deserve to get fired
on
The Forgotten Apple CEO
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Anderson's job was first and foremost to validate the honesty of Enron's financial statements and was therefor afforded a priviledged position. That firm existed solely to protect American financial markets and it failed, utterly. So yes, the firm did have to be destroyed, because it did not do its job. Sucks for the people that work there, but, what was at stake was the stability of the entire US economic system. Were investors to decide that American stock markets were full of lies on financials and withdraw, the result would have been disasterous for the US economy. Thank god the triple combination of healthy dividend tax cuts, sarbanes oxely requirements, and vigorous action by the AG to actually seek real jail time for anyone guilty of financial fraud has restored our markets somewhat to the level they were at before this disaster. It could have been a lot worse, and, the Bush administration actually deserves some credit for handling this one fairly well.
I thought Slashdot ran an article about the Apollo computers and in fact, someone actually has the source code to their software, and, the software to the LEM?
If you assume there is one method of creating soil on the moon, them any sample will give a good enough result
True, but it is also a fairly big assumption, and the only way to confirm it is to test it with more samples, in fact, so many samples that there can be no doubt.
Other people are free to repeat the experiment an add to the statistical sample.
Well yes, but the average joe sees this, and realizes, that, for his own back yard he needs more of a sample to get an accurate nitrogen reading, so whatever this doctor is coming up with is probably wildly inaccurate.
Now, with that said, there is actually a huge implication to this experiment that seems to have been overlooked. The big argument over global warming is solar variability versus not solar variability. While there are plenty of indirect indicators of geological solar output, a really good one would be to go the moon and drill cores and conduct this doctor's experiment, all over the planet. You would establish the solar content with a much greater degree of precision, and, you could also establish a fairly good geological record of solar output. What if there are short term spikes in solar output? What if there are short term drops? Inferential arguments are interesting, but direct measurement is always better, and sans weather, what's a better place to look than on the moon?
I really think we need to accelerate the development of the CEV, double NASA's budget, and get some geologists and physicists up their pronto to check this thing out. The most prominent researchers that oppose this plan, of course, will be bribed with a ride.
Dr Ireland says while we cannot get samples directly from the Sun, we can infer its composition by looking at lunar samples, which are believed to reflect its composition. This is because lunar soil contains oxygen isotopes "implanted" by solar winds carrying elements blown out from the Sun.
Ok, that's a pretty big leap of faith.
a) it assumes that the only agent of change on the lunar surface over 4 billion years is the sun, b) it's one small size sample size picked up by one astronaut that can't possibly represent the whole moon.
Other than the fact that you have a sample with a known history of billionths of its existence, with, a known scope of a billionths of that which is available, I'd see he's right on track to make the claim the article states.
But after using a caesium beam to erode the surface of the soil grains and measure the isotopes oxygen-16, oxygen-17 and oxygen-18, the researchers discovered unexpectedly low levels of oxygen-16.
Why the need to blow away the soil with a cesium beam? They go and get this stuff back from the moon, and start blasting a completely rate and unworldly material and then expect to measure stuff?
If GM loses money, most people would say, GM needs to build better cars. In a similar vein, scientists have to stop whining about how the public prefers TV preachers and snake oil salesmen to them and start asking themselves why that might be the case.
Let me throw some things to correct out there.
a) Scientists making grand predictions that do not happen. Global cooling comes to mind.
b) Scientists making recommendations that were proven to be horribly bad. Anyone remember the four food groups? Yes, the US Government scientists recommended that everyone each roughly a ration of 1 carb, 1 cheese, 1 beef, and 1 fish per day. You could substitute peanut butter for fish.
c) Scientists involved in ethics scandals. I worked on a case where scientists invented a drug, but it totally didn't work and wasn't going to make it through the FDA. So, they loaded up the trials by stuffing the placebo group full of people with severe sepsis infections (aka, doomed to die), in order to make the drug look effective, and lied to families of those dying about the hopes...
d) Scientists can't think on their feet. Scientists really do not know how to debate in a political sense. As such, whenever they get political, they usually sound stupid, and that undermines their credibility in their field.
e) Scientists that patronize people with less of an educated background. You know, you get that advanced degree and you want to feel like royalty, but, it shows. Then, when you bumble on your feet, see d), the public loves to see you crash, ignores everything you say, and then, goes off and hangs out with the preacher that makes them feel good.
f) Science costs too much money. Have you seen how much a subscription to Nature costs? Who the heck is going to buy that when the Church gives out their stuff for free!
The list goes on and on and on. But really, if Science and the people who practice it had a solid reputation, and image, it wouldn't be under assault from those who basically make stuff up (ID folks). GM wants you to buy their cars, they should make them better. Similarly, if scientists want to sell their beliefs, they should make them better.
Until you supposed smart people can see that basic point, people are going to go on and buy into ID, crystals or whatever else that someone can invent.
Not that I would be acidic, how much money do these guys want that they didn't get? I have absolutely no reason, without knowing them, to believe that they are remotely telling the truth. For all I know, someone in the Dems could be telling them - if you help us, we'll help you. It goes on all the time.
The amazing thing is not that Bush is manipulating science - all political parties do. For years Democrats have muzzled any inquiry about the cost effectiveness and economic impact of a wide variety of government regulation, and blithly ignored for four decades mountains of economic evidence that show the welfare state posited by LBJ has utterly failed. And they still do. And what's affirmative action but turning science of natural selection and free enterprise upside down? And of course, Rachel Carson's DDT damnation has probably killed at least 100 million people since she wrote it. So right off the wheel, this whole Bush anti-science thing is so much lies from the Democrats. Scientists that work for the government are like puppets that are made to do whatever each political party wants. For christ sakes, Roosevelt took a bunch of peacenik communists and got them to build the atomic bomb for us!
Be that as it may, why is that whenever a scientist cries foul, there's a crowd of that political ilk that runs to their defense like they are little angelic victims, little jesus's on their little crosses of knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. They aren't. The persecuted scientist is a myth. Even Galileo really went to jail more calling the pope and idiot, and get this, for making claims that he himself could not devise an experiment to prove. Read, please read, some of his work directly, before buying into that nonsense.
Fortunately, the public as a whole sees the scientific establishment for what it is: guys and gals researching new products to try and make a few bucks. When the general public thinks of "scientist", they don't just think about the 1950's image of the brave man of knowledge working feverishly to develop a cure for cancer, they think of the doctors that stop by in the hospital for two minutes while billing for an hour. They don't think of Doctor McCoy, they think of the Doc that left a sponge in Aunt Sarah. They don't think of Spock. They think of Ron Popeil or that Carl guy that said the earth was going to freeze to death. To their company, you can add the guys that appear on TV with Phds talking about how cheeseburgers will kill you, how you aren't supposed to eat this or that product, and then two years later have someone reverse them. The public eats up the sensational stories about how universities are suing each other trying to patent human genes, about how, and yes, the one that soured me on the hallowed nature of science, about how scientists deliberately gave bogus drugs to patients dying of sepsis all in an effort to pump up their stock price. In the meantime, the quiet, slow and steady successes that generally constitute real science are completely and unfortunately ignored, becuase, the tv preachers of science have so completely dominated the field.
As a result, scientists complaining about being muzzled have very little credibility. You people wonder why folks would be so stupid as to buy into crap like intelligent design, or how Americans could blithely ignore a fairly large body of evidence that suggests human induced climate change is a reality, and, all they do is see it snowing in april, think about the doctors that screwed them, the promises of cures and research that failed, and rightfully decide that scientists are probably full of shit and there's no reason to believe them at all.
The bottom line is this: If cars flew, fusion actually arrived, cancer were cured, and the docs did not leave a sponge in aunt sarah or could make up their minds about what drugs to take and what to eat, then, scientists would probably believable to the average joe. But right now, they have about as much crediblity as a TV preacher, which is to say, not a lot.
You're closer than perhaps you realise to an awkward fact (admittedly one of many) that politicians prefer to avoid: a deep green political
Well that's the whole point of my railing.
The great irony of the environmental movement is that you need a dictator to mandate a clean environment, and a dictator is the last person on the earth that would give a damn about whether or not the environment is clean.
Everyone looks at the "Tragedy of the Commons", and says, oh jeez, democracy fails in this case, and then starts looking for a king to fix it. And, then, your environmental movement comes grinding to a halt when the dictator decides he wants to dump plutonium down the grand canyon. Really, what dictators have ever been really good environmentalists? There's absolutely no need for them to do so.
And oh yes, you can try to have a "littler" dictator, a powerful central government with a huge bureacracy behind it, but all you are doing is slowing down the pace of corruption, and not confronting it. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely, its just that the rate of corruption slows down the more people share it, but in the end, you either wind up with a commons again, by sharing enough power, or you wind up with a dictatorship.
It happened to the Romans, and it's happening to the Americans too. People lose their faith in democratic institutions and seek autocracies as a shortcut to imposing their will.
It's not entirely clear that Ethanol even gives us more energy than it took to harvest and process whatever crops we used for the biomass in the first place
Probably doesn't but I don't think it matters. Oil is stored energy anyway, and whatever system we use to replace it will be just making our own storage today rather than relying on the storage of a natural process. That is, gasoline, ethanol, hydrogen, whatever, should be all thought of as portable energy products.
You are deliberately misquoting Dr. Pianka, which is LYING. You take his words out of context and invent meanings to say he's a monster. You're a LIAR, and I really hate you. Yes, I hate you. I don't think I've written that about anybody on Slashdot before, even the guy that I've annoyed repeatedly here for about two years.
Why don't read what he says on his own damned web site:
"I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us."
"What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know"
What more do you need than that? It's right there for you in black and white and you can choose to pretend that what he's not advocating is genocide, but he just told you that EXACTLY that is what he advocates. He lays out the problem of excess humanity just as much as Hitler laid out the problem of too many Jews, or, if you buy into the left wing argument, Bush lays out the problem that there are too many Islamic radicals.
This so called Dr. IS a monster. He's no different from Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin and you are just a stupid sap that falls for it, because instead of Christian Culture or traditional Khmer culture, or the Soviet Worker, its the environment that must be slaughtered for. He and others of his ilk are laying the groundwork for the worst and most unimaginable genocide ever conceived, killing people solely for the sake of saving other species on the planet.
Furthermore, there are witnesses to what this so called salamander loving quack said at this speech:
And, if his speech was so innocent, as you claim, then, why did this Nazi of yours demand that video cameras be TURNED OFF.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, "We're no better than bacteria!" He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Your doctor, and other "humanity is the problem" advocates such as yourself, are no different than the Germans running around saying, "geez, there is this jewish problem, what should we do?". And you can talk as much as you want about sustainability and coexistence and changes in standards in living, but I know and you know that in your heart of hearts, you and the good doctor secretly cheer every earthquake, hurricane, and yes, are actually praying that the bird flu mutates into a pathogen. Well, except for your doctor, because he doesn't think it is good enough that ONLY 100 million people might be killed from it.
Someone walks into a crowded room. He says that there are too many of X, that X is terrible. It just so happens, that everyone in the room is studying to learn how to make things that get rid of X. They stand up and cheer and say "Yes, we must get rid of X".
Upon reading about this, you agree, that yes, there are too many X, and that yes, someone should do something about too many X. But, you call yourself ok because you, as the professor writes:
In this case, X happens to be humans and his audience happened to be biologists. But, if someone said, X = black, or X = jew, the world would be in an uproar.
When humans get overpopulated, there's nothing inherent in human populations that will protect them. Bacteria crash when they are overpopulated. Humans will also crash when they are overpopulated
Oh, now, this is priceless. Last time I checked, humans can manipulate the environment in ways that bacteria cannot. We can alter the planet as we need to, or, colonize new ones. There is no fundamental upper limit to human population.
YOU are evil. YOU are the genocidal maniac. YOU are the anti-scientist. YOU disgust me
That's right. I stand in opposition to your mad plan to loose e-bola on humanity in order to save your pet salamander.
Doctor Pianka: Those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
In other words, Doctor Pianka, like so many environmentalists, are so caught up in their lies that they turn evolution on its head and call it truth. Fact of the matter is, the people that breed the most are the ones that win.
Lies. He's not researching the viruses. Eric Pianka is an expert on small invertibrates such as salamanders, and in many ways is the father of modern ecology.
You're a dirty liar, and you have personally charged the atmosphere. YOU are the problem, YOU are encouraging death, YOU are encouraging terrorism, YOU are advocating the death of innocent people, YOU are the person telling moral people like me to kill themselves, YOU make me sick.
I wasn't the one that said "Humans are no better than bacteria." That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. I wasn't the one that said that e-bola should be unleashed to thin out the human populace for the good of the planet. That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. All I said was that, if you are advocating mass extermination of the human race, for the good of Dr. Pianka's salamanders, you ought to start by killing yourself first. Trust me, we'll go right after you!
Slashdot Mirror
You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Well, yes, except that, killing nonbelievers, Islam excepted, hasn't really been a factor in Western civilization except for maybe a short period from the dark ages through the 30 Years War. Before that, wars were generally fought for plunder, as, indeed, wars after that were fought for plunder as well. Nazism is sort of the ultimate proof that you don't need a Godlike God to go and destroy other people. They did it using a hopped up form of social Darwinism as their shtick. And Communism certainly didn't have a God complex either, but, there's plenty of dead in that shtick's wake...
So yes, removing God from the equation accomplishes nothing.
Such individuals are clearly in the minority. Their opinion does not change the fact that the theory of evolution makes no statements whatsoever regarding the existence or nature of any deities.
It's a heck of a minority though, Dawkins comes to mind.
It does matter. Dismissing a "God" who demands human sacrifice, for example, could arguably improve human society.
Theoretically, not that I've been playing too much Rise of Nations and Age of Empires, the God whose people had the most villagers would ultimately win, assuming he withstood the rush strategies of other Gods.
This may shock everyone, but, he has said so in several interviews and books that he leads towards Democrats. He used to golf with Bill Clinton. Has he ever even been photographed with George Bush? I don't think so. Indeed, Gate more or less acts like a fairly progressive robber baron of old - ruthless in business, but having an enormous and positive impact on the world through his charitable foundations.
Also, stop calling Perens a Kook. That's MY territory, Mister!
I do not see how this is, in any way, an "evolutionary topic". The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever regarding the subject of deities.
There are those in the evolutionary camp that would argue that science displaces the need for God, and therefor, science itself should assume the social role of determining moral values.
To which "God", out of the thousans of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that particular deity to the exclusion of all others?
It doesn't matter, it's really, which ever one wins.
I do not see that one does need to do this at all. "Better adapted" is itself a relative condition, and there is no means to judge any one species as "fundamentally better" than another in an absolute sense.
I disagree with that. Take two people and put them in a pool and tell them to swim laps. One will last longer than the other, and is better.
You could, concievably, with more work, evolve a mathematical metric that values all of a person's probable contributions to society, and arrive at an empiracle definition of who is better. Of course, the definition would change over time as society evolves. That's why some people are paid more than others - in a free enterprise system, the masses of people decide who is better with their wallets, and in a socialist system, it's a committee. If there is no God, can you admit that you are a loser for not having a billion dollars? Can I? Boy, that's a tough, tough pill to swallow.
The flipside of the evolutionary topic is, well, what if we just say there is no God and move on? Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition.
Consider, why does one need to foolishly accept that a better adapted emergent species is not fundamentally better than a less adapted one? It's one thing to argue, correctly, that fossils form an evolutionary chain or that, we can witness the evolution of bacteria in near real time, but then to make the argument that because something is not as well adapted smacks of political correctness designed to avoid the obvious conclusion, that if some beings are better adapted than others, than humans must be too, and there ought to be scientifically determinable markers to measure which humans are better or which are worse. If we think macroscopically, we could also conclude that a culture forms an organism of sorts and different cultures evolve as well, with some naturally and deservedly displacing others, or, some others breeding weakness into a culture by virtue of exchange of information...
Not that I would ever troll, if there is no God, what is actually wrong with Western domination of the world, or, in particular, the American invasion of Iraq and its goals to inject Democracy into the middle east. If it works, then, would that not prove American Democracy was superior, especially considering that only 130,000 soldiers are tasked to correct a nation of some 25 millions, and, if so, then, wouldn't it simply be as natural as one strain of bacteria emerging that is better adapted to say, penicillin, than another?
IMO you are confusing science with that particular kind of optimistic technology that led to the fantastic slogan of "better living through chemistry", among other things.
Ah, but here's the catch: Either the whole point of science is to learn how to make new technology or it is not.
If it is, then you have to have faith that living to be 1000 and having flying cars makes humanity "better". If is not, you have to have that science has some worth for its aesthetic value. In both cases, faith is required, and, only in the former case, is science really fundamentally different from churchgoing, because, science can be proven to be useful.
I clutch my stomach feverishly, the M13 virus is making batteries inside of my intestines. Must pass gas... must find bathroom, electric matter drops out, too late.... the current surges, my heart beats out of control wildly... I die of the M13 virus on a toilet with battery goop coming out of my ass.
That sucks.
I like your idea of drilling a core. Sounds like a worthwhile exercise to me. I'm not sure it will answer your question though
Thank you. At least it passes the laugh test. Just trying to invent more arguments to put Americans back on the moon.
"Oh well, they have to drill cores to investigate global warming" seems trendy enough. "They are going there to help save the earth, so give me 100 billion dollars". I'm a total hypocrite. For all of my hype about science being guilty of making exaggerated claims and lacking credibility, I would glady go to that well of misrepresenation to get people back on the moon. The next generation can figure out ID is a joke on their own.
Stork replied to:
Read about history 250 years ago, at dawn of scientific age. Realize just how much life SUCKED back then by any imaginable measure.
Just to be the devil's advocate, 250 years ago, you could, if you were skilled or lucky or both, have a life where you could have hundreds of servants working for you, own an estate of thousands of acres without any taxation whatsovever, could charter your own private army and attempt to claim an empire for yourself, legally, and best of all, there was no income tax!
250 years ago, you could step outside with your kentucky rifle and hunt just about anything you liked without people complaining about it.
250 years ago, if you were well connected, you could persuade a king to give you an entire state. Who needs HDTV when you have that kind of life? Really, all these electronic goodies we have are designed to help us be content with an ever shrinking pool of land. "Sorry, we can't come up with real land, so, here's this imaginary land..."
You can have a lot more things today than 250 years ago, but you could not have Versaille!
he one extremely important point you left out is that scientists are trained to be skeptical of their own theories
You mean like South Korean doctors?
Science is a religion because science is done with the faith that knowing more about the world will make humanity better, and better is a subjective term. Some would even argue, scientists in particular, that all science has done is teach us how to destroy the planet and each other, so, what's the point?
Experiment refutes scientist's idea.
But the experiment did not refute anything. Science is doing this any more and is relying far more on inferential arguments. The guy's experiment is 300 micrograms of lunar soil being used to characterize the composition of not one, but two celestial bodies. You call that science? If were asked to do a nitrogen sample in the average back yard, I would take thousands of times that in dirt to figure out where the fertilizer actually needed to go, or if you needed it at all, and those samples would only be good for your little back yard. You call this smidgeon of data falsifiability as to the composition of a star and an almost planet? If that's science, no wonder people buy into TV preachers instead.
Bottom line is, people buy Toyotas because they think they are a better product than GM cars, and its GM's fault, not Toyotas. People buy TV preachers instead of scientists, because of who? Scientists need to work on their credibility, and saying the moon is a certain way because of a sliver of a sample is another apalling example of how exactly not to do it.
Anderson's job was first and foremost to validate the honesty of Enron's financial statements and was therefor afforded a priviledged position. That firm existed solely to protect American financial markets and it failed, utterly. So yes, the firm did have to be destroyed, because it did not do its job. Sucks for the people that work there, but, what was at stake was the stability of the entire US economic system. Were investors to decide that American stock markets were full of lies on financials and withdraw, the result would have been disasterous for the US economy. Thank god the triple combination of healthy dividend tax cuts, sarbanes oxely requirements, and vigorous action by the AG to actually seek real jail time for anyone guilty of financial fraud has restored our markets somewhat to the level they were at before this disaster. It could have been a lot worse, and, the Bush administration actually deserves some credit for handling this one fairly well.
I thought Slashdot ran an article about the Apollo computers and in fact, someone actually has the source code to their software, and, the software to the LEM?
If you assume there is one method of creating soil on the moon, them any sample will give a good enough result
True, but it is also a fairly big assumption, and the only way to confirm it is to test it with more samples, in fact, so many samples that there can be no doubt.
Other people are free to repeat the experiment an add to the statistical sample.
Well yes, but the average joe sees this, and realizes, that, for his own back yard he needs more of a sample to get an accurate nitrogen reading, so whatever this doctor is coming up with is probably wildly inaccurate.
Now, with that said, there is actually a huge implication to this experiment that seems to have been overlooked. The big argument over global warming is solar variability versus not solar variability. While there are plenty of indirect indicators of geological solar output, a really good one would be to go the moon and drill cores and conduct this doctor's experiment, all over the planet. You would establish the solar content with a much greater degree of precision, and, you could also establish a fairly good geological record of solar output. What if there are short term spikes in solar output? What if there are short term drops? Inferential arguments are interesting, but direct measurement is always better, and sans weather, what's a better place to look than on the moon?
I really think we need to accelerate the development of the CEV, double NASA's budget, and get some geologists and physicists up their pronto to check this thing out. The most prominent researchers that oppose this plan, of course, will be bribed with a ride.
Read the article:
Dr Ireland says while we cannot get samples directly from the Sun, we can infer its composition by looking at lunar samples, which are believed to reflect its composition. This is because lunar soil contains oxygen isotopes "implanted" by solar winds carrying elements blown out from the Sun.
Ok, that's a pretty big leap of faith.
a) it assumes that the only agent of change on the lunar surface over 4 billion years is the sun,
b) it's one small size sample size picked up by one astronaut that can't possibly represent the whole moon.
Other than the fact that you have a sample with a known history of billionths of its existence, with, a known scope of a billionths of that which is available, I'd see he's right on track to make the claim the article states.
But after using a caesium beam to erode the surface of the soil grains and measure the isotopes oxygen-16, oxygen-17 and oxygen-18, the researchers discovered unexpectedly low levels of oxygen-16.
Why the need to blow away the soil with a cesium beam? They go and get this stuff back from the moon, and start blasting a completely rate and unworldly material and then expect to measure stuff?
Come on, folks, this is crap.
If GM loses money, most people would say, GM needs to build better cars. In a similar vein, scientists have to stop whining about how the public prefers TV preachers and snake oil salesmen to them and start asking themselves why that might be the case.
Let me throw some things to correct out there.
a) Scientists making grand predictions that do not happen. Global cooling comes to mind.
b) Scientists making recommendations that were proven to be horribly bad. Anyone remember the four food groups? Yes, the US Government scientists recommended that everyone each roughly a ration of 1 carb, 1 cheese, 1 beef, and 1 fish per day. You could substitute peanut butter for fish.
c) Scientists involved in ethics scandals. I worked on a case where scientists invented a drug, but it totally didn't work and wasn't going to make it through the FDA. So, they loaded up the trials by stuffing the placebo group full of people with severe sepsis infections (aka, doomed to die), in order to make the drug look effective, and lied to families of those dying about the hopes...
d) Scientists can't think on their feet. Scientists really do not know how to debate in a political sense. As such, whenever they get political, they usually sound stupid, and that undermines their credibility in their field.
e) Scientists that patronize people with less of an educated background. You know, you get that advanced degree and you want to feel like royalty, but, it shows. Then, when you bumble on your feet, see d), the public loves to see you crash, ignores everything you say, and then, goes off and hangs out with the preacher that makes them feel good.
f) Science costs too much money. Have you seen how much a subscription to Nature costs? Who the heck is going to buy that when the Church gives out their stuff for free!
The list goes on and on and on. But really, if Science and the people who practice it had a solid reputation, and image, it wouldn't be under assault from those who basically make stuff up (ID folks). GM wants you to buy their cars, they should make them better. Similarly, if scientists want to sell their beliefs, they should make them better.
Until you supposed smart people can see that basic point, people are going to go on and buy into ID, crystals or whatever else that someone can invent.
Not that I would be acidic, how much money do these guys want that they didn't get? I have absolutely no reason, without knowing them, to believe that they are remotely telling the truth. For all I know, someone in the Dems could be telling them - if you help us, we'll help you. It goes on all the time.
The amazing thing is not that Bush is manipulating science - all political parties do. For years Democrats have muzzled any inquiry about the cost effectiveness and economic impact of a wide variety of government regulation, and blithly ignored for four decades mountains of economic evidence that show the welfare state posited by LBJ has utterly failed. And they still do. And what's affirmative action but turning science of natural selection and free enterprise upside down? And of course, Rachel Carson's DDT damnation has probably killed at least 100 million people since she wrote it. So right off the wheel, this whole Bush anti-science thing is so much lies from the Democrats. Scientists that work for the government are like puppets that are made to do whatever each political party wants. For christ sakes, Roosevelt took a bunch of peacenik communists and got them to build the atomic bomb for us!
Be that as it may, why is that whenever a scientist cries foul, there's a crowd of that political ilk that runs to their defense like they are little angelic victims, little jesus's on their little crosses of knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. They aren't. The persecuted scientist is a myth. Even Galileo really went to jail more calling the pope and idiot, and get this, for making claims that he himself could not devise an experiment to prove. Read, please read, some of his work directly, before buying into that nonsense.
Fortunately, the public as a whole sees the scientific establishment for what it is: guys and gals researching new products to try and make a few bucks. When the general public thinks of "scientist", they don't just think about the 1950's image of the brave man of knowledge working feverishly to develop a cure for cancer, they think of the doctors that stop by in the hospital for two minutes while billing for an hour. They don't think of Doctor McCoy, they think of the Doc that left a sponge in Aunt Sarah. They don't think of Spock. They think of Ron Popeil or that Carl guy that said the earth was going to freeze to death. To their company, you can add the guys that appear on TV with Phds talking about how cheeseburgers will kill you, how you aren't supposed to eat this or that product, and then two years later have someone reverse them. The public eats up the sensational stories about how universities are suing each other trying to patent human genes, about how, and yes, the one that soured me on the hallowed nature of science, about how scientists deliberately gave bogus drugs to patients dying of sepsis all in an effort to pump up their stock price. In the meantime, the quiet, slow and steady successes that generally constitute real science are completely and unfortunately ignored, becuase, the tv preachers of science have so completely dominated the field.
As a result, scientists complaining about being muzzled have very little credibility. You people wonder why folks would be so stupid as to buy into crap like intelligent design, or how Americans could blithely ignore a fairly large body of evidence that suggests human induced climate change is a reality, and, all they do is see it snowing in april, think about the doctors that screwed them, the promises of cures and research that failed, and rightfully decide that scientists are probably full of shit and there's no reason to believe them at all.
The bottom line is this: If cars flew, fusion actually arrived, cancer were cured, and the docs did not leave a sponge in aunt sarah or could make up their minds about what drugs to take and what to eat, then, scientists would probably believable to the average joe. But right now, they have about as much crediblity as a TV preacher, which is to say, not a lot.
You're closer than perhaps you realise to an awkward fact (admittedly one of many) that politicians prefer to avoid: a deep green political
Well that's the whole point of my railing.
The great irony of the environmental movement is that you need a dictator to mandate a clean environment, and a dictator is the last person on the earth that would give a damn about whether or not the environment is clean.
Everyone looks at the "Tragedy of the Commons", and says, oh jeez, democracy fails in this case, and then starts looking for a king to fix it. And, then, your environmental movement comes grinding to a halt when the dictator decides he wants to dump plutonium down the grand canyon. Really, what dictators have ever been really good environmentalists? There's absolutely no need for them to do so.
And oh yes, you can try to have a "littler" dictator, a powerful central government with a huge bureacracy behind it, but all you are doing is slowing down the pace of corruption, and not confronting it. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely, its just that the rate of corruption slows down the more people share it, but in the end, you either wind up with a commons again, by sharing enough power, or you wind up with a dictatorship.
It happened to the Romans, and it's happening to the Americans too. People lose their faith in democratic institutions and seek autocracies as a shortcut to imposing their will.
It's not entirely clear that Ethanol even gives us more energy than it took to harvest and process whatever crops we used for the biomass in the first place
Probably doesn't but I don't think it matters. Oil is stored energy anyway, and whatever system we use to replace it will be just making our own storage today rather than relying on the storage of a natural process. That is, gasoline, ethanol, hydrogen, whatever, should be all thought of as portable energy products.
You are deliberately misquoting Dr. Pianka, which is LYING. You take his words out of context and invent meanings to say he's a monster. You're a LIAR, and I really hate you. Yes, I hate you. I don't think I've written that about anybody on Slashdot before, even the guy that I've annoyed repeatedly here for about two years.
Why don't read what he says on his own damned web site:
"I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us."
"What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know"
What more do you need than that? It's right there for you in black and white and you can choose to pretend that what he's not advocating is genocide, but he just told you that EXACTLY that is what he advocates. He lays out the problem of excess humanity just as much as Hitler laid out the problem of too many Jews, or, if you buy into the left wing argument, Bush lays out the problem that there are too many Islamic radicals.
This so called Dr. IS a monster. He's no different from Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin and you are just a stupid sap that falls for it, because instead of Christian Culture or traditional Khmer culture, or the Soviet Worker, its the environment that must be slaughtered for. He and others of his ilk are laying the groundwork for the worst and most unimaginable genocide ever conceived, killing people solely for the sake of saving other species on the planet.
Furthermore, there are witnesses to what this so called salamander loving quack said at this speech:
Speech
And, if his speech was so innocent, as you claim, then, why did this Nazi of yours demand that video cameras be TURNED OFF.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, "We're no better than bacteria!"
He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
And here's the doctor's thesis watered down, ala Mein Kampf.
Your doctor, and other "humanity is the problem" advocates such as yourself, are no different than the Germans running around saying, "geez, there is this jewish problem, what should we do?". And you can talk as much as you want about sustainability and coexistence and changes in standards in living, but I know and you know that in your heart of hearts, you and the good doctor secretly cheer every earthquake, hurricane, and yes, are actually praying that the bird flu mutates into a pathogen. Well, except for your doctor, because he doesn't think it is good enough that ONLY 100 million people might be killed from it.
This is you:
Someone walks into a crowded room. He says that there are too many of X, that X is terrible. It just so happens, that everyone in the room is studying to learn how to make things that get rid of X. They stand up and cheer and say "Yes, we must get rid of X".
Upon reading about this, you agree, that yes, there are too many X, and that yes, someone should do something about too many X. But, you call yourself ok because you, as the professor writes:
I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.
In this case, X happens to be humans and his audience happened to be biologists. But, if someone said, X = black, or X = jew, the world would be in an uproar.
When humans get overpopulated, there's nothing inherent in human populations that will protect them. Bacteria crash when they are overpopulated. Humans will also crash when they are overpopulated
Oh, now, this is priceless. Last time I checked, humans can manipulate the environment in ways that bacteria cannot. We can alter the planet as we need to, or, colonize new ones. There is no fundamental upper limit to human population.
YOU are evil. YOU are the genocidal maniac. YOU are the anti-scientist. YOU disgust me
That's right. I stand in opposition to your mad plan to loose e-bola on humanity in order to save your pet salamander.
Doctor Pianka: Those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
In other words, Doctor Pianka, like so many environmentalists, are so caught up in their lies that they turn evolution on its head and call it truth. Fact of the matter is, the people that breed the most are the ones that win.
Stork replied to:
Lies. He's not researching the viruses. Eric Pianka is an expert on small invertibrates such as salamanders, and in many ways is the father of modern ecology.
Read it and weep
You're a dirty liar, and you have personally charged the atmosphere. YOU are the problem, YOU are encouraging death, YOU are encouraging terrorism, YOU are advocating the death of innocent people, YOU are the person telling moral people like me to kill themselves, YOU make me sick.
I wasn't the one that said "Humans are no better than bacteria." That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. I wasn't the one that said that e-bola should be unleashed to thin out the human populace for the good of the planet. That would be your esteemed Doctor Pianka. All I said was that, if you are advocating mass extermination of the human race, for the good of Dr. Pianka's salamanders, you ought to start by killing yourself first. Trust me, we'll go right after you!
But do trust the US population of whom 3/4 prefers a truck or SUV for daily runs to the mall.
Absolutely!