Scientists tell if an idea is a good one by trying to prove it wrong, over-and-over-again and in as logical a thought-out way as possible, til they give up. This is known as "science", and the fact that they do it this way is why we call them "scientists".
"I enjoyed Ender's Game as a kid, and it tarnishes the experience a little to know that its authors can say such hateful things."
Dear Anonymous,
Read just about anything else Card ever wrote. Nothing will taint your views of him as an author more than that. (And if anything should have frightened Superman fans it should have that - the quality of the vast majority of his writing.)
And yet Ender's Game is still a great story. It doesn't make it any worse just because most of the author's other work is tripe.
This is one of those mind-bogglingly vaguely self-evident articles that you still can't help but try to correct (well, at least I can't.)
For what definition of habitable? For a given hypothetical type of plasma-based or magnetic life, I imagine the sun is a pretty happening place to hang out.
And yet, no matter what definition you use for habitable, what does "more" habitable mean? Surely it either is, or isn't. What are we measuring here?
And yet, no matter what definition you use or how you measure it, the central thesis of the article is so meaningless as to almost certainly be true. After all, unless you just cheat by defining habitability on a scale of 0 - 1.0 where 1.0 is defined as "just like the Earth, right now, because I said so", what are the odds that we live on the one planet in the universe with the highest score in your arbitrary meaningless homo-sapiens-centric measurement system? Statistically indistinuishable from zero.
Why do people write this crap and call it science?
I personally think she's as good as Lois McMaster Bujold
You had me intrigued until you compared her to Bujold. I've never understood the rabid following the Vorkosigan books get. The only ones I got through were repackaged Lensman novels, and sci fi has actually progressed a bit since the 1930s. Not terrible mind, but near the top of my overrated list.
Love the Zelazny, and he's done plenty of sci-fi to go with the fantasy (Creatures of Light and Darkness, Lord of Light) but I don't think someone who won 6 Hugo Awards, 3 Nebula Awards, 2 Locus Awards, 1 Prix Tour-Apollo Award, 2 Seiun Awards, and 2 Balrog Awards, and has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame gets to go "boo hoo I am so un-appreciated" (which, to the best of my knowledge, Zelazny never ever did. Quite the opposite really.) I suppose you could argue that he was still _under_ appreciated, despite selling more books and winning more awards than just about anyone else in his era, but you'd pretty much be arguing that they needed to invent some more awards to give him in order to appreciate him properly. (You could make a case for that, actually, but while he's one of my all-time favorites, I don't think he was _that_ much better than everyone else.)
Yeah, I wondered about that. There are a number of older authors who were quite justifiably lauded in their day, but who don't get much press now, but I don't know if that counts as under-appreciated. (Ursula maybe, but shes still pretty much known by modern sci fi fans. I was thinking Cordwainer Smith. But if you mean totally unappreciated, I don't think you can include anyone who won a Hugo or a Nebula...)
I saw the video of pinkness the other day, and I thought that it completely failed to sensibly attract girls to science, and made a mockery of science itself.
Then I saw Prometheus that night. In retrospect, the science in that promo clip wasn't _that_ bad...
I'm all for honest and frank child education, but have a good long think about how much discussion you want to have with your son about sex before you just wade into most of McCaffrey's Pern. The Harper Hall series, on the other hand, is probably perfect.
Upvote for Alan Dean Foster and Terry Pratchett. I'd even go Piers Anthony's Xanth stuff - I hate it myself with the fire of a thousand suns, but from what I remember its certainly aimed at about the eight-year-old level. Remember, you're not necessarily looking for books that _you_ will like, but rather for ones that will engage _him_.
Also, since we all seem to be recommending books from last century; Planesrunner by Ian McDonald was interesting, well-written, and from this decade. Also, its got zeppelins in.
You're right; how weird. In fact, searching for that D&D quote from the original post, all I can find is news aggregators and repostits quoting/. I wonder where the quote comes from?
(As in; are they still effective marketing. Obviously, the fact that they do work and that it is unpleasant work is pretty much the entire point of OP.)
I like the sight of a beautiful woman as much as the next guy. Preferrably the sight of one who is comfortable and enjoying themselves. But thats entirely beside the point.
I would not buy a tech product from a company that thought so little of me that they thought that draping sexy women over their product would convince me to buy it, and thought so little of their own product that they thought that it needed sexy women nearby to distract from its technical details (read shortcomings.)
I guess this is why I don't do trade conferrences, and why they don't market to me, but it still surprises me that this works terribly well. I mean sure; us male geeks may be conditioned early-on to be suckers for a pretty girl, and even moreso if its one who can spout a line of technical specs, but we're talking hardware here - if you're not paying more attention to the specs than the girl spouting them, you aren't a real geek.
I know nothing about your personal beliefs, but are you willing to go against them if your constituents tell you to? To pick a ludicrous example; if the web voting tells you they want to legalise baby eating, will you vote for it?
Yeah, like I said; I have trouble with the statement; but until I get a chance to read the research, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. I can think of plausible mechanisms that would at least contribute to that effect, so while its difficult to believe that they would be of an appropriate magnitude, I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.
My only real point was that the/. summary says one thing and the original article says the opposite... and then to show that again for this post, I went back and re-read the summary, discovered I'd misread it the first time, and got embarassed. So there's that.
Well yes and no. There's the water in the reservoirs themselves, that is still missing from the oceans. That doesn't account for a continuing decrease in sea levels though, except for the continuous creation of new reservoirs. But reservoirs also have an enormous evaporation rate, and the water that we take out of them for use often never makes it back to the ocean, for various reasons: we spray it on our gardens and golf courses and it evaporates, is absorbed by plants, or returns direct to groundwater. We flush it down our toilets, and it goes to sewage treatment plants where it sits in enormous pools with high evaporation rates while being treated. In California it gets run in open-topped canals through deserts down the length of the state, evaporating all the way. That sort of thing. The water isn't removed from the ecosystem, but a fair bit of it bypasses the ocean part of the cycle. Even ignoring things like Hoover dam and the Colorado - which makes a bad example because of the huge amount of its water which gets used out of the river's watershed - you generally see much smaller amounts of water flowing out the ocean ends of rivers after they're dammed (for water storage; I'd imagine the effects of flood control dams are smaller, but I couldn't personally vouch for that.)
Having said all of that, its hard to imagine that any of it adds up to a hill of beans when it comes to _ocean_ levels. I'm more-or-less trusting the quoted research on that, not having the time to chase it up myself at the moment.
I wondered this too... so I went and read the linked original article, which quite clearly states:
"Artificial reservoirs, such as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China, have the opposite effect, locking up water that would otherwise flow into the seas."
So your (and my) suspicions were correct; reservoirs don't make this problem worse, as the/. summary implies, but instead partially counteract it. Bad/. summary; no biscuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Scientists tell if an idea is a good one by trying to prove it wrong, over-and-over-again and in as logical a thought-out way as possible, til they give up. This is known as "science", and the fact that they do it this way is why we call them "scientists".
"I enjoyed Ender's Game as a kid, and it tarnishes the experience a little to know that its authors can say such hateful things."
Dear Anonymous,
Read just about anything else Card ever wrote. Nothing will taint your views of him as an author more than that. (And if anything should have frightened Superman fans it should have that - the quality of the vast majority of his writing.)
And yet Ender's Game is still a great story. It doesn't make it any worse just because most of the author's other work is tripe.
Bagpipe music, whiskey, and haggis for the lot of em... Last man standing wins.
Previously discussed and found to be nonsense. In about 5 minutes. By a pack of nerds (I include myself.) On the internet.
And an elected congressman with a full-time research staff still hasn't figured it out. We're doomed.
The only consistent correlation of intelligence to IQ has always been that only idiots believe that intelligence can be measured by a single number.
'Hey! That makes a great headline: "Jedi is the biggest!"'
'Yeah, but its not the biggest."
'Well, its the biggest _alternative_'
'Alternative to what?'
'Things bigger than "Jedi"!'
Gogo circular definition power!
This is one of those mind-bogglingly vaguely self-evident articles that you still can't help but try to correct (well, at least I can't.)
For what definition of habitable? For a given hypothetical type of plasma-based or magnetic life, I imagine the sun is a pretty happening place to hang out.
And yet, no matter what definition you use for habitable, what does "more" habitable mean? Surely it either is, or isn't. What are we measuring here?
And yet, no matter what definition you use or how you measure it, the central thesis of the article is so meaningless as to almost certainly be true. After all, unless you just cheat by defining habitability on a scale of 0 - 1.0 where 1.0 is defined as "just like the Earth, right now, because I said so", what are the odds that we live on the one planet in the universe with the highest score in your arbitrary meaningless homo-sapiens-centric measurement system? Statistically indistinuishable from zero.
Why do people write this crap and call it science?
Quick! to the time machine! We need to sue Gutenberg!
Just tell them its analog World of Warcraft. Everyone knows what WoW is.
If there is a scale that measures prolific hackery, with Peirs Anthony on the bottom and Stephen King on the top
Sorry; which end of that scale is meant to be the "good" end again?
I personally think she's as good as Lois McMaster Bujold
You had me intrigued until you compared her to Bujold. I've never understood the rabid following the Vorkosigan books get. The only ones I got through were repackaged Lensman novels, and sci fi has actually progressed a bit since the 1930s. Not terrible mind, but near the top of my overrated list.
Love the Zelazny, and he's done plenty of sci-fi to go with the fantasy (Creatures of Light and Darkness, Lord of Light) but I don't think someone who won 6 Hugo Awards, 3 Nebula Awards, 2 Locus Awards, 1 Prix Tour-Apollo Award, 2 Seiun Awards, and 2 Balrog Awards, and has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame gets to go "boo hoo I am so un-appreciated" (which, to the best of my knowledge, Zelazny never ever did. Quite the opposite really.) I suppose you could argue that he was still _under_ appreciated, despite selling more books and winning more awards than just about anyone else in his era, but you'd pretty much be arguing that they needed to invent some more awards to give him in order to appreciate him properly. (You could make a case for that, actually, but while he's one of my all-time favorites, I don't think he was _that_ much better than everyone else.)
Yeah, I wondered about that. There are a number of older authors who were quite justifiably lauded in their day, but who don't get much press now, but I don't know if that counts as under-appreciated. (Ursula maybe, but shes still pretty much known by modern sci fi fans. I was thinking Cordwainer Smith. But if you mean totally unappreciated, I don't think you can include anyone who won a Hugo or a Nebula...)
I saw the video of pinkness the other day, and I thought that it completely failed to sensibly attract girls to science, and made a mockery of science itself.
Then I saw Prometheus that night. In retrospect, the science in that promo clip wasn't _that_ bad...
I'm all for honest and frank child education, but have a good long think about how much discussion you want to have with your son about sex before you just wade into most of McCaffrey's Pern. The Harper Hall series, on the other hand, is probably perfect.
Upvote for Alan Dean Foster and Terry Pratchett. I'd even go Piers Anthony's Xanth stuff - I hate it myself with the fire of a thousand suns, but from what I remember its certainly aimed at about the eight-year-old level. Remember, you're not necessarily looking for books that _you_ will like, but rather for ones that will engage _him_.
Also, since we all seem to be recommending books from last century; Planesrunner by Ian McDonald was interesting, well-written, and from this decade. Also, its got zeppelins in.
You're right; how weird. In fact, searching for that D&D quote from the original post, all I can find is news aggregators and repostits quoting /. I wonder where the quote comes from?
What tiny proportion of teens and young adults has ever even heard of it, much less played it?
(As in; are they still effective marketing. Obviously, the fact that they do work and that it is unpleasant work is pretty much the entire point of OP.)
I like the sight of a beautiful woman as much as the next guy. Preferrably the sight of one who is comfortable and enjoying themselves. But thats entirely beside the point.
I would not buy a tech product from a company that thought so little of me that they thought that draping sexy women over their product would convince me to buy it, and thought so little of their own product that they thought that it needed sexy women nearby to distract from its technical details (read shortcomings.)
I guess this is why I don't do trade conferrences, and why they don't market to me, but it still surprises me that this works terribly well. I mean sure; us male geeks may be conditioned early-on to be suckers for a pretty girl, and even moreso if its one who can spout a line of technical specs, but we're talking hardware here - if you're not paying more attention to the specs than the girl spouting them, you aren't a real geek.
I know nothing about your personal beliefs, but are you willing to go against them if your constituents tell you to? To pick a ludicrous example; if the web voting tells you they want to legalise baby eating, will you vote for it?
Your naive trust in the power of the human mind to overcome ignorance with nothing but evidence is rather cute.
Wrong. But cute.
The evidence of history does not support your conclusion.
Yep; all my biscuits are belong to OP. I totally misread it.
Wish I could mod you up - yep, I got it wrong.
Yeah, like I said; I have trouble with the statement; but until I get a chance to read the research, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. I can think of plausible mechanisms that would at least contribute to that effect, so while its difficult to believe that they would be of an appropriate magnitude, I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.
My only real point was that the /. summary says one thing and the original article says the opposite... and then to show that again for this post, I went back and re-read the summary, discovered I'd misread it the first time, and got embarassed. So there's that.
Well yes and no. There's the water in the reservoirs themselves, that is still missing from the oceans. That doesn't account for a continuing decrease in sea levels though, except for the continuous creation of new reservoirs. But reservoirs also have an enormous evaporation rate, and the water that we take out of them for use often never makes it back to the ocean, for various reasons: we spray it on our gardens and golf courses and it evaporates, is absorbed by plants, or returns direct to groundwater. We flush it down our toilets, and it goes to sewage treatment plants where it sits in enormous pools with high evaporation rates while being treated. In California it gets run in open-topped canals through deserts down the length of the state, evaporating all the way. That sort of thing. The water isn't removed from the ecosystem, but a fair bit of it bypasses the ocean part of the cycle. Even ignoring things like Hoover dam and the Colorado - which makes a bad example because of the huge amount of its water which gets used out of the river's watershed - you generally see much smaller amounts of water flowing out the ocean ends of rivers after they're dammed (for water storage; I'd imagine the effects of flood control dams are smaller, but I couldn't personally vouch for that.)
Having said all of that, its hard to imagine that any of it adds up to a hill of beans when it comes to _ocean_ levels. I'm more-or-less trusting the quoted research on that, not having the time to chase it up myself at the moment.
I wondered this too... so I went and read the linked original article, which quite clearly states:
"Artificial reservoirs, such as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China, have the opposite effect, locking up water that would otherwise flow into the seas."
So your (and my) suspicions were correct; reservoirs don't make this problem worse, as the /. summary implies, but instead partially counteract it. Bad /. summary; no biscuit.