Well, for starters, scientific consensus is not the same as government authority.
You may, or at least a rational person may, wish that their representatives in government take into consideration scientifically arrived-upon information in making policy decisions.
Regarding climate change, I really feel like it's a stretch to try to believe that the vast majority of climatologists and meteorologists are all in a big conspiracy to crush individual rights and create some kind of uber-fascist state. The few weather scientists and weathermen I've met appeared to be normal people - people with families, with no grand aspirations for power, mostly just people with a oddly strong interest in the weather.
Regarding evolution, it's not an effort to "remove church teaching and authority in favor of government authority". It's not a conspiracy to want biology texts to be written by biologists, or geology textbooks to be written by geologists, paleontology by paleontologists, genetics texts by geneticists. For young-earth Creationists to be correct, so many different fields of science must either be wrong or plain lying as to be a truly vast conspiracy indeed.
A good first question might be, WHOSE church teaching and authority? The majority of Christians, worldwide, are Catholics. Catholics don't believe in a literal interpretation of all of Genesis. You'd object pretty strongly, I'd imagine, to Catholic, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Muslim teachings being taught in public schools, particularly when you thought they should instead be learning textbook biology.
The USA was conceived as having a separation between church and state exactly because the early settlers arrived here in an effort to avoid religious persecution.
Well, long-term trend lines headed towards lessening CO2 concentrations and lower average temperatures over a span of decades would be welcome evidence contrary to global-warming theories. I don't believe you are likely to see those kinds of trends in contemporary data again in your lifetime, but I for one will be happy to be proven wrong.
It's (or it should be) kind of shocking the attitudes shown here by these several posters regarding children. Reading some of these cynical/mock threatening comments depresses me.
I'm a parent myself - let me say, it's really hard work. There's very little down time, doing it well requires the bulk of your concentration and resources, and you may never feel like you get out of it what you put into it. But having kids is the ultimate 'pay it forward'. If you want the future to be better, give some young people (yours or others) the tools to understand and thrive in the world, hopefully make it better than they found it.
It should be obvious to an Slashdotters, however optimistic they are about the Singularity, Transhumanism, etc that if nobody's making and raising kids, the future is forfeit.
Twenty years ago, we knew of 9 planets. Now we can begin to do statistical analysis on families of solar systems. It's a huge affirmation of long-held suspicions that previously had no real data to support them. It's a huge boost to being able to model solar system formation. It's really useful information EVEN THOUGH you can't fly to those planets yourself and crunch around on the surface in your hiking boots. Ugh.
We can't dictate advances in propulsion technology on a schedule that's convenient for your agenda of galactic conquest. NASA is a (maybe the) major investor in breakthrough energy and propulsion technologies for spaceflight. Take a look here if you want your opinions to be clouded by some actual facts;
I don't think it's too late for us to all say, openly and without any self-recriminations, that it would have been massively, epically cool had they actually and verifiably found a FTL particle. I'll admit it - it surely would have been cool.
Very occasionally someone forwards me a link to the Buffalo News. I admit the paper hasn't been good for a long while. I don't live anywhere near there anymore. Mike Royko used to be republished in the News, and the always great Tom Toles' political cartooning started there, before he moved to the Washington Post.
Most recently someone sent me a link to an article about "Earl's Drive-In and Country-Western Music Museum" closing. As I was the first (and I believe only) male waiter ever to work there, I felt compelled to comment on the article, but gave up based on the ridiculous procedure involved.
Buffalo News has one of the most egregious policies in this regard. They I believe do want to call you for verification when you create an account with them. Given the hassle, I didn't bother. Maybe that's their intent?
But Apple SHOULD do technological research. Because it provides a long term competitive edge for them, and because its the right thing to do. Corporations, like people, live in a larger society, culture (and nation) and they benefit from those things. Apple would not exist were it not embedded in the Silicon Valley culture emanating from Stanford and Berkeley. Apple should give something back. Maybe Steve would not understand this, but surely Woz would.
Yeah, iPhones are great, but honestly, ten years from now, we'll be on to a newer, better UI (glasses, brain implants, holodecks, or whatever.) It turns out we're still using lasers and transistors and communications satellites, all invented by Bell Labs in the 60s.
Here, I'm pasting the best bit from the NYTimes/Bell Labs article, written by Jon Gertner;
"But what should our pursuit of innovation actually accomplish? By one definition, innovation is an important new product or process, deployed on a large scale and having a significant impact on society and the economy, that can do a job (as Mr. Kelly once put it) “better, or cheaper, or both.” Regrettably, we now use the term to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense. One type of innovation creates a handful of jobs and modest revenues; another, the type Mr. Kelly and his colleagues at Bell Labs repeatedly sought, creates millions of jobs and a long-lasting platform for society’s wealth and well-being."
THIS, like times a million. NYTimes this weekend had an excellent article on the history of Bell Labs (the laser, the transistor, communications satellites, etc). HP, whatever else you may think of them, supported the pure research lab which brought forth the memristor. IBM can point to things such as this, its various efforts to simulate a brain, and Watson. Google, bless their souls, is pushing for automated driving (this may not sound in the same league, until you realize the consequences for everybody who drives or rides in an auto.)
Where is the pure research at Apple? Do they think they can get by on just making better UIs, for the rest of forever? Are they at all part of a larger community?
"I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed." (from Gleick's Huffpost piece.) Haggling over the provenance and ethics of the Heartland documents is a dangerous distraction. People with a financial interest in perpetuating the status quo (and no sense of honesty, scientific ethics or responsibility to future generations) are going to look for every opportunity to debate every debatable point, cast aspersions on all good-faith actors, and sow uncertainty everywhere possible. That's a given, it's human nature.
The bit I don't get is how they settled on this as their liberal/UN/socialist conspiracy. Yes, re-engineering our power distribution and transit systems is going to cost a lot of time and money. People in control of power, literal and otherwise, and means of production, it seems like it would be easier to just get out in front of it - buy up all the electric battery producers, build a big windmill farm on the Appalachins mountaintops, make some money on solar roof shingles, and let the science push consumers in your direction. There's lots, plenty, of social wedge issues without trying to argue against statistically-measurable facts (like trending in weather patterns say.)
If it ever dawned on them that man-made climate change really is real, and they're doing all of humanity a great disservice by suppressing the discovery of it, you'd think that would give them pause at least - sleeping well at night, Mr. Koch?
But fighting the science just to keep up the status quo, that's definitely a losing battle in the long run. The Randian notion that rich people are rich because they see the future earlier and can deduce causes and outcomes faster, doesn't agree with this. Climate change is, sooner or later, make itself unambiguously felt.
I know this comment is a day late, but I thought it was a good coincidence that an article popped up in my browser this morning that addresses this. How much federal aid goes to the nonworking poor? That seems a question relevant to your statement "The 50%+ who are in love with government hand-outs and have forgotten how to provide for themselves are dependent."
"The answer: about 10 percent of all federal welfare spending. How did they come up with that? CBPP's methodology uses census data to figure out exactly where program dollars are going, but you can get pretty much the same answer using a simpler, easier-to-understand technique. Step One is to list every federal welfare program. Step Two is to deduct spending on the elderly, blind, and seriously disabled. That's Social Security, Medicare, SSI, and about two-thirds of Medicaid. Step Three is to deduct spending that goes to the working poor. That's unemployment compensation, EITC, and child tax credits. Step Four is to add up the rest. This overstates how much goes to the nonworking poor, since these programs are open to both working and nonworking families, but it gives you a rough idea.
It comes to about $235 billion, the bulk of which is SNAP (formerly food stamps) and about one-third of Medicaid. That's 12 percent of all federal welfare spending and about 6 percent of the whole federal budget. Once you account for the fact that some of these program dollars go to the working poor, you end up with CBPP's estimate of 10 percent, or about 5 percent of the whole federal budget.
Is that too much? I guess you have to decide for yourself. But I'll bet most people think we spend a lot more than 5 percent of the federal budget on this stuff."
I was expecting all the hordes of commenters from the recent NASA/Mars/fed. budget thread to also show up here, to again say "hurf durf, you guys, we just can't go on spending money we don't have!!!1! Don't you understand?!!?! Budgets!! Deficit!! Taxes!!! Entitlements!!!46% (or whatever)!!"
What? Oh, this is Department of Defense? Oh, well, never mind then.
Most people at some time in their lifetimes will accept some kind of assistance from the federal government. You seem to think that because you have a job, you can "fend for yourself" and everything the government does is a sponge off of your effort. "Something useful rather than 'entitlements'". At some point in your life, your parents are going to need their social security. Your aunt is going to need Medicaid or Medicare. Your neighbor may need SSI. Your co-worker is going to need short-term disability. Your brother may need his veterans' benefits one day. 50% of the nation isn't unemployed and living on government handouts. But the "screw it, I got mine" attitude that is everywhere in America these days is pretty short-sighted, unless you really have a mountain of cash hidden somewhere and are prepared to support all your less-fortunate family and friends with it independent of the government.
You can read what the unemployment rate really is, and the caveats that go with those numbers, in the newspaper or on your computer. I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near 50%. You can read what the US individual income tax rate is and compare that to other countries', here;
"People are addicted to government handouts and would rather say "To hell with Mars" than try to do something for themselves." I disagree. It's not the unemployed who've cut science from this (proposed) federal budget. It's the president, clearly. And it's not that he's cutting Mars specifically, though it looks that way. He wants NASA to defend its budget, and to find cuts elsewhere in order to preserve those things (like Mars, in which NASA has kicked ass in recent years) that are truly important. He's doing the responsible thing, the thing Grover Norquist would most advocate in fact, which is to use the budgeting process to drive reform and prioritization. One would think the Republican applause for this would be deafening.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for starters, scientific consensus is not the same as government authority.
You may, or at least a rational person may, wish that their representatives in government take into consideration scientifically arrived-upon information in making policy decisions.
Regarding climate change, I really feel like it's a stretch to try to believe that the vast majority of climatologists and meteorologists are all in a big conspiracy to crush individual rights and create some kind of uber-fascist state. The few weather scientists and weathermen I've met appeared to be normal people - people with families, with no grand aspirations for power, mostly just people with a oddly strong interest in the weather.
Regarding evolution, it's not an effort to "remove church teaching and authority in favor of government authority". It's not a conspiracy to want biology texts to be written by biologists, or geology textbooks to be written by geologists, paleontology by paleontologists, genetics texts by geneticists. For young-earth Creationists to be correct, so many different fields of science must either be wrong or plain lying as to be a truly vast conspiracy indeed.
A good first question might be, WHOSE church teaching and authority? The majority of Christians, worldwide, are Catholics. Catholics don't believe in a literal interpretation of all of Genesis. You'd object pretty strongly, I'd imagine, to Catholic, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Muslim teachings being taught in public schools, particularly when you thought they should instead be learning textbook biology.
The USA was conceived as having a separation between church and state exactly because the early settlers arrived here in an effort to avoid religious persecution.
The former vice president recently had a heart transplant.
Slashdot - yesterday's news, today!
Seriously, how long has the WIRED story on this been up?
Well, long-term trend lines headed towards lessening CO2 concentrations and lower average temperatures over a span of decades would be welcome evidence contrary to global-warming theories. I don't believe you are likely to see those kinds of trends in contemporary data again in your lifetime, but I for one will be happy to be proven wrong.
Just adding a somewhat related anecdote (not my own) -
A Message From a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-douglas/republican-climate-change_b_1374900.html
This, time a hundred.
It's (or it should be) kind of shocking the attitudes shown here by these several posters regarding children. Reading some of these cynical/mock threatening comments depresses me.
I'm a parent myself - let me say, it's really hard work. There's very little down time, doing it well requires the bulk of your concentration and resources, and you may never feel like you get out of it what you put into it. But having kids is the ultimate 'pay it forward'. If you want the future to be better, give some young people (yours or others) the tools to understand and thrive in the world, hopefully make it better than they found it.
It should be obvious to an Slashdotters, however optimistic they are about the Singularity, Transhumanism, etc that if nobody's making and raising kids, the future is forfeit.
Twenty years ago, we knew of 9 planets. Now we can begin to do statistical analysis on families of solar systems. It's a huge affirmation of long-held suspicions that previously had no real data to support them. It's a huge boost to being able to model solar system formation. It's really useful information EVEN THOUGH you can't fly to those planets yourself and crunch around on the surface in your hiking boots. Ugh.
We can't dictate advances in propulsion technology on a schedule that's convenient for your agenda of galactic conquest. NASA is a (maybe the) major investor in breakthrough energy and propulsion technologies for spaceflight. Take a look here if you want your opinions to be clouded by some actual facts;
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/index.html
Yes but don't ignore the fact that the Al Gore robot program was originally funded by DARPA.
Hey, talk about a drone! That guy practically invented the concept! (Thank you, I'll be here all week! Try the veal!)
I don't think it's too late for us to all say, openly and without any self-recriminations, that it would have been massively, epically cool had they actually and verifiably found a FTL particle. I'll admit it - it surely would have been cool.
Oh, like that would ever happen. Corporations are people, my friend!
Very occasionally someone forwards me a link to the Buffalo News. I admit the paper hasn't been good for a long while. I don't live anywhere near there anymore. Mike Royko used to be republished in the News, and the always great Tom Toles' political cartooning started there, before he moved to the Washington Post.
Most recently someone sent me a link to an article about "Earl's Drive-In and Country-Western Music Museum" closing. As I was the first (and I believe only) male waiter ever to work there, I felt compelled to comment on the article, but gave up based on the ridiculous procedure involved.
Buffalo News has one of the most egregious policies in this regard. They I believe do want to call you for verification when you create an account with them. Given the hassle, I didn't bother. Maybe that's their intent?
Here;
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/pss/
you can read the report from the Plantary Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council, to the Science Committee.
It'd be awesome if /. posters read any of this before posting snide/uninformed/trolly comments about NASA, Obama, Space-X, budgets, etc.
The blog Future Planetary Exploration rounds up reporting on this subject;
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2012/02/ruckus.html
Agree. This is part of a long Michigan tradition of crossover voting. Big deal.
If they ever conclusively prove that Romney is a cyborg, that would be /.-worthy.
But Apple SHOULD do technological research. Because it provides a long term competitive edge for them, and because its the right thing to do. Corporations, like people, live in a larger society, culture (and nation) and they benefit from those things. Apple would not exist were it not embedded in the Silicon Valley culture emanating from Stanford and Berkeley. Apple should give something back. Maybe Steve would not understand this, but surely Woz would.
Yeah, iPhones are great, but honestly, ten years from now, we'll be on to a newer, better UI (glasses, brain implants, holodecks, or whatever.) It turns out we're still using lasers and transistors and communications satellites, all invented by Bell Labs in the 60s.
Here, I'm pasting the best bit from the NYTimes/Bell Labs article, written by Jon Gertner;
"But what should our pursuit of innovation actually accomplish? By one definition, innovation is an important new product or process, deployed on a large scale and having a significant impact on society and the economy, that can do a job (as Mr. Kelly once put it) “better, or cheaper, or both.” Regrettably, we now use the term to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense. One type of innovation creates a handful of jobs and modest revenues; another, the type Mr. Kelly and his colleagues at Bell Labs repeatedly sought, creates millions of jobs and a long-lasting platform for society’s wealth and well-being."
The whole article is here (paywall yadda-yadda)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html?pagewanted=all
THIS, like times a million. NYTimes this weekend had an excellent article on the history of Bell Labs (the laser, the transistor, communications satellites, etc). HP, whatever else you may think of them, supported the pure research lab which brought forth the memristor. IBM can point to things such as this, its various efforts to simulate a brain, and Watson. Google, bless their souls, is pushing for automated driving (this may not sound in the same league, until you realize the consequences for everybody who drives or rides in an auto.)
Where is the pure research at Apple? Do they think they can get by on just making better UIs, for the rest of forever? Are they at all part of a larger community?
Cite or GTFO!
THIS. I was just the right age (12? 14?) for Omni to resonate with me during its heyday.
"I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed." (from Gleick's Huffpost piece.) Haggling over the provenance and ethics of the Heartland documents is a dangerous distraction. People with a financial interest in perpetuating the status quo (and no sense of honesty, scientific ethics or responsibility to future generations) are going to look for every opportunity to debate every debatable point, cast aspersions on all good-faith actors, and sow uncertainty everywhere possible. That's a given, it's human nature.
The bit I don't get is how they settled on this as their liberal/UN/socialist conspiracy. Yes, re-engineering our power distribution and transit systems is going to cost a lot of time and money. People in control of power, literal and otherwise, and means of production, it seems like it would be easier to just get out in front of it - buy up all the electric battery producers, build a big windmill farm on the Appalachins mountaintops, make some money on solar roof shingles, and let the science push consumers in your direction. There's lots, plenty, of social wedge issues without trying to argue against statistically-measurable facts (like trending in weather patterns say.)
If it ever dawned on them that man-made climate change really is real, and they're doing all of humanity a great disservice by suppressing the discovery of it, you'd think that would give them pause at least - sleeping well at night, Mr. Koch?
But fighting the science just to keep up the status quo, that's definitely a losing battle in the long run. The Randian notion that rich people are rich because they see the future earlier and can deduce causes and outcomes faster, doesn't agree with this. Climate change is, sooner or later, make itself unambiguously felt.
I know this comment is a day late, but I thought it was a good coincidence that an article popped up in my browser this morning that addresses this. How much federal aid goes to the nonworking poor? That seems a question relevant to your statement "The 50%+ who are in love with government hand-outs and have forgotten how to provide for themselves are dependent."
Well, here's a straightforward answer;
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/how-much-do-we-spend-nonworking-poor
And just to highlight the meat of it;
"The answer: about 10 percent of all federal welfare spending. How did they come up with that? CBPP's methodology uses census data to figure out exactly where program dollars are going, but you can get pretty much the same answer using a simpler, easier-to-understand technique. Step One is to list every federal welfare program. Step Two is to deduct spending on the elderly, blind, and seriously disabled. That's Social Security, Medicare, SSI, and about two-thirds of Medicaid. Step Three is to deduct spending that goes to the working poor. That's unemployment compensation, EITC, and child tax credits. Step Four is to add up the rest. This overstates how much goes to the nonworking poor, since these programs are open to both working and nonworking families, but it gives you a rough idea.
It comes to about $235 billion, the bulk of which is SNAP (formerly food stamps) and about one-third of Medicaid. That's 12 percent of all federal welfare spending and about 6 percent of the whole federal budget. Once you account for the fact that some of these program dollars go to the working poor, you end up with CBPP's estimate of 10 percent, or about 5 percent of the whole federal budget.
Is that too much? I guess you have to decide for yourself. But I'll bet most people think we spend a lot more than 5 percent of the federal budget on this stuff."
Steve Jobs' revenant is NOT going to like this!
I was expecting all the hordes of commenters from the recent NASA/Mars/fed. budget thread to also show up here, to again say "hurf durf, you guys, we just can't go on spending money we don't have!!!1! Don't you understand?!!?! Budgets!! Deficit!! Taxes!!! Entitlements!!!46% (or whatever)!!"
What? Oh, this is Department of Defense? Oh, well, never mind then.
Most people at some time in their lifetimes will accept some kind of assistance from the federal government. You seem to think that because you have a job, you can "fend for yourself" and everything the government does is a sponge off of your effort. "Something useful rather than 'entitlements'". At some point in your life, your parents are going to need their social security. Your aunt is going to need Medicaid or Medicare. Your neighbor may need SSI. Your co-worker is going to need short-term disability. Your brother may need his veterans' benefits one day. 50% of the nation isn't unemployed and living on government handouts. But the "screw it, I got mine" attitude that is everywhere in America these days is pretty short-sighted, unless you really have a mountain of cash hidden somewhere and are prepared to support all your less-fortunate family and friends with it independent of the government.
You can read what the unemployment rate really is, and the caveats that go with those numbers, in the newspaper or on your computer. I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near 50%. You can read what the US individual income tax rate is and compare that to other countries', here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
(Hint, we're 23rd highest.)
"People are addicted to government handouts and would rather say "To hell with Mars" than try to do something for themselves." I disagree. It's not the unemployed who've cut science from this (proposed) federal budget. It's the president, clearly. And it's not that he's cutting Mars specifically, though it looks that way. He wants NASA to defend its budget, and to find cuts elsewhere in order to preserve those things (like Mars, in which NASA has kicked ass in recent years) that are truly important. He's doing the responsible thing, the thing Grover Norquist would most advocate in fact, which is to use the budgeting process to drive reform and prioritization. One would think the Republican applause for this would be deafening.