You could say the same about the other direction though. Genesis is a lot shorter than pretty much any book by Stephen Jay Gould. "God created one couple that had some kids which bred and reproduced" sounds simpler (and more plausible given my experiences in Missouri) than "some chemicals from lightning combined to form organic molecules which formed self-reproducing RNA some of which formed single cell organisms, some of which became multi-cellular, some of which became vertebrates, some of which became homonids, and then some of those became humans."
And that's even dramatically oversimplifying abiogenesis, taxonomies, and natural selection. Start going into speciation events, endosybiant origins of organelles, punctuated equalibrium, multiple levels of selection, and evolution of complex features, and you'll see that it takes a whole hell of a lot more effort to string together evolutionary theory.
Of course, this is because evolutionary theory adheres to the real world while creationism rejects reality specifically because it's too hard for some people to bother understanding and adapting their beliefs to. Much easier to make a theory when you ignore all the evidence.
I think it's because people who are working hard to learn or do research are more interested in that than in starting a new way in which they won't be screwed. I could start a journal which would be fair, I could work hard to get investors and raise the impact factor to respectable levels (or rather I could once I get to be respected in my field). But I won't, because that would be incredibly boring. Also because I would rather do science that will contribute more to society, but really it's about interest level.
In our defense, we're generally not the ones paying for access fees. The universities are, which are using student tuition to. Granted, the universities do take a ridiculous chunk of the grants we work hard to bring in, and then they do little for us in return besides keep the lights on...
But some journals are starting to offer open-access publishing options, you just pay as the author. I can't remember which, but one journal I was looking at publishing required $2k to put your journal article on their website without a paywall.
At the time, I was skeptical that it would pay off, and published it regular-like. But since then, I've had a few researchers I didn't know e-mail me, asking for the PDF. It wasn't a journal article with a particularly broad audience, so I'm wondering if I really screwed myself out of a lot of citations that way.
You forgot "Go to conferences and trade shows and spend a lot to promote the brand."
At a recent huge research conference, I went to a bar. Didn't know it until I walked in, I was meeting some colleagues there, but it was open bar, paid for by a major journal for researchers to try to woo them into publishing there. I enjoyed the booze, which was paid for by the journal, which got paid from universities and researchers buying back research that they had done, which in turn was paid for (both parts) by grants, which was paid by the taxpayer.
I was a little sick the next day at that realization. Also the whiskey. And a cold, you'd think thousands of biologists would be better at keeping germs from spreading between themselves.
Ah, I see I'm perhaps muddling the term hypothesis.
Well then let's simplify it: given that CO2 absorbs more heat, and given that we're putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, what other outcome could there be? Aside from your suggestion that CO2 can reflect more light in the atmosphere than it absorbs*, I haven't heard an alternative outcome, only insistence that it's not happening.
* (do you have a citation suggesting that's possible, by the way?)
Hell if I know. I haven't done much research into climate change. If a warm Jurassic Period with low CO2 isn't explained by other known factors, I'd think that more opponents of carbon regulations would bring that up.
There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS.
Ah, that explains why my car hasn't been shooting diamonds out of it's tailpipe. I thought it was broken. If you'll excuse me, I have to apologize to my girlfriend for proposing with a bag of car exhaust rather than a ring, so I won't be able to read the rest of your no doubt lovely and insightful post.
There's also the facts that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, combustion engines put out carbon dioxide, and there is a lot of combustion going on. A hypothesis needs to be consistent with those facts, climate change is the only hypothesis that I've heard that can do that. What's contradictory about that?
It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.
Seems to me that the only way to "cool" that doesn't involve climate change (ice caps melting) is to have more solar energy reflected. Radiation blocking by CO2 or increased cloud cover sounds like it could do that, though I'm curious as to why this isn't mentioned more often if it's supported by evidence. I'll look into it when I have more time.
Either way, that sounds at least on the surface like a reasonable alternative hypothesis, thank you.
So, do you think 1. Carbon doesn't absorb heat 2. Carbon in the atmosphere can't, for some reason, insulate the earth, trapping more heat 3. Combustion engines do not put out carbon 4. Burning of fossil fuels aren't significantly increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere 5. The carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere at an increased level that corresponds to our increase in emissions or 6. That God or some higher power won't let the world change or 7. That using logic is a waste of time?
Honestly, I can't see many alternative hypotheses here that aren't ignoring reality. All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.
If, in the future, you want to convince someone that software freedom is a good thing, or needs to be protected, you should pick your examples more carefully. You want to pick examples of closed software that people will go "Man, I HATE that!" Steam and netflix work against you here. You mention them, and I think "Hey, I like both of those things. Maybe closed source software isn't that bad?"
Instead of half life and steam, mention Sim City 4 and Origin. Instead of netflix, talk about trying to get the last olympics streaming through NBC.com. THOSE examples will elicit the reaction you're looking for. I think.
You don't, and I don't think most atheists do. There are probably a few atheists running around who, like mrchaotica suggests, have a fervent, religious like belief that there cannot possibly be any deity. They might even be particularly outspoken ones, proselytizing to anyone who will listen, that there is no god. Bit of a straw man argument against atheism in my book: I haven't met any atheists meeting that description. Most atheists seem closer to agnostic: they have hypotheses that there is no deity.
Population turnover isn't that fast. yndrd is right that trends are going in atheist/agnostic favor, but it will take some time before religious folk are in the minority.
Some religious nuts will likely become more desperate in the meantime, and will get increasingly frantic about it, which will likely be extremely annoying for the rest of us. If they successfully ban abortion, look out. They'll then increase their efforts to get rid of birth control, alcohol, free speech, and an uncensored internet.
So you're saying this isn't a "malware" problem so much as it is a "Chinese government hacking dissidents phones to try to find other people to throw in jail for political speech."
Long answer: If you spend a lot of money then you can probably SUE them. And you'll lose that money doing so and will possibly get fined on top of that, and maybe countersued? (IANAL) The only way you would get anywhere with that tactic would be if you were able to spend far more money on lawyers than myriad or whatever the greedy group of assholes calls themselves. Legal insanity only works on behalf of the wealthy and the corporations.
Odds are this would be used on people who have already committed a crime, like determining if parole is granted. I'd argue it's still discrimination if you're saying "Past history AND biology," but the issue is murkier than you're presenting it. I think it's unlikely anyone would say "lets start locking up or watching people who haven't committed any crimes based solely on brain scans."
That wouldn't mean it was useless though. Identifying dumb recidivists would still have some advantages over not identifying either, even if it was biased that way.
However, that in combination with another bias mentioned in TFA does make me think this technique is bad news
Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes.
Emphasis added. So it's more effective at identifying dumb drug dealers who are going to re-offend. But we lock way too many of those up already. I think law enforcement needs to be focused a lot more on violent criminals, and less focus on non-violent criminals.
So, I'm leaning toward "lets not waste taxpayer money on screening criminals with this." I think this will only pad police department budgets and will not make us actually safer. Come back when you have a way of identifying people who are going to re-commit violent crimes, then we'll start discussing whether it's worth it.
I don't want them to be banned by law, but people... DON'T USE GREEN LASER POINTERS FOR PRESENTATIONS.
I've had to sit through a number of powerpoint presentations in darkened rooms where a green laser pointer was too bright. If red is too dim, it's the batteries.
Occasionally I've been in presentations where someone was using a dry erase whiteboard as a screen. Never do that with a laser pointer. If they had tried to do it with a green laser, I would have walked out. That shit is reflective.
Last gripe: people, you really shouldn't need to use a laser pointer on every single slide. Scientists are horrible at this. "If I am not making little circles around random places on the screen at all times, they'll think I'm not a real scientist!" Text should speak for itself, if you're pointing at text, you probably have too much to be of any use, or are nervously pointing unnecessarily. If you have images and you want to direct someone's attention at a small part, you could put arrows on it pretty easily, but that's the one time you need a laser pointer, that's typically only one or two times a slideshow from my experience.
I disagree, I think it reads like he's simply specifying which exact model of phone he has.
He also points out that it rarely goes above 1 GB ram, so it would seem he was actually checking the ram and not storage capacity. And that screen would inform him he has 2 gb ram, not 16. And 2 or 16, it still evidently doesn't use most of it.
Slashdot Mirror
It takes a special kind of entitled asshole, or MS/apple fanboy, to think google is evil for ending a service they were giving away for free.
There are other free RSS services out there, or you can make your own server. It's trivial to export your feeds from google.
You could say the same about the other direction though. Genesis is a lot shorter than pretty much any book by Stephen Jay Gould. "God created one couple that had some kids which bred and reproduced" sounds simpler (and more plausible given my experiences in Missouri) than "some chemicals from lightning combined to form organic molecules which formed self-reproducing RNA some of which formed single cell organisms, some of which became multi-cellular, some of which became vertebrates, some of which became homonids, and then some of those became humans."
And that's even dramatically oversimplifying abiogenesis, taxonomies, and natural selection. Start going into speciation events, endosybiant origins of organelles, punctuated equalibrium, multiple levels of selection, and evolution of complex features, and you'll see that it takes a whole hell of a lot more effort to string together evolutionary theory.
Of course, this is because evolutionary theory adheres to the real world while creationism rejects reality specifically because it's too hard for some people to bother understanding and adapting their beliefs to. Much easier to make a theory when you ignore all the evidence.
I think it's because people who are working hard to learn or do research are more interested in that than in starting a new way in which they won't be screwed. I could start a journal which would be fair, I could work hard to get investors and raise the impact factor to respectable levels (or rather I could once I get to be respected in my field). But I won't, because that would be incredibly boring. Also because I would rather do science that will contribute more to society, but really it's about interest level.
Just goes to show, scientists are not so bright
In our defense, we're generally not the ones paying for access fees. The universities are, which are using student tuition to. Granted, the universities do take a ridiculous chunk of the grants we work hard to bring in, and then they do little for us in return besides keep the lights on...
But some journals are starting to offer open-access publishing options, you just pay as the author. I can't remember which, but one journal I was looking at publishing required $2k to put your journal article on their website without a paywall.
At the time, I was skeptical that it would pay off, and published it regular-like. But since then, I've had a few researchers I didn't know e-mail me, asking for the PDF. It wasn't a journal article with a particularly broad audience, so I'm wondering if I really screwed myself out of a lot of citations that way.
You forgot "Go to conferences and trade shows and spend a lot to promote the brand."
At a recent huge research conference, I went to a bar. Didn't know it until I walked in, I was meeting some colleagues there, but it was open bar, paid for by a major journal for researchers to try to woo them into publishing there. I enjoyed the booze, which was paid for by the journal, which got paid from universities and researchers buying back research that they had done, which in turn was paid for (both parts) by grants, which was paid by the taxpayer.
I was a little sick the next day at that realization. Also the whiskey. And a cold, you'd think thousands of biologists would be better at keeping germs from spreading between themselves.
Ah, I see I'm perhaps muddling the term hypothesis.
Well then let's simplify it: given that CO2 absorbs more heat, and given that we're putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, what other outcome could there be? Aside from your suggestion that CO2 can reflect more light in the atmosphere than it absorbs*, I haven't heard an alternative outcome, only insistence that it's not happening.
* (do you have a citation suggesting that's possible, by the way?)
Hell if I know. I haven't done much research into climate change. If a warm Jurassic Period with low CO2 isn't explained by other known factors, I'd think that more opponents of carbon regulations would bring that up.
There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS.
Ah, that explains why my car hasn't been shooting diamonds out of it's tailpipe. I thought it was broken. If you'll excuse me, I have to apologize to my girlfriend for proposing with a bag of car exhaust rather than a ring, so I won't be able to read the rest of your no doubt lovely and insightful post.
It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.
Seems to me that the only way to "cool" that doesn't involve climate change (ice caps melting) is to have more solar energy reflected. Radiation blocking by CO2 or increased cloud cover sounds like it could do that, though I'm curious as to why this isn't mentioned more often if it's supported by evidence. I'll look into it when I have more time.
Either way, that sounds at least on the surface like a reasonable alternative hypothesis, thank you.
So, do you think 1. Carbon doesn't absorb heat 2. Carbon in the atmosphere can't, for some reason, insulate the earth, trapping more heat 3. Combustion engines do not put out carbon 4. Burning of fossil fuels aren't significantly increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere 5. The carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere at an increased level that corresponds to our increase in emissions or 6. That God or some higher power won't let the world change or 7. That using logic is a waste of time?
Honestly, I can't see many alternative hypotheses here that aren't ignoring reality. All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.
If, in the future, you want to convince someone that software freedom is a good thing, or needs to be protected, you should pick your examples more carefully. You want to pick examples of closed software that people will go "Man, I HATE that!" Steam and netflix work against you here. You mention them, and I think "Hey, I like both of those things. Maybe closed source software isn't that bad?"
Instead of half life and steam, mention Sim City 4 and Origin. Instead of netflix, talk about trying to get the last olympics streaming through NBC.com. THOSE examples will elicit the reaction you're looking for. I think.
Wooshstarter?
"We're making the next gen version of the highly successful 'Phantom Console' initially developed by the famed infinium labs.
For $25, you get a used first-gen phantom console!
For $50, you get the console plus 'woosh black ops 2: Full throttle'
For $100, the developers will come to your house and throw an early prototype right over your head!"
You don't, and I don't think most atheists do. There are probably a few atheists running around who, like mrchaotica suggests, have a fervent, religious like belief that there cannot possibly be any deity. They might even be particularly outspoken ones, proselytizing to anyone who will listen, that there is no god. Bit of a straw man argument against atheism in my book: I haven't met any atheists meeting that description. Most atheists seem closer to agnostic: they have hypotheses that there is no deity.
Population turnover isn't that fast. yndrd is right that trends are going in atheist/agnostic favor, but it will take some time before religious folk are in the minority.
Some religious nuts will likely become more desperate in the meantime, and will get increasingly frantic about it, which will likely be extremely annoying for the rest of us. If they successfully ban abortion, look out. They'll then increase their efforts to get rid of birth control, alcohol, free speech, and an uncensored internet.
What's your point? I can't criticize one government for something if the government where I live does anything similar?
Or are you pushing a straw man argument here, that I was suggesting the US government didn't do anything like that?
Honestly, fuck off. Bad government is bad government, no matter if my government is the same or worse.
So you're saying this isn't a "malware" problem so much as it is a "Chinese government hacking dissidents phones to try to find other people to throw in jail for political speech."
Short answer: no
Long answer: If you spend a lot of money then you can probably SUE them. And you'll lose that money doing so and will possibly get fined on top of that, and maybe countersued? (IANAL) The only way you would get anywhere with that tactic would be if you were able to spend far more money on lawyers than myriad or whatever the greedy group of assholes calls themselves. Legal insanity only works on behalf of the wealthy and the corporations.
I'm going to be genuinely surprised if I don't have to pay licensing fees if I have a baby in the coming years.
This is slashdot: odds are we won't have to pay licensing fees no matter what they decide.
Well, not in person. I just sit there and cringe every time it shines in my eyes, silent tears running down my face.
Odds are this would be used on people who have already committed a crime, like determining if parole is granted. I'd argue it's still discrimination if you're saying "Past history AND biology," but the issue is murkier than you're presenting it. I think it's unlikely anyone would say "lets start locking up or watching people who haven't committed any crimes based solely on brain scans."
However, that in combination with another bias mentioned in TFA does make me think this technique is bad news
Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes.
Emphasis added. So it's more effective at identifying dumb drug dealers who are going to re-offend. But we lock way too many of those up already. I think law enforcement needs to be focused a lot more on violent criminals, and less focus on non-violent criminals.
So, I'm leaning toward "lets not waste taxpayer money on screening criminals with this." I think this will only pad police department budgets and will not make us actually safer. Come back when you have a way of identifying people who are going to re-commit violent crimes, then we'll start discussing whether it's worth it.
They could always use the swedish translation for "one less than a googlewhack"
I don't want them to be banned by law, but people... DON'T USE GREEN LASER POINTERS FOR PRESENTATIONS.
/gripe
I've had to sit through a number of powerpoint presentations in darkened rooms where a green laser pointer was too bright. If red is too dim, it's the batteries.
Occasionally I've been in presentations where someone was using a dry erase whiteboard as a screen. Never do that with a laser pointer. If they had tried to do it with a green laser, I would have walked out. That shit is reflective.
Last gripe: people, you really shouldn't need to use a laser pointer on every single slide. Scientists are horrible at this. "If I am not making little circles around random places on the screen at all times, they'll think I'm not a real scientist!" Text should speak for itself, if you're pointing at text, you probably have too much to be of any use, or are nervously pointing unnecessarily. If you have images and you want to direct someone's attention at a small part, you could put arrows on it pretty easily, but that's the one time you need a laser pointer, that's typically only one or two times a slideshow from my experience.
I disagree, I think it reads like he's simply specifying which exact model of phone he has.
He also points out that it rarely goes above 1 GB ram, so it would seem he was actually checking the ram and not storage capacity. And that screen would inform him he has 2 gb ram, not 16. And 2 or 16, it still evidently doesn't use most of it.