My counter-proposition is that if religion is abolished, large tracts of population would disappear. Religion/dogma seems to be the only thing that keeps some people going.
I've heard that argument before and it seems to be totally inverted. If someone finds out that life is finite rather than infinite, which certainly suggests that this life is more valuable than they'd thought, they'll respond by destroying themselves?
In my limited experience, most people that commit suicide (and I don't mean being euthanized) do so with talk about "seeing others on the other side".
It's ridiculous that the summary implies that, in the context of this leak, Obama setting aside funds for building new power plants is a negative thing.
If anything, the fact that America's only nuclear power comes from relatively ancient, decaying reactors of obsolete design should be motivation for building new nuclear power plants. This might be the best tangible thing Obama has proposed to date and informed citizens should be applauding it.
The scientific community needs to get as far as we can from the policies of companies like Gaussian Inc., who will ban you and your institution for simply publishing any sort of comparative statistics on calculation time, accuracy, etc. from their computational chemistry software.
I can't imagine what they'd do to you if you started sorting through their code...
And if you consider that many of these so-called 'independent' studies are in fact paid for by fringe anti-science groups, then perhaps their results are aren't as unbiased as they would have you believe.
That seems strange - I'm having trouble imaging what an anti-science directed study would consist of. And how unbiased would they have you believe their study is, if it's anti-science by definition? It seems like they would want to show off their own maximizing of bias if it's really anti-science.
Chemical structure drawing tools are extremely important with ChemDraw being mandatory learning at many universities, including my own. Check this list out for a list of many similar programs including FOSS equivalents.
Beyond that, the biggest two uses of computers in higher levels of chemistry are for literature searching (with SciFinder being a clear winner here) and computational chemistry calculations (still unfortunately done mostly on with the anti-FOSS Gaussian software) though there's no shortage of excellent open source equivalents. Avogradro, for example.
However, literature searches aren't going to be too useful without the journal access that Universities enjoy, and frankly most computational chemistry programs are too sophisticated for students of a high school level - though 3D models of chemical structures are always much more interesting. Since chemistry is still taught by using ballpark descriptions and approximations, then successively refining those approximations, I'd be worried that almost any piece of chemistry software would be too intimidating and difficult to explain because it's designed for users with at least a year or two of university courses.
So, I'd think that teaching the students how to draw good structures (with stereochemical accuracy if possible!) on computers would be useful, and maybe 3D structures would be somewhat inspiring, but you're running the risk of over-complicating what should be a course in the fundamentals. If you have the means, you might want to focus on real demonstrations instead, which could be as simple as a marbles to demonstrate entropy, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate for acid/base chemistry, cornstarch and water to demonstrate non-newtonian fluids, alkali metals and water to demonstrate redox chemistry, salt and ice/water to demonstrate boiling point elevation and freezing point depression, etc. etc.
I think a lot of the problematic aspects of kids' lives that may be responsible for this effect come down to the fast-foodization of everything. If you define fast food as the instantaneous satisfying of urges without satisfying the underlying reasons for those urges using shit we understand to be worthless.
Constant connectedness provides the information that we crave, but so much of it and so cheaply that we don't place much value on much of it, including the stuff that actually affects us - how many people know more about international goings-on than local?
Social media sites allow us a steady supply of the gossip and egotism we crave without the meaningful social relationships that we really need. So many human relationships are now plagued by irony and an utter lack of sincerity
Hours and hours of television and movies act similarly, quenching our interest in humankind and stories, but often in a eye-candy-filled, superficial way.
Prescription and non-prescription drugs for absolutely every condition one can name, even conditions that are simply human nature.
And obviously, fast foods (including junk food) please our taste buds but offer next to nothing in terms of nutrition. The list goes on, ad nausem. Good food, good (that are ideally physically present) friends, something challenging to labour on earnestly (while improving a skill or two), and a little relaxation does miracles.
...consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.
Consider how many sources exist for buying bound books, Amazon not being a particularly great one, and how many sources there are for eBooks for Kindle, especially for the technically un-inclined. That's a whopping selection bias!
I do have one minor complaint, that given their networking abilities,
the Na’vi should not be so technologically inferior to the humans.
That ignores the reason humans first started developing significant technology; the agricultural revolution. That was the point when we extracted ourselves from nature and took over control of food. That's what allowed us to create advanced settlements and the rest is (pre-)history, as they say.
See the philosophical novel Ishmael for the basis of this argument.
Given the "living in harmony with nature" theme in the movie, one could hardly expect the Na'vi to have done the same.
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
The same is true of the climategate "scandal", but that hasn't stopped of it from being taken as proof of either a new world order or academia's corruption by at least 25% of comment'ers on climate related stories on mainstream news sites.
This claim is like Bill O'Riley's commentary; its effectiveness doesn't lie in any sort of rationality or evidence, but merely in it being uttered confidently (usually loudly) and it being something people want to believe. Nothing short of total refutation can get rid of garbage like this.
...if the government decides to create a new, open journal will be developing a 'prestige factor' for it. If it isn't impressive to publish in it, the best works simply won't be published there.
Since there's little chance of this potential journal assailing Nature or Science, we may end up with free average quality papers and expensive (to both publish and consume) high-impact ones. That is, unless there's a scientific culture change, and academia starts to value open-access and transparency. Maybe if a few big works are published openly we may have a chance, and with all the climate-gate noise this would be especially good for science on the whole.
If the government simply adds a clause that all papers must be available to the public, we might instead see a new market force driving the big journals to open up all or some of their articles to the public, because if they don't, high quality government-funded works won't be available to them. Not a bad prospect either!
Meanwhile, if you're looking for a paper that your institution (if you belong to one) doesn't have access to, I highly recommend google'ing the title in parentheses - it's amazing how many are posted on ill-protected course pages.
That's similar to the study mentioned in either Blink or Freakonomics (pardon, I forget which) on a daycare centre that instituted a small fine if parents were late for their children.
This soon caused an increase in lateness because parents could, in effect, buy off their guilt for slighting their children. What's more, removing the fine later caused an even larger increase in lateness.
It seems that when you cross the line from the emotional-value realm into the realm of, say, traditional economics motivated by competition and greed, you not only encounter unexpected circumstances but you also may not be able to go back.
And personally, I think the latter realm is not where we want education to be.
It does happen to an extent in the US, if the critic happens to be Islamic also.
But more commonly, it happens on behalf of Americans and American entites worldwide - one protester, essentially murdered by Shell, comes to mind from a recent trial; Ken Saro Wiwa.
No, it's not exactly what China is doing, but if your country is largely affected by powerful corporations, they have to be considered as part of your system of governance - and that doesn't make anybody look too pretty.
There's definitely the issue of correlation/causation - it's an absolute plague on social sciences.
I'm just suggesting we're affected by our new-found ability to instantly satisfy our very natural urges in a way that significantly differs from reality, using porn. As in, it's usually in the 3rd person, it offers a wide selection of girls instantly (no talkie-talkie!), it can often border on brutality, etc. and this might have a residual impact on how we interact with members of the opposite gender, away from the porn.
Likewise, we might be affected by the unnatural way video games satisfy natural urges - like constant positive feedback in WoW, returning from death in almost everything, the ability to kill whatever we see fit in many shooters, etc. Are you really suggesting these would have zero impact on us?
I contend that we learn from experience and our brains are poorly equipped to separate 'virtual' experience from those of reality, and I think this has been demonstrated many times over.
If it weren't the case, could anyone offer satisfactory explanations for all of the changes we're seeing in younger generations?
I am not advocating censorship though! Only that we understand what media's effect is, as best we can.
Though the article itself isn't the best, check out the introduction for references to many long-established results on this issue, the point being that media has a significant effect on its consumers.
The fact that we witness thousands upon thousands more deaths from various sources than our evolutionary ancestors is a very interesting phenomenon that's spawned many good papers.
And I ended my post implying that the (negative) effect of media is small compared to that of censorship - that's the speculation I'm guilty of, but I do believe it.
To say that viewing pornography everyday, where women are treated like beautiful objects at best, and dogshit at worst, wouldn't have an effect on one's outlook is rubbish.
You can't even watch a romantic comedy everyday without it affecting your views - that is basic psychology, empirically proven.
So to say that porn causes rape or anything like that would be silly, but to say that it is totally innocent is equally so.
The same is true for video games, violent or otherwise.
Whether the probably-small destructive effect of porn and video games warrant a rather large censoring is the question.
Slashdot Mirror
Can it organise my porn?
Possibly, but so far it's only been tested up to nine terabytes of data.
iSore
A magical revolutionary product at an unbelivable price - the lowest two octaves of your vocal range.
My counter-proposition is that if religion is abolished, large tracts of population would disappear. Religion/dogma seems to be the only thing that keeps some people going.
I've heard that argument before and it seems to be totally inverted. If someone finds out that life is finite rather than infinite, which certainly suggests that this life is more valuable than they'd thought, they'll respond by destroying themselves?
In my limited experience, most people that commit suicide (and I don't mean being euthanized) do so with talk about "seeing others on the other side".
It's ridiculous that the summary implies that, in the context of this leak, Obama setting aside funds for building new power plants is a negative thing.
If anything, the fact that America's only nuclear power comes from relatively ancient, decaying reactors of obsolete design should be motivation for building new nuclear power plants. This might be the best tangible thing Obama has proposed to date and informed citizens should be applauding it.
Commencer l'opération tempête de le téton !
The scientific community needs to get as far as we can from the policies of companies like Gaussian Inc., who will ban you and your institution for simply publishing any sort of comparative statistics on calculation time, accuracy, etc. from their computational chemistry software.
I can't imagine what they'd do to you if you started sorting through their code...
And if you consider that many of these so-called 'independent' studies are in fact paid for by fringe anti-science groups, then perhaps their results are aren't as unbiased as they would have you believe.
That seems strange - I'm having trouble imaging what an anti-science directed study would consist of. And how unbiased would they have you believe their study is, if it's anti-science by definition? It seems like they would want to show off their own maximizing of bias if it's really anti-science.
Chemical structure drawing tools are extremely important with ChemDraw being mandatory learning at many universities, including my own. Check this list out for a list of many similar programs including FOSS equivalents.
Beyond that, the biggest two uses of computers in higher levels of chemistry are for literature searching (with SciFinder being a clear winner here) and computational chemistry calculations (still unfortunately done mostly on with the anti-FOSS Gaussian software) though there's no shortage of excellent open source equivalents. Avogradro, for example.
However, literature searches aren't going to be too useful without the journal access that Universities enjoy, and frankly most computational chemistry programs are too sophisticated for students of a high school level - though 3D models of chemical structures are always much more interesting. Since chemistry is still taught by using ballpark descriptions and approximations, then successively refining those approximations, I'd be worried that almost any piece of chemistry software would be too intimidating and difficult to explain because it's designed for users with at least a year or two of university courses.
So, I'd think that teaching the students how to draw good structures (with stereochemical accuracy if possible!) on computers would be useful, and maybe 3D structures would be somewhat inspiring, but you're running the risk of over-complicating what should be a course in the fundamentals. If you have the means, you might want to focus on real demonstrations instead, which could be as simple as a marbles to demonstrate entropy, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate for acid/base chemistry, cornstarch and water to demonstrate non-newtonian fluids, alkali metals and water to demonstrate redox chemistry, salt and ice/water to demonstrate boiling point elevation and freezing point depression, etc. etc.
I think a lot of the problematic aspects of kids' lives that may be responsible for this effect come down to the fast-foodization of everything. If you define fast food as the instantaneous satisfying of urges without satisfying the underlying reasons for those urges using shit we understand to be worthless.
Constant connectedness provides the information that we crave, but so much of it and so cheaply that we don't place much value on much of it, including the stuff that actually affects us - how many people know more about international goings-on than local?
Social media sites allow us a steady supply of the gossip and egotism we crave without the meaningful social relationships that we really need. So many human relationships are now plagued by irony and an utter lack of sincerity
Hours and hours of television and movies act similarly, quenching our interest in humankind and stories, but often in a eye-candy-filled, superficial way.
Prescription and non-prescription drugs for absolutely every condition one can name, even conditions that are simply human nature.
And obviously, fast foods (including junk food) please our taste buds but offer next to nothing in terms of nutrition. The list goes on, ad nausem. Good food, good (that are ideally physically present) friends, something challenging to labour on earnestly (while improving a skill or two), and a little relaxation does miracles.
...consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.
Consider how many sources exist for buying bound books, Amazon not being a particularly great one, and how many sources there are for eBooks for Kindle, especially for the technically un-inclined. That's a whopping selection bias!
Agreed, and he said this:
I do have one minor complaint, that given their networking abilities, the Na’vi should not be so technologically inferior to the humans.
That ignores the reason humans first started developing significant technology; the agricultural revolution. That was the point when we extracted ourselves from nature and took over control of food. That's what allowed us to create advanced settlements and the rest is (pre-)history, as they say.
See the philosophical novel Ishmael for the basis of this argument.
Given the "living in harmony with nature" theme in the movie, one could hardly expect the Na'vi to have done the same.
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
The same is true of the climategate "scandal", but that hasn't stopped of it from being taken as proof of either a new world order or academia's corruption by at least 25% of comment'ers on climate related stories on mainstream news sites.
This claim is like Bill O'Riley's commentary; its effectiveness doesn't lie in any sort of rationality or evidence, but merely in it being uttered confidently (usually loudly) and it being something people want to believe. Nothing short of total refutation can get rid of garbage like this.
We only need to wait on a little natural selection to kick in for the usage to drop.
Just kidding - start enforcing the law!
...if the government decides to create a new, open journal will be developing a 'prestige factor' for it. If it isn't impressive to publish in it, the best works simply won't be published there.
Since there's little chance of this potential journal assailing Nature or Science, we may end up with free average quality papers and expensive (to both publish and consume) high-impact ones. That is, unless there's a scientific culture change, and academia starts to value open-access and transparency. Maybe if a few big works are published openly we may have a chance, and with all the climate-gate noise this would be especially good for science on the whole.
If the government simply adds a clause that all papers must be available to the public, we might instead see a new market force driving the big journals to open up all or some of their articles to the public, because if they don't, high quality government-funded works won't be available to them. Not a bad prospect either!
Meanwhile, if you're looking for a paper that your institution (if you belong to one) doesn't have access to, I highly recommend google'ing the title in parentheses - it's amazing how many are posted on ill-protected course pages.
That's similar to the study mentioned in either Blink or Freakonomics (pardon, I forget which) on a daycare centre that instituted a small fine if parents were late for their children. This soon caused an increase in lateness because parents could, in effect, buy off their guilt for slighting their children. What's more, removing the fine later caused an even larger increase in lateness. It seems that when you cross the line from the emotional-value realm into the realm of, say, traditional economics motivated by competition and greed, you not only encounter unexpected circumstances but you also may not be able to go back. And personally, I think the latter realm is not where we want education to be.
It does happen to an extent in the US, if the critic happens to be Islamic also.
But more commonly, it happens on behalf of Americans and American entites worldwide - one protester, essentially murdered by Shell, comes to mind from a recent trial; Ken Saro Wiwa.
No, it's not exactly what China is doing, but if your country is largely affected by powerful corporations, they have to be considered as part of your system of governance - and that doesn't make anybody look too pretty.
It's all those damn Margaritavilles . . .
I'm just suggesting we're affected by our new-found ability to instantly satisfy our very natural urges in a way that significantly differs from reality, using porn. As in, it's usually in the 3rd person, it offers a wide selection of girls instantly (no talkie-talkie!), it can often border on brutality, etc. and this might have a residual impact on how we interact with members of the opposite gender, away from the porn.
Likewise, we might be affected by the unnatural way video games satisfy natural urges - like constant positive feedback in WoW, returning from death in almost everything, the ability to kill whatever we see fit in many shooters, etc. Are you really suggesting these would have zero impact on us?
I contend that we learn from experience and our brains are poorly equipped to separate 'virtual' experience from those of reality, and I think this has been demonstrated many times over.
If it weren't the case, could anyone offer satisfactory explanations for all of the changes we're seeing in younger generations?
I am not advocating censorship though! Only that we understand what media's effect is, as best we can.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6894/is_2_8/ai_n28410574
Though the article itself isn't the best, check out the introduction for references to many long-established results on this issue, the point being that media has a significant effect on its consumers.
The fact that we witness thousands upon thousands more deaths from various sources than our evolutionary ancestors is a very interesting phenomenon that's spawned many good papers.
And I ended my post implying that the (negative) effect of media is small compared to that of censorship - that's the speculation I'm guilty of, but I do believe it.
To say that viewing pornography everyday, where women are treated like beautiful objects at best, and dogshit at worst, wouldn't have an effect on one's outlook is rubbish. You can't even watch a romantic comedy everyday without it affecting your views - that is basic psychology, empirically proven. So to say that porn causes rape or anything like that would be silly, but to say that it is totally innocent is equally so. The same is true for video games, violent or otherwise. Whether the probably-small destructive effect of porn and video games warrant a rather large censoring is the question.