Ok, except that if a lot of ice melts mass is shifted from the poles (along the axis of rotation, hence less angular effect) to the equator.
Fair point.
This drastically changes the angular properties of the once frozen water.
I don't think the word "drastic" means what you think it means. Let's go crazy and say the formerly frozen water raises the sea level by, say, 1,000 feet. That means the radius of the earth has increased by a factor of 0.0000236.
The Earth is much bigger and more massive than you think. I think you have a visual in your mind here of the shape of the Earth having this noticeable bulge from melting water. The truth is that all the stuff on the surface of the earth is as significant as dust on a soccer ball affecting it's behavior (except the dust is orders of magnitude more significant). I suggest doing a little math here.
You sir need to go learn angular mechanics! The mass of the Earth is distributed spherically. The mass of the water is distributed in a spherical SHELL of rather large radius. It seems to me that when you increase the radius of an angular system the torque goes up.....
Okay, now calculate the percentage radius difference between the highest point on earth and the lowest point, then figure that the average ice versus water level is nowhere near that, then figure the tiny amount of mass we're talking about compared to the momentum of the earth.
Or to put it another way, the Earth is smooth to the same degree that a 1 foot sphere has a "Mount Everest" 0.0045 inches high. [On the other hand, the Earth is not perfectly spherical shape-wise, but it is very, very smooth].
Depends how you define significant, of course, but the consequences of running out of oil...
We will NEVER "run out" of oil. It doesn't work like that. It just gets more and more expensive to pull out of the ground. When cheap fossil fuel gets more expensive than the alternatives, then we'll switch to the alternatives (of which there are many).
Hungry people are often poor people, and poor people can't pay enough to meet our expectations of a return (or even no loss) on labor, fuel, vehicles, storage, and other distribution resources.
I think, in general, the problem is more political. In almost every case, countries with large food problems have huge political problems. If you look at the history of the big "food telethons" that try and solve immediate hunger issues, most of the food ends up getting confiscated by the corrupt government or organized crime (or both).
Really, it's pretty cheap to move massive amounts of food if you have a stable country. That's why most of the world has relatively cheap food.
Though in fact they're environmental damage scenarios caused by specific events.
Well, I was talking of human-caused environmental damage. I mean, the sun could go Nova, or we could get hit with the killer burst of gamma rays, too. But that's not what the original poster was referring to.:)
Volcanism. With global warming, the melting of the polar ice will result in a major redistribution of mass. The planet will want to conserve angular momentum. Something will have to give.
Huh? I suggest going to look up the mass of the earth, compared to the mass of all the water. The mass of ALL the water is proportionally tiny, much less the mass of just the ice. Then try and remember that the world goes through periodic ice ages that redistribute water mass all the time.
Good old fashion starvation and disease. For reference, see the current food prices and how these are liked in the developing world. Biofuel mania has something to do with it, but increased consumption by people and animals people eat is the major problem.
Yes, it's entirely possible to get crop failures leading to starvation. But how many deaths? 1M? 10M? Not even a small dent in human population.
The flaw in your thinking is very common -- it assumes a static world that does not adjust. If people are dying by the millions, then things will adjust. Hunger is by far a distribution problem, not a food production problem.
we will actually reach that population level again. Environmental damage here we come!
I knew someone would say this. Alright, I'll bite. Name one plausible environmental damage scenario (other than full-out nuclear war) that would cause a significant proportion of human extinction.
The most extreme predictions of global warming will hardly slow down human population growth, much less actually reduce populations, much less threaten us with extinction. (Of course, predictions are that human population growth will naturally slow and even stop over the next 50 years, but that's another subject).
Don't be silly... The Bible's measurement of those "Seas" was exactly correct: to one significant digit.
I don't expect God to give measurements with 10 digit precision in the bible. However, there is a something to this. I think it's reasonable that numbers wouldn't have fractions, but if the bible were really written by God, then it's reasonable that it should be accurate to the integer. A 10 cubit diameter circle should be well over *31* cubits (31.4). That's not just "rounding to one significant digit" (who even understood rounding in those days?), but it's a clear mistake. It was well within the technology of the day to measure to measure the different between 30 and 31 (and a half).
Or to put it another way, if the bible had a verse that said, "John and Jane had 5 sons and 6 daughters, and thus had 10 children", would you wave your hand and argue that God rounded it off to one significant digit?
As I said, I could understand "31", but "30" makes no sense. Did God inspire and guide the hand of the writers of the bible or didn't he? And if he did, why would he allow such an obvious mistake?
It's not even an interesting concept. It's totally stupid. The gatekeeper program is only going to have a limited number of cat images. All you have to do is have your program get scrape all possible images and then have a human tag all the cats. Even if you have a thousand cats among ten thousand images, it's not that hard for a persistent spammer to mark them.
You state these Christians have a "burning haterd" for atheists. If this is the case they are probably not Christians at all.
The problem is that I don't think these people are particularly unique. I'm reminded of this survey (another story here). Some choice quotes from supposedly "reasonable" people:
'Many of those interviewed saw atheists as cultural elitists, amoral materialists, or given to criminal behavior or drugs. She states, "Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good."'
Cole Ries, the president of the Maranatha Christian Fellowship: "Still, I don't believe that anybody is really an atheist. I believe that deep down everyone knows there is a god."" [how idiotic and arrogant is that??]
'First-year pharmacy student Amanda Wawrzynia, however, found the study reasonable. She said she would have ranked atheists at the bottom of the list of those sharing the same vision of American society. "I would rather have my kids marry someone of a different religion than someone who has none," she said.'
I think the fundamental problem is that Christianity has as a core concept to preach and convert others. Atheists have no investment in converting Christians, but Christians have a huge investment in converting atheists. It's part of the core mission. And if you're not a believer -- if you actually reject the whole idea of God -- then you are an agent of Satan who may lead others astray. In other words, if you're not with God, then you're against God. It interferes with the Christian mission to "save" people from hell and damnation.
In a way, I can kind of understand: if you really believe in God, then you really believe someone's soul is in mortal danger. The stakes could not be higher. And some atheist comes along to poison your community and possibly lead your children to hell! Looked at it that way, an atheist is worse than a child molester!
And this is the problem I have with religion in general and Christianity in particular. The more seriously you believe it, the more it is required of you to persecute nonbelievers, lest they lead "even one soul" into damnation. What's a bit of persecution compared to eternal damnation of one of your friends or family? Is it worth the risk to even get near an atheist? At least some other religions believe in God -- maybe God will cut them some slack.
No disrespect to you, but I take hope in the fact that atheism grows stronger and stronger, and its more and more socially acceptable to declare yourself one, despite all the hatred that surrounds it. I'd like to see that before this century is out (and hopefully I'll see it), atheists will be the majority and humanity can finally cast off the legacy of superstition. Unfortunately, religion is just intrinsically a corrupting and evil influence.
People talk about Christianity like it's the Nazi party, like it's this horrible machine that people are indoctrinated into.
I don't mean this to me inflammatory -- I really don't -- but a LOT of Christianity really is like the Nazi party. Not to say they're putting atheists into ovens, but the hatred of atheists in mainstream Christianity is unbelievable. I would guess you live in one of the more enlightened parts of the country.
I was reading this story recently, and it was absolutely shocking. These are mainstream citizens, not some wacko cult. And it really isn't all that unusual. Google for "atheist persecution" sometime.
Your response will probably be that these aren't "real" Christians, but I maintain you can't separate the two. Polls show that your tolerance is by far in the minority of Christians. Mainstream Christianity has a burning hatred of atheists. I really believe that if a Hitler arose in the United States and called for the rounding up and extermination of atheists, there would be way more support for the policy than you're willing to admit.
Most atheists are perfectly willing to "live and let live", but the majority of Christians aren't. It's not just annoying proselytizing, it's out and out persecution. I could give you long lists of links of examples, but I have a feeling you're not ready to accept how out of control fundamentalism has gotten in the United States.
On a personal note, I don't admit to being an atheist in Real Life anymore. It's just not worth the hassle. It's easier just to say I believe in God without any details, and just define God as, "that natural process that created the universe." I'm pretty sure my in-laws would probably be horrified, though I doubt they would out-and-out disown the family.
I read an article a while back that made the point that one of the biggest factors in attractiveness was symmetry. The "perfect" face doesn't have any features out of alignment. There was another study that made the point that "averaging" faces produced more attractiveness, but this was actually the wrong conclusion. It was the averaging process that smoothed out features into perfect alignment.
Symmetry actually makes sense. The more messed up someone's face is from ideal, the worse their genetics could be. Of course, there are other factors such as shiny hair, clear skin, sharp cheekbones, fitness, which all factor back to health.
An interesting read on this very subject here. Quote:
"I have my own personal hobby horse in this race and have some fairly firm opinions on the way things are going right now. I think that ray tracing in the classical sense, of analytically intersecting rays with conventionally defined geometry, whether they be triangle meshes or higher order primitives, I'm not really bullish on that taking over for primary rendering tasks which is essentially what Intel is pushing."
Carmack admits he has his own personal preference, but generally he's pretty sensible about these things. He's usually called it correctly in the past when people have pushed various technologies that were supposed to take over the world, and they've fallen by the wayside.
Hopefully he'll chime into this latest article with some further thoughts.
They're expensive because of the vast quantity of fuel that you have to use. There's also a certain amount of precision machinery that you lose. Lowering the raw materials cost doesn't really improve rocket economics much.
You have it backwards: Fuel is so cheap that it's on the scale of an accounting error compared to the cost of the rest of the rocket. The point is not to lower the cost of the raw materials, the point is to lower the *weight*. Weight is everything when it comes to rocketry. And a super space elevator-class material would reduce the weight dramatically.
Of course something like a space elevator is not an easy accomplishment. Does that mean we shouldn't try?
What Space Elevator proponents always overlook is that the Miracle Material (cue angelic singing) that makes it possible also drastically improves the cost of POR[tm] (Plain Ol' Rockets). That'll make the space elevator make even less sense if the material was that cheap and plentiful.
And no, we shouldn't even try unless the engineering gets a lot more feasible.
Never mind the children -- how do we teach the damn adults to take care of themselves? What a great world it would be if people took responsibility for their own lives rather than blaming the government for not giving them enough "free" goodies.
the social attitude of the article is firmly entrenched in the 1960s. Consider: [...] The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest.
It's somewhat anachronistic to assume a woman is a housewife, but I would say it's likely that the vast majority of households, even when the woman works, still functions like this. Or to put it another way, I don't know anyone in my circle of friends or acquaintances where the husband plans the meals for the week.
Sure, perhaps I'm being heavy-handed with it, but after a while, you almost have to hit people over the head with the clue-stick.
What this really means is: "Sure, perhaps I'm telling bald-faced lies, but after a while, you have to do that for people to accept your propaganda." See also: Communist Manifestos.
Excellent question. I would love to hear a Democrat actually answer this question and see if they care about fiscal responsibility. And yes, I know the Republicans have been spending like drunken idiots, but at least that is in contradiction to what they *say* they believe in. Democrats traditionally believe in large government transfers of wealth from one group to another. It would be interesting to hear what they say now that we simply can't continue as we're going.
Prediction: If this is asked, he'll dodge the question by saying he'll cut the defense budget, and then use that money for social programs. Of course, the defense budget is a relatively small part of the budget, but he won't mention that, and he certainly won't mention cutting anything else where it NEEDS to be cut. And he'll totally ignore the part about pork spending.
If FF2 is showing a relatively flat line, then it is not creating the circumstances that causes the massive irritating memory usage over time. Hopefully FF3 will fix some of these, but this test proves absolutely nothing if it doesn't demonstrate the problems FF2 had.
Slashdot Mirror
I just hope I'm never on trial for my life in the US.
Why? Because you want to get away with a murder?
You don't seriously think he was railroaded, do you?
Ok, except that if a lot of ice melts mass is shifted from the poles (along the axis of rotation, hence less angular effect) to the equator.
Fair point.
This drastically changes the angular properties of the once frozen water.
I don't think the word "drastic" means what you think it means. Let's go crazy and say the formerly frozen water raises the sea level by, say, 1,000 feet. That means the radius of the earth has increased by a factor of 0.0000236.
The Earth is much bigger and more massive than you think. I think you have a visual in your mind here of the shape of the Earth having this noticeable bulge from melting water. The truth is that all the stuff on the surface of the earth is as significant as dust on a soccer ball affecting it's behavior (except the dust is orders of magnitude more significant). I suggest doing a little math here.
You sir need to go learn angular mechanics! The mass of the Earth is distributed spherically. The mass of the water is distributed in a spherical SHELL of rather large radius. It seems to me that when you increase the radius of an angular system the torque goes up.....
Okay, now calculate the percentage radius difference between the highest point on earth and the lowest point, then figure that the average ice versus water level is nowhere near that, then figure the tiny amount of mass we're talking about compared to the momentum of the earth.
Or to put it another way, the Earth is smooth to the same degree that a 1 foot sphere has a "Mount Everest" 0.0045 inches high. [On the other hand, the Earth is not perfectly spherical shape-wise, but it is very, very smooth].
Depends how you define significant, of course, but the consequences of running out of oil...
We will NEVER "run out" of oil. It doesn't work like that. It just gets more and more expensive to pull out of the ground. When cheap fossil fuel gets more expensive than the alternatives, then we'll switch to the alternatives (of which there are many).
Hungry people are often poor people, and poor people can't pay enough to meet our expectations of a return (or even no loss) on labor, fuel, vehicles, storage, and other distribution resources.
I think, in general, the problem is more political. In almost every case, countries with large food problems have huge political problems. If you look at the history of the big "food telethons" that try and solve immediate hunger issues, most of the food ends up getting confiscated by the corrupt government or organized crime (or both).
Really, it's pretty cheap to move massive amounts of food if you have a stable country. That's why most of the world has relatively cheap food.
Though in fact they're environmental damage scenarios caused by specific events.
Well, I was talking of human-caused environmental damage. I mean, the sun could go Nova, or we could get hit with the killer burst of gamma rays, too. But that's not what the original poster was referring to. :)
Volcanism. With global warming, the melting of the polar ice will result in a major redistribution of mass. The planet will want to conserve angular momentum. Something will have to give.
Huh? I suggest going to look up the mass of the earth, compared to the mass of all the water. The mass of ALL the water is proportionally tiny, much less the mass of just the ice. Then try and remember that the world goes through periodic ice ages that redistribute water mass all the time.
Maybe something like an airborne or mosquito-borne variant of HIV?
It's certainly possible to get killer diseases, but that's not an environmental damage scenario. That can happen anytime.
Good old fashion starvation and disease. For reference, see the current food prices and how these are liked in the developing world. Biofuel mania has something to do with it, but increased consumption by people and animals people eat is the major problem.
Yes, it's entirely possible to get crop failures leading to starvation. But how many deaths? 1M? 10M? Not even a small dent in human population.
The flaw in your thinking is very common -- it assumes a static world that does not adjust. If people are dying by the millions, then things will adjust. Hunger is by far a distribution problem, not a food production problem.
we will actually reach that population level again. Environmental damage here we come!
I knew someone would say this. Alright, I'll bite. Name one plausible environmental damage scenario (other than full-out nuclear war) that would cause a significant proportion of human extinction.
The most extreme predictions of global warming will hardly slow down human population growth, much less actually reduce populations, much less threaten us with extinction. (Of course, predictions are that human population growth will naturally slow and even stop over the next 50 years, but that's another subject).
Don't be silly... The Bible's measurement of those "Seas" was exactly correct: to one significant digit.
I don't expect God to give measurements with 10 digit precision in the bible. However, there is a something to this. I think it's reasonable that numbers wouldn't have fractions, but if the bible were really written by God, then it's reasonable that it should be accurate to the integer. A 10 cubit diameter circle should be well over *31* cubits (31.4). That's not just "rounding to one significant digit" (who even understood rounding in those days?), but it's a clear mistake. It was well within the technology of the day to measure to measure the different between 30 and 31 (and a half).
Or to put it another way, if the bible had a verse that said, "John and Jane had 5 sons and 6 daughters, and thus had 10 children", would you wave your hand and argue that God rounded it off to one significant digit?
As I said, I could understand "31", but "30" makes no sense. Did God inspire and guide the hand of the writers of the bible or didn't he? And if he did, why would he allow such an obvious mistake?
When is someone going make a movie about the persecution of cartographers who believe in a flat earth? WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE MAP MAKERS??
Take picture of an animal against big white back ground XOR other animals at random positions and splash a semi-complicated background in the back.
Now you're back to standard Captchas, just replacing letters with pictures.
While kitten auth is an interesting concept...
It's not even an interesting concept. It's totally stupid. The gatekeeper program is only going to have a limited number of cat images. All you have to do is have your program get scrape all possible images and then have a human tag all the cats. Even if you have a thousand cats among ten thousand images, it's not that hard for a persistent spammer to mark them.
You state these Christians have a "burning haterd" for atheists. If this is the case they are probably not Christians at all.
The problem is that I don't think these people are particularly unique. I'm reminded of this survey (another story here). Some choice quotes from supposedly "reasonable" people:
'Many of those interviewed saw atheists as cultural elitists, amoral materialists, or given to criminal behavior or drugs. She states, "Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good."'
Cole Ries, the president of the Maranatha Christian Fellowship: "Still, I don't believe that anybody is really an atheist. I believe that deep down everyone knows there is a god."" [how idiotic and arrogant is that??]
'First-year pharmacy student Amanda Wawrzynia, however, found the study reasonable. She said she would have ranked atheists at the bottom of the list of those sharing the same vision of American society. "I would rather have my kids marry someone of a different religion than someone who has none," she said.'
I think the fundamental problem is that Christianity has as a core concept to preach and convert others. Atheists have no investment in converting Christians, but Christians have a huge investment in converting atheists. It's part of the core mission. And if you're not a believer -- if you actually reject the whole idea of God -- then you are an agent of Satan who may lead others astray. In other words, if you're not with God, then you're against God. It interferes with the Christian mission to "save" people from hell and damnation.
In a way, I can kind of understand: if you really believe in God, then you really believe someone's soul is in mortal danger. The stakes could not be higher. And some atheist comes along to poison your community and possibly lead your children to hell! Looked at it that way, an atheist is worse than a child molester!
And this is the problem I have with religion in general and Christianity in particular. The more seriously you believe it, the more it is required of you to persecute nonbelievers, lest they lead "even one soul" into damnation. What's a bit of persecution compared to eternal damnation of one of your friends or family? Is it worth the risk to even get near an atheist? At least some other religions believe in God -- maybe God will cut them some slack.
No disrespect to you, but I take hope in the fact that atheism grows stronger and stronger, and its more and more socially acceptable to declare yourself one, despite all the hatred that surrounds it. I'd like to see that before this century is out (and hopefully I'll see it), atheists will be the majority and humanity can finally cast off the legacy of superstition. Unfortunately, religion is just intrinsically a corrupting and evil influence.
People talk about Christianity like it's the Nazi party, like it's this horrible machine that people are indoctrinated into.
I don't mean this to me inflammatory -- I really don't -- but a LOT of Christianity really is like the Nazi party. Not to say they're putting atheists into ovens, but the hatred of atheists in mainstream Christianity is unbelievable. I would guess you live in one of the more enlightened parts of the country.
I was reading this story recently, and it was absolutely shocking. These are mainstream citizens, not some wacko cult. And it really isn't all that unusual. Google for "atheist persecution" sometime.
Your response will probably be that these aren't "real" Christians, but I maintain you can't separate the two. Polls show that your tolerance is by far in the minority of Christians. Mainstream Christianity has a burning hatred of atheists. I really believe that if a Hitler arose in the United States and called for the rounding up and extermination of atheists, there would be way more support for the policy than you're willing to admit.
Most atheists are perfectly willing to "live and let live", but the majority of Christians aren't. It's not just annoying proselytizing, it's out and out persecution. I could give you long lists of links of examples, but I have a feeling you're not ready to accept how out of control fundamentalism has gotten in the United States.
On a personal note, I don't admit to being an atheist in Real Life anymore. It's just not worth the hassle. It's easier just to say I believe in God without any details, and just define God as, "that natural process that created the universe." I'm pretty sure my in-laws would probably be horrified, though I doubt they would out-and-out disown the family.
I read an article a while back that made the point that one of the biggest factors in attractiveness was symmetry. The "perfect" face doesn't have any features out of alignment. There was another study that made the point that "averaging" faces produced more attractiveness, but this was actually the wrong conclusion. It was the averaging process that smoothed out features into perfect alignment.
Symmetry actually makes sense. The more messed up someone's face is from ideal, the worse their genetics could be. Of course, there are other factors such as shiny hair, clear skin, sharp cheekbones, fitness, which all factor back to health.
An interesting read on this very subject here. Quote:
"I have my own personal hobby horse in this race and have some fairly firm opinions on the way things are going right now. I think that ray tracing in the classical sense, of analytically intersecting rays with conventionally defined geometry, whether they be triangle meshes or higher order primitives, I'm not really bullish on that taking over for primary rendering tasks which is essentially what Intel is pushing."
Carmack admits he has his own personal preference, but generally he's pretty sensible about these things. He's usually called it correctly in the past when people have pushed various technologies that were supposed to take over the world, and they've fallen by the wayside.
Hopefully he'll chime into this latest article with some further thoughts.
They're expensive because of the vast quantity of fuel that you have to use. There's also a certain amount of precision machinery that you lose. Lowering the raw materials cost doesn't really improve rocket economics much.
You have it backwards: Fuel is so cheap that it's on the scale of an accounting error compared to the cost of the rest of the rocket. The point is not to lower the cost of the raw materials, the point is to lower the *weight*. Weight is everything when it comes to rocketry. And a super space elevator-class material would reduce the weight dramatically.
Of course something like a space elevator is not an easy accomplishment. Does that mean we shouldn't try?
What Space Elevator proponents always overlook is that the Miracle Material (cue angelic singing) that makes it possible also drastically improves the cost of POR[tm] (Plain Ol' Rockets). That'll make the space elevator make even less sense if the material was that cheap and plentiful.
And no, we shouldn't even try unless the engineering gets a lot more feasible.
Never mind the children -- how do we teach the damn adults to take care of themselves? What a great world it would be if people took responsibility for their own lives rather than blaming the government for not giving them enough "free" goodies.
the social attitude of the article is firmly entrenched in the 1960s. Consider: [...] The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest.
It's somewhat anachronistic to assume a woman is a housewife, but I would say it's likely that the vast majority of households, even when the woman works, still functions like this. Or to put it another way, I don't know anyone in my circle of friends or acquaintances where the husband plans the meals for the week.
Sure, perhaps I'm being heavy-handed with it, but after a while, you almost have to hit people over the head with the clue-stick.
What this really means is: "Sure, perhaps I'm telling bald-faced lies, but after a while, you have to do that for people to accept your propaganda." See also: Communist Manifestos.
Excellent question. I would love to hear a Democrat actually answer this question and see if they care about fiscal responsibility. And yes, I know the Republicans have been spending like drunken idiots, but at least that is in contradiction to what they *say* they believe in. Democrats traditionally believe in large government transfers of wealth from one group to another. It would be interesting to hear what they say now that we simply can't continue as we're going.
Prediction: If this is asked, he'll dodge the question by saying he'll cut the defense budget, and then use that money for social programs. Of course, the defense budget is a relatively small part of the budget, but he won't mention that, and he certainly won't mention cutting anything else where it NEEDS to be cut. And he'll totally ignore the part about pork spending.
If FF2 is showing a relatively flat line, then it is not creating the circumstances that causes the massive irritating memory usage over time. Hopefully FF3 will fix some of these, but this test proves absolutely nothing if it doesn't demonstrate the problems FF2 had.