The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past, and that we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all.
Umm... You are drifting into ignoratio elenchi territory. We were talking about 9,200 and 2,500 years ago, as a point in time when the arctic ice melted to the level it melts today. Not the last 1000 years, i.e. MWP and the LIA.
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past, and that we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all.
I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA.
I am really not sure what you are arguing here. I'm having a feeling that you are making internal logical and informational shortcuts which you are not sharing here. Which is a problem since my telepathy helmet was stolen some time ago, and you know how hard are those to come by these days.
How is less hot MWP and less cool LIA in contradiction with arctic ice melting 9,200 to 2,500 years ago? Or that the level it is melting at today doesn't match any level of melting since way back then?
How is a hotter MWP and cooler LIA than what you say is "mainstream" today in contradiction with either or both of the above?
How would either more or less extreme MWP and LIA support the data about melting arctic ice 9,200 to 2,500 years ago, and the fact that we are seeing such (and expecting to see worse) melting today?
"And we can't just say "Oh, it's all due to Sun's activity. It shined more back then, and it's starting to shine more now.""
I'm not arguing any of those things at this time. Don't read more into my words than I put into them. I'm simply saying that whether this is true or not, or whether the mainstream propaganda is true or not, they are contradictory. And they are.
Just clarifying my point about factors at play in the melting back then, compared to factors at play causing the melting today.
Although, I am again not sure WHAT are you actually arguing then. It's not AGW, it's not "natural", sooo... it's not really happening? It is AGW but not that much? Aliens?
whether this is true or not, or whether the mainstream propaganda is true or not, they are contradictory
Again, not exactly sure what issues you are contradicting against each other, but contradiction itself is secondary to the veracity of A and B. Claiming "they are contradictory" is completely meaningless, it's "true or not" that counts.
"Ball is red" (A) and "Ball is blue" (B) ARE contradictory statements but of no consequence unless the ball is actually either blue or red. One or the other MUST be true for the contradiction to be of any significance. Also, should one or the other be true, contradiction is significant only in pointing out that the claim A does not equal claim B.
Should BOTH A and B be true to the same degree, only THEN is the contradiction of some logical significance, as it would be somewhat of a paradox.
How could one person force 11 other people to vote his way? And what "send a message" are you talking about? A message about what?
Or in the Apple-Samsung case, simply by claiming to be an expert on patents, prior art AND jury duty because he filed a patent himself and was on juries three times already. Also, there were NINE jurors, not twelve.
As for sending the message... Well, besides the "Velvin Hogan is Batman" (4th jury duty? What is he, a professional juror?) there's that literal quote of his...
"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
Which is kind of an issue, since that is EXACTLY what the jury was instructed NOT to do.
Fascism is just Communism implemented where the industrial revolution has already occurred.
Fascism is authoritarianism built on top of nationalism - WE are better than THEM (everyone else) and our Leader is the bestest ever because he is of us and we are the best ever and as such it is foretold in our culture that we shall have the bestest Leader ever. Everything belongs to us, but since the Leader knows best, he is the one running everything.
Communism is all about equality - EVERYONE is essentially the same, everyone should have the same rights, no one should be lesser than others, no one is oppressed. No one owns anything really but everything exists solely for the benefit of everyone - so you don't really need to own anything. Everything is run by those who's duty it is to run things, and they are best for that job because they've been taught how to do it according to the available scientific knowledge.
Communism is an impossible utopia. Humans being imperfectly empathic and selfless it can easily become totalitarian if the people are not careful. Fascism is a very possible insane asylum. Totalitarianism is basically a prerequisite.
Roughly, yes. But so what? It still contradicts the "mainstream" AGW propaganda.
No it does not.
The fact that there are well documented climate changes due to natural events does not contradict or refute the AGW explanation of current climate changes. In fact, those changes actually point out how the current changes are anything but natural.
We're talking geological changes here, lasting for millennia, climate changes being just a side effect. Shifts those geological changes made in planet's systems, from geological, through thermal (air and sea currents) to ecological, more than adequately explain those changes in the polar caps. Where are such geological scale changes in the last 600 years? Or in the last 100 years? Or today? There aren't any.
And we can't just say "Oh, it's all due to Sun's activity. It shined more back then, and it's starting to shine more now." If it was warmer due to the Sun, there were still all those geological changes. Sun activity + geological activity = melting of polar ice. Remove the geological component from the equation (no such activity lately) while keeping the exact same results... and we have a problem.
That region doesn't get that much sunlight. It's actually in the dark for half the year. And it just had an ice age back then. So, the sunlight which wasn't able to break through an ice age for the last 800 years or so, must now warm up the rest of the Earth enough to cause the melting of polar ice caps coming out of an ice age. BUT... It can't shine so much that it would kill off plants and animals in the regions that get a lot of sunlight, at the same time. Only way to accomplish that is if it has help from all those geological changes - greenhouse gasses from the volcanoes and all that water vapor back in the air. Sun wasn't doing the melting back then alone and by itself.
It's all interconnected. Warming causes famine and droughts, famine causes wars and migration, which causes ecological devastation of all regions involved, which pumps right back into warming... And it is not a circular thing, but more of big ball of wibbly-wobbly... stuff.
The good news is, all that population growth also creates more of the only thing that can fix all this. Carbon machines which can both think through and work around problems. Plus they are sexy.
I find it very amusing that here on Slashdot, a few days after a paper claiming that such melts are actually not unusual, along comes another paper that is "gloom and doom".
Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.
Oh and the "not unprecedented" part... That's just the way of saying "Yeah, sure. It happened before." In this case, "before" lies somewhere between 9,200 and 2,500 years ago. Then, during the most of human civilization's existence it cooled down, until around 600 years ago it started to warm up again.
Coincidentally, at about that time the 100-year war was raging across Europe, the Mind Dynasty replaced the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in China while Mongols continued doing their thing all the way to Europe, in Americas Incas were spreading while Aztecs were busy sacrificing humans and Maya were busy with political turmoils of their own.
It is not AGW, it is the exponential population growth.
AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming. As in anthropo meaning human, and genesis meaning origin. As in human impact on the global warming. ANY human impact.
Still, it is regulation motivated by the need for "providing equal service to everyone".
Whether the local anecdotal case is about 10%, 50% or 90% regulation is of no consequence. Original post was about there being only two options for public networks - built by private companies for profit OR built by government for power/control over people.
There are really only two options for public-access networking over a large geographic area: Private commercial interests or a tax-funded government department. Profit or power.
The counter argument is not that there is no regulation of water supply anywhere in the world. It's that, if it exists, the regulation of water supply is not motivated by power or profit, but by greater good of all instead.
Very. Not much of regulating even. It only concerns people with large enough lawns. Who would probably find the fine to be trivial.
And it is obviously rooted in the need to provide equal service to everyone. Those who water gardens and trees or even those who are washing cars are exempt.
Actual regulation would be something like dry faucets from 9 AM to 4 PM - and even that would most likely be caused by the water shortage. Not by frivolous or profit-oriented motives.
This is similar to protocol-based QoS which ensures that VoIP or other latency-sensitive streams take priority over latency-insensitive streams.
More like bandwidth caps on a network with limited resources.
Christianity arrived earlier, even if it covered little of the Middle East.
That which was spreading through the Middle East prior to its 6th century arrival has about as much with "Christianity" as Buddhism - as far as the "true Christians" of that time cared. True Christians, naturally, being situated in Vatican. FFS, they called the East Orthodox Christians heretics - followed by them calling them heretics right back.
Regardless, your "significant percentage of the population" exists only in your head, without a single reference to back it up.
And even if 99% of population were Christians it still would not make a lick of difference nor would it give credibility to your insinuations that it was somehow Christians and Christianity who were the cause of scientific breakthroughs in the Islamic world.
Go back to those links I gave you and check the list of notable scientists and their works. What Christians there were (and you can tell them from their names, or from the list at the bottom of that link above) - they were translators of Greek texts. Actual science was done mostly by Persians with very Muslim names. And those guys were influenced by works of ancient Greeks and Indians - not Christianity.
Maybe it had something to do with the barbaric chaos caused by the end of the Roman Empire?
Sure. You can call them barbaric.
After all, you're the one bringing the whole "who was living where" thing to the table. You're free to call those Christians barbaric - cause disregarding a prosecuted Jew here and there all of those barbarians were Christians.
Not sure what you're trying to accomplish with that name calling, but hey... What do I care?
This is a bad example; plenty of municipalities have water regulations during summers or droughts.
A - those are extreme, non-everyday cases, bordering on natural disaster conditions.
B - such regulations are there solely for the reason of "providing equal service to everyone". Not to ensure greater profit or for the sake of control.
AFTER WHICH the golden age and the scientific revolution started in the Islamic world, lasting for 500 years. You know what is that period referred to as in the Christian world? 6th to 13th century?
TPAs are not being paid according to the return. They are paid on per case and by the hour basis. To get the 20% cut requires more work(hours) the lower you go - exactly what your numbers show up there. Yes, 20% cut from 90% amounts to 18% of the entire amount, another 20% cut gets it down to barely 14%. BTW, sorry if that original line was confusing. At 5 in the morning it made more sense. The gist was that the lower the taxes go, the more valuable the next tax cut gets - both in work needed to achieve it and in the actual money gotten from the cut. Anyway, getting less (tax returns) for the same amount of effort (work hours by TPAs) means that the cut-getting work is getting more expensive. Independence from TPA costs can't be the main motivator for lobbing to lower the taxes.
Or you could simply hire them as permanent employees, pay them a salary, decreasing the profit by a tiniest amount - but cutting out the per hour costs completely while getting the maximum tax cuts available since you have your own tax avoidance staff. Still, TPA costs are not the main motivator.
Or if that's confusing, take 20% off of different tax brackets and watch as the difference goes down - you get less and less for the same cut the lower you go.
So the rich guy gets the money without having to pay the tax prep guy. What makes this so hard for you to understand?
That it's exactly the opposite. RichGuyTM wants 0% taxes. He'll always hire the TPAGuyTM.
70% is NEVER good enough. It may have been "Sigh. OK. Best we can do." back when the tax was at 90%, but not when it's at 70% to start with and he already knows that TPAs can get it lower than that. He's not gonna say "Oh, 70% is OK. I can afford that." He wants less than that.
Look at roman_mir's and similar comments. He sees taxes as theft by the evil, grubby government. Which makes that 0% tax goal not just a matter of profit but a moral struggle. "Fuck it! Burn it if you must, but don't let them commie pinko goodfornuthin thievin gay liberal scumbags in Washington get their hands on my money! MY MONEY! Sweat of MY brow! My precious bodily fluids!"
And back to your original argument... The cost of work by TPAs is NOT the primary motivator for lobbying for lower taxes - it's the higher taxes themselves. Even if their TPAs were super-uber-capable-and-smart, able to get them 99.999% of a tax cut every time - 99.999% of 90% is still more than 99.999% of 70%.
Maybe not the full 90%, but they WERE paying more before.
but the tax preparer doesn't contribute as much and hence, the rich tend to pay less in tax preparation as well as in taxes.
Seriously? Somehow, lowering the tax bracket (which they were already avoiding completely according to you) lowers the price of tax preparation advisers' services or the time it takes them to do their job?
1 - lowering the tax bracket would actually make their services more expensive. Getting 20% off on your taxes from 90% is only 70%, but a same cut from 70% means you're now paying ONLY half. Which makes the tax cuts more valuable the lower you cut them. You could have just thought about it for a few minutes and get this far.
Or if that's confusing, take 20% off of different tax brackets and watch as the difference goes down - you get less and less for the same cut the lower you go. I.e. the price of a tax percentage goes up. Not that any of it matters.
2 - being motivated by the need to pay less, they are naturally aiming at 0% tax or as close to it as possible. As such, any cut is not enough and tax prep advisers are hired regardless of the height of taxes. Not that any of that matters either.
3 - being needed regardless of the current tax bracket, tax prep advisers have no reason to lower the price of their services. You wanna keep your millions, give them thousands. Only thing that matters in lowering their prices is competition.
4 - prices of tax prep advisers are peanuts compared to actual taxes.
And last but not least... 5 - full price of services is based on the input and complexity of one's tax situation. It's NOT about the current maximum tax bracket, but about HOW MUCH IS there to be TAXED.
Having more stuff means you have more stuff to pay taxes on. Paying less taxes means you get to have more stuff... etc. etc.
it *was* about revenge, steps 1 and 2 were basically "don't do it", and the rest was about how to cause an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him.
1 is "it is better to forgive". 2 is get your facts straight - who exactly "to take revenge on, as well as why." 3 is reciprocity and keeping up with the theme - "A good revenge is linked to what has been done against you." 3 also mentions using sexual acts as revenge.
For example if you want revenge on someone who cheated or who dumped you, you should use a punishment with dating/sex/fidelity involved.
4 is about plotting, and it makes it clear that number 2 was not about who not to hurt, but who else deserves to get it.
Do a brainstorm of appropriate measures for the category of revenge youâ(TM)re after. To continue the example above, you can sabotage your victimâ(TM)s current relationship, such as getting his new partner to be unfaithful or ensure that he gets a madman after him.
5 is about being systematic. Or as some might put it - it suggests stalking and going "Fatal Attraction minus a cooked rabbit" on the object of revenge. 6 throws the reciprocity mentioned under 3 out the window, since it talks about grading levels of revenge and getting the most with least out of it. 7 reminds us again that it is all about ensuring that the object of revenge suffers (like the revenger suffered).
So, no. It is not about getting "ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him". It is about making sure that the people who have wronged one in any way suffer at least as much and preferably in a similar way.
Neither is every person a competent cook - that's why there are restaurants. Places where you pay other people to do everything else for you but eating the food. And wasn't it you who mentioned those people whose job it is to dodge taxes for other people?
As usual with any group of people, there's a lot of conflicts of interest between members of this group.
And what is that even supposed to mean? Lobbying for lower taxes is a result of internal strife among the rich?
Rich people have high taxes, don't pay them (you said so above), want them lower though they are not paying them, so they are in conflict with... who exactly? Those rich people who want higher taxes? So, you are saying that because some rich people actually WANT to pay higher taxes, taxes get lowered just to fuck them over?
"Uncle Sam's gonna make you give even less to the state, you millionaire scum. See how you like them apples!"
Well, it actually isn't the first attempt at space art. And it is probably not going to make things much worse as far as the space junk issue is concerned.
Anyway, I am not about to call to a jihad against him and his pretty unimaginative project, which is more of a publicity stunt than anything else. But I do reserve my right to call the spade a spade - or in this case, junk and a lame attempt at fame.
If all that you say is true, government not collecting taxes, rich not paying taxes, the almighty IRS being helpless facing the godlike tax preparation advisers - why did those rich folks then continuously lobby to have the taxes lowered? So the little guy would hate them more?
Your "truisms" are actually more like fallacies. Errors in reasoning due to misconception or a presumption.
I am really, really trying to find some kind of justification for this "art" project and I'm coming up with bupkis. OK... It does nothing scientific. But it does nothing artistic either. It's about as artistic as painting a rock and dumping in the Marianas Trench. For something to be considered art, it has to be able to communicate to other humans a message beyond just its own physical existence.
This satellite is supposed to send messages transmitted to it by blinking its LEDs and "People will be able to see the blinking lights with the naked eye or through a telescope". Visible from the Earth's surface. With naked eye. LEDs. A 10x10x10 cm cube. Hanging in low Earth orbit. 600-2000 km from the surface. Right.
I can't really be bothered to look it up, but something tells me that you can't really see a 10 cm cube, 600-2000 km away, with an amateur telescope. Besides, shouldn't Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) "ground" this project?
Also, WTF is "Science is Fantasy" supposed to mean? That science is unattainable and/or imaginary? Not real? With no real function or application? Just dumping that "is" and it would make SOME sense. Or reversing the order of words in the sentence. This... this is just half-thought through crap.
All I see here is rich, privileged parents, buying their rich, privileged, spoiled kid his 15 minutes of fame since he can't get there with his own effort and talent.
he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow.
The way I read it at first, I thought that he was touching HER elbow/shoulder with his hand. As a writer, she should know a difference between "touching" and "bumping into".
Either way, even at a con it is kinda hard to touch someone with your shoulder while you're facing them and talking to them - unless you're deliberately trying to nudge them in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink chummy sort of way. Which she obviously didn't find chummy as she moved away each time. And then he came on with a lame "you make me think bad thoughts" come-on, and was shot down and ignored.
At the con, someone introduced himself to me and started a conversation, accompanied by elbow-and-shoulder touches that I moved away from. At one point he said I had to stop saying things that "made [him] want to say "wrong" things"; I shut him down politely, turned my back on him, and talked to someone else until he eventually left.
later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
Well actually...
From behind me, the man wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, "Well, you and I will have a good time!" at which point I spun and said loudly and clearly "You do NOT touch me," and moved inside. He stayed in the bottleneck for more than thirty minutes trying to catch my eye before he left; I recruited someone to walk me to the elevator.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," - later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
Well actually, there is another bit or two between those two points.
Sunday morning, I fell in with some friends and was chatting near the entrance to the book room, when I saw him, again hovering nearby. My friends, up to speed on the issue, eventually tried to walk me to the table, at which point he cut in with us and started apologizing. I said, "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," and kept walking.
Later, he stopped by the Clarkesworld table again and hovered for so long that a friend stepped in while I went elsewhere.
Apparently, all he picked up from the line above was the "don't worry about it" part, so he proceeded to stalk her. At which point she contacted the con staff. Then she wrote about it on her livejournal.
THEN, after the guy was originally suspended for two years (though apparently the con claims that "Harassment of any kind...will result in permanent suspension of membership"), she dug around and found out that her case was not the first complaint against the guy for being "too friendly" to women. Including at least one marriage proposal to a person he only just met.
Sooo... umm... he may have actually gotten off easy with just a ban from that one con, although his reputation of a "ladies man" will surely spread due to this publicity.
You are set so deep in your delusions that no argument, no matter how logical or factual can't reach you. I'm not here to argue with you. At best, I'm here only to point out the flaws in your logic and views, so those who skim the discussions wouldn't get the idea that your delusional nonsense is an unopposed norm here.
I mean... I could waste days tearing apart your continuous torrent of quasi-arguments - and for what? Even with those 4 points above, all you need is to scratch their surface to see that you manage to contradict yourself without even noticing.
You are actually promoting greed as a solution for everything and your personal tyranny over "the tyranny of taxation".
You would probably be a lot happier if you finally came out to yourself that you are not a libertarian as you've lead yourself to believe, but a full blown fascist. You may actually be happier. Here's a hint: Libertarians have no need to meddle into other people's "misallocation of labor" - they are against such meddling.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it does.
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past, and that we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all.
Umm... You are drifting into ignoratio elenchi territory.
We were talking about 9,200 and 2,500 years ago, as a point in time when the arctic ice melted to the level it melts today.
Not the last 1000 years, i.e. MWP and the LIA.
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past, and that we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all.
I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA.
I am really not sure what you are arguing here.
I'm having a feeling that you are making internal logical and informational shortcuts which you are not sharing here.
Which is a problem since my telepathy helmet was stolen some time ago, and you know how hard are those to come by these days.
How is less hot MWP and less cool LIA in contradiction with arctic ice melting 9,200 to 2,500 years ago?
Or that the level it is melting at today doesn't match any level of melting since way back then?
How is a hotter MWP and cooler LIA than what you say is "mainstream" today in contradiction with either or both of the above?
How would either more or less extreme MWP and LIA support the data about melting arctic ice 9,200 to 2,500 years ago, and the fact that we are seeing such (and expecting to see worse) melting today?
"And we can't just say "Oh, it's all due to Sun's activity. It shined more back then, and it's starting to shine more now.""
I'm not arguing any of those things at this time. Don't read more into my words than I put into them. I'm simply saying that whether this is true or not, or whether the mainstream propaganda is true or not, they are contradictory. And they are.
Just clarifying my point about factors at play in the melting back then, compared to factors at play causing the melting today.
Although, I am again not sure WHAT are you actually arguing then.
It's not AGW, it's not "natural", sooo... it's not really happening?
It is AGW but not that much?
Aliens?
whether this is true or not, or whether the mainstream propaganda is true or not, they are contradictory
Again, not exactly sure what issues you are contradicting against each other, but contradiction itself is secondary to the veracity of A and B.
Claiming "they are contradictory" is completely meaningless, it's "true or not" that counts.
"Ball is red" (A) and "Ball is blue" (B) ARE contradictory statements but of no consequence unless the ball is actually either blue or red.
One or the other MUST be true for the contradiction to be of any significance.
Also, should one or the other be true, contradiction is significant only in pointing out that the claim A does not equal claim B.
Should BOTH A and B be true to the same degree, only THEN is the contradiction of some logical significance, as it would be somewhat of a paradox.
How could one person force 11 other people to vote his way? And what "send a message" are you talking about? A message about what?
Or in the Apple-Samsung case, simply by claiming to be an expert on patents, prior art AND jury duty because he filed a patent himself and was on juries three times already.
Also, there were NINE jurors, not twelve.
As for sending the message... Well, besides the "Velvin Hogan is Batman" (4th jury duty? What is he, a professional juror?) there's that literal quote of his...
"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
Which is kind of an issue, since that is EXACTLY what the jury was instructed NOT to do.
There. Now you know.
Fascism is just Communism implemented where the industrial revolution has already occurred.
Fascism is authoritarianism built on top of nationalism - WE are better than THEM (everyone else) and our Leader is the bestest ever because he is of us and we are the best ever and as such it is foretold in our culture that we shall have the bestest Leader ever.
Everything belongs to us, but since the Leader knows best, he is the one running everything.
Communism is all about equality - EVERYONE is essentially the same, everyone should have the same rights, no one should be lesser than others, no one is oppressed.
No one owns anything really but everything exists solely for the benefit of everyone - so you don't really need to own anything. Everything is run by those who's duty it is to run things, and they are best for that job because they've been taught how to do it according to the available scientific knowledge.
Communism is an impossible utopia. Humans being imperfectly empathic and selfless it can easily become totalitarian if the people are not careful.
Fascism is a very possible insane asylum. Totalitarianism is basically a prerequisite.
Godforbid, they'd have to take responsibility for future consequences of their actions, or endure the pain of changes in the world around them.
There is only one correct answer.
As long as I can!
Roughly, yes. But so what? It still contradicts the "mainstream" AGW propaganda.
No it does not.
The fact that there are well documented climate changes due to natural events does not contradict or refute the AGW explanation of current climate changes.
In fact, those changes actually point out how the current changes are anything but natural.
We got volcanic eruptions around 7911 BC powerful enough to cause climate changes lasting almost an entire millennium.
Followed by the rises of the sea levels when all that ice starts melting.
Then more catastrophic eruptions, landslides and tsunamis on a geological scale.
Parts of the continents literally disappear. Sahara is formed. Another VEI7 eruption.
We're talking geological changes here, lasting for millennia, climate changes being just a side effect.
Shifts those geological changes made in planet's systems, from geological, through thermal (air and sea currents) to ecological, more than adequately explain those changes in the polar caps.
Where are such geological scale changes in the last 600 years? Or in the last 100 years? Or today?
There aren't any.
And we can't just say "Oh, it's all due to Sun's activity. It shined more back then, and it's starting to shine more now."
If it was warmer due to the Sun, there were still all those geological changes.
Sun activity + geological activity = melting of polar ice.
Remove the geological component from the equation (no such activity lately) while keeping the exact same results... and we have a problem.
That region doesn't get that much sunlight. It's actually in the dark for half the year. And it just had an ice age back then.
So, the sunlight which wasn't able to break through an ice age for the last 800 years or so, must now warm up the rest of the Earth enough to cause the melting of polar ice caps coming out of an ice age.
BUT... It can't shine so much that it would kill off plants and animals in the regions that get a lot of sunlight, at the same time.
Only way to accomplish that is if it has help from all those geological changes - greenhouse gasses from the volcanoes and all that water vapor back in the air.
Sun wasn't doing the melting back then alone and by itself.
Sun is not killing off life around the Equator today either, it isn't shining more or stronger, but we ARE having melting ice caps. And a lot more CO2.
Which we didn't have until recently, and never on this scale.
WE are the major geological change helping Sun melt the polar ice caps.
No one else to blame, no one else to fix it.
It's all interconnected.
Warming causes famine and droughts, famine causes wars and migration, which causes ecological devastation of all regions involved, which pumps right back into warming...
And it is not a circular thing, but more of big ball of wibbly-wobbly... stuff.
The good news is, all that population growth also creates more of the only thing that can fix all this.
Carbon machines which can both think through and work around problems.
Plus they are sexy.
I find it very amusing that here on Slashdot, a few days after a paper claiming that such melts are actually not unusual, along comes another paper that is "gloom and doom".
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11391.html
Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.
Oh and the "not unprecedented" part...
That's just the way of saying "Yeah, sure. It happened before."
In this case, "before" lies somewhere between 9,200 and 2,500 years ago.
Then, during the most of human civilization's existence it cooled down, until around 600 years ago it started to warm up again.
Coincidentally, at about that time the 100-year war was raging across Europe, the Mind Dynasty replaced the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in China while Mongols continued doing their thing all the way to Europe, in Americas Incas were spreading while Aztecs were busy sacrificing humans and Maya were busy with political turmoils of their own.
It is not AGW, it is the exponential population growth.
AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming.
As in anthropo meaning human, and genesis meaning origin.
As in human impact on the global warming. ANY human impact.
In other words, you're a liberal.
...but, are you using the word "liberal" there as it if means something negative?
Still, it is regulation motivated by the need for "providing equal service to everyone".
Whether the local anecdotal case is about 10%, 50% or 90% regulation is of no consequence.
Original post was about there being only two options for public networks - built by private companies for profit OR built by government for power/control over people.
There are really only two options for public-access networking over a large geographic area: Private commercial interests or a tax-funded government department. Profit or power.
The counter argument is not that there is no regulation of water supply anywhere in the world.
It's that, if it exists, the regulation of water supply is not motivated by power or profit, but by greater good of all instead.
pretty mundane.
Very. Not much of regulating even.
It only concerns people with large enough lawns. Who would probably find the fine to be trivial.
And it is obviously rooted in the need to provide equal service to everyone.
Those who water gardens and trees or even those who are washing cars are exempt.
Actual regulation would be something like dry faucets from 9 AM to 4 PM - and even that would most likely be caused by the water shortage.
Not by frivolous or profit-oriented motives.
This is similar to protocol-based QoS which ensures that VoIP or other latency-sensitive streams take priority over latency-insensitive streams.
More like bandwidth caps on a network with limited resources.
Christianity arrived earlier, even if it covered little of the Middle East.
That which was spreading through the Middle East prior to its 6th century arrival has about as much with "Christianity" as Buddhism - as far as the "true Christians" of that time cared.
True Christians, naturally, being situated in Vatican.
FFS, they called the East Orthodox Christians heretics - followed by them calling them heretics right back.
Regardless, your "significant percentage of the population" exists only in your head, without a single reference to back it up.
And even if 99% of population were Christians it still would not make a lick of difference nor would it give credibility to your insinuations that it was somehow Christians and Christianity who were the cause of scientific breakthroughs in the Islamic world.
Go back to those links I gave you and check the list of notable scientists and their works.
What Christians there were (and you can tell them from their names, or from the list at the bottom of that link above) - they were translators of Greek texts.
Actual science was done mostly by Persians with very Muslim names. And those guys were influenced by works of ancient Greeks and Indians - not Christianity.
Maybe it had something to do with the barbaric chaos caused by the end of the Roman Empire?
Sure. You can call them barbaric.
After all, you're the one bringing the whole "who was living where" thing to the table.
You're free to call those Christians barbaric - cause disregarding a prosecuted Jew here and there all of those barbarians were Christians.
Not sure what you're trying to accomplish with that name calling, but hey... What do I care?
This is a bad example; plenty of municipalities have water regulations during summers or droughts.
A - those are extreme, non-everyday cases, bordering on natural disaster conditions.
B - such regulations are there solely for the reason of "providing equal service to everyone". Not to ensure greater profit or for the sake of control.
But nice try there.
If only we were not on the internet.
Where one could check and see that while the Christianity arrived in the Middle East at about the same time as Islam, it is the later which spread across North Africa and further East in the following 100 years.
AFTER WHICH the golden age and the scientific revolution started in the Islamic world, lasting for 500 years.
You know what is that period referred to as in the Christian world? 6th to 13th century?
The Dark Ages.
AFAIK it's used for connectors a lot because it doesn't corrode.
It does get the Purple Plague though. Which, often being hidden from the view, can be worse than corrosion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-aluminium_intermetallic
Holy water failed to exorcise demons from possessed. Would not buy again.
Dude...
TPAs are not being paid according to the return. They are paid on per case and by the hour basis.
To get the 20% cut requires more work(hours) the lower you go - exactly what your numbers show up there.
Yes, 20% cut from 90% amounts to 18% of the entire amount, another 20% cut gets it down to barely 14%.
BTW, sorry if that original line was confusing. At 5 in the morning it made more sense.
The gist was that the lower the taxes go, the more valuable the next tax cut gets - both in work needed to achieve it and in the actual money gotten from the cut.
Anyway, getting less (tax returns) for the same amount of effort (work hours by TPAs) means that the cut-getting work is getting more expensive.
Independence from TPA costs can't be the main motivator for lobbing to lower the taxes.
Or you could simply hire them as permanent employees, pay them a salary, decreasing the profit by a tiniest amount - but cutting out the per hour costs completely while getting the maximum tax cuts available since you have your own tax avoidance staff.
Still, TPA costs are not the main motivator.
Or if that's confusing, take 20% off of different tax brackets and watch as the difference goes down - you get less and less for the same cut the lower you go.
So the rich guy gets the money without having to pay the tax prep guy. What makes this so hard for you to understand?
That it's exactly the opposite.
RichGuyTM wants 0% taxes. He'll always hire the TPAGuyTM.
70% is NEVER good enough. It may have been "Sigh. OK. Best we can do." back when the tax was at 90%, but not when it's at 70% to start with and he already knows that TPAs can get it lower than that.
He's not gonna say "Oh, 70% is OK. I can afford that." He wants less than that.
Look at roman_mir's and similar comments. He sees taxes as theft by the evil, grubby government.
Which makes that 0% tax goal not just a matter of profit but a moral struggle.
"Fuck it! Burn it if you must, but don't let them commie pinko goodfornuthin thievin gay liberal scumbags in Washington get their hands on my money! MY MONEY! Sweat of MY brow! My precious bodily fluids!"
And back to your original argument...
The cost of work by TPAs is NOT the primary motivator for lobbying for lower taxes - it's the higher taxes themselves.
Even if their TPAs were super-uber-capable-and-smart, able to get them 99.999% of a tax cut every time - 99.999% of 90% is still more than 99.999% of 70%.
Maybe not the full 90%, but they WERE paying more before.
but the tax preparer doesn't contribute as much and hence, the rich tend to pay less in tax preparation as well as in taxes.
Seriously?
Somehow, lowering the tax bracket (which they were already avoiding completely according to you) lowers the price of tax preparation advisers' services or the time it takes them to do their job?
1 - lowering the tax bracket would actually make their services more expensive.
Getting 20% off on your taxes from 90% is only 70%, but a same cut from 70% means you're now paying ONLY half.
Which makes the tax cuts more valuable the lower you cut them.
You could have just thought about it for a few minutes and get this far.
Or if that's confusing, take 20% off of different tax brackets and watch as the difference goes down - you get less and less for the same cut the lower you go.
I.e. the price of a tax percentage goes up.
Not that any of it matters.
2 - being motivated by the need to pay less, they are naturally aiming at 0% tax or as close to it as possible.
As such, any cut is not enough and tax prep advisers are hired regardless of the height of taxes.
Not that any of that matters either.
3 - being needed regardless of the current tax bracket, tax prep advisers have no reason to lower the price of their services.
You wanna keep your millions, give them thousands. Only thing that matters in lowering their prices is competition.
4 - prices of tax prep advisers are peanuts compared to actual taxes.
And last but not least...
5 - full price of services is based on the input and complexity of one's tax situation.
It's NOT about the current maximum tax bracket, but about HOW MUCH IS there to be TAXED.
Having more stuff means you have more stuff to pay taxes on. Paying less taxes means you get to have more stuff... etc. etc.
it *was* about revenge, steps 1 and 2 were basically "don't do it", and the rest was about how to cause an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him.
http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2010/08/strangest-blog-thread-yet-on-swedish.html
1 is "it is better to forgive".
2 is get your facts straight - who exactly "to take revenge on, as well as why."
3 is reciprocity and keeping up with the theme - "A good revenge is linked to what has been done against you."
3 also mentions using sexual acts as revenge.
For example if you want revenge on someone who cheated or who dumped you, you should use a punishment with dating/sex/fidelity involved.
4 is about plotting, and it makes it clear that number 2 was not about who not to hurt, but who else deserves to get it.
Do a brainstorm of appropriate measures for the category of revenge youâ(TM)re after.
To continue the example above, you can sabotage your victimâ(TM)s current relationship, such as getting his new partner to be unfaithful or ensure that he gets a madman after him.
5 is about being systematic. Or as some might put it - it suggests stalking and going "Fatal Attraction minus a cooked rabbit" on the object of revenge.
6 throws the reciprocity mentioned under 3 out the window, since it talks about grading levels of revenge and getting the most with least out of it.
7 reminds us again that it is all about ensuring that the object of revenge suffers (like the revenger suffered).
So, no.
It is not about getting "ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him".
It is about making sure that the people who have wronged one in any way suffer at least as much and preferably in a similar way.
Neither is every person a competent cook - that's why there are restaurants.
Places where you pay other people to do everything else for you but eating the food.
And wasn't it you who mentioned those people whose job it is to dodge taxes for other people?
As usual with any group of people, there's a lot of conflicts of interest between members of this group.
And what is that even supposed to mean? Lobbying for lower taxes is a result of internal strife among the rich?
Rich people have high taxes, don't pay them (you said so above), want them lower though they are not paying them, so they are in conflict with... who exactly? Those rich people who want higher taxes?
So, you are saying that because some rich people actually WANT to pay higher taxes, taxes get lowered just to fuck them over?
"Uncle Sam's gonna make you give even less to the state, you millionaire scum. See how you like them apples!"
Well, it actually isn't the first attempt at space art.
And it is probably not going to make things much worse as far as the space junk issue is concerned.
Anyway, I am not about to call to a jihad against him and his pretty unimaginative project, which is more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
But I do reserve my right to call the spade a spade - or in this case, junk and a lame attempt at fame.
If all that you say is true, government not collecting taxes, rich not paying taxes, the almighty IRS being helpless facing the godlike tax preparation advisers - why did those rich folks then continuously lobby to have the taxes lowered?
So the little guy would hate them more?
Your "truisms" are actually more like fallacies.
Errors in reasoning due to misconception or a presumption.
I am really, really trying to find some kind of justification for this "art" project and I'm coming up with bupkis.
OK... It does nothing scientific. But it does nothing artistic either.
It's about as artistic as painting a rock and dumping in the Marianas Trench.
For something to be considered art, it has to be able to communicate to other humans a message beyond just its own physical existence.
This satellite is supposed to send messages transmitted to it by blinking its LEDs and "People will be able to see the blinking lights with the naked eye or through a telescope".
Visible from the Earth's surface. With naked eye. LEDs. A 10x10x10 cm cube. Hanging in low Earth orbit. 600-2000 km from the surface. Right.
I can't really be bothered to look it up, but something tells me that you can't really see a 10 cm cube, 600-2000 km away, with an amateur telescope.
Besides, shouldn't Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) "ground" this project?
Also, WTF is "Science is Fantasy" supposed to mean?
That science is unattainable and/or imaginary? Not real? With no real function or application?
Just dumping that "is" and it would make SOME sense. Or reversing the order of words in the sentence.
This... this is just half-thought through crap.
All I see here is rich, privileged parents, buying their rich, privileged, spoiled kid his 15 minutes of fame since he can't get there with his own effort and talent.
he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow.
The way I read it at first, I thought that he was touching HER elbow/shoulder with his hand. As a writer, she should know a difference between "touching" and "bumping into".
Either way, even at a con it is kinda hard to touch someone with your shoulder while you're facing them and talking to them - unless you're deliberately trying to nudge them in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink chummy sort of way.
Which she obviously didn't find chummy as she moved away each time.
And then he came on with a lame "you make me think bad thoughts" come-on, and was shot down and ignored.
At the con, someone introduced himself to me and started a conversation, accompanied by elbow-and-shoulder touches that I moved away from. At one point he said I had to stop saying things that "made [him] want to say "wrong" things"; I shut him down politely, turned my back on him, and talked to someone else until he eventually left.
later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
Well actually...
From behind me, the man wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, "Well, you and I will have a good time!" at which point I spun and said loudly and clearly "You do NOT touch me," and moved inside.
He stayed in the bottleneck for more than thirty minutes trying to catch my eye before he left; I recruited someone to walk me to the elevator.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
Well actually, there is another bit or two between those two points.
Sunday morning, I fell in with some friends and was chatting near the entrance to the book room, when I saw him, again hovering nearby. My friends, up to speed on the issue, eventually tried to walk me to the table, at which point he cut in with us and started apologizing. I said, "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," and kept walking.
Later, he stopped by the Clarkesworld table again and hovered for so long that a friend stepped in while I went elsewhere.
Apparently, all he picked up from the line above was the "don't worry about it" part, so he proceeded to stalk her.
At which point she contacted the con staff.
Then she wrote about it on her livejournal.
THEN, after the guy was originally suspended for two years (though apparently the con claims that "Harassment of any kind...will result in permanent suspension of membership"), she dug around and found out that her case was not the first complaint against the guy for being "too friendly" to women.
Including at least one marriage proposal to a person he only just met.
Sooo... umm... he may have actually gotten off easy with just a ban from that one con, although his reputation of a "ladies man" will surely spread due to this publicity.
You are set so deep in your delusions that no argument, no matter how logical or factual can't reach you.
I'm not here to argue with you.
At best, I'm here only to point out the flaws in your logic and views, so those who skim the discussions wouldn't get the idea that your delusional nonsense is an unopposed norm here.
I mean... I could waste days tearing apart your continuous torrent of quasi-arguments - and for what?
Even with those 4 points above, all you need is to scratch their surface to see that you manage to contradict yourself without even noticing.
You are actually promoting greed as a solution for everything and your personal tyranny over "the tyranny of taxation".
You would probably be a lot happier if you finally came out to yourself that you are not a libertarian as you've lead yourself to believe, but a full blown fascist. You may actually be happier.
Here's a hint: Libertarians have no need to meddle into other people's "misallocation of labor" - they are against such meddling.