GPL is like promoting free speech until someone saids something YOU don't like.
It's sad when trolling gets modded up like that. GPL is like promoting free speech where you are and in other countries too, even if the governments in those other countries don't like it. The freedom in the GPL is like your right not to be punched in the face. You could argue that that is a limitation of the would-be punchers freedom, but that limitation is not an infringement on freedom - it is the only possible basis for freedom. If you are free to infringe freedom, then there is no freedom.
I have no particular knowledge about whether cats-paw is correct or incorrect nor do I know what "real wages" mean in the context of economics as an academic field. However, both of us are perfectly able to understand that cats-paw was making the statement that a lower-bracket wage today buys you less than it did in years past when buying the kinds of things that lower-bracket workers tend to buy. I have no issue with arguing against that. I have an issue with the way you chose to couch that argument in language that annoyed me, so I called you out on it. When you choose to express yourself in such a way, don't be surprised when other people also talk to you in similar terms. As a guide, you will get better reactions if avoid changing the topic of discussion to be about your superiority over the other person.
I didn't say the difference between the concepts is pointless, I said it doesn't matter what word he used if you think you know what he meant. What you did was in effect saying: "What you (other guy) meant was right, but your word choice was wrong, so now *I'll* say it with the right word, thus making me right in a pointless technical sense, and I'll attempt to prevent you from pointing out what I just did by being arrogant." Contrast that with starting out by saying "I'll assume you meant X because that makes sense."
So, Mr. NoSig, perhaps you would care to demonstrate for the class why you think this distinction is pointless, in the context of the actual meanings of the concepts 'real wages' and 'real prices.'
Now you are attempting the argument from arrogance on me too. You could at least have grasped for another fallacy than the same one you've already been outed on. I know you mixed a straw man in there too, but it simply gets too obvious when you in effect say: "I'm not arguing from arrogance, and if only you'd appreciate how stupid you are compared to me, you'd see that." Does your guitar really have only 1 string?
Actually there are US VISA laws stating that if you have any government funding to be educated or do research in the US then you must leave the US after that and not come back until you have lived in your home country for 2 years. It's not designed to keep out farm workers, it's actually about getting rid of foreigners with advanced degrees.
Taxes should direct funds downward in society, so if taxes increased and you aren't upper class, taxes should benefit you not hinder you. In fact in the US the rich are getting gains while the rest of society isn't, so societal effects have not only kept up with taxes, they have out-paced taxes.
Now - before you start in with an argument about what those real wages can actually buy, consider this: Am I more or less likely to argue you need to take an economics class if you can't distinguish between real wages and real prices of products?
Nice argument from arrogance, there, admitting you are wrong yet still looking down on the guy who was right.
A mutation cannot be evaluated in isolation. As the environment changes a "bad" mutation may become "good" and vice versa. A mutation may be usually "bad" but good when combined with 5 other specific mutations. What genomes do over time is collect a multitude of mutations that don't immediately kill the creature with that DNA or otherwise make it unable to breed. So the variance of DNA increases over time. A suddenly heightened level of pressure may then kill off all creatures without some specific mutations, decreasing the variance of DNA. Evolution does not proceed as a sequence of "jackpots".
We may be able to tell if a virus is engineered by humans, but only by comparing it to what we see happening in nature. If what is happening in nature is subtly influenced by God, then we have nothing to compare it to to tell the difference.
If you believe that species formation is like jackpots at a casino, then it's not strange if you skeptical of evolution. However, that's not how it works. Evolution is gradual change over a very long period of time, it's not a "kaching!" moment after which suddenly there is a new species. What happens over that long, long time is that the genome essentially picks up information from the environment through survival of the fittest. There is no numbers to work out on hitting a jackpot, there is just a gradual process that can even sometimes make a species less fit just by sheer chance. Evolution is not goal directed.
I don't see how we could get a theory of how quickly something like that should happen - at most what we could do is get an idea of how fast it has happened on Earth, but that's only half of what you need for your plan. You might want to run simulations, but they would have to be unrealistically realistic and rich to approach the complexity of the natural world. Even if you could construct such a simulation and run it for millions of years; if God or some other alien is willing to interfere in the natural world, then he might as well be interfering in your perfect simulation of the natural world as well.
We don't need what you are referring to to figure out if West Nile 2012 is man-made. First of all, if West Nile 2012 is well made, it may be impossible to tell that it is man made even if it is. Second, what we'd need to get there is to compare how it was formed from its genetic parents to how known-natural diseases were formed. In your perspective, we could at most distinguish man-made from God-made in this way.
The reactors shut down in case of earthquake. I assume because they might be damaged by the earthquake and there's no way of being sure about that without first shutting down the reactor.
There are many other reactors that have survived earthquakes and Tsunamis of the same size. For example there are lots of other reactors in Japan that were impacted by this event and they don't have these issues now.
The earthquake might have damaged whatever Tsunami protection the backup generators had. I don't believe there is information available about exactly how the backup generators were damaged - probably because that's not so important right now.
True, and it's not just that they are designed to prevent such a thing - it is exceedingly difficult to make an atomic bomb. It is by far not just a question of having lots of uranium or other radioactive material in a big pile. The problem is that the material will expand from heat long before it gets dense enough to create a nuclear explosion. So you need conventional explosives shaped in just the right way to compress your nuclear material into a small enough space. This is very difficult to get right which is why Iran won't have nuclear weapons just like that even if they do get their hands on the required material. The nuclear material in a nuclear reactor isn't even anywhere close to pure enough anyway that it could be used for a bomb as-is. Nuclear reactors cannot and will never generate nuclear explosions. However, in a worst case scenario they CAN burn and melt due to the heat they generate. More importantly they can release lots of radioactive material. They cannot explode in the way that a nuclear bomb does. If the chain reaction runs amok in a nuclear power plant, it will "just" get very, very hot - though that's bad enough on its own.
From the way you tell it, the way to be perfectly safe from a Tsunami is to sit on the ceiling of a brick house. Very helpfully, the preceding earthquake will warn you of the impending Tsunami if it is close (so the human warning systems don't get to you in time). I wonder why anyone would die to a Tsunami, then, especially in Japan where everyone knows exactly what Tsunamis are all about because they get them frequently?
Also, the first wave was not the most damaging one - the second one was. Also, Tsunamis don't just do damage by crashing into things or by picking up heavy things and crashing those heavy things into other things, they also do damage when they recede before the next wave comes in and carry even large objects out to sea (and colliding them with structures) or drag them along the land or even just remove the ground from under structures. This happens repeatedly as the following waves come in. Also, the impact of the Tsunami differs from area to area. So the video you have seen of the initial impact of the first wave at some specific place isn't necessarily very informative about what a Tsunami can do. The Wikipedia article on the matter is interesting, even though it doesn't go into much detail on exactly how much or little damage there can be from a Tsunami.
The way this Tsunami impacted the plants were by taking out the support infrastructure outside the reactors - the reactors themselves suffered no initial damage from the earthquake or Tsunami, as far as I know. Modern reactor designs do not need power, active cooling or outside infrastructure to stay safe, and this event shows why that is.
From recent news, not quite so safe anyway. However that is an ancient reactor at the end of its planned life pressed beyond what it was designed for. I'd still be happy to live next door to a modern plant.
It's in the "spent fuel storage pond" that there was a fire according to the IAEA, I take it from that that spent fuel is stored on-site in a vulnerable position. That pond may also have stored usable fuel, though that's not much of a difference since there is plenty of uranium left in spent fuel and burning spent fuel is no more of a good thing than burning usable fuel. Spent fuel is still very much active.
I was wrong - there has been more explosions after I read up on it. Apparently the explosions DO cause a hazard due to spent fuel being stored on-site close enough to the reactor housing that these events can light them on fire even if the explosions do not impact the reactor itself. That seems like a particularly idiotic design to me - now I'm very interested to know if more modern reactors also store spent fuel so close to the reactor that they are at risk of catching on fire in case of an accident. I don't know what to think about the suggestion that containment could be breached by a hydrogen explosion - I think they must be referring to one of the weaker barriers and not the main barrier that should ultimately contain the radioactivity in a worst-case scenario. At three mile island a hydrogen explosion occurred inside the containment and it still held up well.
That was the housing outside the containment dome. That housing is not a safety feature which is the whole reason that there are not systems in place to prevent build-up of hydrogen gas outside the containment like there is inside the containment. It could have been done, it just wasn't important to do it since an explosion outside the containment is not a hazard to the reactor and it would only occur in situations such as this which exceeds what the reactor is designed to withstand. Obviously it's bad for staff nearby the explosion, though. As far as reactor safety goes, these explosions are non-issues.
Of course we are willing to have it next door. Do you really think we are lying when we say we think it's safe, in spite of the abundant evidence rolling in from Japan right now that even ancient relic ford-T reactors are safe in the face of much more forceful attack than designed for including the most serious failure mode possible for these ancient reactors (loss of cooling). Now a coal mine, that you could not get me to live next door to.
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GPL is like promoting free speech until someone saids something YOU don't like.
It's sad when trolling gets modded up like that. GPL is like promoting free speech where you are and in other countries too, even if the governments in those other countries don't like it. The freedom in the GPL is like your right not to be punched in the face. You could argue that that is a limitation of the would-be punchers freedom, but that limitation is not an infringement on freedom - it is the only possible basis for freedom. If you are free to infringe freedom, then there is no freedom.
I have no particular knowledge about whether cats-paw is correct or incorrect nor do I know what "real wages" mean in the context of economics as an academic field. However, both of us are perfectly able to understand that cats-paw was making the statement that a lower-bracket wage today buys you less than it did in years past when buying the kinds of things that lower-bracket workers tend to buy. I have no issue with arguing against that. I have an issue with the way you chose to couch that argument in language that annoyed me, so I called you out on it. When you choose to express yourself in such a way, don't be surprised when other people also talk to you in similar terms. As a guide, you will get better reactions if avoid changing the topic of discussion to be about your superiority over the other person.
So, Mr. NoSig, perhaps you would care to demonstrate for the class why you think this distinction is pointless, in the context of the actual meanings of the concepts 'real wages' and 'real prices.'
Now you are attempting the argument from arrogance on me too. You could at least have grasped for another fallacy than the same one you've already been outed on. I know you mixed a straw man in there too, but it simply gets too obvious when you in effect say: "I'm not arguing from arrogance, and if only you'd appreciate how stupid you are compared to me, you'd see that." Does your guitar really have only 1 string?
Actually there are US VISA laws stating that if you have any government funding to be educated or do research in the US then you must leave the US after that and not come back until you have lived in your home country for 2 years. It's not designed to keep out farm workers, it's actually about getting rid of foreigners with advanced degrees.
Exactly, which is argument from arrogance.
You were pointing out a pointless technicality of word choice and saying that you were right because of that technicality.
Taxes should direct funds downward in society, so if taxes increased and you aren't upper class, taxes should benefit you not hinder you. In fact in the US the rich are getting gains while the rest of society isn't, so societal effects have not only kept up with taxes, they have out-paced taxes.
Now - before you start in with an argument about what those real wages can actually buy, consider this: Am I more or less likely to argue you need to take an economics class if you can't distinguish between real wages and real prices of products?
Nice argument from arrogance, there, admitting you are wrong yet still looking down on the guy who was right.
You don't understand the suggestion.
A mutation cannot be evaluated in isolation. As the environment changes a "bad" mutation may become "good" and vice versa. A mutation may be usually "bad" but good when combined with 5 other specific mutations. What genomes do over time is collect a multitude of mutations that don't immediately kill the creature with that DNA or otherwise make it unable to breed. So the variance of DNA increases over time. A suddenly heightened level of pressure may then kill off all creatures without some specific mutations, decreasing the variance of DNA. Evolution does not proceed as a sequence of "jackpots".
We may be able to tell if a virus is engineered by humans, but only by comparing it to what we see happening in nature. If what is happening in nature is subtly influenced by God, then we have nothing to compare it to to tell the difference.
Forrest Mims is a creationist. [...] It blew me away when I found out that a guy that smart and cool was a creationist.
Hi Forest Mims, welcome to Slashdot!
If you believe that species formation is like jackpots at a casino, then it's not strange if you skeptical of evolution. However, that's not how it works. Evolution is gradual change over a very long period of time, it's not a "kaching!" moment after which suddenly there is a new species. What happens over that long, long time is that the genome essentially picks up information from the environment through survival of the fittest. There is no numbers to work out on hitting a jackpot, there is just a gradual process that can even sometimes make a species less fit just by sheer chance. Evolution is not goal directed.
I don't see how we could get a theory of how quickly something like that should happen - at most what we could do is get an idea of how fast it has happened on Earth, but that's only half of what you need for your plan. You might want to run simulations, but they would have to be unrealistically realistic and rich to approach the complexity of the natural world. Even if you could construct such a simulation and run it for millions of years; if God or some other alien is willing to interfere in the natural world, then he might as well be interfering in your perfect simulation of the natural world as well.
We don't need what you are referring to to figure out if West Nile 2012 is man-made. First of all, if West Nile 2012 is well made, it may be impossible to tell that it is man made even if it is. Second, what we'd need to get there is to compare how it was formed from its genetic parents to how known-natural diseases were formed. In your perspective, we could at most distinguish man-made from God-made in this way.
Call me when all mass in the solar system is arranged according to our wishes. Then we may have hit a limit, but maybe not even then.
The reactors shut down in case of earthquake. I assume because they might be damaged by the earthquake and there's no way of being sure about that without first shutting down the reactor.
There are many other reactors that have survived earthquakes and Tsunamis of the same size. For example there are lots of other reactors in Japan that were impacted by this event and they don't have these issues now.
I feel sorry for you.
The earthquake might have damaged whatever Tsunami protection the backup generators had. I don't believe there is information available about exactly how the backup generators were damaged - probably because that's not so important right now.
True, and it's not just that they are designed to prevent such a thing - it is exceedingly difficult to make an atomic bomb. It is by far not just a question of having lots of uranium or other radioactive material in a big pile. The problem is that the material will expand from heat long before it gets dense enough to create a nuclear explosion. So you need conventional explosives shaped in just the right way to compress your nuclear material into a small enough space. This is very difficult to get right which is why Iran won't have nuclear weapons just like that even if they do get their hands on the required material. The nuclear material in a nuclear reactor isn't even anywhere close to pure enough anyway that it could be used for a bomb as-is. Nuclear reactors cannot and will never generate nuclear explosions. However, in a worst case scenario they CAN burn and melt due to the heat they generate. More importantly they can release lots of radioactive material. They cannot explode in the way that a nuclear bomb does. If the chain reaction runs amok in a nuclear power plant, it will "just" get very, very hot - though that's bad enough on its own.
From the way you tell it, the way to be perfectly safe from a Tsunami is to sit on the ceiling of a brick house. Very helpfully, the preceding earthquake will warn you of the impending Tsunami if it is close (so the human warning systems don't get to you in time). I wonder why anyone would die to a Tsunami, then, especially in Japan where everyone knows exactly what Tsunamis are all about because they get them frequently?
Also, the first wave was not the most damaging one - the second one was. Also, Tsunamis don't just do damage by crashing into things or by picking up heavy things and crashing those heavy things into other things, they also do damage when they recede before the next wave comes in and carry even large objects out to sea (and colliding them with structures) or drag them along the land or even just remove the ground from under structures. This happens repeatedly as the following waves come in. Also, the impact of the Tsunami differs from area to area. So the video you have seen of the initial impact of the first wave at some specific place isn't necessarily very informative about what a Tsunami can do. The Wikipedia article on the matter is interesting, even though it doesn't go into much detail on exactly how much or little damage there can be from a Tsunami.
The way this Tsunami impacted the plants were by taking out the support infrastructure outside the reactors - the reactors themselves suffered no initial damage from the earthquake or Tsunami, as far as I know. Modern reactor designs do not need power, active cooling or outside infrastructure to stay safe, and this event shows why that is.
From recent news, not quite so safe anyway. However that is an ancient reactor at the end of its planned life pressed beyond what it was designed for. I'd still be happy to live next door to a modern plant.
It's in the "spent fuel storage pond" that there was a fire according to the IAEA, I take it from that that spent fuel is stored on-site in a vulnerable position. That pond may also have stored usable fuel, though that's not much of a difference since there is plenty of uranium left in spent fuel and burning spent fuel is no more of a good thing than burning usable fuel. Spent fuel is still very much active.
I was wrong - there has been more explosions after I read up on it. Apparently the explosions DO cause a hazard due to spent fuel being stored on-site close enough to the reactor housing that these events can light them on fire even if the explosions do not impact the reactor itself. That seems like a particularly idiotic design to me - now I'm very interested to know if more modern reactors also store spent fuel so close to the reactor that they are at risk of catching on fire in case of an accident. I don't know what to think about the suggestion that containment could be breached by a hydrogen explosion - I think they must be referring to one of the weaker barriers and not the main barrier that should ultimately contain the radioactivity in a worst-case scenario. At three mile island a hydrogen explosion occurred inside the containment and it still held up well.
Yay! :)
That was the housing outside the containment dome. That housing is not a safety feature which is the whole reason that there are not systems in place to prevent build-up of hydrogen gas outside the containment like there is inside the containment. It could have been done, it just wasn't important to do it since an explosion outside the containment is not a hazard to the reactor and it would only occur in situations such as this which exceeds what the reactor is designed to withstand. Obviously it's bad for staff nearby the explosion, though. As far as reactor safety goes, these explosions are non-issues.
Of course we are willing to have it next door. Do you really think we are lying when we say we think it's safe, in spite of the abundant evidence rolling in from Japan right now that even ancient relic ford-T reactors are safe in the face of much more forceful attack than designed for including the most serious failure mode possible for these ancient reactors (loss of cooling). Now a coal mine, that you could not get me to live next door to.