as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something
I keep seeing this, and honestly, it confuses me. Sure, follow the money. But....here is the kicker: add it up!
Can you actually make the argument that someone like Gore stands to make evenly remotely close to the profits that "big oil, etc.." stand to make?
If someone like all Gore was just interested in making money, it sure would be a thousand times easier to make said money by supporting the status quo.
Exactly! The thing I take equal issue with is that *any* criticism of AGW activism is immediately dismissed as AGW denial, and it's not true.
As I see it, 99% of that criticism is tantamount to someone saying "the sky is red". Why the "F" (pardon abbreviated language) should any credible scientist waste their time refuting absurd claims?
If people want to criticize AGW, do it with research that is accepted into peer reviewed journals. Put up or shut the (pardon again) "F" up.
The first scientist to put forth a credible theory and evidence of said theory refuting AGW will be extremely famous. I wonder why no one has stepped up?
BP will certainly be able to afford the cleaning if its cost is 200 million.
However, time will tell whether they will be able to afford the real cost of the oil (fishing, tourism, etc...), which is being estimated, conservatively at the moment, at over 12 billion dollars. (I'm guessing it will be way higher, but who knows).
There are already 40 class action lawsuits from texas to florida in motion against BP and its partners.
Where are you getting your flow rate figures from? I googled for a bit but wasn't able to find very many good numbers.
I found one talking about some offshore wells in Brazil http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/marlimpetro/
"Module 3
The module 3 development was based on 15 subsea production wells and ten injection wells, delivering at a rate of 100,000 bopd and 3 million square metres of gas per day"
So that one platform can get 100,000 barrels per day, but using 15 wells under it I guess? The gulf well is a single hole, so 100,000/15 is a more likely number?
I have to wonder though, is the great depth of this particular well, and its known very high pressure, causing it to pump out way more than average? I'm just curious if anyone as 'real' numbers, or is it all still guesswork?
Under Bush, total spending appears to have been near 11.5 Trillion.
Some people, like the conservative heritage foundation, say Obama's total spending will be somewhere near 10.3 trillion, Over a Decade though. Not in one year..... http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54400
Were you perhaps thinking of total deficit rather than spending? That is true, the deficit right now under Obama is larger than it was under Bush. But that is because he inherited so much, and is betting that 'fixing' health care will lower the deficit over time.
Phil Donahue was cancelled when his show had more viewers than any other show on the network.
The link above is Sean Hannity interviewing Phil.
While this was pretty much blatant cancelling of a show because it was 'too liberal', I'm sure there are many ways a show could be forced out just by stuffing it in crappy time slots, or failing to promote it well.
But I do agree that the conservative shows tend to be very 'Jerry Springer like', and outrageous does sell very well.
It is a combination of factors driving media of course, but one thing is certain: America is not made up of 20 conservatives for every one liberal.
To be honest, as a liberal, I find it hard to listen to liberal radio talk shows. I find that the level of conversation is usually very low on the intelligence ladder. Same goes with conservative talk radio. But my point, is that I bet most liberals would rather read higher quality news sites than listen to two people argue.
Worldwide, forests dissipate orders of magnitude more wind energy than wind farms would if we provided all of humanities power requirements using them.
Even solar energy isn't "safe" by your definition, because widespread use of solar cells would alter the Earth's albedo.
Well thats an easy fix. For every acre of wind farm we build, lets chop down 2 acres of rain forest!;)
I thought commercial wind turbines had a variety of ways to combat high winds?
I assume they do, as small home diy wind guides have 3-4 different ways of combating high winds. From springs the physically let the blades tip back if too much wind pushes them, to tails with springs that twist the blades out of the wind if enough pressure is put on it, and then of course a ton of electrical ways to slow the blades via resistance.
"Given the choice between trusting The People, or trusting that small subset of The People who live by taxing the rest of us and telling us what's good for us, I think I'm going to have to call it for The People."
I full endorse this, and would like to extend our zero tolerance of government regulation to the meat industry;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
I'm almost at a point where I'd love to see all government regulation disappear, the country meltdown, people die, the environment screwed, poison food, etc.. etc.. just to shut up all these anti-regulation people.
"What's been shown over and over again is that the conservative talk radio shows and conservative news/opinion channels make the most money because they have the largest audience. The vast majority of people like them better."
It might also have something to do media ownership being increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few large corporations.
Setting aside for the moment the issue of news deliberately lying (which I think could be enforced if libel and slander laws were strengthened), your comment:
"The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech"
Is correct. And the reason that the issues being reported by media has diminished to a few talking points a day, is because of the concentration of media ownership. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
And that is a clear area that the government can regulate. Break up the media giants. Stop allowing these huge mergers with obvious conflicts of interest for the public good.
In addtion, similar to the BBC, the government could also provide a stronger public funded news organization.
It's not certain that this remote valve would have been able to contain the spill, but it is another line of defense that the US does not require. Brazil and Norway require these acoustic switches. They only cost about 500,000 dollars. I'm assuming that is a tiny amount compared to the cost of the platform.
Internet Explorer 532255 50.94% Firefox 334610 32.02% Safari 119225 11.41% Chrome 53363 5.11% Mozilla 1922 0.18% Opera 1463 0.14% SeaMonkey 578 0.06% Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05% Camino 377 0.04% Opera Mini 306 0.03%
You base your vote on what you know. If the media isn't giving you good information, you vote poorly.
And even if you spend vast amounts of time researching for real facts, and become very well informed on every issue, your choice of candidates is usually between "corporate owned slightly liberal politician A" and "corporate owned slightly conservative politician B".
That won't ever change unless we have meaningful campaign finance reform and serious regulation on political ads, plus a revamp of news agencies.
WE are failing and causing these problems by allowing these lobbyists to have influence.
We are not failing. The news is failing us. And the news is failing us because behemoth "near-monopolies" have taken over the news. And these near-monopolies / mega-multinational corporations exist because of removals of regulations that had been in place since after the great depression.
We need serious campaign finance reform, and that needs to include public financing of both campaigns and of news sources. We need a constitutional amendment to prevent corporations from getting involved in politics. etc...
There are a lot of things wrong with our political system right now, but it isn't the people.
I've been debating with a conservative relative over the last few years via email exchanges. Usually over whatever the hot political topic of the month is. It is often very hard to find good solid details about issues. No matter what your stance is on the issue.
Gah.. I just wrote a mini novel below and then erased it. This is one of those issues that you either take the time to read books on the rise of corporations and the shrinking of news ownership, and its impact, or you don't. Here's one interesting read: http://www.amazon.com/Unequal-Protection-Corporate-Dominance-Rights/dp/1605095710/ref=pd_sim_b_2
I have never seen any party be this good at it. It's working out well for them. The constant repetition of bald face lies is shaping public opinion.
Probably one of them found this on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window:)
"Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison"
It's been a long while since I studied that period, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and that it was an answer that most academics agreed with:
Once the expansion period (and loot providing a money flow) was over, the cost of maintaining such vast territories gradually weakened Rome to the point of collapse.
However, after looking at the wiki page, I can see I obviously forgot about a ton of other theories:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Theories_of_a_fall.2C_decline.2C_transition_and_continuity
Except that given this is a conventional weapon, the chances that it will be used are much higher. Not against Russia of course, but I bet we see them being fired at "terrorists" shortly after going online.
Russia's fear isn't so much of being attacked, as it is not being able to verify that they aren't under attack. "Nuclear equivalent" force, 1 hour to hit any target in the world, and they can change direction. Even if we called Russia and said, "hey heads up, we are firing 40 missiles into Afghanistan this afternoon", Russia would have no defense if that was a lie. We could change the missile direction right before it got to Afghanistan and hit Russia nearly instantly.
Now I doubt Russia believes that we'd do this, but you can't maintain power if you admit you have no way to verify if you are under attack, and worse, no way to defend or retaliate against an attack.
I love computers too. But haven't you ever been in a situation where you just wanted to do something (watch a movie, read your email, play a game, get a website working for a customer, etc..) and the computer wouldn't do it?
On some days, it'd fun to debug, but there are those days when you just want to do X because your tired, bored, etc.. and that damn computer just won't do it. Those are the days when you hate computers.
However, I tend to agree with this basic mindset: I'd rather suffer some days of hating a computer, than having only a completely locked down "appliance" that has no hope of being customized in the ways I desire.
Having gone through many office arrangement fads in the last 15 years, the one thing that consistently works, when management is good, is pretty much standard cubes or offices.
Collaboration without thought is simply placing people next to each other. Collaboration that is well thought out, is a good design process, good tools, and consistent clear management directives.
Another thing I've found useful is to not be stingy with tools (computers, software, extra monitors, etc...) and allowing people to have multiple of whatever they want. Let programmers have their own space or office (office is ideal), with 2 computers in each. If a couple folks want to team up for an afternoon, they can work in the same office. But come the next day, when they need to go back and focus on individual areas, zero distraction is what works. Computers are cheap in comparison to the salaries you're paying.
And lastly, the rest factor. If someone hits a wall, and just wants to zone out for 10 minutes browsing, say, slashdot:) for a while, doing so guilt-free because others can't see them is very beneficial. If instead there is pressure to work constantly, the quality of the work is going to go downhill. It has been estimated in various studies that people only do real work 5-6 hours out of an 8 hour shift.
That occurs for various reasons. But if people are pressured/forced to work longer than that national average, you'll still end up with people only working 5-6 hours out of an 8 hour shift, wasting 2-3 hours interrupting other people or zoning out pretending to work. And zoning out on nothing is boring, and de-stimulates the mind, making getting back into work slower/harder. If instead, a person is allowed to 'zone out' on something engaging (youtube video, phone call to friend, etc..) their mind will both be rested and still turned on when they return to work.
Slashdot Mirror
If minority parties leads to things like massive CCTV surveillance, I'm not sure I'd want that in the US.
While I was pleasantly surprised to see office live supporting firefox, it sure is lame that it is only supported on windows or mac.
I still need to open and save microsoft project files from time to time, and Openproj is fairly buggy.
as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something
I keep seeing this, and honestly, it confuses me. Sure, follow the money. But....here is the kicker: add it up!
Can you actually make the argument that someone like Gore stands to make evenly remotely close to the profits that "big oil, etc.." stand to make?
If someone like all Gore was just interested in making money, it sure would be a thousand times easier to make said money by supporting the status quo.
Exactly! The thing I take equal issue with is that *any* criticism of AGW activism is immediately dismissed as AGW denial, and it's not true.
As I see it, 99% of that criticism is tantamount to someone saying "the sky is red". Why the "F" (pardon abbreviated language) should any credible scientist waste their time refuting absurd claims?
If people want to criticize AGW, do it with research that is accepted into peer reviewed journals. Put up or shut the (pardon again) "F" up.
The first scientist to put forth a credible theory and evidence of said theory refuting AGW will be extremely famous. I wonder why no one has stepped up?
BP will certainly be able to afford the cleaning if its cost is 200 million.
However, time will tell whether they will be able to afford the real cost of the oil (fishing, tourism, etc...), which is being estimated, conservatively at the moment, at over 12 billion dollars. (I'm guessing it will be way higher, but who knows).
There are already 40 class action lawsuits from texas to florida in motion against BP and its partners.
Where are you getting your flow rate figures from? I googled for a bit but wasn't able to find very many good numbers.
I found one talking about some offshore wells in Brazil http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/marlimpetro/
"Module 3
The module 3 development was based on 15 subsea production wells and ten injection wells, delivering at a rate of 100,000 bopd and 3 million square metres of gas per day"
So that one platform can get 100,000 barrels per day, but using 15 wells under it I guess? The gulf well is a single hole, so 100,000/15 is a more likely number?
I have to wonder though, is the great depth of this particular well, and its known very high pressure, causing it to pump out way more than average? I'm just curious if anyone as 'real' numbers, or is it all still guesswork?
Is there a way to mod this guy +10? And then permanently attach his post to the top of every AGW related slashdot thread please.
Cloture and Filibuster are related in that one prevents the other, and the number of cloture votes is related to the filibuster.
The republicans have been threatening to filibuster everything, so the it forces a cloture vote. Basically, it slows things down intentionally.
Here's a nice graph of cloture votes:
http://www.ourfuture.org/obstruction
Can you link to some numbers? That Obama's first year cost more than Bush's 8 years and two wars doesn't sound right.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StockInvestingTrading/cost-of-the-bush-era-11-point-5-trillion.aspx
Under Bush, total spending appears to have been near 11.5 Trillion.
Some people, like the conservative heritage foundation, say Obama's total spending will be somewhere near 10.3 trillion, Over a Decade though. Not in one year.....
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54400
Were you perhaps thinking of total deficit rather than spending? That is true, the deficit right now under Obama is larger than it was under Bush. But that is because he inherited so much, and is betting that 'fixing' health care will lower the deficit over time.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200410290004
Phil Donahue was cancelled when his show had more viewers than any other show on the network.
The link above is Sean Hannity interviewing Phil.
While this was pretty much blatant cancelling of a show because it was 'too liberal', I'm sure there are many ways a show could be forced out just by stuffing it in crappy time slots, or failing to promote it well.
But I do agree that the conservative shows tend to be very 'Jerry Springer like', and outrageous does sell very well.
It is a combination of factors driving media of course, but one thing is certain: America is not made up of 20 conservatives for every one liberal.
To be honest, as a liberal, I find it hard to listen to liberal radio talk shows. I find that the level of conversation is usually very low on the intelligence ladder. Same goes with conservative talk radio. But my point, is that I bet most liberals would rather read higher quality news sites than listen to two people argue.
Worldwide, forests dissipate orders of magnitude more wind energy than wind farms would if we provided all of humanities power requirements using them.
Even solar energy isn't "safe" by your definition, because widespread use of solar cells would alter the Earth's albedo.
Well thats an easy fix. For every acre of wind farm we build, lets chop down 2 acres of rain forest! ;)
I thought commercial wind turbines had a variety of ways to combat high winds?
I assume they do, as small home diy wind guides have 3-4 different ways of combating high winds. From springs the physically let the blades tip back if too much wind pushes them, to tails with springs that twist the blades out of the wind if enough pressure is put on it, and then of course a ton of electrical ways to slow the blades via resistance.
"Given the choice between trusting The People, or trusting that small subset of The People who live by taxing the rest of us and telling us what's good for us, I think I'm going to have to call it for The People."
I full endorse this, and would like to extend our zero tolerance of government regulation to the meat industry ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
I'm almost at a point where I'd love to see all government regulation disappear, the country meltdown, people die, the environment screwed, poison food, etc.. etc.. just to shut up all these anti-regulation people.
Have you never even glanced at a history book?
"What's been shown over and over again is that the conservative talk radio shows and conservative news/opinion channels make the most money because they have the largest audience. The vast majority of people like them better."
It might also have something to do media ownership being increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few large corporations.
Setting aside for the moment the issue of news deliberately lying (which I think could be enforced if libel and slander laws were strengthened), your comment:
"The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech"
Is correct. And the reason that the issues being reported by media has diminished to a few talking points a day, is because of the concentration of media ownership. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
And that is a clear area that the government can regulate. Break up the media giants. Stop allowing these huge mergers with obvious conflicts of interest for the public good.
In addtion, similar to the BBC, the government could also provide a stronger public funded news organization.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html
It's not certain that this remote valve would have been able to contain the spill, but it is another line of defense that the US does not require. Brazil and Norway require these acoustic switches. They only cost about 500,000 dollars. I'm assuming that is a tiny amount compared to the cost of the platform.
www.pcc.edu for the last 30 days.
Internet Explorer 532255 50.94%
Firefox 334610 32.02%
Safari 119225 11.41%
Chrome 53363 5.11%
Mozilla 1922 0.18%
Opera 1463 0.14%
SeaMonkey 578 0.06%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05%
Camino 377 0.04%
Opera Mini 306 0.03%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
You base your vote on what you know. If the media isn't giving you good information, you vote poorly.
And even if you spend vast amounts of time researching for real facts, and become very well informed on every issue, your choice of candidates is usually between "corporate owned slightly liberal politician A" and "corporate owned slightly conservative politician B".
That won't ever change unless we have meaningful campaign finance reform and serious regulation on political ads, plus a revamp of news agencies.
WE are failing and causing these problems by allowing these lobbyists to have influence.
We are not failing.
The news is failing us.
And the news is failing us because behemoth "near-monopolies" have taken over the news.
And these near-monopolies / mega-multinational corporations exist because of removals of regulations that had been in place since after the great depression.
We need serious campaign finance reform, and that needs to include public financing of both campaigns and of news sources. We need a constitutional amendment to prevent corporations from getting involved in politics.
etc...
There are a lot of things wrong with our political system right now, but it isn't the people.
I've been debating with a conservative relative over the last few years via email exchanges. Usually over whatever the hot political topic of the month is. It is often very hard to find good solid details about issues. No matter what your stance is on the issue.
Gah.. I just wrote a mini novel below and then erased it. This is one of those issues that you either take the time to read books on the rise of corporations and the shrinking of news ownership, and its impact, or you don't. Here's one interesting read: http://www.amazon.com/Unequal-Protection-Corporate-Dominance-Rights/dp/1605095710/ref=pd_sim_b_2
I have never seen any party be this bad at it.
I have never seen any party be this good at it. It's working out well for them. The constant repetition of bald face lies is shaping public opinion.
Probably one of them found this on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window :)
"Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison"
It's been a long while since I studied that period, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and that it was an answer that most academics agreed with:
Once the expansion period (and loot providing a money flow) was over, the cost of maintaining such vast territories gradually weakened Rome to the point of collapse.
However, after looking at the wiki page, I can see I obviously forgot about a ton of other theories:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Theories_of_a_fall.2C_decline.2C_transition_and_continuity
Except that given this is a conventional weapon, the chances that it will be used are much higher. Not against Russia of course, but I bet we see them being fired at "terrorists" shortly after going online.
Russia's fear isn't so much of being attacked, as it is not being able to verify that they aren't under attack. "Nuclear equivalent" force, 1 hour to hit any target in the world, and they can change direction. Even if we called Russia and said, "hey heads up, we are firing 40 missiles into Afghanistan this afternoon", Russia would have no defense if that was a lie. We could change the missile direction right before it got to Afghanistan and hit Russia nearly instantly.
Now I doubt Russia believes that we'd do this, but you can't maintain power if you admit you have no way to verify if you are under attack, and worse, no way to defend or retaliate against an attack.
I love computers too. But haven't you ever been in a situation where you just wanted to do something (watch a movie, read your email, play a game, get a website working for a customer, etc..) and the computer wouldn't do it?
On some days, it'd fun to debug, but there are those days when you just want to do X because your tired, bored, etc.. and that damn computer just won't do it. Those are the days when you hate computers.
However, I tend to agree with this basic mindset: I'd rather suffer some days of hating a computer, than having only a completely locked down "appliance" that has no hope of being customized in the ways I desire.
Having gone through many office arrangement fads in the last 15 years, the one thing that consistently works, when management is good, is pretty much standard cubes or offices.
Collaboration without thought is simply placing people next to each other. Collaboration that is well thought out, is a good design process, good tools, and consistent clear management directives.
Another thing I've found useful is to not be stingy with tools (computers, software, extra monitors, etc...) and allowing people to have multiple of whatever they want. Let programmers have their own space or office (office is ideal), with 2 computers in each. If a couple folks want to team up for an afternoon, they can work in the same office. But come the next day, when they need to go back and focus on individual areas, zero distraction is what works. Computers are cheap in comparison to the salaries you're paying.
And lastly, the rest factor. If someone hits a wall, and just wants to zone out for 10 minutes browsing, say, slashdot:) for a while, doing so guilt-free because others can't see them is very beneficial. If instead there is pressure to work constantly, the quality of the work is going to go downhill. It has been estimated in various studies that people only do real work 5-6 hours out of an 8 hour shift.
That occurs for various reasons. But if people are pressured/forced to work longer than that national average, you'll still end up with people only working 5-6 hours out of an 8 hour shift, wasting 2-3 hours interrupting other people or zoning out pretending to work. And zoning out on nothing is boring, and de-stimulates the mind, making getting back into work slower/harder. If instead, a person is allowed to 'zone out' on something engaging (youtube video, phone call to friend, etc..) their mind will both be rested and still turned on when they return to work.