Umm... no? Right now, you can already do time of day metering, where you get charged different rates at different times. People with solar installations like this, because their solar panel returns power to the grid at daytime rates, and then they come home at night and use power at evening rates. You could do that with a battery too, except that batteries are expensive so no one does. Unless you already happen to have the battery...
I'm not asking you to have much faith in my statistics knowledge. I wasn't attempting to claim any results. And if I did, I would expect you to base your opinion of my statistics knowledge on, well, the work I showed.
This author has no reputation for most Slashdot readers. That was rather my point by emphasizing the site. I trust the NYT as an editing body and transfer their reputation onto the articles by individual authors; Livejournal offers no such reputation that can be transfered to the individual bloggers, in the same way that the hosting company for the NYT doesn't transfer any reputation to the NYT.
If the author doesn't have a reputation, they need to establish credibility by means of showing their work. I don't see why you're complaining about my post, when all you're doing is making the exact same point I was. Oh, right, you're just a random AC troll on Slashdot. Never mind...
(Of course, the post in question has since been updated with the relevant data available. So you're free to go form your own opinion of the statistics involved. And no, I'm not going to tell you what mine is. Kudos to the authors for providing the resources needed to check their results.)
Exactly. That's a policy worth following even at the level of internet debates. If someone asks me for a summary of a topic, I'll point them at the article. However, if what's called for is a discussion of one aspect, or an authoritative reference, WP is not the right answer. However, more and more I find that WP is the fastest way to find a good reference on a subject -- find the relevant article, look at the references section, and the odds are good there will be an appropriate link.
Knowing how to use, and more importantly, how not to use, and encyclopedia should be basic knowledge. Teachers should be teaching it, and shouldn't matter in the slightest what encyclopedia you use for a paper, because the reader will never know.
Be that as it may, the numbers were usually calculated by someone qualified to do so. It's not hard to read between the lines and figure out what the caveats probably are.
For a random Livejournal post, however, I'm not even willing to trust that the most basic of the math was done correctly without some evidence to support it.
(Of course, it looks like the post has been updated with the relevant data -- I haven't looked at it in any detail at all, but it looks like enough is there to go over it and check the work. So I'm no longer complaining, and I applaud the author for putting up the work so everyone can see what the data have to offer.)
About reputable news sources is that they have, well, a reputation for doing at least a decent job of statistics. Livejournal... doesn't.
On the other hand, the nice thing about statistics is that without much work you can show what numbers you started with, what games you played with them, and what numbers you ended up with. And you can fairly easy say why you think those games were legitimate, and others can fairly easily say why they think they are or aren't, or can otherwise review your methodology.
So, if we're going to link to Livejournal as our source of statistics, can we at least link to pages that showed their work, just like they were taught in math class?
I know enough statistics to at least form a rough opinion on whether what they're stating is meaningful -- which is completely useless given the total lack of any data or discussion of methods. Yes, that stuff from math class did actually have a point.
Sure you could set up a ratio. The problem is that the amount of wealth represented by the currency currently in circulation (note wealth != money) vastly exceeds the current market value of the available gold. So you artifically drive up the price of gold so it can back the currency. The problem is that now the value of the gold backing the currency is exactly as artificial, no more or less, as the fiat currency you just left. What, then, is the point? You've gone from one fiat currency to another, because the value of the thing I can exchange my currency for is far less than the value of the currency -- so that exchange is meaningless.
It certainly is a false dichotomy on the face of it, however it appears to be the closest approximation to the options we are presented. Specifically, those who advocate backed currencies seem to consistently advocate poor economic policies in many areas. There are few politicians advocating economic policies I like in all respects, but the ones I like better advocate maintaining our current fiat currency (though only by default, as they don't address the issue directly). As such, I will choose between the options presented.
I would dearly love to be able to vote for individual policies (assuming there was an effective way to do that...), but I can't. Therefore I'll weigh the options I'm presented, and I prefer the ones that don't include gold-backed currencies. I actually intend to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, but his economic policies are not one of the reasons for that.
This is going to sound weird, but... Are you sure that's entirely a bad thing? Clearly, you can print too much money. But it also seems that our current economic troubles are more closely related to recent bad policies than to either the creation of money or the fact that we use a fiat currency. So, just as it is unclear to me that low levels of inflation are inherently bad, it is similarly unclear to me that printing modest amounts of money is a bad thing.
That is true, but if not for its use in jewelry and as a store of value, what would gold be worth? Half its current price? A tenth? Is it meaningfully different to back your currency with something whose inherent value is less than half the value of the currency than to simply not back it?
As for changing his position, the only issue I can name where Ron Paul has changed his stance is on the death penalty: he used to be in favor of it, but given the number of death row convicts who have been exonerated by DNA evidence, he no longer supports it. I don't have a problem with that.
That's why I have an issue with the label flip-flopper in general -- our politicians should be willing to reevaluate their positions when new data comes to light. There is nothing to be ashamed of in changing your mind, assuming there is a reason for that. I don't want a politician who stubbornly holds on to a bad idea long after it has become obvious to everyone else how bad an idea it is. (Pretending to hold an opinion because it's popular, or expressing an opinion you don't hold, however, is an entirely different and unrelated matter.)
There is, shall we say, a gap in your reasoning. There is no reason that fiat currencies can't continue to be valuable for the same reason they are valuable now -- ie, that the other guy will continue to believe that his dollars can be exchanged for your stuff. I'd much rather have a fiat currency with sound political and economic policies behind it than a gold-backed currency without.
$9T, while not trivial, is still not actually all that bad. Compare it to the GDP -- $12T. Now compare that ratio to a typical family income and house mortgage. Also compare it to other countries, or just other Western democracies.
I wouldn't call our debt small, but I don't think it's an immediate problem. We should be worrying about it, and I'm firmly in favor of trying to reduce government spending and pay it down, but I certainly wouldn't call it a sky-is-falling level crisis. We should be worrying about our debt, but not panicing or fearing about the possibility of hyperinflation.
Really? Last I checked, plenty of economies have had trouble both with and without backed currencies. As far as I can tell, the recipe for a strong economy is sound political and economic policy. There is no magic, and no easy answers.
(I'm a Ron Paul supporter, but it's in spite of, not because of, his ridiculous gold standard ideas.)
Surprisingly enough, good economies require good economic policy. Unfortunately, that's not as simple as a gold standard. Historically, inflation occurs regardless of whether there is a precious metal or other substance backing the currency. Incidentally, you are aware that there isn't enough gold for the government to buy enough for 100% backing of the currency, right? Also, if you set the exchange value for gold at higher than the current market price, all you've done is ignored the problem and made an empty promise until such time as inflation makes the price of gold rise past your set value -- at which point the problem isn't any easier.
Exactly. There are much better technologies available for that purpose. I'm sure we can find a way to adapt this technology from network communications to file systems.
I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
To drag this further off-topic... Plenty of people have questioned that assertion. Or perhaps more accurately, plenty of people have questioned the idea of strapping yourself to a motor that can't be turned off (the SRBs and most solid motors) -- no current manned rocket actually uses high explosives for propellant. Many of these people are very smart and experienced, and many of them are trying to do something about it. Unfortunately, NASA and the current commercial providers don't seem terribly interested in attempts to reduce the risk of spaceflight by more than modest amounts.
I've worked on rocket engines. There's nothing more inherently dangerous about them than there is about a jet engine or even your car engine. All contain high energy chemicals and at least moderately high pressures. The fact that historically rocket engines are more dangerous than modern airplane engines is a result of two things: higher maturity levels in aircraft engine design, and a very curious lack of attention to safety and reliability in historical rocket engine design.
It does not have to be this way. We know how to build rocket engines that fail less often, and fail less catastrophically when they do fail. We know how to build rockets that don't kill their passengers when they fail. We need to stop assuming that space travel will always be as dangerous as it has been, and ask what we can do differently to make it safer from early in the design process. (It won't ever be completely safe, just as air travel will never be completely safe. It can, however, be continually improving in safety, and we can continue searching for ways to make it safer.)
Yeah, it's fairly pointless to make voices that sound "natural" at 400-600 WPM. Heck, *people* don't sound natural at that speed, but they can certainly sound intelligible (though it's far from trivial).
Did you watch the video carefully? They offer a very authoritative sounding explanation of the water / ice theory presented as one option in the article, but don't actually capture rocks in motion on film. There's water moving, and some sort of foam on top of the water, but that's about it. As the original article says, there's lots of evidence in favor of this theory, but also evidence against it being that simple -- like experiments involving undisturbed stakes and such. As far as I can tell, that seems to be a piece of the explanation, but not the whole explanation.
Some of us prefer our linguistics to be prescriptive rather than wimpy. Clear usage of terms aids communication, and the fact that more and more idiots are misusing the phrase doesn't make you look like less of one when you willing join the herd.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... no? Right now, you can already do time of day metering, where you get charged different rates at different times. People with solar installations like this, because their solar panel returns power to the grid at daytime rates, and then they come home at night and use power at evening rates. You could do that with a battery too, except that batteries are expensive so no one does. Unless you already happen to have the battery...
I'm not asking you to have much faith in my statistics knowledge. I wasn't attempting to claim any results. And if I did, I would expect you to base your opinion of my statistics knowledge on, well, the work I showed.
This author has no reputation for most Slashdot readers. That was rather my point by emphasizing the site. I trust the NYT as an editing body and transfer their reputation onto the articles by individual authors; Livejournal offers no such reputation that can be transfered to the individual bloggers, in the same way that the hosting company for the NYT doesn't transfer any reputation to the NYT.
If the author doesn't have a reputation, they need to establish credibility by means of showing their work. I don't see why you're complaining about my post, when all you're doing is making the exact same point I was. Oh, right, you're just a random AC troll on Slashdot. Never mind...
(Of course, the post in question has since been updated with the relevant data available. So you're free to go form your own opinion of the statistics involved. And no, I'm not going to tell you what mine is. Kudos to the authors for providing the resources needed to check their results.)
Exactly. That's a policy worth following even at the level of internet debates. If someone asks me for a summary of a topic, I'll point them at the article. However, if what's called for is a discussion of one aspect, or an authoritative reference, WP is not the right answer. However, more and more I find that WP is the fastest way to find a good reference on a subject -- find the relevant article, look at the references section, and the odds are good there will be an appropriate link.
Knowing how to use, and more importantly, how not to use, and encyclopedia should be basic knowledge. Teachers should be teaching it, and shouldn't matter in the slightest what encyclopedia you use for a paper, because the reader will never know.
Be that as it may, the numbers were usually calculated by someone qualified to do so. It's not hard to read between the lines and figure out what the caveats probably are.
For a random Livejournal post, however, I'm not even willing to trust that the most basic of the math was done correctly without some evidence to support it.
(Of course, it looks like the post has been updated with the relevant data -- I haven't looked at it in any detail at all, but it looks like enough is there to go over it and check the work. So I'm no longer complaining, and I applaud the author for putting up the work so everyone can see what the data have to offer.)
Even more interesting would be to see a control group -- that is, a landslide victory election that was generally agreed to be free of tampering.
About reputable news sources is that they have, well, a reputation for doing at least a decent job of statistics. Livejournal... doesn't.
On the other hand, the nice thing about statistics is that without much work you can show what numbers you started with, what games you played with them, and what numbers you ended up with. And you can fairly easy say why you think those games were legitimate, and others can fairly easily say why they think they are or aren't, or can otherwise review your methodology.
So, if we're going to link to Livejournal as our source of statistics, can we at least link to pages that showed their work, just like they were taught in math class?
I know enough statistics to at least form a rough opinion on whether what they're stating is meaningful -- which is completely useless given the total lack of any data or discussion of methods. Yes, that stuff from math class did actually have a point.
Sure you could set up a ratio. The problem is that the amount of wealth represented by the currency currently in circulation (note wealth != money) vastly exceeds the current market value of the available gold. So you artifically drive up the price of gold so it can back the currency. The problem is that now the value of the gold backing the currency is exactly as artificial, no more or less, as the fiat currency you just left. What, then, is the point? You've gone from one fiat currency to another, because the value of the thing I can exchange my currency for is far less than the value of the currency -- so that exchange is meaningless.
It certainly is a false dichotomy on the face of it, however it appears to be the closest approximation to the options we are presented. Specifically, those who advocate backed currencies seem to consistently advocate poor economic policies in many areas. There are few politicians advocating economic policies I like in all respects, but the ones I like better advocate maintaining our current fiat currency (though only by default, as they don't address the issue directly). As such, I will choose between the options presented.
I would dearly love to be able to vote for individual policies (assuming there was an effective way to do that...), but I can't. Therefore I'll weigh the options I'm presented, and I prefer the ones that don't include gold-backed currencies. I actually intend to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, but his economic policies are not one of the reasons for that.
This is going to sound weird, but... Are you sure that's entirely a bad thing? Clearly, you can print too much money. But it also seems that our current economic troubles are more closely related to recent bad policies than to either the creation of money or the fact that we use a fiat currency. So, just as it is unclear to me that low levels of inflation are inherently bad, it is similarly unclear to me that printing modest amounts of money is a bad thing.
That is true, but if not for its use in jewelry and as a store of value, what would gold be worth? Half its current price? A tenth? Is it meaningfully different to back your currency with something whose inherent value is less than half the value of the currency than to simply not back it?
As for changing his position, the only issue I can name where Ron Paul has changed his stance is on the death penalty: he used to be in favor of it, but given the number of death row convicts who have been exonerated by DNA evidence, he no longer supports it. I don't have a problem with that.
That's why I have an issue with the label flip-flopper in general -- our politicians should be willing to reevaluate their positions when new data comes to light. There is nothing to be ashamed of in changing your mind, assuming there is a reason for that. I don't want a politician who stubbornly holds on to a bad idea long after it has become obvious to everyone else how bad an idea it is. (Pretending to hold an opinion because it's popular, or expressing an opinion you don't hold, however, is an entirely different and unrelated matter.)
There is, shall we say, a gap in your reasoning. There is no reason that fiat currencies can't continue to be valuable for the same reason they are valuable now -- ie, that the other guy will continue to believe that his dollars can be exchanged for your stuff. I'd much rather have a fiat currency with sound political and economic policies behind it than a gold-backed currency without.
$9T, while not trivial, is still not actually all that bad. Compare it to the GDP -- $12T. Now compare that ratio to a typical family income and house mortgage. Also compare it to other countries, or just other Western democracies.
I wouldn't call our debt small, but I don't think it's an immediate problem. We should be worrying about it, and I'm firmly in favor of trying to reduce government spending and pay it down, but I certainly wouldn't call it a sky-is-falling level crisis. We should be worrying about our debt, but not panicing or fearing about the possibility of hyperinflation.
Really? Last I checked, plenty of economies have had trouble both with and without backed currencies. As far as I can tell, the recipe for a strong economy is sound political and economic policy. There is no magic, and no easy answers.
(I'm a Ron Paul supporter, but it's in spite of, not because of, his ridiculous gold standard ideas.)
Surprisingly enough, good economies require good economic policy. Unfortunately, that's not as simple as a gold standard. Historically, inflation occurs regardless of whether there is a precious metal or other substance backing the currency. Incidentally, you are aware that there isn't enough gold for the government to buy enough for 100% backing of the currency, right? Also, if you set the exchange value for gold at higher than the current market price, all you've done is ignored the problem and made an empty promise until such time as inflation makes the price of gold rise past your set value -- at which point the problem isn't any easier.
What if I'm trying to sell a congresscritter? Enough of them get bought that there has to be a market for spaming about it...
Exactly. There are much better technologies available for that purpose. I'm sure we can find a way to adapt this technology from network communications to file systems.
I don't think that anyone has ever questioned the fact that strapping yourself to the top of hundreds of tons of high explosives is inherently dangerous.
To drag this further off-topic... Plenty of people have questioned that assertion. Or perhaps more accurately, plenty of people have questioned the idea of strapping yourself to a motor that can't be turned off (the SRBs and most solid motors) -- no current manned rocket actually uses high explosives for propellant. Many of these people are very smart and experienced, and many of them are trying to do something about it. Unfortunately, NASA and the current commercial providers don't seem terribly interested in attempts to reduce the risk of spaceflight by more than modest amounts.
I've worked on rocket engines. There's nothing more inherently dangerous about them than there is about a jet engine or even your car engine. All contain high energy chemicals and at least moderately high pressures. The fact that historically rocket engines are more dangerous than modern airplane engines is a result of two things: higher maturity levels in aircraft engine design, and a very curious lack of attention to safety and reliability in historical rocket engine design.
It does not have to be this way. We know how to build rocket engines that fail less often, and fail less catastrophically when they do fail. We know how to build rockets that don't kill their passengers when they fail. We need to stop assuming that space travel will always be as dangerous as it has been, and ask what we can do differently to make it safer from early in the design process. (It won't ever be completely safe, just as air travel will never be completely safe. It can, however, be continually improving in safety, and we can continue searching for ways to make it safer.)
Don't people already gesture at Emacs?
I'll bring the popcorn if you'll bring the soda...
Yeah, it's fairly pointless to make voices that sound "natural" at 400-600 WPM. Heck, *people* don't sound natural at that speed, but they can certainly sound intelligible (though it's far from trivial).
$1M is cheap. $1M per battery sold is an attempt to kill the company outright.
Summary article, but there are links:
Proof that internet pron prevents rape.
Did you watch the video carefully? They offer a very authoritative sounding explanation of the water / ice theory presented as one option in the article, but don't actually capture rocks in motion on film. There's water moving, and some sort of foam on top of the water, but that's about it. As the original article says, there's lots of evidence in favor of this theory, but also evidence against it being that simple -- like experiments involving undisturbed stakes and such. As far as I can tell, that seems to be a piece of the explanation, but not the whole explanation.
Some of us prefer our linguistics to be prescriptive rather than wimpy. Clear usage of terms aids communication, and the fact that more and more idiots are misusing the phrase doesn't make you look like less of one when you willing join the herd.