Heh, what I remember from before Windows XP came out is how many people explained that, with all it's colorful window managers, etc. Linux would never be taken seriously like Windows because the window managers made Linux looked like a toy. Then XP came out with its default theme and all of a sudden those people changed their tune. Of course, they just switched to other reasons they felt that Linux would never be taken seriously and suddenly defended the toy look in operating systems...
But in the old days, you could drop down a menu and, at a glance, see all the menu items. That was always the first thing I did when learning a new program, spend five minutes or so going through the menus and learning what functionality was available. Anything I couldn't tell from the name, I clicked on to see what it does. You can do that with the ribbon interface too by moving the mouse around and reading the tooltips, but not as quickly or easily. For most of the icons, telling what they do just from looking at them isn't as easy as just reading the name of the item.
So from my point of view, the ribbon interface hides a lot of functionality in plain sight. It's not as intuitive and easy to learn and relies on you already knowing how to use the program and what functions are available and searching for them.
Yeah netsharc. Before all the cool kids started using them, computers were just your nerdy hobby. Nerd! Who cares that, technically speaking, everyone depended on computers well before the world wide web and even the Internet came along.
Just to weigh in here. I remember the joys of playing KQ 4 in CGA way back when I first got it. At the time I longed for a system that would actually be able to match the screen shots on the back of the box. One thing I distinctly remember about that era for pretty much all computer games, including the Sierra games was the fine print explaining that the screen shots were from the Amiga version of the game. This was presumably given as an explanation for why the version you had never quite seemed to match the screen shots on the box. Still, I was always under the impression that it was not completely untrue and that the Amiga versions really did look better. If this wasn't true, why weren't all the Amiga users complaining that the screen shots didn't match?
Basically my problem with the carbon trading markets and any other pollution trading markets is that they are inherently corruptible ideas. Right off the bat, they allow for more pollution and they allow for all the market shenanigans that are making the stock market so terrible. I suppose it's possible to make the idea work, but only in a fantasy land where people don't act like people and, therefore, the market wouldn't have been needed in the first place.
As for carbon dioxide. It doesn't create locally unhealthy conditions for humans at current levels, but it is creating problems in other ecological niches. The oceans, for example. Not to mention, very few of these carbon producing sectors produce only carbon dioxide. There's plenty of other carbon-based (benzene, anyone?) and non-carbon based pollutants (all kinds of radioactive isotopes released in coal burning) being produced as well.
You wrote that: "the status quo doesn't mean that things are stable". I agree entirely. Please note that I actually said that in the parenthetical aside in the section you quoted write above where you wrote that. Specifically, I wrote: "not really status quo, since our use of resources is accelerating and also predictably a blip on the graph since we'll run out at some point, and I don't see how anyone can argue that we won't". I suppose that could or could not be considered status quo depending on how you look at it. For example, pressing the accelerator in a car all the way to the floor and holding it there could be considered a status quo, even if the car hasn't topped out at its highest speed yet. Similarly, the state of steadily depressing the accelerator (accelerating acceleration) at 2 mm per minute could also be seen as a status quo. It all depends if you're only looking at the system consisting of the driver and the pedals, or if you're including the car and the world around it.
As for the petroleum situation, I'm glad that you see that we're running out. The thing is, it's stupid to actually wait until we run out and then scramble to fix things. We know it's going to happen. Signs are that it's already started happening (trouble is, the signs are difficult to read amongst the noise of profiteering corporations who, if alternatives that compete with their products come along, can magically become more efficient, drop their prices dramatically, kill the other industry, then raise their prices). The really crucial thing is that it doesn't just affect energy usage. We rely on petrochemicals for virtually all of our large scale chemical industries, especially including plastics. Also, our current (broken, in my opinion) agricultural methods rely on fertilizers that are mostly derived from petrochemicals and where not derived from petrochemicals, are derived from other resources which are equally non-renewable (which is to say, actually renewable, just not at the rate we use them, e.g. fossilized guano). We need to fix our energy issues, stop burning petrochemicals for easy energy. Then we need to find alternatives to them in all the other industries they're used in because, even after we have petrochemical free energy, we'll still want manufactured goods and we'll still want food.
As for the developing world producing more of the pollution, it just isn't true per capita. Yet. Their industries are, at present, dirtier, but just don't have the numbers to match the developed world. Plus, I disagree that countries can export their manufacturing and simultaneously absolve themselves of the responsibility for how the third parties go about the manufacturing. The real problem is, how do you avoid developing countries getting the short end of the stick compared to the developed countries, without having them reach the per capita pollution levels of the developed countries. Fortunately, as others have pointed out, technological development in the real world doesn't work like the technology chain in some sort of strategy game like Civilization or Starcraft. Developing countries can leapfrog centuries of what mor
khallow wrote a string of personal insults followed by:
Pollution credit markets work.
First of all, I would be remiss if I didn't point out this Slashdot article about the carbon trading markets "working". I also have to confess to some confusion. I actually expected a global warming denialist to agree with me on cap and trade schemes being a scam. That's usually the response when they're asked why so many scientists would participate in this supposed huge conspiracy: that they're being paid off by those profiting from the cap and trade schemes. From what I can see, pollution credit markets don't work, or, at least, they don't work to reduce pollution. They manage to make some people rich, of course, which means that they "work" by some definitions, just not the ones that really count. They pretty much "work" in the same way as MMORPG secondary currency markets do.
I wasn't previously curious about whether or not you considered carbon dioxide a pollutant or not. I thought you would have the good sense to understand that absolutely anything, even otherwise beneficial substances, are pollutants in the wrong places or at the wrong concentrations. Ozone, for example, is vital to our protection from certain types of solar radiation, and ozone depleting chemicals are therefore major pollutants. However, ozone is also highly toxic and, at ground level, it is a pollutant.
Same goes for CO2. It's an important chemical, but there's a reason it's a waste product from our body rather than something we need to consume. CO2 concentration directly regulates our breathing: too little CO2 and you don't automatically take a breath, too much and you do, if you hold your breath, the burning sensation in your lungs is your lungs reacting to too high a concentration of CO2 (this is one of the reasons that inflating your lungs with helium to give you a squeaky voice can be dangerous, because it displaces the oxygen, but also the CO2, which means that you don't feel like you're out of breath even though your asphyxiating). While we're at it, ever consider the fact that CO2 scrubbing can make unbreathable air breathable even though they don't change the oxygen partial pressure? If none of that convinces you, what about carbonic acid in rain caused by CO2 in the atmosphere? Is that a pollutant?
Plain old O2 is toxic to humans at the wrong concentrations, but even at normal atmospheric concentrations it's dangerous to other life, such as in some deep ocean environments, if introduced there.
All kinds of wonderful fertilizers are great for plants (although there's a decent argument that most modern crops grow big, but are actually pretty nutritionally deprived and lacking in nutrition compared to crops of yesteryear) and, without them, our modern forms of agriculture would be unsustainable (which should worry everyone because the fertilizers are mostly petrochemical with most of the rest coming from other limited fossilized deposits and we're on track to run out). Those same fertilizers, flushed down major rivers like the Mississipi create massive dead zones.
Water can be a big pollutant in the wrong places. That's right, good old fashioned dihydrogen monoxide. Irrigation projects if not done very, very carefully, can take arid regions with poor crop yields and turn them into a paradise of lush, abundant crops, for a few years. After that the soil turns to salt pan and nothing grows there for decades.
Moving on to salt. It's vital to animal life, but too little and your cells pop, too much and they crenate. Too much where you want to grow your crops and you'd better change what you're trying to grow or just give up.
Everything, absolutely everything is a pollutant in the wrong concentration and in the wrong place, because ecosystems work on the principle that certain conditions exist in certain places. If you remove the order that allows
A pollution-trading economy is a ridiculous scam. It's obvious that it's just a way to open a loophole for big polluters and to create another ridiculous "stock market" for vultures to game for profit. In the meantime, however, we don't actually have to wait for "evidence" as you put it, that pollution has adverse effects. The only thing that the jury is still out on (in the opinion mostly of non-experts) is whether the current warming trend is happening, whether humans are causing it, and whether it is a bad thing (the climate change deniers always seem to fall back through those positions, then jump back to square one while your back is turned). The thing is, it doesn't even matter if the climate models are wrong. The fact is, we know that the heavy burning of fossil fuels is bad for us for a long time, climate change or no climate change. I have to agree with a previous poster that the climate change "debate" has been the greatest boon for polluters in years. Everyone seems to completely focus on that one side effect of heavy fossil fuel burning and ignore all of the other problems, going all the way back to the London Pea Soup Fog that used to asphyxiate people, that we already _know_ are problems. The fact that no convincing evidence (which would have to consist of the complete destruction of all life on earth in order to convince most global warming "skeptics", but still apparently wouldn't convince the really hard core) can be presented on only one of the negatives seems to somehow, in the minds of these people, nullify every single other negative that we already know beyond a shadow of a doubt as cold, hard fact.
Personally, I'm not against nuclear power as long as it's done safely. I think in this day and age, we have the expertise to do it safely (bearing in mind that, thanks to Chernobyl, only 24 years ago, it won't really be safe to eat wild mushrooms in Europe for maybe the next century). We can make reactors that just won't melt down or explode with enough force to escape their containment. That said, nuclear power just hasn't proven itself to be economical so far. It may be the case that the costs of nuclear are inflated by the climate of fear and caution around it, and the inevitable corruption and waste on the part of government and nuclear developers. The fact is though, that most nuclear power plants end up costing twice or three times as much as the original quoted price, and end up with greater operational expenses while producing less power than anticipated and generally require all kinds of sunk taxpayer money to become operational which hides the true costs. Technological advancement may deal with these problems. It's possible that it already has, but the lead in times are measured in decades. The problem is, that puts nuclear on the same footing as solar (wind actually seems to pretty much be here already) in that it will be a decent method to produce power once certain technological hurdles are overcome. Since the sun won't run out of nuclear fuel for billions of years, and fuel for current nuclear reactors will run out in hundreds (not really run out, it's renewable in the same way that oil is actually renewable, it's just that we're using both faster than they renew), I'd say that investment in solar research will produce the long term payoff and we can save the nuclear fuel for off-grid niches, like space exploration.
The inevitable end result of this sort of reasoning would seem to be a military coup against the government. The way it's supposed to work is that government tells the military what to do, not the other way around. They can advise government, but they're not supposed to do it as a form of manipulation. If military personnel want to influence government, they can vote, or they can run for government offices once they leave military service.
I think you're ignoring the fact that, for close to the last decade, the number of "intelligence" agencies has skyrocketed. Some are military, some fall under the DHS, some don't. Some are bound to still be completely secret and some are parts of other government organizations that have decided to do intelligence work even though it's not remotely in their purview. Some of them are truly competent, most of them really just aren't. The ones that are competent are also generally large enough and have such a culture of secrecy that the right hand really doesn't know what the left hand is doing. In other words, they have some core of competency, surrounded by a galaxy of incompetent satellite departments and sub-organizations. Not to mention that these organizations tend to be dumping grounds for political appointees who have managed to really impress some senator or something. Oh, and they also have all kinds of revolving door policies with all kinds of private sector "think tank" organizations.
In any case, anyone who has been in any large organization can look at a description of the same organization from someone else and be outraged at how plain wrong it is. They say this in all honesty based on their own knowledge and experience. The fact is, another person's experience in the same organization, even overlapping with a lot of the same people, can be completely different. One person can be exposed to the rational, methodical, competent elements of the organization, while someone who passes them in the hallways every day can be drowning in a Kafkaesque nightmare of incompetence and broken bureaucracy. That's just the way large organizations with oversight problems (and I don't see how anyone could imagine that oversight of any organization based on "need to know" principles could be anything other than problematic) are.
Aside from that, you're also ignoring the fact that you don't have to be ignorant of the fact that your snake oil doesn't do what you say it does to sell it. There are plenty of con artists who get by on enough intelligence or even brilliance to impress people enough to think that the impossibility they're selling might be possible. For that matter, there are brilliant people who convince themselves of their own snake oil, like Fred Hoyle, who was a brilliant astronomer, but nevertheless led a misinformed campaign against Arecheopteryx, convinced that it must be some vast paleontological conspiracy. Then there are the people who know that they're selling a scam and believe it at the same time. I'm convinced a lot of cult leaders fall into this category. The ones that run manipulative cons for years or decades making themselves rich and "marrying" countless women and girls, but then drink the poison Koolaid, or immolate themselves, etc. with the rest of their followers when they could have cut and run.
I think the same is probably true to a degree with the perpetrator in The Fine Article. You don't float over a million in bad checks to Vegas casinos unless you're a special kind of delusional. That kind of delusional gamblers mind really could believe that their software, which they know doesn't really work, could still somehow, by pure random chance, miraculously uncover some terrorist plot and save thousands of lives. It's ridiculous, but random false positives could make it happen. To the kind of mind that actually thinks it could make money gambling against casinos this may actually make sense.
I think you may be remembering it as considerably more explicit than it actually was. Also, I'm not sure what extremes I'm arguing. I was talking about what's actually in the movie and what would still be in the movie even if you took out the very small amount of sexual content. That one scene that bothers you was in the movie. It's a tiny part of it, but significant. If the event hadn't been shown, it would have needed to be implied somehow, so why not just show it? Who does it harm exactly?
(Just a note, I'm going to assume anyone reading this knows that there are lots of spoilers)
Well, sure, you could take out the attempted rape, the sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II, Dr Manhattan's nudity, the scene with young Rorshach seeing his mother having sex with a client, the sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II and any others I'm forgetting. They're all parts of the story though. The attempted rape plays a major part in the characterization of the Comedian and the Silk Spectre and is one of the defining moments of their relationship. The sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II I've already talked about. Dr Manhattan's nudity is important to his characterization. The details of Rorshach's childhood are extremely important to his characterization. The sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II is important to defining their relationship at the time of the story and also as another demonstration of how far beyond human he has become. All of these things are important to the story. Sure, you can cut them out and just imply that they happened in some other way. Possibly through narration: tell, don't show as opposed to show, don't tell. Of course, you could also just have made the entire movie in one room at the New Frontiersman with one reporter reading Rorshach's journal aloud for two hours. Boy, what a movie that would be.
Interestingly, if you cut the length of the movie by about a minute and a half by removing anything explicitly sexual as well as all nudity (not the same thing as sexual) and left in all the murder of a lesbian superhero and her lover, murder of a bank guard/superhero with an inconvenient cape, murder of child-eating dogs, revenge murder of a child killer, genocidal scale murder, murder of mother with unborn child, murder of bystanding CEOs and secretaries, murder by poisoning of murderous assassin, murder by particle disintegration of hard-working scientists and engineers, murder of an innocent genetically engineered tiger-thingy by particle disintegration, murder of a comrade in arms to hush him up, murder of an old man by a bunch of idiots, murder of height challenged crime figures, murder of murderous convicts (could probably claim self defense there), murder of a murderous superhero/government agent, murder of John F. Kennedy, implied murder of Woodward and Bernstein, lots of killings that aren't technically murder because they were in warfare or were technically police actions, grisly violence of all kinds, dogs gnawing on a childs bones, dismemberments, horrific beatings, accidental deaths by particle disintegration, etc. etc. then you'd probably manage to get a PG-13 rating. Wierd really. Of course, you could also take out all of that stuff, but then you'd have a much shorter movie. I suppose you could add some talking animal friends and a few musical numbers...
I actually like movies with talking animal friends and musical numbers. I actually like all kinds of movies. I liked the Watchmen movie. I liked the comic as well. My favorite movies include some with R ratings and some with G ratings (no nc-17s or X-rated or whatever among my top favorites, but there's no reason there couldn't be if they were good movies, I can think of plenty of books I like that might need that kind of rating if they were done as movies). For all of those movies, the tone and substance of the story really would be hurt by either "sanitizing" it down to a lower rating or "dirtying" it up to a higher rating. They are what they are.
Still, it would be nice if, when the movie came out, you could automatically get a censored version for anyone it needs to be censored for and a regular version for everyone else. That way, the kids could all pretend to their parents that they've only seen the censored version rather than pretending that they haven't seen it at all the way they do now. The broadcast model of theaters and TV is a problem there, however. It's logistically problematic to have multiple versions of a movie out in the theaters at the same
Sure, but the drive casing probably didn't break open. It would have been made of aluminum, most likely, which isn't the best heat sink, but is better than nothing. The heat it was exposed to was probably intense but brief. So, the platters inside the drive were probably only exposed to a small amount of heat for a short period of time. The overnight fire that the grandparent post referred to would be hundreds of times longer and probably hotter too.
The problem with being able to make things like that legal retroactively is that it effectively completely nullifies the constitution. Want slavery? Pass a law allowing it and enslave people without due process of law (it's actually still constitutional to do it with due process of law, which is pretty disturbing). Wait for it to work its way through the courts. Right before it is inevitably declared unconstitutional, pass a new law, slightly differently worded under which you can re-enslave the people you're about to be ordered to free right after you "free" them. Then, pass a law retroactively pardoning the people involved. Voila, the constitution means nothing. You can apply the same principle to freedom of speech, right to assemble (no special laws really need to be passed there, they can just pen people up between two advancing columns of police, then arrest them for failure to disperse, hold them for a while, then release them without charges), right to bear arms, search and seizure (although, with the blatantly unconstitutional civil forfeiture situation, it seems you don't need any new special laws in that department either), etc. etc.
Basically, if the legislators can absolve their enforcers of the consequences of violating the rules that are supposed to bind the legislators, then there are effectively _no_ laws binding the legislators. The problem is, it's not just the legislative and executive branch in on the problem. The Judicial branch either seem to conspire to neuter the constitution as well, or meekly acquiesce, possibly out of fear of being labeled an "activist judge". Otherwise, they wouldn't operate under the assumption that, when the constitution is massively violated, nothing can be done because no one has standing to sue over it.
You are critically out of order and missing some steps in your little diabolical plan. If you were to do it, you would want to make sure that you've covered yourself properly. The first step is to get an audio recorder and record everything, even if you're in a two party consent state for recording. The _second_ step is to find the girl and explain everything and promise her half the $500. _Then_ you contact him and agree to carry out the contract. Then you fudge the murder, bring back the ripped shirt, etc.
The reasons to do it in this order should be obvious. If it were to be done the way you propose, you'd not only be putting yourself at risk of serving a very long time in jail for murder for hire and attempted murder (when you go after the girl to try to talk to her after agreeing to kill her, it's going to look pretty bad if you fail to explain yourself), but you'd be risking the girl's chance at justice. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that the prosecuting authorities have offered a sweet plea deal to the person hiring a hit man in exchange for testimony against the juicier target. You'd probably go to jail for life, while he'd get a lesser sentence for both the rape and solicitation of murder than he would have gotten for just the rape if he hadn't tried to put out a hit.
In any case, either way you do it, you'd be breaking a number of laws. Aside from plain old fraud and conspiracy charges, there are probably specific laws you'd be breaking regarding offering hoax murder for hire services. Plus you'd be bringing the girl into a conspiracy to commit fraud, which would probably be admissible in a rape trial and seriously hurt her case.
Plus, doing it in my suggested order still doesn't protect you from attempted murder and murder for hire and conspiracy to commit murder charges. The conspiracy to commit murder charges might stick even if you can prove you never intended to commit the murder simply because you conspired to do it. Even if you contacted the girl first and recorded everything, you still might not be able to prove that your plan wasn't to lull her into a false sense of security and safety while providing yourself a cover story right up until the point you killed her. If you were arrested part way through, before you'd split the money and passed up some clear opportunity to kill her, the evidence against you could still be damning in the right hands.
All in all, it's a cute plan. The drawbacks are just a bit too much for the whole $250 you'd earn from it. I would strongly suggest to everyone to never involve yourselves in a murder for hire scheme, even if only as a hoax.
Food recipes aren't covered by ip law (except for trade secret) as far as I can tell. The specific written recipe can be copyrighted. The name of the dish can be trademarked. Possibly some new, completely unique way of processing food could be patented. Aside from that, however, if you can find out how to make it without violating trade secret provisions, you can make it and serve it all you want.
Maybe you were being facetious and I deserve a big whoosh.
Tetrominos were a well known mathematical puzzle piece before the game Tetris came out. The goal of tetris is to complete 4 by 10 areas, but it has the simpler goal of just clearing lines for people who can't manage to clear 4 lines at a time. The creator of the game came up with a fun way to do it with blocks falling from the top of the screen, but otherwise pretty much nothing about the game was original. The graphics consisted pretty much of blocks. The music consisted of traditional Russian folk music and other classical music. The name of the game is just derived from the word Tetromino. As far as I can tell, the word tetris is original, but the only part of it that's actually original is the 'is' at the end. Tetrada doesn't even contain either of those letters.
You do know that Islam is an Abrahamic faith like Christianity, right? In other words, their creation story is from the same sources. Hinduism would have been a better example.
Very true. Terry Pratchett referred to education as "lies to children". The idea being that we lie to them and tell them that things are this way or that way and, as they get older and more knowledgeable we tell them "well, it's not actually quite that way, here's the more complex explanation". That is pretty much the way it has to be done. As long as it's not done in a contemptuous fashion that turns children off to education, then it's not necessarily so bad. Educators should always be on the lookout for better and better ways to give children good foundations that are easy to learn, but don't actually contradict reality.
If there were no flying squirrels/bats, etc. you'd probably also be arguing that wings are irreducibly complex. After all, why would evolution cause an animal to lose a perfectly good set of limbs, just to spend thousands of years developing wings capable of actually flying. Fortunately, we can see dozens of examples in nature of rudimentary wings at different stages of development that make it very obvious how it happens. Despite all this, people, including respected scientists, still once upon a time tried to insist that the feathers on Archeopteryx were fake, even though it obviously has wings (if not wings, then it has a ridiculously long finger). The respected scientist in that case was curmudgeon Fred Hoyle, who coined the term 'big bang' (although he disagreed and originated the competing steady state theory), and did the important early work on stellar nucleosynthesis. Notably lacking among his credentials are paleontology and geology, and his debunking of Archeopteryx has since been thoroughly debunked (everything he claimed about the fossil was a misconception, not to mention that too many other Archeopteryx and other feathered dinosaur fossils have been found since then). For some reason, people with an agenda to push can always find these supposedly logical impossible puzzles in development.
To address the points you made in your discussion, I'd like to start by correcting your misconception that an important part of evolution is that "the strong survive while the weak die off". It's not survival of the strongest, it's survival of the _fittest_. Evolution isn't some path to godlike perfection. Evolution is just a way of describing a system of trial and error that reacts to the environment (an environment that, by the way, is made up of other organisms that are always evolving). Any genetic change that makes an individual stronger (such as 25% larger muscles), doesn't necessarily make the individual fitter because there could be a drought and a sudden lack of food and the individual with more mass to support isn't going to be able to get enough food to survive and is therefore less fit (or, in some conditions it will be able to get more food and will be more fit - a lot depends on random circumstance). Not to mention the other important fact that the individual with the bloated muscles or increased size due to a mutation may find itself without the skeletal structure to support its muscles or with a circulatory system the design of which doesn't scale up with the demands of its increased size. Heart problems are very common in human giants, even though bipedal creatures massively larger than them have existed. It's obvious then that most "beneficial" mutations are not actually beneficial to start with. Instead, most of them are survived rather than increasing survivability. Other mutations, or genetic combinations with existing mutations, can later combine to actually confer genetic advantage and then the bearers of the beneficial genetic legacy can go on to supplant the rest of the population, or use their newfound ability to spread out into a new environmental niche. Obviously evolution isn't just one process, simply illustrated in a textbook, it's a blanket term for an entire set of feedback processes.
On to four chambered hearts. You ask how evolution explains it, then go on to claim that "nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart". If you'd open your eyes, you'd see that there are plenty of examples of birth defects in which even human infants are born with extra heart chambers. They usually are not functional, and usually lead to early death. If there's a genetic predisposition to such defects, and conditions are right, entire populations can exist with the same defect. They don't have to be fittest, they just have to be viable. Then, eventually, other mutations may occur that improve the functionality of the mutation, up to the point where it actually provides an advantage over
It doesn't seriously harm others around you on light exposure. Having to walk through a cloud of foul, cloying smoke when entering and exiting buildings just isn't enough to make much of a difference over a lifetime. It's the continuously smoke-filled rooms that are the problem. Especially parents who smoke constantly around infants and young children with developing lungs and laugh off the health dangers as just some crock that some nuts came up with. Standard smokers persecution complex. Everyone is picking on the smokers for no reason. They're not the ones being obnoxious by subjecting everyone else to the side-effects of their addiction, everyone else is being obnoxious by asking them to please smoke somewhere else. My sister was a smoker for years and is currently in her most successful quitting phase yet, I've spent nearly two decades as a first hand witness to the logical convolutions and ridiculous self-deceptions practiced by smokers. Like when she was a teenager and thought that stuffing a towel under her bedroom door could hide the fact that she was smoking in there. I can't imagine what it must have been doing to her sense of smell for her to believe that could possibly work. I also know at least one person with bad asthma and bronchitis. She never smoked, but her father was a heavy smoker. That's anecdotal, of course. But studies have been done pretty firmly establishing this link. Even if you dismiss the studies out of hand, I don't understand how you could possibly conclude that it's a good thing for children's lungs to develop in a constant toxic haze.
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Unfortunately, you have ransomware viruses posing as antivirus software (with names like winantivirus 2010), obfuscating the whole issue.
Heh, what I remember from before Windows XP came out is how many people explained that, with all it's colorful window managers, etc. Linux would never be taken seriously like Windows because the window managers made Linux looked like a toy. Then XP came out with its default theme and all of a sudden those people changed their tune. Of course, they just switched to other reasons they felt that Linux would never be taken seriously and suddenly defended the toy look in operating systems...
But in the old days, you could drop down a menu and, at a glance, see all the menu items. That was always the first thing I did when learning a new program, spend five minutes or so going through the menus and learning what functionality was available. Anything I couldn't tell from the name, I clicked on to see what it does. You can do that with the ribbon interface too by moving the mouse around and reading the tooltips, but not as quickly or easily. For most of the icons, telling what they do just from looking at them isn't as easy as just reading the name of the item.
So from my point of view, the ribbon interface hides a lot of functionality in plain sight. It's not as intuitive and easy to learn and relies on you already knowing how to use the program and what functions are available and searching for them.
Yeah netsharc. Before all the cool kids started using them, computers were just your nerdy hobby. Nerd! Who cares that, technically speaking, everyone depended on computers well before the world wide web and even the Internet came along.
Just to weigh in here. I remember the joys of playing KQ 4 in CGA way back when I first got it. At the time I longed for a system that would actually be able to match the screen shots on the back of the box. One thing I distinctly remember about that era for pretty much all computer games, including the Sierra games was the fine print explaining that the screen shots were from the Amiga version of the game. This was presumably given as an explanation for why the version you had never quite seemed to match the screen shots on the box. Still, I was always under the impression that it was not completely untrue and that the Amiga versions really did look better. If this wasn't true, why weren't all the Amiga users complaining that the screen shots didn't match?
Basically my problem with the carbon trading markets and any other pollution trading markets is that they are inherently corruptible ideas. Right off the bat, they allow for more pollution and they allow for all the market shenanigans that are making the stock market so terrible. I suppose it's possible to make the idea work, but only in a fantasy land where people don't act like people and, therefore, the market wouldn't have been needed in the first place.
As for carbon dioxide. It doesn't create locally unhealthy conditions for humans at current levels, but it is creating problems in other ecological niches. The oceans, for example. Not to mention, very few of these carbon producing sectors produce only carbon dioxide. There's plenty of other carbon-based (benzene, anyone?) and non-carbon based pollutants (all kinds of radioactive isotopes released in coal burning) being produced as well.
You wrote that: "the status quo doesn't mean that things are stable". I agree entirely. Please note that I actually said that in the parenthetical aside in the section you quoted write above where you wrote that. Specifically, I wrote: "not really status quo, since our use of resources is accelerating and also predictably a blip on the graph since we'll run out at some point, and I don't see how anyone can argue that we won't". I suppose that could or could not be considered status quo depending on how you look at it. For example, pressing the accelerator in a car all the way to the floor and holding it there could be considered a status quo, even if the car hasn't topped out at its highest speed yet. Similarly, the state of steadily depressing the accelerator (accelerating acceleration) at 2 mm per minute could also be seen as a status quo. It all depends if you're only looking at the system consisting of the driver and the pedals, or if you're including the car and the world around it.
As for the petroleum situation, I'm glad that you see that we're running out. The thing is, it's stupid to actually wait until we run out and then scramble to fix things. We know it's going to happen. Signs are that it's already started happening (trouble is, the signs are difficult to read amongst the noise of profiteering corporations who, if alternatives that compete with their products come along, can magically become more efficient, drop their prices dramatically, kill the other industry, then raise their prices). The really crucial thing is that it doesn't just affect energy usage. We rely on petrochemicals for virtually all of our large scale chemical industries, especially including plastics. Also, our current (broken, in my opinion) agricultural methods rely on fertilizers that are mostly derived from petrochemicals and where not derived from petrochemicals, are derived from other resources which are equally non-renewable (which is to say, actually renewable, just not at the rate we use them, e.g. fossilized guano). We need to fix our energy issues, stop burning petrochemicals for easy energy. Then we need to find alternatives to them in all the other industries they're used in because, even after we have petrochemical free energy, we'll still want manufactured goods and we'll still want food.
As for the developing world producing more of the pollution, it just isn't true per capita. Yet. Their industries are, at present, dirtier, but just don't have the numbers to match the developed world. Plus, I disagree that countries can export their manufacturing and simultaneously absolve themselves of the responsibility for how the third parties go about the manufacturing. The real problem is, how do you avoid developing countries getting the short end of the stick compared to the developed countries, without having them reach the per capita pollution levels of the developed countries. Fortunately, as others have pointed out, technological development in the real world doesn't work like the technology chain in some sort of strategy game like Civilization or Starcraft. Developing countries can leapfrog centuries of what mor
khallow wrote a string of personal insults followed by:
First of all, I would be remiss if I didn't point out this Slashdot article about the carbon trading markets "working". I also have to confess to some confusion. I actually expected a global warming denialist to agree with me on cap and trade schemes being a scam. That's usually the response when they're asked why so many scientists would participate in this supposed huge conspiracy: that they're being paid off by those profiting from the cap and trade schemes. From what I can see, pollution credit markets don't work, or, at least, they don't work to reduce pollution. They manage to make some people rich, of course, which means that they "work" by some definitions, just not the ones that really count. They pretty much "work" in the same way as MMORPG secondary currency markets do.
I wasn't previously curious about whether or not you considered carbon dioxide a pollutant or not. I thought you would have the good sense to understand that absolutely anything, even otherwise beneficial substances, are pollutants in the wrong places or at the wrong concentrations. Ozone, for example, is vital to our protection from certain types of solar radiation, and ozone depleting chemicals are therefore major pollutants. However, ozone is also highly toxic and, at ground level, it is a pollutant.
Same goes for CO2. It's an important chemical, but there's a reason it's a waste product from our body rather than something we need to consume. CO2 concentration directly regulates our breathing: too little CO2 and you don't automatically take a breath, too much and you do, if you hold your breath, the burning sensation in your lungs is your lungs reacting to too high a concentration of CO2 (this is one of the reasons that inflating your lungs with helium to give you a squeaky voice can be dangerous, because it displaces the oxygen, but also the CO2, which means that you don't feel like you're out of breath even though your asphyxiating). While we're at it, ever consider the fact that CO2 scrubbing can make unbreathable air breathable even though they don't change the oxygen partial pressure? If none of that convinces you, what about carbonic acid in rain caused by CO2 in the atmosphere? Is that a pollutant?
Plain old O2 is toxic to humans at the wrong concentrations, but even at normal atmospheric concentrations it's dangerous to other life, such as in some deep ocean environments, if introduced there.
All kinds of wonderful fertilizers are great for plants (although there's a decent argument that most modern crops grow big, but are actually pretty nutritionally deprived and lacking in nutrition compared to crops of yesteryear) and, without them, our modern forms of agriculture would be unsustainable (which should worry everyone because the fertilizers are mostly petrochemical with most of the rest coming from other limited fossilized deposits and we're on track to run out). Those same fertilizers, flushed down major rivers like the Mississipi create massive dead zones.
Water can be a big pollutant in the wrong places. That's right, good old fashioned dihydrogen monoxide. Irrigation projects if not done very, very carefully, can take arid regions with poor crop yields and turn them into a paradise of lush, abundant crops, for a few years. After that the soil turns to salt pan and nothing grows there for decades.
Moving on to salt. It's vital to animal life, but too little and your cells pop, too much and they crenate. Too much where you want to grow your crops and you'd better change what you're trying to grow or just give up.
Everything, absolutely everything is a pollutant in the wrong concentration and in the wrong place, because ecosystems work on the principle that certain conditions exist in certain places. If you remove the order that allows
A pollution-trading economy is a ridiculous scam. It's obvious that it's just a way to open a loophole for big polluters and to create another ridiculous "stock market" for vultures to game for profit. In the meantime, however, we don't actually have to wait for "evidence" as you put it, that pollution has adverse effects. The only thing that the jury is still out on (in the opinion mostly of non-experts) is whether the current warming trend is happening, whether humans are causing it, and whether it is a bad thing (the climate change deniers always seem to fall back through those positions, then jump back to square one while your back is turned). The thing is, it doesn't even matter if the climate models are wrong. The fact is, we know that the heavy burning of fossil fuels is bad for us for a long time, climate change or no climate change. I have to agree with a previous poster that the climate change "debate" has been the greatest boon for polluters in years. Everyone seems to completely focus on that one side effect of heavy fossil fuel burning and ignore all of the other problems, going all the way back to the London Pea Soup Fog that used to asphyxiate people, that we already _know_ are problems. The fact that no convincing evidence (which would have to consist of the complete destruction of all life on earth in order to convince most global warming "skeptics", but still apparently wouldn't convince the really hard core) can be presented on only one of the negatives seems to somehow, in the minds of these people, nullify every single other negative that we already know beyond a shadow of a doubt as cold, hard fact.
Personally, I'm not against nuclear power as long as it's done safely. I think in this day and age, we have the expertise to do it safely (bearing in mind that, thanks to Chernobyl, only 24 years ago, it won't really be safe to eat wild mushrooms in Europe for maybe the next century). We can make reactors that just won't melt down or explode with enough force to escape their containment. That said, nuclear power just hasn't proven itself to be economical so far. It may be the case that the costs of nuclear are inflated by the climate of fear and caution around it, and the inevitable corruption and waste on the part of government and nuclear developers. The fact is though, that most nuclear power plants end up costing twice or three times as much as the original quoted price, and end up with greater operational expenses while producing less power than anticipated and generally require all kinds of sunk taxpayer money to become operational which hides the true costs. Technological advancement may deal with these problems. It's possible that it already has, but the lead in times are measured in decades. The problem is, that puts nuclear on the same footing as solar (wind actually seems to pretty much be here already) in that it will be a decent method to produce power once certain technological hurdles are overcome. Since the sun won't run out of nuclear fuel for billions of years, and fuel for current nuclear reactors will run out in hundreds (not really run out, it's renewable in the same way that oil is actually renewable, it's just that we're using both faster than they renew), I'd say that investment in solar research will produce the long term payoff and we can save the nuclear fuel for off-grid niches, like space exploration.
The inevitable end result of this sort of reasoning would seem to be a military coup against the government. The way it's supposed to work is that government tells the military what to do, not the other way around. They can advise government, but they're not supposed to do it as a form of manipulation. If military personnel want to influence government, they can vote, or they can run for government offices once they leave military service.
There might not be a shortage of forests, but there's a bit of a monoculture problem.
I think you're ignoring the fact that, for close to the last decade, the number of "intelligence" agencies has skyrocketed. Some are military, some fall under the DHS, some don't. Some are bound to still be completely secret and some are parts of other government organizations that have decided to do intelligence work even though it's not remotely in their purview. Some of them are truly competent, most of them really just aren't. The ones that are competent are also generally large enough and have such a culture of secrecy that the right hand really doesn't know what the left hand is doing. In other words, they have some core of competency, surrounded by a galaxy of incompetent satellite departments and sub-organizations. Not to mention that these organizations tend to be dumping grounds for political appointees who have managed to really impress some senator or something. Oh, and they also have all kinds of revolving door policies with all kinds of private sector "think tank" organizations.
In any case, anyone who has been in any large organization can look at a description of the same organization from someone else and be outraged at how plain wrong it is. They say this in all honesty based on their own knowledge and experience. The fact is, another person's experience in the same organization, even overlapping with a lot of the same people, can be completely different. One person can be exposed to the rational, methodical, competent elements of the organization, while someone who passes them in the hallways every day can be drowning in a Kafkaesque nightmare of incompetence and broken bureaucracy. That's just the way large organizations with oversight problems (and I don't see how anyone could imagine that oversight of any organization based on "need to know" principles could be anything other than problematic) are.
Aside from that, you're also ignoring the fact that you don't have to be ignorant of the fact that your snake oil doesn't do what you say it does to sell it. There are plenty of con artists who get by on enough intelligence or even brilliance to impress people enough to think that the impossibility they're selling might be possible. For that matter, there are brilliant people who convince themselves of their own snake oil, like Fred Hoyle, who was a brilliant astronomer, but nevertheless led a misinformed campaign against Arecheopteryx, convinced that it must be some vast paleontological conspiracy. Then there are the people who know that they're selling a scam and believe it at the same time. I'm convinced a lot of cult leaders fall into this category. The ones that run manipulative cons for years or decades making themselves rich and "marrying" countless women and girls, but then drink the poison Koolaid, or immolate themselves, etc. with the rest of their followers when they could have cut and run.
I think the same is probably true to a degree with the perpetrator in The Fine Article. You don't float over a million in bad checks to Vegas casinos unless you're a special kind of delusional. That kind of delusional gamblers mind really could believe that their software, which they know doesn't really work, could still somehow, by pure random chance, miraculously uncover some terrorist plot and save thousands of lives. It's ridiculous, but random false positives could make it happen. To the kind of mind that actually thinks it could make money gambling against casinos this may actually make sense.
I think you may be remembering it as considerably more explicit than it actually was. Also, I'm not sure what extremes I'm arguing. I was talking about what's actually in the movie and what would still be in the movie even if you took out the very small amount of sexual content. That one scene that bothers you was in the movie. It's a tiny part of it, but significant. If the event hadn't been shown, it would have needed to be implied somehow, so why not just show it? Who does it harm exactly?
(Just a note, I'm going to assume anyone reading this knows that there are lots of spoilers)
Well, sure, you could take out the attempted rape, the sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II, Dr Manhattan's nudity, the scene with young Rorshach seeing his mother having sex with a client, the sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II and any others I'm forgetting. They're all parts of the story though. The attempted rape plays a major part in the characterization of the Comedian and the Silk Spectre and is one of the defining moments of their relationship. The sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre II I've already talked about. Dr Manhattan's nudity is important to his characterization. The details of Rorshach's childhood are extremely important to his characterization. The sex scene between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre II is important to defining their relationship at the time of the story and also as another demonstration of how far beyond human he has become. All of these things are important to the story. Sure, you can cut them out and just imply that they happened in some other way. Possibly through narration: tell, don't show as opposed to show, don't tell. Of course, you could also just have made the entire movie in one room at the New Frontiersman with one reporter reading Rorshach's journal aloud for two hours. Boy, what a movie that would be.
Interestingly, if you cut the length of the movie by about a minute and a half by removing anything explicitly sexual as well as all nudity (not the same thing as sexual) and left in all the murder of a lesbian superhero and her lover, murder of a bank guard/superhero with an inconvenient cape, murder of child-eating dogs, revenge murder of a child killer, genocidal scale murder, murder of mother with unborn child, murder of bystanding CEOs and secretaries, murder by poisoning of murderous assassin, murder by particle disintegration of hard-working scientists and engineers, murder of an innocent genetically engineered tiger-thingy by particle disintegration, murder of a comrade in arms to hush him up, murder of an old man by a bunch of idiots, murder of height challenged crime figures, murder of murderous convicts (could probably claim self defense there), murder of a murderous superhero/government agent, murder of John F. Kennedy, implied murder of Woodward and Bernstein, lots of killings that aren't technically murder because they were in warfare or were technically police actions, grisly violence of all kinds, dogs gnawing on a childs bones, dismemberments, horrific beatings, accidental deaths by particle disintegration, etc. etc. then you'd probably manage to get a PG-13 rating. Wierd really. Of course, you could also take out all of that stuff, but then you'd have a much shorter movie. I suppose you could add some talking animal friends and a few musical numbers...
I actually like movies with talking animal friends and musical numbers. I actually like all kinds of movies. I liked the Watchmen movie. I liked the comic as well. My favorite movies include some with R ratings and some with G ratings (no nc-17s or X-rated or whatever among my top favorites, but there's no reason there couldn't be if they were good movies, I can think of plenty of books I like that might need that kind of rating if they were done as movies). For all of those movies, the tone and substance of the story really would be hurt by either "sanitizing" it down to a lower rating or "dirtying" it up to a higher rating. They are what they are.
Still, it would be nice if, when the movie came out, you could automatically get a censored version for anyone it needs to be censored for and a regular version for everyone else. That way, the kids could all pretend to their parents that they've only seen the censored version rather than pretending that they haven't seen it at all the way they do now. The broadcast model of theaters and TV is a problem there, however. It's logistically problematic to have multiple versions of a movie out in the theaters at the same
Sure, but the drive casing probably didn't break open. It would have been made of aluminum, most likely, which isn't the best heat sink, but is better than nothing. The heat it was exposed to was probably intense but brief. So, the platters inside the drive were probably only exposed to a small amount of heat for a short period of time. The overnight fire that the grandparent post referred to would be hundreds of times longer and probably hotter too.
I have to comment on this one. How does the love triangle between Silk Spectre II, Night Owl and Dr. Manhattan not have anything to do with the plot?
The problem with being able to make things like that legal retroactively is that it effectively completely nullifies the constitution. Want slavery? Pass a law allowing it and enslave people without due process of law (it's actually still constitutional to do it with due process of law, which is pretty disturbing). Wait for it to work its way through the courts. Right before it is inevitably declared unconstitutional, pass a new law, slightly differently worded under which you can re-enslave the people you're about to be ordered to free right after you "free" them. Then, pass a law retroactively pardoning the people involved. Voila, the constitution means nothing. You can apply the same principle to freedom of speech, right to assemble (no special laws really need to be passed there, they can just pen people up between two advancing columns of police, then arrest them for failure to disperse, hold them for a while, then release them without charges), right to bear arms, search and seizure (although, with the blatantly unconstitutional civil forfeiture situation, it seems you don't need any new special laws in that department either), etc. etc.
Basically, if the legislators can absolve their enforcers of the consequences of violating the rules that are supposed to bind the legislators, then there are effectively _no_ laws binding the legislators. The problem is, it's not just the legislative and executive branch in on the problem. The Judicial branch either seem to conspire to neuter the constitution as well, or meekly acquiesce, possibly out of fear of being labeled an "activist judge". Otherwise, they wouldn't operate under the assumption that, when the constitution is massively violated, nothing can be done because no one has standing to sue over it.
You are critically out of order and missing some steps in your little diabolical plan. If you were to do it, you would want to make sure that you've covered yourself properly. The first step is to get an audio recorder and record everything, even if you're in a two party consent state for recording. The _second_ step is to find the girl and explain everything and promise her half the $500. _Then_ you contact him and agree to carry out the contract. Then you fudge the murder, bring back the ripped shirt, etc.
The reasons to do it in this order should be obvious. If it were to be done the way you propose, you'd not only be putting yourself at risk of serving a very long time in jail for murder for hire and attempted murder (when you go after the girl to try to talk to her after agreeing to kill her, it's going to look pretty bad if you fail to explain yourself), but you'd be risking the girl's chance at justice. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that the prosecuting authorities have offered a sweet plea deal to the person hiring a hit man in exchange for testimony against the juicier target. You'd probably go to jail for life, while he'd get a lesser sentence for both the rape and solicitation of murder than he would have gotten for just the rape if he hadn't tried to put out a hit.
In any case, either way you do it, you'd be breaking a number of laws. Aside from plain old fraud and conspiracy charges, there are probably specific laws you'd be breaking regarding offering hoax murder for hire services. Plus you'd be bringing the girl into a conspiracy to commit fraud, which would probably be admissible in a rape trial and seriously hurt her case.
Plus, doing it in my suggested order still doesn't protect you from attempted murder and murder for hire and conspiracy to commit murder charges. The conspiracy to commit murder charges might stick even if you can prove you never intended to commit the murder simply because you conspired to do it. Even if you contacted the girl first and recorded everything, you still might not be able to prove that your plan wasn't to lull her into a false sense of security and safety while providing yourself a cover story right up until the point you killed her. If you were arrested part way through, before you'd split the money and passed up some clear opportunity to kill her, the evidence against you could still be damning in the right hands.
All in all, it's a cute plan. The drawbacks are just a bit too much for the whole $250 you'd earn from it. I would strongly suggest to everyone to never involve yourselves in a murder for hire scheme, even if only as a hoax.
Food recipes aren't covered by ip law (except for trade secret) as far as I can tell. The specific written recipe can be copyrighted. The name of the dish can be trademarked. Possibly some new, completely unique way of processing food could be patented. Aside from that, however, if you can find out how to make it without violating trade secret provisions, you can make it and serve it all you want.
Maybe you were being facetious and I deserve a big whoosh.
Tetrominos were a well known mathematical puzzle piece before the game Tetris came out. The goal of tetris is to complete 4 by 10 areas, but it has the simpler goal of just clearing lines for people who can't manage to clear 4 lines at a time. The creator of the game came up with a fun way to do it with blocks falling from the top of the screen, but otherwise pretty much nothing about the game was original. The graphics consisted pretty much of blocks. The music consisted of traditional Russian folk music and other classical music. The name of the game is just derived from the word Tetromino. As far as I can tell, the word tetris is original, but the only part of it that's actually original is the 'is' at the end. Tetrada doesn't even contain either of those letters.
You do know that Islam is an Abrahamic faith like Christianity, right? In other words, their creation story is from the same sources. Hinduism would have been a better example.
Very true. Terry Pratchett referred to education as "lies to children". The idea being that we lie to them and tell them that things are this way or that way and, as they get older and more knowledgeable we tell them "well, it's not actually quite that way, here's the more complex explanation". That is pretty much the way it has to be done. As long as it's not done in a contemptuous fashion that turns children off to education, then it's not necessarily so bad. Educators should always be on the lookout for better and better ways to give children good foundations that are easy to learn, but don't actually contradict reality.
If there were no flying squirrels/bats, etc. you'd probably also be arguing that wings are irreducibly complex. After all, why would evolution cause an animal to lose a perfectly good set of limbs, just to spend thousands of years developing wings capable of actually flying. Fortunately, we can see dozens of examples in nature of rudimentary wings at different stages of development that make it very obvious how it happens. Despite all this, people, including respected scientists, still once upon a time tried to insist that the feathers on Archeopteryx were fake, even though it obviously has wings (if not wings, then it has a ridiculously long finger). The respected scientist in that case was curmudgeon Fred Hoyle, who coined the term 'big bang' (although he disagreed and originated the competing steady state theory), and did the important early work on stellar nucleosynthesis. Notably lacking among his credentials are paleontology and geology, and his debunking of Archeopteryx has since been thoroughly debunked (everything he claimed about the fossil was a misconception, not to mention that too many other Archeopteryx and other feathered dinosaur fossils have been found since then). For some reason, people with an agenda to push can always find these supposedly logical impossible puzzles in development.
To address the points you made in your discussion, I'd like to start by correcting your misconception that an important part of evolution is that "the strong survive while the weak die off". It's not survival of the strongest, it's survival of the _fittest_. Evolution isn't some path to godlike perfection. Evolution is just a way of describing a system of trial and error that reacts to the environment (an environment that, by the way, is made up of other organisms that are always evolving). Any genetic change that makes an individual stronger (such as 25% larger muscles), doesn't necessarily make the individual fitter because there could be a drought and a sudden lack of food and the individual with more mass to support isn't going to be able to get enough food to survive and is therefore less fit (or, in some conditions it will be able to get more food and will be more fit - a lot depends on random circumstance). Not to mention the other important fact that the individual with the bloated muscles or increased size due to a mutation may find itself without the skeletal structure to support its muscles or with a circulatory system the design of which doesn't scale up with the demands of its increased size. Heart problems are very common in human giants, even though bipedal creatures massively larger than them have existed. It's obvious then that most "beneficial" mutations are not actually beneficial to start with. Instead, most of them are survived rather than increasing survivability. Other mutations, or genetic combinations with existing mutations, can later combine to actually confer genetic advantage and then the bearers of the beneficial genetic legacy can go on to supplant the rest of the population, or use their newfound ability to spread out into a new environmental niche. Obviously evolution isn't just one process, simply illustrated in a textbook, it's a blanket term for an entire set of feedback processes.
On to four chambered hearts. You ask how evolution explains it, then go on to claim that "nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart". If you'd open your eyes, you'd see that there are plenty of examples of birth defects in which even human infants are born with extra heart chambers. They usually are not functional, and usually lead to early death. If there's a genetic predisposition to such defects, and conditions are right, entire populations can exist with the same defect. They don't have to be fittest, they just have to be viable. Then, eventually, other mutations may occur that improve the functionality of the mutation, up to the point where it actually provides an advantage over
Inhaling a bunch of carcinogens seems like a pretty good way to increase chances of getting cancer to me.
It doesn't seriously harm others around you on light exposure. Having to walk through a cloud of foul, cloying smoke when entering and exiting buildings just isn't enough to make much of a difference over a lifetime. It's the continuously smoke-filled rooms that are the problem. Especially parents who smoke constantly around infants and young children with developing lungs and laugh off the health dangers as just some crock that some nuts came up with. Standard smokers persecution complex. Everyone is picking on the smokers for no reason. They're not the ones being obnoxious by subjecting everyone else to the side-effects of their addiction, everyone else is being obnoxious by asking them to please smoke somewhere else. My sister was a smoker for years and is currently in her most successful quitting phase yet, I've spent nearly two decades as a first hand witness to the logical convolutions and ridiculous self-deceptions practiced by smokers. Like when she was a teenager and thought that stuffing a towel under her bedroom door could hide the fact that she was smoking in there. I can't imagine what it must have been doing to her sense of smell for her to believe that could possibly work. I also know at least one person with bad asthma and bronchitis. She never smoked, but her father was a heavy smoker. That's anecdotal, of course. But studies have been done pretty firmly establishing this link. Even if you dismiss the studies out of hand, I don't understand how you could possibly conclude that it's a good thing for children's lungs to develop in a constant toxic haze.