The "little ice age" started about 700 years ago. That was a cooling period causing widespread famine and disease in Europe. In some places in Europe, witches were blamed and hunted for the change in climate by the orthodox and respected authorities.
In different words, yes, it was pretty much like what we're experiencing now, including the witch hunts, except it got unusually cold instead of unusually warm. But we have those bases covered since it's now called "climate change" instead of "global warming".
These estimates are not based on counting the number of storms that actually occur, they are based on simulations of storm paths.
The probability that another one of these happens in our lifetime is about 10%.
The probability that another once-in-700-year event happens somewhere in the US even just next year is nearly 100%, since there are many more than 700 sites that keep and report these statistics. In different words, you expect multiple extreme weather events to be reported in the US every year.
It's called acting like an adult, and most professionals learned to do so at an early age.
If didn't live in your basement, you'll know that most people act unprofessionally some of the time. You'd also know that part of being a professional is dealing with the fact that other people often act unprofessionally.
Honest question: how would you know if you were losing lots of talented developers?
Who cares? It's their project, not yours. It's not your business to maximize the number of developers they have.
but it's such a terrible attitude that I felt compelled to comment. Slavery works. Human experimentation works. Spying on every citizen in the country works. Morality matters.
Those all have something in common: those being harmed don't have the choice to walk away. If you don't like the way Linus runs his software project, don't join the project. Since it's open source, you can even fork it.
morality-wise, but let's not go saying that the ends always justify the means.
There's something fundamentally wrong with your sense of morality if you think that voluntary associations of people have to conform to some global standard of conduct. Some people may like screaming obscenities at each other and develop software while they are doing it. Some people like whipping each other while having sex. It's none of your business.
The fact Linux is awesome and Linus is an abusive and profane manager doesn't mean the profanity and abuse is necessary to make Linux awesome.... The fact it's working doesn't mean it can't be improved.
And the wonderful thing is that it's open source, and if you can improve the development processes, you are welcome to demonstrate that you can improve it.
There are lots of things wrong with that analysis. It assumes that species only adapt to climate change by evolution, but they can adapt by migration. It confuses global mean temperature changes with local changes. And the rate of evolution is not fixed, it is driven by environmental change: more change means a faster rate of evolution. In fact, extinctions are a primary driver of evolution. In addition, for millions of years now, every 100000 years, global mean temperatures change by about 3-4C in a few thousand years, and over large regions, they change by 10C or more in a few thousand years with regularity; if the bleak picture you paint, we'd have one mass extinction after another.
As for the P-Tr extinction event, nobody knows what caused it or how it relates to climate change. There have been many rapid changes in temperature and rapid changes in CO2 in earth's history, and some correlate with massive extinction events, others appear not to. Picking mass extinctions out of the biological record and using them in climate change arguments is dishonest and unscientific.
Finally, you make the usual implicit error of people who propose action on climate change, namely you assume that this is under our control and that the best course of action is to control it. There isn't a governmental power in the world to keep places like China and India from burning fossil fuels or to keep the population from increasing; what can stop carbon emissions and population growth is technological and economic advances, precisely the things that the economic interventions proposed by global warming activists threaten.
For the last few million years, we have had severe glacial periods every 100000 years and brief interglacials. That kind of harsh climate may have forced the evolution of H. sapiens, but by any objective standard, it is "not pleasant". Without AGW, we'd probably be starting another deep glaciation within a couple of thousand years. Human carbon emissions may be putting that off, and I don't see why that's a bad thing.
The continents weren't in hugely different positions. Ocean currents have changed somewhat. But on the whole, there is no evidence that Eocene-like CO2 concentrations would result in very different effects now than they did during the Eocene. They would certainly not result in "anoxia".
Once all the carbon is released, the globe will be roughly where it was during the Eocene. That means: lush vegetation, lots of mammals and primates, forests in the Antarctic and Sahara, far less temperature differences between high and low latitudes, and generally a warmer and wetter climate.
I said that the possibility exists, not that it is automatically so. Generally, in such cases, the jury needs to look at the exact circumstances. In this case, there is no evidence that Zimmerman was physically or even verbally aggressive.
If you have you would understand that hitting someone, or knocking their head into concrete is not 'life threatening'.
Medically, that is false. Skull fractures are very serious medically, and frequently result in death. Furthermore, even if he had just lost consciousness, he would have lost any ability to defend himself.
people can want to hurt another human *very badly* yet not have any intent to kill.
Deadly force in self-defense is usually justified against any violent felony that the person reasonably believes may result in serious injury, not just attempted murder.
The real problem with Guantanamo is political: by shipping POWs halfway across the world, not only did this become a big deal in the media, there is also no easy way of releasing these people. If these prisoners had been kept in local POW camps close to where they were captured, nobody would have cared, and they could just have been released back to where they came from. The Guantanamo debacle remains a testament to Bush's political incompetence, and to Obama's dishonesty for failing to close it despite his campaign promises.
I think it would be good for the UN to recognize some general exception to extradition treaties for whistle blowing (acts of public disclosure of secret information). It would still remain an individual judgment call for nations whether to aid or grant asylum to whistle blowers, but there would be some recognition that such acts are sometimes justified. It would also reduce some of the hypocrisy coming from some nations, who, on the one hand are trying to score propaganda points by railing against the US, and on the other hand hide behind extradition treaties to continue business as usual.
Martin hit Zimmerman's head against the concrete and Martin may have been going for Zimmerman's gun. In addition, Martin was in much better shape than Zimmerman. Not only did Zimmerman reasonably believe that his life was in danger (which would be sufficient for self-defense), objectively his life really was in danger.
(By the way, if Martin had killed Zimmerman, he might also have been acting in self-defense and been found not-guilty.)
i'd like to hear your answer...based on reported facts...you don't have to link to everything I've been up on the trial...answer my question if you'd like to talk further
What is there left to talk about? The evidence from the trial is clear and the jury verdict is correct.
For the question of self-defense, it doesn't matter who started the fight or who badgered who.
(Of course, it couldn't even be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman started the fight; his story that he was on the way back to his car when Martin attacked him from behind is possible.)
Your premise is wrong. Forensics showed that Zimmerman was on the ground and Martin was bending over him when Martin was shot.
Who instigated the confrontation isn't relevant to the question of self-defense. You can start a fight and still claim self-defense when the other person turns the conflict into a lethal conflict.
Furthermore, Martin might well have been able to claim self-defense as well if he had shot Zimmerman; claims of self-defense aren't mutually exclusive.
The proper response to Zimmerman's acquittal is outrage.
The proper response to Zimmerman's acquittal is relief that the jury decided based on the facts; there was simply no other decision they could have reached if they did their job.
Racism is a problem in techie circles and it shows in overt and subtle ways. [...] Middle class white people have gotten *more* racist and less nuanced in their worldview in the last 15 years and it's a shame.
"Middle class white people" are just getting pissed off at being being lumped together and insulted based on their race and class. That makes you the racist.
1. Why is everyone so upset that evidence about Martin's background that Zimmerman couldn't have known was kept out of court? It seems like since he couldn't have known, it didn't affect the situation at hand and therefore shouldn't be considered. But I might be missing something about why the victim's background is relevant in any case where the murder isn't premeditated.
People have different propensities for violence. A key question in the trial was whether it was plausible that Martin threw Zimmerman to the ground and punched him. Knowing background information on his interest in fighting and weapons seems relevant.
2. At what point does getting out of your car and pursuing somebody become an aggressive act? We know for a fact that he followed Martin, there can be no doubt given where he was parked and where the body was, yet this is still considered self defense? I'd appreciate some help with that.
It doesn't matter who started the confrontation, it only matters whether he killed because at the time he shot he had to fear for his life. Zimmerman could have thrown the first punch and the shooting would still have been self-defense (the punch itself might be a separate crime in that case).
3. The stand your ground law was mentioned several times throughout this case, although it doesn't seem to have directly caused the not guilty verdict. What I'm wondering is why that law didn't give Martin the right to stand his ground when Zimmerman pursued him?
Self-defense claims aren't mutually exclusive. If Martin had killed Zimmerman, he could have been found "not guilty" as well. Probably both Martin and Zimmerman were fearing for their lives that night (each based on their own prejudices and stereotypes), and that's why the confrontation turned deadly.
Pay your employees what they are worth and companies might find that employees are more likely to stick around.
So you are saying that companies should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training an employee and then immediately raise their salary to what they are worth after training. How do they ever recover the cost of training then? And then the employee is still likely to take an above-market offer from someone else.
Then the company acts all surprised when the employee jumps ship.
They don't act surprised at all. Instead, they just don't train, because no matter what they do, they lose.
I guess things like investment in cures (not profitable treatment) for disease, or investment in education designed to produce citizens vs consumers/worker bees, just isn't worthwhile.
People like you have never shown that increasingly transferring these functions to government or spending more money on them even achieve their stated goals. In fact, it's clear they don't: we're spending far more than European nations and getting no better results.
Let's trust companies and rich people to invest. Yay trickle down!
Ah, "trickle down", an invention of the left and a convenient straw man to put up when you don't have any arguments. Trickle down is obviously a stupid idea and it doesn't work. "Trickle down" is not why people advocate lower taxes, except in the minds of left wing demagogues. Lowering taxes and limiting the size of government isn't primarily about money. It's about people taking responsibility for their own lives instead of assuming that all their needs will be taken care of for them by a rich, powerful political elite and the apparatus they run.
If progressives and "liberals" really cared about providing for "the poor", we could do that with a simple negative income tax; I'd be all for that even if it cost more than the entitlement system we currently have (but it would actually cost much less). But progressives and liberals don't care about that, what they care about is shaping society, based on the assumption that everybody other than a small elite is too stupid to make their own decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
Batshit insane federal environmental program (read: crony capitalism) killed by slightly less insane local regulators.
The "little ice age" started about 700 years ago. That was a cooling period causing widespread famine and disease in Europe. In some places in Europe, witches were blamed and hunted for the change in climate by the orthodox and respected authorities.
In different words, yes, it was pretty much like what we're experiencing now, including the witch hunts, except it got unusually cold instead of unusually warm. But we have those bases covered since it's now called "climate change" instead of "global warming".
These estimates are not based on counting the number of storms that actually occur, they are based on simulations of storm paths.
The probability that another one of these happens in our lifetime is about 10%.
The probability that another once-in-700-year event happens somewhere in the US even just next year is nearly 100%, since there are many more than 700 sites that keep and report these statistics. In different words, you expect multiple extreme weather events to be reported in the US every year.
Does that answer your question?
RTFA
Those evil climate change deniers at NASA are up to their old tricks again!
Law enforcement is never that straightforward and efficient.
If didn't live in your basement, you'll know that most people act unprofessionally some of the time. You'd also know that part of being a professional is dealing with the fact that other people often act unprofessionally.
Who cares? It's their project, not yours. It's not your business to maximize the number of developers they have.
Those all have something in common: those being harmed don't have the choice to walk away. If you don't like the way Linus runs his software project, don't join the project. Since it's open source, you can even fork it.
There's something fundamentally wrong with your sense of morality if you think that voluntary associations of people have to conform to some global standard of conduct. Some people may like screaming obscenities at each other and develop software while they are doing it. Some people like whipping each other while having sex. It's none of your business.
And the wonderful thing is that it's open source, and if you can improve the development processes, you are welcome to demonstrate that you can improve it.
There are lots of things wrong with that analysis. It assumes that species only adapt to climate change by evolution, but they can adapt by migration. It confuses global mean temperature changes with local changes. And the rate of evolution is not fixed, it is driven by environmental change: more change means a faster rate of evolution. In fact, extinctions are a primary driver of evolution. In addition, for millions of years now, every 100000 years, global mean temperatures change by about 3-4C in a few thousand years, and over large regions, they change by 10C or more in a few thousand years with regularity; if the bleak picture you paint, we'd have one mass extinction after another.
As for the P-Tr extinction event, nobody knows what caused it or how it relates to climate change. There have been many rapid changes in temperature and rapid changes in CO2 in earth's history, and some correlate with massive extinction events, others appear not to. Picking mass extinctions out of the biological record and using them in climate change arguments is dishonest and unscientific.
Finally, you make the usual implicit error of people who propose action on climate change, namely you assume that this is under our control and that the best course of action is to control it. There isn't a governmental power in the world to keep places like China and India from burning fossil fuels or to keep the population from increasing; what can stop carbon emissions and population growth is technological and economic advances, precisely the things that the economic interventions proposed by global warming activists threaten.
Do you have any more such stupid and unscientific analogies?
For the last few million years, we have had severe glacial periods every 100000 years and brief interglacials. That kind of harsh climate may have forced the evolution of H. sapiens, but by any objective standard, it is "not pleasant". Without AGW, we'd probably be starting another deep glaciation within a couple of thousand years. Human carbon emissions may be putting that off, and I don't see why that's a bad thing.
The continents weren't in hugely different positions. Ocean currents have changed somewhat. But on the whole, there is no evidence that Eocene-like CO2 concentrations would result in very different effects now than they did during the Eocene. They would certainly not result in "anoxia".
Once all the carbon is released, the globe will be roughly where it was during the Eocene. That means: lush vegetation, lots of mammals and primates, forests in the Antarctic and Sahara, far less temperature differences between high and low latitudes, and generally a warmer and wetter climate.
I said that the possibility exists, not that it is automatically so. Generally, in such cases, the jury needs to look at the exact circumstances. In this case, there is no evidence that Zimmerman was physically or even verbally aggressive.
Medically, that is false. Skull fractures are very serious medically, and frequently result in death. Furthermore, even if he had just lost consciousness, he would have lost any ability to defend himself.
Deadly force in self-defense is usually justified against any violent felony that the person reasonably believes may result in serious injury, not just attempted murder.
The real problem with Guantanamo is political: by shipping POWs halfway across the world, not only did this become a big deal in the media, there is also no easy way of releasing these people. If these prisoners had been kept in local POW camps close to where they were captured, nobody would have cared, and they could just have been released back to where they came from. The Guantanamo debacle remains a testament to Bush's political incompetence, and to Obama's dishonesty for failing to close it despite his campaign promises.
I think it would be good for the UN to recognize some general exception to extradition treaties for whistle blowing (acts of public disclosure of secret information). It would still remain an individual judgment call for nations whether to aid or grant asylum to whistle blowers, but there would be some recognition that such acts are sometimes justified. It would also reduce some of the hypocrisy coming from some nations, who, on the one hand are trying to score propaganda points by railing against the US, and on the other hand hide behind extradition treaties to continue business as usual.
Martin hit Zimmerman's head against the concrete and Martin may have been going for Zimmerman's gun. In addition, Martin was in much better shape than Zimmerman. Not only did Zimmerman reasonably believe that his life was in danger (which would be sufficient for self-defense), objectively his life really was in danger.
(By the way, if Martin had killed Zimmerman, he might also have been acting in self-defense and been found not-guilty.)
What is there left to talk about? The evidence from the trial is clear and the jury verdict is correct.
For the question of self-defense, it doesn't matter who started the fight or who badgered who.
(Of course, it couldn't even be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman started the fight; his story that he was on the way back to his car when Martin attacked him from behind is possible.)
Your premise is wrong. Forensics showed that Zimmerman was on the ground and Martin was bending over him when Martin was shot.
Who instigated the confrontation isn't relevant to the question of self-defense. You can start a fight and still claim self-defense when the other person turns the conflict into a lethal conflict.
Furthermore, Martin might well have been able to claim self-defense as well if he had shot Zimmerman; claims of self-defense aren't mutually exclusive.
The proper response to Zimmerman's acquittal is relief that the jury decided based on the facts; there was simply no other decision they could have reached if they did their job.
"Middle class white people" are just getting pissed off at being being lumped together and insulted based on their race and class. That makes you the racist.
People have different propensities for violence. A key question in the trial was whether it was plausible that Martin threw Zimmerman to the ground and punched him. Knowing background information on his interest in fighting and weapons seems relevant.
It doesn't matter who started the confrontation, it only matters whether he killed because at the time he shot he had to fear for his life. Zimmerman could have thrown the first punch and the shooting would still have been self-defense (the punch itself might be a separate crime in that case).
Self-defense claims aren't mutually exclusive. If Martin had killed Zimmerman, he could have been found "not guilty" as well. Probably both Martin and Zimmerman were fearing for their lives that night (each based on their own prejudices and stereotypes), and that's why the confrontation turned deadly.
So you are saying that companies should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training an employee and then immediately raise their salary to what they are worth after training. How do they ever recover the cost of training then? And then the employee is still likely to take an above-market offer from someone else.
They don't act surprised at all. Instead, they just don't train, because no matter what they do, they lose.
People like you have never shown that increasingly transferring these functions to government or spending more money on them even achieve their stated goals. In fact, it's clear they don't: we're spending far more than European nations and getting no better results.
Ah, "trickle down", an invention of the left and a convenient straw man to put up when you don't have any arguments. Trickle down is obviously a stupid idea and it doesn't work. "Trickle down" is not why people advocate lower taxes, except in the minds of left wing demagogues. Lowering taxes and limiting the size of government isn't primarily about money. It's about people taking responsibility for their own lives instead of assuming that all their needs will be taken care of for them by a rich, powerful political elite and the apparatus they run.
If progressives and "liberals" really cared about providing for "the poor", we could do that with a simple negative income tax; I'd be all for that even if it cost more than the entitlement system we currently have (but it would actually cost much less). But progressives and liberals don't care about that, what they care about is shaping society, based on the assumption that everybody other than a small elite is too stupid to make their own decisions.