There is a subtle point that is being overlooked. Climate change revisionists (who should all be jailed for conspiracy to commit genocide of the human race) have gone from denying climate change, which is no longer credible, to denying humans are the cause of climate change.
The non-sequitur implication being, human behaviour, even stupid behaviour, does not need to change.
But on one level it does not matter if catastrophic climate change is caused by pollution or by cosmic rays, it will still kill us. It means massive ecological dislocation, terrible human suffering, and a major setback for, if not the end of, civilization.
And we can't just turn off cosmic rays, so if that's the real cause, we better get moving on whatever ecological remediation we can do.
Socrates would be confused
on
New Ice Age Theory
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't know that 'sophism' is fair. The Milankovitch cycles don't explain two different period lengths. The actual paper (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0701/07011 17.pdf) suggests a mechanism giving a periodic behaviour in the interior of the sun having multiple period lengths. Unless it was arbitrarily calibrated to give the same cycles as Ice Ages (I concede I couldn't follow all the math), it looks pretty reasonable as a hypothesis. If there's a periodic behaviour on the Earth, and a behaviour inside the Sun with same period lengths, and they coincide, that's worth looking into. (Pity we can't observe the interior of the sun as easily as the Earth's orbit.)
Corporations are perpetual and you'd think they are not subject to selection pressures, but they do seem to adapt and embrace new strategies, like buying politicians, and promoting globalization to escape national laws. Too bad we didn't see it before it was too late.
No, censorship is not a solution. But someone who makes a living using scientific knowledge of the weather has to recognize that their employment is conditional on possessing and demonstrating the requisite scientific knowledge.
However, (1) losing your qualification on the basis that you have demonstrably ceased to be qualified does require some hearing or some due process from the accrediting body (American Meteorological Society in this case). Anything else is a politically-motivated violation of employee rights.
(2) I'm not sure a "broadcast meteorologist" really makes statements about climate change all that often, or that they should. They can report things like changes in allergy seasons or implications for agriculture/gardening with reference to the underlying climate change without raising questions as to cause (which is outside their area of expertise anyway).
I've seen no shortage of IT professionals who do more harm than good to the business and consequently should be fired outright. But there's also an astonishing number of users completely unwilling to meet IT half way. Back in the days when a computer might run $1000, and companies that would never let an employee touch a $1000 piece of manufacturing equipment without an appropriate diploma or certficate, office workers were let loose on computers with no training at all. Even worse, they started to believe they didn't have any responsibility for learning how to use equipment they were entrusted with.
Qualitative formulae can be useful, but often they give a false sense of precision. In this case a simple list of independent variables would have been much more appropriate (and intellectually honest). A definition of "sensitivity to delay" would have been nice too.
As much as I sincerely believe it's never really an 'accident' when a big corporation 'just happens' to end up someone else's holding money, I'm not sympathetic to people who tried to collect charity-like donations on the cheap. And 6 months of interest is very cheap if it meant they didn't end up incorporating a real charity or a proper donation bank account. (I hope they're not doing this guy's taxes by themselves...)
"The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions". That destroys the credibility of the whole list. The movie was made in 1939. *Someone* must have known - the costume manager, the supplier of the material...
Based on The Fine Article, all it means is that two different natural selection pressures were at play over a very short time frame. First longer legs (increased speed) were favoured, but longer term an even better strategy was staying in trees (behaviour), which then favoured shorter legs (better tree-climbing). The relationship between the change in behaviour and evolutionary pressures is unclear, but it is not the article's apparent implication of Lamarckian evolution.
What is wrong with TV executives? Most TV writing is appallingly bad - and they pick a fight with the best writer they've got? (And since it sounds like NBC is in the wrong anyway.)
Apparently, they've discovered that if you're in an environment full of math over-achievers, you might feel less confident about your own math performance.
It doesn't strike me as a particularly profound conclusion.
The catch is that "Free Trade" is a myth. Tax laws, environmental laws, labour laws, patent laws, all provide subsidies, overt or disguised, to various industries or corporations. The existing "free trade" model is hardly a ideal free market economy, but every time it changes, some interest or another usually makes sure it just gets more complicated, and no-one has any clue what the 'natural' price of anything is. But globalization (which is *not* really about free trade) does usually end up concentrating wealth and depressing wages.
Since cosmic rays produce these events naturally without destroying the Earth, we can feel pretty safe. But when the obliteration of human civilization is at issue, somehow the concerns don't seem so frivolous. (But you would think this would have been already covered in an environmental impact assessment or something.)
I never understand ether getting such a bad reputation. Okay, it turned out empty space didn't have stiffness or viscosity (or whatever ether was supposed to have), but it was an excellent first guess when you consider we did find empty space had properties like curvature and energy.
Sadly, that really seems to be case. While we've become de-sensitized over the years, both "dark matter" and "MOND" are pretty radical and rather weakly supported by the evidence. Simple reality: we don't know, and it's too soon to reject either theory. (Though I've always had this suspicion that MOND would just fall out of a quantized theory of gravity.)
Obviously, it's sexist, but the question is really: is moderating an overpowering gender imbalance in the interest of the GNOME project? Political or philosophical satisfaction should not be a goal. The fact that no women applied is a factor, but GNOME is not (just) about coding for the sake of egos - some users (remember them?) will be female, and thus some element of female perspective is important.
I find this explanation even more watered down than most. I have yet to see a quantum entanglement scenario that distinguishes quantum mechanics and special relativity. Photons travel at the speed of light; therefore - from the photon's perspective - the distance travelled is zero. Of course they're entangled - there's a frame of reference where they are in the same place!
I know quantum entanglement is supposed to say more than that, but the layman's explanations always seem to be missing the part that isn't explained by special relativity alone.
While not testable in the scientific sense, the evidence for the Flying Spaghetti Monster is compelling. Spaghetti is a product of human culture. The probably that humans would develop, purely by chance, a culture that would create a food in the creator's image, is so vanishingly small as to defy imagination.
As a pastafarian, I find the term 'monster' to be sacrilegious.
It seems that in Microsoft-speak, "innovation" means "the illusion that Microsoft is an innovator".
Innovation (in the Queen's English) is a good thing; innovation (Microsoft-speak) is destroying real innovation for the sake of ego, and is a bad thing.
This is why they say 'stifling innovation' whenever anything demonstrates the absence of innovation on their part.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoy it while it lasts.
For now we have a minority Parliament, so they are likely to sell us out just yet. But you know they want to. Bastards.
There is a subtle point that is being overlooked. Climate change revisionists (who should all be jailed for conspiracy to commit genocide of the human race) have gone from denying climate change, which is no longer credible, to denying humans are the cause of climate change.
The non-sequitur implication being, human behaviour, even stupid behaviour, does not need to change.
But on one level it does not matter if catastrophic climate change is caused by pollution or by cosmic rays, it will still kill us. It means massive ecological dislocation, terrible human suffering, and a major setback for, if not the end of, civilization.
And we can't just turn off cosmic rays, so if that's the real cause, we better get moving on whatever ecological remediation we can do.
...and it's still not a Mac.
I don't know that 'sophism' is fair. The Milankovitch cycles don't explain two different period lengths. The actual paper (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0701/07011 17.pdf) suggests a mechanism giving a periodic behaviour in the interior of the sun having multiple period lengths. Unless it was arbitrarily calibrated to give the same cycles as Ice Ages (I concede I couldn't follow all the math), it looks pretty reasonable as a hypothesis. If there's a periodic behaviour on the Earth, and a behaviour inside the Sun with same period lengths, and they coincide, that's worth looking into. (Pity we can't observe the interior of the sun as easily as the Earth's orbit.)
Corporations are perpetual and you'd think they are not subject to selection pressures, but they do seem to adapt and embrace new strategies, like buying politicians, and promoting globalization to escape national laws. Too bad we didn't see it before it was too late.
No, censorship is not a solution. But someone who makes a living using scientific knowledge of the weather has to recognize that their employment is conditional on possessing and demonstrating the requisite scientific knowledge.
However, (1) losing your qualification on the basis that you have demonstrably ceased to be qualified does require some hearing or some due process from the accrediting body (American Meteorological Society in this case). Anything else is a politically-motivated violation of employee rights.
(2) I'm not sure a "broadcast meteorologist" really makes statements about climate change all that often, or that they should. They can report things like changes in allergy seasons or implications for agriculture/gardening with reference to the underlying climate change without raising questions as to cause (which is outside their area of expertise anyway).
My God! It's full of APL!
I've seen no shortage of IT professionals who do more harm than good to the business and consequently should be fired outright. But there's also an astonishing number of users completely unwilling to meet IT half way. Back in the days when a computer might run $1000, and companies that would never let an employee touch a $1000 piece of manufacturing equipment without an appropriate diploma or certficate, office workers were let loose on computers with no training at all. Even worse, they started to believe they didn't have any responsibility for learning how to use equipment they were entrusted with.
Qualitative formulae can be useful, but often they give a false sense of precision. In this case a simple list of independent variables would have been much more appropriate (and intellectually honest). A definition of "sensitivity to delay" would have been nice too.
As much as I sincerely believe it's never really an 'accident' when a big corporation 'just happens' to end up someone else's holding money, I'm not sympathetic to people who tried to collect charity-like donations on the cheap. And 6 months of interest is very cheap if it meant they didn't end up incorporating a real charity or a proper donation bank account. (I hope they're not doing this guy's taxes by themselves...)
An important subject to be sure, but this is essentially just "Embrace, extend and extinguish" with a more colourful metaphor.
"The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions". That destroys the credibility of the whole list. The movie was made in 1939. *Someone* must have known - the costume manager, the supplier of the material...
Based on The Fine Article, all it means is that two different natural selection pressures were at play over a very short time frame. First longer legs (increased speed) were favoured, but longer term an even better strategy was staying in trees (behaviour), which then favoured shorter legs (better tree-climbing). The relationship between the change in behaviour and evolutionary pressures is unclear, but it is not the article's apparent implication of Lamarckian evolution.
What is wrong with TV executives? Most TV writing is appallingly bad - and they pick a fight with the best writer they've got? (And since it sounds like NBC is in the wrong anyway.)
Apparently, they've discovered that if you're in an environment full of math over-achievers, you might feel less confident about your own math performance.
It doesn't strike me as a particularly profound conclusion.
The catch is that "Free Trade" is a myth. Tax laws, environmental laws, labour laws, patent laws, all provide subsidies, overt or disguised, to various industries or corporations. The existing "free trade" model is hardly a ideal free market economy, but every time it changes, some interest or another usually makes sure it just gets more complicated, and no-one has any clue what the 'natural' price of anything is. But globalization (which is *not* really about free trade) does usually end up concentrating wealth and depressing wages.
Since cosmic rays produce these events naturally without destroying the Earth, we can feel pretty safe. But when the obliteration of human civilization is at issue, somehow the concerns don't seem so frivolous. (But you would think this would have been already covered in an environmental impact assessment or something.)
Wrong continent.
I never understand ether getting such a bad reputation. Okay, it turned out empty space didn't have stiffness or viscosity (or whatever ether was supposed to have), but it was an excellent first guess when you consider we did find empty space had properties like curvature and energy.
Sadly, that really seems to be case. While we've become de-sensitized over the years, both "dark matter" and "MOND" are pretty radical and rather weakly supported by the evidence. Simple reality: we don't know, and it's too soon to reject either theory. (Though I've always had this suspicion that MOND would just fall out of a quantized theory of gravity.)
Obviously, it's sexist, but the question is really: is moderating an overpowering gender imbalance in the interest of the GNOME project? Political or philosophical satisfaction should not be a goal. The fact that no women applied is a factor, but GNOME is not (just) about coding for the sake of egos - some users (remember them?) will be female, and thus some element of female perspective is important.
Could you pilot a submarine through a planet's core?
Easily, if it wasn't the actual geological core, but an ordinary ocean trench with a melodramatic name.
I find this explanation even more watered down than most. I have yet to see a quantum entanglement scenario that distinguishes quantum mechanics and special relativity. Photons travel at the speed of light; therefore - from the photon's perspective - the distance travelled is zero. Of course they're entangled - there's a frame of reference where they are in the same place!
I know quantum entanglement is supposed to say more than that, but the layman's explanations always seem to be missing the part that isn't explained by special relativity alone.
While not testable in the scientific sense, the evidence for the Flying Spaghetti Monster is compelling. Spaghetti is a product of human culture. The probably that humans would develop, purely by chance, a culture that would create a food in the creator's image, is so vanishingly small as to defy imagination.
As a pastafarian, I find the term 'monster' to be sacrilegious.
This is why they say 'stifling innovation' whenever anything demonstrates the absence of innovation on their part.