Given that tumors are basically cell growths that aren't coordinated, you best hope against hope that the response is coordinated if you disable this gene.
And since this gene has been in our dna for a long time, the information coordinating the response is going to be outdated, or simply randomized/erased (genes that are deactivated -for any reason- are randomized by evolution). It seems unlikely in the extreme that the response will be coordinated.
Well disabling anti-cancer genes. Let's have the marketing department "fix" the issue :
"regenerate long lost limbs ! act now and you get 3 kg for free*"
(small print)
(* 3kg free may be either tumor growth or a bowl of sweat collected from our medical department, depending)
--
People who need govt to protect them from religion cannot have much faith in the logic of atheism. And given that government is much more about restricting religion than it ever was about enforcing it, this says a lot more about atheists than it says about anyone else.
You get massively oversubscribed bandwidth (100:1 or more). This they sell to you specifying that at no point they guarantee that you even have any bandwidth at all. Certainly that must be clear language, no ?
Given such terms in the contract, are you really in any doubt as to what "they promise" ?
Without oversubscription your price would go, say times 30.
And you can order, with just about all isps, non-oversubscribed bandwidth. Just order an SDSL per 2 mbit you want to use. Or a T1. Costs between $500 and $1000 per month. The isp will guarantee that you can use that bandwidth at all times.
It's really that simple. Note that $500 per month would be close to the cost to the ISP of providing this.
Actually the people gave these massive advantages to the telcos because otherwise they'd only connect customers that would be profitable (what a concept). Since that was "unacceptable", these huge entities were created and given these massive advantages, destroying anything remotely resembling a free market.
And now, like anyone with the power to violate contracts, they want to change the terms. They imagine that all this will get delivered for free, but they know full well that it'll simply be paid by tax increases.
But there's the "free stuff now" argument. And that's what net neutrality appears to be : free stuff now.
In reality of course, it's an impossible and unworkable constraint on network architecture that'd make delivering adsl lines more expensive than going to the moon if seriously implemented. It would literally require dropping all advantages packet-based networks have. And since congress, despite what half of slashdot seems to think, does not have the power to vote facts out of reality, net neutrality will not happen in practice.
That's what the paper claims. Sabotage everything on a provider's network, so that it's "fair".
People here don't even know that all of the major network equipment manufacturers ONLY produce equipment that violates net neutrality. You see, they give absolute priority to "network critical" messages (you see things like synchronization, route distribution in various protocols, tunnel setup and teardown, session establishment...). After network critical, there are (on cisco) 7 other prioritized levels for traffic. All get preferred before any actually useful traffic gets sent. Inside that useful traffic, the provider's own services that require it (such as voice and business traffic, and any kind of reserved traffic) get preferred, then the network capacity that is still unused, that's what gets used for the $IwantGigabitsForLessDollars customers. Every provider that tried to sell better network for a little more money has failed. People do not want this, or at least they don't want to pay even a few dollars to get it.
Besides, the idiots leave open a loophole that AT&T easily fits through. You have to give equal resources on a network. Here's a prediction : every large ISP will henceforth build 2 networks. One, an ubercheap crappy network to provide "internet" to whining downloaders. Second a quality network for people who actually pay, you know, something actually exceeding the cost of the bandwidth they use, that doesn't connect to the outside at all, and therefore doesn't discriminate. It's easy, especially given the fact they already do this. Split these networks up financially (already done in quite a few providers) and voila : "net neutrality" with the exact same network config they already have, the one you're complaining about.
Best way to fix it ? How about you pay for the bandwidth you want to use ? Get a 10M symmetrical internet line and pay the $500 per month they ask.
What does that have to do with this situation ? These are operational reports from the US military. There are separate (and less dangerous) accounts of who is incarcerated, and why, available to the Afghan government (who may then choose to publish it or not - and at least a few are indeed published)
And quite frankly, given the choice between incarceration by the US, or by the "muslim students", who would you choose ?
If you don't feel revealing your secrets is dangerous... may I ask you a simple question :
What's the way to log in to your bank account ? Mail account ? Social security number ? Surely revealing secrets can't hurt you, right ?
This just to establish the obvious - that some secrets are secret for a reason. And obviously, interactions with informants on an enemy that kills without regard to human rights, or even basic decency, are secret. You'd have to be fucking desperate to see the "muslim students" (translation into a language nobody here understands : "taliban") as victims. At the very best these people are a maffia shooting from behind children. At worst, they're genocidal maniaks that need to be eradicated before they start again (murdered half Kabul when they left it, in addition to several religious genocides, and that's just in the last 10 years).
Well you got me. Obviously the earth satisfies this definition.
A system that is in equilibrium experiences no changes when it is isolated from its surroundings.
Obviously if we were to take away the sun, and space itself and put the earth somewhere apart in empty space, the influence doing this on the life on earth, and earth itself would be ?!? nothing ?!?
Oh wait... you're wrong (and not just for this reason).
And this is not a "tiny detail" earth fails every single one of the requirements for being in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Unless of course, you count the surface, athmosphere, life, all the fields surrounding earth and all the energy changing the surface as superfluous details (which is probably what you're doing). But in that case, you've obviously excluded the climate itself, and using such an assertion to prove anything about the climate seems a bit... less than accurate. Don't you think ?
Note how you try to mislead people. The statement that you claim "proves" earth is in equilibrium:
"earth wants to stay in thermal equilibrium"
Note what it doesn't state. Think about it. It does not in fact, state that earth is currently in thermal equilibrium, just that it "wants to" (meaning it's evolving towards a state of equilibrium over time).
Obviously this is correct, if somewhat unfortunately phrased (especially the word "stay"). It is simply a way to state the second law of thermodynamics : that entropy is ever-increasing and eventually the earth will be a cold, hard, dead empty rock without any athmosphere and without any discernable properties, a perfect, dead, sphere, perfectly uniform in the distribution of just about every variable imaginable. Eventually, earth will be in thermodynamic equilibrium. Everything is evolving towards a state of equilibrium.
Ah finally we get to this argument. The flaw in your line of thinking is the implicit assumption that the earth is in thermodynamic equilibrium.
If this assumption is not made, your claim that energy rise => temperature increase is not valid. To take a stupid example : even massive energy increases would not lead to temperature rise in a superconductor.
But why not try this at home ? Take a glass of purified water (home distilled water will do fine). Insert a small piece of white paper, which will obviously quickly assume the same temperature as the water. Make sure nothing moves inside the microwave (ie. not the glass either), and that the device is on a very stable surface. Heat the glass for 5 minutes at 1000W.
Now you'd think "surely the water has evaporated by then ?", but you will see that almost none of the water is evaporated. If you check with an infrared thermometer you will find the paper having a temperature of 40 degrees (at best), maybe even less. Moreover, the paper will quickly assume the environmental temperature (as will, of course, the water).
Yet a massive amount of energy went inside the water. Clearly it did not lead to a temperature increase, it was stored in the magnetic field of the polar liquid that is water. In water it is possible to change the division of energy between temperature and the magnetic field without significant energy input.
Just a warning, DO NOT touch the glass except with a -long- stick, unless you like visiting the hospital.
In general : if you take a "black body" : a ball with a perfectly uniform temperature and no features *at all*, you'd be right : any change in energy balance changes the temperatures inside the ball, including it's surface temperatures.
Needless to say this is an idealized situation one never encounters in reality. Nevertheless there are objects that are "more or less" black bodies (such as a metal wire). The earth as a whole, however, is not a black body by a long shot.
In a system not in thermodynamic equilibrium the climate is not so much the total amount of energy in the system, but the internal division of that energy (and the temperature in moving gasses is a whole lot more complex than that, as what you're actually calling temperature is the average unsynchronized movement of gas molecules. The synchronized movement, the equivalent of winds, eats from the same energy. But so do a million other physical processes, even complex things. On earth, for example, erosion is a process that removes energy from the athmosphere).
So, for example, dropping the temperature over the poles 10 degrees and increasing wind speeds over the rest of the planet would be a perfectly possible change in the climate that would not require any change in energy balance, even if it *would* change average surface temperatures (quite a bit).
To illustrate just how very wrong this way of thinking is : if you look at the earth as a black body, and determine what the temperature should be on the surface of the earth you'd come to the conclusion that earth surface temperature is 6400 degrees kelvin.
So -in short- no, changing the climate would *not* require a massive amount of energy (which is one of the main points of the theory of AGW in the first place : the total amount of energy released by humans is totally insignificant as compared to the increase in temperature that was observed to follow it. Hell, even net solar input is barely significant, and is a dozen powers of 10 more. The whole point is that human interference amplified the effect of certain -perfectly natural- effects, specifically the "greenhouse effect" of the athmosphere, and in the current theory, a dozen more effects are involved too)
Note that life is not possible on -or in- anything that is near thermodynamic equilibrium.
And the whole problem of a chaotic system is that :
1) you can create an infinite amount of models that will match the past, to any desired amount of accuracy 2) there is *NO* valid way that can tell you which of the models is the correct one (no occam's razor, or rather the more well-defined variants of it can't either). Therefore any change can occur at any time, and cannot be foreseen *at all*.
Therefore attempting to change variables in order to achieve a desired effect is madness. Why ? Something like this will happen
0.00001% increase in co2 production will increase global temperatures by 12 degrees 0.000001% increase in co2 production will drop global temp 6 degrees 0.0000001% increase in co2 production will raise global temperatures 22 degrees 0.00000001%...
And so on. There is no way to predict the effect of any change in the variables, so policies will have random effects.
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic in the short term and not chaotic in the long term.
-and-
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic in the long term and not chaotic in the short term (so despite the apparent stability in our solar system, sudden, unforeseen, radical changes *will* occur)
-more general-
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic on any timescale, but not on another timescale.
And even those gotchas only apply if you assume it's even possible to predict the climate.
The sad thing is, about the past, the IPCC is right : the climate *did* warm (mostly) because of co2 increases. Heh, guess I don't even disagree that "global warming is undeniable". But the IPCC is also absurdly wrong, relying instead on a known wrong intuition : this does not mean that a further rise in athmospheric co2 will increase warming. In fact any change could have any effect, so every policy, from let's pollute because we can to killing of the entire human species has exactly the same chances of influencing the climate. Quite frankly, anyone who's had a theoretical mathematics class at any university should know this, but of course... there's politics. Blacks and whites have to be the same, even when we're talking about melanine levels, all religions and ethnicities have to be the same, even when talking about page count of important documents, science can answer *any* question 100% correctly to infinite levels of accuracy and anyone who believes otherwise is a racist. (get that ? you're a racist if you point out that the bible, as compared to other religions, is a very long book indeed. Or the fact that more people die from medical mistakes than that have their lives saved by medical intervention. What you are when you point out obvious flaws in the foundation of "climate theory" is simpler : unemployed and unemployable. And God forbid any publication on the "deniers" list should publish a quote from you that could, twisted appropriately, indicate you do not agree to doctrine)
So just putting it here, getting it off my chest : why is predictability an assumption ? Because, mathematically, some things are what is called "chaotic". Which means 2 things: 1) it is perfectly possible to predict the past, and to explain it. Down to the last tinyest little detail you can explain every variation in the graphs 2) said fabulous, genius, nobel-prize-winning theories (or other theories), will fail 5 minutes into the future. Whoops.
Climate is... chaotic. Meaning it has the two properties above.
And despite seemingly credible sources claiming the opposite (hello "newscientist", "nature" ?), chaotic systems persistently refuse to bow to statistics (if they didn't that would be a contradiction of chaos). There are weaker forms of "chaotic behavior" that can be predicted by statistics. However, they've been tested and... well the weather and climate are really fully chaotic.
Seemingly absurdly simple questions turn out to be chaotic (the coast of Britain to name a famous paper). How long is the coast of Britain ? Depends on your measurement device. Measure with a ruler 1000 km long and it will be seriously shorter than the English claim. Measure with a ruler of 1 cm and it will be seriously longer than the English claim. By varying the ruler's length you can make the coast of Britain any length, but it is impossible to predict what difference a change in ruler length will do to the length of the coast. The motion of the planets (the famous "three body problem"), another chaotic problem.
The consequences of this chaos conept are vehemently dismissed as total crap, even when it's pretty old and well known mathematical theory. The moon could fly away from the earth tomorrow (and while it probably won't happen tomorrow, the chances that it will eventually happen are very good indeed). That's a trivial consequence of the three body problem. Worse : we can't predict when this event will happen (just like we can't predict the motions of comets and meteorites accurate enough to decide if they'll hit earth until they're right on top of us). At best we can hope for a few days' warning. Despite the seeming absurdity one day the papers will announce "the moon left us, tidal currents slowing to a halt", and this will just happen some day, nobody seeing it coming (or at least nobody correctly predicting when it'll happen).
Where do you get, in that verse (or at least that chapter), the self-defence part ? That just came out of nowhere, and curiously you didn't mention it earlier when talking about kafirs... Could you be a little more consistent ? (or truthful...)
Otherwise, you've answered your own question, along with a dozen excuses:
So you agree your religion commands you to kill.
*excuses* yes *excuses*
For comparison, the bible commands *NOT* to kill, not even defensively. It just states that there are situations where lives are lost no matter what you can do, and then (and only then), you are allowed to make the decision to end a life. But even in the situation where you attacked, to prevent a worse situation, killing is a sin, and must be atoned for. So for example, if you could travel back in time, as a good Christian, it would perhaps be "allowed" to kill Hitler (but it would certainly never be "good"), and you would still need forgiveness for this act. Killing to save your own life (ie. self-defense as you call it) is definitely a grave sin. Simply put, a good Christian will only ever take the decision to try to end a life in order to protect the lives of others, and will never end a life to protect his own.
Frankly, it's easy to see that your excuses are desperately grasping at straws indeed. Btw you forgot the excuses for the slavery, genocides, raping of slaves, racism (the part about the "function" of black people in the quran (ie. slaves), paedophilia (having sex with minor children without their permission is called paedophilia). You believe your prophet is a paedophile because allah ordered him to do it... let's see some excuses for this too. And, of course, the fact that all these acts are not just theoretical in your little booklet, but have been consistent, including today, in muslim societies ("little booklet" : barely 60 pages, in large print (and even a lot less in kufic arameic, the original), compared to close to 500 for the torah, and close to 1500 for the bible, and that's not in large print. Most historians even believe that the quran is just 23 random mistranslated excerpts from the bible, and frankly, have you ever read the later chapters of the quran and compared with the new testament ? They're right)
But the main question is how exactly you twist these words to a defensive meaning ? Because that's some serious twisting indeed:
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then...
All these verbs, slay, besiege, take, lie in ambush... they're all active verbs (also in the original syrian, ok granted, I know maybe 50 words ancient syrian, but they have a rather extensive and meaningful grammar that's surprisingly clear), if they denoted a defensive act they would have used the passive form, for... well that's simply how you say that, even in today's arabic. These are clear, short, direct sentences that mean to attack, independent of any action of the people you attack. In other words, the act they denote is halfway between military attack and terrorism.
Unless, of course, you claim allah cannot be comprehended. Of course, that would mean allah is not capable of clearly expressing his will, and is generally an idiot. That'd mean anyone attempting to be a muslim is just as much kuffar as any saudi street hooker.
As long as you refuse to even define what we're talking about, how could you possibly be right ? At best you're stating nonsense. Literally non-sense. You're not even wrong, in fact you talk such non-sense that it isn't even possible to evaluate whether it's true. It's non-sense in the most literal definition of the word : it means *nothing*. Zero. Zilch. Your argument is merely a sequence of letters, no more meaningful than a totally random one.
So let's first define what we're actually talking about. Clearly.
And stop hogging my human rights ! (ie. your car). After all, don't we both agree that human rights must not be violated ?
So you agree your religion commands you to kill. You're just nitpicking about who exactly it orders you to kill. And if I protest this it's because I'm racist ? Oh, please.
Would you object to other religions killing ? Heh. Would you protest Jews comitting genocide on palestinians ? Why ? You're no better, you're just an incapable lazy buffoon.
So you're saying muslims are only obliged to kill people who:
Most of the people reading this can not be a kaffir. The munarfiq (hypocrite) is the worst person, and Islam has real problems with these, the lowest part of hell being reserved for them. How do we judge them. In the words of the Prophet "The characteristics of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he gives his word, he breaks it; and when he is given a trust, he is unfaithful." Someone who was born a muslim can be a hypocrite, making him the worst person of all. Add to this that in Islamic theology your final assertive act will decide how your life will be judged. I don't know how my end will be (if I will even be a Muslim at the end of my life). I don't know how your end will be, so how can I judge you.
Can you say "making excuses" ? And quite pathetic ones at that, don't you think ?
How do you square yourself with this "literal order from allah" ? (if you don't believe the quran is the literal orders from allah, please don't claim you're a muslim)
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then...
Regardless, even, of whom exactly you should kill and ambush and generally attack in every dishonorable way imaginable, it's an order to kill.
So, to put it extremely frankly : choose. Do you (a) refuse allah's orders, and are therefore not a muslim (b) you're a murderer.
You know you can twist your ass around all you want but the end result is simple :
US (and any government that tries) : 99% compliant with human rights (and trying, but failing to make that 100%) Enemies of the US : 10% (at best) compliant with human rights (and trying to make that less). Taliban : 0%
Complaints about the behavior of the US : this thread is full of them Complaints about the taliban's behavior : "not needed"
So the EFFECT of what you're doing is simply advancing the cause of the taliban, destroying human rights.
Somehow we're to believe you are not aware of this. That your "good intentions" (who incidentally make you feel better about yourself at zero cost, and zero risk*) make up for any ill effects.
So all your feel-good complaining : 1) make the situation worse for everyone, and parrots what everyone says 2) makes you feel better about yourself
Are we to think this is a mere coincidence ?
* while obviously complaining about the taliban, or "muslim students" in English, will quickly evolve into a question about "that" religion, and that's not without risk, or at least not without consequences (you know the "RACIST !" says the 3 year-old who can't win the argument).
What nonsense, what is the UNHRC except exactly "the monolith" you claim doesn't exist ?
And most of the UNHRC rights are "you must" rights, often with the "you" part ill-defined, mostly understood to be states, or, you know, whoever is convenient.
This, of course, stops neither claims that something is a human right when it's not (such as "the right" of human shileds to not get shot when providing cover for attacking soldiers*) and denying human rights (such as, oh, free speech in Turkey, or religious freedom anywhere in the muslim world).
* the Geneva convention is quite clear : if a terrorist is firing from within a crowd, anyone who declared war on the terrorists (ie. notified them) is perfectly within his/her rights to blast the entire crowd to hell
I wonder how he deals with the obvious truth that there are hundreds of governments that 1) violate human rights 2) do not hide this fact
China, India, Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, Egypt, Chad, (the entirety of North Africa), Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey,... the list goes on and on and on...
Most governments that really violate human rights do not claim they don't. They just claim human rights are unjust (all muslim nations), or that they know better what human rights are because they're... (insert Chinese, North Korean, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Taiwan,...)
The population of these countries easily exceeds 3 billion human beings.
How exactly will documenting abuses help against this ?
And I wonder how human rights can even be applied at all worldwide.
Human rights match make some serious demands on a country's law : -> right to private property *psssst* no communist human rights, and at what point does socialism begin to violate human rights ? -> right to roof *psst* no human rights in (very) capitalist countries -> right to not be discriminated by religion
a) this includes the right to marry : neither muslims nor hindus can respect human rights *and* their religion, even if they live in a country that does (and I think this goes for most religions)
b) this does not include the right to marry : islam and human rights do not mix (since sharia demands separate rights per religion)
c) this includes the right not to be criticized/insulted (as the UN seems to want) : let's go convict Christopher Hitchens (and all these pesky atheists) for crimes against humanity ! -> right to not be discriminated by sex : again obviously islam violates this, so does sikhism and the Japanese "religion" -> right to representation in government : no communist human rights, no dictatorial human rights, or in a (real) kingdom,...
And that's ignoring the tangled mess that is human rights in warzones, and how ridiculously difficult they are to respect (and ignoring that only the US even tries to respect them, most US adverseries just routinely violate human rights even in peacetime)
And apparently violating human rights, even in big ways, does not justify ANY reaction by anyone. Example : Iran gets to execute minor girls (12yo) for the crime of being raped as a matter of policy, and this does not justify an incursion (but there are easily thousands of cases like this)
Slashdot Mirror
Given that tumors are basically cell growths that aren't coordinated, you best hope against hope that the response is coordinated if you disable this gene.
And since this gene has been in our dna for a long time, the information coordinating the response is going to be outdated, or simply randomized/erased (genes that are deactivated -for any reason- are randomized by evolution). It seems unlikely in the extreme that the response will be coordinated.
Well disabling anti-cancer genes. Let's have the marketing department "fix" the issue :
"regenerate long lost limbs ! act now and you get 3 kg for free*"
(small print)
(* 3kg free may be either tumor growth or a bowl of sweat collected from our medical department, depending)
--
People who need govt to protect them from religion cannot have much faith in the logic of atheism. And given that government is much more about restricting religion than it ever was about enforcing it, this says a lot more about atheists than it says about anyone else.
Not if there's any truth the idea that google is the new microsoft.
You get massively oversubscribed bandwidth (100:1 or more). This they sell to you specifying that at no point they guarantee that you even have any bandwidth at all. Certainly that must be clear language, no ?
Given such terms in the contract, are you really in any doubt as to what "they promise" ?
Without oversubscription your price would go, say times 30.
And you can order, with just about all isps, non-oversubscribed bandwidth. Just order an SDSL per 2 mbit you want to use. Or a T1. Costs between $500 and $1000 per month. The isp will guarantee that you can use that bandwidth at all times.
It's really that simple. Note that $500 per month would be close to the cost to the ISP of providing this.
Actually the people gave these massive advantages to the telcos because otherwise they'd only connect customers that would be profitable (what a concept). Since that was "unacceptable", these huge entities were created and given these massive advantages, destroying anything remotely resembling a free market.
And now, like anyone with the power to violate contracts, they want to change the terms. They imagine that all this will get delivered for free, but they know full well that it'll simply be paid by tax increases.
But there's the "free stuff now" argument. And that's what net neutrality appears to be : free stuff now.
In reality of course, it's an impossible and unworkable constraint on network architecture that'd make delivering adsl lines more expensive than going to the moon if seriously implemented. It would literally require dropping all advantages packet-based networks have. And since congress, despite what half of slashdot seems to think, does not have the power to vote facts out of reality, net neutrality will not happen in practice.
That's what the paper claims. Sabotage everything on a provider's network, so that it's "fair".
People here don't even know that all of the major network equipment manufacturers ONLY produce equipment that violates net neutrality. You see, they give absolute priority to "network critical" messages (you see things like synchronization, route distribution in various protocols, tunnel setup and teardown, session establishment ...). After network critical, there are (on cisco) 7 other prioritized levels for traffic. All get preferred before any actually useful traffic gets sent. Inside that useful traffic, the provider's own services that require it (such as voice and business traffic, and any kind of reserved traffic) get preferred, then the network capacity that is still unused, that's what gets used for the $IwantGigabitsForLessDollars customers. Every provider that tried to sell better network for a little more money has failed. People do not want this, or at least they don't want to pay even a few dollars to get it.
Besides, the idiots leave open a loophole that AT&T easily fits through. You have to give equal resources on a network. Here's a prediction : every large ISP will henceforth build 2 networks. One, an ubercheap crappy network to provide "internet" to whining downloaders. Second a quality network for people who actually pay, you know, something actually exceeding the cost of the bandwidth they use, that doesn't connect to the outside at all, and therefore doesn't discriminate. It's easy, especially given the fact they already do this. Split these networks up financially (already done in quite a few providers) and voila : "net neutrality" with the exact same network config they already have, the one you're complaining about.
Best way to fix it ? How about you pay for the bandwidth you want to use ? Get a 10M symmetrical internet line and pay the $500 per month they ask.
Heh, fat chance.
What does that have to do with this situation ? These are operational reports from the US military. There are separate (and less dangerous) accounts of who is incarcerated, and why, available to the Afghan government (who may then choose to publish it or not - and at least a few are indeed published)
And quite frankly, given the choice between incarceration by the US, or by the "muslim students", who would you choose ?
Thought so.
There are many people who find a bit of attention and the illusion of personal power more important than whether (other) people get killed or not.
But we both knew that already. Let's not pretend this is anything other, because it isn't.
If you don't feel revealing your secrets is dangerous ... may I ask you a simple question :
What's the way to log in to your bank account ? Mail account ? Social security number ? Surely revealing secrets can't hurt you, right ?
This just to establish the obvious - that some secrets are secret for a reason. And obviously, interactions with informants on an enemy that kills without regard to human rights, or even basic decency, are secret. You'd have to be fucking desperate to see the "muslim students" (translation into a language nobody here understands : "taliban") as victims. At the very best these people are a maffia shooting from behind children. At worst, they're genocidal maniaks that need to be eradicated before they start again (murdered half Kabul when they left it, in addition to several religious genocides, and that's just in the last 10 years).
Well you got me. Obviously the earth satisfies this definition.
A system that is in equilibrium experiences no changes when it is isolated from its surroundings.
Obviously if we were to take away the sun, and space itself and put the earth somewhere apart in empty space, the influence doing this on the life on earth, and earth itself would be ?!? nothing ?!?
Oh wait ... you're wrong (and not just for this reason).
And this is not a "tiny detail" earth fails every single one of the requirements for being in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Unless of course, you count the surface, athmosphere, life, all the fields surrounding earth and all the energy changing the surface as superfluous details (which is probably what you're doing). But in that case, you've obviously excluded the climate itself, and using such an assertion to prove anything about the climate seems a bit ... less than accurate. Don't you think ?
Note how you try to mislead people. The statement that you claim "proves" earth is in equilibrium :
"earth wants to stay in thermal equilibrium"
Note what it doesn't state. Think about it. It does not in fact, state that earth is currently in thermal equilibrium, just that it "wants to" (meaning it's evolving towards a state of equilibrium over time).
Obviously this is correct, if somewhat unfortunately phrased (especially the word "stay"). It is simply a way to state the second law of thermodynamics : that entropy is ever-increasing and eventually the earth will be a cold, hard, dead empty rock without any athmosphere and without any discernable properties, a perfect, dead, sphere, perfectly uniform in the distribution of just about every variable imaginable. Eventually, earth will be in thermodynamic equilibrium. Everything is evolving towards a state of equilibrium.
Fortunately, we're not there yet.
Ah finally we get to this argument. The flaw in your line of thinking is the implicit assumption that the earth is in thermodynamic equilibrium.
If this assumption is not made, your claim that energy rise => temperature increase is not valid. To take a stupid example : even massive energy increases would not lead to temperature rise in a superconductor.
But why not try this at home ? Take a glass of purified water (home distilled water will do fine). Insert a small piece of white paper, which will obviously quickly assume the same temperature as the water. Make sure nothing moves inside the microwave (ie. not the glass either), and that the device is on a very stable surface. Heat the glass for 5 minutes at 1000W.
Now you'd think "surely the water has evaporated by then ?", but you will see that almost none of the water is evaporated. If you check with an infrared thermometer you will find the paper having a temperature of 40 degrees (at best), maybe even less. Moreover, the paper will quickly assume the environmental temperature (as will, of course, the water).
Yet a massive amount of energy went inside the water. Clearly it did not lead to a temperature increase, it was stored in the magnetic field of the polar liquid that is water. In water it is possible to change the division of energy between temperature and the magnetic field without significant energy input.
Just a warning, DO NOT touch the glass except with a -long- stick, unless you like visiting the hospital.
In general : if you take a "black body" : a ball with a perfectly uniform temperature and no features *at all*, you'd be right : any change in energy balance changes the temperatures inside the ball, including it's surface temperatures.
Needless to say this is an idealized situation one never encounters in reality. Nevertheless there are objects that are "more or less" black bodies (such as a metal wire). The earth as a whole, however, is not a black body by a long shot.
In a system not in thermodynamic equilibrium the climate is not so much the total amount of energy in the system, but the internal division of that energy (and the temperature in moving gasses is a whole lot more complex than that, as what you're actually calling temperature is the average unsynchronized movement of gas molecules. The synchronized movement, the equivalent of winds, eats from the same energy. But so do a million other physical processes, even complex things. On earth, for example, erosion is a process that removes energy from the athmosphere).
So, for example, dropping the temperature over the poles 10 degrees and increasing wind speeds over the rest of the planet would be a perfectly possible change in the climate that would not require any change in energy balance, even if it *would* change average surface temperatures (quite a bit).
To illustrate just how very wrong this way of thinking is : if you look at the earth as a black body, and determine what the temperature should be on the surface of the earth you'd come to the conclusion that earth surface temperature is 6400 degrees kelvin.
So -in short- no, changing the climate would *not* require a massive amount of energy (which is one of the main points of the theory of AGW in the first place : the total amount of energy released by humans is totally insignificant as compared to the increase in temperature that was observed to follow it. Hell, even net solar input is barely significant, and is a dozen powers of 10 more. The whole point is that human interference amplified the effect of certain -perfectly natural- effects, specifically the "greenhouse effect" of the athmosphere, and in the current theory, a dozen more effects are involved too)
Note that life is not possible on -or in- anything that is near thermodynamic equilibrium.
That math doesn't apply to politics is a well-known fact.
But you would do well to remember that politics don't change the laws of nature.
And the whole problem of a chaotic system is that :
1) you can create an infinite amount of models that will match the past, to any desired amount of accuracy
2) there is *NO* valid way that can tell you which of the models is the correct one (no occam's razor, or rather the more well-defined variants of it can't either). Therefore any change can occur at any time, and cannot be foreseen *at all*.
Therefore attempting to change variables in order to achieve a desired effect is madness. Why ? Something like this will happen
0.00001% increase in co2 production will increase global temperatures by 12 degrees ...
0.000001% increase in co2 production will drop global temp 6 degrees
0.0000001% increase in co2 production will raise global temperatures 22 degrees
0.00000001%
And so on. There is no way to predict the effect of any change in the variables, so policies will have random effects.
Extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.
Too bad that what you're saying is theoretically impossible.
Models have zero predictive power on chaotic systems, despite the fact that they can explain just about everything that has happened before.
So it's easy to build confidence in such a model of a chaotic system. However, it will never predict the future with any amount of accuracy.
The only thing you can say about any chaotic system is that "probably" it will not change at all. Attempting to predict any changes is madness.
From your math book :
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic in the short term and not chaotic in the long term.
-and-
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic in the long term and not chaotic in the short term (so despite the apparent stability in our solar system, sudden, unforeseen, radical changes *will* occur)
-more general-
It is *NOT* possible for something to be chaotic on any timescale, but not on another timescale.
And even those gotchas only apply if you assume it's even possible to predict the climate.
The sad thing is, about the past, the IPCC is right : the climate *did* warm (mostly) because of co2 increases. Heh, guess I don't even disagree that "global warming is undeniable". But the IPCC is also absurdly wrong, relying instead on a known wrong intuition : this does not mean that a further rise in athmospheric co2 will increase warming. In fact any change could have any effect, so every policy, from let's pollute because we can to killing of the entire human species has exactly the same chances of influencing the climate. Quite frankly, anyone who's had a theoretical mathematics class at any university should know this, but of course ... there's politics. Blacks and whites have to be the same, even when we're talking about melanine levels, all religions and ethnicities have to be the same, even when talking about page count of important documents, science can answer *any* question 100% correctly to infinite levels of accuracy and anyone who believes otherwise is a racist. (get that ? you're a racist if you point out that the bible, as compared to other religions, is a very long book indeed. Or the fact that more people die from medical mistakes than that have their lives saved by medical intervention. What you are when you point out obvious flaws in the foundation of "climate theory" is simpler : unemployed and unemployable. And God forbid any publication on the "deniers" list should publish a quote from you that could, twisted appropriately, indicate you do not agree to doctrine)
So just putting it here, getting it off my chest : why is predictability an assumption ? Because, mathematically, some things are what is called "chaotic". Which means 2 things :
1) it is perfectly possible to predict the past, and to explain it. Down to the last tinyest little detail you can explain every variation in the graphs
2) said fabulous, genius, nobel-prize-winning theories (or other theories), will fail 5 minutes into the future. Whoops.
Climate is ... chaotic. Meaning it has the two properties above.
And despite seemingly credible sources claiming the opposite (hello "newscientist", "nature" ?), chaotic systems persistently refuse to bow to statistics (if they didn't that would be a contradiction of chaos). There are weaker forms of "chaotic behavior" that can be predicted by statistics. However, they've been tested and ... well the weather and climate are really fully chaotic.
Seemingly absurdly simple questions turn out to be chaotic (the coast of Britain to name a famous paper). How long is the coast of Britain ? Depends on your measurement device. Measure with a ruler 1000 km long and it will be seriously shorter than the English claim. Measure with a ruler of 1 cm and it will be seriously longer than the English claim. By varying the ruler's length you can make the coast of Britain any length, but it is impossible to predict what difference a change in ruler length will do to the length of the coast. The motion of the planets (the famous "three body problem"), another chaotic problem.
The consequences of this chaos conept are vehemently dismissed as total crap, even when it's pretty old and well known mathematical theory. The moon could fly away from the earth tomorrow (and while it probably won't happen tomorrow, the chances that it will eventually happen are very good indeed). That's a trivial consequence of the three body problem. Worse : we can't predict when this event will happen (just like we can't predict the motions of comets and meteorites accurate enough to decide if they'll hit earth until they're right on top of us). At best we can hope for a few days' warning. Despite the seeming absurdity one day the papers will announce "the moon left us, tidal currents slowing to a halt", and this will just happen some day, nobody seeing it coming (or at least nobody correctly predicting when it'll happen).
Where do you get, in that verse (or at least that chapter), the self-defence part ? That just came out of nowhere, and curiously you didn't mention it earlier when talking about kafirs ... Could you be a little more consistent ? (or truthful ...)
Otherwise, you've answered your own question, along with a dozen excuses :
So you agree your religion commands you to kill.
*excuses* yes *excuses*
For comparison, the bible commands *NOT* to kill, not even defensively. It just states that there are situations where lives are lost no matter what you can do, and then (and only then), you are allowed to make the decision to end a life. But even in the situation where you attacked, to prevent a worse situation, killing is a sin, and must be atoned for. So for example, if you could travel back in time, as a good Christian, it would perhaps be "allowed" to kill Hitler (but it would certainly never be "good"), and you would still need forgiveness for this act. Killing to save your own life (ie. self-defense as you call it) is definitely a grave sin. Simply put, a good Christian will only ever take the decision to try to end a life in order to protect the lives of others, and will never end a life to protect his own.
Frankly, it's easy to see that your excuses are desperately grasping at straws indeed. Btw you forgot the excuses for the slavery, genocides, raping of slaves, racism (the part about the "function" of black people in the quran (ie. slaves), paedophilia (having sex with minor children without their permission is called paedophilia). You believe your prophet is a paedophile because allah ordered him to do it ... let's see some excuses for this too. And, of course, the fact that all these acts are not just theoretical in your little booklet, but have been consistent, including today, in muslim societies ("little booklet" : barely 60 pages, in large print (and even a lot less in kufic arameic, the original), compared to close to 500 for the torah, and close to 1500 for the bible, and that's not in large print. Most historians even believe that the quran is just 23 random mistranslated excerpts from the bible, and frankly, have you ever read the later chapters of the quran and compared with the new testament ? They're right)
But the main question is how exactly you twist these words to a defensive meaning ? Because that's some serious twisting indeed :
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then ...
All these verbs, slay, besiege, take, lie in ambush ... they're all active verbs (also in the original syrian, ok granted, I know maybe 50 words ancient syrian, but they have a rather extensive and meaningful grammar that's surprisingly clear), if they denoted a defensive act they would have used the passive form, for ... well that's simply how you say that, even in today's arabic. These are clear, short, direct sentences that mean to attack, independent of any action of the people you attack. In other words, the act they denote is halfway between military attack and terrorism.
Unless, of course, you claim allah cannot be comprehended. Of course, that would mean allah is not capable of clearly expressing his will, and is generally an idiot. That'd mean anyone attempting to be a muslim is just as much kuffar as any saudi street hooker.
As long as you refuse to even define what we're talking about, how could you possibly be right ? At best you're stating nonsense. Literally non-sense. You're not even wrong, in fact you talk such non-sense that it isn't even possible to evaluate whether it's true. It's non-sense in the most literal definition of the word : it means *nothing*. Zero. Zilch. Your argument is merely a sequence of letters, no more meaningful than a totally random one.
So let's first define what we're actually talking about. Clearly.
And stop hogging my human rights ! (ie. your car). After all, don't we both agree that human rights must not be violated ?
So you agree your religion commands you to kill. You're just nitpicking about who exactly it orders you to kill. And if I protest this it's because I'm racist ? Oh, please.
Would you object to other religions killing ? Heh. Would you protest Jews comitting genocide on palestinians ? Why ? You're no better, you're just an incapable lazy buffoon.
So you're saying muslims are only obliged to kill people who :
Most of the people reading this can not be a kaffir. The munarfiq (hypocrite) is the worst person, and Islam has real problems with these, the lowest part of hell being reserved for them. How do we judge them. In the words of the Prophet "The characteristics of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he gives his word, he breaks it; and when he is given a trust, he is unfaithful." Someone who was born a muslim can be a hypocrite, making him the worst person of all. Add to this that in Islamic theology your final assertive act will decide how your life will be judged. I don't know how my end will be (if I will even be a Muslim at the end of my life). I don't know how your end will be, so how can I judge you.
Can you say "making excuses" ? And quite pathetic ones at that, don't you think ?
How do you square yourself with this "literal order from allah" ? (if you don't believe the quran is the literal orders from allah, please don't claim you're a muslim)
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then ...
Regardless, even, of whom exactly you should kill and ambush and generally attack in every dishonorable way imaginable, it's an order to kill.
So, to put it extremely frankly : choose. Do you (a) refuse allah's orders, and are therefore not a muslim (b) you're a murderer.
Which is it ?
Slashdot "norms" are mostly about what gives "me" the most free stuff.
So negative rights (your "right" not to give me free stuff) are not all that popular at all.
It's sad, but it's how it is.
So you're talking about "human rights" as a fairy-tale concept, meaning exactly (and only) what you want it to mean, and nothing else.
Why are you denying my human right to your car ? You're a war criminal !
(this in hopes of showing you how idiotic your point is)
You know you can twist your ass around all you want but the end result is simple :
US (and any government that tries) : 99% compliant with human rights (and trying, but failing to make that 100%)
Enemies of the US : 10% (at best) compliant with human rights (and trying to make that less). Taliban : 0%
Complaints about the behavior of the US : this thread is full of them
Complaints about the taliban's behavior : "not needed"
So the EFFECT of what you're doing is simply advancing the cause of the taliban, destroying human rights.
Somehow we're to believe you are not aware of this. That your "good intentions" (who incidentally make you feel better about yourself at zero cost, and zero risk*) make up for any ill effects.
So all your feel-good complaining :
1) make the situation worse for everyone, and parrots what everyone says
2) makes you feel better about yourself
Are we to think this is a mere coincidence ?
* while obviously complaining about the taliban, or "muslim students" in English, will quickly evolve into a question about "that" religion, and that's not without risk, or at least not without consequences (you know the "RACIST !" says the 3 year-old who can't win the argument).
What nonsense, what is the UNHRC except exactly "the monolith" you claim doesn't exist ?
And most of the UNHRC rights are "you must" rights, often with the "you" part ill-defined, mostly understood to be states, or, you know, whoever is convenient.
This, of course, stops neither claims that something is a human right when it's not (such as "the right" of human shileds to not get shot when providing cover for attacking soldiers*) and denying human rights (such as, oh, free speech in Turkey, or religious freedom anywhere in the muslim world).
* the Geneva convention is quite clear : if a terrorist is firing from within a crowd, anyone who declared war on the terrorists (ie. notified them) is perfectly within his/her rights to blast the entire crowd to hell
I wonder how he deals with the obvious truth that there are hundreds of governments that
1) violate human rights
2) do not hide this fact
China, India, Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, Egypt, Chad, (the entirety of North Africa), Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, ... the list goes on and on and on ...
Most governments that really violate human rights do not claim they don't. They just claim human rights are unjust (all muslim nations), or that they know better what human rights are because they're ... (insert Chinese, North Korean, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Taiwan, ...)
The population of these countries easily exceeds 3 billion human beings.
How exactly will documenting abuses help against this ?
And I wonder how human rights can even be applied at all worldwide.
Human rights match make some serious demands on a country's law : ...
-> right to private property *psssst* no communist human rights, and at what point does socialism begin to violate human rights ?
-> right to roof *psst* no human rights in (very) capitalist countries
-> right to not be discriminated by religion
a) this includes the right to marry : neither muslims nor hindus can respect human rights *and* their religion, even if they live in a country that does (and I think this goes for most religions)
b) this does not include the right to marry : islam and human rights do not mix (since sharia demands separate rights per religion)
c) this includes the right not to be criticized/insulted (as the UN seems to want) : let's go convict Christopher Hitchens (and all these pesky atheists) for crimes against humanity !
-> right to not be discriminated by sex : again obviously islam violates this, so does sikhism and the Japanese "religion"
-> right to representation in government : no communist human rights, no dictatorial human rights, or in a (real) kingdom,
And that's ignoring the tangled mess that is human rights in warzones, and how ridiculously difficult they are to respect (and ignoring that only the US even tries to respect them, most US adverseries just routinely violate human rights even in peacetime)
And apparently violating human rights, even in big ways, does not justify ANY reaction by anyone. Example : Iran gets to execute minor girls (12yo) for the crime of being raped as a matter of policy, and this does not justify an incursion (but there are easily thousands of cases like this)