We have nothing to discuss because you can't even understand the articles to which you have linked. Nowhere did the reported studies mention socialism.
No, they just call acknowledging the obvious economic truths about free markets a mental illness.
Which, I suppose, is technically something else. Heh.
one political science study that you disagree with
Am I to understand you agree with it ? Because if you do... we've really got nothing to discuss. If you believe the only reason someone could fail to believe in socialism is being dumb... then you're just looking to justify leftist bias in universities, that would mean you do not see it as a problem.
The mere fact that studies like that get published is an indication btw, of not just leftist bias, but 1) a large leftist majority 2) who feels no qualms about ridiculing and attacking anyone of different bent.
Or do you disagree with this assesment ? Do you think it's "just" a normal study. Something that is "evidently true".
There's also a link. Talk about proof of very far going leftist bias in universities. The link tells of "actual research", you see. Well you'd know that if you'd actually read it.
You just repeat what you've said before. Let me ask this : do you seriously believe universities have a pro free-market bias ? It seems to me baffling anyone seriously believes that actually.
Allow me to point to this idiotic racist outrage to prove just how far leftist bias in universities go :
et me get this straight. You think that socialists, PETA and the Sierra Club have managed to buy out virtually all the climate scientists of the world? Where did they get the money for that?
Like all good socialists, they don't have money. Instead they used any and all influence they have anywhere, from government to university boards to physical attack in some cases, to attack anyone not on their side.
There are NO scientists funding their own research anymore (used to be a basic requirement of being called "objective"). It just doesn't exist. Corporate research departments, like IBM's or Philips' have are the closest thing to impartial organisations we have in this day and age. Or perhaps, one should say, they're not objective either, but they're the only scientists not 95% dependant upon the government. So they're the only ones who might come up with a viewpoint independantly of the government.
And what evidence do you have for this?
You know, much more proof than is available than just walking into just about any university's "human sciences" (in case you don't know "climate" is not an exact science at all) department and talking to just about anyone is not really needed.
Or just ask a student you how they think of unemployment. Or just look up a few articles on the split of political parties in any university. You'll notice, that the percentages are entirely different than those in the general population, nearly exclusively democrat (and not "sensibly" democrat, loony democrat).
Unless of course, you think that somehow there are barely any republicans that have any measure of intelligence at all. That would, of course, make you a racist.
For such a massive conspiracy, there would have to be a large paper trail. There would be evidence of these organisations funding research groups
As previously stated, very nearly all university research is sponsored by the quintessential political organisation : the government. Despite this, there is no shortage of socialist (and communist) organisations funding research in large universities. The paper trail is ineed lengthy and obvious for all to see if you just take a look.
Of course, you believe money only corrupts if it's from the other side. I understand the dilemma of someone who's genuinly pro-agw... just about all the research money comes from pro-agw groups or parties, or from anti-agw groups or parties, and there are hardly any scientists at all that receive no funding (so the only real option you have is to take some numbers and see if you can correlate them yourself. And as anyone who's tried to correlate co2 concentration and temperature over 2000 years of history knows : they don't correlate. They "seem" somewhat related on the graph but the best correlation number I can get (by time shifting either forward or backward in time) is about 0.2, which is not enough by far)
It's also an absurd misconception that oil giants are against global warming legislation. Well, this may be true for the truly idiotically evil amongst them (*cough* aramco *cough*), but you should sit back for 2 seconds and think about such giants as BP, Esso, and Shell. The ones that get blamed, because greens are not interested in anyone, no matter how evil, that isn't in their backyard. That they can't nail and shame publically. And so aramco gets a free pass, as does venezuela.
BP, Esso, and Shell, despite what people seem to think, do not make their money from mining oil (not the biggest part anyway). They make their money from reprocessing oil. Biofuels, for example, are mostly, if not all, processed by these guys (esp. in Europe). Since their oil sources are in serious decline (mostly due to political factors : the world-wide nationalization of oil fields. It doesn't just happen in Venezuela). Furthermore their margins on selling actually mined oil are growing thinner by the month, due to price pressures from both sides (supp
So what you're saying is that on the tiny chance that it might someday affect you I should have risked a life ?
You're truly far along the road to convincing me of my terrible misdeeds, sir.
What exactly motivates you to take a stand like that ? Are you simply so egoistic to demand that only your intrests can be taken into account in anyone's decision ? Are you truly so idiotically confident in government policy perhaps (Ironically here in belgium the national health insurance was modified 3 months ago because a politician's child got sick, after all hundreds of dead don't matter, but the child of a politician... owww can't risk that. Normally policies take 3 years to modify, this one got through in less than a week) ? Perhaps you find that medicinal help should be restricted to the "better bred" people like yourself ? Are you a "gaia is good for us" nutter, when obviously gaia includes such blessings as the aids virus ? Exactly what argument are you making here ?
In reality given the obvious fact that evolution allows bacteria to adapt to any tactic you might decide to use, any (effective) tactic will (eventually) fail. The "lower" the life form you're fighting (ie. less complex) the faster evolution can make it resistent.
Hell even vaccines will only work until diseases find a way around it. Several have. You can be as immune to aids as you want, it won't protect you from infection, nor from the disease itself. And aids is not alone in that. You have bof, which is another one that comes to mind.
So the key is to keep fighting and keep inventing new medicines every few years. I'll leave it as a test of basic intelligence why isolating populations does not work (think columbus). Either we fight, or we go back 50 years and a simple case of the cold becomes for 5 to 30% of people a death sentence, every ten or twenty years. With population reductions of 90% every hundred years or so. The only thing we would have to hope for is that in a few thousand years our immune system improves. I assume this is what you're advocating ? (because using medicine when the amount of individuals of an infectious agent is hundreds of times more than average is about as sure-fire a way to induce resistance as you can get, so you "shouldn't" use medicine in an epidemic)
And even if our immune system were to improve, that would make a few races biological weapons against all other humans.
So as long as we still have working medicine, as long as medical innovation does not stutter, we've got nothing to worry about, and it is a good thing to use it. It helps people, it helps the researchers (they get paid), it helps the freaking economy.
If it were to fail, nothing is going to protect you.
So I completely fail to see your point. And frankly, I need no justification to do what I think is right, at least not from you.
And obviously lots of medicine has very direct effects minutes after intake. Why, just take a headache pill, or aspirin, who work within a few minutes. Penicillin starts working in mere minutes too.
Do you really think any doctor seriously believes that someone who's running a fever of 39 degrees has nothing ?
This is not a misdiagnosis. The doctor knew very well what was happening, he's not stupid. He just misled his patient, putting govt policy above the intrests of his patient.
Yeah, let's pretend the abortion debate is restricted to babies with extremely severe birth defects. Then we can approve what would otherwise clearly be murder without feeling bad.
In holland, a full 1/3 of pregnancies is aborted under their legislation (that's not counting early-term abortions and "abortion pill" abortions, that would make it more than 2/3 of all babies). Are you seriously suggesting all these babies have birth defects ? Even when medical care was basically nonexistent in America there were only between 12 and 15% babies with defects (and that's including diseases, not just birth defects). I doubt the Dutch have worse genes than we do.
If you truly believe people are better off dead than severely ill, then why limit it to babies ? Let's just kill anyone with a disease serious enough to warrant 10.000$ in treatment costs, no ? Just kill anyone diagnosed with that Tay-Sachs disease. It'd fix our medical cost problem overnight.
Let's also kill all the long term unemployed, oh and anyone over 60.
Oh right you should only kill people whose complaints are not heard. Sorry I forgot the basic policy. That's what you're actually arguing for... that one gets to kill (for comfort, or for any reason at all) anyone who can't make him/herself heard.
Lawyers is a great profession, at least from a mathematical perspective. Lawyers are lawyers, but what people mostly forget is that just about all lawmakers are (or have been) lawyers (at least the democrats). Judges are also ex-lawyers. And since the government's been starting all this "too big to fail" bailouts there's a very surprising increase in the number of lawyer ceo's in wall street and the car (ex-)industry.
So the fun thing about lawyers is : the more lawyers you have, the more extra lawyers you need. It's like a runaway nuclear reaction. It's tha bomb man.
Of course this only remains interesting until you ask the question as to who pays for it all...
I bet it also looks the same from a convict who gets executed in an American jail for brutally murdering 50 Americans by slowly torturing them to death... After all a death threat was made by congress, and then Americans acted on it, guns blazing. Surely that's equivalent to slitting the throat of journalists you don't like for something they wrote, right ?
Oh wait... no...
How can one call these 2 acts equivalent ? Yes they're both killing, however one is murder the other is justice (and before you say it, personally I find a death sentence (much) less cruel than life in prison without chance for release).
Whether abortions are murder is (imho) solely dependant on the status you afford living feutuses. Do you consider them living beings (they are defineately that imho), or not ? Do you consider their lives so worthless that the mere comfort of others is sufficient reason to brutally murdering them ?(slowly cutting them into pieces is the english translation of "curating" in case anyone doesn't know)
How anyone can claim that a being that is intelligent enough to steer it's muscles and bone to try and stop the instruments that are killing it is "not conscious" or "feels no pain" is beyond me. If it is not conscious, why do it's actions have a clear purpose ? If it feels no pain, then why would it try to stop it at all ? Just look at it. Do you seriously consider that to be a better fate than an orphanage ?
Personally I find in myself sympathy, if not total agreement, for the argument that the murderers of 9/11 are more honorable than abortion doctors. At least they murdered Americans for something they thought honorable. Abortion doctors cannot seriously harbor any illusion that what they're doing is anything other than killing human beings for the comfort of other human beings. It's the same as these bastard muslims do in their own countries.
Does this opinion make me an extremist ? I have not killed or damaged anyone for this opinion. But if I know anyone to have had an abortion, I no longer talk or have any kind of dealings with them.
Most people who say this simply do not know that there are better options, as most doctor's will follow government policy, and won't inform patients that they're doing so. Of course to get all the options is exactly why you have doctors in the first place, of course, who are supposed to advise YOU on what's best for YOU. What's best for the patient.
I just had another incident. My baby was ill, running a fever of 39.2 degrees, rapidly climbing. We went to the doctor and he refused to prescribe antibiotics because "it might be a virus and it's good to wait".
Needless to say, I refused to pay a dime to the guy, told him that if he didn't step out of the way he'd be lucky to walk away with a broken arm and a black eye. We went to another doctor who did prescribe antibiotics, after some pressure, and lo and behold, the fever went down a mere 15 minutes after administration.
Doctors in Belgium take risks with the lives of their patients. Why do they do this ? It's government policy : they're penalized for "overprescribing" (but not penalized for patients dying, or patients in worse condition than they would have been with actual help).
The sad thing is, most people do not know what the implications are of their doctor's advice. They would have waited, and since there obviously was a bacterium inside my baby, she would have worsened as if there was no medical care. It might even have killed her.
But I'd be "blisfully" unaware. I'd also have a very ill baby or, worse, a dead one.
For the record : I fully agree that for the "collective", the doctor's decision was correct : avoid the use of antibiotics in all but the most extreme cases, and not at all on children, prolonging the period that the bacteria will need to become resistent. It was not, however, the best advice for the patient. This guy was also playing with the life of my child.
But of course, if I did not have medical practitioners in my family (who report the pressure they feel to avoid prescribing), I would have fallen hook, line and sinker for the doctor's WRONG advice. I might also have lost a child.
And for the record : I'm Belgian. And you're entirely right, most people here believe we have excellent medical care, despite that nearly all of them know of medical situations that have gotten completely out of hand due to stupid doctor's advice.
Since when is your life not yours, but the government's?
The medical aspect of your life is the property of whoever is paying for medicine. Since the government is paying for it, the government became the customer. The doctor's job is not to keep you happy, or even healthy, the doctor's job is to keep the government happy.
The worst of it is that, over time, this becomes a reason for prohibition-like policies.
There are 2 ways to do that : 1) avoid any and all risks, and if one screws up, deny everything. After all, if the patient sues, the government employs the defendant, the lawyer, and all possible witnesses (because only doctors get to testify) (and more-or-less the judge. Furthermore judges are more wary of convicting municipalities than convicting individuals, I don't claim this is because of payment, likely just that they're bigger with better lawyers). Only in the case of truly criminal behavior does a doctor run the risk of a conviction. Incompetence doesn't matter because... patients do not get the choice of doctor (that's more expensive you see), and doctors are very sure of their jobs indeed 2) avoid any and all costs (e.g. they try to get nurses to send someone with a broken leg home with a pain-relief cream first. Only after the patient comes back do they take an x-ray. The worst of it is they claim this "is better for the environment")
Or at least, that's how it's been for decades in Europe. I hope America will be different, but I doubt it. Every year more savings are necessary. Even in the best years of the past century, like 2000-2001, medicine still had to shrink down.
You should be able to take a risk on experimental treatment. You should be able to end your own life if it becomes too much.
Not to nitpick, but euthanasia is asking others to end your life. Everybody who knows a bit of basic medicine knows 10 different ways to end his or her life.
And since everyone can run this program and exploit the way it calculates things this will be about as realistic as the CBO estimates ! Oh wait, the government can write bug-free programs, right ? Of course it will provide for a few cushy python hacking jobs in wall street.
This would be great for wall street ! Imagine, relatively simple AI programs automatically searching for loopholes in the law. Nothing could go wrong, right ? After all, in a government program, there will be no loopholes, right ?
And all this in the name of letting stupid people invest "safely". How about allowing wall street to take money from stupid people ? This ensuring stupid people won't make many investments at all. This will result in only the smart investors investing (those with a proven track record of good investments, as illustrated by their bank account balance). Which is of course the reason capitalism works in the first place. Sucks if you're not capable of making investments significantly smarter than average, of course.
Then simply go back to the situation before the crisis started brewing and either outlaw investing loaned money directly (which America never did), or make it de-facto impossible (which America did do), which will prevent a crash like we saw last year (and which we will see again unless Obama radically changes course). Of course, this will mean that we return to the situation that any group judged "unreliable" (unreliable as in "will probably not be extremely stable for at least 30 years") will not be able to get much of a loan at all (and because some of these groups are human, that will result in racial differences, education differences, etc). But if making reasonable assumptions about people is supposedly racist and outlawed, how can anyone but the law (ie. all of us) be blamed for the crashes this causes ?
As far as atheism being "innocent", the atrocities committed by so-called atheist states were not carried out because atheist beliefs motivated or compelled the guilty. There was an entirely different agenda in place and the "atheist state" moniker was not at the core of it. Many of the citizens and soldiers of these states did not consider themselves atheists either, rather people of one faith or another who were not free to practice their actual beliefs.
Actually, in the case of the Soviets, some of the atrocities, like the Northern province of Afghanistan and several dozen genocides on eastern European monasteries were carried out with "enforcing atheism" as the purpose. Apparently the same is true for several Souther Asian communist atrocities. Of course, the perpetrators were still communists, so make of it what you want.
So "were there atheists who killed and claimed those killings for atheism ?" is a very simple question with a very simple answer : Yes. "Socialists" as they called themselves, "Communists" as we call them, did so.
You obviously believe what you say, but I don't believe that you don't know about or remember the details of the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch-trials, the Vatican's current scandals with systemic child-rape and subsequent cover-ups, sections of the old testament that encourage all manner of offenses against decency (slavery, mass-murder, et al), etc.
It is telling that you have to invoke acts that do not actually involve killing. I find child-rape an especially poor choice for attacking christians and defending muslims. You might know that child-rape is not punishable by law in most muslim states (fucking girls as young as 7 years (and younger) old against their wishes, often doing irreversible damage to the organs involved.
You may not know this, but most muslim nations, like Jordan and Iran have entire hospitals that are dedicated SOLELY to the care for these "damaged" girls. They claim that more victims of these atrocities simply die and never get to the hospital. Occupancy counts ? In Jordan about 500, and in Iran an astonishing 3000 girls, including one that was raped by ayatollah khomeini, the most important religious figure in shi'a islam. This is a fatwa (religious edict) from him "A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable.". Needless to say, he failed to uphold his own principles.
Total death toll of the crusades, inquisition, salem witch trials : certainly less than 1 million people, possibly not even 100.000 (the inquisition, for example, did not kill 10.000 people. Additionally, one has to take into account that each victim of the inquisition was accused, given a chance to defend himself in a court of law, and failed to do so satisfactorily, with the assistance of legal counsel. Contrary to popular opinion most executions (>85%) were for murder convictions. If one assumes that, say 60% of those convictions were accurate, would it truly be fair to call these people victims ?)
Total death toll of only ONE 20th century muslim massacre, the ottoman/turkish massacre of the armenians : 1.5 million people (high estimate), 600.000 (estimate of muslims themselves). Note that the massacres were ordered by sultan abdul hamid II, whose title was "caliph al islam" (the ruler of islam, a title from the quran that implies one speaks for allah). You can't get get more "muslim" than that.
There can be no question that the muslim genocides in India occured on a scale that just doesn't compare to the Armenian massacres, as do several northern-african muslim massacres.
Btw : estimated number of people killed in offensive campaigns, raids, enslavement missions, and "plain" genocides, by the founder of islam (according to muslims themselves) : at least 10.000. Yes the prophet himself ordered at least 7 genocides himself. Number of slaves taken : at least several t
Yeah, throw scientists to the wolves of the private sector. So instead of discovering that new particle or galaxy, they can make a new obesity pill* to keep the fast food giants in profit, or increase the screen size of your iphone so you can more effectively wank yourself off to Internet porn in the company toilets.
If you mean to throw them to the wolves so that they'd use science for things that the general population (ie : me) actually wants them to use science for, then...
We now face a decision: become rational really fast, or die.
How many times in history have we heard some variant of this prediction? We are still here.
Actually we've heard this many times. And we've died by the millions many times. The holocaust, the soviet genocides ("engineered famine" is the preferred term, although how exactly that covers shooting civilians is beyond me), the muslim massacre on armenians, the rwanda massacres, the (ongoing) muslim-on-sudanese genocide against blacks,...
And that's just the 20th century. Many idiots seem to think the 21st century will be different because they live in the by-far longest stable state (ie. the United states) where this hasn't happened for over 200 years. Hell, even Europeans, whose last genocide was little more than 10 years ago (but far away from Western Europe), the last Western European genocide was about 60 years ago, which is more than 1 generation ago. So everyone thinks these things "don't happen" and somehow believe that "diplomacy" (or worse : "international trade") will prevent another one. Or perhaps just the inherent human goodness will prevent it. Meanwhile that inherent human goodness doesn't seem to be stopping sudanese muslims from raiding, killing and enslaving like their religion demands... Also one is to ignore that the peak year for international trade in the 20th century was 1913 (that level, as percentage of global gdp, was only surpassed in 1996), and 1939 was arguably the year the most money was invested in diplomacy.
The key is evolution. Everyone does things differently. Some people don't defend themselves, some others beat the crap out of any attackers,... and some survive and some die. Evolution. Whichever tactic works will be the surviving one. Maybe comitting genocides is the key to survival, maybe not doing anything against these things is the correct tactic, maybe wars are the correct tactic.
The same goes for food production. Many people will try, some will have working strategies and live, some will have failing strategies and die. Of course this is "unfair" although what exactly is so very unfair about living in reality is beyond me.
Of course, this is how evolution works : 1) breed, making small mistakes in copying genes (and ideology) 2) die "en masse" 3) goto 1
Everyone seems to be skipping step 2, especially when professing to "believe" in evolution and what that supposedly means (you know the "evolution means jesus doesn't exist, but has nothing to do with children or death" crowd. Hell I've actually heard one person claim that genes were unfair and that "therefore" evolution cannot have anything to do with genes. Although I must agree with the part that genes are VERY unfair things indeed)
The problem, however with government-funded basic research is the lack of useful applications. A centrally-funded scientist has no reason -at all- to convert his discovery into an actual invention, so this will generally not happen.
Perhaps an example : in the 20th century cars were invented. The basic principle of the explosive engine, however, had long been demonstrated by "patronized" scientists (scientists working for royalty), and was generally well-known. Actual test explosion-based engines had rotated (a few times) 150 years before the invention of the car (granted, due to lack of useable fuel they weren't practical, but still. One such engine was built into some of the first machine guns).
So it seems to me the answer is somewhere in the middle, on the one hand provide generous subsidies, on the other hand forcing scientists to go into the private sector. Perhaps a time limit on employment at universities would provide the right incentives ? Make it generous, say 16 years. But after 16 years, every cent of subsidy stops, and they have to find a private investor.
The same problem poses itself in general problem solving. The time horizon that is a property of rational thought. What is rationally optimal for the next 3 seconds will generally be a very different beast from what is rationally optimal for the next 10 years. And, while perhaps only relevant for the catholic church and evolution, is radically different from rationally optimal stuff with a 500 year time horizon.
Let's take global warming and having children, and compare the optimal actions depending on time horizons : 3 seconds : optimal course is to ignore global warming, children are not even theoretically possible 10 years : optimal course is to ignore global warming (except that it might relieve social pressures, or gain one power, but you cannot scientifically defend it), children are not advisable 50 years : moderate actions to prevent global warming would seem to be rational. Children might be nice to have. 100 years : large costs to prevent global warming seem justified, although one should also take into account that oil will be gone long before this time passes. In this time period, obviously it is absolutely essential to have sufficient children to carry on after you're dead. The more, the better. 500 years : ignore global warming (after all, wel WILL run out of oil in less than 50 years, so what's the big hubhub all about ?). Instead, focus on lots of children, but keep in mind that the ideology must survive : so limit the amount of children high enough to expand, but low enough so that each can get a good education.
The problem with this is, of course, that per-customer dedicated bandwidth costs (at least) $20/mbit/month. So a supposedly "modest" 20 mbit connection would run you $400 per month, and have a setup fee over $1000. This is a very good price for that bandwith, if you attempted to buy this not being a large telco you'd easily pay double that.
Since customers refuse to pay this, other methods have to be found.
Dedicated bandwidth, with which you can do as you please without limits, are perfectly for sale. They're "Business" deals in most ISPs I know of. Now if all residential users agreed to pay that price and agreed not to go take the lower-monthly-rate-but-massively-oversold deal there is no problem.
Can you say "snowball's chance in hell" ?
The sad thing is, one regularly sees on online fora discussions about how this-or-that provider is 0.30$ cheaper per month. Equally inflammatory comments of course, equal accusations how the telco's (large and small) are sleeping with the devil.
Because the Soyuz redefines the word "inefficiency" when it comes to fuel use, beating even Al Gore's favorite gallons per centimeter figures.
Apparently it uses triple the fuel of the space shuttle for less than half of the useful weight (although there is disagreement whether the spacecraft itself counts as useful weight, but even without the spacecrafts included, the shuttle still comfortably beats the soyuz. Since the shuttle provides useful infrastructure in orbit, whereas the soyuz doesn't it might even be fair to).
So using the Soyuz would get Nasa broke in 5 years with Bush-era funds.
Well, it was reliable in that they hardly ever failed to have huge accidents. Nor did they ever fail to deny this with propaganda. It helps if your launch site does not have any reporter within a 1000 km radius if you want to coverup fuckups.
I know this is very anti-postmodern but just because you don't see or don't know about something, doesn't mean it's not real. You'd think the fact that rain makes you wet at night would stop this sort of nonsense, but these are academics we're talking about.
Besides you failed to answer my question. IPCC 2000 predictions were :
1) embarassingly wrong about temperature (on a year-to-year error they were as wrong as the 1990 predictions, gaining only a tiny bit of accuracy, despite higher error margins) 2) even though temperature did not rise, the sea level did rise more than the IPCC predicted, despite the supposed cause of sea level rise REVERSING.
Here is a summary graph of the IPCC predictions compared to real data :
As you can see, their predictions hold up for 1-2 years in the future, at best. And then they're revised according to additional data detected.
This means, to me, that their models are worthless. And I repeat again, this is EXACTLY what you'd expect to happen if climate was chaotic in nature. If climate wasn't chaotic in nature, you'd expect weather to bounce around a bit due to small variations, but larger trends would win out in the end.
Clearly, this doesn't happen, and the IPCC adjusts it's theories every few years. Instead, the newly published numbers have the same error margin as the old ones, just different baseline data. Their models are not, in fact, gaining in accuracy, they're merely forced to match new data.
The adjusting of the baseline every few years strikes me as a deeply dishonest way of doing science. Changing predictions you made in the past, as the IPCC did in 1995, 2001 and 2007, strikes me as little more than outright fraud. Of course I really enjoy the word "exact" (or positive) in my sciences.
How anyone can claim the "necessity" of basing policy on predictions like this is beyond me. Imagine a nuclear plant design that performed 10% outside of spec after 10 years. The scientists involved wouldn't just be fired, they'd be skinned alive in the public square.
"Please state which physical principle tells you that earth surface temperatures will rise as a result of increased incoming surface irradiation?"
Are you kidding me? You really don't know that atoms absorb photons of specific wavelengths and when they do so they move to a higher energy state and thus jiggle more vigourously? Surely you don't need to be told that temprature is simply a measure of how vigoursly atoms are jiggling, do you? Here is a simple experiment you can perform to convince yourself that the suns rays can warm the Earth's surface; walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky.
And you complain that I do not apply science ? Let's state it differently :
You have a large system with many temperatures. It has an average temperature.
Obviously it is a trivial matter to raise the average temperature : just raise 1 of the components. You can leave the others be, or you could even lower them. You could even put the increased entropy in other things than temperature, although that's mostly theoretical.
Now in case you don't know, the main heat repository of earth is the ocean. We don't even have a very good view of how much heat the ocean actually contains, and only limited data on how heat transfers into the ocean and out of it. Let's not consider the earth as a whole, but merely the oceans : take "the little ice" age : clearly, it is perfectly possible to have both poles grow to double their normal size without any change to average temperature. The reverse is also true.
As such, growing or shrinking polar ice caps may, or may not, have any temperature change causing them.
So there you have the problem with not having thermal equilibrium : if you don't have it, any change may have any result, it simply imposes a constraint on the global sum, yet doesn't impose any demands on any individual component. The earth, in reality, not in your fantasy, is not in thermal equilibrium, and will obviously refuse to behave like your "let's scratch all terms except the one that seems to prove my conclusion" theories state. The sun might double it's energy output, and it's an open question if it would have
any effect at all on any specific component of earth. Yes it would raise average temperature. The fact that the average earth temperature is about 6000 degrees celcius, and yet we're not all standing knee-deep in magma should tell you that heat is not distributed evenly on earth, so additional heat will NOT get distributed evenly either.
This is reality we're talking about, not your overly simplified "we must reach this conclusion" dribble.
If you truly think increased irradiation necessarily leads to higher temperatures, might I suggest spending a summer in Eastern Europe ? Even Moskou's weather would convince you in a most effective manner that this is not true at all. There is absolutely no shortage of irradiation there, but it gets fucking cold the second you step into the shadow, never mind what happens at night. Mind you, this is not Siberia I'm talking about.
And before you start giving the anecdote blabber, an anecdote is not sufficient to prove something to be true. It is, however, sufficient to prove a claim, like yours, false (being a mathematician, surely you know this, right ?).
You'd think an actual scientist would know that intuition can be ridiculously misleading, and especially a mathematician would have a very deep distrust of what statements like "walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky" supposedly prove.
Slashdot Mirror
We have nothing to discuss because you can't even understand the articles to which you have linked. Nowhere did the reported studies mention socialism.
No, they just call acknowledging the obvious economic truths about free markets a mental illness.
Which, I suppose, is technically something else. Heh.
one political science study that you disagree with
Am I to understand you agree with it ? Because if you do ... we've really got nothing to discuss. If you believe the only reason someone could fail to believe in socialism is being dumb ... then you're just looking to justify leftist bias in universities, that would mean you do not see it as a problem.
The mere fact that studies like that get published is an indication btw, of not just leftist bias, but
1) a large leftist majority
2) who feels no qualms about ridiculing and attacking anyone of different bent.
Or do you disagree with this assesment ? Do you think it's "just" a normal study. Something that is "evidently true".
There's also a link. Talk about proof of very far going leftist bias in universities. The link tells of "actual research", you see. Well you'd know that if you'd actually read it.
You just repeat what you've said before. Let me ask this : do you seriously believe universities have a pro free-market bias ? It seems to me baffling anyone seriously believes that actually.
Allow me to point to this idiotic racist outrage to prove just how far leftist bias in universities go :
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968042,00.html
et me get this straight. You think that socialists, PETA and the Sierra Club have managed to buy out virtually all the climate scientists of the world? Where did they get the money for that?
Like all good socialists, they don't have money. Instead they used any and all influence they have anywhere, from government to university boards to physical attack in some cases, to attack anyone not on their side.
There are NO scientists funding their own research anymore (used to be a basic requirement of being called "objective"). It just doesn't exist. Corporate research departments, like IBM's or Philips' have are the closest thing to impartial organisations we have in this day and age. Or perhaps, one should say, they're not objective either, but they're the only scientists not 95% dependant upon the government. So they're the only ones who might come up with a viewpoint independantly of the government.
And what evidence do you have for this?
You know, much more proof than is available than just walking into just about any university's "human sciences" (in case you don't know "climate" is not an exact science at all) department and talking to just about anyone is not really needed.
Or just ask a student you how they think of unemployment. Or just look up a few articles on the split of political parties in any university. You'll notice, that the percentages are entirely different than those in the general population, nearly exclusively democrat (and not "sensibly" democrat, loony democrat).
Unless of course, you think that somehow there are barely any republicans that have any measure of intelligence at all. That would, of course, make you a racist.
For such a massive conspiracy, there would have to be a large paper trail. There would be evidence of these organisations funding research groups
As previously stated, very nearly all university research is sponsored by the quintessential political organisation : the government. Despite this, there is no shortage of socialist (and communist) organisations funding research in large universities. The paper trail is ineed lengthy and obvious for all to see if you just take a look.
Of course, you believe money only corrupts if it's from the other side. I understand the dilemma of someone who's genuinly pro-agw ... just about all the research money comes from pro-agw groups or parties, or from anti-agw groups or parties, and there are hardly any scientists at all that receive no funding (so the only real option you have is to take some numbers and see if you can correlate them yourself. And as anyone who's tried to correlate co2 concentration and temperature over 2000 years of history knows : they don't correlate. They "seem" somewhat related on the graph but the best correlation number I can get (by time shifting either forward or backward in time) is about 0.2, which is not enough by far)
It's also an absurd misconception that oil giants are against global warming legislation. Well, this may be true for the truly idiotically evil amongst them (*cough* aramco *cough*), but you should sit back for 2 seconds and think about such giants as BP, Esso, and Shell. The ones that get blamed, because greens are not interested in anyone, no matter how evil, that isn't in their backyard. That they can't nail and shame publically. And so aramco gets a free pass, as does venezuela.
BP, Esso, and Shell, despite what people seem to think, do not make their money from mining oil (not the biggest part anyway). They make their money from reprocessing oil. Biofuels, for example, are mostly, if not all, processed by these guys (esp. in Europe). Since their oil sources are in serious decline (mostly due to political factors : the world-wide nationalization of oil fields. It doesn't just happen in Venezuela). Furthermore their margins on selling actually mined oil are growing thinner by the month, due to price pressures from both sides (supp
So what you're saying is that on the tiny chance that it might someday affect you I should have risked a life ?
You're truly far along the road to convincing me of my terrible misdeeds, sir.
What exactly motivates you to take a stand like that ? Are you simply so egoistic to demand that only your intrests can be taken into account in anyone's decision ? Are you truly so idiotically confident in government policy perhaps (Ironically here in belgium the national health insurance was modified 3 months ago because a politician's child got sick, after all hundreds of dead don't matter, but the child of a politician ... owww can't risk that. Normally policies take 3 years to modify, this one got through in less than a week) ? Perhaps you find that medicinal help should be restricted to the "better bred" people like yourself ? Are you a "gaia is good for us" nutter, when obviously gaia includes such blessings as the aids virus ? Exactly what argument are you making here ?
In reality given the obvious fact that evolution allows bacteria to adapt to any tactic you might decide to use, any (effective) tactic will (eventually) fail. The "lower" the life form you're fighting (ie. less complex) the faster evolution can make it resistent.
Hell even vaccines will only work until diseases find a way around it. Several have. You can be as immune to aids as you want, it won't protect you from infection, nor from the disease itself. And aids is not alone in that. You have bof, which is another one that comes to mind.
So the key is to keep fighting and keep inventing new medicines every few years. I'll leave it as a test of basic intelligence why isolating populations does not work (think columbus). Either we fight, or we go back 50 years and a simple case of the cold becomes for 5 to 30% of people a death sentence, every ten or twenty years. With population reductions of 90% every hundred years or so. The only thing we would have to hope for is that in a few thousand years our immune system improves. I assume this is what you're advocating ? (because using medicine when the amount of individuals of an infectious agent is hundreds of times more than average is about as sure-fire a way to induce resistance as you can get, so you "shouldn't" use medicine in an epidemic)
And even if our immune system were to improve, that would make a few races biological weapons against all other humans.
So as long as we still have working medicine, as long as medical innovation does not stutter, we've got nothing to worry about, and it is a good thing to use it. It helps people, it helps the researchers (they get paid), it helps the freaking economy.
If it were to fail, nothing is going to protect you.
So I completely fail to see your point. And frankly, I need no justification to do what I think is right, at least not from you.
And obviously lots of medicine has very direct effects minutes after intake. Why, just take a headache pill, or aspirin, who work within a few minutes. Penicillin starts working in mere minutes too.
Do you really think any doctor seriously believes that someone who's running a fever of 39 degrees has nothing ?
This is not a misdiagnosis. The doctor knew very well what was happening, he's not stupid. He just misled his patient, putting govt policy above the intrests of his patient.
Yeah, let's pretend the abortion debate is restricted to babies with extremely severe birth defects. Then we can approve what would otherwise clearly be murder without feeling bad.
In holland, a full 1/3 of pregnancies is aborted under their legislation (that's not counting early-term abortions and "abortion pill" abortions, that would make it more than 2/3 of all babies). Are you seriously suggesting all these babies have birth defects ? Even when medical care was basically nonexistent in America there were only between 12 and 15% babies with defects (and that's including diseases, not just birth defects). I doubt the Dutch have worse genes than we do.
If you truly believe people are better off dead than severely ill, then why limit it to babies ? Let's just kill anyone with a disease serious enough to warrant 10.000$ in treatment costs, no ? Just kill anyone diagnosed with that Tay-Sachs disease. It'd fix our medical cost problem overnight.
Let's also kill all the long term unemployed, oh and anyone over 60.
Oh right you should only kill people whose complaints are not heard. Sorry I forgot the basic policy. That's what you're actually arguing for ... that one gets to kill (for comfort, or for any reason at all) anyone who can't make him/herself heard.
Lawyers is a great profession, at least from a mathematical perspective. Lawyers are lawyers, but what people mostly forget is that just about all lawmakers are (or have been) lawyers (at least the democrats). Judges are also ex-lawyers. And since the government's been starting all this "too big to fail" bailouts there's a very surprising increase in the number of lawyer ceo's in wall street and the car (ex-)industry.
So the fun thing about lawyers is : the more lawyers you have, the more extra lawyers you need. It's like a runaway nuclear reaction. It's tha bomb man.
Of course this only remains interesting until you ask the question as to who pays for it all ...
And if you take enough drugs with that, perhaps you'll actually believe it works ...
Over here in reality it mainly means another occupant in the nuthouse.
You hate politicians then ?
They should really pass a law to round the lot up and ship them to a small pacific island with lotsa guns and a film crew.
I bet it also looks the same from a convict who gets executed in an American jail for brutally murdering 50 Americans by slowly torturing them to death ... After all a death threat was made by congress, and then Americans acted on it, guns blazing. Surely that's equivalent to slitting the throat of journalists you don't like for something they wrote, right ?
Oh wait ... no ...
How can one call these 2 acts equivalent ? Yes they're both killing, however one is murder the other is justice (and before you say it, personally I find a death sentence (much) less cruel than life in prison without chance for release).
Whether abortions are murder is (imho) solely dependant on the status you afford living feutuses. Do you consider them living beings (they are defineately that imho), or not ? Do you consider their lives so worthless that the mere comfort of others is sufficient reason to brutally murdering them ?(slowly cutting them into pieces is the english translation of "curating" in case anyone doesn't know)
How anyone can claim that a being that is intelligent enough to steer it's muscles and bone to try and stop the instruments that are killing it is "not conscious" or "feels no pain" is beyond me. If it is not conscious, why do it's actions have a clear purpose ? If it feels no pain, then why would it try to stop it at all ? Just look at it. Do you seriously consider that to be a better fate than an orphanage ?
Personally I find in myself sympathy, if not total agreement, for the argument that the murderers of 9/11 are more honorable than abortion doctors. At least they murdered Americans for something they thought honorable. Abortion doctors cannot seriously harbor any illusion that what they're doing is anything other than killing human beings for the comfort of other human beings. It's the same as these bastard muslims do in their own countries.
Does this opinion make me an extremist ? I have not killed or damaged anyone for this opinion. But if I know anyone to have had an abortion, I no longer talk or have any kind of dealings with them.
Most people who say this simply do not know that there are better options, as most doctor's will follow government policy, and won't inform patients that they're doing so. Of course to get all the options is exactly why you have doctors in the first place, of course, who are supposed to advise YOU on what's best for YOU. What's best for the patient.
I just had another incident. My baby was ill, running a fever of 39.2 degrees, rapidly climbing. We went to the doctor and he refused to prescribe antibiotics because "it might be a virus and it's good to wait".
Needless to say, I refused to pay a dime to the guy, told him that if he didn't step out of the way he'd be lucky to walk away with a broken arm and a black eye. We went to another doctor who did prescribe antibiotics, after some pressure, and lo and behold, the fever went down a mere 15 minutes after administration.
Doctors in Belgium take risks with the lives of their patients. Why do they do this ? It's government policy : they're penalized for "overprescribing" (but not penalized for patients dying, or patients in worse condition than they would have been with actual help).
The sad thing is, most people do not know what the implications are of their doctor's advice. They would have waited, and since there obviously was a bacterium inside my baby, she would have worsened as if there was no medical care. It might even have killed her.
But I'd be "blisfully" unaware. I'd also have a very ill baby or, worse, a dead one.
For the record : I fully agree that for the "collective", the doctor's decision was correct : avoid the use of antibiotics in all but the most extreme cases, and not at all on children, prolonging the period that the bacteria will need to become resistent. It was not, however, the best advice for the patient. This guy was also playing with the life of my child.
But of course, if I did not have medical practitioners in my family (who report the pressure they feel to avoid prescribing), I would have fallen hook, line and sinker for the doctor's WRONG advice. I might also have lost a child.
And for the record : I'm Belgian. And you're entirely right, most people here believe we have excellent medical care, despite that nearly all of them know of medical situations that have gotten completely out of hand due to stupid doctor's advice.
Since when is your life not yours, but the government's?
The medical aspect of your life is the property of whoever is paying for medicine. Since the government is paying for it, the government became the customer. The doctor's job is not to keep you happy, or even healthy, the doctor's job is to keep the government happy.
The worst of it is that, over time, this becomes a reason for prohibition-like policies.
There are 2 ways to do that : ... patients do not get the choice of doctor (that's more expensive you see), and doctors are very sure of their jobs indeed
1) avoid any and all risks, and if one screws up, deny everything. After all, if the patient sues, the government employs the defendant, the lawyer, and all possible witnesses (because only doctors get to testify) (and more-or-less the judge. Furthermore judges are more wary of convicting municipalities than convicting individuals, I don't claim this is because of payment, likely just that they're bigger with better lawyers). Only in the case of truly criminal behavior does a doctor run the risk of a conviction. Incompetence doesn't matter because
2) avoid any and all costs (e.g. they try to get nurses to send someone with a broken leg home with a pain-relief cream first. Only after the patient comes back do they take an x-ray. The worst of it is they claim this "is better for the environment")
Or at least, that's how it's been for decades in Europe. I hope America will be different, but I doubt it. Every year more savings are necessary. Even in the best years of the past century, like 2000-2001, medicine still had to shrink down.
You should be able to take a risk on experimental treatment. You should be able to end your own life if it becomes too much.
Not to nitpick, but euthanasia is asking others to end your life. Everybody who knows a bit of basic medicine knows 10 different ways to end his or her life.
And since everyone can run this program and exploit the way it calculates things this will be about as realistic as the CBO estimates ! Oh wait, the government can write bug-free programs, right ? Of course it will provide for a few cushy python hacking jobs in wall street.
This would be great for wall street ! Imagine, relatively simple AI programs automatically searching for loopholes in the law. Nothing could go wrong, right ? After all, in a government program, there will be no loopholes, right ?
And all this in the name of letting stupid people invest "safely". How about allowing wall street to take money from stupid people ? This ensuring stupid people won't make many investments at all. This will result in only the smart investors investing (those with a proven track record of good investments, as illustrated by their bank account balance). Which is of course the reason capitalism works in the first place. Sucks if you're not capable of making investments significantly smarter than average, of course.
Then simply go back to the situation before the crisis started brewing and either outlaw investing loaned money directly (which America never did), or make it de-facto impossible (which America did do), which will prevent a crash like we saw last year (and which we will see again unless Obama radically changes course). Of course, this will mean that we return to the situation that any group judged "unreliable" (unreliable as in "will probably not be extremely stable for at least 30 years") will not be able to get much of a loan at all (and because some of these groups are human, that will result in racial differences, education differences, etc). But if making reasonable assumptions about people is supposedly racist and outlawed, how can anyone but the law (ie. all of us) be blamed for the crashes this causes ?
As far as atheism being "innocent", the atrocities committed by so-called atheist states were not carried out because atheist beliefs motivated or compelled the guilty. There was an entirely different agenda in place and the "atheist state" moniker was not at the core of it. Many of the citizens and soldiers of these states did not consider themselves atheists either, rather people of one faith or another who were not free to practice their actual beliefs.
Actually, in the case of the Soviets, some of the atrocities, like the Northern province of Afghanistan and several dozen genocides on eastern European monasteries were carried out with "enforcing atheism" as the purpose. Apparently the same is true for several Souther Asian communist atrocities. Of course, the perpetrators were still communists, so make of it what you want.
So "were there atheists who killed and claimed those killings for atheism ?" is a very simple question with a very simple answer : Yes. "Socialists" as they called themselves, "Communists" as we call them, did so.
You obviously believe what you say, but I don't believe that you don't know about or remember the details of the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch-trials, the Vatican's current scandals with systemic child-rape and subsequent cover-ups, sections of the old testament that encourage all manner of offenses against decency (slavery, mass-murder, et al), etc.
It is telling that you have to invoke acts that do not actually involve killing. I find child-rape an especially poor choice for attacking christians and defending muslims. You might know that child-rape is not punishable by law in most muslim states (fucking girls as young as 7 years (and younger) old against their wishes, often doing irreversible damage to the organs involved.
You may not know this, but most muslim nations, like Jordan and Iran have entire hospitals that are dedicated SOLELY to the care for these "damaged" girls. They claim that more victims of these atrocities simply die and never get to the hospital. Occupancy counts ? In Jordan about 500, and in Iran an astonishing 3000 girls, including one that was raped by ayatollah khomeini, the most important religious figure in shi'a islam. This is a fatwa (religious edict) from him "A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable.". Needless to say, he failed to uphold his own principles.
Total death toll of the crusades, inquisition, salem witch trials : certainly less than 1 million people, possibly not even 100.000 (the inquisition, for example, did not kill 10.000 people. Additionally, one has to take into account that each victim of the inquisition was accused, given a chance to defend himself in a court of law, and failed to do so satisfactorily, with the assistance of legal counsel. Contrary to popular opinion most executions (>85%) were for murder convictions. If one assumes that, say 60% of those convictions were accurate, would it truly be fair to call these people victims ?)
Total death toll of only ONE 20th century muslim massacre, the ottoman/turkish massacre of the armenians : 1.5 million people (high estimate), 600.000 (estimate of muslims themselves). Note that the massacres were ordered by sultan abdul hamid II, whose title was "caliph al islam" (the ruler of islam, a title from the quran that implies one speaks for allah). You can't get get more "muslim" than that.
There can be no question that the muslim genocides in India occured on a scale that just doesn't compare to the Armenian massacres, as do several northern-african muslim massacres.
Btw : estimated number of people killed in offensive campaigns, raids, enslavement missions, and "plain" genocides, by the founder of islam (according to muslims themselves) : at least 10.000. Yes the prophet himself ordered at least 7 genocides himself. Number of slaves taken : at least several t
Yeah, throw scientists to the wolves of the private sector. So instead of discovering that new particle or galaxy, they can make a new obesity pill* to keep the fast food giants in profit, or increase the screen size of your iphone so you can more effectively wank yourself off to Internet porn in the company toilets.
If you mean to throw them to the wolves so that they'd use science for things that the general population (ie : me) actually wants them to use science for, then ...
yes ...
that's exactly what I mean.
We now face a decision: become rational really fast, or die.
How many times in history have we heard some variant of this prediction? We are still here.
Actually we've heard this many times. And we've died by the millions many times. The holocaust, the soviet genocides ("engineered famine" is the preferred term, although how exactly that covers shooting civilians is beyond me), the muslim massacre on armenians, the rwanda massacres, the (ongoing) muslim-on-sudanese genocide against blacks, ...
And that's just the 20th century. Many idiots seem to think the 21st century will be different because they live in the by-far longest stable state (ie. the United states) where this hasn't happened for over 200 years. Hell, even Europeans, whose last genocide was little more than 10 years ago (but far away from Western Europe), the last Western European genocide was about 60 years ago, which is more than 1 generation ago. So everyone thinks these things "don't happen" and somehow believe that "diplomacy" (or worse : "international trade") will prevent another one. Or perhaps just the inherent human goodness will prevent it. Meanwhile that inherent human goodness doesn't seem to be stopping sudanese muslims from raiding, killing and enslaving like their religion demands ... Also one is to ignore that the peak year for international trade in the 20th century was 1913 (that level, as percentage of global gdp, was only surpassed in 1996), and 1939 was arguably the year the most money was invested in diplomacy.
The key is evolution. Everyone does things differently. Some people don't defend themselves, some others beat the crap out of any attackers, ... and some survive and some die. Evolution. Whichever tactic works will be the surviving one. Maybe comitting genocides is the key to survival, maybe not doing anything against these things is the correct tactic, maybe wars are the correct tactic.
The same goes for food production. Many people will try, some will have working strategies and live, some will have failing strategies and die. Of course this is "unfair" although what exactly is so very unfair about living in reality is beyond me.
Of course, this is how evolution works :
1) breed, making small mistakes in copying genes (and ideology)
2) die "en masse"
3) goto 1
Everyone seems to be skipping step 2, especially when professing to "believe" in evolution and what that supposedly means (you know the "evolution means jesus doesn't exist, but has nothing to do with children or death" crowd. Hell I've actually heard one person claim that genes were unfair and that "therefore" evolution cannot have anything to do with genes. Although I must agree with the part that genes are VERY unfair things indeed)
My point was more along the lines of "everyone paying less than $400 for 1.5Mbit should not complain about cost cutting measures".
For obvious reasons.
The problem, however with government-funded basic research is the lack of useful applications. A centrally-funded scientist has no reason -at all- to convert his discovery into an actual invention, so this will generally not happen.
Perhaps an example : in the 20th century cars were invented. The basic principle of the explosive engine, however, had long been demonstrated by "patronized" scientists (scientists working for royalty), and was generally well-known. Actual test explosion-based engines had rotated (a few times) 150 years before the invention of the car (granted, due to lack of useable fuel they weren't practical, but still. One such engine was built into some of the first machine guns).
So it seems to me the answer is somewhere in the middle, on the one hand provide generous subsidies, on the other hand forcing scientists to go into the private sector. Perhaps a time limit on employment at universities would provide the right incentives ? Make it generous, say 16 years. But after 16 years, every cent of subsidy stops, and they have to find a private investor.
The same problem poses itself in general problem solving. The time horizon that is a property of rational thought. What is rationally optimal for the next 3 seconds will generally be a very different beast from what is rationally optimal for the next 10 years. And, while perhaps only relevant for the catholic church and evolution, is radically different from rationally optimal stuff with a 500 year time horizon.
Let's take global warming and having children, and compare the optimal actions depending on time horizons :
3 seconds : optimal course is to ignore global warming, children are not even theoretically possible
10 years : optimal course is to ignore global warming (except that it might relieve social pressures, or gain one power, but you cannot scientifically defend it), children are not advisable
50 years : moderate actions to prevent global warming would seem to be rational. Children might be nice to have.
100 years : large costs to prevent global warming seem justified, although one should also take into account that oil will be gone long before this time passes. In this time period, obviously it is absolutely essential to have sufficient children to carry on after you're dead. The more, the better.
500 years : ignore global warming (after all, wel WILL run out of oil in less than 50 years, so what's the big hubhub all about ?). Instead, focus on lots of children, but keep in mind that the ideology must survive : so limit the amount of children high enough to expand, but low enough so that each can get a good education.
The problem with this is, of course, that per-customer dedicated bandwidth costs (at least) $20 /mbit/month. So a supposedly "modest" 20 mbit connection would run you $400 per month, and have a setup fee over $1000. This is a very good price for that bandwith, if you attempted to buy this not being a large telco you'd easily pay double that.
Since customers refuse to pay this, other methods have to be found.
Dedicated bandwidth, with which you can do as you please without limits, are perfectly for sale. They're "Business" deals in most ISPs I know of. Now if all residential users agreed to pay that price and agreed not to go take the lower-monthly-rate-but-massively-oversold deal there is no problem.
Can you say "snowball's chance in hell" ?
The sad thing is, one regularly sees on online fora discussions about how this-or-that provider is 0.30$ cheaper per month. Equally inflammatory comments of course, equal accusations how the telco's (large and small) are sleeping with the devil.
Why not just copy the Soyuz? Is it patented?
Because the Soyuz redefines the word "inefficiency" when it comes to fuel use, beating even Al Gore's favorite gallons per centimeter figures.
Apparently it uses triple the fuel of the space shuttle for less than half of the useful weight (although there is disagreement whether the spacecraft itself counts as useful weight, but even without the spacecrafts included, the shuttle still comfortably beats the soyuz. Since the shuttle provides useful infrastructure in orbit, whereas the soyuz doesn't it might even be fair to).
So using the Soyuz would get Nasa broke in 5 years with Bush-era funds.
Reliable ? You cannot seriously be referring to the Soviet space program.
Well, it was reliable in that they hardly ever failed to have huge accidents. Nor did they ever fail to deny this with propaganda. It helps if your launch site does not have any reporter within a 1000 km radius if you want to coverup fuckups.
I know this is very anti-postmodern but just because you don't see or don't know about something, doesn't mean it's not real. You'd think the fact that rain makes you wet at night would stop this sort of nonsense, but these are academics we're talking about.
Besides you failed to answer my question. IPCC 2000 predictions were :
1) embarassingly wrong about temperature (on a year-to-year error they were as wrong as the 1990 predictions, gaining only a tiny bit of accuracy, despite higher error margins)
2) even though temperature did not rise, the sea level did rise more than the IPCC predicted, despite the supposed cause of sea level rise REVERSING.
Here is a summary graph of the IPCC predictions compared to real data :
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/IPCC%20Verification%2090-95-01-07%20vs%20Obs.png
As you can see, their predictions hold up for 1-2 years in the future, at best. And then they're revised according to additional data detected.
This means, to me, that their models are worthless. And I repeat again, this is EXACTLY what you'd expect to happen if climate was chaotic in nature. If climate wasn't chaotic in nature, you'd expect weather to bounce around a bit due to small variations, but larger trends would win out in the end.
Clearly, this doesn't happen, and the IPCC adjusts it's theories every few years. Instead, the newly published numbers have the same error margin as the old ones, just different baseline data. Their models are not, in fact, gaining in accuracy, they're merely forced to match new data.
The adjusting of the baseline every few years strikes me as a deeply dishonest way of doing science. Changing predictions you made in the past, as the IPCC did in 1995, 2001 and 2007, strikes me as little more than outright fraud. Of course I really enjoy the word "exact" (or positive) in my sciences.
How anyone can claim the "necessity" of basing policy on predictions like this is beyond me. Imagine a nuclear plant design that performed 10% outside of spec after 10 years. The scientists involved wouldn't just be fired, they'd be skinned alive in the public square.
"Please state which physical principle tells you that earth surface temperatures will rise as a result of increased incoming surface irradiation?"
Are you kidding me? You really don't know that atoms absorb photons of specific wavelengths and when they do so they move to a higher energy state and thus jiggle more vigourously? Surely you don't need to be told that temprature is simply a measure of how vigoursly atoms are jiggling, do you? Here is a simple experiment you can perform to convince yourself that the suns rays can warm the Earth's surface; walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky.
And you complain that I do not apply science ? Let's state it differently :
You have a large system with many temperatures. It has an average temperature.
Obviously it is a trivial matter to raise the average temperature : just raise 1 of the components. You can leave the others be, or you could even lower them. You could even put the increased entropy in other things than temperature, although that's mostly theoretical.
Now in case you don't know, the main heat repository of earth is the ocean. We don't even have a very good view of how much heat the ocean actually contains, and only limited data on how heat transfers into the ocean and out of it. Let's not consider the earth as a whole, but merely the oceans : take "the little ice" age : clearly, it is perfectly possible to have both poles grow to double their normal size without any change to average temperature. The reverse is also true.
As such, growing or shrinking polar ice caps may, or may not, have any temperature change causing them.
So there you have the problem with not having thermal equilibrium : if you don't have it, any change may have any result, it simply imposes a constraint on the global sum, yet doesn't impose any demands on any individual component. The earth, in reality, not in your fantasy, is not in thermal equilibrium, and will obviously refuse to behave like your "let's scratch all terms except the one that seems to prove my conclusion" theories state. The sun might double it's energy output, and it's an open question if it would have
any effect at all on any specific component of earth. Yes it would raise average temperature. The fact that the average earth temperature is about 6000 degrees celcius, and yet we're not all standing knee-deep in magma should tell you that heat is not distributed evenly on earth, so additional heat will NOT get distributed evenly either.
This is reality we're talking about, not your overly simplified "we must reach this conclusion" dribble.
If you truly think increased irradiation necessarily leads to higher temperatures, might I suggest spending a summer in Eastern Europe ? Even Moskou's weather would convince you in a most effective manner that this is not true at all. There is absolutely no shortage of irradiation there, but it gets fucking cold the second you step into the shadow, never mind what happens at night. Mind you, this is not Siberia I'm talking about.
And before you start giving the anecdote blabber, an anecdote is not sufficient to prove something to be true. It is, however, sufficient to prove a claim, like yours, false (being a mathematician, surely you know this, right ?).
You'd think an actual scientist would know that intuition can be ridiculously misleading, and especially a mathematician would have a very deep distrust of what statements like "walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky" supposedly prove.