You can keep remaking a point after it's been discredited, but that will not exactly prove it.
In reality the analogy is close to all you know about the theory. Yet this does not stop you from calling me an "amateur". Great. I am an amateur (though more knowledgeable about it than you).
Your assertion that something can be chaotic in the near term (weather) and predictable in the long term (climate) is obviously bullshit. One of the three bodies might fly away, or even two, making any prediction you think you can make about the three body problem idiotic. In the three body problem any reasonable certainty of prediction stops after 1 period of the system. If you take the same for weather that means that 1 day in advance should be doable. I do not know what the climate's equivalent would be of this but there probably exist discrete events that would change the climate forever and that occur on a specific day.
You also have no response to the failed prediction other than the excuse "they made no such prediction". Tell me, do you think you're convincing anyone ? The error bars are clearly visible in the linked document, and the lower error bound indicates a clearly rising temperature, an event which has not happened. Some numbers are available in the second document on the same site (though thorougly buried : clearly the IPCC is not interested in people testing their predictions, a criticism which has been leveled against them again and again, but they do not seem to like this idea of getting pinned down on their predictions at all. We all know why this is)
If you're talking about mathematical concept "chaos", then we can shut down climate science, and turn out the lights permanently. The only thing that would remain to be done is observe, strictly after the fact, what has happened. We would have zero use for any theory or model for predicting the weather.
It is proven that if a system exhibits "chaos" (as defined by...) cannot be predicted, except with FULL knowledge of the initial conditions.
This means that unless we find a way to determine the location of every last photon, every last atom, and every last little magnetic field, down to less than the planck length since the creation of the universe up till now, we can make no better prediction for the weather than "tomorrow's probably going to be the same as today" (meaning that even if we were able to send scientists back in time to measure with the best instruments that can theoretically be conceived, and allow violating of several principles of physics, it still wouldn't be possible to measure the state of the system).
Your example is equally stupid : The chances are good (very good) that water will boil at 100 degrees, but that's as far as theory allows you to go. It is nowhere near certain. I'm more of a mathematician so "certain", to me, means 1. 100%. Not one trillionth less.
You can't predict when water will start to boil (not that water boiling is an actual chaotic system, but hey, we "amateurs" shouldn't nibble on details, should we ?). Put water of 80 degrees in the microwave. Make sure it is very stable, nothing moving (disable any rotation in recent ovens). Add heat using the microwave until the water should be at least 120 degrees celcius. Contrary to what you'd expect all of the water will be liquid. If perfectly stable, you can leave it on full power for half an hour, and it will STILL be liquid.
Given the right equipment it is possible to make water freeze while it's being heated inside a microwave oven. In fact, several power generator designs are based on doing exactly this.
You cannot, in fact, predict when a pot of water will start to boil. It might not boil, it might go "critical". It might go "supercritical". If you add heat to water at 98 degrees celcius, it might freeze. All these are possibilities and indeed illustrate quite well what "chaos" means, even if they are not actually chaotic.
The whole point of chaos, of course, is that the tiniest, minutest detail WILL change the outcome in a massive way. Not might. Not should. It is a certainty. If the climate is indeed chaotic (which is not entirely certain, just very likely), whether you put your shoes to the left or the right of your bed matters more than what factories do 1 year from now (that would be, incidentially, the very definition of chaotic behavior of a system, but I'm sure you know that, right ?).
If you were to have a haystack on a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere, moving a needle inside 1 nanometer will produce radically different climate after a while. That's chaos. If that is true, obviously doing anything to either encourage or discourage global warming is idiotic, as there is no way whatsoever to predict the effect of doing anything.
And btw, the IPCC models are based on differential equations that are solved by numerically approximating them with supercomputers, using incomplete data. If climate is indeed chaotic, this cannot work, this would be a theoretical impossibility. It would be akin to dividing 3 by 2 until it grows larger than 10.
Only a purely theoretical solution to the problem, that does not use actual measured values, has any chance for a successfull prediction in a chaotic system (due to the absolute need for perfect accuracy. Not accuracy down to the last nanometer. Or even the last planck length. Theoretically perfect accuracy, not even infinite accuracy would do). In all likelihood, there is no such formula.
Or you could just point out that the current weather does not -by a long shot- match any of the predictions (made BEFORE it started). For any non-political theory, that would do it.
Specifically that the IPCC predicted a warming of 0.12 degrees +- 0.05 degrees in 2000. From 2000 to 2009, however, there was a cooling of just over 0.1 degrees. That's over 4 times the maximum error they predicted. If you take pure satellite data, it's even more of course.
Before I get accused of heresy (not that having the facts on my side will prevent that, but hey, one hopes against hope): -> IPCC prediction according to it's 2000 report : http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/pdf/wg1spm.pdf figure 5 : uniform rising temperatures for the entirety of the 21st century : every year is warmer than the previous year from now up till 2100, including the lower error bar -> consistent 10-year dropping temperature http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/world-meteorological-organization-wmo-2000s-warmest-hottest-decade-on-record/ (which is a somewhat misleading headline. 2000-2010 may be the warmest decade, but 1995-2000 would be the warmest 5 year period. Wouldn't want to indicate warming has stopped, even temporary, now would we ? That'll just lead to skepticism. There was a time when skepticism WAS science, but hey)
Needless to say, if this occured within any exact science, all scientists would be sent back to the "put all your crazy ideas on a napkin" stage, and the theory that produced the errant predictions sent to the bin.
(and while I fully agree this hardly constitutes a cooling trend over the long term, it is far outside of the error margins for the theory, so something is horribly wrong with the models, making their predictions useless at best, dangerous at worst)
Of course in reality this is a case where multiple concerns must be weighted against one another. In the real world there are competing effects.
Specifically you need to weigh safety against privacy. Obviously when safety fails you're dead. When privacy fails you're at worst shamed. So it is acceptable to break privacy restrictions to increase safety.
Except "they" are American citizens, directly controlled by the elected president, DHS may employ and train the people that do the actual grabbing, but the order comes from Obama. Interpol is neither elected, nor accountable to anyone (they're more like the EU, or the UN. They're totally unaccountable except insofar as they could have member states leaving). And they do indeed grab people.
This is a pattern, there are few, if any, international organisations that are elected. Yet the EU (and especially the Lisbon treaty EU) is by far the most powerful unelected government in the world. One might almost think that in political circles, democracy is something that they'd mostly like to get rid of, but can't (yet ?).
I think you've proven my point for me, especially if you allow for the fact that there are mor than 500 different interpretations of Judaic law.
Btw : it seems to me that a "strangulation offense" would be a death penalty. Perhaps I'm just more attached to breathing than your average Jew ?
I guess the only real question remaining is : would you, being a full and proud Jew, apply these punishments to your daughter ? Let's face it, at the very least she's going to breat the sabbat at some point, which is a stoning offence, as you well know (note that there is disagreement on whether a non-Jew who breaks the sabbat (as they all do) should be stoned to death. Please illuminate us).
We both know the answer : a resounding "NO". You do not, in fact, think Judaism is just (otherwise you wouldn't even have argued obviously, ascribing the "wrong" details to another interpretation of Judaism like every other Jew does).
And I seriously doubt you believe sufficiently in God to say in public that God is with the Jews. Or with the Christians or anyone else for that matter.
Why not just admit the truth ? The values you believe in are not Jewish, they're Christian. The fact that you even think there is something wrong with stoning at all... If you're a Jew, the "fact" that God decreed stoning should be enough moral justification. After all, God's actions are the definition of morality according to Judaism. Of course, it's not and you know it.
The west has been shutting down roboticized factories whilst China is building sweat shops upon a never before seen scale.
Ahem ? India maybe...
Have you seen a few Chinese factories ? Working conditions may be harsh, but they're no sweat shops like in muslim countries or India.
Furthermore they're more than a little roboticized too. In fact, I've worked in one of those western factories and visited a Chinese one. The Chinese one was much more roboticized (which is normal, it was more modern by far).
Furthermore, a LOT of recent product simply cannot be made by manual labor. No matter how much manual labor you have, you'll never make an iphone. Sure manual labor is useful at a few points in the cycle, but not all that many anymore. Same with plastic products. They're made by "blowing" plastic into shapes with pressures approaching 200 athmosphere. Know anyone with such lungs ? Obviously the Chinese are not making them using human lungs.
It's a cute theme "the Chinese use sweat shops", but it's wrong. The Chinese outperform the US : -> they put in more work. Not the idiots, not the sweatshoppers. The engineers. The telephonists. The secretaries. The professors (not that that last part is any surprise if you've visited a campus recently) (and btw, given the -for now- limited traffic problems there, I doubt the Chinese put in more hours) -> they have a workable labour productivity level (labour productivity = profit of the work done by one person - cost per person (including taxes, buildings, "long lunch rights", vacation days...)
Actually China might be the realistic version of avatar's story... that terrain, after all, was not Chinese not at all that long ago. Of course, the Chinese demonstrated very effectively just what hopes any non-industrialized nation has of repelling industrialized invaders.
Exactly , this is a global economy now , no more isolation , this means in order for us to evolve the rest of the world needs to come to our level , or we need to evolve to the standards of another country.
You know when the economy was biggest and most "global" (max. international trade) in the first part of the 20th century ? 1914. In 1939 it was not at the level of 1914, but it was the high point of several decades.
Historically I'm afraid you're going to find historical evidence for interconnected global economy preventing war... somewhat lacking... to say the least.
Actually any sane person should not make the mistake that population size is going to matter much in the 21st century. In fact, it seems to me population will be a serious handicap (as it has been in the past too, and not just in extreme examples like Rwanda). Truly bad news for human rights, and, well anyone alive really, but computers and machines are a hell of a lot cheaper, more flexible and more reliable than humans.
"Read Chinese history and see if this happened before by any chance"...
Although, if you want a good night sleep, it might be adviseable not to do so. China looks damned huge on a map, doesn't it ? I wonder how much those borders changed in 100 years... (again, if you want a good night sleep, don't check)
Realistically, there are tons of situations that are powder kegs. There's always the middle east, but there's also the muslim situation in Northern Europe, and frankly if the economy doesn't recover there will soon be a "latin" situation in southern united states. Russia is another powder keg, controlling much of the energy supply of Europe (without which much of Europe would be uninhabitable to 90% of it's population don't forget). There's the enormous tension between "the gulf" of the middle east and Iran (and let's not forget, Iran has a barely functioning army, which beats the crap out of the "no army" approach of the gulf for obvious reasons). Iraq, thanks to Bush, is stabilizing for now. Everybody knows that it doesn't take much to blow that keg. Pakistan, and especially India and China's reaction to Pakistani agression (which are constant) are another wild card.
It seems likely that at least one keg will blow up. It seems likely that will happen soon.
Still does not say anything about stoning a Jewish person who has had sex with a non-Jew, nor anything about stoning the non-Jewish partner. Unfortunately, wishing something to be true does not make it true.
As we probably both know, stoning to death is the punishment for any kind of sex except as regulated by Judaic law... Any non-legal sex.
Why don't you explain to me whether it is "legal" for a Jew to have sex with a non-Jew (excepting, of course, a Jewish man sleeping with a non-Jewish female "servant" (a word that might just as easily be translated as slave*))...
Actually, the exact same standard (two upstanding male Jewish witnesses) is necessary to inflict any punishment on a woman.
Why don't you first clarify your own belief. Does Judaism, YES OR NO, demand that people be stoned for very minor crimes ?
Let's face it, your statement would mean that a beth din court would not accept it proven that someone had sex if she was pregnant. Do you, yes or no, find that realistic ?
Incidentally... what is the punishment for theft according to you ? Say, a hungry orphan steals a loaf of bread ?
And what, pray tell, is all this bullshit I hear about eyes ? How exactly, and I mean exactly, are car accidents dealt with according to toraic law.
* I fully accept that the Judaic concept of slavery is infinitely preferable to, for example, the islamic or even hindu concept of same, but it's still there. Yes, there is the "max 7 years" and the requirement for "some" form of payment, but it's still involuntary servitude)
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this paragraph. Should the Sanhedrin be re-established (b'meheira b'yameinu) I will submit completely to its judgments.
An interesting question : do you accept the judgements of the "grand sanhedrin", called by Napoleon ? Why/why not ?
So why don't you answer a very simple question. Since you don't care about the other religions, let's just focus on islam :
1) whose actions are the definition of morality in islam 2) did that person (yes or no) rape a minor girl (less than or exactly 9 years old) 3) did 2) take place with or without consent of the girl ? 4) did that person rape someone he abducted and then "owned" ? (yes or no) 5) did said person trade in people ? yes or no 6) did said person force "traded" people to prostitute themselves for his own profit ? yes or no 7) do present-day moderate muslims, yes-or-no, accept the blatant immorality of these acts and how they reflect on the character of this person ?
I wonder, truly, if you have the courage to answer these questions...
The funny thing is that one thing is never found in energy contingency plans :
renewables
Everyone knows why, yet political correctness demands we say "it's a conspiracy by those evil rich (white) capitalists !". When has the world gone mad ? And why...
And before you ask : my stance on renewables is the same as on fusion. Ready for more research ? Good potential ? Certainly. Ready to get even a single unit installed (barring exceptional applications) : no. Not in 10 years either.
That anyone can defend Hamas, et al is just stupefying.
Once you realize that for many people their ideology is much more important than the very lives of others, it stops being stupefying. It starts being something else, though. Of course if "not killing others" took precedence of fake but "lofty" ideals we wouldn't have many greens, lefties or even muslims (well you sure as hell wouldn't have any "political muslims", which is presumed to be somehow different from just plain "muslims", though no-one ever cares to specify different how exactly).
Surely you've got an answer to these, very important questions :
1) you talk as if you've got 100% assurances that terrorists never hurt anyone. Explain how 9/11 fits in this view, without using the words "Bush did it". Then expand to the constant terror attacks experienced before and after 9/11 2) since you will obviously fail to answer 1) satisfactorily, you can still save your skin by explaining exactly how you'll prevent other people (whether that'd be terrorists, Iran, enemy countries like North Korea or others) from acquiring them and using them against American troops. If not, please explain to the troops why they have to risk their lives for you while you're refusing to give them the same weapons as the enemy you ("congress" ~= you, at least that's democratic theory, right ?) want them to fight 3) you're bigoted against technology. A stable, portentially 24/7 present platform, anywhere in the sky. Now I'm sure I don't really need to explain what advantages that has, other than "killing people", correct ? Mapmaking
Sorry but I refuse to take my facts from a site that does not consider "creating economic justice" a tax, and that considers "making companies pay for the environmental damage they cause" anything other than a way to increase taxes and to blame those "evil companies" for the resulting price hike (since obviously it's keeping people alive and happy, also called 'the economy', that's causing the environmental problems, and companies are only a barely significant part of the equation). It is beyond obvious that the dates chosen for comparison, which fail to match those of any official institutions, are meant to cherry-pick data.
I fear that it's not so much "reality" that shows it's "liberal bias" on this site, but something else. Someone's dishonesty.
There's no such thing as an isolated morality. I.e., there is no personal morality. We might believe that our personal sense of right and wrong exists apart from society, but this is false.
This, we agree on.
UN soldiers get to rape, or kill Israelis through stupidity or outright malice, without reprecussions in New York
And Israeli soldiers get to kill Palestinians in the West Bank without any repercussions. Same with Blackwater guards and Iraqi civilians in Iraq. Same with US soldiers in Okinawa. With the Japanese soldiers and Chinese women. Angola. Ghana. Brazil.
We all know which of these statements are propaganda, and which are not. Again, no army is perfect, but that does not imply that the moral standards of the IDF and of the palestinian "civilians" of Hamas and Fatah are comparable.
Good does not equal evil, simply because good people do not always chose optimally for everyone, nor does evil become good through deceptive actions (e.g. saladin, who reintroduced slavery to the holy land, was not "good", because he set one hungry widow with child free from her slave contract as a prostitute-slave to a wealthy arab, and provided her with food. He is as evil as all other muslims*)
* muslim meaning someone who believes in the morality of islam, which obviously cannot be seen apart from it's stance of slavery, including it's stance of using female slaves as prostitutes, except by the blatantly dishonest
In addition to evil people using deception, sometimes they simply screw up. The only reason America managed to establish a beachhead at Normandy was the failure of a nazi tank commander to pass on critical defense data. We all know the amount of human suffering and self-sacrifice it took to breach unprepared nazi lines, think of what it would have taken if they had been prepared.
The thing in common? They all *abused* their power over the helpless. Whether it's a single male raping a single woman or mass rape and murder in the list above, it was all about the strong victimizing the weak. So no, the morality of the police/military force is worse than any individuals.
Then you should praise God that you live in 21st century America. You see, even 250 years ago it was not possible for the executive authority (that's the police) to abuse their power over the helpless. You see, their actions were the *definition* of morally right ("L'etat ? C'est moi" and the implied "Dieu ? C'est moi") in all earlier centuries.
The function of the police, in western societies, is by the way exactly that : an application of Christian moral ethics. Protecting the weak from the strong is something that you will not find in many religions at all. Of the "big ones", only Christianity and Bushido even mention it. Needless to say, of the "pseudo"-religions, like communism, you won't find this either. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism,... all do the exact opposite : the only protection is provided to (specific) strong people, and they are free to attack, rape and rob the weak at will (slaves and "dhimmis" in islam, slaves and non-buddhists in buddhism, dalits in hinduism,...). Islam is even worse : sharia is very explicit that the caliph (and the whole state structure) is 100% at liberty to execute, on the spot, anyone it deems dangerous to itself.
Christianity, btw, claims that a second kind of protection must be guaranteed as well : the protection of the individual (and it's very specific : esp. rich individuals *and* their property) from the many.
One act's morality does not equal another act's morality. In fact I daresay there are no 2 actions that have the same moral dimension. Specifically your moral equivalence is beyond stupid : the actions of the occasional enlisted lunatic do NOT equal a popular policy, followed by most of the population, of religious genocide, as palestinians follow. Or more precisely, as palestinians claim islam mandates (a
Nature = everything that existed (or could have existed) before the first "artificial" thing was created by the first intelligent human (/or other species for that matter)
What I would like to see is a reduction over 60 years (3 generations) down to about 2 billion people. Which is somehow accomplished with a magical wand that oppresses no one. I think we are on a doomsday track right now.
What can be accomplished with absolute (100%) birth control :
A 10% reduction in world population by 2050. Say 16% in 60 years (that's VERY generous).
You want a reduction by 4 billion. By using the massive necessary violence to stop people having children you can cause a reduction by a little under 1 billion.
So 75% of your target can only be accomplished by genocide. 3 billion people. Congratulations, you're worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the muslim prophet combined (the largest mass-murderer, the muslim "prophet" and his jihad, is only responsible for about 1 billion dead corpses, you want 3 billion corpses).
Your argument on the morality of the police's actions (and cooperating with them) is flawed because you base that morality on the morality of the general public and their laws as if they are infallible. Additionally, you need to evaluate each act of cooperation individually. If Blizzard volunteered information that lead a peaceful Chinese dissident to be arrested, most people would think that would be immoral. On the other hand, if Blizzard volunteered information that lead a child pornographer to be arrested, most people would think that would be moral. Still others would view both as immoral because Blizzard should have an inherent duty to protect information and our system already provides a mechanism (a warrant) to get that information when it is needed.
Your argument only makes sense if you assume that your own morality beats out the morality of our laws, and consistently does so. If that were true, surely you could provide examples of this. How you in your daily life violate the law, go to jail for it, and still have better morality than everyone else. Surely you can provide a few examples of YOU doing this if this is true... You demand perfect moral behavior from the police, so surely you'll understand that as you try to do some law-enforcement of your own, I demand the same perfect moral standard from you. Needless to say, you fail (as we all do).
I don't understand how people can seriously demand this perfect morality from so many organisations. From the police, to congress, the army, (the UN has consistently failed to uphold every moral standard in existence, so people stopped expecting them to, it seems. UN soldiers get to rape, or kill Israelis through stupidity or outright malice, without reprecussions in New York)
Furthermore even if you were a martyr-knight-saint, justification for your opinion would not just require that you're such a saint, but that sufficiently large numbers of people (ie. nearly all) have such saintly better-than-our-laws behavior. Sufficiently large numbers meaning so large that most criminals would be caught, most crimes prevented, not by the law, but by normal citizens.
Obviously this is not happening. That makes, imho, the moral thing to do becomes cooperation with the authorities, in all cases, even when you're not sure about the morality of their actions.
To be a good moral guardian, the law/police/... does not need to be perfect. It needs to be better than average. It needs to catch more criminals that John Q. Public does. It needs to prevent more crimes than an average very, very non-special American does.
And quite frankly, I have little illusions about the morality of the police force. But I am absolutely convinced they do better than you.
A trivial piece of software should be installable without admin privileges.
I think the problem is not so much the good/bad trivial/complicated distinction in the software that is important, but the good/bad trivial/complicated distinction in the programmer/admin.
After all, the parent poster is right, most software is perfectly installable as a non-admin. It just takes an above-average programmer.
Actually due to that gigantic thermonuclear reactor floating in the sky that constantly fires ridiculously massive amounts of high-energy charged particles at us, that might be a problem.
The northern lights aren't the only fenomenon that's caused by the north pole attracting those particles.
Slashdot Mirror
You can keep remaking a point after it's been discredited, but that will not exactly prove it.
In reality the analogy is close to all you know about the theory. Yet this does not stop you from calling me an "amateur". Great. I am an amateur (though more knowledgeable about it than you).
Your assertion that something can be chaotic in the near term (weather) and predictable in the long term (climate) is obviously bullshit. One of the three bodies might fly away, or even two, making any prediction you think you can make about the three body problem idiotic. In the three body problem any reasonable certainty of prediction stops after 1 period of the system. If you take the same for weather that means that 1 day in advance should be doable. I do not know what the climate's equivalent would be of this but there probably exist discrete events that would change the climate forever and that occur on a specific day.
You also have no response to the failed prediction other than the excuse "they made no such prediction". Tell me, do you think you're convincing anyone ? The error bars are clearly visible in the linked document, and the lower error bound indicates a clearly rising temperature, an event which has not happened. Some numbers are available in the second document on the same site (though thorougly buried : clearly the IPCC is not interested in people testing their predictions, a criticism which has been leveled against them again and again, but they do not seem to like this idea of getting pinned down on their predictions at all. We all know why this is)
You do know that climate is chaotic, right?
If you're talking about mathematical concept "chaos", then we can shut down climate science, and turn out the lights permanently. The only thing that would remain to be done is observe, strictly after the fact, what has happened. We would have zero use for any theory or model for predicting the weather.
It is proven that if a system exhibits "chaos" (as defined by ...) cannot be predicted, except with FULL knowledge of the initial conditions.
This means that unless we find a way to determine the location of every last photon, every last atom, and every last little magnetic field, down to less than the planck length since the creation of the universe up till now, we can make no better prediction for the weather than "tomorrow's probably going to be the same as today" (meaning that even if we were able to send scientists back in time to measure with the best instruments that can theoretically be conceived, and allow violating of several principles of physics, it still wouldn't be possible to measure the state of the system).
Your example is equally stupid : The chances are good (very good) that water will boil at 100 degrees, but that's as far as theory allows you to go. It is nowhere near certain. I'm more of a mathematician so "certain", to me, means 1. 100%. Not one trillionth less.
You can't predict when water will start to boil (not that water boiling is an actual chaotic system, but hey, we "amateurs" shouldn't nibble on details, should we ?). Put water of 80 degrees in the microwave. Make sure it is very stable, nothing moving (disable any rotation in recent ovens). Add heat using the microwave until the water should be at least 120 degrees celcius. Contrary to what you'd expect all of the water will be liquid. If perfectly stable, you can leave it on full power for half an hour, and it will STILL be liquid.
Given the right equipment it is possible to make water freeze while it's being heated inside a microwave oven. In fact, several power generator designs are based on doing exactly this.
You cannot, in fact, predict when a pot of water will start to boil. It might not boil, it might go "critical". It might go "supercritical". If you add heat to water at 98 degrees celcius, it might freeze. All these are possibilities and indeed illustrate quite well what "chaos" means, even if they are not actually chaotic.
The whole point of chaos, of course, is that the tiniest, minutest detail WILL change the outcome in a massive way. Not might. Not should. It is a certainty. If the climate is indeed chaotic (which is not entirely certain, just very likely), whether you put your shoes to the left or the right of your bed matters more than what factories do 1 year from now (that would be, incidentially, the very definition of chaotic behavior of a system, but I'm sure you know that, right ?).
If you were to have a haystack on a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere, moving a needle inside 1 nanometer will produce radically different climate after a while. That's chaos. If that is true, obviously doing anything to either encourage or discourage global warming is idiotic, as there is no way whatsoever to predict the effect of doing anything.
And btw, the IPCC models are based on differential equations that are solved by numerically approximating them with supercomputers, using incomplete data. If climate is indeed chaotic, this cannot work, this would be a theoretical impossibility. It would be akin to dividing 3 by 2 until it grows larger than 10.
Only a purely theoretical solution to the problem, that does not use actual measured values, has any chance for a successfull prediction in a chaotic system (due to the absolute need for perfect accuracy. Not accuracy down to the last nanometer. Or even the last planck length. Theoretically perfect accuracy, not even infinite accuracy would do). In all likelihood, there is no such formula.
And the IPCC predi
Or you could just point out that the current weather does not -by a long shot- match any of the predictions (made BEFORE it started). For any non-political theory, that would do it.
Specifically that the IPCC predicted a warming of 0.12 degrees +- 0.05 degrees in 2000. From 2000 to 2009, however, there was a cooling of just over 0.1 degrees. That's over 4 times the maximum error they predicted. If you take pure satellite data, it's even more of course.
Before I get accused of heresy (not that having the facts on my side will prevent that, but hey, one hopes against hope):
-> IPCC prediction according to it's 2000 report : http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/pdf/wg1spm.pdf figure 5 : uniform rising temperatures for the entirety of the 21st century : every year is warmer than the previous year from now up till 2100, including the lower error bar
-> consistent 10-year dropping temperature http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/world-meteorological-organization-wmo-2000s-warmest-hottest-decade-on-record/ (which is a somewhat misleading headline. 2000-2010 may be the warmest decade, but 1995-2000 would be the warmest 5 year period. Wouldn't want to indicate warming has stopped, even temporary, now would we ? That'll just lead to skepticism. There was a time when skepticism WAS science, but hey)
Needless to say, if this occured within any exact science, all scientists would be sent back to the "put all your crazy ideas on a napkin" stage, and the theory that produced the errant predictions sent to the bin.
(and while I fully agree this hardly constitutes a cooling trend over the long term, it is far outside of the error margins for the theory, so something is horribly wrong with the models, making their predictions useless at best, dangerous at worst)
Of course in reality this is a case where multiple concerns must be weighted against one another. In the real world there are competing effects.
Specifically you need to weigh safety against privacy. Obviously when safety fails you're dead. When privacy fails you're at worst shamed. So it is acceptable to break privacy restrictions to increase safety.
Welcome to the real world.
Except "they" are American citizens, directly controlled by the elected president, DHS may employ and train the people that do the actual grabbing, but the order comes from Obama. Interpol is neither elected, nor accountable to anyone (they're more like the EU, or the UN. They're totally unaccountable except insofar as they could have member states leaving). And they do indeed grab people.
This is a pattern, there are few, if any, international organisations that are elected. Yet the EU (and especially the Lisbon treaty EU) is by far the most powerful unelected government in the world. One might almost think that in political circles, democracy is something that they'd mostly like to get rid of, but can't (yet ?).
Obviously it's about their employees. You can be UN employee. You can be interpol employee.
Perhaps a meta-darwin award for hosting a famous website on a single "green solar powered" (see lmi.net, their hoster) hoster.
At the moment, you see, they're using 1.2 kw for not showing us that site. You'd almost think they're working for the government ...
I think you've proven my point for me, especially if you allow for the fact that there are mor than 500 different interpretations of Judaic law.
Btw : it seems to me that a "strangulation offense" would be a death penalty. Perhaps I'm just more attached to breathing than your average Jew ?
I guess the only real question remaining is : would you, being a full and proud Jew, apply these punishments to your daughter ? Let's face it, at the very least she's going to breat the sabbat at some point, which is a stoning offence, as you well know (note that there is disagreement on whether a non-Jew who breaks the sabbat (as they all do) should be stoned to death. Please illuminate us).
We both know the answer : a resounding "NO". You do not, in fact, think Judaism is just (otherwise you wouldn't even have argued obviously, ascribing the "wrong" details to another interpretation of Judaism like every other Jew does).
And I seriously doubt you believe sufficiently in God to say in public that God is with the Jews. Or with the Christians or anyone else for that matter.
Why not just admit the truth ? The values you believe in are not Jewish, they're Christian. The fact that you even think there is something wrong with stoning at all ... If you're a Jew, the "fact" that God decreed stoning should be enough moral justification. After all, God's actions are the definition of morality according to Judaism. Of course, it's not and you know it.
The west has been shutting down roboticized factories whilst China is building sweat shops upon a never before seen scale.
Ahem ? India maybe ...
Have you seen a few Chinese factories ? Working conditions may be harsh, but they're no sweat shops like in muslim countries or India.
Furthermore they're more than a little roboticized too. In fact, I've worked in one of those western factories and visited a Chinese one. The Chinese one was much more roboticized (which is normal, it was more modern by far).
Furthermore, a LOT of recent product simply cannot be made by manual labor. No matter how much manual labor you have, you'll never make an iphone. Sure manual labor is useful at a few points in the cycle, but not all that many anymore. Same with plastic products. They're made by "blowing" plastic into shapes with pressures approaching 200 athmosphere. Know anyone with such lungs ? Obviously the Chinese are not making them using human lungs.
It's a cute theme "the Chinese use sweat shops", but it's wrong. The Chinese outperform the US : ...)
-> they put in more work. Not the idiots, not the sweatshoppers. The engineers. The telephonists. The secretaries. The professors (not that that last part is any surprise if you've visited a campus recently) (and btw, given the -for now- limited traffic problems there, I doubt the Chinese put in more hours)
-> they have a workable labour productivity level (labour productivity = profit of the work done by one person - cost per person (including taxes, buildings, "long lunch rights", vacation days
Actually China might be the realistic version of avatar's story ... that terrain, after all, was not Chinese not at all that long ago. Of course, the Chinese demonstrated very effectively just what hopes any non-industrialized nation has of repelling industrialized invaders.
Exactly , this is a global economy now , no more isolation , this means in order for us to evolve the rest of the world needs to come to our level , or we need to evolve to the standards of another country.
You know when the economy was biggest and most "global" (max. international trade) in the first part of the 20th century ? 1914. In 1939 it was not at the level of 1914, but it was the high point of several decades.
Historically I'm afraid you're going to find historical evidence for interconnected global economy preventing war ... somewhat lacking ... to say the least.
Actually any sane person should not make the mistake that population size is going to matter much in the 21st century. In fact, it seems to me population will be a serious handicap (as it has been in the past too, and not just in extreme examples like Rwanda). Truly bad news for human rights, and, well anyone alive really, but computers and machines are a hell of a lot cheaper, more flexible and more reliable than humans.
"Read Chinese history and see if this happened before by any chance" ...
Although, if you want a good night sleep, it might be adviseable not to do so. China looks damned huge on a map, doesn't it ? I wonder how much those borders changed in 100 years ... (again, if you want a good night sleep, don't check)
Realistically, there are tons of situations that are powder kegs. There's always the middle east, but there's also the muslim situation in Northern Europe, and frankly if the economy doesn't recover there will soon be a "latin" situation in southern united states. Russia is another powder keg, controlling much of the energy supply of Europe (without which much of Europe would be uninhabitable to 90% of it's population don't forget). There's the enormous tension between "the gulf" of the middle east and Iran (and let's not forget, Iran has a barely functioning army, which beats the crap out of the "no army" approach of the gulf for obvious reasons). Iraq, thanks to Bush, is stabilizing for now. Everybody knows that it doesn't take much to blow that keg. Pakistan, and especially India and China's reaction to Pakistani agression (which are constant) are another wild card.
It seems likely that at least one keg will blow up. It seems likely that will happen soon.
Still does not say anything about stoning a Jewish person who has had sex with a non-Jew, nor anything about stoning the non-Jewish partner. Unfortunately, wishing something to be true does not make it true.
As we probably both know, stoning to death is the punishment for any kind of sex except as regulated by Judaic law ... Any non-legal sex.
Why don't you explain to me whether it is "legal" for a Jew to have sex with a non-Jew (excepting, of course, a Jewish man sleeping with a non-Jewish female "servant" (a word that might just as easily be translated as slave*)) ...
Actually, the exact same standard (two upstanding male Jewish witnesses) is necessary to inflict any punishment on a woman.
Why don't you first clarify your own belief. Does Judaism, YES OR NO, demand that people be stoned for very minor crimes ?
Let's face it, your statement would mean that a beth din court would not accept it proven that someone had sex if she was pregnant. Do you, yes or no, find that realistic ?
Incidentally ... what is the punishment for theft according to you ? Say, a hungry orphan steals a loaf of bread ?
And what, pray tell, is all this bullshit I hear about eyes ? How exactly, and I mean exactly, are car accidents dealt with according to toraic law.
* I fully accept that the Judaic concept of slavery is infinitely preferable to, for example, the islamic or even hindu concept of same, but it's still there. Yes, there is the "max 7 years" and the requirement for "some" form of payment, but it's still involuntary servitude)
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this paragraph. Should the Sanhedrin be re-established (b'meheira b'yameinu) I will submit completely to its judgments.
An interesting question : do you accept the judgements of the "grand sanhedrin", called by Napoleon ? Why/why not ?
So why don't you answer a very simple question. Since you don't care about the other religions, let's just focus on islam :
1) whose actions are the definition of morality in islam
2) did that person (yes or no) rape a minor girl (less than or exactly 9 years old)
3) did 2) take place with or without consent of the girl ?
4) did that person rape someone he abducted and then "owned" ? (yes or no)
5) did said person trade in people ? yes or no
6) did said person force "traded" people to prostitute themselves for his own profit ? yes or no
7) do present-day moderate muslims, yes-or-no, accept the blatant immorality of these acts and how they reflect on the character of this person ?
I wonder, truly, if you have the courage to answer these questions ...
The funny thing is that one thing is never found in energy contingency plans :
renewables
Everyone knows why, yet political correctness demands we say "it's a conspiracy by those evil rich (white) capitalists !". When has the world gone mad ? And why ...
And before you ask : my stance on renewables is the same as on fusion. Ready for more research ? Good potential ? Certainly. Ready to get even a single unit installed (barring exceptional applications) : no. Not in 10 years either.
That anyone can defend Hamas, et al is just stupefying.
Once you realize that for many people their ideology is much more important than the very lives of others, it stops being stupefying. It starts being something else, though. Of course if "not killing others" took precedence of fake but "lofty" ideals we wouldn't have many greens, lefties or even muslims (well you sure as hell wouldn't have any "political muslims", which is presumed to be somehow different from just plain "muslims", though no-one ever cares to specify different how exactly).
Surely you've got an answer to these, very important questions :
1) you talk as if you've got 100% assurances that terrorists never hurt anyone. Explain how 9/11 fits in this view, without using the words "Bush did it". Then expand to the constant terror attacks experienced before and after 9/11
2) since you will obviously fail to answer 1) satisfactorily, you can still save your skin by explaining exactly how you'll prevent other people (whether that'd be terrorists, Iran, enemy countries like North Korea or others) from acquiring them and using them against American troops. If not, please explain to the troops why they have to risk their lives for you while you're refusing to give them the same weapons as the enemy you ("congress" ~= you, at least that's democratic theory, right ?) want them to fight
3) you're bigoted against technology. A stable, portentially 24/7 present platform, anywhere in the sky. Now I'm sure I don't really need to explain what advantages that has, other than "killing people", correct ? Mapmaking
Sorry but I refuse to take my facts from a site that does not consider "creating economic justice" a tax, and that considers "making companies pay for the environmental damage they cause" anything other than a way to increase taxes and to blame those "evil companies" for the resulting price hike (since obviously it's keeping people alive and happy, also called 'the economy', that's causing the environmental problems, and companies are only a barely significant part of the equation). It is beyond obvious that the dates chosen for comparison, which fail to match those of any official institutions, are meant to cherry-pick data.
I fear that it's not so much "reality" that shows it's "liberal bias" on this site, but something else. Someone's dishonesty.
There's no such thing as an isolated morality. I.e., there is no personal morality. We might believe that our personal sense of right and wrong exists apart from society, but this is false.
This, we agree on.
UN soldiers get to rape, or kill Israelis through stupidity or outright malice, without reprecussions in New York
And Israeli soldiers get to kill Palestinians in the West Bank without any repercussions. Same with Blackwater guards and Iraqi civilians in Iraq. Same with US soldiers in Okinawa. With the Japanese soldiers and Chinese women. Angola. Ghana. Brazil.
We all know which of these statements are propaganda, and which are not. Again, no army is perfect, but that does not imply that the moral standards of the IDF and of the palestinian "civilians" of Hamas and Fatah are comparable.
Good does not equal evil, simply because good people do not always chose optimally for everyone, nor does evil become good through deceptive actions (e.g. saladin, who reintroduced slavery to the holy land, was not "good", because he set one hungry widow with child free from her slave contract as a prostitute-slave to a wealthy arab, and provided her with food. He is as evil as all other muslims*)
* muslim meaning someone who believes in the morality of islam, which obviously cannot be seen apart from it's stance of slavery, including it's stance of using female slaves as prostitutes, except by the blatantly dishonest
In addition to evil people using deception, sometimes they simply screw up. The only reason America managed to establish a beachhead at Normandy was the failure of a nazi tank commander to pass on critical defense data. We all know the amount of human suffering and self-sacrifice it took to breach unprepared nazi lines, think of what it would have taken if they had been prepared.
The thing in common? They all *abused* their power over the helpless. Whether it's a single male raping a single woman or mass rape and murder in the list above, it was all about the strong victimizing the weak. So no, the morality of the police/military force is worse than any individuals.
Then you should praise God that you live in 21st century America. You see, even 250 years ago it was not possible for the executive authority (that's the police) to abuse their power over the helpless. You see, their actions were the *definition* of morally right ("L'etat ? C'est moi" and the implied "Dieu ? C'est moi") in all earlier centuries.
The function of the police, in western societies, is by the way exactly that : an application of Christian moral ethics. Protecting the weak from the strong is something that you will not find in many religions at all. Of the "big ones", only Christianity and Bushido even mention it. Needless to say, of the "pseudo"-religions, like communism, you won't find this either. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, ... all do the exact opposite : the only protection is provided to (specific) strong people, and they are free to attack, rape and rob the weak at will (slaves and "dhimmis" in islam, slaves and non-buddhists in buddhism, dalits in hinduism, ...). Islam is even worse : sharia is very explicit that the caliph (and the whole state structure) is 100% at liberty to execute, on the spot, anyone it deems dangerous to itself.
Christianity, btw, claims that a second kind of protection must be guaranteed as well : the protection of the individual (and it's very specific : esp. rich individuals *and* their property) from the many.
One act's morality does not equal another act's morality. In fact I daresay there are no 2 actions that have the same moral dimension. Specifically your moral equivalence is beyond stupid : the actions of the occasional enlisted lunatic do NOT equal a popular policy, followed by most of the population, of religious genocide, as palestinians follow. Or more precisely, as palestinians claim islam mandates (a
Nature = everything that existed (or could have existed) before the first "artificial" thing was created by the first intelligent human (/or other species for that matter)
Atoms are certainly part of it.
What I would like to see is a reduction over 60 years (3 generations) down to about 2 billion people. Which is somehow accomplished with a magical wand that oppresses no one. I think we are on a doomsday track right now.
What can be accomplished with absolute (100%) birth control :
A 10% reduction in world population by 2050. Say 16% in 60 years (that's VERY generous).
You want a reduction by 4 billion. By using the massive necessary violence to stop people having children you can cause a reduction by a little under 1 billion.
So 75% of your target can only be accomplished by genocide. 3 billion people. Congratulations, you're worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the muslim prophet combined (the largest mass-murderer, the muslim "prophet" and his jihad, is only responsible for about 1 billion dead corpses, you want 3 billion corpses).
Your argument on the morality of the police's actions (and cooperating with them) is flawed because you base that morality on the morality of the general public and their laws as if they are infallible. Additionally, you need to evaluate each act of cooperation individually. If Blizzard volunteered information that lead a peaceful Chinese dissident to be arrested, most people would think that would be immoral. On the other hand, if Blizzard volunteered information that lead a child pornographer to be arrested, most people would think that would be moral. Still others would view both as immoral because Blizzard should have an inherent duty to protect information and our system already provides a mechanism (a warrant) to get that information when it is needed.
Your argument only makes sense if you assume that your own morality beats out the morality of our laws, and consistently does so. If that were true, surely you could provide examples of this. How you in your daily life violate the law, go to jail for it, and still have better morality than everyone else. Surely you can provide a few examples of YOU doing this if this is true ... You demand perfect moral behavior from the police, so surely you'll understand that as you try to do some law-enforcement of your own, I demand the same perfect moral standard from you. Needless to say, you fail (as we all do).
I don't understand how people can seriously demand this perfect morality from so many organisations. From the police, to congress, the army, (the UN has consistently failed to uphold every moral standard in existence, so people stopped expecting them to, it seems. UN soldiers get to rape, or kill Israelis through stupidity or outright malice, without reprecussions in New York)
Furthermore even if you were a martyr-knight-saint, justification for your opinion would not just require that you're such a saint, but that sufficiently large numbers of people (ie. nearly all) have such saintly better-than-our-laws behavior. Sufficiently large numbers meaning so large that most criminals would be caught, most crimes prevented, not by the law, but by normal citizens.
Obviously this is not happening. That makes, imho, the moral thing to do becomes cooperation with the authorities, in all cases, even when you're not sure about the morality of their actions.
To be a good moral guardian, the law/police/... does not need to be perfect. It needs to be better than average. It needs to catch more criminals that John Q. Public does. It needs to prevent more crimes than an average very, very non-special American does.
And quite frankly, I have little illusions about the morality of the police force. But I am absolutely convinced they do better than you.
A trivial piece of software should be installable without admin privileges.
I think the problem is not so much the good/bad trivial/complicated distinction in the software that is important, but the good/bad trivial/complicated distinction in the programmer/admin.
After all, the parent poster is right, most software is perfectly installable as a non-admin. It just takes an above-average programmer.
Actually due to that gigantic thermonuclear reactor floating in the sky that constantly fires ridiculously massive amounts of high-energy charged particles at us, that might be a problem.
The northern lights aren't the only fenomenon that's caused by the north pole attracting those particles.
This could very well cause a shift in climate.