The statistical null hypothesis of constant temperature is easily rejected. So this is just false.
Have you ever even once done this ? The statistical constant null hypothesis will be 95% certain for a specific range, for any dataset (as long as one accepts your practice of just throwing random formulas at datasets that don't actually satisfy their axioms as valid). As it happens, that range is about 4 degrees celcius (smaller even if you exclude the ice ages) over the last 100k years. If you were to make the case that some enormous force kept the temperature within a certain relatively small limit, there would be a lot of support for that.
Just for the record : I fully agree that the above method is wrong. It doesn't make sense mathematically, and there is no way in hell that range is 95% certain. However, it's calculated by throwing wrong mathematical formulas at a problem, which you are saying yields valid results. Besides, if you get to draw a trendline through the past 150 years and proclaim that the temperature follows that trend, then surely I get to draw one through the last 100k years ?
Just to summarize: last 10 years : pretty much constant last 100 years : small rise in temperature, the trendline shows a tiny inclination (much smaller than global warming) last 150 years : clearly rising temperature trendline (ie. the global warming trendline) last 1000 years : temperature dropping according to trendline last 10000 years : massive rise in temperature last 100000 years : nothing to see here, trendline is very close to straight
This is exactly what you'd expect to see for a chaotic variable of course. Why don't you tell me which trendline is valid, and give me a single good reason why it's that one and no other.
On the contrary, nobody to date has come anywhere close to explaining temperature changes in the past arising from factors such as changes in the sun's output or the earth's orbit, temperatures on other planets, responses to "natural experiments" such as volcanoes, or even explaining why the earth is not much colder than it is, without a substantial role for CO2--a role that was predicted over 100 years ago based upon basic radiation physics. And the best you can do is appeal to imagined magical properties of chaotic mechanisms.
As you've demonstrated before, the fact that you can't explain fluctuations doesn't bother you for your global warming theory. Why should it bother me in mine ? It "averages out", doesn't it ? You claim everything, even the weather averages out, you even go so far as claiming that chaotic fluctuations (which are by definition not bound) average out. I mean seriously. And you actually criticize someone else for ignoring a few fluctuations ?
I've yet to see the first paper explain why the temperature suddenly dropped in 1998 (aside from listing 6 factors that supposedly coincided until you actually look at them, in fairness we don't know what happened. Nothing spectacular seems to have happened, and yet there was a massive worldwide change). There is the additional question of why it took scientists until 2002 to see there was a drop in 1998. If their theories are so good why can't they even predict the recent past is a real trend or simply a fluke ? I mean these theories are supposed to be 98% accurate 100 years in the future, so the past doesn't seem to me such a challenge.
Although of course if you just use statistical formulas on a chaotic system, I can understand perfectly well why you don't understand a thing about the system. You know, it seemed fun, so I tried statistics on the strange attractor system in 5 configurations specifically chosen not to escape to infinity any time soon (that took some time, just finding those that were relatively stable). And I checked the average position : and just what I expected happened : the average will take on nearly every possible position at some point on time, and it thus is exactly as accurate as taking
The nonsensical expression "simulated variable" does not occur anywhere int he passage that you quoted. So that's a FAIL.
I guess you must have hidden it on one of the many "earths".
You don't understand chaos at all do you. "A degree of accuracy in the starting conditions that is not achievable with real-world measurements" makes it sound like next year's model will solve it. As for monte-carlo analysis (just run the wrong prediction many times and average the mistakes, assuming weather is unidimensional and linear, aka. how we arrive at global warming prediction) it's just as worthless as a single run. You're making the idiotic mistake that the average of 2 chaotic runs is somehow more likely to happen than either of the runs themselves. Same principle applies to any arbitrary number of simulations.
Believe it or not, one piece of wrong data is exactly as useful as a billion trillion pieces of wrong data. Not useful at all. You can't take wrong data, average it, and have something useful come out.
Sure, there is stored energy, but none of these energy reservoirs are infinite in capacity, and there are consequences to pumping more energy into them, and all of the energy ultimately has to end up as heat, due to the Second Law
Ok, fair enough... until of course you look at that little word there... "ultimately"... the earth has been releasing stored energy for 5 billion years now and it still stores far more than the sum total of what it released. What global warming adds to the athmosphere alone is a drop on a hot plate, and in reality that addition is spread out into many systems.
I wonder how you'd reply to the obvious counter-statement. You're allowed to take some statistics of obviously wrong values and proclaim them gospel truth, so can I please do the same ? The temperature in the last 100.000 years has been close to constant. It has barely risen with much more co2 than we have today, has warmed up with much more oxygen in the air than we have today, in short, it's historically shown itself supremely indifferent to this co2 gas... (or more accurately, the co2/o2 balance) except for the last 150 years. Why doesn't that mean that something else is causing the warming and the co2 increase is just a consequence of whatever is really happening ? After all, if the situation is more co2 -> hotter, then it is beyond easy to name 30 counterexamples from the last 20000 years alone.
I'm guessing we'll be seeing the appeal to authority fallacy here, despite the fact that this guy proclaims science doesn't work like that.
Riiiiight. Please quote any paragraph in which I used the nonsensical expression "simulated variable."
Okay:
A proper statistical trend analysis will result in a best estimate of the trend (which may be warming or cooling) given the available data, as well as confidence limits on that trend--a measure of how much the estimated trend would be expected to vary if that observation could be repeated (i.e. if you had a population of earths with a similar climate trend but with different weather, each of which could be identically sampled over the same time period using the same methodology)
Let me guess, this is not really simulation ? Or it "just seems" ridiculous, perhaps ? Or are you perhaps trying to say that weather is random, but averages out "in the end" ? Or perhaps you just really suck in communication, and the idea behind it was in actuality kinda good ?
The notion that statistics cannot be applied to chaotic systems is also foolish. In fact, most of the things to which we apply statistics are chaotic in a physical sense.
Let me guess, your point is that you can calculate using the same formulas in chaotic systems but the predictions become worthless, and so "they can be applied" ? They can be applied to chaotic systems in the same sense that a hammer can be applied to cake, yes. Usefully ? No. But yeah, numbers, formulas hey let's go crazy. Whether you'll be accomplishing anything more than a cat with a calculator is another matter.
Fortunately, this matters only over short periods of time, because the earth must ultimately come to radiative balance. In the long term, energy in has to equal energy out. And a consequence of the second law is that all energy input eventually ends up as heat.
Pray tell, has this happened at any time during the earth's entire lifetime ? It needs to happen before the universe ends, yes (probably, in the sense that that seems intuitively right). But we have quite a bit of time to go before then. Long before the earth comes to radiative balance, all life will be extinct, as life itself IS a radiative imbalance on earth. But so is anything that moves on our little blue globe, from massive global ocean currents to treeleaves moving in the wind. Have they ever stopped ? Are you seriously going to make the claim that radiative imbalance is a temporary thing (in the "short" term - as in less than billions of years). Note that the energy stored in ocean currents alone far exceeds the total energy that global warming has added to the earth in the last 2 centuries, and this amount of energy has been shown to vary wildly from year to year.
You keep making these hugely large assumptions without giving any credit to the fact that you're doing so, even denying it.
The temperature record has a standard deviation. It is a simple mathematical calculation, as you've described.
No, it does not. Really. The theoretical properties that prevent this go much further. It is impossible to even theoretically describe a temperature measurement that does have a variance. In order for a variable to have a standard deviations you must have identical repeat measurements taken under identical conditions. The measurements don't quite live up to that standard.
So a derivation of temperature variance from first principles will... run stuck. There is no answer to this question, at all.
You are the one using the "simulated" terminology for variables.
I suspect that this is another term that you do not actually understand. Physical modeling of the roll of the dice can readily be done, with no randomness involved. It's pretty straightforward physics. But it ends up having such a sensitive dependence on boundary conditions that such a model is pretty much useless for practical purposes--a statistical description turns out to be more useful in practice, for dice as for many phenomena in the real world (e.g. short term weather variations).
So wait... I claim that accurate physical modeling of a dice roll is not possible. You claim it is. You're "right" despite the fact that you agree such models cannot actually predict dice rolls... Pray tell, what is the definition of a physical model again ? It wouldn't happen to involve accurate predictions now would it ?
The right answer is that dice rolls behave chaotic, they're designed that way. And there is not a single mathematically valid way to narrow the list of values from it's universe, in this case { 1,2,3,4,5,6 }. Of course, with an (ideal) dice you can do repeated experiments, which depend on a large series of boolean conditions, resulting in a high-N binomial distribution (NOT a normal one...), which can be accurately approximated using a normal distribution (which is very different from being normally distributed).
Now what is a temperature sensor measuring ? Well essentially it's measuring brownian motion inside the sensor, which depends on the number and speed of collisions with outside gas molecules which just happen to pass by. Now how is the speed of those gas molecules distributed ? The only way a temperature sensor could work is if they're fully thermalized (if their entropy is maximal). Remember the last time someone said there was a real nice cool breeze ? Ever noticed breezes disappear when you crossed a building corner ? What does that tell you about how thermalized normal gas molecules are ? The reason no-one is making tiny temperature sensors is that they're not stable... And that's caused by the nature of what you're measuring, not by the sensor. The small sensors really are more accurately telling you the brownian motion. The more accurate they are... the more extreme their ranges will be in the same circumstances. If smaller, more sensitive sensors are less stable than their bigger clunkier less accurate brothers... then what happens to this equation ?
for all e > 0 there exists a sufficiently large n such that |sum(X1, X2,... Xn)/n - m| 0K there exists an atom in our atmosphere that has that temperature (ie. that speed)
Is it the same problem as dice rolls ? No, it has the added problem that you can't actually repeat an experiment. Measuring the temperature 5 times measures 5 completely different things. At day and at night, to give an intuitive example. So measuring temperature more often does not actually yield multiple measurements of the same experiment... you're just performing a lot of different experiments.
The question is whether the increase satisfies the technical criterion of "statistical significance"
You don't think that this sort of remark... might be part of the reason global warming has such a bad rep. Let's run you through a basic application of statistical science here.
When we make a measurement, you're essentially placing a sensor in a noisy environment. If we make the wrong assumption that the noise is random (this is wrong, but hopefully close enough. Yes, hopefully). So you take many measurements and use a number of techniques to fix this data, including several that are essentially fraud (I can see the guy at this station wasn't taking his medicine these days, let's just drop that data - type of "fixing"). Then you test a hypothesis against that data. This does not result in "a warming trend" or "a cooling trend" it results in 2 numbers : chance that the temperature has risen -> p, chance that the temperature has not risen -> !p (hey sue me, slashdot does not implement latex and I'm not about to look up the correct UTF symbol for not). You might also calculate a value "q", the chance that the temperature has dropped. And this also gives you !q.
What may amaze you is that p > !p AND q > !q. So we're dealing with a guess here. The convention is that unless p > 95%, we don't say temperature has risen. For most data sets, p 50%).
Note that even this 95% is a concession of the scientific world to statistical sciences, and there's a huge problem with statistical sciences. By contrast, the canonical example of an exact science, physics, only considers a measurement reasonable when it passes a significance of six sigma (which is 99.9999998027% certain). That is *NOT* enough to declare something the truth within physics, the only thing that is enough for that is a mathematically consistent theory that passes repeatable experiments (and even then it usually takes 10 years or more).
Read that link. Think about the fact that climate science is in fact much more limited in what it can experiment with than medical science. Experiments are impossible. Today's data is unreliable to the point where ~10% of the data points are flat-out wrong before correction. Data going back thousands of years is used, and nobody really knows it's reliability (and the tree ring issue certainly seems to suggest a lot of factors we don't know are at play here)...
So can you please understand that if it's not statistically significant, it didn't happen. Credibility is a huge problem already, please don't screw it by being wrong 50% of the time. No, not even if you mean well.
Maybe... and I'm just venturing a guess here. The answer is in the very first message of this thread.
Once the sky falls enough for a piece to hit you in the head, then it's too late to prevent its complete collapse. So do we want to prevent it from falling, or not?
When meteorite strikes start getting blamed on global warming... don't you think it may be time to tone it down a notch ?
The conclusions they have come to, as a massive consensus, is that AGW is very much real and significant, and cannot be explained away by natural means.
Even you are talking in hyperbole. Avoid words like "massive", do not use the term AGW after you've expressed doubt that it's anthropogenic.
I do have a question about global warming. Unless I'm massively misreading just about all papers on the subject, global warming is a feedback loop. There's a hundred factors, but by far the biggest one is temp -> more h2o -> more temp -> more h2o and we're essentially screwed until that one runs it's course, which is expected to happen by 2150. This feedback loop started between 1830 and 1890, so I doubt my grandfather knew anyone who had anything to do with it when he was a toddler. This is an effect that explains ~90% of the temperature change, 3 times bigger than the co2 effect, ~80% of which is another ocean-related feedback loop cause by rising temperatures. Now call me insane, but doesn't that mean that if every human dropped dead tonight after carefully shutting down all appliances and power plants, global warming will run >95% of it's course anyway ? So essentially my question is what, exactly, will a small decrease in co2 emissions help when a drop to zero would hardly do anything ?
A second question I have is with how we select theories to believe. IPCC has made 5 reports now, 4 of which predict the temperature variation 100 years out. Aside from the fact that I detest the way they arrive at their conclusions. The first IPCC report predicted a temperature anomaly and a 95% certainty interval. Guess what. We're below that 95% certainty interval. The second, likewise. Third, likewise. The fourth, we're at the very bottom of the confidence interval... But I said there were 5, didn't I ? Well the 5th... no longer has a prediction.
Exactly how old does the IPCC think I am ? I realize they're better scientists than me, granted, but that people who pulled the above stunt call themselves scientists... baffles me. I was taught at university to base my faith in theories on their predictive ability in the past... well you blew it. Try for another 20 years, get it right this time, and get back to me and I'll be their staunchest defender... but... It's really really really hard to defend this.
Furthermore, the way the IPCC arrives at conclusions (and the reason scientists don't care about their track record) is the following : they take ~20 studies (the number of studies dropped with every report though), and average out the mean and standard deviation (you have done enough math, I'm sure, to know the mathematical validity of averaging out standard deviations is, have you not ?) of 20 studies that ran simulations nobody has any reasonable hope of duplicating, even if the source data was available.
The reason scientists don't care, aside from the money argument, is that they base their theories on individual theories that have been refined, and did indeed drop all of the theories that first report was based on. But as I said, the IPCC is no longer including any theories at all... wtf ?
Furthermore the people defending AGW on the street and in papers are, and you have my sincerest apologies in advance, MORONS. The supporters of AGW are the biggest enemy of rational debate here. They don't know what a derivative equation is yet defend f^100(x) like a taliban defends allah's orders to eradicate all gays.
I do address it. I explicitly say that apple's software is better than ICS.
My point was that apple went into 2011 winning most, if not all "mine's bigger than yours" contests. It's had to give up every last one of them. iPhones are no longer the biggest, lightest, heaviest (if that's your fancy), brightest, best display in sunlight, longest battery life, fastest 3/4G/LTE/... best camera, best zoom, best video playback, best... Right now they're "low side of the high end" on all of those with their latest model. And yes, absolutely, they've managed to hold on to "best total package" (your "what's the device you like to use ?" spec).
I was hoping it wouldn't be so controversial an idea that Google is going to beat apple at programming effective and simple systems. That seems a no-brainer to me. And while Google's development environment for phones sucks, it doesn't suck nearly as bad as Apple's (you can build an android app in less time than it takes to build an equivalent ios app and with less frustration, although it has to be said that m$ beats google at this game. There's no real comparison between visual studio and eclipse : studio wins hands down).
Keep in mind that the numbers from Google come from the Oracle settlement offer. They are years out of date, and google would want them to have been as low as the judge would possibly accept. It makes one wonder what google left out, and you can be sure that they're profit figures, not revenue figures too.
It is also a bit strange to use profit numbers that you just know are from the previous fiscal years only with the cumulative phones count for one more year. Given android's exponential growth, every year more handsets are sold than all the years before. So that's at least a factor 2 right there. I am not saying google makes as much as apple does from selling phones. But it's a lot more than the article lets on. I would also keep in mind that google does not need to actually design or distribute hardware, they leave that to others.
And last, I would like to contend that while apple had the technological advantage in the market up until last year (and these figures are older). If anyone failed to notice, the best iPhone was top of the line in every spec, from screen size, camera, memory, gpu,... and that's far from true anymore. Since last year, every answer to the a best-specification question has been some android phone. The phone with the largest screen -> android. Best screen in sunlight -> android. The phone with the best camera -> android. The phone with the most memory -> android. The phone with the fastest cpu -> android. Best 3d performance -> android. While apple still has best specs on tablet (although the iPad3 design does show they're desperate : it's thermal package is at the very edge of what is reasonable, and their power usage is huge), their advantage their is also waning and I seriously doubt it will survive 2012.
So apple started 2011 with the best phone available, no matter your criteria. Compared to that Apple's 2012 start is at most the "best styled full package" or something to that effect. Siri is all but a failure (given that you know it was meant to replace google search on iPhone... it's a dismal failure), and one wonders what will remain of apple's advantage by 2012. Even in 2012 you've got to admit that there were android phones (SGS2, Nexus) that beat apple's hardware style, and arguably the Nexus beat apple both on the software and hardware. I agree that with the nexus, the software quality, while much improved, is still debatable wether it beats IOS. I doubt that by the end of 2012 it will still be debatable whether android or ios will be best.
Google is getting close to beating apple without having their act decently together. The real question is whether google's or apple's programmers are the best ones... and frankly, I don't think it's even a contest. Given the fact that google loves developers (mostly) and apple... well, frankly, hate them, I find this a very positive thing.
By the way: perhaps a better way to put my point is this:
An ideal Christian does not kill, not even to protect his own life. He or she will only fight to protect others, and try to avoid killing at all costs. An ideal Christian believes that every human is equal in the eyes of God, including men and women. An ideal Christian believes that everybody should make his own choices, including whether or not to be a Christian, with the exception that no trades should be done with such people if it can be avoided, because that would provide an obvious loophole. This includes gays. That's what's enshrined in Canon law.
The prophet is the ideal muslim. That is what sharia enshrines. This means an ideal muslim buys and sells slaves with the intention of making a profit, sometimes killing a few to ensure obedience (read the camel piss crucifixion story). An ideal muslim will rape (female) slaves, for fun, or hurt them, or kill them, for his own enjoyment. He buys and sells marriage contracts, even in the case where the contract was explicitly made to have sex with an 8 year old girl against her will (and 8 is generous, most accounts say 6 years old, and there's the little detail that 3 of the 5 schools agree that a muslim is perfectly okay if he rapes a baby. Google "thighing" if you're not easily disgusted). A good muslim lies and deceives others with the intent to cause wars between them, if it will advance his ideology. He fights wars himself. He uses and signs peace treaties, but does not abide by their terms, using them merely as a means of deception. He commits genocide, if it advances his purpose, and in general against any follower of any non-abrahamic religion. He even kills other muslims for perceived flaws in their understanding of the ideology of islam.
That's the point I'm making. The truth is simple : most Christians do not live up to the standard set by Jesus (whether most or all is the right word, is not so relevant here, I like to think some lucky ones actually achieve it). Why ? Because they cannot control themselves enough, or they are forced into situations where they can't live up to his example (Canon law codifies this : as long as you make the best possible choice in imperfect situations, you're perfectly fine. With a few exceptions, like that every death is a sin, no matter how justified, and requires you to ask forgiveness). In a sense, canon law is a moral standard you cannot seriously hope to achieve, and it is accepted you'll never get there, but you should always keep trying.
Likewise, most muslims do not live up to the standard of the prophet. But not because they're morally worse than the prophet. Because they perfectly agree that the acts of the prophet were monstrous and disgusting. This is where the difference between an average muslim and an extremist really is. An average muslim is what one would call a cryptochristian, who strives to achieve the values Jesus Christ embodies, but doesn't feel part of the community of Christians at all. But they'd never consider killing anyone, no matter how directly sharia embodies it. They will not demand revenge-killing, even when they have a right to it. And they will deny and talk around the issue when confronted with it directly. They will accuse you of having falsified the quran, or the hadith, knowing full well that if they'd check, they'd find the exact same text. And they'll simply try to forget this. You can literally find accounts a millenia old recounting this process and it's still true today. Extremist muslims accept islam for what it is, and follow the guidance of the prophet, and plot and help terrorist or kill others themselves. They will sell and buy women, and then do with them whatever they care to, beating them, raping them. They will treat anyone that works for them as slaves, literally. What I don't agree with is that these extremists are a tiny minority. Yes, they are a minority, but they easily represent 10-20% of all muslims, and they are the backbone of the faith. They, and the rabid attacks they immediately
You neglected to answer the question. Do you hate America enough to consider tolerating islam ? To consider "toleration" to include a genocide on gays. That was the original question.
Your post seems to indicate that you think America imprisoning criminals is worse somehow than genocides on gays, raping children (sharia sanctifies the rape of minors, as long as they're female slaves or within marriage), slavery, including hunting slaves for sport or crucifying them just to seem them suffer. The paedophile prophet did all that.
So why don't you answer the question ? Do you support that "because America does worse in prisons" ? Or for whatever other reason ?
Inquisitions : the first time in history people were given a trial before the government would put them to death. The inquisition also made a point of actually letting the defendant talk to their accusers, and advising them of their rights and duties before the trial. It was also the first time ever in history that a rules (as in a single person) didn't have all 3 powers fully in hand (as in even the king had to convince 2 other people before he could have someone executed publically). Yes, they considered protestantism a crime, and a majority of Americans have those in the family. (Sorry, I studied law, and when it comes to legal history, the spanish inquisition is a bit of a hero)
Brutal middle ages. The Roman economy disappeared and thus it gradually became impossible to feed more than 20-30% of the population. In addition medicine and fresh water fell away after it had been available for centuries. The age was certainly brutal, but frankly, what could anyone have done about this ? There was no way to save even 50% of the population. Do you seriously expect such a thing to happen peacefully ?
There is only one nominally Christian organisation that ever engaged in state sanctioned slavery, and even they felt the need to keep it secret. The east india trading company. They did a lot of other things that most definitely violated canon law, like piracy. The other Chrsitian countries started 3 wars in response to this, and for the Pope the reason was it's acknowledgement of slavery. Is that's what you call supporting slavery ? Do I mean that there never was a single Christian that sold slaves ? No of course not. (buying them to free them is encouraged in canon law, selling them or putting them to work is punishable by death if you're a Christian. For a fun story of how exactly the bible sees this, read up on the history of the heart symbol, specifically it's Roman origin. Besides, you'll love the story. It originally was the logo of a Roman brothel-chain whose owner converted to Christianity and...)
Christian law outlaws slavery, and the only "support" of slavery in canon law is a prohibition on using large-scale violence to end slavery.
Sharia law enshrines slavery, the kidnapping of people into slavery, selling slaves, including children, for sex, for hunting, for whatever you want.
That is identical according to you ? Do you have a brain ?
It's a difference of extent, not position. The islamists have the same political views as the most conservative christians, but greatly intensified and taken to the extreme.
No they don't. There are many fundamental differences, like the fact that Christians don't kill except to prevent worse (as a general principle I mean, I don't mean this in the extreme). Muslims on the other hand practice revenge killing (again, I'm talking about sharia versus canon law).
Or how about a very "Amerian" difference : muslims are capitalists to the extreme, much more so than the most extreme Americans. Muslims sell forced marriages (think that's bad ? their prophet did it, so are you accusing him of being a monster ?), people (ie. they're slavers). Children, life, death, pleasure, sex, people, everything is for sale in islam..., whereas you'll find conservative Christians are somewhere between mercantilists and socialists, and even what one would call extremely capitalist christians consider most of those things entirely off limits : you cannot buy people, sex, and only limited pleasures... if they are making the rules.
You simply don't know, probably. One of the things the Iranian government lets their officials do is sell sex through contracts. That's not just tolerated either, that's how things are done. They're just much more modern about it compared to every other muslim society : you see, the women these Iranian officials sell have freely chosen to do that (motivated by money of course, but they could have said no, nobody would have used violence against them), and they pay these officials a comission that's also specified in a contract. These prostitutes "temporarily marry" their clients.
This is a great point of contention, you see Saudi's don't agree with this practice. A woman, according to Saudis does not have a legal person, and so any conditions in the contract that give the woman rights are illegal, for they interfere with a deeper law. This time limit is considered such an additional right : it allows a woman a way out of marriage without the man's consent.
No, no, no, temporary marriages are forbidden (punished by death, too) in Saudi Arabia. You can only use slave women for prostitution in Saudi Arabia. Which of course does not prevent them from having prostitution. They just "employ" those women : they "hire" them, take away their passports, money, everything, lock them up and rent them out. This is not considered a sin, or against the law in any way.
These are not tiny subtleties as you probably agree. And this is just a basic beginning, there's much more differences.
And this is only 2 religions. There's hundreds of different religions on this planet, most have various positions on the above issues. All are different, and I can absolutely guarantee you'll hate all of them. The most modern one by far is Christianity, despite the fact that it's hardly the youngest one (most religions are less than 500 years old, most small religions less than 200). Also very weird is that most religions except the very largest ones are being systematically eradicated, and yes, mostly by "the west". Most religions are not losing to atheism, but mostly to Christianity with a smaller number losing to islam, like local religions in most of Indonesia for example. We live in very weird times and we're fast approaching a situation where the vast majority of the people on this planet will believe in Jesus or allah (~ 80%), with a significant but not overwhelming numerical advantage for Jesus. Atheists are not even third in the list, with only a few hundred million.
Besides, we all know the internet. If you think about it, is it really possible to avoid porn on the internet ? I mean completely ?
I'm not in favour of a ban, in fact I'm very much against it. But it would be nice to have some normal, easy way avoid those banners at least. But I seriously doubt a ban would be an improvement. But it would be great if there would be a page that asked for permission to put those ads on you. And a page, not like those "would you like to continue" pages filled with naked women, that completely defeats the purpose of such a page, spammed onto fora that have nothing to do with that subject (really what does a porn site link do on an RC forum ? Wtf ?)
But yeah, a ban would make things a lot worse, not better.
First, I would like to say to anyone who looks for moral judgement in the following story is deluded. I would just like to call attention to the bigger picture and the bigger political situation that surrounded the Iranian revolution. No 2 situations are alike, but the Iranian and Egyptian "revolutions" are close than you give them credit for.
The Iranian revolution was very similar, just a slightly different promise made by "progressive" Iranians. They main promise was a better justice system, a less corrupt government, a more progressive form of government, tolerant of all, preferring no-one (muslim theocrats massacrers promising and demanding tolerance and fairness, sound strange ? It shouldn't). The one thing that united revolutionaries in 1972 in Iran was outing the shah.
The mullahs simply convinced the international community and most of the rest of the revolutionaries they wanted to introduce "a moderate form of" communism (anyone with half a brain knows the history between islam and communism and would never have fallen for this but that didn't include the communists. And as we've seen these guys do not know anything about moderation at all). Without the support this garnered, the revolution would never have succeeded. They were a minority in the revolution, after the fall of the shah, but they would attack anyone who even slightly opposed them like rabid dogs. They would kill off entire demonstrations for less than good reasons. Needless to say, when confronted with actual street violence, as opposed to an organised corrupt justice system (which still gave everyone they possibly could a hearing - just not a fair one). It turned out all those chic revolutionary socialists didn't think revolution would actually involve pain, or God forbid... death, and they gave in.
Why do you think the mullahs, including the lovely ahmadinnerjacket, attacked the American embassy ? If anything at that time they were thankful for America driving back the communists. They attacked the American embassy because they wanted to convince Russia and socialists worldwide they were pushing communism so they'd keep getting bankrolled. They couldn't get direct American support so they turned around and attacked like rabid dogs resulting in the famous hostage crisis that carter so expertly handled. Most of all, they wanted to impress Moscow sufficiently to prevent those armies that just happened to gather at Iran's border just before the revolution from advancing. And they succeeded. Strategically they had enormous luck, the luck that Russia was threatening and that the Shah's government fell for it, while they attacked without any regard as to what would happen to Iranians. They just wanted to attack like lunatic rabid dogs and as it turned out the Russian threats was a bluf. Please don't delude yourself into thinking the mullahs somehow knew this. They knew perfectly well that if Russia was to attack they'd likely have massacred large numbers of Iranians, they just didn't care. The socialists were more moral in that they at least knew that if they won, no attack would be forthcoming.
Since then, for 40 years the people who fought for coummunism have been completely abanded by their "comrades" to this by their socialist friends in Russia, Europe and America alike. Likewise, everyone else abandoned them, at best providing for a few refugees. And let's not pretend that Iraq was attempting to help matters, it was not. Those who could, fled (since the first thing the mullahs did was massacre anyone they feared might topple a government, guess who was at the top of their minds ?).
(And yes, Europeans actually preferred theocracy to communism so they helped the mullahs by providing ways for them to unite, but imho this was not the deciding factor)
At least today there aren't 2 sides for them to play against the middle. We should keep in mind that this is their attempt to establish a first base of operations. Compa
Wait are we so anti-American that massacring gays, or religious massacres or all those other islamic ideals are a-okay now ?
Or are we perhaps so tolerant of muslims that massacring gays and other religions ok ?
Or do we tolerate gays and vow to destroy "that part" (or more) of islam ?
Do tell... Or is everything ok as long as it doesn't affect you directly, and we should realize that standing against islamic genocides would potentially involve embarassing situations for you personally or even... *gasp* risk ?
I'm sure you have a good response to this. I'm sure it will explain how slightly inconveniencing you is much worse than mass murder. How every religion is really the same, whether it started by the self-sacrifice of someone who wouldn't raise a sword against his own executioner or it started with a paedophilic thief, warmonger and slave. Whether it built the best, freeest and by far the most moral, most scientific, least poverty-stricken and most advanced society in the world or whether it's the religion that built the islamic hellholes where there's currently a wave of women choosing death over their islamic "freedom" ("strangely" this does not make headlines in western papers), the one country that still openly practices slavery, and >95% of wars and massacres worldwide for the last century.
I don't really even want to hear it. Shut the fuck up.
It's funny. At least the original post you're replying to has some weak mention of history. You just make a meaningless rant about it. You can do the same with atheism (e.g. do atheists rape if they know they won't get caught ? Well since atheism essentially advocates profit-loss calculation instead of "absolute" morality, the answer can only be yes, can't it ?)
There is no age of consent in Vatican city, the concept doesn't exist in Canon law at all. All sex outside of wedlock is outlawed. The reason the "age of consent" is declared to be 12 is that people can be married, IF given special permission when under 16, at age 12 (the law does explicitly require both partners to be 'reasonably' close in age, and both older than 12, and both have to give permission for this to a priest. This permission first has to be given without anyone but the person giving it present, and a government official. Not exactly "rape away", is it ?).
By the same standard, the age of consent in the US is 14 (procedure : go to Alabama, get permission from both your parents and a judge, and pay $2000).
Are you really this ignorant of history ? You cite three additions to law, two of which were "argued from the bible"... great, but those things are little more than corrections to the tax code today. They're relevant, don't get me wrong, but they're hardly the basis of our law system.
The precedent thing turned out to be very, very important, so at least that one is somewhat relevant. It's not nearly as important as Judaic law or Canon law though. As you know English law descends from French law, which was essentially almost directly Canon Law. Canon law's basis is Judaic law (e.g. the basic principle of civil cases is "an eye for an eye", but that's hardly the only principle) corrected with what's in the new testament (essentially, revenge is outlawed. The purpose of law is to right wrongs, not enforce law itself. It is perfectly A-okay to violate 99% of US laws as long as no-one gets hurt (feel free to walk around in public places naked where no-one sees you, feel free to shoot in public streets if nobody's there. You can only be convicted for crimes if someone complains)). Canon law has equality : with the exception of the state (the king) everybody has the same rights and duties (e.g. no slavery), with reasonable exceptions (like convicted criminals having less rights, but only for a while), and even has equality of the sexes. I'm not saying that was always true in practice under canon law, far from it. Although that principle has always influenced Christian societies. Law has always applied to both men and women, and even in the worst places for women's rights there have always been cases where a man gets convicted in a case started by a woman. To give an example, women are explicitly denied access to the legal system in islam, and this only changed at the point of a gun during colonization.
Yes there are big differences between Canon law and English common law, e.g. the incorporation of legal entities, the legal entity status of the government (in Judaic law the government can do whatever the hell it wants, including killing people for no reason and can't be sued), the principle of advocates (which was introduced by the inquisition, incidentally)...
Don't get me wrong, I do not support religious law, of any kind. I would not support direct application of Canon law (I kind of like the tax rate), although I'd prefer it over direct application of Judaic law, which again I'd massively prefer over sharia. That does not change the fact that the basic idea of our legal system is Canon law (rectifying wrongs, not revenge), and making up for what you did wrong ("an eye for an eye", you break someone's car, you pay to have it unbroken. You destroy someone's house, you fix it/pay for fixing it,...)
In effect, all law systems worldwide are based on religious law and it is a very good thing that ours is based on Canon law.
(and frankly the slavery thing leaves out several important details btw. first, those "slaves" are slaves for a seven-year term, after which they're free. Second they get paid, and there's even a minimum wage, if the "owner" can't pay that, they're free, and they get food and shelter. A slave remains legal standing, and an owner can no more force a marriage, for example, than an employer can today. I'm not saying it's a-okay, but you're neglecting that this isn't 'slavery' as understood today with unpaid forced labour, where owners can legally kill slaves, or with raping female slaves, which is islamic in origin. What people don't understand about slavery is that there are many different interpretations of slavery, and that what we consider slavery, with killing slaves and raping slaves and torture only ever was allowed under islamic law)
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That's part of the point. A working scramjet, if it can have sufficient payload, may be a much more effecient way into orbit.
The statistical null hypothesis of constant temperature is easily rejected. So this is just false.
Have you ever even once done this ? The statistical constant null hypothesis will be 95% certain for a specific range, for any dataset (as long as one accepts your practice of just throwing random formulas at datasets that don't actually satisfy their axioms as valid). As it happens, that range is about 4 degrees celcius (smaller even if you exclude the ice ages) over the last 100k years. If you were to make the case that some enormous force kept the temperature within a certain relatively small limit, there would be a lot of support for that.
Just for the record : I fully agree that the above method is wrong. It doesn't make sense mathematically, and there is no way in hell that range is 95% certain. However, it's calculated by throwing wrong mathematical formulas at a problem, which you are saying yields valid results. Besides, if you get to draw a trendline through the past 150 years and proclaim that the temperature follows that trend, then surely I get to draw one through the last 100k years ?
Just to summarize :
last 10 years : pretty much constant
last 100 years : small rise in temperature, the trendline shows a tiny inclination (much smaller than global warming)
last 150 years : clearly rising temperature trendline (ie. the global warming trendline)
last 1000 years : temperature dropping according to trendline
last 10000 years : massive rise in temperature
last 100000 years : nothing to see here, trendline is very close to straight
This is exactly what you'd expect to see for a chaotic variable of course. Why don't you tell me which trendline is valid, and give me a single good reason why it's that one and no other.
On the contrary, nobody to date has come anywhere close to explaining temperature changes in the past arising from factors such as changes in the sun's output or the earth's orbit, temperatures on other planets, responses to "natural experiments" such as volcanoes, or even explaining why the earth is not much colder than it is, without a substantial role for CO2--a role that was predicted over 100 years ago based upon basic radiation physics. And the best you can do is appeal to imagined magical properties of chaotic mechanisms.
As you've demonstrated before, the fact that you can't explain fluctuations doesn't bother you for your global warming theory. Why should it bother me in mine ? It "averages out", doesn't it ? You claim everything, even the weather averages out, you even go so far as claiming that chaotic fluctuations (which are by definition not bound) average out. I mean seriously. And you actually criticize someone else for ignoring a few fluctuations ?
I've yet to see the first paper explain why the temperature suddenly dropped in 1998 (aside from listing 6 factors that supposedly coincided until you actually look at them, in fairness we don't know what happened. Nothing spectacular seems to have happened, and yet there was a massive worldwide change). There is the additional question of why it took scientists until 2002 to see there was a drop in 1998. If their theories are so good why can't they even predict the recent past is a real trend or simply a fluke ? I mean these theories are supposed to be 98% accurate 100 years in the future, so the past doesn't seem to me such a challenge.
Although of course if you just use statistical formulas on a chaotic system, I can understand perfectly well why you don't understand a thing about the system. You know, it seemed fun, so I tried statistics on the strange attractor system in 5 configurations specifically chosen not to escape to infinity any time soon (that took some time, just finding those that were relatively stable). And I checked the average position : and just what I expected happened : the average will take on nearly every possible position at some point on time, and it thus is exactly as accurate as taking
The nonsensical expression "simulated variable" does not occur anywhere int he passage that you quoted. So that's a FAIL.
I guess you must have hidden it on one of the many "earths".
You don't understand chaos at all do you. "A degree of accuracy in the starting conditions that is not achievable with real-world measurements" makes it sound like next year's model will solve it. As for monte-carlo analysis (just run the wrong prediction many times and average the mistakes, assuming weather is unidimensional and linear, aka. how we arrive at global warming prediction) it's just as worthless as a single run. You're making the idiotic mistake that the average of 2 chaotic runs is somehow more likely to happen than either of the runs themselves. Same principle applies to any arbitrary number of simulations.
Believe it or not, one piece of wrong data is exactly as useful as a billion trillion pieces of wrong data. Not useful at all. You can't take wrong data, average it, and have something useful come out.
Sure, there is stored energy, but none of these energy reservoirs are infinite in capacity, and there are consequences to pumping more energy into them, and all of the energy ultimately has to end up as heat, due to the Second Law
Ok, fair enough ... until of course you look at that little word there ... "ultimately" ... the earth has been releasing stored energy for 5 billion years now and it still stores far more than the sum total of what it released. What global warming adds to the athmosphere alone is a drop on a hot plate, and in reality that addition is spread out into many systems.
I wonder how you'd reply to the obvious counter-statement. You're allowed to take some statistics of obviously wrong values and proclaim them gospel truth, so can I please do the same ? The temperature in the last 100.000 years has been close to constant. It has barely risen with much more co2 than we have today, has warmed up with much more oxygen in the air than we have today, in short, it's historically shown itself supremely indifferent to this co2 gas ... (or more accurately, the co2/o2 balance) except for the last 150 years. Why doesn't that mean that something else is causing the warming and the co2 increase is just a consequence of whatever is really happening ? After all, if the situation is more co2 -> hotter, then it is beyond easy to name 30 counterexamples from the last 20000 years alone.
I'm guessing we'll be seeing the appeal to authority fallacy here, despite the fact that this guy proclaims science doesn't work like that.
Riiiiight. Please quote any paragraph in which I used the nonsensical expression "simulated variable."
Okay :
A proper statistical trend analysis will result in a best estimate of the trend (which may be warming or cooling) given the available data, as well as confidence limits on that trend--a measure of how much the estimated trend would be expected to vary if that observation could be repeated (i.e. if you had a population of earths with a similar climate trend but with different weather, each of which could be identically sampled over the same time period using the same methodology)
Let me guess, this is not really simulation ? Or it "just seems" ridiculous, perhaps ? Or are you perhaps trying to say that weather is random, but averages out "in the end" ? Or perhaps you just really suck in communication, and the idea behind it was in actuality kinda good ?
The notion that statistics cannot be applied to chaotic systems is also foolish. In fact, most of the things to which we apply statistics are chaotic in a physical sense.
Let me guess, your point is that you can calculate using the same formulas in chaotic systems but the predictions become worthless, and so "they can be applied" ? They can be applied to chaotic systems in the same sense that a hammer can be applied to cake, yes. Usefully ? No. But yeah, numbers, formulas hey let's go crazy. Whether you'll be accomplishing anything more than a cat with a calculator is another matter.
Fortunately, this matters only over short periods of time, because the earth must ultimately come to radiative balance. In the long term, energy in has to equal energy out. And a consequence of the second law is that all energy input eventually ends up as heat.
Pray tell, has this happened at any time during the earth's entire lifetime ? It needs to happen before the universe ends, yes (probably, in the sense that that seems intuitively right). But we have quite a bit of time to go before then. Long before the earth comes to radiative balance, all life will be extinct, as life itself IS a radiative imbalance on earth. But so is anything that moves on our little blue globe, from massive global ocean currents to treeleaves moving in the wind. Have they ever stopped ? Are you seriously going to make the claim that radiative imbalance is a temporary thing (in the "short" term - as in less than billions of years). Note that the energy stored in ocean currents alone far exceeds the total energy that global warming has added to the earth in the last 2 centuries, and this amount of energy has been shown to vary wildly from year to year.
You keep making these hugely large assumptions without giving any credit to the fact that you're doing so, even denying it.
The temperature record has a standard deviation. It is a simple mathematical calculation, as you've described.
No, it does not. Really. The theoretical properties that prevent this go much further. It is impossible to even theoretically describe a temperature measurement that does have a variance. In order for a variable to have a standard deviations you must have identical repeat measurements taken under identical conditions. The measurements don't quite live up to that standard.
So a derivation of temperature variance from first principles will ... run stuck. There is no answer to this question, at all.
You are the one using the "simulated" terminology for variables.
I suspect that this is another term that you do not actually understand. Physical modeling of the roll of the dice can readily be done, with no randomness involved. It's pretty straightforward physics. But it ends up having such a sensitive dependence on boundary conditions that such a model is pretty much useless for practical purposes--a statistical description turns out to be more useful in practice, for dice as for many phenomena in the real world (e.g. short term weather variations).
So wait ... I claim that accurate physical modeling of a dice roll is not possible. You claim it is. You're "right" despite the fact that you agree such models cannot actually predict dice rolls ... Pray tell, what is the definition of a physical model again ? It wouldn't happen to involve accurate predictions now would it ?
The right answer is that dice rolls behave chaotic, they're designed that way. And there is not a single mathematically valid way to narrow the list of values from it's universe, in this case { 1,2,3,4,5,6 }. Of course, with an (ideal) dice you can do repeated experiments, which depend on a large series of boolean conditions, resulting in a high-N binomial distribution (NOT a normal one ...), which can be accurately approximated using a normal distribution (which is very different from being normally distributed).
Now what is a temperature sensor measuring ? Well essentially it's measuring brownian motion inside the sensor, which depends on the number and speed of collisions with outside gas molecules which just happen to pass by. Now how is the speed of those gas molecules distributed ? The only way a temperature sensor could work is if they're fully thermalized (if their entropy is maximal). Remember the last time someone said there was a real nice cool breeze ? Ever noticed breezes disappear when you crossed a building corner ? What does that tell you about how thermalized normal gas molecules are ? The reason no-one is making tiny temperature sensors is that they're not stable ... And that's caused by the nature of what you're measuring, not by the sensor. The small sensors really are more accurately telling you the brownian motion. The more accurate they are ... the more extreme their ranges will be in the same circumstances. If smaller, more sensitive sensors are less stable than their bigger clunkier less accurate brothers ... then what happens to this equation ?
for all e > 0 there exists a sufficiently large n such that |sum(X1, X2, ... Xn)/n - m| 0K there exists an atom in our atmosphere that has that temperature (ie. that speed)
Is it the same problem as dice rolls ? No, it has the added problem that you can't actually repeat an experiment. Measuring the temperature 5 times measures 5 completely different things. At day and at night, to give an intuitive example. So measuring temperature more often does not actually yield multiple measurements of the same experiment ... you're just performing a lot of different experiments.
So how do we fix this ? Well
The question is whether the increase satisfies the technical criterion of "statistical significance"
You don't think that this sort of remark ... might be part of the reason global warming has such a bad rep. Let's run you through a basic application of statistical science here.
When we make a measurement, you're essentially placing a sensor in a noisy environment. If we make the wrong assumption that the noise is random (this is wrong, but hopefully close enough. Yes, hopefully). So you take many measurements and use a number of techniques to fix this data, including several that are essentially fraud (I can see the guy at this station wasn't taking his medicine these days, let's just drop that data - type of "fixing"). Then you test a hypothesis against that data. This does not result in "a warming trend" or "a cooling trend" it results in 2 numbers : chance that the temperature has risen -> p, chance that the temperature has not risen -> !p (hey sue me, slashdot does not implement latex and I'm not about to look up the correct UTF symbol for not). You might also calculate a value "q", the chance that the temperature has dropped. And this also gives you !q.
What may amaze you is that p > !p AND q > !q. So we're dealing with a guess here. The convention is that unless p > 95%, we don't say temperature has risen. For most data sets, p 50%).
Note that even this 95% is a concession of the scientific world to statistical sciences, and there's a huge problem with statistical sciences. By contrast, the canonical example of an exact science, physics, only considers a measurement reasonable when it passes a significance of six sigma (which is 99.9999998027% certain). That is *NOT* enough to declare something the truth within physics, the only thing that is enough for that is a mathematically consistent theory that passes repeatable experiments (and even then it usually takes 10 years or more).
Read that link. Think about the fact that climate science is in fact much more limited in what it can experiment with than medical science. Experiments are impossible. Today's data is unreliable to the point where ~10% of the data points are flat-out wrong before correction. Data going back thousands of years is used, and nobody really knows it's reliability (and the tree ring issue certainly seems to suggest a lot of factors we don't know are at play here) ...
So can you please understand that if it's not statistically significant, it didn't happen. Credibility is a huge problem already, please don't screw it by being wrong 50% of the time. No, not even if you mean well.
You're not helping.
Maybe ... and I'm just venturing a guess here. The answer is in the very first message of this thread.
Once the sky falls enough for a piece to hit you in the head, then it's too late to prevent its complete collapse. So do we want to prevent it from falling, or not?
When meteorite strikes start getting blamed on global warming ... don't you think it may be time to tone it down a notch ?
The conclusions they have come to, as a massive consensus, is that AGW is very much real and significant, and cannot be explained away by natural means.
Even you are talking in hyperbole. Avoid words like "massive", do not use the term AGW after you've expressed doubt that it's anthropogenic.
I do have a question about global warming. Unless I'm massively misreading just about all papers on the subject, global warming is a feedback loop. There's a hundred factors, but by far the biggest one is temp -> more h2o -> more temp -> more h2o and we're essentially screwed until that one runs it's course, which is expected to happen by 2150. This feedback loop started between 1830 and 1890, so I doubt my grandfather knew anyone who had anything to do with it when he was a toddler. This is an effect that explains ~90% of the temperature change, 3 times bigger than the co2 effect, ~80% of which is another ocean-related feedback loop cause by rising temperatures. Now call me insane, but doesn't that mean that if every human dropped dead tonight after carefully shutting down all appliances and power plants, global warming will run >95% of it's course anyway ? So essentially my question is what, exactly, will a small decrease in co2 emissions help when a drop to zero would hardly do anything ?
A second question I have is with how we select theories to believe. IPCC has made 5 reports now, 4 of which predict the temperature variation 100 years out. Aside from the fact that I detest the way they arrive at their conclusions. The first IPCC report predicted a temperature anomaly and a 95% certainty interval. Guess what. We're below that 95% certainty interval. The second, likewise. Third, likewise. The fourth, we're at the very bottom of the confidence interval ... But I said there were 5, didn't I ? Well the 5th ... no longer has a prediction.
Exactly how old does the IPCC think I am ? I realize they're better scientists than me, granted, but that people who pulled the above stunt call themselves scientists ... baffles me. I was taught at university to base my faith in theories on their predictive ability in the past ... well you blew it. Try for another 20 years, get it right this time, and get back to me and I'll be their staunchest defender ... but ... It's really really really hard to defend this.
Furthermore, the way the IPCC arrives at conclusions (and the reason scientists don't care about their track record) is the following : they take ~20 studies (the number of studies dropped with every report though), and average out the mean and standard deviation (you have done enough math, I'm sure, to know the mathematical validity of averaging out standard deviations is, have you not ?) of 20 studies that ran simulations nobody has any reasonable hope of duplicating, even if the source data was available.
The reason scientists don't care, aside from the money argument, is that they base their theories on individual theories that have been refined, and did indeed drop all of the theories that first report was based on. But as I said, the IPCC is no longer including any theories at all ... wtf ?
Furthermore the people defending AGW on the street and in papers are, and you have my sincerest apologies in advance, MORONS. The supporters of AGW are the biggest enemy of rational debate here. They don't know what a derivative equation is yet defend f^100(x) like a taliban defends allah's orders to eradicate all gays.
Yeah geeks have zero influence over which products succeed. Heh.
Now what would happen if the government had some other means to enforce compliance and cares more about organizations where it has a stake in ?
Hmmmm ...
We all know why ... because there is one culture that opposes racism and there are many cultures that push racism.
I do address it. I explicitly say that apple's software is better than ICS.
My point was that apple went into 2011 winning most, if not all "mine's bigger than yours" contests. It's had to give up every last one of them. iPhones are no longer the biggest, lightest, heaviest (if that's your fancy), brightest, best display in sunlight, longest battery life, fastest 3/4G/LTE/... best camera, best zoom, best video playback, best ... Right now they're "low side of the high end" on all of those with their latest model. And yes, absolutely, they've managed to hold on to "best total package" (your "what's the device you like to use ?" spec).
I was hoping it wouldn't be so controversial an idea that Google is going to beat apple at programming effective and simple systems. That seems a no-brainer to me. And while Google's development environment for phones sucks, it doesn't suck nearly as bad as Apple's (you can build an android app in less time than it takes to build an equivalent ios app and with less frustration, although it has to be said that m$ beats google at this game. There's no real comparison between visual studio and eclipse : studio wins hands down).
Keep in mind that the numbers from Google come from the Oracle settlement offer. They are years out of date, and google would want them to have been as low as the judge would possibly accept. It makes one wonder what google left out, and you can be sure that they're profit figures, not revenue figures too.
It is also a bit strange to use profit numbers that you just know are from the previous fiscal years only with the cumulative phones count for one more year. Given android's exponential growth, every year more handsets are sold than all the years before. So that's at least a factor 2 right there. I am not saying google makes as much as apple does from selling phones. But it's a lot more than the article lets on. I would also keep in mind that google does not need to actually design or distribute hardware, they leave that to others.
And last, I would like to contend that while apple had the technological advantage in the market up until last year (and these figures are older). If anyone failed to notice, the best iPhone was top of the line in every spec, from screen size, camera, memory, gpu, ... and that's far from true anymore. Since last year, every answer to the a best-specification question has been some android phone. The phone with the largest screen -> android. Best screen in sunlight -> android. The phone with the best camera -> android. The phone with the most memory -> android. The phone with the fastest cpu -> android. Best 3d performance -> android. While apple still has best specs on tablet (although the iPad3 design does show they're desperate : it's thermal package is at the very edge of what is reasonable, and their power usage is huge), their advantage their is also waning and I seriously doubt it will survive 2012.
So apple started 2011 with the best phone available, no matter your criteria. Compared to that Apple's 2012 start is at most the "best styled full package" or something to that effect. Siri is all but a failure (given that you know it was meant to replace google search on iPhone ... it's a dismal failure), and one wonders what will remain of apple's advantage by 2012. Even in 2012 you've got to admit that there were android phones (SGS2, Nexus) that beat apple's hardware style, and arguably the Nexus beat apple both on the software and hardware. I agree that with the nexus, the software quality, while much improved, is still debatable wether it beats IOS. I doubt that by the end of 2012 it will still be debatable whether android or ios will be best.
Google is getting close to beating apple without having their act decently together. The real question is whether google's or apple's programmers are the best ones ... and frankly, I don't think it's even a contest. Given the fact that google loves developers (mostly) and apple ... well, frankly, hate them, I find this a very positive thing.
By the way: perhaps a better way to put my point is this :
An ideal Christian does not kill, not even to protect his own life. He or she will only fight to protect others, and try to avoid killing at all costs. An ideal Christian believes that every human is equal in the eyes of God, including men and women. An ideal Christian believes that everybody should make his own choices, including whether or not to be a Christian, with the exception that no trades should be done with such people if it can be avoided, because that would provide an obvious loophole. This includes gays. That's what's enshrined in Canon law.
The prophet is the ideal muslim. That is what sharia enshrines. This means an ideal muslim buys and sells slaves with the intention of making a profit, sometimes killing a few to ensure obedience (read the camel piss crucifixion story). An ideal muslim will rape (female) slaves, for fun, or hurt them, or kill them, for his own enjoyment. He buys and sells marriage contracts, even in the case where the contract was explicitly made to have sex with an 8 year old girl against her will (and 8 is generous, most accounts say 6 years old, and there's the little detail that 3 of the 5 schools agree that a muslim is perfectly okay if he rapes a baby. Google "thighing" if you're not easily disgusted). A good muslim lies and deceives others with the intent to cause wars between them, if it will advance his ideology. He fights wars himself. He uses and signs peace treaties, but does not abide by their terms, using them merely as a means of deception. He commits genocide, if it advances his purpose, and in general against any follower of any non-abrahamic religion. He even kills other muslims for perceived flaws in their understanding of the ideology of islam.
That's the point I'm making. The truth is simple : most Christians do not live up to the standard set by Jesus (whether most or all is the right word, is not so relevant here, I like to think some lucky ones actually achieve it). Why ? Because they cannot control themselves enough, or they are forced into situations where they can't live up to his example (Canon law codifies this : as long as you make the best possible choice in imperfect situations, you're perfectly fine. With a few exceptions, like that every death is a sin, no matter how justified, and requires you to ask forgiveness). In a sense, canon law is a moral standard you cannot seriously hope to achieve, and it is accepted you'll never get there, but you should always keep trying.
Likewise, most muslims do not live up to the standard of the prophet. But not because they're morally worse than the prophet. Because they perfectly agree that the acts of the prophet were monstrous and disgusting. This is where the difference between an average muslim and an extremist really is. An average muslim is what one would call a cryptochristian, who strives to achieve the values Jesus Christ embodies, but doesn't feel part of the community of Christians at all. But they'd never consider killing anyone, no matter how directly sharia embodies it. They will not demand revenge-killing, even when they have a right to it. And they will deny and talk around the issue when confronted with it directly. They will accuse you of having falsified the quran, or the hadith, knowing full well that if they'd check, they'd find the exact same text. And they'll simply try to forget this. You can literally find accounts a millenia old recounting this process and it's still true today. Extremist muslims accept islam for what it is, and follow the guidance of the prophet, and plot and help terrorist or kill others themselves. They will sell and buy women, and then do with them whatever they care to, beating them, raping them. They will treat anyone that works for them as slaves, literally. What I don't agree with is that these extremists are a tiny minority. Yes, they are a minority, but they easily represent 10-20% of all muslims, and they are the backbone of the faith. They, and the rabid attacks they immediately
You neglected to answer the question. Do you hate America enough to consider tolerating islam ? To consider "toleration" to include a genocide on gays. That was the original question.
Your post seems to indicate that you think America imprisoning criminals is worse somehow than genocides on gays, raping children (sharia sanctifies the rape of minors, as long as they're female slaves or within marriage), slavery, including hunting slaves for sport or crucifying them just to seem them suffer. The paedophile prophet did all that.
So why don't you answer the question ? Do you support that "because America does worse in prisons" ? Or for whatever other reason ?
Inquisitions : the first time in history people were given a trial before the government would put them to death. The inquisition also made a point of actually letting the defendant talk to their accusers, and advising them of their rights and duties before the trial. It was also the first time ever in history that a rules (as in a single person) didn't have all 3 powers fully in hand (as in even the king had to convince 2 other people before he could have someone executed publically). Yes, they considered protestantism a crime, and a majority of Americans have those in the family. (Sorry, I studied law, and when it comes to legal history, the spanish inquisition is a bit of a hero)
Brutal middle ages. The Roman economy disappeared and thus it gradually became impossible to feed more than 20-30% of the population. In addition medicine and fresh water fell away after it had been available for centuries. The age was certainly brutal, but frankly, what could anyone have done about this ? There was no way to save even 50% of the population. Do you seriously expect such a thing to happen peacefully ?
There is only one nominally Christian organisation that ever engaged in state sanctioned slavery, and even they felt the need to keep it secret. The east india trading company. They did a lot of other things that most definitely violated canon law, like piracy. The other Chrsitian countries started 3 wars in response to this, and for the Pope the reason was it's acknowledgement of slavery. Is that's what you call supporting slavery ? Do I mean that there never was a single Christian that sold slaves ? No of course not. (buying them to free them is encouraged in canon law, selling them or putting them to work is punishable by death if you're a Christian. For a fun story of how exactly the bible sees this, read up on the history of the heart symbol, specifically it's Roman origin. Besides, you'll love the story. It originally was the logo of a Roman brothel-chain whose owner converted to Christianity and ...)
Christian law outlaws slavery, and the only "support" of slavery in canon law is a prohibition on using large-scale violence to end slavery.
Sharia law enshrines slavery, the kidnapping of people into slavery, selling slaves, including children, for sex, for hunting, for whatever you want.
That is identical according to you ? Do you have a brain ?
It's a difference of extent, not position. The islamists have the same political views as the most conservative christians, but greatly intensified and taken to the extreme.
No they don't. There are many fundamental differences, like the fact that Christians don't kill except to prevent worse (as a general principle I mean, I don't mean this in the extreme). Muslims on the other hand practice revenge killing (again, I'm talking about sharia versus canon law).
Or how about a very "Amerian" difference : muslims are capitalists to the extreme, much more so than the most extreme Americans. Muslims sell forced marriages (think that's bad ? their prophet did it, so are you accusing him of being a monster ?), people (ie. they're slavers). Children, life, death, pleasure, sex, people, everything is for sale in islam ..., whereas you'll find conservative Christians are somewhere between mercantilists and socialists, and even what one would call extremely capitalist christians consider most of those things entirely off limits : you cannot buy people, sex, and only limited pleasures ... if they are making the rules.
You simply don't know, probably. One of the things the Iranian government lets their officials do is sell sex through contracts. That's not just tolerated either, that's how things are done. They're just much more modern about it compared to every other muslim society : you see, the women these Iranian officials sell have freely chosen to do that (motivated by money of course, but they could have said no, nobody would have used violence against them), and they pay these officials a comission that's also specified in a contract. These prostitutes "temporarily marry" their clients.
This is a great point of contention, you see Saudi's don't agree with this practice. A woman, according to Saudis does not have a legal person, and so any conditions in the contract that give the woman rights are illegal, for they interfere with a deeper law. This time limit is considered such an additional right : it allows a woman a way out of marriage without the man's consent.
No, no, no, temporary marriages are forbidden (punished by death, too) in Saudi Arabia. You can only use slave women for prostitution in Saudi Arabia. Which of course does not prevent them from having prostitution. They just "employ" those women : they "hire" them, take away their passports, money, everything, lock them up and rent them out. This is not considered a sin, or against the law in any way.
These are not tiny subtleties as you probably agree. And this is just a basic beginning, there's much more differences.
And this is only 2 religions. There's hundreds of different religions on this planet, most have various positions on the above issues. All are different, and I can absolutely guarantee you'll hate all of them. The most modern one by far is Christianity, despite the fact that it's hardly the youngest one (most religions are less than 500 years old, most small religions less than 200). Also very weird is that most religions except the very largest ones are being systematically eradicated, and yes, mostly by "the west". Most religions are not losing to atheism, but mostly to Christianity with a smaller number losing to islam, like local religions in most of Indonesia for example. We live in very weird times and we're fast approaching a situation where the vast majority of the people on this planet will believe in Jesus or allah (~ 80%), with a significant but not overwhelming numerical advantage for Jesus. Atheists are not even third in the list, with only a few hundred million.
Besides, we all know the internet. If you think about it, is it really possible to avoid porn on the internet ? I mean completely ?
I'm not in favour of a ban, in fact I'm very much against it. But it would be nice to have some normal, easy way avoid those banners at least. But I seriously doubt a ban would be an improvement. But it would be great if there would be a page that asked for permission to put those ads on you. And a page, not like those "would you like to continue" pages filled with naked women, that completely defeats the purpose of such a page, spammed onto fora that have nothing to do with that subject (really what does a porn site link do on an RC forum ? Wtf ?)
But yeah, a ban would make things a lot worse, not better.
First, I would like to say to anyone who looks for moral judgement in the following story is deluded. I would just like to call attention to the bigger picture and the bigger political situation that surrounded the Iranian revolution. No 2 situations are alike, but the Iranian and Egyptian "revolutions" are close than you give them credit for.
The Iranian revolution was very similar, just a slightly different promise made by "progressive" Iranians. They main promise was a better justice system, a less corrupt government, a more progressive form of government, tolerant of all, preferring no-one (muslim theocrats massacrers promising and demanding tolerance and fairness, sound strange ? It shouldn't). The one thing that united revolutionaries in 1972 in Iran was outing the shah.
The mullahs simply convinced the international community and most of the rest of the revolutionaries they wanted to introduce "a moderate form of" communism (anyone with half a brain knows the history between islam and communism and would never have fallen for this but that didn't include the communists. And as we've seen these guys do not know anything about moderation at all). Without the support this garnered, the revolution would never have succeeded. They were a minority in the revolution, after the fall of the shah, but they would attack anyone who even slightly opposed them like rabid dogs. They would kill off entire demonstrations for less than good reasons. Needless to say, when confronted with actual street violence, as opposed to an organised corrupt justice system (which still gave everyone they possibly could a hearing - just not a fair one). It turned out all those chic revolutionary socialists didn't think revolution would actually involve pain, or God forbid ... death, and they gave in.
Why do you think the mullahs, including the lovely ahmadinnerjacket, attacked the American embassy ? If anything at that time they were thankful for America driving back the communists. They attacked the American embassy because they wanted to convince Russia and socialists worldwide they were pushing communism so they'd keep getting bankrolled. They couldn't get direct American support so they turned around and attacked like rabid dogs resulting in the famous hostage crisis that carter so expertly handled. Most of all, they wanted to impress Moscow sufficiently to prevent those armies that just happened to gather at Iran's border just before the revolution from advancing. And they succeeded. Strategically they had enormous luck, the luck that Russia was threatening and that the Shah's government fell for it, while they attacked without any regard as to what would happen to Iranians. They just wanted to attack like lunatic rabid dogs and as it turned out the Russian threats was a bluf. Please don't delude yourself into thinking the mullahs somehow knew this. They knew perfectly well that if Russia was to attack they'd likely have massacred large numbers of Iranians, they just didn't care. The socialists were more moral in that they at least knew that if they won, no attack would be forthcoming.
Since then, for 40 years the people who fought for coummunism have been completely abanded by their "comrades" to this by their socialist friends in Russia, Europe and America alike. Likewise, everyone else abandoned them, at best providing for a few refugees. And let's not pretend that Iraq was attempting to help matters, it was not. Those who could, fled (since the first thing the mullahs did was massacre anyone they feared might topple a government, guess who was at the top of their minds ?).
(And yes, Europeans actually preferred theocracy to communism so they helped the mullahs by providing ways for them to unite, but imho this was not the deciding factor)
At least today there aren't 2 sides for them to play against the middle. We should keep in mind that this is their attempt to establish a first base of operations. Compa
Wait are we so anti-American that massacring gays, or religious massacres or all those other islamic ideals are a-okay now ?
Or are we perhaps so tolerant of muslims that massacring gays and other religions ok ?
Or do we tolerate gays and vow to destroy "that part" (or more) of islam ?
Do tell ... Or is everything ok as long as it doesn't affect you directly, and we should realize that standing against islamic genocides would potentially involve embarassing situations for you personally or even ... *gasp* risk ?
The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Christian conservatives in the west isn't really that big,
Sure it isn't where does anyone get that ...
idea.
I'm sure you have a good response to this. I'm sure it will explain how slightly inconveniencing you is much worse than mass murder. How every religion is really the same, whether it started by the self-sacrifice of someone who wouldn't raise a sword against his own executioner or it started with a paedophilic thief, warmonger and slave. Whether it built the best, freeest and by far the most moral, most scientific, least poverty-stricken and most advanced society in the world or whether it's the religion that built the islamic hellholes where there's currently a wave of women choosing death over their islamic "freedom" ("strangely" this does not make headlines in western papers), the one country that still openly practices slavery, and >95% of wars and massacres worldwide for the last century.
I don't really even want to hear it. Shut the fuck up.
I wonder which will prevail ?
I lied. Heh. I wish I wondered.
It's funny. At least the original post you're replying to has some weak mention of history. You just make a meaningless rant about it. You can do the same with atheism (e.g. do atheists rape if they know they won't get caught ? Well since atheism essentially advocates profit-loss calculation instead of "absolute" morality, the answer can only be yes, can't it ?)
There is no age of consent in Vatican city, the concept doesn't exist in Canon law at all. All sex outside of wedlock is outlawed. The reason the "age of consent" is declared to be 12 is that people can be married, IF given special permission when under 16, at age 12 (the law does explicitly require both partners to be 'reasonably' close in age, and both older than 12, and both have to give permission for this to a priest. This permission first has to be given without anyone but the person giving it present, and a government official. Not exactly "rape away", is it ?).
By the same standard, the age of consent in the US is 14 (procedure : go to Alabama, get permission from both your parents and a judge, and pay $2000).
I googled for that text, it's obviously not from the new testament. Any other "references" ?
Are you really this ignorant of history ? You cite three additions to law, two of which were "argued from the bible" ... great, but those things are little more than corrections to the tax code today. They're relevant, don't get me wrong, but they're hardly the basis of our law system.
The precedent thing turned out to be very, very important, so at least that one is somewhat relevant. It's not nearly as important as Judaic law or Canon law though. As you know English law descends from French law, which was essentially almost directly Canon Law. Canon law's basis is Judaic law (e.g. the basic principle of civil cases is "an eye for an eye", but that's hardly the only principle) corrected with what's in the new testament (essentially, revenge is outlawed. The purpose of law is to right wrongs, not enforce law itself. It is perfectly A-okay to violate 99% of US laws as long as no-one gets hurt (feel free to walk around in public places naked where no-one sees you, feel free to shoot in public streets if nobody's there. You can only be convicted for crimes if someone complains)). Canon law has equality : with the exception of the state (the king) everybody has the same rights and duties (e.g. no slavery), with reasonable exceptions (like convicted criminals having less rights, but only for a while), and even has equality of the sexes. I'm not saying that was always true in practice under canon law, far from it. Although that principle has always influenced Christian societies. Law has always applied to both men and women, and even in the worst places for women's rights there have always been cases where a man gets convicted in a case started by a woman. To give an example, women are explicitly denied access to the legal system in islam, and this only changed at the point of a gun during colonization.
Yes there are big differences between Canon law and English common law, e.g. the incorporation of legal entities, the legal entity status of the government (in Judaic law the government can do whatever the hell it wants, including killing people for no reason and can't be sued), the principle of advocates (which was introduced by the inquisition, incidentally) ...
Don't get me wrong, I do not support religious law, of any kind. I would not support direct application of Canon law (I kind of like the tax rate), although I'd prefer it over direct application of Judaic law, which again I'd massively prefer over sharia. That does not change the fact that the basic idea of our legal system is Canon law (rectifying wrongs, not revenge), and making up for what you did wrong ("an eye for an eye", you break someone's car, you pay to have it unbroken. You destroy someone's house, you fix it/pay for fixing it, ...)
In effect, all law systems worldwide are based on religious law and it is a very good thing that ours is based on Canon law.
(and frankly the slavery thing leaves out several important details btw. first, those "slaves" are slaves for a seven-year term, after which they're free. Second they get paid, and there's even a minimum wage, if the "owner" can't pay that, they're free, and they get food and shelter. A slave remains legal standing, and an owner can no more force a marriage, for example, than an employer can today. I'm not saying it's a-okay, but you're neglecting that this isn't 'slavery' as understood today with unpaid forced labour, where owners can legally kill slaves, or with raping female slaves, which is islamic in origin. What people don't understand about slavery is that there are many different interpretations of slavery, and that what we consider slavery, with killing slaves and raping slaves and torture only ever was allowed under islamic law)
Whoops. Although in my defense, the first attacks started under Stalin.