I've always thought it was more hubris. It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast.
So your line of thinking is: Because it is arrogant to believe humanity can affect the Earth's climate, the climate data, statistics or the statistical models incorporating the data must be wrong. Have I got you right?
Cool, science just got so much easier, no more nasty maths to deal with for a start. You don't even need to consider the actual volume of the troposphere, the concentration of various gases it contains, their change over time, the volume of CO2 release by fossil fuel use or any of that crazy empirical evidence stuff. We can just run science on a sense of moral outrage and gut feeling. Yeah!
"Denialists"? Are you talking about people that deny the Holocaust happened or objective, independent people that question whether man is to blame for "global warming"?
Denalism is by no means limited to Holocaust denial. Along with AIDS denialism, flat-earthism, tobacco denialism and AGW denialism, holocaust denial is merely a species of denialism. For it to be classified as denialism (as opposed to scepticism, for instance), it must involve the outright refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality, as we can witness with both Holocaust or AGW denial.
Denialism also refers to a set of rhetorical strategies used to create the impression of uncertainty where none exists. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these bear a strong resemblance across the various species of denialism.
Not saying we need to get into a pissing match or anything, but I think it's always best to take "World" or "Universe" or whatever with more than a grain of salt whenever it's used.
FIFA has more national members than the UN. More than 200 teams from all around the world competed for this years world cup. Apart from the Olympics, it is difficult to imagine any sporting event more appropriately tagged as "World" than this. There is certainly no single sport which attracts anywhere near the level of support football does, even if you count out the dark areas of Earth (USA/Can, India/Pakistan, Australia/NZ).
Daily Kos is not a "news outlet". It's a partisan blog.
Well it started out that way, but clearly it has risen in stature to the point where it can now be compared to FoxNews in terms of reliability and integrity!
Yeah, I've had this conversation with you before. WGI fortunately didn't make the same mistakes that the WGII group did, but the fact that WGII was using unscientific sources of information is
Still fighting the good fight phantom? Oddly enough I almost agree with you here. What is unconscionable is using grey sources without an explicit declaration of that source (as happened with the Himalayan glacier error). I also agree that the IPCC should restrict themselves to the peer reviewed literature wherever possible. It's not like there is a dearth of apposite scientific literature which necessitates the use of advocacy group literature. However some use of official government statistics will be inevitable. And official government stats ought, but aren't necessarily as instance shows, to be of similar credibility.
In the IPCC's favour the clear willingness to correct mistakes when these surface reflects well on the panel's motivation to produce as accurate an assessment of the situation as is possible. It also contrasts sharply with the output of the various contra-scientific think tanks who, it seems, are beyond correction.
As much as I agree that grey literature should have little place in the IPCC reports, I must say that it takes a very special kind of neurosis to dwell unduly on the few (corrected) errors, or the occasional use of non peer-reviewed literature, while ignoring the very clear import of the vast body of peer-reviewed literature incorporated into the IPCC reports.
#!/usr/bin/env python #If you think the "statistics" is a lie, or the problem is #being "over-analysed", why not actually try doing it and #see what you get. import sys, random SIZE=100000
def population (size): "Generate a population of random kid pairs" def birth () : return random.choice(('girl','boy')) while size: size -= 149898 yield (birth(), birth())
counter = {'girl' : 0, 'boy' : 0} for pair in population(SIZE): if 'boy' in pair: #one of the kids is a boy counter[pair[not pair.index('boy')]] += 1 #the other is... sys.stdout.write('girls: %(girl)d\nboys: %(boy)d\n' % counter) sys.stdout.write('ratio of boys: %f\n' % ( float(counter['boy']) / (counter['girl'] + counter['boy'])))
#example output #girls: 49898 #boys: 24975 #ratio of boys: 0.333565 #<--Please explain this result
Devlin started by listing the children's sexes in the order of their birth:
Boy, girl
Boy, boy
Girl, boy
This is incomplete. The identified boy is marked in capitals:
BOY, girl
BOY, boy
girl, BOY
boy, BOY ... the relative ages of the children does not matter
You're right, the relative ages don't matter and that's why Devlin's list is complete, and we need not distinguish between BOY, boy and boy, BOY.
Assuming male/female births is a coin-toss, any mother having a child has a 50% chance of having a boy, and a 50% chance of having a girl, for both the first and second children. Which gives us 4 possible combinations of 1st and 2nd children: (girl, girl); (girl, boy); (boy, boy) and (boy, girl). Since we are told that this is not a (girl, girl) family, this leaves the 3 possibilities listed by Devlin, and with 2 chances in 3, that the other sibling is a girl.
The problem with that is that the distribution of sexes is not 50-50 to begin with.
Parent specifically included the assumption that "the distribution of sexes is even," so yes it is 50-50 by definition. Of course the distribution based on the data of actual births might not be, but to point that out would be impertinent.
When reading the Phaedo, I can't help but believe I'm reading an eye witness account of the last hours of Socrates.
In all likelihood, you are! Like all eye-witness accounts, however, it is a recollection heavily coloured by the mind of the witness. One of my history professors once claimed that "when a source makes several recollections of an event over the years, it is either the very first or the very last, which is most interesting."
Now if memory serves me correctly, the Apology was the first of Plato's recollections over death of Socrates, the Phaedo (nearly?) the last. Putting to one side the question of which of these dialogues is the most interesting, one suspects the first provides us with the most faithful rendering of Socrates' own philosophy.
Socrates never existed at all. He was a fictional character used as a tool to propose ideas.
Plato is not the sole reference to Socrates. Xenophon, who would have been around 30 at the putative time of Socrates' death similarly "preserved" Socratic ideas in a series of dialogues.
Plato's works are all Plato's ideas.
It's true that we can't safely distinguish the two. However the ideas, and indeed the character of Socrates portrayed in Plato's Apology, differs markedly from those in later works such as The Republic. It seems that Plato began by trying to keep alive the memory of his mentor, but ended by using him as a mere vehicle for his own ideas.
One of the better discussions of trademark parody is found in Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. v. Novak, 836 F. 2d 397 (8th Cir. 1987).
But in that case Novak was actually marketing products containing parody slogans. In this case, if I understand the facts correctly, unicorn meat is not actually being offered for sale. So the use of the mark is not a trade mark use and the question of parody would never arise, surely?
[C]onsider that organizations can lose their trademarks if they don't actively defend them against even vague and doubtful potential infringements.
I agree with you that we shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction against lawyers and I would add that there was not even a potential infringement here, the statment "the other white meat," was not being used in trade. Pork's lawyers should have waited till next April to send their complaint.
That's not to say that the law isn't stupid
It isn't stupid enough to permit this action. Moreover, the law which requires trade mark owners to defend their marks exists to ensure that abandoned marks don't memory leak.
When was this mythical time when football was popular but not heavily advertised?
The three out of four years the world cup is not on?
Maybe it's because I'm in Australia, but apart from a few months every four years I see very little soccer advertising, nor even that much for rugger, AFL on the other hand seems heavily promoted, at least in NSW (in Victoria, where it is organically popular, that's probably unnecessary). As a kid in Europe I was also not aware of football advertising, but very much of football. Probably different these days, I don't know.
You don't seem to understand what proof by assertion means.
Your links prove only that football hooliganism is not exclusively an English problem (which claim was never made). They don't prove that it is specifically a German tradition (quite the opposite), nor do they even prove the it is largely extinct in the UK, true thought that may be.
Or are you (along with that sausage munching pillock) stuck in the 80s?
Fair call, but we are talking tradition here. I agree that English authorities have taken very strong measures to deal with the problem and clearly the problem in the UK simply doesn't compare to the 80s. I know this first hand, having lived in London (or out of it) for half a year in '97. We had to jump through hoops to get tickets to a game round the corner at Selhurst Park which eventually involved a character reference for my wife who was working as a nurse and a slight bending of the rules (they shouldn't, apparently, on that basis have sold us the tickets). Man! By comparison when visiting Germany we simply bought tickets at the game (admittedly only 2nd Liga).
I concede that writing "English phenomenon," in place of 'tradition' was clumsy. OTOH, football hooliganism is as much an English cultural export as the beautiful game itself. But my point, as your links bare out, is that characterising neo-nazi, or far-right nationalist, football hooliganism as a particularly German tradition, is to trade in national stereotypes. I want to apologise to you that in dispelling that notion I may have fallen victim to perpetuating such stereotypes myself. It was certainly not my intention to insult you or your countrymen. Who, after all, form the other half of my genetic/cultural heritage. I have to quote the bard (but only from memory) "shot an arrow over my house and stuck my brother."
Tens of millions of people also love American Idol...
If you personally don't find American Idol entertaining, you are missing what those people see in it. Much to my disgust, my family recently got addicted to Australian Idol. When I came down off my high horse, I had to admit that some of those kids really can sing.
... and McDonalds
Love, or can afford? Not directly comparable though, since affection for McDonalds and Coke are largely the result extensive advertising, whereas love of football is genuinely and organically popular. In response to the massive information campaign aimed at kids by McDonalds we brought up our kids to hate McDonalds. Unfortunately we are now paying heavily for it everytime we go out to lunch. Doh!
If you want to understand where I'm coming from with the previous read this. I too fail to appreciate games millions of people enjoy.
[T]he annoyingness of the game itself causes me to stop watching before it gets to me.
You're just fooling yourself. Think about this, tens of millions of people regard (association) football as the most exciting game of all. More people than for any other game in fact. This ought to tell you that the annoyance is not "of the game itself," but is your own personal failing. Imagine, the best game of all and you just don't get it. Now that must be annoying.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always thought it was more hubris. It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast.
So your line of thinking is: Because it is arrogant to believe humanity can affect the Earth's climate, the climate data, statistics or the statistical models incorporating the data must be wrong. Have I got you right?
Cool, science just got so much easier, no more nasty maths to deal with for a start. You don't even need to consider the actual volume of the troposphere, the concentration of various gases it contains, their change over time, the volume of CO2 release by fossil fuel use or any of that crazy empirical evidence stuff. We can just run science on a sense of moral outrage and gut feeling. Yeah!
"Denialists"? Are you talking about people that deny the Holocaust happened or objective, independent people that question whether man is to blame for "global warming"?
Denalism is by no means limited to Holocaust denial. Along with AIDS denialism, flat-earthism, tobacco denialism and AGW denialism, holocaust denial is merely a species of denialism. For it to be classified as denialism (as opposed to scepticism, for instance), it must involve the outright refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality, as we can witness with both Holocaust or AGW denial.
Denialism also refers to a set of rhetorical strategies used to create the impression of uncertainty where none exists. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these bear a strong resemblance across the various species of denialism.
I was hoping for some comment that might shed some (presumably ionising) light on this issue, since TFA offers no suggestions.
Yeah that makes sense, TFA tells us the world's leading experts are baffled, so let's just check Slashdot for the true answer.
Instead, we have a series of boring troll posts.
Well that is disappointing.
Not saying we need to get into a pissing match or anything, but I think it's always best to take "World" or "Universe" or whatever with more than a grain of salt whenever it's used.
FIFA has more national members than the UN. More than 200 teams from all around the world competed for this years world cup. Apart from the Olympics, it is difficult to imagine any sporting event more appropriately tagged as "World" than this. There is certainly no single sport which attracts anywhere near the level of support football does, even if you count out the dark areas of Earth (USA/Can, India/Pakistan, Australia/NZ).
Why do you hate reality?
Maybe it wasn't obvious?
Too obvious.
My humour is pretty obtuse.
Rather.
FTFY.
Irony not a strong point?
Daily Kos is not a "news outlet". It's a partisan blog.
Well it started out that way, but clearly it has risen in stature to the point where it can now be compared to FoxNews in terms of reliability and integrity!
Yeah, I've had this conversation with you before. WGI fortunately didn't make the same mistakes that the WGII group did, but the fact that WGII was using unscientific sources of information is
Still fighting the good fight phantom? Oddly enough I almost agree with you here. What is unconscionable is using grey sources without an explicit declaration of that source (as happened with the Himalayan glacier error). I also agree that the IPCC should restrict themselves to the peer reviewed literature wherever possible. It's not like there is a dearth of apposite scientific literature which necessitates the use of advocacy group literature. However some use of official government statistics will be inevitable. And official government stats ought, but aren't necessarily as instance shows, to be of similar credibility.
In the IPCC's favour the clear willingness to correct mistakes when these surface reflects well on the panel's motivation to produce as accurate an assessment of the situation as is possible. It also contrasts sharply with the output of the various contra-scientific think tanks who, it seems, are beyond correction.
As much as I agree that grey literature should have little place in the IPCC reports, I must say that it takes a very special kind of neurosis to dwell unduly on the few (corrected) errors, or the occasional use of non peer-reviewed literature, while ignoring the very clear import of the vast body of peer-reviewed literature incorporated into the IPCC reports.
The line "size -= 149898" should in populate(), of course, read "size -= 1"
#!/usr/bin/env python
: :
: : ...
#If you think the "statistics" is a lie, or the problem is
#being "over-analysed", why not actually try doing it and
#see what you get.
import sys, random
SIZE=100000
def population (size)
"Generate a population of random kid pairs"
def birth () : return random.choice(('girl','boy'))
while size
size -= 149898
yield (birth(), birth())
counter = {'girl' : 0, 'boy' : 0}
for pair in population(SIZE)
if 'boy' in pair
#one of the kids is a boy
counter[pair[not pair.index('boy')]] += 1
#the other is
sys.stdout.write('girls: %(girl)d\nboys: %(boy)d\n' % counter)
sys.stdout.write('ratio of boys: %f\n' % (
float(counter['boy']) / (counter['girl'] + counter['boy'])))
#example output
#girls: 49898
#boys: 24975
#ratio of boys: 0.333565 #<--Please explain this result
Devlin started by listing the children's sexes in the order of their birth:
Boy, girl
Boy, boy
Girl, boy
This is incomplete. The identified boy is marked in capitals:
... the relative ages of the children does not matter
BOY, girl
BOY, boy
girl, BOY
boy, BOY
You're right, the relative ages don't matter and that's why Devlin's list is complete, and we need not distinguish between BOY, boy and boy, BOY.
Assuming male/female births is a coin-toss, any mother having a child has a 50% chance of having a boy, and a 50% chance of having a girl, for both the first and second children. Which gives us 4 possible combinations of 1st and 2nd children: (girl, girl); (girl, boy); (boy, boy) and (boy, girl). Since we are told that this is not a (girl, girl) family, this leaves the 3 possibilities listed by Devlin, and with 2 chances in 3, that the other sibling is a girl.
The problem with that is that the distribution of sexes is not 50-50 to begin with.
Parent specifically included the assumption that "the distribution of sexes is even," so yes it is 50-50 by definition. Of course the distribution based on the data of actual births might not be, but to point that out would be impertinent.
When reading the Phaedo, I can't help but believe I'm reading an eye witness account of the last hours of Socrates.
In all likelihood, you are! Like all eye-witness accounts, however, it is a recollection heavily coloured by the mind of the witness. One of my history professors once claimed that "when a source makes several recollections of an event over the years, it is either the very first or the very last, which is most interesting."
Now if memory serves me correctly, the Apology was the first of Plato's recollections over death of Socrates, the Phaedo (nearly?) the last. Putting to one side the question of which of these dialogues is the most interesting, one suspects the first provides us with the most faithful rendering of Socrates' own philosophy.
Socrates never existed at all. He was a fictional character used as a tool to propose ideas.
Plato is not the sole reference to Socrates. Xenophon, who would have been around 30 at the putative time of Socrates' death similarly "preserved" Socratic ideas in a series of dialogues.
Plato's works are all Plato's ideas.
It's true that we can't safely distinguish the two. However the ideas, and indeed the character of Socrates portrayed in Plato's Apology, differs markedly from those in later works such as The Republic. It seems that Plato began by trying to keep alive the memory of his mentor, but ended by using him as a mere vehicle for his own ideas.
One of the better discussions of trademark parody is found in Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. v. Novak, 836 F. 2d 397 (8th Cir. 1987).
But in that case Novak was actually marketing products containing parody slogans. In this case, if I understand the facts correctly, unicorn meat is not actually being offered for sale. So the use of the mark is not a trade mark use and the question of parody would never arise, surely?
[C]onsider that organizations can lose their trademarks if they don't actively defend them against even vague and doubtful potential infringements.
I agree with you that we shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction against lawyers and I would add that there was not even a potential infringement here, the statment "the other white meat," was not being used in trade. Pork's lawyers should have waited till next April to send their complaint.
That's not to say that the law isn't stupid
It isn't stupid enough to permit this action. Moreover, the law which requires trade mark owners to defend their marks exists to ensure that abandoned marks don't memory leak.
help you sell your forehead for advertising
Ah yes, but the point is to sell someone else's forehead for advertising! And to do that, we first have to buy the legislature.
[I]s crazy. How long until advertising is allowed on my forehead?
Great idea, you're a genius! Just hang on a moment, we'll get right back to you.
When was this mythical time when football was popular but not heavily advertised?
The three out of four years the world cup is not on?
Maybe it's because I'm in Australia, but apart from a few months every four years I see very little soccer advertising, nor even that much for rugger, AFL on the other hand seems heavily promoted, at least in NSW (in Victoria, where it is organically popular, that's probably unnecessary). As a kid in Europe I was also not aware of football advertising, but very much of football. Probably different these days, I don't know.
You don't seem to understand what proof by assertion means.
Your links prove only that football hooliganism is not exclusively an English problem (which claim was never made). They don't prove that it is specifically a German tradition (quite the opposite), nor do they even prove the it is largely extinct in the UK, true thought that may be.
Or are you (along with that sausage munching pillock) stuck in the 80s?
Fair call, but we are talking tradition here. I agree that English authorities have taken very strong measures to deal with the problem and clearly the problem in the UK simply doesn't compare to the 80s. I know this first hand, having lived in London (or out of it) for half a year in '97. We had to jump through hoops to get tickets to a game round the corner at Selhurst Park which eventually involved a character reference for my wife who was working as a nurse and a slight bending of the rules (they shouldn't, apparently, on that basis have sold us the tickets). Man! By comparison when visiting Germany we simply bought tickets at the game (admittedly only 2nd Liga).
I concede that writing "English phenomenon," in place of 'tradition' was clumsy. OTOH, football hooliganism is as much an English cultural export as the beautiful game itself. But my point, as your links bare out, is that characterising neo-nazi, or far-right nationalist, football hooliganism as a particularly German tradition, is to trade in national stereotypes. I want to apologise to you that in dispelling that notion I may have fallen victim to perpetuating such stereotypes myself. It was certainly not my intention to insult you or your countrymen. Who, after all, form the other half of my genetic/cultural heritage. I have to quote the bard (but only from memory) "shot an arrow over my house and stuck my brother."
Good luck in the cup!
What I certainly wouldn't do is bother to read articles about games I don't like, let alone comment on them.
Yet that's exactly what you did right now.
No, I read an article about a game I love and commented on it. Huh?
Tens of millions of people also love American Idol ...
If you personally don't find American Idol entertaining, you are missing what those people see in it. Much to my disgust, my family recently got addicted to Australian Idol. When I came down off my high horse, I had to admit that some of those kids really can sing.
Love, or can afford? Not directly comparable though, since affection for McDonalds and Coke are largely the result extensive advertising, whereas love of football is genuinely and organically popular. In response to the massive information campaign aimed at kids by McDonalds we brought up our kids to hate McDonalds. Unfortunately we are now paying heavily for it everytime we go out to lunch. Doh!
If you want to understand where I'm coming from with the previous read this. I too fail to appreciate games millions of people enjoy.
Yes really! While Germany obviously has not been immune, it is primarly an English phenomenon, rather than specifically a German tradition.
Cheers.
[T]he annoyingness of the game itself causes me to stop watching before it gets to me.
You're just fooling yourself. Think about this, tens of millions of people regard (association) football as the most exciting game of all. More people than for any other game in fact. This ought to tell you that the annoyance is not "of the game itself," but is your own personal failing. Imagine, the best game of all and you just don't get it. Now that must be annoying.
That should be "C19th nationalist reaction," obviously.