The thing that the good infographics have in common is that the graphic part of them is integral to how they present the information - they are not just showing bits text with associated clip art.
People who don't believe in AGW/man made climate change will think that this study is just part of the conspiracy
Most people who do believe in AGW/man made climate change will continue to suggest remedies that just will not happen due to economics/human nature
The small amount of actually useful discussion of how we can adapt to a changing climate (no matter what it's cause) will be drowned out in the accusations and counter accusations
>Well I think that video streaming sites would be VERY interested in this data. Probably interested enough to at the very least partially fund the research.
Since both of the authors of the paper are employed by Akamai, one of the biggest video distribution networks, I think it is likely that they entirely funded the research.
>If you are so sick of American retards then have your governments drop out of NATO
errr, given that the parent poster said "Most americans are fucking retards so I'm stuck with the healthcare for the rich only system we have here", I'm guess they are an American...
Never miss out on an opportunity to have a go at your allies though. The allies who stuck with you through the cold war, providing the front line against the soviets along with convenient places to locate early warning radar, airbases and even nuclear missiles.
The reason that European countries can afford universal healthcare is simple - we have higher taxes than the USA to pay for it.
gives the USA and Germany almost identical percentages of foreign-born residents. (12.81% and 12.31%) France and UK are not far behind. No breakdown of where they came from but most immigrants to Europe are from poorer countries.
>In particular, what would you say Israel could have done differently?
Routing the wall they built so it didn't involve taking farmland from Palestinians, knocking down palestinian homes or separating palestinians from their water sources.
Not building settlements on palestinian land
Not knocking down the homes of palestinian militants, where other people live too, as a form of collective punishment
I don't have a problem with Israel defending itself - the militants who are firing rockets at civilians deserve everything they get. However, Israel is not blameless - there are plenty of things they could have done differently which would reduce the support base of the militants rather than encouraging it.
>Why does this balance of power between large and small states (which I can understand), require ALL votes in a state to go to a single candidate though? Wouldn't allocating a state's electoral votes proportionate to the actual percentages allow third parties a chance at gaining some representation that seems essentially impossible now?
I think your second question answers your first. The folks in power have no interest in helping third parties take some of that power away from them.
>Around 44% of the votes for president in Minnesota DO NOT COUNT
They do count - just not in the final stage of the process. You live in Minnesota, so you get to help decide who Minnesota wants for president.
The USA is a federation of states (as the name makes clear) - directly electing national politicians would be against the whole way the country was set up.
If you take your argument all the way, you would have to say that in an election based on the popular vote, anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate would not count.
Would you also remove all scores made by losing sports teams from the record books on the basis that they didn't count as their team didn't win the game?
So what are they doing? They make a hypothesis, experimentally test it and then make conclusions. Sounds like the scientific method to me.
> You know what bugs me? The science cheerleaders who don't know the first thing about science -- though they think they do -- repeating total nonsense like it's gospel.
You know what bugs me? People who make assertions with nothing to back them up. You are asserting that they are 'precisely' not doing science and yet you don't provide any reasoning or evidence to support that assertion.
How do you define the difference between 'science' and 'not science'?
What specific features must an investigation have in order to be classified as science?
Surely following the scientific method is the very definition of doing science. You can criticise the specifics of their approach but it's still science.
> when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
There are regular news stories about vandalism, ranging from things like memorials that are important symbolically through to things like railway where vandalism could result in a very dangerous situation.
Haven't you ever seen coverage of riots? Usually any big riot is a mix of looting where the motive is theft and just pure mindless destruction of property (e.g. cars being rolled over or torched)
On an electronic level, there are plenty of DOS and DDOS attacks that are motivated by mischief rather than any other motive.
For a lot of people (maybe all of us to some extent) destroying things can be enjoyable.
I agree with you in principle but I think there are some arguments for maintaining as much biodiversity as is practical.
One of the strongest is the the value of genomes. It has taken nature billions of years to generate the genomes of the life that is on earth now - it seems wasteful to throw them away before we have a chance to learn from them.
Look at the number of drugs that have been developed from natural sources. Destroying species before we've even had a chance to study them could mean that we miss out on a cure that we could really do with.
>Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.
No it's not. There are some similarities but there are also differences.
Youtube is a middleman between content uploaders and content viewers. In your polluting example, you are not a middleman. Would you make a waste company responsible for pre-screening every load of waste they pick up from a customer to deliver to the dump to ensure it does not have any illegal waste in it?
Forcing youtube to screen content could have terrible consequences for all websites that act as conduits between their users (slashdot being an example) - could Slashdot afford to pre-screen every comment here for copyright violations, libel, hate speech or other illegal acts?
Right now, such sites can operate on the basis of removing content when there is a complaint. Forcing pre-screening (presumably with penalties if violations slip through) could prove costly.
The map in question is ultimately sourced from The Ordinance Survey, the UK government's mapping agency. OS maps are well regarded for their accuracy .
Of course, your milage may vary (perhaps literally!) in countries where Bing relies on other sources for it's detailed maps.
My favourite cover artist misconception is in Josh Kirby's original cover for Terry Pratchetts The Colour of Magic. The initial description of the Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower, mentions four eyes (meaning he wears glasses) but Kirby took the description literally and depicted him with four actual eyes.
I believe the extra eyes remained for the cover of The Light Fantastic, so clearly the author wasn't too upset about the inaccuracy (Kirby's covers were never all that true to the book descriptions in any case...)
>That acronym would not be offensive if used by a black person.
You keep saying that. Why is it surprising to you? The same is true for words used towards all kinds of groups.
I don't think it is words themselves that are offensive but the intent behind them. Obviously as we are not all mind readers, people have to take a guess at intent based on the words used, the tone and, yes, the person doing the talking. When a member of a particular group uses a potentially offensive term for their own group, it is usually pretty clear that they do not intend to offend. When someone outside the group does it, it is not so clear.
As well as racial groups, this applies to all kinds of groups like gays, jews, ginger haired people, nerds, people from specific cities/countries/regions.
People can sometimes be over sensitive (I have certainly come across people who look for opportunities to be offended) but if you know a word will be considered offensive when you use it, why not choose a different word, assuming you don't intend to offend?
The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.
I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing? * What effects will that cause (good and bad)? * What can we do to affect the rate of change? * What can we do to mitigate the bad effects? * What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
Strictly speaking, an acronym, is a _word_ formed from the initial letters of a phrase. Thus, strictly speaking, neither NDA or DNA are acronyms, as we don't pronounce them as words but rather we speak their constituent letters separately.
Interesting that you refer to 'the intruder' - in this case, the guy who got killed was walking to a house where he was a guest - he wasn't on or even approaching the other guys property.
I don't think this case is clear cut - there are all kinds of grey areas about what happened - but muddying the water with words like 'intruder' doesn't help.
I think it would be fair to say 'supposed intruder', as it does seem that Zimmerman mistakenly believed this to be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Granted, most of the ones that pop up on blogs are pretty lame but there are some good ones out there.
Some of the ones produced for the Guardian newspaper are pretty good.
For example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/oct/26/government-spending-department-2010-11
I also like the one's that Randall Munroe produces at xkcd.
http://xkcd.com/980/
The thing that the good infographics have in common is that the graphic part of them is integral to how they present the information - they are not just showing bits text with associated clip art.
There are also animals where the survival chances of offspring is enhanced by the sacrifice of their parents.
Maybe the financial benefits of playing the NFL, which can be passed to offspring, outweigh the potential downside of having a shorter life.
>For very low values of nice.
Some English wine, especially sparkling, has been doing very well is recent years, including beating the French at their own game:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9279939/Former-hairdresser-wins-top-wine-award.html
I predict:
People who don't believe in AGW/man made climate change will think that this study is just part of the conspiracy
Most people who do believe in AGW/man made climate change will continue to suggest remedies that just will not happen due to economics/human nature
The small amount of actually useful discussion of how we can adapt to a changing climate (no matter what it's cause) will be drowned out in the accusations and counter accusations
>Well I think that video streaming sites would be VERY interested in this data. Probably interested enough to at the very least partially fund the research.
Since both of the authors of the paper are employed by Akamai, one of the biggest video distribution networks, I think it is likely that they entirely funded the research.
>If you are so sick of American retards then have your governments drop out of NATO
errr, given that the parent poster said "Most americans are fucking retards so I'm stuck with the healthcare for the rich only system we have here", I'm guess they are an American...
Never miss out on an opportunity to have a go at your allies though. The allies who stuck with you through the cold war, providing the front line against the soviets along with convenient places to locate early warning radar, airbases and even nuclear missiles.
The reason that European countries can afford universal healthcare is simple - we have higher taxes than the USA to pay for it.
Some analysis of your first point here:
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/how-flawed-is-life-expectancy/
tl;dr - people at the USA still have lower life expectancy when measured from later ages
With regard to your second point, this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-born_population_in_2005
gives the USA and Germany almost identical percentages of foreign-born residents. (12.81% and 12.31%) France and UK are not far behind. No breakdown of where they came from but most immigrants to Europe are from poorer countries.
>In particular, what would you say Israel could have done differently?
Routing the wall they built so it didn't involve taking farmland from Palestinians, knocking down palestinian homes or separating palestinians from their water sources.
Not building settlements on palestinian land
Not knocking down the homes of palestinian militants, where other people live too, as a form of collective punishment
I don't have a problem with Israel defending itself - the militants who are firing rockets at civilians deserve everything they get. However, Israel is not blameless - there are plenty of things they could have done differently which would reduce the support base of the militants rather than encouraging it.
>Why does this balance of power between large and small states (which I can understand), require ALL votes in a state to go to a single candidate though? Wouldn't allocating a state's electoral votes proportionate to the actual percentages allow third parties a chance at gaining some representation that seems essentially impossible now?
I think your second question answers your first. The folks in power have no interest in helping third parties take some of that power away from them.
>Around 44% of the votes for president in Minnesota DO NOT COUNT
They do count - just not in the final stage of the process. You live in Minnesota, so you get to help decide who Minnesota wants for president.
The USA is a federation of states (as the name makes clear) - directly electing national politicians would be against the whole way the country was set up.
If you take your argument all the way, you would have to say that in an election based on the popular vote, anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate would not count.
Would you also remove all scores made by losing sports teams from the record books on the basis that they didn't count as their team didn't win the game?
>In one place he talked about an alien living in a far away galaxy seeing events on earth. If he was moving towards earth, he would see our 'future'.
What was the reasoning behind that?
>That is precisely what they do not do.
So what are they doing? They make a hypothesis, experimentally test it and then make conclusions. Sounds like the scientific method to me.
> You know what bugs me? The science cheerleaders who don't know the first thing about science -- though they think they do -- repeating total nonsense like it's gospel.
You know what bugs me? People who make assertions with nothing to back them up. You are asserting that they are 'precisely' not doing science and yet you don't provide any reasoning or evidence to support that assertion.
How do you define the difference between 'science' and 'not science'?
What specific features must an investigation have in order to be classified as science?
Surely following the scientific method is the very definition of doing science. You can criticise the specifics of their approach but it's still science.
> when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
There are regular news stories about vandalism, ranging from things like memorials that are important symbolically through to things like railway where vandalism could result in a very dangerous situation.
Haven't you ever seen coverage of riots? Usually any big riot is a mix of looting where the motive is theft and just pure mindless destruction of property (e.g. cars being rolled over or torched)
On an electronic level, there are plenty of DOS and DDOS attacks that are motivated by mischief rather than any other motive.
For a lot of people (maybe all of us to some extent) destroying things can be enjoyable.
>Having said that, wtf does the "MMGW" acronymn stand for?
Man Made Global Warming
I agree with you in principle but I think there are some arguments for maintaining as much biodiversity as is practical.
One of the strongest is the the value of genomes. It has taken nature billions of years to generate the genomes of the life that is on earth now - it seems wasteful to throw them away before we have a chance to learn from them.
Look at the number of drugs that have been developed from natural sources. Destroying species before we've even had a chance to study them could mean that we miss out on a cure that we could really do with.
>Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.
No it's not. There are some similarities but there are also differences.
Youtube is a middleman between content uploaders and content viewers. In your polluting example, you are not a middleman. Would you make a waste company responsible for pre-screening every load of waste they pick up from a customer to deliver to the dump to ensure it does not have any illegal waste in it?
Forcing youtube to screen content could have terrible consequences for all websites that act as conduits between their users (slashdot being an example) - could Slashdot afford to pre-screen every comment here for copyright violations, libel, hate speech or other illegal acts?
Right now, such sites can operate on the basis of removing content when there is a complaint. Forcing pre-screening (presumably with penalties if violations slip through) could prove costly.
The map in question is ultimately sourced from The Ordinance Survey, the UK government's mapping agency. OS maps are well regarded for their accuracy .
Of course, your milage may vary (perhaps literally!) in countries where Bing relies on other sources for it's detailed maps.
My favourite cover artist misconception is in Josh Kirby's original cover for Terry Pratchetts The Colour of Magic. The initial description of the Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower, mentions four eyes (meaning he wears glasses) but Kirby took the description literally and depicted him with four actual eyes.
I believe the extra eyes remained for the cover of The Light Fantastic, so clearly the author wasn't too upset about the inaccuracy (Kirby's covers were never all that true to the book descriptions in any case...)
Quite right.
Aside from any offensive connotations, which of these names clearly fails at being clear about what it does?
Photoshop
Paint
GIMP
>That acronym would not be offensive if used by a black person.
You keep saying that. Why is it surprising to you? The same is true for words used towards all kinds of groups.
I don't think it is words themselves that are offensive but the intent behind them. Obviously as we are not all mind readers, people have to take a guess at intent based on the words used, the tone and, yes, the person doing the talking. When a member of a particular group uses a potentially offensive term for their own group, it is usually pretty clear that they do not intend to offend. When someone outside the group does it, it is not so clear.
As well as racial groups, this applies to all kinds of groups like gays, jews, ginger haired people, nerds, people from specific cities/countries/regions.
People can sometimes be over sensitive (I have certainly come across people who look for opportunities to be offended) but if you know a word will be considered offensive when you use it, why not choose a different word, assuming you don't intend to offend?
The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.
I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing?
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
>your logic of reasoning is flawed the second you begin to cast any form of judgement over someone
you see the irony in putting that statement in the middle of a long post attacking someones ideas, right?
Strictly speaking, an acronym, is a _word_ formed from the initial letters of a phrase. Thus, strictly speaking, neither NDA or DNA are acronyms, as we don't pronounce them as words but rather we speak their constituent letters separately.
Interesting that you refer to 'the intruder' - in this case, the guy who got killed was walking to a house where he was a guest - he wasn't on or even approaching the other guys property.
I don't think this case is clear cut - there are all kinds of grey areas about what happened - but muddying the water with words like 'intruder' doesn't help.
I think it would be fair to say 'supposed intruder', as it does seem that Zimmerman mistakenly believed this to be the case.