If I hadn't already posted the comment you reply to, I would have modded your funny +1:-)
So, I'll have to do the next best and reply instead.
And I suppose everything you say goes inside that 1%, right?
Well, modesty forbids... However, I do strive to always make intelligent posts, rather than just shoot off my gob.
(Some people would consider that the first step would be to get rid of those who apparently never learned to use semicolons, or those who can't spell, or those who talk about "the original purpose of the internet")
Not to mention those who put too much significance on minor errors, rather than trying to actually understand what is being communicated. I don't mind - I lose nothing just because some lack the ability to discuss content instead of form.
... evolution didn't go into high gear until the "Cambrian Explosion",...
I'm not sure I believe that - one could reasonably argue that the growth in complexity from a soup of ribozymes to the first cell, was comparable to the leap from single-celled organisms to multicelled; or possibly far more involved than that. Another major leap was from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, a necessary precondition for (most) multicelled life, it would appear. What happened at the Cambrian explosion was probably just that now the organisms got big and touch enough to leave fossils.
What I'd really want to see happening is that somebody would finally manage to be successful by consecrating on actual game content worth spending time on.
You know, I played my first computer games some 35 years ago - it's actually scary to think about those numbers; games like 'Colossal Cave' on a Cyber computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure) or the first platform hoppers (character based on CP/M). What is really scare, though, is that content-wise nothing has ever moved since then. I don't give a toss about whether Linux has the very best driver for the latest ultra-, hyper-, super graphics card out there, because the games are still the same, old, tired re-run. It's like a $1000 gift card for MacDonalds - yeah, it's worth $1000, but on the other hand, it's for MacDonald's.
The right to offend is more important than the right not to be offended.
True. But that is not the point here, nor is it the point of legislation against stirring up hatred against religious groups. Criticising or making jokes about others is orders of magnitude away from inciting hatred or bullying a vulnerable person. The difference is in the consequences and the intentions: if you joke about religion, it is well-intended, but if you incite hatred, you are actively trying to harm somebody. It's like sex vs rape; one is good, the other is bad, and most people accept that there is a fundamental difference.
"Freedom of speech" once meant simply that everybody had the right to express their political or religious opinions without fear of being persecuted by the authorities. Nowadays it appears to be used as an excuse for why you can't be held to account for anything you say at all, no matter what the consequences. Call me old-fashioned, but I disagree with that notion - to my mind, you always have to face up to the consequences of what you do, freedom or not. If you drive like an idiot and kill somebody, you're guilty of man-slaughter; if you bully a vulnerable person online and they commit suicide, you're guilty of the same; if you incite hatred and your followers lynch somebody, the same applies. The last example is no different from the concept of corporate man-slaughter, which most people find very reasonable.
If we do that, there will be very, very little left of the internet, or any other medium.
I don't think so. People who have something worthwhile to say are usually intelligent and experienced enough to know that being abusive is counterproductive; so, if we got rid of all the abusers and the sites that thrive on them, what is left is actually the 1% or so that is worht spending time and money on - the part that was the actual, original purpose of the internet.
It sounds to astonishingly outrageous that one has to expect that it is simply a variant of the old joke about the 'Man eating chicken': Sounds like 'Man-eating chicken', but is actually 'Man, eating chicken'.
Oh gods, another sales drone trying to raise the non-issue of how we can cram irrelevant technology into people's lives, so they can suck a larger part of our blood?
I think most of us realise that the home serves a number of intensely practical purposes: preparing food, eating food, sleeping etc. Just take the kitchen, where probably the most technical gear is concentrated, even if we don't quite think of it as such: cookers, ovens, mixers and what have you. A good kitchen is a workshop, first and foremost, and what do you need in a good workshop? Good tools: pots, pans, bowls, knives; how much better would it be to have a networked knife or a spoon with a host of remote sensors built in? Not a lot, I bet.
It's hard to control a thing without being able to analyze it.
It is also hard to produce biological weapons without first analyzing how disease spreads; but that knowledge is also necessary in order to control and cure diseases. All knowledge is a two-edged sword, but ignorance gives you no benefits; it just makes you easier to control by those in power. The problem is not that 'the government' studies it or even that they use it, the real problem is if it is kept secret. One would expect that the government of a democratic society would be less likely to keep secrets than a private company, for example; a company has an interest in keeping their competitors in the dark, whereas a government ideally works for the interest of ALL its citizens, right? So, less of a reason to keep secrets.
Depends on what you expect them to competent at - as far as I can see, they are very competent at receiving funds, blocking progress, staying in power and slandering each other. They show excellent judgement when it comes to proposing bills that are outrageously stupid and therefore have little chance of getting passed, but make them look like they have opinions and principles.
The problem in the US is that you have set yourselves up with a political system that is fundamentally impossible to trust. In most other countries, what appears to be legal in America, would be considered corruption - such as receiving large, undisclosed contributions from the industry. That, plus the fact that parties and candidates are allowed to advertise everywhere without limitations, means that politics is too much reality show and too little substance. And of course, you know that no matter who you elect, you will get somebody who is in the pockets of the best paying corporations and lobby groups. I don't know what that kind of political system is called - democracy it isn't.
Oh shut up. They've managed to do something we did in the 1970's.
Well, he/she does have a point, as you actually manage to say yourself. When the US did this, they were in a massive, economic upturn, as is China now; and we in the West were in the grip of a massive, if somewhat naive, optimism - remember the Hippies? It was in the 60es and 70es that we shook of the post-WWII gloom and started believing that we could achieve anything and everything. Unfortunately we also managed to squander much of it - my personal opinion is that it is consumerism more than anything that's to blame, and unless China reins in a bit, they will too. So it goes in the world, but when that time comes, perhaps we will be ready again.
What upsets me is how demonizing the argument about Global Warming / Climate Change is
Well, I suspect that somebody has an interest in derailing the discussion and avoiding a proper, level-headed, scientific discourse. The blame falls on both sides, but I don't think those involved in climate research are at fault; they do, after all, come out at regular intervals with corrections and amendments to their previous work, something we don't see much of from the other side.
The earth will change its temperature. That will happen with or without us, just look at the historical record. Earths temperature isn't stable.
This is well known and has been for more than a century. What is new is that we are contributing significantly to the warming, and that we may be in danger of initiating a very abrupt climate change; this will most likely result in major extinctions as well as causing big problems for ourselves - with 6 billion (or is it 7 now adays?) people on the planet to feed and shelter, that is not something we need.
And for all those who argue we are burning too much fossil fuels, those carbon atoms weren't created into existence in the ground as they were today,
True. They were extracted from our atmosphere at a time when the sun was significantly cooler than now. Returning it all to the atmosphere now would definitely not be a good idea.
All of science works better when there are those who are skeptical. It refines your proof if you are right, or betters your understanding if you are wrong.
Very true - but the word 'skeptical' has been hijacked by people who are not honestly skeptical. Skeptical means that you have considered the fact and reached a different conclusion, and it implies that you are willing to change your conclusion if you gain better insight. In that sense ALL scientists are skeptical.
Renewable will have to become a lot more than a fad, and sooner rather than later, I think. Not because I think the Apocalypse is nigh or anything like that, but because it takes time for this new technology to mature, and the benefits, once it is mature, are going to be immense. It will of course be painful to some - all change is - but isn't it better to go through those changes voluntarily and being able to control the pace, than being forced because we are choking in our own filth?
Don't get me wrong - although we don't quite reach the same conclusions, I feel you discuss and argue very intelligently and I respect your style. If only everybody else would follow your example.
You are right, of course, that because of the longer time horizon in the climate models, it takes longer to refine, but I feel we can still have some confidence, since we can test against historical data. And while I feel confident that you know the difference between a model that is somewhat imprecise and one that is completely wrong, it appears that this fact escapes the attention of most - what I hear too much is that 'not 100% precise' == 'completely wrong'. Which is nonsense, of course. We already know enough to realize that we need to do somethng, even if we don't have all the details; or at least, that is how I understand it.
You argue convincingly and there is a lot of good sense in what you day, but I think you are trying to pass off some dubious arguments as well.
modelling the planet's climate to any accurate degree in the long term seems a bit unrealistic, given the relative complexity of an entire planet's ecosystem
Is it more compicated than, say, modelling the evolution of a star from the primordial disc of dust? We do that with a high degree of confidence, knowing full well that this kind of models are somewhat uncertain; they give us valuable insight into how stars actually work, at least with some useful degree of resolution. It is the same with climate modelling: we know they are not correct in the sense that everything that comes out of the models is accurate, but they are near enough to be useful. All the calculations come with guidelines on how far we can trust them, just like the weather forecast, BTW. And while we are on the weather; we can actually make more reliable predictions about the climate than about the weather, because weather forecasts try to produce an detailed map of things like temperature, cloud cover, wind and precipitation within very short time frames of a few hours, whereas the detail in climate forecasts is more like averages over decades and across whole regions.
I don't have a problem with people raising honest objections based on serious, logical consideration of facts; what I have a problem with is the unthinking rejection and sometimes obstructive obfuscation based on short term interests. Producers of fossil fuels have an interest in blocking anything that may lead to them losing profit, and any climate research that concludes that we should stop burning fossil fuel will put their profits at risk. To me this reasoning is very plausible; much more plausible than any conspiracy theory about a secretive cabal of 'climate scientists' trying to further their own agenda.
* Did you seriously just compare predictive modeling of an entire planet's weather patterns decades or even centuries into the future to "1 + 1 = 2"?
You know the answer perfectly well, I think; this is the sort of question one asks to make the opponent look silly. No I didn't compare climate modelling to elementary maths; I compare the socalled 'skeptics', with their deliberate 'misunderstanding' of what climatologists are telling us, to a child's behaviour, when a child does not want to listen to a 'boring' explanation and spitefully tries to avoid the issue.
Yes, we get it: people who doubt global warming are not of your tribe - they think badthought and no tolerance can be shown to other tribes.
I'm sure there is much tribalism invovled on both sides, but I don't think you can generalize like this. And describing honest and sober climatologists as wild-eyed fanatics is hardly reasonable, it just casts you in a bad light as one of those wild-eyed fanatics yourself. Why not quit the name-calling and contribute to the debate honestly and in good faith? What we are after here is the truth, as far as we are able to grasp it.
Doubting and probing is a fundamental part of science, and as far as I can see, that is what climatologists have been doing here for a long time already. But there comes a point where most scientists will say 'enough now, let's move on'; why should we keep rehashing the same arguments over and over? The so-called climate skeptics have shown repeatedly that they either don't understand the science or don't listen - what else can one think, when people ask a question, get an answer and then keep asking the same again and and again? It's like a child asking 'Why is 1+1=2?' - 'Well, if you take one and another one, then together you have two' - 'But why?'. You can only keep explaining the same, elementary fact so many times before you have to conclude that you are not getting anywhere.
You can call that 'leftist' if you want - I understand that it is just a term of abuse and has no deeper meaning - but I think it makes sense to believe in measuable data and logical conclusions.
You've never actually studied the lives of those that wrote the four Gospels have you, no you want to write them off as self-centered people looking to hold power. Way to be scientific. You're just parroting something you read on a blog.
Tell where to learn about them - apart from the Gospels. Are there contemporary accounts detailing their lives? I have read the Bible something like 5 times - for a long time as a student, I sincerely tried to convince myself that I believed, and I read the Bible from end to end, over and over. But you can only keep deceiving yourself for so long before you start feeling dirty, so I made what I still call a leap of faith: I decided not to look for something that clearly isn't there, in the Bible. If God is real and cares, then he will come to me when the time is right; and if not, never mind.
So, be scientific and show me evidence that can be repeated and checked objectively. Or take my reasoning apart logically - I am willing to concede defeat, if you can show me that I am wrong.
Jesus wasn't simply a philosopher, he claimed to be God and encouraged others to worship him as God
To a non-believer, Jesus can't really be much more than a philosopher; or, if one were to take his words as spoken, a madman. I think, as a non-believer, you would have to regards the stories in the NT as tales, constructed retrospectively by the followers of the emerging religion that was growing up in his name. We have very little evidence of what he actually did, if he even existed, and the evidence we do have, is such that it is reasonable to be highly skeptical about large parts of it. The four Gospels are part of what was probably a large number of more or less tall tales, and they were selected by a group of people who has a strong interest in upholding their religious organisation, not by a team of unbiased researchers trying to learn the truth about things.
... more about systems than people and women are more interested in people than systems.
Here's another, equally brilliant explanation: A relatively large proportion of IT professionals are gay and gays hate women: Bingo! (Just to ward off a flood of outrage: I was applying irony here)
I think you need to qualify your statement a bit more - how do you get to the conclusion that males are more interested in systems than females? I'm not saying that you are wrong, but I am not convinced.
Let's face it, without some competition, the USA would sit around with its thumb up its ass.
Well, what could we expect, when the space programmes of the US and USSR were, in large parts, no more than dick-waving? The Chinese are quite naturally milking their space program for its publicity value, but they have their eyes firmly on the commercial and political power objectives in the long term. I wish them all success with it - it can only benefit us all, if space exploration becomes sustainable or viable or whatever the word is. And hopefully this will spur the West and Russia on to try to do better.
Obtaining basic functional English is very easy, and English speakers are accustomed to understanding non-native speakers.
Well, it is, and then again, not really. The difference between how it is written and how it sounds can be quite startling, especially in the UK. I suppose American is much a more uniform language, but the difference between regions in UK is quite stark - to the extent that Londoners find it very difficult to understand Northeners or Scots; ironically, coming from Denmark, I have no such difficulties, since it sounds rather like the dialect I grew up with in Jutland.
If someone messes up on one of the finer points of English grammar, he'll obviously reveal himself as a non-native speaker, but the listener will still easily understand him. I feel like this is not the case in Mandarin, nor in any of the other tonal languages. It is just too easy to flub a tone and completely alter the meaning of the sentence.
The tones are the only really important thing to learn - the classical example is 'laoshi' which can, among other things mean either 'teacher' or 'old shit'. But the tones are not all that difficult - I remember them by thinking of them as sounding like different 'moods': 1st tone (high, level) = 'indifferent, whatever', 2nd tone (rising) = 'questioning', 3rd tone (falling, rising) = 'hesitant, I don't know about that' and 4th (falling) = 'rejecting, no!'. I don't think it maps to real meaning, but it helps me remember.
I think the really big difficulty people have with Chinese is that they try to map sentences directly from one language to another; Chinese does not use subordinate sentences like English does, so one has to break the sentences up and reassemble them, unlike when you go from English to French.
... notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak.
Is that so? I would be interested to hear what that assessment is based on - having learned the languages myself, I didn't find it hard, on the contrary.
Chinese is notable for having probably the simplest syntax of any language, pronunciation, this is no harder than are other languages, and the national transcription system, pinyin, is very consistent and accurately represents the pronunciation of the words, unlike for example English - for an illustration, see Mark Twain's famous satire on a similar subject:
Even Chinese characters aren't all that difficult - they are highly structured, and you only need to learn about 1000 to understand most texts; the average desktop user probably already recognises more than that number of icons without even sweating. I think the idea that Chinese is incredibly hard to learn is simply based on ignorance, and perhaps also some sort of fear that one might sound silly if one were to pronounce foreign languages correctly; English speakers seem to go out of their way to mispronounce ALL other languages, including German and French.
Compare Chinese with English:
Chinese: There are no grammatical tenses (past -, present -, future -...) English: Verbs have a different form depending on whether it talks about the past, present, etc.
Chinese: Nouns have the same form always. Really always: no singular/plural, nominative/accusative/genitive/dative/... English:...
Chinese: Spelled as it is pronounced English: Need I elaborate?
And in English, the fact that it is a bastard language, with imported features from a large number of other languages, means that the same grammatical structures are governed by several basically unrelated rules: one house, several houses, but on the other hand, one forum, several fora - or should that be forums? And how about 'one virus'? If English were like Chinese, the question simply wouldn't arise. Chinese is easy to learn, far easier than English.
And it isn't that I don't like English - I love the language, but that is exactly because it is so convoluted and almost creatively messy.
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If I hadn't already posted the comment you reply to, I would have modded your funny +1 :-)
So, I'll have to do the next best and reply instead.
And I suppose everything you say goes inside that 1%, right?
Well, modesty forbids ... However, I do strive to always make intelligent posts, rather than just shoot off my gob.
(Some people would consider that the first step would be to get rid of those who apparently never learned to use semicolons, or those who can't spell, or those who talk about "the original purpose of the internet")
Not to mention those who put too much significance on minor errors, rather than trying to actually understand what is being communicated. I don't mind - I lose nothing just because some lack the ability to discuss content instead of form.
Any way, it shouldn't be a problem; they could just use a translation of the word 'Gnome' - for example, in Swedish: Nissan. Problem solved.
... evolution didn't go into high gear until the "Cambrian Explosion", ...
I'm not sure I believe that - one could reasonably argue that the growth in complexity from a soup of ribozymes to the first cell, was comparable to the leap from single-celled organisms to multicelled; or possibly far more involved than that. Another major leap was from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, a necessary precondition for (most) multicelled life, it would appear. What happened at the Cambrian explosion was probably just that now the organisms got big and touch enough to leave fossils.
What I'd really want to see happening is that somebody would finally manage to be successful by consecrating on actual game content worth spending time on.
You know, I played my first computer games some 35 years ago - it's actually scary to think about those numbers; games like 'Colossal Cave' on a Cyber computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure) or the first platform hoppers (character based on CP/M). What is really scare, though, is that content-wise nothing has ever moved since then. I don't give a toss about whether Linux has the very best driver for the latest ultra-, hyper-, super graphics card out there, because the games are still the same, old, tired re-run. It's like a $1000 gift card for MacDonalds - yeah, it's worth $1000, but on the other hand, it's for MacDonald's.
The right to offend is more important than the right not to be offended.
True. But that is not the point here, nor is it the point of legislation against stirring up hatred against religious groups. Criticising or making jokes about others is orders of magnitude away from inciting hatred or bullying a vulnerable person. The difference is in the consequences and the intentions: if you joke about religion, it is well-intended, but if you incite hatred, you are actively trying to harm somebody. It's like sex vs rape; one is good, the other is bad, and most people accept that there is a fundamental difference.
"Freedom of speech" once meant simply that everybody had the right to express their political or religious opinions without fear of being persecuted by the authorities. Nowadays it appears to be used as an excuse for why you can't be held to account for anything you say at all, no matter what the consequences. Call me old-fashioned, but I disagree with that notion - to my mind, you always have to face up to the consequences of what you do, freedom or not. If you drive like an idiot and kill somebody, you're guilty of man-slaughter; if you bully a vulnerable person online and they commit suicide, you're guilty of the same; if you incite hatred and your followers lynch somebody, the same applies. The last example is no different from the concept of corporate man-slaughter, which most people find very reasonable.
If we do that, there will be very, very little left of the internet, or any other medium.
I don't think so. People who have something worthwhile to say are usually intelligent and experienced enough to know that being abusive is counterproductive; so, if we got rid of all the abusers and the sites that thrive on them, what is left is actually the 1% or so that is worht spending time and money on - the part that was the actual, original purpose of the internet.
It sounds to astonishingly outrageous that one has to expect that it is simply a variant of the old joke about the 'Man eating chicken': Sounds like 'Man-eating chicken', but is actually 'Man, eating chicken'.
Now that cannabis is legal in Washington, I think we can look forward to -
1. Much mellower politics
2. A massive increase in sales of snacks in the area around the Conress
Oh gods, another sales drone trying to raise the non-issue of how we can cram irrelevant technology into people's lives, so they can suck a larger part of our blood?
I think most of us realise that the home serves a number of intensely practical purposes: preparing food, eating food, sleeping etc. Just take the kitchen, where probably the most technical gear is concentrated, even if we don't quite think of it as such: cookers, ovens, mixers and what have you. A good kitchen is a workshop, first and foremost, and what do you need in a good workshop? Good tools: pots, pans, bowls, knives; how much better would it be to have a networked knife or a spoon with a host of remote sensors built in? Not a lot, I bet.
It's hard to control a thing without being able to analyze it.
It is also hard to produce biological weapons without first analyzing how disease spreads; but that knowledge is also necessary in order to control and cure diseases. All knowledge is a two-edged sword, but ignorance gives you no benefits; it just makes you easier to control by those in power. The problem is not that 'the government' studies it or even that they use it, the real problem is if it is kept secret. One would expect that the government of a democratic society would be less likely to keep secrets than a private company, for example; a company has an interest in keeping their competitors in the dark, whereas a government ideally works for the interest of ALL its citizens, right? So, less of a reason to keep secrets.
I was greatly amused when the HR department at my company was looking for "Pearl" developers.
That would be somebody with a lot of mussels, right?
Both parties are very incompetent
Depends on what you expect them to competent at - as far as I can see, they are very competent at receiving funds, blocking progress, staying in power and slandering each other. They show excellent judgement when it comes to proposing bills that are outrageously stupid and therefore have little chance of getting passed, but make them look like they have opinions and principles.
The problem in the US is that you have set yourselves up with a political system that is fundamentally impossible to trust. In most other countries, what appears to be legal in America, would be considered corruption - such as receiving large, undisclosed contributions from the industry. That, plus the fact that parties and candidates are allowed to advertise everywhere without limitations, means that politics is too much reality show and too little substance. And of course, you know that no matter who you elect, you will get somebody who is in the pockets of the best paying corporations and lobby groups. I don't know what that kind of political system is called - democracy it isn't.
> China 2014 = USA 1960.
Oh shut up. They've managed to do something we did in the 1970's.
Well, he/she does have a point, as you actually manage to say yourself. When the US did this, they were in a massive, economic upturn, as is China now; and we in the West were in the grip of a massive, if somewhat naive, optimism - remember the Hippies? It was in the 60es and 70es that we shook of the post-WWII gloom and started believing that we could achieve anything and everything. Unfortunately we also managed to squander much of it - my personal opinion is that it is consumerism more than anything that's to blame, and unless China reins in a bit, they will too. So it goes in the world, but when that time comes, perhaps we will be ready again.
What upsets me is how demonizing the argument about Global Warming / Climate Change is
Well, I suspect that somebody has an interest in derailing the discussion and avoiding a proper, level-headed, scientific discourse. The blame falls on both sides, but I don't think those involved in climate research are at fault; they do, after all, come out at regular intervals with corrections and amendments to their previous work, something we don't see much of from the other side.
The earth will change its temperature. That will happen with or without us, just look at the historical record. Earths temperature isn't stable.
This is well known and has been for more than a century. What is new is that we are contributing significantly to the warming, and that we may be in danger of initiating a very abrupt climate change; this will most likely result in major extinctions as well as causing big problems for ourselves - with 6 billion (or is it 7 now adays?) people on the planet to feed and shelter, that is not something we need.
And for all those who argue we are burning too much fossil fuels, those carbon atoms weren't created into existence in the ground as they were today,
True. They were extracted from our atmosphere at a time when the sun was significantly cooler than now. Returning it all to the atmosphere now would definitely not be a good idea.
All of science works better when there are those who are skeptical. It refines your proof if you are right, or betters your understanding if you are wrong.
Very true - but the word 'skeptical' has been hijacked by people who are not honestly skeptical. Skeptical means that you have considered the fact and reached a different conclusion, and it implies that you are willing to change your conclusion if you gain better insight. In that sense ALL scientists are skeptical.
Good idea beyond the "renewable" fad
Renewable will have to become a lot more than a fad, and sooner rather than later, I think. Not because I think the Apocalypse is nigh or anything like that, but because it takes time for this new technology to mature, and the benefits, once it is mature, are going to be immense. It will of course be painful to some - all change is - but isn't it better to go through those changes voluntarily and being able to control the pace, than being forced because we are choking in our own filth?
Don't get me wrong - although we don't quite reach the same conclusions, I feel you discuss and argue very intelligently and I respect your style. If only everybody else would follow your example.
You are right, of course, that because of the longer time horizon in the climate models, it takes longer to refine, but I feel we can still have some confidence, since we can test against historical data. And while I feel confident that you know the difference between a model that is somewhat imprecise and one that is completely wrong, it appears that this fact escapes the attention of most - what I hear too much is that 'not 100% precise' == 'completely wrong'. Which is nonsense, of course. We already know enough to realize that we need to do somethng, even if we don't have all the details; or at least, that is how I understand it.
You argue convincingly and there is a lot of good sense in what you day, but I think you are trying to pass off some dubious arguments as well.
modelling the planet's climate to any accurate degree in the long term seems a bit unrealistic, given the relative complexity of an entire planet's ecosystem
Is it more compicated than, say, modelling the evolution of a star from the primordial disc of dust? We do that with a high degree of confidence, knowing full well that this kind of models are somewhat uncertain; they give us valuable insight into how stars actually work, at least with some useful degree of resolution. It is the same with climate modelling: we know they are not correct in the sense that everything that comes out of the models is accurate, but they are near enough to be useful. All the calculations come with guidelines on how far we can trust them, just like the weather forecast, BTW. And while we are on the weather; we can actually make more reliable predictions about the climate than about the weather, because weather forecasts try to produce an detailed map of things like temperature, cloud cover, wind and precipitation within very short time frames of a few hours, whereas the detail in climate forecasts is more like averages over decades and across whole regions.
I don't have a problem with people raising honest objections based on serious, logical consideration of facts; what I have a problem with is the unthinking rejection and sometimes obstructive obfuscation based on short term interests. Producers of fossil fuels have an interest in blocking anything that may lead to them losing profit, and any climate research that concludes that we should stop burning fossil fuel will put their profits at risk. To me this reasoning is very plausible; much more plausible than any conspiracy theory about a secretive cabal of 'climate scientists' trying to further their own agenda.
* Did you seriously just compare predictive modeling of an entire planet's weather patterns decades or even centuries into the future to "1 + 1 = 2"?
You know the answer perfectly well, I think; this is the sort of question one asks to make the opponent look silly. No I didn't compare climate modelling to elementary maths; I compare the socalled 'skeptics', with their deliberate 'misunderstanding' of what climatologists are telling us, to a child's behaviour, when a child does not want to listen to a 'boring' explanation and spitefully tries to avoid the issue.
Yes, we get it: people who doubt global warming are not of your tribe - they think badthought and no tolerance can be shown to other tribes.
I'm sure there is much tribalism invovled on both sides, but I don't think you can generalize like this. And describing honest and sober climatologists as wild-eyed fanatics is hardly reasonable, it just casts you in a bad light as one of those wild-eyed fanatics yourself. Why not quit the name-calling and contribute to the debate honestly and in good faith? What we are after here is the truth, as far as we are able to grasp it.
Doubting and probing is a fundamental part of science, and as far as I can see, that is what climatologists have been doing here for a long time already. But there comes a point where most scientists will say 'enough now, let's move on'; why should we keep rehashing the same arguments over and over? The so-called climate skeptics have shown repeatedly that they either don't understand the science or don't listen - what else can one think, when people ask a question, get an answer and then keep asking the same again and and again? It's like a child asking 'Why is 1+1=2?' - 'Well, if you take one and another one, then together you have two' - 'But why?'. You can only keep explaining the same, elementary fact so many times before you have to conclude that you are not getting anywhere.
You can call that 'leftist' if you want - I understand that it is just a term of abuse and has no deeper meaning - but I think it makes sense to believe in measuable data and logical conclusions.
You've never actually studied the lives of those that wrote the four Gospels have you, no you want to write them off as self-centered people looking to hold power. Way to be scientific. You're just parroting something you read on a blog.
Tell where to learn about them - apart from the Gospels. Are there contemporary accounts detailing their lives? I have read the Bible something like 5 times - for a long time as a student, I sincerely tried to convince myself that I believed, and I read the Bible from end to end, over and over. But you can only keep deceiving yourself for so long before you start feeling dirty, so I made what I still call a leap of faith: I decided not to look for something that clearly isn't there, in the Bible. If God is real and cares, then he will come to me when the time is right; and if not, never mind.
So, be scientific and show me evidence that can be repeated and checked objectively. Or take my reasoning apart logically - I am willing to concede defeat, if you can show me that I am wrong.
Jesus wasn't simply a philosopher, he claimed to be God and encouraged others to worship him as God
To a non-believer, Jesus can't really be much more than a philosopher; or, if one were to take his words as spoken, a madman. I think, as a non-believer, you would have to regards the stories in the NT as tales, constructed retrospectively by the followers of the emerging religion that was growing up in his name. We have very little evidence of what he actually did, if he even existed, and the evidence we do have, is such that it is reasonable to be highly skeptical about large parts of it. The four Gospels are part of what was probably a large number of more or less tall tales, and they were selected by a group of people who has a strong interest in upholding their religious organisation, not by a team of unbiased researchers trying to learn the truth about things.
... would seem to be natural stupidity, which so many of us do so well.
... more about systems than people and women are more interested in people than systems.
Here's another, equally brilliant explanation: A relatively large proportion of IT professionals are gay and gays hate women: Bingo! (Just to ward off a flood of outrage: I was applying irony here)
I think you need to qualify your statement a bit more - how do you get to the conclusion that males are more interested in systems than females? I'm not saying that you are wrong, but I am not convinced.
Let's face it, without some competition, the USA would sit around with its thumb up its ass.
Well, what could we expect, when the space programmes of the US and USSR were, in large parts, no more than dick-waving? The Chinese are quite naturally milking their space program for its publicity value, but they have their eyes firmly on the commercial and political power objectives in the long term. I wish them all success with it - it can only benefit us all, if space exploration becomes sustainable or viable or whatever the word is. And hopefully this will spur the West and Russia on to try to do better.
Obtaining basic functional English is very easy, and English speakers are accustomed to understanding non-native speakers.
Well, it is, and then again, not really. The difference between how it is written and how it sounds can be quite startling, especially in the UK. I suppose American is much a more uniform language, but the difference between regions in UK is quite stark - to the extent that Londoners find it very difficult to understand Northeners or Scots; ironically, coming from Denmark, I have no such difficulties, since it sounds rather like the dialect I grew up with in Jutland.
If someone messes up on one of the finer points of English grammar, he'll obviously reveal himself as a non-native speaker, but the listener will still easily understand him. I feel like this is not the case in Mandarin, nor in any of the other tonal languages. It is just too easy to flub a tone and completely alter the meaning of the sentence.
The tones are the only really important thing to learn - the classical example is 'laoshi' which can, among other things mean either 'teacher' or 'old shit'. But the tones are not all that difficult - I remember them by thinking of them as sounding like different 'moods': 1st tone (high, level) = 'indifferent, whatever', 2nd tone (rising) = 'questioning', 3rd tone (falling, rising) = 'hesitant, I don't know about that' and 4th (falling) = 'rejecting, no!'. I don't think it maps to real meaning, but it helps me remember.
I think the really big difficulty people have with Chinese is that they try to map sentences directly from one language to another; Chinese does not use subordinate sentences like English does, so one has to break the sentences up and reassemble them, unlike when you go from English to French.
... notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak.
Is that so? I would be interested to hear what that assessment is based on - having learned the languages myself, I didn't find it hard, on the contrary.
Chinese is notable for having probably the simplest syntax of any language, pronunciation, this is no harder than are other languages, and the national transcription system, pinyin, is very consistent and accurately represents the pronunciation of the words, unlike for example English - for an illustration, see Mark Twain's famous satire on a similar subject:
http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/1...
Even Chinese characters aren't all that difficult - they are highly structured, and you only need to learn about 1000 to understand most texts; the average desktop user probably already recognises more than that number of icons without even sweating. I think the idea that Chinese is incredibly hard to learn is simply based on ignorance, and perhaps also some sort of fear that one might sound silly if one were to pronounce foreign languages correctly; English speakers seem to go out of their way to mispronounce ALL other languages, including German and French.
Compare Chinese with English:
Chinese: There are no grammatical tenses (past -, present -, future - ...)
English: Verbs have a different form depending on whether it talks about the past, present, etc.
Chinese: Nouns have the same form always. Really always: no singular/plural, nominative/accusative/genitive/dative/... ...
English:
Chinese: Spelled as it is pronounced
English: Need I elaborate?
And in English, the fact that it is a bastard language, with imported features from a large number of other languages, means that the same grammatical structures are governed by several basically unrelated rules: one house, several houses, but on the other hand, one forum, several fora - or should that be forums? And how about 'one virus'? If English were like Chinese, the question simply wouldn't arise. Chinese is easy to learn, far easier than English.
And it isn't that I don't like English - I love the language, but that is exactly because it is so convoluted and almost creatively messy.