You are correct, I want to hear about the problem from people who are experienced and informed about the field, and qualified to know the risks. I want information from people who are knowledgeable about the facility and the the current circumstances there. I want... well... the people who actually manage the place and who are on the ground there now...
Or I want that guy sitting in an office in the U.S. who wrote "The Physics of Star Trek"... since he obviously is a reputable source.
Not to get into one side or the other of this debate, but when I see something like that statement I have to point out that the Titanic was unsinkable.
But the actual physics said that the Titanic can sink. The actual physics also say that these plants can't "go Chernobyl". I suppose I also shouldn't say that my house can't turn into a cloud of butterflies and carry me to the moon. Yes, the worst case scenario is bad, I don't mean to downplay that, but it isn't Chernobyl bad, either.
Three Mile Island in the late 1970s, Chernobyl in the mid 1980s, and now these.
Chernobyl was a bona fide catastrophe... But Three Mile Island isn't the best example for you cause, since no one died, and there was no long term effects. It was broke, it was fixed, end of story. Also, four problems in 50 years, out of however many plants world wide, is actually a POSITIVE thing. I can't think of many other complex engineering complexes that have a record that good. How often does oil and gas infrastructure fail? How many people have died due to nuclear accidents versus conventional power generation techniques? Nuclear is probably still safer than pretty much any other feasible, and accepted, form of power generation.
I'm guessing it would take less than the largest earthquake in over a century to kill most other power generators, oil, coal, or gas. And even in a worst case scenario these plants probably won't be that bad. We're not looking at a potential Chernobyl here. I'm guessing the death toll, at worse, will be in the tens. Which isn't good, but isn't nearly as damning as some people want it to be.
Also, modern designs wouldn't have these problems. Modern designs remove 90% of the criticisms that you, and other, lay at their feet. Most modern designs would have walked out of this disaster completely unfazed. They also don't produce as much waste, and produce mostly low-half-life wastes, and can burn less rare elements, and waste from older plants (converting it to low level waste as a bonus). So even if we take this as some big "anti-nuclear" lesson (which would be stupid), the deepest lesson we can take from it is "that 40 year old design isn't the best, so perhaps we should upgrade".
But then again I'm trying to be a rational, objective, person, who isn't immediately scared the second the hear the word "nuclear" ("zomg, they make bombs from that shit!"). In reality this probably killed all hope for nuclear power, and the benefits it brings over most all other forms of power generation. But people are idiots, so no surprise there.
And then again the alternatives also have significant downsides that nuclear doesn't. Every source of energy is going to have some decent downsides, its just about what risks and and dangers you find acceptable.
I'm not a 100% nuclear fanboy, but I do find it a shame that this is going to kill nuclear for another couple decades. Especially since there are some really good designs (low waste, low half life waste, safer, immune to problems like in Japan) in the pipeline. Not all nuclear is created equal.
Also, as a denizen of the desert Southwest, I find the common theme of paving over the deserts with solar panels to be distasteful as they are also thriving ecosystems, and as valuable as forests and grasslands. Most solar schemes also depend on some rather nasty chemicals for their construction. Wind kills birds, is an eye sore, and has some decent potential risks, it also isn't the most dependable source of energy. Tidal energy is a bit better, but it isn't really that feasible for vast swaths of most continents, and isn't nearly high yield enough to meet demand.
We're going to need a broad spectrum of power generation to wean us off fossil fuels. Nuclear probably should be in that bundle, since it is dependable, (with modern designs) safe, and high yield. Objectively looking at its track record, it still is pretty damn safe. If someone ran the statistics (Google didn't help, I tried) I'm guessing nuclear is safer than coal, oil, or gas. If it takes the largest earthquake in 100+ years to make it fail (and not dramatically like Chernobyl), I wouldn't say that is a damning thing. Hell, if it was just the earthquake (sans tsunami), they would probably still be running fine, or at least not in a state like they are... which is quite a statement when you think of it.
Also... why is this getting more mind share than the far larger catastrophe? Yes, it is important, yes, it is somewhat frightening, but some perspective is needed as well. So far this reactor has claimed 4 lives, how many has the actually catastrophe claimed? This reactor, even in a worse case scenario, will claim fewer lives, and cause less destruction, than the earthquake and tsunami. Far fewer.
Actually, so far, I've been very impressed with the Japanese. They've shown how to do earthquakes right... I find the whole thing rather hopeful.
What alternative to "consensus" would you propose for a field where it is KNOWN that the best models we have are bad?
I wasn't trying to debate global warming, per se, but the fact that the debate introduced "consensus" as an aspect of science in the popular understanding. Yes, it does have some limited applicability in the AGW debate, but only when applied to the deep, dirty, and technical aspects of the debate. The philosophy of science bits. This has risen to the forefront though, and has been abused.
Just because 100%, or 90% of 5% of scientists hold a common view doesn't make said view valid. And just because 5%, 90%, or 99% of scientists hold a dissenting view doesn't make the theory wrong. Somewhere deep down there is a real thing that the science is trying to describe, and it doesn't care one bit how many scientists agree with it. Geocentricism was wrong, even before people discovered an alternative. Basically facts precede observation, much less consensus. The debate isn't about consensus, it is about what threshold of certainty should we have before public action. More accurately, the argument is a technical one based on the merit of various models, i.e. a purely scientific one. If AGW exists, it will continue to do so even if everyone decides otherwise. If AGW doesn't exist (or isn't as big a deal as it is painted), it will continue to not exist even if we all decide it does.
In brief, reality doesn't give two shits what we think of it. So "consensus" is a bit meaningless.
"The consensus view" (i.e., the projections of most models in most runs) "is that...".
That isn't really how it is presented. If it was true that "consensus" just mean "most models", then the phrase would carry some weight. It has been twisted by the media, and people with personal (non-scientific) interests to mean "most scientists agree" as a matter of proof. As if you could gather 90 out of 100 climatologists get them to agree on something, and it would magically be a fact. This strenghtens the opposing, and equally idiotic view that if you can find or create enough dissent that somehow things aren't true.
That said, "consensus" does serve some purpose. For us lay people it is a good rough criteria for judgement of what have a greater probability of being true than not. It can help up form opinions on the state of the world; if a decent portion of qualified experts agree on something. As a student of the philosophy of science I have to admit that consensus is actually a great deal of the social epistemology of science... in a very tricky, and scary way. But this isn't a useful way, I hate to admit it, but science does just fine without us obnoxious philosophy wonks.
Again, just so people don't leap down my throat, I think that AGW is probably real, or at least a more credible stance than its opposite. I'm not certain. I'm a lay person in this feild, so... And even if there is still a decent chance of it not being correct, we should act, as a matter of policy, that it is true, since it is better than the alternatives (a climatological Pascal's wager...). Probably. But, I am a lay person, and if someone allowed me an actual opinion on the truth this matter, they would be stark raving mad,
I generally think the term, or ones like it, has no place in large public debates with public consequences since they are pretty much terms standing for individual (and subjective) values. Debates on mass policy should try to stick as much to universals as possible.
(My pet peeve is legislating based on religious morals, when people of different moral ideology would be effected... What Jesus, or Muhammad, or Abraham, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, would do has very little meaning to a large portion of the population. No to say I'm against religion, just against is applicability as a universal)
Damn me previously commenting on this thread... I would have hit the mod button for you. You hit the nail on the head! And better, your actually on topic while doing so.
Thats the big problem... "you don't 100% know" is universally valid. And it leaves a very large opening to insert your own theory, because we confuse the fact that there is no 100% certainty in scientific/inductive statements with pure epistemic relativism. If you can't know 100%, then my pet theory has equal chances of being correct.
Sadly it is pretty hard to actually debunk that, since you enter into the fuzzy realms of philosophy.
They frequently take the position that a fetus is a person complete with all that entails and that a fetus exists from conception. Such a clumping of cells isn't any more a person than that wart I had removed was.
It isn't that simple. If I take a random clump of cells there is a fundamental difference between it and a fetus... a fetus can turn into a human. If I were to join into this argument on either side, I could argue against abortion without ever using the term "soul", or other religious terms, based on this potential. I'm not going to weigh in beyond that, though, since I don't really see the point.
Abortion doesn't have to be a religious issue. You can be religious and pro-choice (I know some of that camp), atheist/agnostic and pro-life, or anywhere between. In reality, the morality of abortion has absolutely nothing to do with science. You cannot, based wholly on empirical scientific reasoning, fall into either camp conclusively. Abortion is a completely personal debate, based wholly on your own subjective beliefs, priorities, and cultural upbringing.
Science can debunk erroneous claims within the debate, but can't really be used to "pick sides". And no, science can't debunk the idea of a "soul", it can only state that there is no empirical evidence for such a thing, which isn't the same as saying "there is no such thing".
We think we have a pretty good handle on it, but we don't know.
This is true of ALL scientific statements. Scientific knowledge can never be known 100%, its always just the best explanation of observed data, with varying degree of strength (based on the amount of observed data).
This is sciences main strength, that the system is always open, and always self-correcting, at least when the process is working as it should. This is its main weakness, though, when it comes to the public aspect of science. As a scientist, you can never say "I know that...", which leaves openings for those who oppose your theories. Lay people want 100%, they want the capital "T" Truth, which is something that science can never offer. If it isn't 100%, then there is room for their badly reasoned, self-interested, personal theories. Sadly this will always be true.
Another problem, as TFA points out, is the rise of post-modern relativism, and the spread of Fox News Ontology (fair and balanced, all views are equal). A person who has spend 10 years studying a subject, and half of their lives getting their hands dirty within the topic opinion is just as valid as some guy off the street who pretty much only knows about the subject from the popular media, or the pulpit, cultural tradition, or just plain gut instinct. This is further hurt by attacks from within the science community itself, self-interested corporate science.
For some reason people decided science is about meaning, and not about cold reality that really doesn't care one bit what god you embrace, what you think of fetuses, whether you love the gay, or like swilling fossil fuels like no tomorrow. The things that science explores doesn't give one shit about what people think, or hold sacred. This is a hard pill to swallow in a world where facts should only serve your own self-interests. Reality should never get in the way of your personal life, or profit margin.
If a well accepted, and evidence backed theory doesn't fit your religion, making up fake "quasi-science" isn't going to change a damn thing. The evidecne behind the views to find abhorrent will remain.
The solution, as it always is, is education. That and finding a way to get rid of a firm belief in relativism when it serves our little egotistical wishes.
Scientists, sadly, aren't helping. I do beleive in anthropogenic global warming, but the scientists who usually defend this view use the word "consensus" way too much to be healthy. 95% of scientists agreeing doesn't really mean much, and it send the wrong message that science is somehow a democracy.
Also the scientific coverage of gender and sexuality is laughable, since people refuse to tread on it for fear of upsetting social norms. Why the hell is science doing cultural activism? Science should be culturally agnostic. If facts say something culturally unpopular, then tough... Its the job of science to be the error checker of society as much as it is to explore arcane truths.
I am not a scientist, though I went to school for philosophy of science.
Apple has kept their overpriced ipods on top largely by providing consumers with the most physically attractive product. And physical attractiveness has also played a role in adoption of their laptop line as well, especially the Air. Yet, I doubt the iPhone will carry the day on looks.
I own an iPod, and have owned an iPod since their second generation hit the shelves. Why? I got one for free (or with a deep discount) with the purchase of an iBook through college. It beat the crap out of my old flash based one in every-way. Why do I still buy them (I'm on number 3)? Because they still beat the competition on my needs, though just barely. When they came out the iPod-iTunes scheme was the best there was, I didn't have to sit around organizing my 10Gb of music, putting it in folders, moving it to a device, etc... I plug it in -- it syncs, no work on my behalf. Beautiful. This is why I still buy them, I don't have the time or desire to sit around playing with my growing music selection. And now that I've had one for awhile, I will continue buying them until Apple screws them up (which their coming close too, iTunes is 90% bloat now if you don't own other Apple devices, and they decided that people who like music isn't a target anymore, with their measly, overpriced flash players). I don't care if its Apple. I would buy any product, regardless of branding, that worked as well. It moved me from dreading planning what I might want to listen too tomorrow, to just grabbing a device and going... no more Winamp and directory hell.
Attractiveness didn't play a roll, and continues not to.
As for my old iBook, I didn't get it because it was pretty. I got it because I was sick of PCs. When I got it, I recently had a PSU fry my computer which I just spent around $500 upgrading. I could either go through the whole mess again, or get a Mac. I got a Mac. I was in college, I had better things to do than sit around maintaining my computer. I loved that iBook. Later I bought a MacMini, and it was a mistake. And Apple started growing a bit nasty (IMO). But at the time I saw my freinds with Macs not spending a couple hours a week maintaining their computers, and saw that it was running Unix... Later I was sold on OS Xs conventions and strategy. Looks didn't play a roll. And once I realized that I was trading power for ease of use, I switched back to homemade Windows/Linux boxes. This was after college, so time spent maintaining it became less important, this played a roll too.
I'm not a fan boy of anything in particular. I'm typing this from an old laptop running Kubuntu. My general purpose computer is home-built and running Win7 and OpenSuse. My HTPC occasionally runs various flavors of Linux (installed to see if they can actually work as a media center yet). I still have an iPod though and will until something beats them. I do have an old MacMini sitting around in the kitchen serving internet, music, and recipes, though.
Claiming that Apple products owe all their success to fashion is wrong. It might play a small roll in some consumers, but I doubt that group is large enough to allow Apple to have the share it does. iPhones were the first smart-phones to break the "executive" stereotype, and appear to be usable for normal people. Once this market was opened they got beat quickly by Android. Tablet computers might go the same way, if there ever will be a decent competitor. Looking at that market, there is only a SINGLE product that even comes close to an iPad (Samsung Galaxy Tablet), and everything else is a cheap piece of quickly thrown together crap. If someone else hops in with a better product, at a better price, they will probably win.
Right now, though, if I was in the market for a tablet (I'm not, I don't see the point), I would probably get an iPad. Not for Apple loyalty, but because nothing else is quite as good, yet.
I generally don't "overtly" boycott things, though I avoid them based on quality. I haven't bought a Sony product in years (ignoring a used PS2 and used games for it, but Sony didn't see any cash from that), but not because I'm boycotting them, but because their quality isn't as good as their competitors. This didn't use to be true, but it is now. I might own a DVD or two from Sony, and I'm sure Samsung had to kick in some cash to Sony to make the Blu-ray player I bought.
I've noticed that when companies start getting generally abusive, their products also become inferior. There probably is a correlation hiding in there somewhere.
I've also "boycotted" the RIAA for around 10 years, completely on accident. There hasn't been anything I really wanted coming from any of their labels for some time. I still spend as much on music as I used to, but it mostly goes to independent labels and live music now.
Though I am sad that my Sony stereo receiver from the 80's just died, I loved it. Sony used to be decent company, squeezing out decent products. Sadly those times have passed. I replaced it with an old Pioneer receiver from the early 80's... so take that Sony! Ahem.
Do you just avoid things that say "Sony" on them, or avoid everything held by Sony itself? Sony owns a cubic shit ton of other corporations and products, many of which aren't labeled as such. They also own large stakes in many other businesses; so do you avoid all of there tentacles?
Not sure about you, but I'd rather risk having something old break with the benefit of being able to actually browse the web. Things are so far along since IE6 that it really is a completely new world online.
This matters if your employees should be browsing the web as part of their actual job. Otherwise Facebook being broken might be seen as a benefit rather than a problem. The only thing that matters is your ancient, crusty, legacy apps that are built around IE6.
My girlfriend works at a very large, Fortune 500, company and they still have IE6. They recently upgraded one of their apps and were forced to also roll out Firefox, but they locked down to the point where it can ONLY open that application, while keeping IE6 as the primary browser.
The hassle is probably worth it to them, from a pure economics point of view, though. Sure, replacing a browser would be nice, but re-buying all of your business essential applications would probably cost a lot of money... a hell of a lot if you need per-seat licensing of tens of thousands of employees.
In circumstances where it is meaningful, yes. We can safely blaim Hitler for the holocaust, we can blame Gavrilo Princip for shooting Franz Ferdinand, etc... But we can't blame Hitler for WWII, or Gavrilo Princip for starting WWI since it hides larger, more nebulous, causes. And for long lasting, completely ambiguous, conflicts assigning blame becomes more... meaningless. Sure, arguably, the Muslims started the Crusades rolling, but it doesn't excuse 200 years of general asshattery from Europe during that time period. Sure Palestinians cause a large amount of nasty in Israel, but it doesn't excuse the Israeli reactions also being nasty. When both sides of a conflict act badly the side who started it matters less and less.
If someone walks up to you on the street and punches you, then assigning blame is a meaningful thing. If it is a mutual confrontation that escalates into mutual violence, then blame becomes much more difficult, no matter who threw the first punch.
I also am leery of assigning blame to large groups of people for the acts of a portion of that group. Or quickly assigning blame to people or groups in circumstances that are much larger and more complicated than one group versus another, since it hides deeper causes of conflict, and often more interesting, and insightful, questions.
From an outside perspective America itself doesn't fair very well either. We ran (do run) around picking fights with everyone too. I'm guessing much of Latin America could pain us in a very bad light, for instance.
Basic law of cultures and societies: "everyone is an asshole".
it's still the same thing because you refuse to accept that Muslims did X bad thing and it resulted in Y.
Strawman much? Yes, someone did bad thing X that lead to equally bad thing Y, and then it continues on and on for hundreds of years. I find putting blame to be rather shallow, since neither group really emerged looking good. Yes, the Muslims might have been very marginally worse (since some small group of them started it) than the Christians, but functionally it doesn't matter one bit.
Your problem is that your blaming a full group for the actions of a very small portion of said group. Muslims is as meaningless a phrase as Christians, or Caucasians, or Blacks, or whatever. Thats the problem.
Also, I'm not an apologist for anyone. I don't see either side as noble, nor do I see either side as "evil". Both Christians and Muslims have been assholes throughout time. Sure, right now the Muslims aren't doing as well, but the Christians were there previously, and will be there again (listen to some radical Christians in America, they sound just like the radical Muslims, and have the same goals). I really don't find the "whose worse" conversation productive, interesting, or accurate. Its a pointless thing. What purpose does it serve? To make your "side" feel warm and fuzzy? To spread some hate, and potential violence, to your enemies? What the hell is the purpose?
You realize that 99% of all Muslims don't care, aren't terrorists, etc... Just like 99% of Christians or any other ethnic or religious group? What percentage of Muslims took part in the crusades, versus what portion of European Christians?
And isn't just saying "the Crusades were bad", enough? What purpose is served by saying that one side was marginally worse than the other, or one side "started it"? Who cares?
However, the politically correct devotion to Muslims makes it almost a crime to point out that the Crusades were a response to Muslim aggression.
Perhaps both sides were asshats and largely responsible for the Crusades? The whole "European Christians/Muslims started it!" thing sounds like a second grade argument, "who started it" is a rather silly thing to argue about when talking about over 200 years of conflict, with a rather large heap of atrocities sitting in the laps of BOTH sides. I have no sympathy for either side in the crusades, since they both are guilty of perpetuating it, no matter who started it.
Same with Israel and Palestine; the argument about who started it, or who is "correct", has long since become irrelevant, since both sides continue the conflict. Actually, its the same with most large-scale conflicts.
Its like blaming all of WWI (and thus WWII, and thus Hitler) on Gavrilo Princip. It might be somewhat correct, but completely misses any point.
Not hating on Muslims isn't politically correct, its accurate. Sure, they have their extremists, and that is bad, but 99% of them are normal folk doing normal things whose only difference in life is not buying into your religion. I'm an atheist, I can't really see a difference between most Muslims and most Christians. Hell, looking at the vocal Fungelicals, the nasty theocracies in the Middle East are more a road map than some evil empire. Muslims are the same as everyone else, for good or ill.
However, I own a 1st gen iPad, and I also own a good quality DSLR plus a small digital point-and-shoot -- for me, I can't imagine why anybody would *want* a camera in that device, but someone must because it's one of the things I see people bitching about the most. Then again, my cell phone is used only for, well, phone calls... and even then, not very often.
Everything needs a damn camera. I'm pretty sure I have over 12 cameras, or devices that can be used as such, sitting around the house right now. I really don't understand it. You aren't a "high tech consumer good" unless you have a semi-crappy camera glued on. I don't see the point, how many people actually use that as a buying point... Man, I want to spend a large sum of money on a tablet computer, but I won't unless it has a crappy camera attached (that takes pictures as good as my ancient cheap point-and-shoot).
From now on I won't buy anything unless it has a camera. I was going to go get a new kitten, but it didn't have a 3.4 megapixel camera taped to its head, so I didn't.
. UBIK was optioned at one point (maybe by John Lennon?)...
I think Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine... and a bunch of really annoying, pretentious, fake indie films) bought the rights to Ubik now. Which, if he pulls it off like Eternal Sunshine, might be a good movies, if he does it like The Green Hornet or Science of Sleep, it will one the largest steaming piles of crap ever squeezed from the bowels of Hollywood. Being that it is Philip Dick (1% of of movies based off of his work is worth watching, he might be the most butchered author there is), Hollywood (90% is crap), and Michel Gondry (1 good movies, followed by a stream of crap)... I wouldn't hold my breath.
The low budget film based on Radio Free Albemuth might be nice, it looks at least faithful to the story. Though the trailer dashes most of that hope, since it looks like a ultra-low-budget film, with some pretty stiff acting. Perhaps its just the trailer though, since it is a pretty bad one.
Blade Runner was a huge improvement over the original story.
In your, completely subjective, opinion at least. I disagree.
That said, I see Blade Runner and DADoES as separate things, and enjoy both of them roughly equally for completely different reasons. Blade Runner was a stylistic master piece, with pretty much perfect scene making and acting. DADoES was a tilted tragi-comedy with a brooding philosophical bent, and the trademark Philip Dick ambiguity. The story was much much more intellectually satisfying, and pulled off intelligent better (unlike the movies silly unicorn thing), but, like much of Dick's writing, is a bit hit or miss. The story's world comes off more like a sketch than a completed thing. The movie makes up for this in spades, but at the expense of intellectual depth.
Blade Runner, though, is the second best Dick adaptation (After A Scanner Darkly), and is a brilliant film on its own. If I was stuck on a desert island and could only have one, I would ponder how arbitrary this whole scenario is, and then pick the story.
Its pretty much the same way I see the LoTR trilogy, the books and the movies are very different beasts, and can be judged separately. It isn't really an either/or thing.
Ubuntu, which moved the 3 window title buttons to the wrong location
Gah, I hate this! Is there an objectively right and wrong placement of windows controls? When did this happen, and how was it justified?
You don't like it, that doesn't make it right or wrong. I personally don't like them on the right, so... therefore... our opinions nullify the whole damn debate and people are free to stick there buttons where ever they like.
Its all about the options. Let users decide what they want if your defaults don't work for them. Before Ubuntu switched their buttons to the left, I always did it manually any way (oh no, a whole 2-3 minutes of work every 6 months to a year!). I also have a Mac sitting around somewhere with the same setup. If I could switch the window controls on my Win7 boxes, I would (I personally hate the task bar being on the bottom, it clearly should be on the right!).
Yeah, like that whole Panorama awesomeness they stole from Chrome. Oh, wait.
Wow, a place where my tabs can go to die in obscurity! Why the hell isn't Panorama an extension? I personally don't care about it, and will never use it; but when the whole project started wasn't the point to make a completely basic, fast, browser, and add all the other features as optional extensions?
Also, if they're trying to make more room from actual content by trimming the GUI, why did they make their little "Firefox" menu thing take up extra room instead of sticking it in some pre-existing area of the interface?
Stockholm syndrome comes to mind. But what do you think about the last few Ubuntu releases? You mean that to you both the old plain gnome with a brown background and the new MacOS X sortalookalikebutugly are better than Mint's defaults? Someone get me an RDF depletor, Shuttleworth got a bit of Steve's liver on eBay.
I've been setting my window controls on the left manually for a long time, until Ubuntu decided to save me the four minutes needed to switch them. And plain old Gnome is better (IMO) than the odd Windows95 menus that Mint has. Mint also is a bit ugly, again IMO, its trying to hard to appeal to Windows users where it really should have its own look and feel... If I wanted Windows I would just use Windows, or wheel my chair three feet over and use my Windows 7 box (much better GUI than Mint). Linux should have, and stick to, its own GUI conventions (for Gnome and KDE) instead of trying really hard to be Windows or OS X. Windows can out Windows Linux any day, the result is always ugly and kludgy.
But then again I've been using KDE for a bit now (with my buttons on the left, still). So...
Also, to move away from Unbuntu, and Canonical, I'd say hop over to OpenSuse. No real complaints after getting used to RPMs and the lack of apt.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, I want to hear about the problem from people who are experienced and informed about the field, and qualified to know the risks. I want information from people who are knowledgeable about the facility and the the current circumstances there. I want... well... the people who actually manage the place and who are on the ground there now...
Or I want that guy sitting in an office in the U.S. who wrote "The Physics of Star Trek"... since he obviously is a reputable source.
Not to get into one side or the other of this debate, but when I see something like that statement I have to point out that the Titanic was unsinkable.
But the actual physics said that the Titanic can sink. The actual physics also say that these plants can't "go Chernobyl". I suppose I also shouldn't say that my house can't turn into a cloud of butterflies and carry me to the moon. Yes, the worst case scenario is bad, I don't mean to downplay that, but it isn't Chernobyl bad, either.
Three Mile Island in the late 1970s, Chernobyl in the mid 1980s, and now these.
Chernobyl was a bona fide catastrophe... But Three Mile Island isn't the best example for you cause, since no one died, and there was no long term effects. It was broke, it was fixed, end of story. Also, four problems in 50 years, out of however many plants world wide, is actually a POSITIVE thing. I can't think of many other complex engineering complexes that have a record that good. How often does oil and gas infrastructure fail? How many people have died due to nuclear accidents versus conventional power generation techniques? Nuclear is probably still safer than pretty much any other feasible, and accepted, form of power generation.
I'm guessing it would take less than the largest earthquake in over a century to kill most other power generators, oil, coal, or gas. And even in a worst case scenario these plants probably won't be that bad. We're not looking at a potential Chernobyl here. I'm guessing the death toll, at worse, will be in the tens. Which isn't good, but isn't nearly as damning as some people want it to be.
Also, modern designs wouldn't have these problems. Modern designs remove 90% of the criticisms that you, and other, lay at their feet. Most modern designs would have walked out of this disaster completely unfazed. They also don't produce as much waste, and produce mostly low-half-life wastes, and can burn less rare elements, and waste from older plants (converting it to low level waste as a bonus). So even if we take this as some big "anti-nuclear" lesson (which would be stupid), the deepest lesson we can take from it is "that 40 year old design isn't the best, so perhaps we should upgrade".
But then again I'm trying to be a rational, objective, person, who isn't immediately scared the second the hear the word "nuclear" ("zomg, they make bombs from that shit!"). In reality this probably killed all hope for nuclear power, and the benefits it brings over most all other forms of power generation. But people are idiots, so no surprise there.
And then again the alternatives also have significant downsides that nuclear doesn't. Every source of energy is going to have some decent downsides, its just about what risks and and dangers you find acceptable.
I'm not a 100% nuclear fanboy, but I do find it a shame that this is going to kill nuclear for another couple decades. Especially since there are some really good designs (low waste, low half life waste, safer, immune to problems like in Japan) in the pipeline. Not all nuclear is created equal.
Also, as a denizen of the desert Southwest, I find the common theme of paving over the deserts with solar panels to be distasteful as they are also thriving ecosystems, and as valuable as forests and grasslands. Most solar schemes also depend on some rather nasty chemicals for their construction. Wind kills birds, is an eye sore, and has some decent potential risks, it also isn't the most dependable source of energy. Tidal energy is a bit better, but it isn't really that feasible for vast swaths of most continents, and isn't nearly high yield enough to meet demand.
We're going to need a broad spectrum of power generation to wean us off fossil fuels. Nuclear probably should be in that bundle, since it is dependable, (with modern designs) safe, and high yield. Objectively looking at its track record, it still is pretty damn safe. If someone ran the statistics (Google didn't help, I tried) I'm guessing nuclear is safer than coal, oil, or gas. If it takes the largest earthquake in 100+ years to make it fail (and not dramatically like Chernobyl), I wouldn't say that is a damning thing. Hell, if it was just the earthquake (sans tsunami), they would probably still be running fine, or at least not in a state like they are... which is quite a statement when you think of it.
Also... why is this getting more mind share than the far larger catastrophe? Yes, it is important, yes, it is somewhat frightening, but some perspective is needed as well. So far this reactor has claimed 4 lives, how many has the actually catastrophe claimed? This reactor, even in a worse case scenario, will claim fewer lives, and cause less destruction, than the earthquake and tsunami. Far fewer.
Actually, so far, I've been very impressed with the Japanese. They've shown how to do earthquakes right... I find the whole thing rather hopeful.
What alternative to "consensus" would you propose for a field where it is KNOWN that the best models we have are bad?
I wasn't trying to debate global warming, per se, but the fact that the debate introduced "consensus" as an aspect of science in the popular understanding. Yes, it does have some limited applicability in the AGW debate, but only when applied to the deep, dirty, and technical aspects of the debate. The philosophy of science bits. This has risen to the forefront though, and has been abused.
Just because 100%, or 90% of 5% of scientists hold a common view doesn't make said view valid. And just because 5%, 90%, or 99% of scientists hold a dissenting view doesn't make the theory wrong. Somewhere deep down there is a real thing that the science is trying to describe, and it doesn't care one bit how many scientists agree with it. Geocentricism was wrong, even before people discovered an alternative. Basically facts precede observation, much less consensus. The debate isn't about consensus, it is about what threshold of certainty should we have before public action. More accurately, the argument is a technical one based on the merit of various models, i.e. a purely scientific one. If AGW exists, it will continue to do so even if everyone decides otherwise. If AGW doesn't exist (or isn't as big a deal as it is painted), it will continue to not exist even if we all decide it does.
In brief, reality doesn't give two shits what we think of it. So "consensus" is a bit meaningless.
"The consensus view" (i.e., the projections of most models in most runs) "is that ...".
That isn't really how it is presented. If it was true that "consensus" just mean "most models", then the phrase would carry some weight. It has been twisted by the media, and people with personal (non-scientific) interests to mean "most scientists agree" as a matter of proof. As if you could gather 90 out of 100 climatologists get them to agree on something, and it would magically be a fact. This strenghtens the opposing, and equally idiotic view that if you can find or create enough dissent that somehow things aren't true.
That said, "consensus" does serve some purpose. For us lay people it is a good rough criteria for judgement of what have a greater probability of being true than not. It can help up form opinions on the state of the world; if a decent portion of qualified experts agree on something. As a student of the philosophy of science I have to admit that consensus is actually a great deal of the social epistemology of science... in a very tricky, and scary way. But this isn't a useful way, I hate to admit it, but science does just fine without us obnoxious philosophy wonks.
Again, just so people don't leap down my throat, I think that AGW is probably real, or at least a more credible stance than its opposite. I'm not certain. I'm a lay person in this feild, so... And even if there is still a decent chance of it not being correct, we should act, as a matter of policy, that it is true, since it is better than the alternatives (a climatological Pascal's wager...). Probably. But, I am a lay person, and if someone allowed me an actual opinion on the truth this matter, they would be stark raving mad,
I agree 100%.
I generally think the term, or ones like it, has no place in large public debates with public consequences since they are pretty much terms standing for individual (and subjective) values. Debates on mass policy should try to stick as much to universals as possible.
(My pet peeve is legislating based on religious morals, when people of different moral ideology would be effected... What Jesus, or Muhammad, or Abraham, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, would do has very little meaning to a large portion of the population. No to say I'm against religion, just against is applicability as a universal)
Damn me previously commenting on this thread... I would have hit the mod button for you. You hit the nail on the head! And better, your actually on topic while doing so.
Thats the big problem... "you don't 100% know" is universally valid. And it leaves a very large opening to insert your own theory, because we confuse the fact that there is no 100% certainty in scientific/inductive statements with pure epistemic relativism. If you can't know 100%, then my pet theory has equal chances of being correct.
Sadly it is pretty hard to actually debunk that, since you enter into the fuzzy realms of philosophy.
They frequently take the position that a fetus is a person complete with all that entails and that a fetus exists from conception. Such a clumping of cells isn't any more a person than that wart I had removed was.
It isn't that simple. If I take a random clump of cells there is a fundamental difference between it and a fetus... a fetus can turn into a human. If I were to join into this argument on either side, I could argue against abortion without ever using the term "soul", or other religious terms, based on this potential. I'm not going to weigh in beyond that, though, since I don't really see the point.
Abortion doesn't have to be a religious issue. You can be religious and pro-choice (I know some of that camp), atheist/agnostic and pro-life, or anywhere between. In reality, the morality of abortion has absolutely nothing to do with science. You cannot, based wholly on empirical scientific reasoning, fall into either camp conclusively. Abortion is a completely personal debate, based wholly on your own subjective beliefs, priorities, and cultural upbringing.
Science can debunk erroneous claims within the debate, but can't really be used to "pick sides". And no, science can't debunk the idea of a "soul", it can only state that there is no empirical evidence for such a thing, which isn't the same as saying "there is no such thing".
I'm not going to hop into this debate; I obviously have an opinion, everyone does, but realize it is nothing but my own, subjective, opinion.
I hate the idea of a child being a punishment.
Agreed. Though I think someone phrased it wrong, a child is a consequence of previous decisions.
We think we have a pretty good handle on it, but we don't know.
This is true of ALL scientific statements. Scientific knowledge can never be known 100%, its always just the best explanation of observed data, with varying degree of strength (based on the amount of observed data).
This is sciences main strength, that the system is always open, and always self-correcting, at least when the process is working as it should. This is its main weakness, though, when it comes to the public aspect of science. As a scientist, you can never say "I know that...", which leaves openings for those who oppose your theories. Lay people want 100%, they want the capital "T" Truth, which is something that science can never offer. If it isn't 100%, then there is room for their badly reasoned, self-interested, personal theories. Sadly this will always be true.
Another problem, as TFA points out, is the rise of post-modern relativism, and the spread of Fox News Ontology (fair and balanced, all views are equal). A person who has spend 10 years studying a subject, and half of their lives getting their hands dirty within the topic opinion is just as valid as some guy off the street who pretty much only knows about the subject from the popular media, or the pulpit, cultural tradition, or just plain gut instinct. This is further hurt by attacks from within the science community itself, self-interested corporate science.
For some reason people decided science is about meaning, and not about cold reality that really doesn't care one bit what god you embrace, what you think of fetuses, whether you love the gay, or like swilling fossil fuels like no tomorrow. The things that science explores doesn't give one shit about what people think, or hold sacred. This is a hard pill to swallow in a world where facts should only serve your own self-interests. Reality should never get in the way of your personal life, or profit margin.
If a well accepted, and evidence backed theory doesn't fit your religion, making up fake "quasi-science" isn't going to change a damn thing. The evidecne behind the views to find abhorrent will remain.
The solution, as it always is, is education. That and finding a way to get rid of a firm belief in relativism when it serves our little egotistical wishes.
Scientists, sadly, aren't helping. I do beleive in anthropogenic global warming, but the scientists who usually defend this view use the word "consensus" way too much to be healthy. 95% of scientists agreeing doesn't really mean much, and it send the wrong message that science is somehow a democracy.
Also the scientific coverage of gender and sexuality is laughable, since people refuse to tread on it for fear of upsetting social norms. Why the hell is science doing cultural activism? Science should be culturally agnostic. If facts say something culturally unpopular, then tough... Its the job of science to be the error checker of society as much as it is to explore arcane truths.
I am not a scientist, though I went to school for philosophy of science.
Apple has kept their overpriced ipods on top largely by providing consumers with the most physically attractive product. And physical attractiveness has also played a role in adoption of their laptop line as well, especially the Air. Yet, I doubt the iPhone will carry the day on looks.
I own an iPod, and have owned an iPod since their second generation hit the shelves. Why? I got one for free (or with a deep discount) with the purchase of an iBook through college. It beat the crap out of my old flash based one in every-way. Why do I still buy them (I'm on number 3)? Because they still beat the competition on my needs, though just barely. When they came out the iPod-iTunes scheme was the best there was, I didn't have to sit around organizing my 10Gb of music, putting it in folders, moving it to a device, etc... I plug it in -- it syncs, no work on my behalf. Beautiful. This is why I still buy them, I don't have the time or desire to sit around playing with my growing music selection. And now that I've had one for awhile, I will continue buying them until Apple screws them up (which their coming close too, iTunes is 90% bloat now if you don't own other Apple devices, and they decided that people who like music isn't a target anymore, with their measly, overpriced flash players). I don't care if its Apple. I would buy any product, regardless of branding, that worked as well. It moved me from dreading planning what I might want to listen too tomorrow, to just grabbing a device and going... no more Winamp and directory hell.
Attractiveness didn't play a roll, and continues not to.
As for my old iBook, I didn't get it because it was pretty. I got it because I was sick of PCs. When I got it, I recently had a PSU fry my computer which I just spent around $500 upgrading. I could either go through the whole mess again, or get a Mac. I got a Mac. I was in college, I had better things to do than sit around maintaining my computer. I loved that iBook. Later I bought a MacMini, and it was a mistake. And Apple started growing a bit nasty (IMO). But at the time I saw my freinds with Macs not spending a couple hours a week maintaining their computers, and saw that it was running Unix... Later I was sold on OS Xs conventions and strategy. Looks didn't play a roll. And once I realized that I was trading power for ease of use, I switched back to homemade Windows/Linux boxes. This was after college, so time spent maintaining it became less important, this played a roll too.
I'm not a fan boy of anything in particular. I'm typing this from an old laptop running Kubuntu. My general purpose computer is home-built and running Win7 and OpenSuse. My HTPC occasionally runs various flavors of Linux (installed to see if they can actually work as a media center yet). I still have an iPod though and will until something beats them. I do have an old MacMini sitting around in the kitchen serving internet, music, and recipes, though.
Claiming that Apple products owe all their success to fashion is wrong. It might play a small roll in some consumers, but I doubt that group is large enough to allow Apple to have the share it does. iPhones were the first smart-phones to break the "executive" stereotype, and appear to be usable for normal people. Once this market was opened they got beat quickly by Android. Tablet computers might go the same way, if there ever will be a decent competitor. Looking at that market, there is only a SINGLE product that even comes close to an iPad (Samsung Galaxy Tablet), and everything else is a cheap piece of quickly thrown together crap. If someone else hops in with a better product, at a better price, they will probably win.
Right now, though, if I was in the market for a tablet (I'm not, I don't see the point), I would probably get an iPad. Not for Apple loyalty, but because nothing else is quite as good, yet.
I generally don't "overtly" boycott things, though I avoid them based on quality. I haven't bought a Sony product in years (ignoring a used PS2 and used games for it, but Sony didn't see any cash from that), but not because I'm boycotting them, but because their quality isn't as good as their competitors. This didn't use to be true, but it is now. I might own a DVD or two from Sony, and I'm sure Samsung had to kick in some cash to Sony to make the Blu-ray player I bought.
I've noticed that when companies start getting generally abusive, their products also become inferior. There probably is a correlation hiding in there somewhere.
I've also "boycotted" the RIAA for around 10 years, completely on accident. There hasn't been anything I really wanted coming from any of their labels for some time. I still spend as much on music as I used to, but it mostly goes to independent labels and live music now.
Though I am sad that my Sony stereo receiver from the 80's just died, I loved it. Sony used to be decent company, squeezing out decent products. Sadly those times have passed. I replaced it with an old Pioneer receiver from the early 80's... so take that Sony! Ahem.
Do you just avoid things that say "Sony" on them, or avoid everything held by Sony itself? Sony owns a cubic shit ton of other corporations and products, many of which aren't labeled as such. They also own large stakes in many other businesses; so do you avoid all of there tentacles?
Not sure about you, but I'd rather risk having something old break with the benefit of being able to actually browse the web. Things are so far along since IE6 that it really is a completely new world online.
This matters if your employees should be browsing the web as part of their actual job. Otherwise Facebook being broken might be seen as a benefit rather than a problem. The only thing that matters is your ancient, crusty, legacy apps that are built around IE6.
My girlfriend works at a very large, Fortune 500, company and they still have IE6. They recently upgraded one of their apps and were forced to also roll out Firefox, but they locked down to the point where it can ONLY open that application, while keeping IE6 as the primary browser.
The hassle is probably worth it to them, from a pure economics point of view, though. Sure, replacing a browser would be nice, but re-buying all of your business essential applications would probably cost a lot of money... a hell of a lot if you need per-seat licensing of tens of thousands of employees.
In circumstances where it is meaningful, yes. We can safely blaim Hitler for the holocaust, we can blame Gavrilo Princip for shooting Franz Ferdinand, etc... But we can't blame Hitler for WWII, or Gavrilo Princip for starting WWI since it hides larger, more nebulous, causes. And for long lasting, completely ambiguous, conflicts assigning blame becomes more... meaningless. Sure, arguably, the Muslims started the Crusades rolling, but it doesn't excuse 200 years of general asshattery from Europe during that time period. Sure Palestinians cause a large amount of nasty in Israel, but it doesn't excuse the Israeli reactions also being nasty. When both sides of a conflict act badly the side who started it matters less and less.
If someone walks up to you on the street and punches you, then assigning blame is a meaningful thing. If it is a mutual confrontation that escalates into mutual violence, then blame becomes much more difficult, no matter who threw the first punch.
I also am leery of assigning blame to large groups of people for the acts of a portion of that group. Or quickly assigning blame to people or groups in circumstances that are much larger and more complicated than one group versus another, since it hides deeper causes of conflict, and often more interesting, and insightful, questions.
From an outside perspective America itself doesn't fair very well either. We ran (do run) around picking fights with everyone too. I'm guessing much of Latin America could pain us in a very bad light, for instance.
Basic law of cultures and societies: "everyone is an asshole".
it's still the same thing because you refuse to accept that Muslims did X bad thing and it resulted in Y.
Strawman much? Yes, someone did bad thing X that lead to equally bad thing Y, and then it continues on and on for hundreds of years. I find putting blame to be rather shallow, since neither group really emerged looking good. Yes, the Muslims might have been very marginally worse (since some small group of them started it) than the Christians, but functionally it doesn't matter one bit.
Your problem is that your blaming a full group for the actions of a very small portion of said group. Muslims is as meaningless a phrase as Christians, or Caucasians, or Blacks, or whatever. Thats the problem.
Also, I'm not an apologist for anyone. I don't see either side as noble, nor do I see either side as "evil". Both Christians and Muslims have been assholes throughout time. Sure, right now the Muslims aren't doing as well, but the Christians were there previously, and will be there again (listen to some radical Christians in America, they sound just like the radical Muslims, and have the same goals). I really don't find the "whose worse" conversation productive, interesting, or accurate. Its a pointless thing. What purpose does it serve? To make your "side" feel warm and fuzzy? To spread some hate, and potential violence, to your enemies? What the hell is the purpose?
You realize that 99% of all Muslims don't care, aren't terrorists, etc... Just like 99% of Christians or any other ethnic or religious group? What percentage of Muslims took part in the crusades, versus what portion of European Christians?
And isn't just saying "the Crusades were bad", enough? What purpose is served by saying that one side was marginally worse than the other, or one side "started it"? Who cares?
However, the politically correct devotion to Muslims makes it almost a crime to point out that the Crusades were a response to Muslim aggression.
Perhaps both sides were asshats and largely responsible for the Crusades? The whole "European Christians/Muslims started it!" thing sounds like a second grade argument, "who started it" is a rather silly thing to argue about when talking about over 200 years of conflict, with a rather large heap of atrocities sitting in the laps of BOTH sides. I have no sympathy for either side in the crusades, since they both are guilty of perpetuating it, no matter who started it.
Same with Israel and Palestine; the argument about who started it, or who is "correct", has long since become irrelevant, since both sides continue the conflict. Actually, its the same with most large-scale conflicts.
Its like blaming all of WWI (and thus WWII, and thus Hitler) on Gavrilo Princip. It might be somewhat correct, but completely misses any point.
Not hating on Muslims isn't politically correct, its accurate. Sure, they have their extremists, and that is bad, but 99% of them are normal folk doing normal things whose only difference in life is not buying into your religion. I'm an atheist, I can't really see a difference between most Muslims and most Christians. Hell, looking at the vocal Fungelicals, the nasty theocracies in the Middle East are more a road map than some evil empire. Muslims are the same as everyone else, for good or ill.
However, I own a 1st gen iPad, and I also own a good quality DSLR plus a small digital point-and-shoot -- for me, I can't imagine why anybody would *want* a camera in that device, but someone must because it's one of the things I see people bitching about the most. Then again, my cell phone is used only for, well, phone calls ... and even then, not very often.
Everything needs a damn camera. I'm pretty sure I have over 12 cameras, or devices that can be used as such, sitting around the house right now. I really don't understand it. You aren't a "high tech consumer good" unless you have a semi-crappy camera glued on. I don't see the point, how many people actually use that as a buying point... Man, I want to spend a large sum of money on a tablet computer, but I won't unless it has a crappy camera attached (that takes pictures as good as my ancient cheap point-and-shoot).
From now on I won't buy anything unless it has a camera. I was going to go get a new kitten, but it didn't have a 3.4 megapixel camera taped to its head, so I didn't.
. UBIK was optioned at one point (maybe by John Lennon?)...
I think Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine... and a bunch of really annoying, pretentious, fake indie films) bought the rights to Ubik now. Which, if he pulls it off like Eternal Sunshine, might be a good movies, if he does it like The Green Hornet or Science of Sleep, it will one the largest steaming piles of crap ever squeezed from the bowels of Hollywood. Being that it is Philip Dick (1% of of movies based off of his work is worth watching, he might be the most butchered author there is), Hollywood (90% is crap), and Michel Gondry (1 good movies, followed by a stream of crap)... I wouldn't hold my breath.
The low budget film based on Radio Free Albemuth might be nice, it looks at least faithful to the story. Though the trailer dashes most of that hope, since it looks like a ultra-low-budget film, with some pretty stiff acting. Perhaps its just the trailer though, since it is a pretty bad one.
Blade Runner was a huge improvement over the original story.
In your, completely subjective, opinion at least. I disagree.
That said, I see Blade Runner and DADoES as separate things, and enjoy both of them roughly equally for completely different reasons. Blade Runner was a stylistic master piece, with pretty much perfect scene making and acting. DADoES was a tilted tragi-comedy with a brooding philosophical bent, and the trademark Philip Dick ambiguity. The story was much much more intellectually satisfying, and pulled off intelligent better (unlike the movies silly unicorn thing), but, like much of Dick's writing, is a bit hit or miss. The story's world comes off more like a sketch than a completed thing. The movie makes up for this in spades, but at the expense of intellectual depth.
Blade Runner, though, is the second best Dick adaptation (After A Scanner Darkly), and is a brilliant film on its own. If I was stuck on a desert island and could only have one, I would ponder how arbitrary this whole scenario is, and then pick the story.
Its pretty much the same way I see the LoTR trilogy, the books and the movies are very different beasts, and can be judged separately. It isn't really an either/or thing.
I see it as Fern Gully meets Starship Troopers.
Ubuntu, which moved the 3 window title buttons to the wrong location
Gah, I hate this! Is there an objectively right and wrong placement of windows controls? When did this happen, and how was it justified?
You don't like it, that doesn't make it right or wrong. I personally don't like them on the right, so... therefore... our opinions nullify the whole damn debate and people are free to stick there buttons where ever they like.
Its all about the options. Let users decide what they want if your defaults don't work for them. Before Ubuntu switched their buttons to the left, I always did it manually any way (oh no, a whole 2-3 minutes of work every 6 months to a year!). I also have a Mac sitting around somewhere with the same setup. If I could switch the window controls on my Win7 boxes, I would (I personally hate the task bar being on the bottom, it clearly should be on the right!).
Yeah, like that whole Panorama awesomeness they stole from Chrome. Oh, wait.
Wow, a place where my tabs can go to die in obscurity! Why the hell isn't Panorama an extension? I personally don't care about it, and will never use it; but when the whole project started wasn't the point to make a completely basic, fast, browser, and add all the other features as optional extensions?
Also, if they're trying to make more room from actual content by trimming the GUI, why did they make their little "Firefox" menu thing take up extra room instead of sticking it in some pre-existing area of the interface?
Stockholm syndrome comes to mind. But what do you think about the last few Ubuntu releases? You mean that to you both the old plain gnome with a brown background and the new MacOS X sortalookalikebutugly are better than Mint's defaults? Someone get me an RDF depletor, Shuttleworth got a bit of Steve's liver on eBay.
I've been setting my window controls on the left manually for a long time, until Ubuntu decided to save me the four minutes needed to switch them. And plain old Gnome is better (IMO) than the odd Windows95 menus that Mint has. Mint also is a bit ugly, again IMO, its trying to hard to appeal to Windows users where it really should have its own look and feel... If I wanted Windows I would just use Windows, or wheel my chair three feet over and use my Windows 7 box (much better GUI than Mint). Linux should have, and stick to, its own GUI conventions (for Gnome and KDE) instead of trying really hard to be Windows or OS X. Windows can out Windows Linux any day, the result is always ugly and kludgy.
But then again I've been using KDE for a bit now (with my buttons on the left, still). So...
Also, to move away from Unbuntu, and Canonical, I'd say hop over to OpenSuse. No real complaints after getting used to RPMs and the lack of apt.