Is the BBC really too leftist? OK, they're to the left of the Conservative Party. But the last time the Conservatives polled over 50% in a UK General Election was in 1931.
So if they showed a slight tendency (say 60:40) to favour "left of centre" parties, that would actually be an accurate reflection of the current voting patterns over the entire UK (they are meant to be a UK broadcaster, not just Home Counties and London).
Now, if you want to accuse them of being overstaffed, bureaucratic, filling their channels with easy populist braindead pap, filling their news channels with pointless speculation and non-news "news" (still not as bad as the gullible newspapers though) then I'd agree with you.
We're not short of people who could be stockbrokers, but they're paid plenty - at the moment. Come the next crash, they'll be out on their ear again, since none of them really know what's going on (nobody does).
It's not really just about supply and demand, it's also about how close you are to the money. The work that scientists do may make someone a fortune at some point, but that point will be years away.
As for whether scientists are really important or not - put it this way, after World War II the British weren't trying to kidnap German lawyers to stop them falling into the hands of the Russians.
Then they are blitheringly incompetent. Besides, technically they'd have only paid for the non-watermarked images, not the images with watermarks.
Also, I notice that a number have suggested that the current images have been edited with photoshop - open them with a hex editor and see the info, I notice at the moment it comes up as Adobe Photoshop 7.02007:08:27 22:06:26.
> 4) Decreased mortality. Deaths increase from a one degree drop in temperature at around four times the rate
> of a one degree rise in temperature.
That contradicts other studies I've read, but now I have to do some hunting for them.
Another factor to also consider is not just the overall temperature, but how likely short-term extremes are. A study in Japan, covering the whole range of the country (Journal of Risk Research, Volume 1, Number 3, 1 July 1998 , pp. 209-220(12)) found that the optimum temperature for minimum mortality rate varied from 23C-28 C to 33+C over the North to the south of the country - so while people in a range of climates may be able to adapt to long term changes without an increase in mortality due to the average climate, if the number of extreme climate events increases then this could produce a clear increase in deaths.
A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health (Medina-Ramon, Zanobetti, Cavanagh and Schwartz) found that in the US, extremely cold weather increases the mortality rate by less than extreme heat.
Global warming may be no problem for you if you live in a climate which can have extremes of cold but doesn't tend to get that dangerously hot (the US Pacific North-West, say, or the UK), and may be preferable if you have a particular illness (e.g. cardiovascular deaths, especially cardiac arrest deaths, show much larger increases on extremely cold days than other mortality causes). But on net - it doesn't appear to be a good thing.
You need to form amorphous ice rather than crystalline ice. The problem is that crystalline ice forms at temperatures down to -143C. So you have to get the entire subject down to under -143C almost instantaneously. Which means, if you freeze something at normal pressures, you can freeze the surface 10-20 micrometres of the subject before ice crystals start forming.
By raising the pressure, you can safely freeze larger samples. You can get up to 1mm wide with a pressure of 2100 bar. But this is done by scientists who want to investigate small biological samples in the electron microscope, not by woo-artists conning egotists that anyone would want to thaw them out again even if it was possible.
President Klaus' statements are of a form that have been refuted already:
...the changes needed do not require hardship or reduction in the quality of life. Quite the contrary. They will result in a cleaner environment, healthier air and cleaner water, good-paying jobs in high-tech industries in our own countries, certainly better than mining coal, although coal may continue as one source of energy. The only losers will be those special interests who do not adapt, who prefer to spread misinformation and buy off politicians, to the detriment of life on Earth. We must be on the lookout for them and point them out for what they are.
These people are largely getting so annoyed at statements which *aren't* providing logical evidence contrary to the theory. Winding people up until they get annoyed doesn't mean your argument is right.
There's nothing in this FT.com article other than re-hashed old vague handwaving. For example the old "we don't have to do anything because the Earth changes temperature anyway" - if you insist on leaving your heating on all year round because it gets warm in summer anyway then I'd consider you to be rather eccentric.
Scientists are getting annoyed at those who try to engage in debates on science in the public sphere by relying on debating tricks rather than science. Science isn't what feels right to you - evolution on the plains of Africa doesn't require the development of full and accurate intuition on how the universe works. Undergraduate science students can quite often be overheard complaining that something they've been taught is counter-intuitive, but it's their intuition that needs to change as reality isn't going to.
As for squeaking wheels, the anti-global warming lobby appear to be squeaking far louder. Articles in the Financial Times get more attention than those in Nature.
I don't think they would - what is technically a crime is being committed by the person attempting to purchase marijuana, after all. But they'd probably not want to get involved because of the amount of paperwork required.
Does anyone else remember CRASH magazine? Whatever happened to those guys?
A bit of pointless time wasting with Google has found a few of them - Oli Frey (and maybe some others), are now running Thalamus Publishing, which produces illustrated history books, Chris Anderson is the curator of the Technology Entertainment Design) Conference, Julian Rignall was reviewing for IGN as recently as last year, although Wikipedia claims he currently works for the Bank of America (no idea if he still has a mullet), and Gary Penn is now Creative Director at Denki.
But one thing modern Russia (and 1930s Germany, and arguably Iraq) should teach us is that enough people *will* prefer a sort of totalitarian regime to a free society where chaos *often* happens.
Now where is the boundary between often chaos and sometimes chaos?
The triumph of free society is not pre-ordained. You need to work hard to achieve it, and you need to work hard to retain it.
I don't think you picked the best examples in the films "Titanic" and "The Matrix" - James Cameron (writer and producer as well as director of Titanic) is Canadian, Kate Winslet British. The production companies were 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Lightstorm (Cameron's company)
Carrie-Anne Moss is Canadian, Hugo Weaving Australian, the Matrix films were a co-production between Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures (Australian).
So, in just your examples we have Canadian and Australian producers, Canadian writer, Canadian, British and Australian actors, Canadian director, share of the proceeds going to Canada and Australia.
Now, this doesn't mean at all that the US contribution is at all negligible, but pretending that the product is American, rather than multinational, is misleading.
# Radical Idea: Use less energy. But who's gonna make money off that? Yuck!
Hat manufacturers? If you use less energy by turning the heating down, maybe we'll all go back to wearing hats all the time, as in the early part of the 20th century...
"Should universities (or groups within universities) be allowed to hold patents and intellectual property while at the same time gaining donations and grants as an educational institution -- or for that matter government funds?"
If the government isn't going to pay 100% of the cost of the research, yes. My last research project was funded at 80% of cost. Where do they expect the other 20% to come from if we can't profit from our research?
Maybe if those 200 million wanted to consume like Al Gore while having enough forest to buy carbon offsets. But there are plenty of countries with a perfectly good lifestyle that don't consume anywhere near as much as the average American, let alone the wealthiest.
The United Kingdom is currently running at requiring just under 6ha per person. The planet has 11.2 billion hectares biologically sustainable. That's 1.8 billion people, all living at UK standards. Even US standards would sustain over 1 billion.
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conten t=national_footprints.
Correction - the Space Elevator relies on near flawless carbon nanotubes. While nanotubes have been produced in quantity, getting them to be sufficiently close to perfect to be strong enough for a space elevator is another matter altogether.
You've a different read to the impression I've seen. He's someone who admits he has no high opinion of himself, some might say he has an overactive imagination, and his kiddie skillz were enough to get him in trouble because US military thought using Windows was a good idea (this is his legal defence line, anyway).
There's a difference between "common people didn't have music" and "we don't have any record of common people's music". The latter is true, we don't know the former is. I'd be very surprised if that was the case.
As for bards in Medieval period, 12th century records describing the Battle of Hastings state
Taillefer, qui mult bien chantout, sor un cheval qui tost alout, devant le duc alout chantant de Karlemaigne e de Rollant, e d'Olivier e des vassals qui morurent en Rencevals.
A man who sings very well singing songs of bravery (in this case, the Song of Roland) to gee up the troops before battle? Maybe not a bard, but he sounds like a minstrel.
Not that the Normans introduced music to England; the Anglo Saxons had scops.
So I suspect you may be understating the role of music in the early medieval period.
I'm not too sure about that. The Albigensian Crusade was genocidal in the scale and violence (this is the one where the quote "kill them all; God will know his own" comes from). The crusaders were rewarded with the land. The difference is that it was aimed at those with religious differences, rather than racial differences, as it was largely northern French nobles killing the southern French.
Tend to get published in real journals? Such as, say, Nature, which has had articles encouraging academics to publish in the past?
Indeed, I know from a Nature article from December 2005 that one of the regular editors on the Schizophrenia article on Wikipedia is a neuropsychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London - and indeed, the researchers academic webpage lists the relevent Wikipedia pages he has edited.
There are *plenty* of editors with credentials. This proposal suggests acknowledging that.
It's one thing to make one of them. Economically making arrays containing enough working components to provide commercially viable products is another thing altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the BBC really too leftist? OK, they're to the left of the Conservative Party. But the last time the Conservatives polled over 50% in a UK General Election was in 1931. So if they showed a slight tendency (say 60:40) to favour "left of centre" parties, that would actually be an accurate reflection of the current voting patterns over the entire UK (they are meant to be a UK broadcaster, not just Home Counties and London). Now, if you want to accuse them of being overstaffed, bureaucratic, filling their channels with easy populist braindead pap, filling their news channels with pointless speculation and non-news "news" (still not as bad as the gullible newspapers though) then I'd agree with you.
It's not really just about supply and demand, it's also about how close you are to the money. The work that scientists do may make someone a fortune at some point, but that point will be years away.
As for whether scientists are really important or not - put it this way, after World War II the British weren't trying to kidnap German lawyers to stop them falling into the hands of the Russians.
Then they are blitheringly incompetent. Besides, technically they'd have only paid for the non-watermarked images, not the images with watermarks. Also, I notice that a number have suggested that the current images have been edited with photoshop - open them with a hex editor and see the info, I notice at the moment it comes up as Adobe Photoshop 7.02007:08:27 22:06:26.
> of a one degree rise in temperature.
That contradicts other studies I've read, but now I have to do some hunting for them.
Another factor to also consider is not just the overall temperature, but how likely short-term extremes are. A study in Japan, covering the whole range of the country (Journal of Risk Research, Volume 1, Number 3, 1 July 1998 , pp. 209-220(12)) found that the optimum temperature for minimum mortality rate varied from 23C-28 C to 33+C over the North to the south of the country - so while people in a range of climates may be able to adapt to long term changes without an increase in mortality due to the average climate, if the number of extreme climate events increases then this could produce a clear increase in deaths.
A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health (Medina-Ramon, Zanobetti, Cavanagh and Schwartz) found that in the US, extremely cold weather increases the mortality rate by less than extreme heat.
Global warming may be no problem for you if you live in a climate which can have extremes of cold but doesn't tend to get that dangerously hot (the US Pacific North-West, say, or the UK), and may be preferable if you have a particular illness (e.g. cardiovascular deaths, especially cardiac arrest deaths, show much larger increases on extremely cold days than other mortality causes). But on net - it doesn't appear to be a good thing.
You need to form amorphous ice rather than crystalline ice. The problem is that crystalline ice forms at temperatures down to -143C. So you have to get the entire subject down to under -143C almost instantaneously. Which means, if you freeze something at normal pressures, you can freeze the surface 10-20 micrometres of the subject before ice crystals start forming. By raising the pressure, you can safely freeze larger samples. You can get up to 1mm wide with a pressure of 2100 bar. But this is done by scientists who want to investigate small biological samples in the electron microscope, not by woo-artists conning egotists that anyone would want to thaw them out again even if it was possible.
These people are largely getting so annoyed at statements which *aren't* providing logical evidence contrary to the theory. Winding people up until they get annoyed doesn't mean your argument is right. There's nothing in this FT.com article other than re-hashed old vague handwaving. For example the old "we don't have to do anything because the Earth changes temperature anyway" - if you insist on leaving your heating on all year round because it gets warm in summer anyway then I'd consider you to be rather eccentric. Scientists are getting annoyed at those who try to engage in debates on science in the public sphere by relying on debating tricks rather than science. Science isn't what feels right to you - evolution on the plains of Africa doesn't require the development of full and accurate intuition on how the universe works. Undergraduate science students can quite often be overheard complaining that something they've been taught is counter-intuitive, but it's their intuition that needs to change as reality isn't going to. As for squeaking wheels, the anti-global warming lobby appear to be squeaking far louder. Articles in the Financial Times get more attention than those in Nature.
Yes, people are beating antisocial behaviour charges in court because the police officer is not available to appear in court at the time.
I don't think they would - what is technically a crime is being committed by the person attempting to purchase marijuana, after all. But they'd probably not want to get involved because of the amount of paperwork required.
Bloody hell, it's Dick van Dyke.
It's a relative term - extremely long compared to their diameter. These are about a million times longer than they are wide.
A bit of pointless time wasting with Google has found a few of them - Oli Frey (and maybe some others), are now running Thalamus Publishing, which produces illustrated history books, Chris Anderson is the curator of the Technology Entertainment Design) Conference, Julian Rignall was reviewing for IGN as recently as last year, although Wikipedia claims he currently works for the Bank of America (no idea if he still has a mullet), and Gary Penn is now Creative Director at Denki.
Now where is the boundary between often chaos and sometimes chaos?
The triumph of free society is not pre-ordained. You need to work hard to achieve it, and you need to work hard to retain it.
Carrie-Anne Moss is Canadian, Hugo Weaving Australian, the Matrix films were a co-production between Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures (Australian).
So, in just your examples we have Canadian and Australian producers, Canadian writer, Canadian, British and Australian actors, Canadian director, share of the proceeds going to Canada and Australia.
Now, this doesn't mean at all that the US contribution is at all negligible, but pretending that the product is American, rather than multinational, is misleading.
Hat manufacturers? If you use less energy by turning the heating down, maybe we'll all go back to wearing hats all the time, as in the early part of the 20th century...
If the government isn't going to pay 100% of the cost of the research, yes. My last research project was funded at 80% of cost. Where do they expect the other 20% to come from if we can't profit from our research?
Maybe if those 200 million wanted to consume like Al Gore while having enough forest to buy carbon offsets. But there are plenty of countries with a perfectly good lifestyle that don't consume anywhere near as much as the average American, let alone the wealthiest. The United Kingdom is currently running at requiring just under 6ha per person. The planet has 11.2 billion hectares biologically sustainable. That's 1.8 billion people, all living at UK standards. Even US standards would sustain over 1 billion. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conten t=national_footprints.
So don't hold your breath.
As you could tell if you read the article.
Well, someone has to be. Once upon a time it was the US.
sor un cheval qui tost alout = on a horse which went fast
devant le duc alout chantant = before the Duke went singing
In other words, Taillefer rode on a fast horse in front of the Duke, singing the Song of Roland.
Sorry, it's probably easier to understand if your grasp of French is bad...
As for bards in Medieval period, 12th century records describing the Battle of Hastings state
A man who sings very well singing songs of bravery (in this case, the Song of Roland) to gee up the troops before battle? Maybe not a bard, but he sounds like a minstrel.
Not that the Normans introduced music to England; the Anglo Saxons had scops.
So I suspect you may be understating the role of music in the early medieval period.
I'm not too sure about that. The Albigensian Crusade was genocidal in the scale and violence (this is the one where the quote "kill them all; God will know his own" comes from). The crusaders were rewarded with the land. The difference is that it was aimed at those with religious differences, rather than racial differences, as it was largely northern French nobles killing the southern French.
Tend to get published in real journals? Such as, say, Nature, which has had articles encouraging academics to publish in the past? Indeed, I know from a Nature article from December 2005 that one of the regular editors on the Schizophrenia article on Wikipedia is a neuropsychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London - and indeed, the researchers academic webpage lists the relevent Wikipedia pages he has edited. There are *plenty* of editors with credentials. This proposal suggests acknowledging that.
It's one thing to make one of them. Economically making arrays containing enough working components to provide commercially viable products is another thing altogether.