On the Monty Python front - the Norwegians (initially) banned the film "Life of Brian". So in Sweden it was advertised as "the movie that is so funny, it was banned in Norway".
"War Games" can be very serious exercises indeed - e.g. the US carried out a number of War Games in 1999 called Desert Crossing to simulate the invasion of Iraq.
Note also that the current US Director of National Intelligence, John McConnell, was previously Senior Vice President with Booz Allen Hamilton. They aren't just telco management consultants, they're government management consultants (this doesn't mean they're not bozos, but it does mean that if they are bozos, they're very dangerous bozos)
I don't feel that you actually bothered reading what I said. I didn't say "The Right" were biased against the facts. I didn't say "The Left" are free of bias against the facts. I said the Right currently appear particularly well endowed with people who are biased against the facts.
Perhaps I should have had the word "appear" in blinking bold text. Maybe the word "currently" also. It's the image thing - "The Left" have people like Gore, who have a love of reeling off a whole range of statistics. Often, the facts aren't actually wrong, it's the relevance, importance, accuracy and interpretation of them that are at matter. Currently prominent figures on "The Right" such as George W Bush, on the other hand, tend to eschew facts and respond with feelings. More so than the left, more so than the centre, and more so than the right did in the past. Sadly, rather than the leading figures on the right returning to being those who actually consider the facts, I suspect the left may be learning from the success of the right and becoming more keen on using Truthiness than truth.
Another factor, rather than the style of the most prominent, is the question of which end of the spectrum has its nutjobs currently making the most noise - which would again appear to be the right, as many of the hard left still haven't recovered from seeing their beloved communism shown to be fundamentally unworkable. Also, the loudly shouting individuals who believe the only real source of facts is from ancient religious texts are more prominent on the right than on the left in the US. Then there is the denial of facts to protect vested interests - in the case of large petrochemical companies, for example, it would be hard to portray them as a bunch of tree hugging hippies. Yes, tree hugging hippies will also happily ignore facts, but they don't have the lobbying power, sponsorship funds and media presence that large petrochemical companies can gather together.
This doesn't mean it is a fundamental thing for people on the right to deny facts - someone who only acts on the facts and requires absolute proof and believes fundamentally that one should tread carefully and balance the books sounds a bit like an old-style "right winger" to me.
I noticed the word "unnatural" and ignored it. After all, a lot of biological natural things have evolved to do very nasty things to us, whether it's Deadly Nightshade or the 1918 Flu virus (nowadays only killing monkeys in Canadian labs). A lot of other things we think of as artificial occur without human intervention as well, from radioactive elements to carbon nanotubes.
Something isn't nice or nasty because we made it or it occurs in nature. It's nice or nasty because of its intrinsic physical properties. What may be "unnatural" is our producing concentrations of these materials far in excess of what would be likely to occur without human intervention on this planet's surface - which again isn't fundamentally that much different from an early medieval European exposing themselves to nanoparticles by spending their winters in a smoky hut.
Scientific misconduct is an offence that should be taken seriously. If someone is fabricating data, selectively discarding any unwanted results (i.e. only showing those that show what they want to believe), using statistics in a deliberately misleading manner, producing a distorted interpretation of results (saying "this could mean X" when X is at one extreme of the possible range), and deliberate misinterpretation of others results, then they aren't being a scientist.
Now, you are allowed to say all these things as a member of the public, and then you are merely wrong. And indeed, as a scientist this is only actually illegal if your distortions are gaining you funding. But if you want to be a member of a scientific body, and have the approval of that body, then you'd better be able to back up your argument with the scientific method.
There have always been nanoscale particles in the atmosphere, even more so since the Industrial Revolution started. We've been living with nanoparticles ever since we learnt to make fire.
Some materials get *safer* as they get smaller - one reason asbestos fibres are dangerous is not because they are so narrow but because they are (relatively) so long - nano width, but micro length. The body can't get rid of them, so forms scarring in the lungs instead. Something that is nano in all directions is more easily got rid of by the body's immune system (I'm more concerned by nanotubes, some of which can be very long, than by nanoparticles smaller in all dimensions than a human white blood cell).
Asbestos is also dangerous because of the ease with which it gets into the air when in a friable form. Nanoparticles firmly bonded into a matrix aren't that much of a danger.
So the reality is that they're not harmless, they're not incredibly deadly, they're somewhere in between. Where exactly we don't know yet.
Indeed, the text of the paper specifically states that they have "isolated similar stem cell populations from placental biopsies obtained after full-term pregnancies"
Passed 62 million six years ago, so more than California and Texas put together. Mind you, the Indian civil service has always had a bit of a reputation for mass employment.
If the cruft is in separate articles, then the problem is just the sheer number of articles to be watched -quiet articles on obscure subjects are more likely to not be watched by anyone, so are more likely to be defaced without anyone noticing. This is particularly a problem where biographies are concerned.
If the cruft is in a main article, then it can become more of a problem. If you want to look at the events of 1962, you probably only want to see the main news events of that year, rather than a list of 10,000+ names that includes every professional sportsperson, musician, high level professor, published author, elected politician, actor, wrestler, porn star and z-list celebrity born in that year.
It's not a coincidence that the whole 'save the rainforests' is a lot quieter now than in the 90's
With the exception of the Daily Express's obsession about Princess Diana being dead, most UK newspapers eventually get tired of repeating the same news all the time.
The 'Football Field every minute' prooved to be a lie that was circulated in that time.
Let's make a calculation as to how far they were out. Now, taking a football field as the largest in the Premiership at 105 × 68 metres, that gives a football field a minute clearance rate as 7140m^2 per minute, or about 3750km^2 per year (about the size of the county of Kent in England). In Nature in March this year (doi |doi:10.1038/nature04389), Soares predicted that at current rates, 2.1 million km^2 would be lost between 2003 and 2050. Which is 44680 km^2 per year (about the size of the South West and South East of England added together).
So a football field every minute is indeed wrong. According to Soares numbers (and my back of the envelope calculations), it's nearly 12 football fields a minute.
In reality, of course, no-one knows the exact rate at which the Amazon basin is currently being cleared.
What, the National Science Board that said in 1972 "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end... leading into the next glacial age. However, it is possible, or even likely, than human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path."?
That's not a claim of global cooling. That's a statement that there is one mechanism that is leading to global cooling, but there are other mechanisms also acting and we don't know which one will dominate.
Without the greenhouse effect we would all freeze to death (unless you like -19 degrees Celsius). Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we are emitting, and is increasing. The effect of human activity on global water vapor concentrations is considered negligible.
So it's like being on a well-balanced see-saw, and then having someone chuck a bag of sugar in your lap. The reason you hit the floor isn't "you're too fat", it's that someone chucked a bag of sugar at you.
The medieval warm period definitely did happen in Europe, but that does not mean it was a global event. For example, corals suggest that if you were talking about the central tropical Pacific you might be using the terms "The Medieval Cool Period" and "The Little Warm Age" (Nature 424, 271-276)
The climate on the whole remains pretty steady, and if anything activity on the Sun is much more likely to change the climate than anything we do.
The vast majority of papers modelling total solar irradiance variations over the past millenia are unable to account fully for the recent increase in global temperature. If there is a mechanism that is causing greater variation in global temperature due to the influence of the sun, astrophysicists are not aware of it. Data is rather patchy once you go more than a few decades back (estimating total solar irradiance from the number of sunspots is iffy), however, but there is certainly not enough information to support your bold statement.
Given that they have a high quality protein-rich diet and a national health service that is particularly focused on infant care and nutrition, it wouldn't suprise me if the Dutch had the largest average brain size, along with being the tallest nation on Earth...
Given the cranial sizes, it would be easier for a Neanderthal woman to give birth to a part Cro-Magnon child than it would be for a Cro-Magnon woman to give birth to a part Neanderthal child.
To comment on the second part of your comment - Weather != climate.
If stood next to the sea, I could not predict the exact height of the 13th wave will reach. I can, however, make a reasonable estimate of when high tide will be in four years time. The impossibility of predicting the weather in four weeks time does not necessarily make it impossible to predict the climate in 50 years.
* Monckton categorically states that the temperature of the oceans has decreased, without using sources.
Over what period? The oceans *have* cooled significantly since 2003. Similar rapid cooling also occured in 1980-1983.
However, this is a fraction of the heating oceans have gained over the previous 50. Furthermore, sea level hasn't gone down since 2003, it's slightly gone up, suggesting that sea level rise has recently shifted from being mostly caused by warming to being dominated by melting of ice. And here's areference.
Slashdot Mirror
On the Monty Python front - the Norwegians (initially) banned the film "Life of Brian". So in Sweden it was advertised as "the movie that is so funny, it was banned in Norway".
Note also that the current US Director of National Intelligence, John McConnell, was previously Senior Vice President with Booz Allen Hamilton. They aren't just telco management consultants, they're government management consultants (this doesn't mean they're not bozos, but it does mean that if they are bozos, they're very dangerous bozos)
Not sure people will leave if they know they're not being heard. People still post as Anonymous Coward on Slashdot, don't they?
Put your fingers together and twiddle your thumbs. Are your thumbs twiddling by your forefingers, or by your little fingers?
Place the phone supported by all the fingers. Twiddle your thumbs - they're in front of the screen.
Then it would be indistinguishable from the average Friday night in a British city.
G for Giersch, perhaps?
Five minutes isn't impossible at all. The Austrian free-diver Herbert Nitsch can hold his breath for more than 9 minutes.
I don't feel that you actually bothered reading what I said. I didn't say "The Right" were biased against the facts. I didn't say "The Left" are free of bias against the facts. I said the Right currently appear particularly well endowed with people who are biased against the facts.
Perhaps I should have had the word "appear" in blinking bold text. Maybe the word "currently" also. It's the image thing - "The Left" have people like Gore, who have a love of reeling off a whole range of statistics. Often, the facts aren't actually wrong, it's the relevance, importance, accuracy and interpretation of them that are at matter. Currently prominent figures on "The Right" such as George W Bush, on the other hand, tend to eschew facts and respond with feelings. More so than the left, more so than the centre, and more so than the right did in the past. Sadly, rather than the leading figures on the right returning to being those who actually consider the facts, I suspect the left may be learning from the success of the right and becoming more keen on using Truthiness than truth.
Another factor, rather than the style of the most prominent, is the question of which end of the spectrum has its nutjobs currently making the most noise - which would again appear to be the right, as many of the hard left still haven't recovered from seeing their beloved communism shown to be fundamentally unworkable. Also, the loudly shouting individuals who believe the only real source of facts is from ancient religious texts are more prominent on the right than on the left in the US. Then there is the denial of facts to protect vested interests - in the case of large petrochemical companies, for example, it would be hard to portray them as a bunch of tree hugging hippies. Yes, tree hugging hippies will also happily ignore facts, but they don't have the lobbying power, sponsorship funds and media presence that large petrochemical companies can gather together.
This doesn't mean it is a fundamental thing for people on the right to deny facts - someone who only acts on the facts and requires absolute proof and believes fundamentally that one should tread carefully and balance the books sounds a bit like an old-style "right winger" to me.
Something isn't nice or nasty because we made it or it occurs in nature. It's nice or nasty because of its intrinsic physical properties. What may be "unnatural" is our producing concentrations of these materials far in excess of what would be likely to occur without human intervention on this planet's surface - which again isn't fundamentally that much different from an early medieval European exposing themselves to nanoparticles by spending their winters in a smoky hut.
Now, you are allowed to say all these things as a member of the public, and then you are merely wrong. And indeed, as a scientist this is only actually illegal if your distortions are gaining you funding. But if you want to be a member of a scientific body, and have the approval of that body, then you'd better be able to back up your argument with the scientific method.
But the right does currently appear to be particularly well endowed with people who have a bias against the facts.
There have always been nanoscale particles in the atmosphere, even more so since the Industrial Revolution started. We've been living with nanoparticles ever since we learnt to make fire. Some materials get *safer* as they get smaller - one reason asbestos fibres are dangerous is not because they are so narrow but because they are (relatively) so long - nano width, but micro length. The body can't get rid of them, so forms scarring in the lungs instead. Something that is nano in all directions is more easily got rid of by the body's immune system (I'm more concerned by nanotubes, some of which can be very long, than by nanoparticles smaller in all dimensions than a human white blood cell). Asbestos is also dangerous because of the ease with which it gets into the air when in a friable form. Nanoparticles firmly bonded into a matrix aren't that much of a danger. So the reality is that they're not harmless, they're not incredibly deadly, they're somewhere in between. Where exactly we don't know yet.
(alright, I haven't done French in 15 years...)
Can't be less ethical than eating the thing...
Passed 62 million six years ago, so more than California and Texas put together. Mind you, the Indian civil service has always had a bit of a reputation for mass employment.
If the cruft is in separate articles, then the problem is just the sheer number of articles to be watched -quiet articles on obscure subjects are more likely to not be watched by anyone, so are more likely to be defaced without anyone noticing. This is particularly a problem where biographies are concerned.
If the cruft is in a main article, then it can become more of a problem. If you want to look at the events of 1962, you probably only want to see the main news events of that year, rather than a list of 10,000+ names that includes every professional sportsperson, musician, high level professor, published author, elected politician, actor, wrestler, porn star and z-list celebrity born in that year.
With the exception of the Daily Express's obsession about Princess Diana being dead, most UK newspapers eventually get tired of repeating the same news all the time.
Let's make a calculation as to how far they were out. Now, taking a football field as the largest in the Premiership at 105 × 68 metres, that gives a football field a minute clearance rate as 7140m^2 per minute, or about 3750km^2 per year (about the size of the county of Kent in England). In Nature in March this year (doi |doi:10.1038/nature04389), Soares predicted that at current rates, 2.1 million km^2 would be lost between 2003 and 2050. Which is 44680 km^2 per year (about the size of the South West and South East of England added together).
So a football field every minute is indeed wrong. According to Soares numbers (and my back of the envelope calculations), it's nearly 12 football fields a minute.
In reality, of course, no-one knows the exact rate at which the Amazon basin is currently being cleared.
That's not a claim of global cooling. That's a statement that there is one mechanism that is leading to global cooling, but there are other mechanisms also acting and we don't know which one will dominate.
So it's like being on a well-balanced see-saw, and then having someone chuck a bag of sugar in your lap. The reason you hit the floor isn't "you're too fat", it's that someone chucked a bag of sugar at you.
However, if they were reporting dolphings jumping backwards through a hoop while whistling the Star-Spangled Banner, then I'd be concerned.
Given that they have a high quality protein-rich diet and a national health service that is particularly focused on infant care and nutrition, it wouldn't suprise me if the Dutch had the largest average brain size, along with being the tallest nation on Earth...
Given the cranial sizes, it would be easier for a Neanderthal woman to give birth to a part Cro-Magnon child than it would be for a Cro-Magnon woman to give birth to a part Neanderthal child.
If stood next to the sea, I could not predict the exact height of the 13th wave will reach. I can, however, make a reasonable estimate of when high tide will be in four years time. The impossibility of predicting the weather in four weeks time does not necessarily make it impossible to predict the climate in 50 years.
Over what period? The oceans *have* cooled significantly since 2003. Similar rapid cooling also occured in 1980-1983.
However, this is a fraction of the heating oceans have gained over the previous 50. Furthermore, sea level hasn't gone down since 2003, it's slightly gone up, suggesting that sea level rise has recently shifted from being mostly caused by warming to being dominated by melting of ice. And here's areference.