I know from personal experience that is not true in all cases. Long ago, the early 60s, my friends and I flew lights under balloons over Tucson, AZ.
Unless you and your friends happen to be visiting us from a faraway planet I fail to see how you doing this provides any physical evidence whatsoever of extraterrestrial UFOs. Indeed if anything your hoax - like crop circles - just illustrates that people seeing such things are just seeing phenomena with simple explanations and their brain is then going on wild flights of fantasy convincing them that these lights are somehow alien. This seems like a psychological effect to me, perhaps triggered by a physical stimulus.
UFO's (in the sense of extra-terrestrials) are just the modern equivalent of ghosts. Enough "reliable" people have reported seeing UFOs and ghosts that the effect seems to be real as far as a human brain is concerned. However, the complete and utter lack of physical evidence suggests that they are purely a psychological effect and not a physical one.
Oh, really? Some paper may contain fibres from other sources but a lot of paper comes from wood which is why there are pulp mills in places known for harvesting timber like Canada. They literally make it from trees.
Yes, but that still does not make this "clean" energy. If a coal-fired plant uses an improved boiler that reduces its emissions that does not make it a clean energy source it just makes it a less damaging one. I'd argue that this is exactly what this is - it might be better than what we do now but there is no way you can call this clean given the emissions required to produce what it needs to run.
Planting more trees to create more paper and support more recycling is a good thing - it removes carbon or, at worst, is carbon neutral. This proposed plant relies on one of the worst carbon-emitting industries that exists. It is not the same thing.
How is this "clean" energy? Cows are well known as one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. How many cows are required to support this plant and are their greenhouse gas emissions factored in when figuring out how "clean" the energy is? If we have to start maintaining large herds of cattle to support these powerplants this is probably not a good thing.
I am not defending glitter, I am defending the principle that we should use be making scientifically sound decisions when it comes to banning things and only ban things which are more harmful than beneficial. Since glitter is basically useless that's a pretty low bar but it still has to be crossed. There seems to be clear evidence support a ban on plastic glitter but not metallic. If we just allow things to be banned by association - essentially making the argument that plastic glitter is bad therefore all glitter is bad - we are setting off down a dangerous road.
I noticed that African nations ranked lower than average on that chart compared to the rest of the world
Do you not think perhaps that this is because their healthcare is generally nowhere near as good as what is available in Europe, Canada and (if you can afford it) the US?
It seems to be an implementation of Discworld's "The Luggage" but with wheels not legs and hopefully without the homicidal tendencies...although perhaps that's why it needs to be banned.
People always show up, and when enough people have arrived, they need to be governed.
What you say is absolutely true. However, given that Bitcoin is governed by an algorithm the question now is can governments be replaced to some extent by agreed algorithms? After all, that is what laws are at some level: an agreed upon algorithm that if you do X then Y will happen. So this is not a non-government but potentially a new type of government. Even a partial replacement in limited situations would be something rather new and untried.
Yeah, heaven forbid a teacher should earn a living.
It's not a question of earning a living it is a question of professional ethics. Teachers have a job which is to provide the best possible education for the kids in their charge. If they accept a bribe like this then it calls into question their motive for getting their kids involved. Was it because it offers a great educational opportunity or was it because of the kickback?
This sort of questioning brings a profession into disrepute. How happy would you be taking a drug your doctor prescribed if you knew they got a significant financial kickback from the drug company for prescribing it?
Or, maybe it's because people don't like seeing other people die if they can help it.
Yes, but they could not help it could they? Even worse, they knew they could not help it. That unless you are implying that they just wanted to postpone the inevitable to the next shift when they might not be the ones to see it?
The UK did not have the ability to treat this child's condition, but people in the USA could. Or at least they claimed they could have.
The important part of your statement is "they claimed they could have". The quack in the US claimed this without ever having examined the patient and the UK doctors were appalled at the irresponsible nature of the US doctor's claims. After the baby's condition became clear to him he was forced to admit that there was absolutely nothing he could have done for the child. All he did was act is a grossly unprofessional manner and made things a lot worse for everyone else.
European health care "light years" ahead of the USA? I call bullshit.
This is indeed, as you say, "bullshit" because a light year is a measure of distance. However, it is very accurate to say that European and Canadian healthcare is about 3 years ahead of healthcare in the US because the average life expectancy in Europe and Canada is about 82 years while it is only about 79 in the US (averaged over both genders).
Both animals are predators. As animals, the only thing that really matters is success in their particular niche.
Exactly and because dogs have evolved to hunt in a pack while cats hunt alone dogs have to be brainier in order to coordinate their actions enough to be able to hunt effectively as a pack which requires communication and trust which in turn requires a high degree of intelligence. Depending on whom you believe some models of the evolution of human intelligence link it to the development of social skills and certainly there seems to be some correlation: elephants, dolphins, rats etc. are all regarded as highly intelligent and are social.
The ability to communicate and to grasp abstract concepts like anger, pain, hunger etc. is essential to both having large social groups and to intelligence. Cats are successful hunters not, primarily, because of their intelligence, but because of their natural weaponry, speed and agility. They don't rely on their intelligence to hunt as much as dogs - or indeed humans - do and so unsurprisingly they are not as intelligent because they do not need to be.
It depends strongly on the type of metal though. Iron, even in small chunks, is not going to be an issue because it will rapidly oxidise to rust which is readily found naturally. On the other hand, a metal like lead is highly toxic and relatively stable and is really bad for the environment. So I'm not saying that metal glitter is necessarily fine for the environment all I am pointing out is that if microplastics are bad for the environment then it does not logically follow that we should ban metal glitter. This would be like arguing that plastic bags are bad for the environment so therefore we should ban paper bags.
"I think all glitter should be banned, because it's microplastic," Dr. Trisia Farrelly of New Zealand's Massey University... Modern-day crafting glitter is made primarily from metals..
It's more like a pogrom against logical consistency. If crafting glitter is not made from plastic but metal then, unless there is an environmental problem with the metal they use, why should it be banned? If the summary is right then clearly "all glitter" should not be banned, just cosmetic glitter which is made from plastic and Gary.
In order to go "bilingual", it would have to be able to understand one language first.
Google translate can map between multiple languages without understanding any of them...which, admittedly, is why it does not do a great job but it is usually good enough to be reasonably understandable.
You are also forgetting the economic argument. It is almost certainly more worthwhile to spend that money mining bitcoins rather than cracking a wallets encryption at the moment.
While I get your implied meaning the other reason you are correct is because these bitcoins are not lost. At some point it is highly probable that the encryption used will become easily breakable on some future, possible quantum computing, device. At this point the coins can be recovered...although the entire encryption behind bitcoin will also be undermined so they will probably be worthless!
We might be able to "adapt to the change" -- what matters is how shitty the process is, and it's shaping up to be pretty fucking awful.
This was exactly the point I was making. The reason we want to stop global warming is that adapting to it is going to cause a huge amount of social and economic upheaval. Instead of making dishonest claims that it is impossible for us to adapt to global warming we should be looking at the economic costs of adapting to vs. avoiding global warming. I believe this will show that avoiding is the far better option but, for once, could we please have a debate based on facts rather than the hyperbole that both sides spout?
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I know from personal experience that is not true in all cases. Long ago, the early 60s, my friends and I flew lights under balloons over Tucson, AZ.
Unless you and your friends happen to be visiting us from a faraway planet I fail to see how you doing this provides any physical evidence whatsoever of extraterrestrial UFOs. Indeed if anything your hoax - like crop circles - just illustrates that people seeing such things are just seeing phenomena with simple explanations and their brain is then going on wild flights of fantasy convincing them that these lights are somehow alien. This seems like a psychological effect to me, perhaps triggered by a physical stimulus.
Luckily there simply isn't enough money in Bitcoin to result in any political will to bail this greedy fools out.
That depends on who the fools are. Are you sure that no politicians have invested large sums in bitcoin?
UFO's (in the sense of extra-terrestrials) are just the modern equivalent of ghosts. Enough "reliable" people have reported seeing UFOs and ghosts that the effect seems to be real as far as a human brain is concerned. However, the complete and utter lack of physical evidence suggests that they are purely a psychological effect and not a physical one.
Paper is not made of trees.
Oh, really? Some paper may contain fibres from other sources but a lot of paper comes from wood which is why there are pulp mills in places known for harvesting timber like Canada. They literally make it from trees.
That comment about Canada, is actually what concerns me most about liberal politics.
Total disregard for all foreigners is not liberal politics, it's American politics.
The cows exist either way.
Yes, but that still does not make this "clean" energy. If a coal-fired plant uses an improved boiler that reduces its emissions that does not make it a clean energy source it just makes it a less damaging one. I'd argue that this is exactly what this is - it might be better than what we do now but there is no way you can call this clean given the emissions required to produce what it needs to run.
Planting more trees to create more paper and support more recycling is a good thing - it removes carbon or, at worst, is carbon neutral. This proposed plant relies on one of the worst carbon-emitting industries that exists. It is not the same thing.
How is this "clean" energy? Cows are well known as one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. How many cows are required to support this plant and are their greenhouse gas emissions factored in when figuring out how "clean" the energy is? If we have to start maintaining large herds of cattle to support these powerplants this is probably not a good thing.
Why are you defending glitter?
I am not defending glitter, I am defending the principle that we should use be making scientifically sound decisions when it comes to banning things and only ban things which are more harmful than beneficial. Since glitter is basically useless that's a pretty low bar but it still has to be crossed. There seems to be clear evidence support a ban on plastic glitter but not metallic. If we just allow things to be banned by association - essentially making the argument that plastic glitter is bad therefore all glitter is bad - we are setting off down a dangerous road.
I noticed that African nations ranked lower than average on that chart compared to the rest of the world
Do you not think perhaps that this is because their healthcare is generally nowhere near as good as what is available in Europe, Canada and (if you can afford it) the US?
WTF is "smart luggage"?
It seems to be an implementation of Discworld's "The Luggage" but with wheels not legs and hopefully without the homicidal tendencies...although perhaps that's why it needs to be banned.
People always show up, and when enough people have arrived, they need to be governed.
What you say is absolutely true. However, given that Bitcoin is governed by an algorithm the question now is can governments be replaced to some extent by agreed algorithms? After all, that is what laws are at some level: an agreed upon algorithm that if you do X then Y will happen. So this is not a non-government but potentially a new type of government. Even a partial replacement in limited situations would be something rather new and untried.
No, historically it was done by clergy who back then were all male.
Yeah, heaven forbid a teacher should earn a living.
It's not a question of earning a living it is a question of professional ethics. Teachers have a job which is to provide the best possible education for the kids in their charge. If they accept a bribe like this then it calls into question their motive for getting their kids involved. Was it because it offers a great educational opportunity or was it because of the kickback?
This sort of questioning brings a profession into disrepute. How happy would you be taking a drug your doctor prescribed if you knew they got a significant financial kickback from the drug company for prescribing it?
The cryptography can be upgraded with a fork. So a fix is painful but possible.
Or, maybe it's because people don't like seeing other people die if they can help it.
Yes, but they could not help it could they? Even worse, they knew they could not help it. That unless you are implying that they just wanted to postpone the inevitable to the next shift when they might not be the ones to see it?
The UK did not have the ability to treat this child's condition, but people in the USA could. Or at least they claimed they could have.
The important part of your statement is "they claimed they could have". The quack in the US claimed this without ever having examined the patient and the UK doctors were appalled at the irresponsible nature of the US doctor's claims. After the baby's condition became clear to him he was forced to admit that there was absolutely nothing he could have done for the child. All he did was act is a grossly unprofessional manner and made things a lot worse for everyone else.
European health care "light years" ahead of the USA? I call bullshit.
This is indeed, as you say, "bullshit" because a light year is a measure of distance. However, it is very accurate to say that European and Canadian healthcare is about 3 years ahead of healthcare in the US because the average life expectancy in Europe and Canada is about 82 years while it is only about 79 in the US (averaged over both genders).
Both animals are predators. As animals, the only thing that really matters is success in their particular niche.
Exactly and because dogs have evolved to hunt in a pack while cats hunt alone dogs have to be brainier in order to coordinate their actions enough to be able to hunt effectively as a pack which requires communication and trust which in turn requires a high degree of intelligence. Depending on whom you believe some models of the evolution of human intelligence link it to the development of social skills and certainly there seems to be some correlation: elephants, dolphins, rats etc. are all regarded as highly intelligent and are social.
The ability to communicate and to grasp abstract concepts like anger, pain, hunger etc. is essential to both having large social groups and to intelligence. Cats are successful hunters not, primarily, because of their intelligence, but because of their natural weaponry, speed and agility. They don't rely on their intelligence to hunt as much as dogs - or indeed humans - do and so unsurprisingly they are not as intelligent because they do not need to be.
Yes, chemistry is very specific which is why the original argument against plastics does not hold for metal. This was my point!
It depends strongly on the type of metal though. Iron, even in small chunks, is not going to be an issue because it will rapidly oxidise to rust which is readily found naturally. On the other hand, a metal like lead is highly toxic and relatively stable and is really bad for the environment. So I'm not saying that metal glitter is necessarily fine for the environment all I am pointing out is that if microplastics are bad for the environment then it does not logically follow that we should ban metal glitter. This would be like arguing that plastic bags are bad for the environment so therefore we should ban paper bags.
"I think all glitter should be banned, because it's microplastic," Dr. Trisia Farrelly of New Zealand's Massey University... Modern-day crafting glitter is made primarily from metals..
It's more like a pogrom against logical consistency. If crafting glitter is not made from plastic but metal then, unless there is an environmental problem with the metal they use, why should it be banned? If the summary is right then clearly "all glitter" should not be banned, just cosmetic glitter which is made from plastic and Gary.
In order to go "bilingual", it would have to be able to understand one language first.
Google translate can map between multiple languages without understanding any of them...which, admittedly, is why it does not do a great job but it is usually good enough to be reasonably understandable.
You are also forgetting the economic argument. It is almost certainly more worthwhile to spend that money mining bitcoins rather than cracking a wallets encryption at the moment.
While I get your implied meaning the other reason you are correct is because these bitcoins are not lost. At some point it is highly probable that the encryption used will become easily breakable on some future, possible quantum computing, device. At this point the coins can be recovered...although the entire encryption behind bitcoin will also be undermined so they will probably be worthless!
We might be able to "adapt to the change" -- what matters is how shitty the process is, and it's shaping up to be pretty fucking awful.
This was exactly the point I was making. The reason we want to stop global warming is that adapting to it is going to cause a huge amount of social and economic upheaval. Instead of making dishonest claims that it is impossible for us to adapt to global warming we should be looking at the economic costs of adapting to vs. avoiding global warming. I believe this will show that avoiding is the far better option but, for once, could we please have a debate based on facts rather than the hyperbole that both sides spout?