If you're going to post the IPCC numbers on sea level rise, you ought to know that when the report was released, there was a HUGE outcry from people who did science on the subject of sea level rise because they felt the numbers in the report vastly underestimated the expected rise. RealClimate has an extensive discussion of the numbers, here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007 /03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/
Seems unlikely. If you read the actual WHOI paper (here), you'll find that there are a wide class of PBDE-like compounds produced in many aquatic species, e.g. sponges, algae, and worms (methoxy-PBDEs). This is what the paper is about, NOT about C-14 in PBDEs in whales. The paper makes the point that these MeO-PBDEs are bioactive, and that C-14 may be a good way to distinguish industrial vs. natural sources of brominated compounds in animal flesh. It does NOT suggest that whales contain naturally-occuring PBDEs, just that they contain a related, biogenic compound which is also bioactive.
There are a lot of dangerous, unstable individuals who could obliterate a city the minute they got ahold of a nuke. But this needn't concern us overly, since nuclear weapons aren't exactly available at the corner mart. If they were that easy to get ahold of, do you think Iran would be going through all the headache they are? Pray, tell me, which state is it that is going to hand their precious nuclear device off to an organization like al-Qaeda? Which state is going to risk having the shit blown out of them by the United States in retaliation? Or in which desert is al-Qaeda going to conveniently stumble across a nuke lying unattended?
One can paint all sorts of ridiculous doomsday scenarios. But what-ifs, especially wholly implausible ones, are no reason to give up tangible rights. You know, the freedoms that they hate us for.
Maybe you haven't been reading the same newspapers as I have... Abdullah Al-Mujahir was, last I heard, a U.S. citizen who is being held indefinitely by the military without being charged with anything. So... unless you'd like to back your comments up with some clarification, you're nothing but a troll.
Although it's true that there's no direct reward for good behavior (and in fact there might be a penalty - if you share popular files it sucks up your bandwidth), I think most people recognize the value of mutual aid in the system. In most forums discussing P2P, people will poo-poo spoofers and non-sharers, recognizing that such people are destroying the system by not contributing. The reward for your good behavior is the continued viability of the system as a whole.
During the bru-ha-ha around building an observatory on Mount Graham, which was built over protest about such things as native's rights (the Apache consider Mount Graham to be a sacred mountain, and building an observatory atop it is sort of like building a research reactor in the Ka'aba) (whew), the Pope stepped in and said he would fund the damn thing.
One of the pieces of the Church's reasons for doing so, was (in a bit of absurdity even Ianesco couldn't outdo), that if there were aliens out there, it was important to know about it right away, so that they could all be converted to Christianity.
I, for one, find this completely bizarre and hilarious. But maybe I'm no better than those folks who laughed at the 4.5 billion year suggestion.
Mount graham story here.
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If you're going to post the IPCC numbers on sea level rise, you ought to know that when the report was released, there was a HUGE outcry from people who did science on the subject of sea level rise because they felt the numbers in the report vastly underestimated the expected rise. RealClimate has an extensive discussion of the numbers, here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007 /03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/
Seems unlikely. If you read the actual WHOI paper (here), you'll find that there are a wide class of PBDE-like compounds produced in many aquatic species, e.g. sponges, algae, and worms (methoxy-PBDEs). This is what the paper is about, NOT about C-14 in PBDEs in whales. The paper makes the point that these MeO-PBDEs are bioactive, and that C-14 may be a good way to distinguish industrial vs. natural sources of brominated compounds in animal flesh. It does NOT suggest that whales contain naturally-occuring PBDEs, just that they contain a related, biogenic compound which is also bioactive.
There are a lot of dangerous, unstable individuals who could obliterate a city the minute they got ahold of a nuke. But this needn't concern us overly, since nuclear weapons aren't exactly available at the corner mart. If they were that easy to get ahold of, do you think Iran would be going through all the headache they are? Pray, tell me, which state is it that is going to hand their precious nuclear device off to an organization like al-Qaeda? Which state is going to risk having the shit blown out of them by the United States in retaliation? Or in which desert is al-Qaeda going to conveniently stumble across a nuke lying unattended?
One can paint all sorts of ridiculous doomsday scenarios. But what-ifs, especially wholly implausible ones, are no reason to give up tangible rights. You know, the freedoms that they hate us for.
Maybe you haven't been reading the same newspapers as I have... Abdullah Al-Mujahir was, last I heard, a U.S. citizen who is being held indefinitely by the military without being charged with anything. So... unless you'd like to back your comments up with some clarification, you're nothing but a troll.
Although it's true that there's no direct reward for good behavior (and in fact there might be a penalty - if you share popular files it sucks up your bandwidth), I think most people recognize the value of mutual aid in the system. In most forums discussing P2P, people will poo-poo spoofers and non-sharers, recognizing that such people are destroying the system by not contributing. The reward for your good behavior is the continued viability of the system as a whole.
During the bru-ha-ha around building an observatory on Mount Graham, which was built over protest about such things as native's rights (the Apache consider Mount Graham to be a sacred mountain, and building an observatory atop it is sort of like building a research reactor in the Ka'aba) (whew), the Pope stepped in and said he would fund the damn thing. One of the pieces of the Church's reasons for doing so, was (in a bit of absurdity even Ianesco couldn't outdo), that if there were aliens out there, it was important to know about it right away, so that they could all be converted to Christianity. I, for one, find this completely bizarre and hilarious. But maybe I'm no better than those folks who laughed at the 4.5 billion year suggestion. Mount graham story here.