That and its tantamount in Texas to coming out of the closet as openly gay and vegan... "Hi, my name is Mike and I'm an environmentalist", "Oh, I need to introduce you to my cousin Steve!"
Here, here, as well, I go into a mall armed with a machete, I may hack what a dozen people in a crowded shopping center, mayby 2 die. I go in with a couple Uzis and a backpack full of clips and the body count is going to be epic. Why would you promote that kind of carnage? By all means, guns for hunting and pistols for self protection. The rest, there is simply no justification for. You're just fanning the flames for survivalist nuts who already a burger shy a happy meal.
You see, from the mouth of a Venezuelan. Guns aren't going anywhere, and the culture is in a desperate mess. Runs on banks, currency that is collapsing. Guns in prisons!!! I would hope even the most ardent gun enthusiast would see that as a fundamental problem of gun availability. A little gun control here might indeed be a very GOOD THING./p
On one side we have the "Pry my gun out of cold dead hand" coalition, on the other "let's arm everyone with daises and sing Kumbaya" brotherhood. Both believe they have the moral high ground and both are offended the other won't stop being ignorant and change their point of view. Jeeze, let's just agree to disagree. Guns are tools. They are tools specifically designed to kill. There are societies with lots of guns and societies with none at all. There are societies which have evolved in the presence of guns, and therefore have incorporated guns into their social fabric so making blanket statements pro or con is just being ignorant and ill informed and you can't compare societies with guns and ones without.
The folks who think we need guns to fight our government are deluded. I'm sorry but your gun in the face of air to ground laser guided missiles is fighting a samarai katana with a wet noodle... good luck with that. Get a reality check, if your government turns on you, you will be out gunned, out manned, and at the mercy of technology over which you have no hope of beating. WAKE UP. For those of you who think arming yourself against street crime is stupid, you clearly aren't paying attention to the state of street gangs and the violent mentally ill wandering our streets. That said, the best experts I've ever heard on the subject all say the best answer by far is to learn critical self defense techniques including basic knife fighting and defense with and against guns. Trained self defense is always with you (you'll never discover you left it at home when you need it) and any way the most effective defense technology available is "Run Fu" or don't be there when the schist and the fan collide.
So please enough of the Rambo thinking, its a fantasy, and my darlings on the other side, please man up, its a scary world and being prepared for bad news before its bad news about you is a very intelligent way to get to a ripe old age.
We can have a wide open no holds barred space to create anything good, bad or indifferent. Or we can lock it all down according to someone's idea of safe, fair and convenient. Under the second plan. a thousand things you are going to want to do will not be possible because they exceed the mandate of the security environment (no matter where you arbitrarily draw the line.) So you get to pick your demons. Me I like it the way it is. That's just me.
I do have a physical library, because there is something sensual and delightful in the heft and feel of a physical book. That said, the advantages to having a substantially larger collection of electronic books, including wear and tear on the physical universe, portability, shear size of collection management, exquisite access to specific quotes and information and ability to preserve virtually forever, make me think that I'll save the physical books for the precious first volume delights I cherish, and keep my working library on a digital device.
Spiritual people. There is something absolutely amazing about life and death. One minute a person is there and then suddenly, all that remains is a husk. Yes, I understand fully the mechanics of the process, right down to the baryons. That doesn't change the fact that in my experience, something profound and ineffable has vanished from my perception, my grasp, and has left the world that I can comprehend.
None of this is an excuse for willful ignorance and stupid, stubborn, hubris. No matter how hard I believe, the world will not stop. If it did, the thin skin of the planet would tear free from the mantle and continents would slide over one another. Life on the planet would evaporate in a magmatic cataclism that would make the eruption of Mt. St. Helens look like a popcorn fart in a hurricane. If there is a creator, I'm guessing she doesn't go around suspending physics to mess with the creation. Just a guess (having created a few virtual worlds of my own, I'm supposing we're well past the beta.) Our world is chock full of mythologies. Its a human penchant to come up with stories to explain what we don't understand. Its also a penchant to attempt to describe nature and observe its inner workings. Folks who have at an early age divorced themselves from reality are missing something. We live in a truly remarkable universe. Even more disconcerting is that some people who choose to ignore reality seem to treat reality as though it bends to their opinions. The harsh conservative element in our government seems to have faith that a government that gives all its money away to the wealthy and takes no taxes can work and its people (at least the ones that matter) can thrive. This is the danger of faith based thinking, policy, society. The belief is more important than the fact, and those who have faith in driving straight on a crooked road endanger themselves and all others on the road.
A wise person surrenders to reality that which is real, and leaves that which untestable, unexplainable, or just humanly ineffable to faith. In these people I have no problem, I find myself among them. I simply know where to draw the line, and as our science improves, so the line moves.
Actually there are hosts of interesting theories, some with growing evidence to suggest their validity. One set of theories suggest this universe is the white whole side of the formation of a supermassive black hole in a universe to which we no longer have access, and that our universe inflates into other universes by the formation of black holes here. Another suggests that our universe is a holographic projection on the surface of a black hole. Still another suggests that this universe is a simulation in an incredibly huge computer someplace. In which case, God could be described in equal parts as the researcher, the operating system and the simulation control system. Conjecture into the eternal and infinite are inherent aspects of being human. Thee difference between science and religion is in one, a really creative guy makes up a great story and people choose to believe that because it means they don't have to stare into the naked maw of eternity wondering what happens to themselves and everything they know. In the other a really creative guy makes up a great story, then looks for a way to test whether the universe itself likes the story. The universe is a really hard test. Most made up stories to describe the nature of natural phenomena, fail the universe test. That doesn't mean people shouldn't believe whatever they feel like. They just need to acknowledge one set of beliefs is base purely on hope and faith, and the other is based on validation by the final test, agreement with the physical universe. Some things are probably untestable, in which case you get to play as you choose. Just be clear that it has no ground in physical reality and please stop going around paving your beliefs on the souls of other people. Its the height of hubris, and leads to holy wars, and we've had far too many of these already thank you.
Part of the problem is the grotesque need to put advertisement inside everything we do, because sweet Jebus help me if we can't find some way to squeeze another penny of profit off a dead author's moldering corpse. Sadly, this problem isn't going away any time soon. How about this, separate the "Work of Art" from the annoying bits. Literally have them be distinct and separate objects. Leave the art alone. Do not touch it. Keep your grubby mitts off my masterpiece you heathen. Dork with your part as much as you like... it is after all your part. This is about sloppy data management and publishers need to begin to understand the nature of data. That is, if they intend to sell books in an electronic format. All you publishers, please have a brief but productive conversation with a few software and IT folk about how you manage data integrity, and ensure your product doesn't A) Get stepped on by stupid stuff B) Get corrupted by lack of proper data safeguards.
The rest as they say, is business as usual... please proceed, nothing to see here.
I'm sorry, but what planet have you been living on for the last 20 years. Our supreme court (with special kudos for justices Kennedy and Scalia), just defined corporations as people with the first amendment rights to buy elections. Judges across the land have been giving large corporations anything they damn well want without the slightest concern to the damage done to society, and I for one am thrilled that this judge actually had;
1. A positive measurable IQ.
2. A sense of the urgency of this decision.
3. A grasp of the implications facing society and business if the wrong decision were made
4. And a basic idea just how bogus Oracle's claims were.
It almost gives me faith in the system when someone does something so right, and for the right reasons. Now someone needs to buy Oracle a speedo with an ice bag in the front... take down some of that pain and swelling...
You sir are a wise man. Here in California, we used to have a 5 mile wide "No Build Corridor" near the San Andreas fault in San Bernadino. No problem, it was sparsely inhabited dessert. As more and more folks moved out to what they call the "Inland Empire", the size of that corridor kept shrinking, cuz the real estate folks were howling to the State Gubernment that the laws were taking the very bread out of their chillens mouths. California has a very powerful Real Estate lobby (which can tell by the fact that 98% of our state's estuaries have been turned into marinas, waste treatment plants, or landfill, all for and because of Real Estate agents.) Soon they were putting mobile homes within a 100 yards, because heck their mobile homes right, who cares if they move a little... their mobile. Today, you can travel out to San Bernadino and go to the eastern edge of town and if you look real close at the diagonal line running from top left to bottom right of the Google map, you can see the meeting of the Pacific and North American plates. You can also see the fault has been littered with housing developments. Because who should be denied the breathtaking adventure of seeing their home split down the middle and travel in 2 different directions at 60 mph!
People are stupid, and greedy, and they have a real poor memory. If you let'em they will stick their head right in the lion's mouth to see where the lamb went. That's why we pass laws to protect us from ourselves. Sadly who will protect us from the greedy buggers who buy the people who are supposed to protect us. Sigh!
Clearly the folks scoffing not only didn't read the article, but are using poor information. When scientists originally predicted a 59cm rise in sea level by end of century, they were surprised and dismayed to find that the "Actual Rise" was significantly greater than expected and then were forced to revise the prediction to a meter. This is still a very conservative prediction. There is significant probability that the rise will be greater, perhaps significantly. This is particularly significant because when you add that meter to the substantial increase of serious storm surge from more frequent category 4 and 5 hurricanes (another gift from climate change), you have a significant coastal region which is going to be impacted in a number of really unhappy ways. To not use the information in hand to make intelligent plans based on best available information is tantamount to religious fanaticism, whether the religion is Gawd base or more Ideology centered. The smart money is on folks building floating homes on the N.C. Coast. Happy sailing!
Unfortunately a lot of government contracts have all kinds of built in ways for vendors to bid low at the front and charge high at the back (particularly if a high level government official who somehow makes out is willing to run interference.) The Deputy Mayor says this was a good contract... perhaps there's a new McMansion in the Hamptons? Country Club Membership? Pools, Tennis Courts? Yacht? Heck, that wasn't a good contract... that was a great contract!!!
This is essentially the only way to run this experiment, if you run all the cores at this speed, fusion is initiated, a black hole forms and time runs backwards!
Of equal relevance, we have spent endless hours here cheering the creation of a $25 laptop in India and the Khan Academy in the Silicon Valley in the hopes of providing a future of enlightenment and self determination for societies steeping in ignorance and superstition. Here is the need, hand out, eye wide open. Perhaps this is the time and and place for people to say to those who would attack innocent girls for improving themselves, This is unacceptable behavior.
Clearly you understand neither carbon nor ocean salinity. Human beings have in fact decreased the overall salinity of the ocean and raised the sea level as well as dramatically increased the CO2 levels in the ocean as carbonic acid. We can measure those things. CO2 occurs naturally in the atmosphere. If by human enterprise and the act of burning materials with carbon in them, you dramatically increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, you have polluted the atmosphere by definition. When human activities produce byproducts that impact the normal function of an environmental process or ecology, that is called pollutions. Even if the stuff you're polluting with may have value in say Scotland becoming a wine growing region. It's going to promote wildfires in say someplace like Minnesota and other places that aren't typically noted for wildfire, and worse promote the conversion of global rainforests into desserts. I can take perfectly good clean water. Put it where it will cause an environmental disaster, lets say in some fragile but vital dessert habitat. I've now made that habitat great for old men in golf shoes and lounge singers, but I've destroyed the natural habitat that was already there, and that could be called pollution. It depends on who wins, who loses, and who's getting paid. When Los Angeles sucked the Owen's Valley dry in the early 1900s. L.A. would say they were building a dream. The farmers in the Owens Valley who were wiped off the map would describe it as a nightmare.
Using you salt example, If I dump a billion tons of salt into the San Fransisco bay, the way California agriculture interests did when they tried to flush the salt out of the central valley from years of indiscriminate irrigation, then salt would become a pollutant. By the way, it had tragic consequences killing millions of birds and other local animals as well as ruining a number of estuaries along the Sacramento Delta, essential for fish reproduction. That pollution had profound economic and environmental impact. We addressed that by improving irrigation techniques and preventing the dumping of contaminated salt water into our lakes and waterways.
We need to manage CO2 in exactly the same way (and yes, that includes removing it from industrial exhausts.) The good news, is that a lot of bright folks see industrial exhaust as a gold mine for the production of biofuels. See, cloud has silver lining... just bring adequate technology to the party.
Slashdot Mirror
That and its tantamount in Texas to coming out of the closet as openly gay and vegan... "Hi, my name is Mike and I'm an environmentalist", "Oh, I need to introduce you to my cousin Steve!"
Betcha it'd sell big in the Outback... "Hey Mick, throw be 'nuther Frosty Piss. She's right Mate!"
Here, here, as well, I go into a mall armed with a machete, I may hack what a dozen people in a crowded shopping center, mayby 2 die. I go in with a couple Uzis and a backpack full of clips and the body count is going to be epic. Why would you promote that kind of carnage? By all means, guns for hunting and pistols for self protection. The rest, there is simply no justification for. You're just fanning the flames for survivalist nuts who already a burger shy a happy meal.
You see, from the mouth of a Venezuelan. Guns aren't going anywhere, and the culture is in a desperate mess. Runs on banks, currency that is collapsing. Guns in prisons!!! I would hope even the most ardent gun enthusiast would see that as a fundamental problem of gun availability. A little gun control here might indeed be a very GOOD THING./p
On one side we have the "Pry my gun out of cold dead hand" coalition, on the other "let's arm everyone with daises and sing Kumbaya" brotherhood. Both believe they have the moral high ground and both are offended the other won't stop being ignorant and change their point of view. Jeeze, let's just agree to disagree. Guns are tools. They are tools specifically designed to kill. There are societies with lots of guns and societies with none at all. There are societies which have evolved in the presence of guns, and therefore have incorporated guns into their social fabric so making blanket statements pro or con is just being ignorant and ill informed and you can't compare societies with guns and ones without.
The folks who think we need guns to fight our government are deluded. I'm sorry but your gun in the face of air to ground laser guided missiles is fighting a samarai katana with a wet noodle... good luck with that. Get a reality check, if your government turns on you, you will be out gunned, out manned, and at the mercy of technology over which you have no hope of beating. WAKE UP. For those of you who think arming yourself against street crime is stupid, you clearly aren't paying attention to the state of street gangs and the violent mentally ill wandering our streets. That said, the best experts I've ever heard on the subject all say the best answer by far is to learn critical self defense techniques including basic knife fighting and defense with and against guns. Trained self defense is always with you (you'll never discover you left it at home when you need it) and any way the most effective defense technology available is "Run Fu" or don't be there when the schist and the fan collide.
So please enough of the Rambo thinking, its a fantasy, and my darlings on the other side, please man up, its a scary world and being prepared for bad news before its bad news about you is a very intelligent way to get to a ripe old age.
We can have a wide open no holds barred space to create anything good, bad or indifferent. Or we can lock it all down according to someone's idea of safe, fair and convenient. Under the second plan. a thousand things you are going to want to do will not be possible because they exceed the mandate of the security environment (no matter where you arbitrarily draw the line.) So you get to pick your demons. Me I like it the way it is. That's just me.
I do have a physical library, because there is something sensual and delightful in the heft and feel of a physical book. That said, the advantages to having a substantially larger collection of electronic books, including wear and tear on the physical universe, portability, shear size of collection management, exquisite access to specific quotes and information and ability to preserve virtually forever, make me think that I'll save the physical books for the precious first volume delights I cherish, and keep my working library on a digital device.
Actually by definition 50% are :-)
I think your issue is that the average point now is hovering just north of Australopithecus.
Spiritual people. There is something absolutely amazing about life and death. One minute a person is there and then suddenly, all that remains is a husk. Yes, I understand fully the mechanics of the process, right down to the baryons. That doesn't change the fact that in my experience, something profound and ineffable has vanished from my perception, my grasp, and has left the world that I can comprehend.
None of this is an excuse for willful ignorance and stupid, stubborn, hubris. No matter how hard I believe, the world will not stop. If it did, the thin skin of the planet would tear free from the mantle and continents would slide over one another. Life on the planet would evaporate in a magmatic cataclism that would make the eruption of Mt. St. Helens look like a popcorn fart in a hurricane. If there is a creator, I'm guessing she doesn't go around suspending physics to mess with the creation. Just a guess (having created a few virtual worlds of my own, I'm supposing we're well past the beta.) Our world is chock full of mythologies. Its a human penchant to come up with stories to explain what we don't understand. Its also a penchant to attempt to describe nature and observe its inner workings. Folks who have at an early age divorced themselves from reality are missing something. We live in a truly remarkable universe. Even more disconcerting is that some people who choose to ignore reality seem to treat reality as though it bends to their opinions. The harsh conservative element in our government seems to have faith that a government that gives all its money away to the wealthy and takes no taxes can work and its people (at least the ones that matter) can thrive. This is the danger of faith based thinking, policy, society. The belief is more important than the fact, and those who have faith in driving straight on a crooked road endanger themselves and all others on the road.
A wise person surrenders to reality that which is real, and leaves that which untestable, unexplainable, or just humanly ineffable to faith. In these people I have no problem, I find myself among them. I simply know where to draw the line, and as our science improves, so the line moves.
Actually there are hosts of interesting theories, some with growing evidence to suggest their validity. One set of theories suggest this universe is the white whole side of the formation of a supermassive black hole in a universe to which we no longer have access, and that our universe inflates into other universes by the formation of black holes here. Another suggests that our universe is a holographic projection on the surface of a black hole. Still another suggests that this universe is a simulation in an incredibly huge computer someplace. In which case, God could be described in equal parts as the researcher, the operating system and the simulation control system. Conjecture into the eternal and infinite are inherent aspects of being human. Thee difference between science and religion is in one, a really creative guy makes up a great story and people choose to believe that because it means they don't have to stare into the naked maw of eternity wondering what happens to themselves and everything they know. In the other a really creative guy makes up a great story, then looks for a way to test whether the universe itself likes the story. The universe is a really hard test. Most made up stories to describe the nature of natural phenomena, fail the universe test. That doesn't mean people shouldn't believe whatever they feel like. They just need to acknowledge one set of beliefs is base purely on hope and faith, and the other is based on validation by the final test, agreement with the physical universe. Some things are probably untestable, in which case you get to play as you choose. Just be clear that it has no ground in physical reality and please stop going around paving your beliefs on the souls of other people. Its the height of hubris, and leads to holy wars, and we've had far too many of these already thank you.
Frosty Piss? Is that anything like Coor's Light?
Who sed? A little globbing and reg-ex goes a long way :-)
Part of the problem is the grotesque need to put advertisement inside everything we do, because sweet Jebus help me if we can't find some way to squeeze another penny of profit off a dead author's moldering corpse. Sadly, this problem isn't going away any time soon. How about this, separate the "Work of Art" from the annoying bits. Literally have them be distinct and separate objects. Leave the art alone. Do not touch it. Keep your grubby mitts off my masterpiece you heathen. Dork with your part as much as you like... it is after all your part. This is about sloppy data management and publishers need to begin to understand the nature of data. That is, if they intend to sell books in an electronic format. All you publishers, please have a brief but productive conversation with a few software and IT folk about how you manage data integrity, and ensure your product doesn't A) Get stepped on by stupid stuff B) Get corrupted by lack of proper data safeguards.
The rest as they say, is business as usual... please proceed, nothing to see here.
I'm sorry, but what planet have you been living on for the last 20 years. Our supreme court (with special kudos for justices Kennedy and Scalia), just defined corporations as people with the first amendment rights to buy elections. Judges across the land have been giving large corporations anything they damn well want without the slightest concern to the damage done to society, and I for one am thrilled that this judge actually had;
1. A positive measurable IQ.
2. A sense of the urgency of this decision.
3. A grasp of the implications facing society and business if the wrong decision were made
4. And a basic idea just how bogus Oracle's claims were.
It almost gives me faith in the system when someone does something so right, and for the right reasons. Now someone needs to buy Oracle a speedo with an ice bag in the front... take down some of that pain and swelling...
A meter rise in sea level plus more Cat 4 and 5 storms will make a bunch of costal regions HIGHLY flood prone, whether they are now or not.
People are stupid, and greedy, and they have a real poor memory. If you let'em they will stick their head right in the lion's mouth to see where the lamb went. That's why we pass laws to protect us from ourselves. Sadly who will protect us from the greedy buggers who buy the people who are supposed to protect us. Sigh!
Clearly the folks scoffing not only didn't read the article, but are using poor information. When scientists originally predicted a 59cm rise in sea level by end of century, they were surprised and dismayed to find that the "Actual Rise" was significantly greater than expected and then were forced to revise the prediction to a meter. This is still a very conservative prediction. There is significant probability that the rise will be greater, perhaps significantly. This is particularly significant because when you add that meter to the substantial increase of serious storm surge from more frequent category 4 and 5 hurricanes (another gift from climate change), you have a significant coastal region which is going to be impacted in a number of really unhappy ways. To not use the information in hand to make intelligent plans based on best available information is tantamount to religious fanaticism, whether the religion is Gawd base or more Ideology centered. The smart money is on folks building floating homes on the N.C. Coast. Happy sailing!
Unfortunately a lot of government contracts have all kinds of built in ways for vendors to bid low at the front and charge high at the back (particularly if a high level government official who somehow makes out is willing to run interference.) The Deputy Mayor says this was a good contract... perhaps there's a new McMansion in the Hamptons? Country Club Membership? Pools, Tennis Courts? Yacht? Heck, that wasn't a good contract... that was a great contract!!!
This is essentially the only way to run this experiment, if you run all the cores at this speed, fusion is initiated, a black hole forms and time runs backwards!
It was North Koreans trying to get information for their missile program!!!
You can't speak to NASA until you make it through their airspace... welcome to vertical bureaucracy!
Angry man screams into cell phone standing near a small dock "Dammit I said ORE Dog not OAR Dog!!!"
Sorry but you NAV was made in Thailand... its a He/She!
Of equal relevance, we have spent endless hours here cheering the creation of a $25 laptop in India and the Khan Academy in the Silicon Valley in the hopes of providing a future of enlightenment and self determination for societies steeping in ignorance and superstition. Here is the need, hand out, eye wide open. Perhaps this is the time and and place for people to say to those who would attack innocent girls for improving themselves, This is unacceptable behavior.
Clearly you understand neither carbon nor ocean salinity. Human beings have in fact decreased the overall salinity of the ocean and raised the sea level as well as dramatically increased the CO2 levels in the ocean as carbonic acid. We can measure those things. CO2 occurs naturally in the atmosphere. If by human enterprise and the act of burning materials with carbon in them, you dramatically increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, you have polluted the atmosphere by definition. When human activities produce byproducts that impact the normal function of an environmental process or ecology, that is called pollutions. Even if the stuff you're polluting with may have value in say Scotland becoming a wine growing region. It's going to promote wildfires in say someplace like Minnesota and other places that aren't typically noted for wildfire, and worse promote the conversion of global rainforests into desserts. I can take perfectly good clean water. Put it where it will cause an environmental disaster, lets say in some fragile but vital dessert habitat. I've now made that habitat great for old men in golf shoes and lounge singers, but I've destroyed the natural habitat that was already there, and that could be called pollution. It depends on who wins, who loses, and who's getting paid. When Los Angeles sucked the Owen's Valley dry in the early 1900s. L.A. would say they were building a dream. The farmers in the Owens Valley who were wiped off the map would describe it as a nightmare.
Using you salt example, If I dump a billion tons of salt into the San Fransisco bay, the way California agriculture interests did when they tried to flush the salt out of the central valley from years of indiscriminate irrigation, then salt would become a pollutant. By the way, it had tragic consequences killing millions of birds and other local animals as well as ruining a number of estuaries along the Sacramento Delta, essential for fish reproduction. That pollution had profound economic and environmental impact. We addressed that by improving irrigation techniques and preventing the dumping of contaminated salt water into our lakes and waterways.
We need to manage CO2 in exactly the same way (and yes, that includes removing it from industrial exhausts.) The good news, is that a lot of bright folks see industrial exhaust as a gold mine for the production of biofuels. See, cloud has silver lining... just bring adequate technology to the party.