No... they are results of heat. The evidence is jumping up and biting you. I'm speaking about effect. If you want to talk cause, I'll be happy to show you a couple hundred sources of information from broadly diverse areas of research which create a virtually irrefutable conclusion to emerge. Human Beings are changing the global climate, through first order effects from greenhouse gases, and now growingly through second order effects from the liberation of huge amounts of CO2 and methane from melting permafrost and organic decomposition at high latitudes and ocean hydrides.
Better yet, you go out, hit the science journals, and I mean all kinds of different research. Oceanography, Microbiology, Biology, Geology and Geophysics, Archeology, Botany, Agricultural Science, Forest Management, Hydrology and Water Management. Then come back to me, Let me know what you found, The key is, go with an open mind, and stop trying to prove your point. You can't learn anything from a closed premise. Besides being bad science, it points to religion not informed inquiry.
This is clearly written by someone who hasn't bothered to read even a scrap of the research out there. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS COMPLEX. They just discovered that glacier aren't melting in the Himalayas. Yes, glaciers are melting everywhere else, but not the Himalayas. This is contrary evidence, that demands refining models and coming up with meaningful explanations. THAT IS THE NATURE OF SCIENCE. The reason scientists are for the most part, and I say most part, reporting results consistent with global climate change is because we are experiencing global climate change. The system is however chaotic and there are all kinds of interesting kinks and turns in the research which will ultimate help us come up with better models of the real world. So, for real science to occur, you need to bring in all the evidence, including evidence that conflict with your theory, because in the end, physical reality is the first, last, and only measure of the validity of any theory.
To claim that the lack of refuting evidence, implies external coercion is ridiculous. Its like saying the lack of refuting evidence for Relativity implies political conspiracy. If the government had anything to do with the majority of evidence you might have a case. However the evidence doesn't just come from climate scientists. It comes from biologists, agricultural scientists, forest managers, geologists, archeologists,botanists... on and on. The corroborating evidence literally comes in now from hundreds of diverse scientific fields and specialties. To argue global climate change is quick approaching the kind of religious closed minded belief one associates with flat earthers.
So like your belief, you criticism, doesn't hold water.
You give someone a grant... they go purchase a bunch of computers and test equipment and do this research thing for 1 to 10 years. They collect data, analyze results then publish peer reviewed papers. We call this science
The guys being paid by the oil companies, on the other hand, are doing little or no research, save looking for ways specifically to discredit the people (not the research) of those investigating climate change. So they bandy about opinions, assassinate character, lie, cheat and build grotesque fictions from whole cloth. So its not the funding. Its what's being done with the money. Science in one case, and corporate espionage in the other. Place your bets where you will, I'll take the science camp myself thanks..
The sociological problem isn't comfort. Its having a talking head in a little box tell you what you need to get comfort. Worse because these things only gratify and virtually never satisfy, you have to get today's "Turd Neuvo" to maintain that 1 minute and 14 seconds of comfort. Pavlovian consumption as economic raison d'etre. We don't need this crap. There are DOZENS of nations that consume a tenth of what America consumes and THEY ARE HAPPIER than we are. They save more money than we do. They have better health than us. Their children are getting better educations. People, who among you can't see that obsessive hoarding and anorexia are the opposite ends of the same shitty stick?
This is that religion thing again. Grow a free mind, READ dammit!, Our appetite is not our best friend. Its time to take the profit motive out of living and breathing. I know I just committed the foulest of blasphemies and I'll be forced at gun point to say 1000 hail Wallstreets, but this little experiment in grotesque consumption has run its course and is bloody close to destroying everything we love. Just yesterday I heard they want to strip mine coal in Bryce National Park. That kind of says it all. Enough people. We're turning the world into a toilet. Its like some horrible existential scene from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", whatever you do, don't eat that last wafer thin mint.
Its time for us to elect representatives who aren't permanently attached to Corporate America's teat. Its time to muzzle Corporate America, and surgically separate them from state, while we're at it rescind their personhood, they've abused the privilege. Its time to teach our kids that they are responsible for the future, that it will only be as good or as bad as they make it, and we who are already here, should spend the rest of our ill begotten existences cleaning up the fscking mess we made, instead of viciously grubbing for more. So a little dignity please! Let's have a little compassion. Grow a pair, and demand that we put our attention to cleaning up the mess. That's a future worth having. That's a purpose worth living for. This knee jerk, pavlovian self satisfying, needs to come to a crashing halt now. It is so time to find out what's important, and let me be the first to let you know its not Axe Spray-on Deodorant, or minty fresh breath, or even the right feminine hygiene product. Perhaps then, we'll all discover the true nature of real comfort and lasing happiness. Being at home in our skins and being able to look in the mirror without shame, or the quiet self loathing at what little we've left our children.
Actually, producing oil from algae looks very promising (especially with some exciting breakthroughs in bioreactors.) We could produce all the oil we need from an oil farm covering the land area of about half the state of New Mexico (by the way, with the help of several new desalination processes it should be possible to bring substantial new energy industries to the deserts of the south west.) This is particularly true with the increasing price of oil, which at this very moment is again on the rise.The $3 dollar gallon of gas is gone and isn't coming back. The $4 gallon is soon to join it. Every day I talk to friends who have hybrids and they are honestly smug as hell (and rightfully so.)
Expanded hydrothermal, pebble-bed nuclear with helium cooling, direct solar to hydrogen, the list of exciting new potential technologies is almost endless. The key is to create a national mandate, like getting to the moon. A nation that is 100% renewable energy within 10 years. More important, becoming the global leader of renewables and exporting our technology to the rest of the world. That's a winning strategy. It means of course telling the fossil fuel industry to get off its fat ass and move to the future. Tough, its time to bite the bullet before we're shot by it. This has ceased to be a wake-up call... its now more like a 3 alarm fire swiftly moving towards 4 alarm. Stop arguing against the future, nobody had a cow over the end of the buggy whip industry, they just all went out and got their new cars. Its time for this generation to get over gasoline. Whatever's coming next will be even better, just make it that way. One of the worst problems with spending your time living in the past, is that you lose any say about the shape of the future. All the interesting stuff is that way, over the horizon.
For the love o Jeebus... on this very day Slashdot has an article taking about the fact that Nuclear Power plants in the US are having problems running at capacity because the RIVERS ARE TOO HOT... The National Forestry, is overhauling its long term timber estimates due to projected drought and wildfire in the Western United States, and the last 10 years match prior projections based on model of global climate change. There are islands in the south Pacific that are being evacuated because ocean levels are rendering them uninhabitable.
At what point do you concede that perhaps the word is getting warmer and that HUMAN BEINGS are the cause? When the asphalt in front of your home spontaneously combusts? When the squirrels in the trees melt like marshmallows? Never? The problem my friend, with stinking your head in the sand is that soon, your tail feathers are going to get singed. I know its hard. I understand you want to believe that human enterprise is inherently good. Visit a Superfund site. Get a clue, hell get two, they're small. Human beings are amazing wonderful beasts. They're also Machiavellian bastards, like most of the other primates on the planet. The only difference is we can actually appraise our actions and do something about the creepier ones. Continuing to mindlessly crap into an environment in collapse is something that demands we use our frontal lobes and not the magical thinking parts of our brains. Hence the science.
Taken by itself, this is one disturbing thread. Taken in context with the other documents released its clear this is part of a wholesale attack on science, public opinion and social responsibility. It verges on an attack on sanity, and it again points to a small group of egotists and narcissists who have put personal acquisition and power ahead of social benefit or even environmental viability for our children and our children's children.
I couldn't be any clearer that this is a PR arm of the fossil fuel industry and that short term profits win out over even the hint of a future worth living in for our society. I would say they should be ashamed of themselves, but everything I've read informs me that sociopaths are incapable of shame.
Also be careful, if the punctuation begins to glow, its reaching the end of its life and is about to evaporate in rather impressive gamma ray burst. The upside, is you can use the burst to sterilize food for long term storage or eliminate unpleasant neighbors.
Please explain to me, how strategic drone assassination has greater moral reprehensibility than... Oh, I don't know, how about carpet bombing a the capital of a country that didn't do anything to us? I think a pretty strong case for Shock and Awe being considered a war crime can be made by any fifth grader. Using drones, or robots, or any other technology that keeps American soldiers out of harms way, while surveiling and potentially assassinating people engaged in war against us, seems to me to be an optimal strategy. This of course does not excuse gross violations of international law, treaties or acceptable humanitarian practices (of which America has had a very hard time honor over the last decade.)
Don't get me wrong. I am not happy with Mr. Obama's performance on a lot of fronts. I am however clear that it is almost impossible to elect a man in this country today with the desired capacity for intelligent choice making, moral integrity, human compassion and operational courage required to fulfill on the promises that Obama made in his election speeches. Real change is almost impossible to attain as long corporations own the government and ignorant, superstitious, masses choose leaders on the basis of who they'd like to get drunk with.
The only thing I find more reprehensible about Obama than Bush, is that Obama actually seems to have something resembling a moral center and for sure a measurable IQ, and therefore should know better than be participating in these atrocities. Sadly his many compromises include letting the people who dug us into this hole continue digging.
I would only add, that our law makers almost to a man, are lawyers or ex-lawyers and that it is good for lawyers to breed contention, disarray and conflict. A broken patent system, and system in fact which allows the most crass among us to patent, defend and firewall everything and anything including air, sunshine and the rain that falls on your face, makes their greedy little hearts happier than words can say.
Remember they aren't the least bit interested in society. They are interested in the depth and breadth of their bank accounts. To that end, most lawyers would be happy to build a legal framework for the production of Soylent Green, as long as they got some residual income from its production. Any thought that these people are your friends is at best a fantasy and much more likely a profound delusion.
Add to that the recent execution in Texas of a man virtually everyone with a IQ outside of single digits is certain was innocent, and its pretty clear that looking good, looking hard on crime, and being a righteous Christian hard-ass (sweet Jeebus my brain hurts just putting those words together into a single fscked-up gestalt!) trumps integrity, dignity, humanity or compassion. The U.S. isn't as screwed up as the Middle-East, but there are religious idiots working hard to get us there!
I have to agree that Interpol's complicity in this is shocking and bodes poorly for the global state of Human Rights.
Actually, for myself, I'd be voting on religions (or belief systems if you prefer) for top sources of human slaughter, though the lack of separation between said systems and their states have rendered governments into efficient structures for the promotion of significant death and human suffering. Strangely enough, commerce and corporations as well come in pretty high in the history of dealing death (at least since the invention of corporations.) It might be wise to institute rigorous separation and checks and balances on all these institutions because in the end human beings are equal part angels and demons.
So first of all, QUESTION EVERYTHING... absolutely, believe in nothing. Create explanations for the universe, realize they are not the truth and that the first time you find incontrovertible evidence to the contrary its time to either dispose of your theory or modify it to explain the phenomenon. That means, if you're going to be rigorous, both not believing in Global Climate change and also not believing in the absence of Global Climate change. All there are, is facts. Find them. Weigh them. Make an enlightened appraisal. While you weigh them, look at your sources. Compare them and their reputations. Are these the same people who said smoking is healthy, and are known to fill the media with corporate spin to muddy the water, create false controversy and help fossil fuel interests drill another day? Is the global scientist in question in the middle of fund raising and do they have a reputation for clear, logical research or are they ideologues shoving a point of view down a willing media's gullet. You have to be grown up! Not all sources of information are equal. And for gawd sake, stop trying to justify you point of view first, because cherry picking evidence to prove your point is not a search for truth, its a search for vindication and that is not science my friend, that is religion.
There's a great blog and book called You're not so smart, and it goes into deep discussion of how people think and behave. and for the most part we aren't open to new ideas, we just cherry pick facts to justify our philosophical positions. It actually takes a tremendous amount of intellectual rigor to look at the MANY sides of an idea to come away with some concise idea of where the reality of the situation lands. This by the way is complicated in this modern age by the fact your search engines are designed to help you find what you're looking for. So if you're looking for justification, not only will you find it, but you will soon be virtually unable to find anything else... the engine will be leaned in the direction you push it. Just as an aside, this is one more reason to look for all sides of a conversation, because you want to prevent your primary source of information from becoming so biased that it becomes just another feedback on your point of view.
In the area of global climate change. We have a lot of very interesting information. Greenland is experiencing TREMENDOUS melting events and there is a huge influx of fresh water into the arctic ocean. The problems with polar bear and brown bears is well understood, including a recent event in which unusually warm coastal water prevents salmon runs in southern Alaska and resulted in serious die off of young brown bears. Glaciers through the Americas, Europe and Africa are disappearing. The loss of glaciers in North America is so pronounced that within 20 years the International Park name "Glacier" may have no glaciers to speak of. Ocean chemistry is changing, and measurable rises in CO2 have resulted in acidification threatening a wide variety of species that require carbonaceous shells (everything from coral to shell fish to crustaceans and their larva.) On the other side, chemical changes have caused a massive increase in ocean jellies (a well known survival response to perceived threat designed to ensure species survival in the face of potential calamity.) We're seeing dramatic shifts in the flowering and fruiting seasons of plant around the world. Shifts in animal migration. Statistical changes in weather patterns consistent with predicted models (increased numbers of floods and droughts and increases in precipitation and storm intensity.) Serious rise in droughts and wildfires in the Western US, Africa and Australia. These are all facts. Part of a larger picture and as some have already said, so complex that we don't understand it. However, we can begin to see patterns emerging. It would be profoundly foolish to ignore these signs, or wait until catastrophic environmental failure became clear and incontrovertible.
Wise money suggests there are a hundred good reasons for looking at ways to conserve energy, become more efficient, find renewable resources and create an energy economy that begins to move people and long term solutions off planet. Wise money suggests that rather than argue and justify a negligent past, it would serve us all best to invent a workable future and to that end, arguing against the impacts of fossil fuels and there growing scarcity would seem (at least to me) like a fools errand.
It doesn't take a God or gawd to stand in the belief that human beings have inalienable rights, that perhaps society's greatest responsibility is to promote and empower human dignity. We hold that humanity must be free of oppression, slavery, poverty and ignorance to rise to it's greatest potential, and any institution or enterprise that promotes itself to the detriment of humanity and life at large must be constrained and by design forced to address its responsibility to human life and liberty. Laws must exist to serve humanity and not despots. Police must exist to enforce these laws with dignity and compassion.
The United States was hijacked in 1980. A few wealthy, powerful men looked at the problems that faced humanity, and rather than seeing an opportunity to address those challenges looked for a way to use these challenges to take control and solve the problems they saw in the way that despots throughout history solved such problems. Sadly, they didn't bother to study events like the French Revolution. The entire world is changing. Democratizing in the face of ancient memes and cultures which struggle to persist sociopolitical atrocities millennia old. I would argue that religion has been a hindrance to humanity for the most part. I distinguish organized religion as an institution for the promotion of magical thinking in the face of contrary evidence from the personal practice of spiritual endeavor which is often, in of itself a powerful inquiry into the nature of self and its relationship to the eternal. I have no problem with ontology, philosophy, metaphysics or any other search for a deeper human truth. I do find that pumping superstitious masses full of mindless magical crap, making them virtually unfit for rational discourse or informed appraisal of a physical universe both distressing and alarming at a time when we need enlightened minds desperately.
In fact I am interested in the existence of a big 'G' God. However, I am far more interested in evolving myself and humanity to a state that ensures our race will have a brilliant and enduring future, and I can without equivocation say I have a great deal of work to do on myself, and that society at large is a fair distance from that goal.
On that note... Here is a 12,000 year old creosote bush, and its the same plant. So, though it may not be the oldest lawn in the world, it is probably the oldest single life form (with perhaps the exception of certain ancient bacteria which might be virtually immortal.)
The entire point of patents was to promote invention and empower human economy. Honeywell killed off its remote thermostat product line long ago and has no intention of producing any more... they just want to make sure nobody else can enter that business either. That is expressly AGAINST the entire point of patents and their current use as a bludgeon to hold the world at large hostage has rendered them not only nonproductive but profoundly harmful to human enterprise.
The use of patents to cut up human IP into little fiefdoms, and turn corporations into despotic warlords, holders of IP to control and dominate society has become detrimental to human advancement, social well being and and the future of new businesses. We need to change IP laws to protect inventors, but prevent corporations from using IP as a means to destroy fair competition, promote monopolies and as such place the public in the stranglehold of sole proprietorship. It is a natural process as we move towards an information society to have IP become the currency of trade. It is therefore detrimental to society to put artificial boundaries on the free market of ideas and IP. We need to change the way that IP is managed, such that inventors are rewarded... specific people who hold patents on created works and are fairly remunerated for their inventions by both their companies and society at large. As such we also need to limit or eliminate the right of corporations to own patents, because they are compelled to use them as tools to dominate the market.
All of this is the mischief that descends from corporations having human rights without human limitations. It is also high time to define corporations properly as human enterprises, giving them the appropriate rights and freedoms to operate and thrive and remove the privileges that have proven so detrimental to society, human existence and life on the planet in general. We are at a historic nexus and our future demands that we stop and look at what contributes to our future and what threatens it. We carry tremendous baggage from the past, some of it wisdom, some if it atrocity. We need to consciously choose a future and invent who and what we are going to be. To do less, is take our hands off the wheel and simply hope that things will turn out. Good luck with things just turning out.
Clearly you do not understand what it means to be gay. Is being straight a choice you make or simply the way you are? Did you wake up one morning and "Decide" as matter of lifestyle that you would choose partners of the opposite sex. The only thing more hardwired in the human brain than sexual preference is gender identity and the latter in fact may happen in utero.
Here's an example of just how screwed up England was. There was a young lady from England who had to come to America in the early 90s to give birth. She was born interssexed, with a hypertrophic clitoris. When she was born, the Doctor asked her Father, a hard drinking, working class man, what he wanted, "A boy or a girl." The man said "Boy" and so the child was christened, and in England, as the child is christened, is law (at least it used to be until the EU pimp slapped them into complying with basic human rights.) So the child was raise as a boy, all the time knowing she was a girl, wanting be a girl, certain that their must be somebody who would save her from this torture. At 13 when she began to menstruate, she was forced to go through a series of surgeries to close her cervix. That resulted in a life threatening complication and more surgeries to undo the damage. Her breasts developed, her Father force her to have a double mastectomy. All the while, her Father raged that she wasn't the SON he had intended and spent his time beating her half to death. At one point the beating was so savage neighbors called the police and upon arrival the Father claimed she attacked him so they put her in jail... a man's jail, where she was promptly raped. She moved away from home at 15 to stay alive. Began dressing and living as a woman. Fell in love with a young man as girls are want, and became pregnant because she couldn't under English law see a doctor and get contraceptives (remember, she's a man.) Here's where the brain strains... In England, it is law that a woman MUST see a doctor during pregnancy or go to jail. However, this person is legally a MAN, and therefore no Doctor could see her for fear of losing his license to practice, There was no way for her to see a Doctor in all of England legally, because she was legally a man, but not seeing a Doctor demanded that she be imprisoned, and lose her child. So she was finally able to get some help and came to the United States to have her baby pregnant in her third trimester. Moreover, she could not go back to England because she was now a fugitive guilty of a variety of infractions and circumventing British justice. That's the mentality, dignity, and morality of the imbeciles who put their religious complacency ahead of the basic need for human justice.
Absolutely absolve Turing and all like him of any taint from the past . By publicly declaring the laws and mentality that tortured him, assaulted him, and ultimately destroyed him and countless other innocents be acknowledged as inhuman, inhumane, unjust and contrary to the dignity of the human spirit. The man is not to blame, the law was evil, and the men who hated, and plotted to destroy those who they could neither accept nor condone were in their hearts equally evil. Religion is no excuse. There are atrocities being committed today against women in Muslim nations around the entire middle-east. Even Israel hyper-orthodox Jewish sects have been guilty of attacking or abusing women, even little girls who don't comply with their religious standards of modesty. Its become a major point in the continuing friction between orthodox and secular Jews. People take beliefs and turn them around to justify themselves and in many cases persecute others. Turing was an innocent victim of such behavior. It is time we put things right for him and once and for all accept people for their differences.
#1 Should the library censor, filter, or prevent a person from looking at anything? No. That's not free speech, that's freedom of information. Two completely different issues.
#2 Should the man have the right to subject people including children to his porn addiction? Also, NO! He should be made to go into one of the music listening booths where he can satisfy his person viewing fetish however he pleases.
If he refuses to take his behavior to a more responsibly location, the young lady has every right to video him in a public place, doing an indecent thing and send it to the evening news for public dissemination. That would in fact be free speech, which is protected and the wayward gentleman would have to deal with the social repercussions of being an inconsiderate ass in public. Not to mention how this might impact his job and his marriage. It would take but a couple such incidents to forever make the practice an obvious no pass for anyone not attempting social suicide.
Titanium interacts better with bone and the body tends to tolerate it well (most artificial joints are made of titanium), is lighter that steel, and has superb sintering properties. In fact nanograin titanium oxide (a ceramic) when shaped and sintered is transparent, as light as aluminum, stronger than steel, and far more flexible than either. It is extremely heat resistant and you could in fact build a very impressive engine block out of it... and be able to tune you motor by adjust combustion until your ignition color went blue (indicating complete optimal combustion.)
You could print a very high quality bone replacement and put synthetic bone inside and out to support marrow, a blood supply and attachment points on the outside for muscle and tendon. In fact you could build anchor points for carbon fiber to replace portions of tendon, and the tendon would naturally grow into the fiber over time. With the work being done on 3D printing, Its almost certain that we'll eventually just print up actual replacement organs and tissues from our own stem cells and with a little Extracellular Matrix to make it all grow together, no scars, no complications. We truly live in amazing times!
That's not exactly true. The amount of intelligence built into remote medical technology today is fairly astounding. There are surgical robots that can be shipped to Africa for a world class surgeon to operate half a world away. That includes multiple tool sets so multiple surgeons can operate simultaneously, microscopic stereo video, enhancements that allow a surgeons tool manipulation to be smooth and precise despite the lag due to satellite communications.
There are layers of heuristics, predictive algorithms, noise dampening, on and on... This is not a simple puppet. There is real intelligence on the performing side that is completely autonomous to the machine. That said, it is a robotic tool designed to remote and enhance the intent of a human user. So one may want to distinguish "Robot" from "Robotic Tool". It is a fine distinction and incredibly blurry, which is at least one reason that folks haven't bothered to draw that particular line. Perhaps as we have more fully autonomous robotic entities running all over the landscape that will change.
No, the lymphoma would still be present and just metastasize to some other organ/tissue. This might treat the tumor in the stomach, but it would only be a stop gap measure with limited viability in the long haul. There are other recent technologies however that might make a difference, including monoclonal antibodies carrying everything from toxins and markers for the immune system to nano-particles of metals that can convert various EMR into heat and kill tumors and cancer cells. You may want to do a quick look up for animal experimentation for cancer research to see if anyone in your area is conducting research for feline lymphoma.
Your making a false assumption on the presumption that they don't intend to force second hand owners to pay 100% of the full price of the product on the premise that whether you're the first or twenty first person to be holding the disc, you will pay 100% for the privilege to play their game. Its there game, they have every right to make certain everyone pays the full price to play it. That said, they're going to have to deal with a world where players have expectations from other game producers, and unless their games are the most amazing, wonderful, enjoyable games ever made, there is a very real chance that players will simply tell them to shove it.
Its a for profit business. These are not bad people, they are there to make a profit, the more the better, and if they have to slap you around a little or mess with your perceived entitlements to squeeze a little more profit out, you're simply buggered. This is not evil, its the way our economy is geared and the answer is to sit the man down and let him know that at some point, aggressive profit making to the detriment of your customers will predictably reach a point of diminishing returns. Businessmen need to be able to make a reasonable profit on their product. They also need to treat their customers with respect and dignity and their customers need to do the same. There is common ground, and its up to both parties to find it. Or you can just declare war on one another and everyone loses, particularly the innocent bystanders who end up being subjected to legislation on behalf of business which fundamentally undermines human rights.
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No... they are results of heat. The evidence is jumping up and biting you. I'm speaking about effect. If you want to talk cause, I'll be happy to show you a couple hundred sources of information from broadly diverse areas of research which create a virtually irrefutable conclusion to emerge. Human Beings are changing the global climate, through first order effects from greenhouse gases, and now growingly through second order effects from the liberation of huge amounts of CO2 and methane from melting permafrost and organic decomposition at high latitudes and ocean hydrides.
Better yet, you go out, hit the science journals, and I mean all kinds of different research. Oceanography, Microbiology, Biology, Geology and Geophysics, Archeology, Botany, Agricultural Science, Forest Management, Hydrology and Water Management. Then come back to me, Let me know what you found, The key is, go with an open mind, and stop trying to prove your point. You can't learn anything from a closed premise. Besides being bad science, it points to religion not informed inquiry.
This is clearly written by someone who hasn't bothered to read even a scrap of the research out there. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS COMPLEX. They just discovered that glacier aren't melting in the Himalayas. Yes, glaciers are melting everywhere else, but not the Himalayas. This is contrary evidence, that demands refining models and coming up with meaningful explanations. THAT IS THE NATURE OF SCIENCE. The reason scientists are for the most part, and I say most part, reporting results consistent with global climate change is because we are experiencing global climate change. The system is however chaotic and there are all kinds of interesting kinks and turns in the research which will ultimate help us come up with better models of the real world. So, for real science to occur, you need to bring in all the evidence, including evidence that conflict with your theory, because in the end, physical reality is the first, last, and only measure of the validity of any theory.
To claim that the lack of refuting evidence, implies external coercion is ridiculous. Its like saying the lack of refuting evidence for Relativity implies political conspiracy. If the government had anything to do with the majority of evidence you might have a case. However the evidence doesn't just come from climate scientists. It comes from biologists, agricultural scientists, forest managers, geologists, archeologists,botanists... on and on. The corroborating evidence literally comes in now from hundreds of diverse scientific fields and specialties. To argue global climate change is quick approaching the kind of religious closed minded belief one associates with flat earthers.
So like your belief, you criticism, doesn't hold water.
Here's a little hint...
You give someone a grant... they go purchase a bunch of computers and test equipment and do this research thing for 1 to 10 years. They collect data, analyze results then publish peer reviewed papers. We call this science
The guys being paid by the oil companies, on the other hand, are doing little or no research, save looking for ways specifically to discredit the people (not the research) of those investigating climate change. So they bandy about opinions, assassinate character, lie, cheat and build grotesque fictions from whole cloth. So its not the funding. Its what's being done with the money. Science in one case, and corporate espionage in the other. Place your bets where you will, I'll take the science camp myself thanks..
The sociological problem isn't comfort. Its having a talking head in a little box tell you what you need to get comfort. Worse because these things only gratify and virtually never satisfy, you have to get today's "Turd Neuvo" to maintain that 1 minute and 14 seconds of comfort. Pavlovian consumption as economic raison d'etre. We don't need this crap. There are DOZENS of nations that consume a tenth of what America consumes and THEY ARE HAPPIER than we are. They save more money than we do. They have better health than us. Their children are getting better educations. People, who among you can't see that obsessive hoarding and anorexia are the opposite ends of the same shitty stick?
This is that religion thing again. Grow a free mind, READ dammit!, Our appetite is not our best friend. Its time to take the profit motive out of living and breathing. I know I just committed the foulest of blasphemies and I'll be forced at gun point to say 1000 hail Wallstreets, but this little experiment in grotesque consumption has run its course and is bloody close to destroying everything we love. Just yesterday I heard they want to strip mine coal in Bryce National Park. That kind of says it all. Enough people. We're turning the world into a toilet. Its like some horrible existential scene from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", whatever you do, don't eat that last wafer thin mint.
Its time for us to elect representatives who aren't permanently attached to Corporate America's teat. Its time to muzzle Corporate America, and surgically separate them from state, while we're at it rescind their personhood, they've abused the privilege. Its time to teach our kids that they are responsible for the future, that it will only be as good or as bad as they make it, and we who are already here, should spend the rest of our ill begotten existences cleaning up the fscking mess we made, instead of viciously grubbing for more. So a little dignity please! Let's have a little compassion. Grow a pair, and demand that we put our attention to cleaning up the mess. That's a future worth having. That's a purpose worth living for. This knee jerk, pavlovian self satisfying, needs to come to a crashing halt now. It is so time to find out what's important, and let me be the first to let you know its not Axe Spray-on Deodorant, or minty fresh breath, or even the right feminine hygiene product. Perhaps then, we'll all discover the true nature of real comfort and lasing happiness. Being at home in our skins and being able to look in the mirror without shame, or the quiet self loathing at what little we've left our children.
Actually, producing oil from algae looks very promising (especially with some exciting breakthroughs in bioreactors.) We could produce all the oil we need from an oil farm covering the land area of about half the state of New Mexico (by the way, with the help of several new desalination processes it should be possible to bring substantial new energy industries to the deserts of the south west.) This is particularly true with the increasing price of oil, which at this very moment is again on the rise.The $3 dollar gallon of gas is gone and isn't coming back. The $4 gallon is soon to join it. Every day I talk to friends who have hybrids and they are honestly smug as hell (and rightfully so.)
Expanded hydrothermal, pebble-bed nuclear with helium cooling, direct solar to hydrogen, the list of exciting new potential technologies is almost endless. The key is to create a national mandate, like getting to the moon. A nation that is 100% renewable energy within 10 years. More important, becoming the global leader of renewables and exporting our technology to the rest of the world. That's a winning strategy. It means of course telling the fossil fuel industry to get off its fat ass and move to the future. Tough, its time to bite the bullet before we're shot by it. This has ceased to be a wake-up call... its now more like a 3 alarm fire swiftly moving towards 4 alarm. Stop arguing against the future, nobody had a cow over the end of the buggy whip industry, they just all went out and got their new cars. Its time for this generation to get over gasoline. Whatever's coming next will be even better, just make it that way. One of the worst problems with spending your time living in the past, is that you lose any say about the shape of the future. All the interesting stuff is that way, over the horizon.
For the love o Jeebus... on this very day Slashdot has an article taking about the fact that Nuclear Power plants in the US are having problems running at capacity because the RIVERS ARE TOO HOT... The National Forestry, is overhauling its long term timber estimates due to projected drought and wildfire in the Western United States, and the last 10 years match prior projections based on model of global climate change. There are islands in the south Pacific that are being evacuated because ocean levels are rendering them uninhabitable.
At what point do you concede that perhaps the word is getting warmer and that HUMAN BEINGS are the cause? When the asphalt in front of your home spontaneously combusts? When the squirrels in the trees melt like marshmallows? Never? The problem my friend, with stinking your head in the sand is that soon, your tail feathers are going to get singed. I know its hard. I understand you want to believe that human enterprise is inherently good. Visit a Superfund site. Get a clue, hell get two, they're small. Human beings are amazing wonderful beasts. They're also Machiavellian bastards, like most of the other primates on the planet. The only difference is we can actually appraise our actions and do something about the creepier ones. Continuing to mindlessly crap into an environment in collapse is something that demands we use our frontal lobes and not the magical thinking parts of our brains. Hence the science.
Taken by itself, this is one disturbing thread. Taken in context with the other documents released its clear this is part of a wholesale attack on science, public opinion and social responsibility. It verges on an attack on sanity, and it again points to a small group of egotists and narcissists who have put personal acquisition and power ahead of social benefit or even environmental viability for our children and our children's children.
I couldn't be any clearer that this is a PR arm of the fossil fuel industry and that short term profits win out over even the hint of a future worth living in for our society. I would say they should be ashamed of themselves, but everything I've read informs me that sociopaths are incapable of shame.
Also be careful, if the punctuation begins to glow, its reaching the end of its life and is about to evaporate in rather impressive gamma ray burst. The upside, is you can use the burst to sterilize food for long term storage or eliminate unpleasant neighbors.
BIG WHOA... just for a second
Please explain to me, how strategic drone assassination has greater moral reprehensibility than... Oh, I don't know, how about carpet bombing a the capital of a country that didn't do anything to us? I think a pretty strong case for Shock and Awe being considered a war crime can be made by any fifth grader. Using drones, or robots, or any other technology that keeps American soldiers out of harms way, while surveiling and potentially assassinating people engaged in war against us, seems to me to be an optimal strategy. This of course does not excuse gross violations of international law, treaties or acceptable humanitarian practices (of which America has had a very hard time honor over the last decade.)
Don't get me wrong. I am not happy with Mr. Obama's performance on a lot of fronts. I am however clear that it is almost impossible to elect a man in this country today with the desired capacity for intelligent choice making, moral integrity, human compassion and operational courage required to fulfill on the promises that Obama made in his election speeches. Real change is almost impossible to attain as long corporations own the government and ignorant, superstitious, masses choose leaders on the basis of who they'd like to get drunk with.
The only thing I find more reprehensible about Obama than Bush, is that Obama actually seems to have something resembling a moral center and for sure a measurable IQ, and therefore should know better than be participating in these atrocities. Sadly his many compromises include letting the people who dug us into this hole continue digging.
Brilliant, concise and to the point.
I would only add, that our law makers almost to a man, are lawyers or ex-lawyers and that it is good for lawyers to breed contention, disarray and conflict. A broken patent system, and system in fact which allows the most crass among us to patent, defend and firewall everything and anything including air, sunshine and the rain that falls on your face, makes their greedy little hearts happier than words can say.
Remember they aren't the least bit interested in society. They are interested in the depth and breadth of their bank accounts. To that end, most lawyers would be happy to build a legal framework for the production of Soylent Green, as long as they got some residual income from its production. Any thought that these people are your friends is at best a fantasy and much more likely a profound delusion.
Add to that the recent execution in Texas of a man virtually everyone with a IQ outside of single digits is certain was innocent, and its pretty clear that looking good, looking hard on crime, and being a righteous Christian hard-ass (sweet Jeebus my brain hurts just putting those words together into a single fscked-up gestalt!) trumps integrity, dignity, humanity or compassion. The U.S. isn't as screwed up as the Middle-East, but there are religious idiots working hard to get us there!
I have to agree that Interpol's complicity in this is shocking and bodes poorly for the global state of Human Rights.
That's "loooooooooooooool" not "loooooooooooooooong", the first is wicked funny the second is just a vowel-o-palooza.
Actually, for myself, I'd be voting on religions (or belief systems if you prefer) for top sources of human slaughter, though the lack of separation between said systems and their states have rendered governments into efficient structures for the promotion of significant death and human suffering. Strangely enough, commerce and corporations as well come in pretty high in the history of dealing death (at least since the invention of corporations.) It might be wise to institute rigorous separation and checks and balances on all these institutions because in the end human beings are equal part angels and demons.
So first of all, QUESTION EVERYTHING... absolutely, believe in nothing. Create explanations for the universe, realize they are not the truth and that the first time you find incontrovertible evidence to the contrary its time to either dispose of your theory or modify it to explain the phenomenon. That means, if you're going to be rigorous, both not believing in Global Climate change and also not believing in the absence of Global Climate change. All there are, is facts. Find them. Weigh them. Make an enlightened appraisal. While you weigh them, look at your sources. Compare them and their reputations. Are these the same people who said smoking is healthy, and are known to fill the media with corporate spin to muddy the water, create false controversy and help fossil fuel interests drill another day? Is the global scientist in question in the middle of fund raising and do they have a reputation for clear, logical research or are they ideologues shoving a point of view down a willing media's gullet. You have to be grown up! Not all sources of information are equal. And for gawd sake, stop trying to justify you point of view first, because cherry picking evidence to prove your point is not a search for truth, its a search for vindication and that is not science my friend, that is religion.
Here, here!
There's a great blog and book called You're not so smart, and it goes into deep discussion of how people think and behave. and for the most part we aren't open to new ideas, we just cherry pick facts to justify our philosophical positions. It actually takes a tremendous amount of intellectual rigor to look at the MANY sides of an idea to come away with some concise idea of where the reality of the situation lands. This by the way is complicated in this modern age by the fact your search engines are designed to help you find what you're looking for. So if you're looking for justification, not only will you find it, but you will soon be virtually unable to find anything else... the engine will be leaned in the direction you push it. Just as an aside, this is one more reason to look for all sides of a conversation, because you want to prevent your primary source of information from becoming so biased that it becomes just another feedback on your point of view.
In the area of global climate change. We have a lot of very interesting information. Greenland is experiencing TREMENDOUS melting events and there is a huge influx of fresh water into the arctic ocean. The problems with polar bear and brown bears is well understood, including a recent event in which unusually warm coastal water prevents salmon runs in southern Alaska and resulted in serious die off of young brown bears. Glaciers through the Americas, Europe and Africa are disappearing. The loss of glaciers in North America is so pronounced that within 20 years the International Park name "Glacier" may have no glaciers to speak of. Ocean chemistry is changing, and measurable rises in CO2 have resulted in acidification threatening a wide variety of species that require carbonaceous shells (everything from coral to shell fish to crustaceans and their larva.) On the other side, chemical changes have caused a massive increase in ocean jellies (a well known survival response to perceived threat designed to ensure species survival in the face of potential calamity.) We're seeing dramatic shifts in the flowering and fruiting seasons of plant around the world. Shifts in animal migration. Statistical changes in weather patterns consistent with predicted models (increased numbers of floods and droughts and increases in precipitation and storm intensity.) Serious rise in droughts and wildfires in the Western US, Africa and Australia. These are all facts. Part of a larger picture and as some have already said, so complex that we don't understand it. However, we can begin to see patterns emerging. It would be profoundly foolish to ignore these signs, or wait until catastrophic environmental failure became clear and incontrovertible.
Wise money suggests there are a hundred good reasons for looking at ways to conserve energy, become more efficient, find renewable resources and create an energy economy that begins to move people and long term solutions off planet. Wise money suggests that rather than argue and justify a negligent past, it would serve us all best to invent a workable future and to that end, arguing against the impacts of fossil fuels and there growing scarcity would seem (at least to me) like a fools errand.
It doesn't take a God or gawd to stand in the belief that human beings have inalienable rights, that perhaps society's greatest responsibility is to promote and empower human dignity. We hold that humanity must be free of oppression, slavery, poverty and ignorance to rise to it's greatest potential, and any institution or enterprise that promotes itself to the detriment of humanity and life at large must be constrained and by design forced to address its responsibility to human life and liberty. Laws must exist to serve humanity and not despots. Police must exist to enforce these laws with dignity and compassion.
The United States was hijacked in 1980. A few wealthy, powerful men looked at the problems that faced humanity, and rather than seeing an opportunity to address those challenges looked for a way to use these challenges to take control and solve the problems they saw in the way that despots throughout history solved such problems. Sadly, they didn't bother to study events like the French Revolution. The entire world is changing. Democratizing in the face of ancient memes and cultures which struggle to persist sociopolitical atrocities millennia old. I would argue that religion has been a hindrance to humanity for the most part. I distinguish organized religion as an institution for the promotion of magical thinking in the face of contrary evidence from the personal practice of spiritual endeavor which is often, in of itself a powerful inquiry into the nature of self and its relationship to the eternal. I have no problem with ontology, philosophy, metaphysics or any other search for a deeper human truth. I do find that pumping superstitious masses full of mindless magical crap, making them virtually unfit for rational discourse or informed appraisal of a physical universe both distressing and alarming at a time when we need enlightened minds desperately.
In fact I am interested in the existence of a big 'G' God. However, I am far more interested in evolving myself and humanity to a state that ensures our race will have a brilliant and enduring future, and I can without equivocation say I have a great deal of work to do on myself, and that society at large is a fair distance from that goal.
On that note... Here is a 12,000 year old creosote bush, and its the same plant. So, though it may not be the oldest lawn in the world, it is probably the oldest single life form (with perhaps the exception of certain ancient bacteria which might be virtually immortal.)
The entire point of patents was to promote invention and empower human economy. Honeywell killed off its remote thermostat product line long ago and has no intention of producing any more... they just want to make sure nobody else can enter that business either. That is expressly AGAINST the entire point of patents and their current use as a bludgeon to hold the world at large hostage has rendered them not only nonproductive but profoundly harmful to human enterprise.
The use of patents to cut up human IP into little fiefdoms, and turn corporations into despotic warlords, holders of IP to control and dominate society has become detrimental to human advancement, social well being and and the future of new businesses. We need to change IP laws to protect inventors, but prevent corporations from using IP as a means to destroy fair competition, promote monopolies and as such place the public in the stranglehold of sole proprietorship. It is a natural process as we move towards an information society to have IP become the currency of trade. It is therefore detrimental to society to put artificial boundaries on the free market of ideas and IP. We need to change the way that IP is managed, such that inventors are rewarded... specific people who hold patents on created works and are fairly remunerated for their inventions by both their companies and society at large. As such we also need to limit or eliminate the right of corporations to own patents, because they are compelled to use them as tools to dominate the market.
All of this is the mischief that descends from corporations having human rights without human limitations. It is also high time to define corporations properly as human enterprises, giving them the appropriate rights and freedoms to operate and thrive and remove the privileges that have proven so detrimental to society, human existence and life on the planet in general. We are at a historic nexus and our future demands that we stop and look at what contributes to our future and what threatens it. We carry tremendous baggage from the past, some of it wisdom, some if it atrocity. We need to consciously choose a future and invent who and what we are going to be. To do less, is take our hands off the wheel and simply hope that things will turn out. Good luck with things just turning out.
Clearly you do not understand what it means to be gay. Is being straight a choice you make or simply the way you are? Did you wake up one morning and "Decide" as matter of lifestyle that you would choose partners of the opposite sex. The only thing more hardwired in the human brain than sexual preference is gender identity and the latter in fact may happen in utero.
Here's an example of just how screwed up England was. There was a young lady from England who had to come to America in the early 90s to give birth. She was born interssexed, with a hypertrophic clitoris. When she was born, the Doctor asked her Father, a hard drinking, working class man, what he wanted, "A boy or a girl." The man said "Boy" and so the child was christened, and in England, as the child is christened, is law (at least it used to be until the EU pimp slapped them into complying with basic human rights.) So the child was raise as a boy, all the time knowing she was a girl, wanting be a girl, certain that their must be somebody who would save her from this torture. At 13 when she began to menstruate, she was forced to go through a series of surgeries to close her cervix. That resulted in a life threatening complication and more surgeries to undo the damage. Her breasts developed, her Father force her to have a double mastectomy. All the while, her Father raged that she wasn't the SON he had intended and spent his time beating her half to death. At one point the beating was so savage neighbors called the police and upon arrival the Father claimed she attacked him so they put her in jail... a man's jail, where she was promptly raped. She moved away from home at 15 to stay alive. Began dressing and living as a woman. Fell in love with a young man as girls are want, and became pregnant because she couldn't under English law see a doctor and get contraceptives (remember, she's a man.) Here's where the brain strains... In England, it is law that a woman MUST see a doctor during pregnancy or go to jail. However, this person is legally a MAN, and therefore no Doctor could see her for fear of losing his license to practice, There was no way for her to see a Doctor in all of England legally, because she was legally a man, but not seeing a Doctor demanded that she be imprisoned, and lose her child. So she was finally able to get some help and came to the United States to have her baby pregnant in her third trimester. Moreover, she could not go back to England because she was now a fugitive guilty of a variety of infractions and circumventing British justice. That's the mentality, dignity, and morality of the imbeciles who put their religious complacency ahead of the basic need for human justice.
Absolutely absolve Turing and all like him of any taint from the past . By publicly declaring the laws and mentality that tortured him, assaulted him, and ultimately destroyed him and countless other innocents be acknowledged as inhuman, inhumane, unjust and contrary to the dignity of the human spirit. The man is not to blame, the law was evil, and the men who hated, and plotted to destroy those who they could neither accept nor condone were in their hearts equally evil. Religion is no excuse. There are atrocities being committed today against women in Muslim nations around the entire middle-east. Even Israel hyper-orthodox Jewish sects have been guilty of attacking or abusing women, even little girls who don't comply with their religious standards of modesty. Its become a major point in the continuing friction between orthodox and secular Jews. People take beliefs and turn them around to justify themselves and in many cases persecute others. Turing was an innocent victim of such behavior. It is time we put things right for him and once and for all accept people for their differences.
#1 Should the library censor, filter, or prevent a person from looking at anything? No. That's not free speech, that's freedom of information. Two completely different issues.
#2 Should the man have the right to subject people including children to his porn addiction? Also, NO! He should be made to go into one of the music listening booths where he can satisfy his person viewing fetish however he pleases.
If he refuses to take his behavior to a more responsibly location, the young lady has every right to video him in a public place, doing an indecent thing and send it to the evening news for public dissemination. That would in fact be free speech, which is protected and the wayward gentleman would have to deal with the social repercussions of being an inconsiderate ass in public. Not to mention how this might impact his job and his marriage. It would take but a couple such incidents to forever make the practice an obvious no pass for anyone not attempting social suicide.
Titanium interacts better with bone and the body tends to tolerate it well (most artificial joints are made of titanium), is lighter that steel, and has superb sintering properties. In fact nanograin titanium oxide (a ceramic) when shaped and sintered is transparent, as light as aluminum, stronger than steel, and far more flexible than either. It is extremely heat resistant and you could in fact build a very impressive engine block out of it... and be able to tune you motor by adjust combustion until your ignition color went blue (indicating complete optimal combustion.)
You could print a very high quality bone replacement and put synthetic bone inside and out to support marrow, a blood supply and attachment points on the outside for muscle and tendon. In fact you could build anchor points for carbon fiber to replace portions of tendon, and the tendon would naturally grow into the fiber over time. With the work being done on 3D printing, Its almost certain that we'll eventually just print up actual replacement organs and tissues from our own stem cells and with a little Extracellular Matrix to make it all grow together, no scars, no complications. We truly live in amazing times!
That's not exactly true. The amount of intelligence built into remote medical technology today is fairly astounding. There are surgical robots that can be shipped to Africa for a world class surgeon to operate half a world away. That includes multiple tool sets so multiple surgeons can operate simultaneously, microscopic stereo video, enhancements that allow a surgeons tool manipulation to be smooth and precise despite the lag due to satellite communications.
There are layers of heuristics, predictive algorithms, noise dampening, on and on... This is not a simple puppet. There is real intelligence on the performing side that is completely autonomous to the machine. That said, it is a robotic tool designed to remote and enhance the intent of a human user. So one may want to distinguish "Robot" from "Robotic Tool". It is a fine distinction and incredibly blurry, which is at least one reason that folks haven't bothered to draw that particular line. Perhaps as we have more fully autonomous robotic entities running all over the landscape that will change.
No, the lymphoma would still be present and just metastasize to some other organ/tissue. This might treat the tumor in the stomach, but it would only be a stop gap measure with limited viability in the long haul. There are other recent technologies however that might make a difference, including monoclonal antibodies carrying everything from toxins and markers for the immune system to nano-particles of metals that can convert various EMR into heat and kill tumors and cancer cells. You may want to do a quick look up for animal experimentation for cancer research to see if anyone in your area is conducting research for feline lymphoma.
Because voting for Obama has so clearly prevented the continued erosion of freedom... yeah right.
So you get to choose between the guy that drag races towards a fascist state vs. the guy who just ambles towards one.
Your making a false assumption on the presumption that they don't intend to force second hand owners to pay 100% of the full price of the product on the premise that whether you're the first or twenty first person to be holding the disc, you will pay 100% for the privilege to play their game. Its there game, they have every right to make certain everyone pays the full price to play it. That said, they're going to have to deal with a world where players have expectations from other game producers, and unless their games are the most amazing, wonderful, enjoyable games ever made, there is a very real chance that players will simply tell them to shove it.
Its a for profit business. These are not bad people, they are there to make a profit, the more the better, and if they have to slap you around a little or mess with your perceived entitlements to squeeze a little more profit out, you're simply buggered. This is not evil, its the way our economy is geared and the answer is to sit the man down and let him know that at some point, aggressive profit making to the detriment of your customers will predictably reach a point of diminishing returns. Businessmen need to be able to make a reasonable profit on their product. They also need to treat their customers with respect and dignity and their customers need to do the same. There is common ground, and its up to both parties to find it. Or you can just declare war on one another and everyone loses, particularly the innocent bystanders who end up being subjected to legislation on behalf of business which fundamentally undermines human rights.