You're making a very serious allegation without backing it up. Please show us any
information which Lomborg `ignored because it didn't fit his thesis'.
Leaving aside the absurdity of calling for muzzling anyone who `disagrees with scientific
opinion' (as did, oh, Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein, need I remind you?), your tactic
of calling Lomborg's work `lies' without providing evidence suggests that you are engaging
in dogma, not science.
Actually, just above, you finally admitted that you have only read about two chapters of Lomborg's book
(in this post of yours), and
as you don't provide a single example of Lomborg doing what you claim, how seriously should we take this
accusation.
You are making a very serious claim (that Lomborg ignores sources which contradict him) without providing
any evidence (such as an example of a source which he ignored). In other words, you're just blowing hot air.
You're trolling right? Far from being `content-free', the chapter you choose
to cite (on Forestation) has eighty-six footnotes citing a very wide
range of sources. This in a chapter which runs only eight pages.
Quite seriously, are we really supposed to take your complaint seriously, when
the only thing you find to say is that one particular eight-page chapter in the
midst of a five-hundred page large-format trade paperback does not have more
graphs? Really?
Incidentally, if you'll actually read those footnotes (on pages 375-378
of the paperback edition) you'll find that in addition to citing a range of
sources, they add considerable discussion of the subject at hand.
And your next complaint is what? That he doesn't interrupt a chapter on oil
supplies for a disquisition on mideast politics? I thought you were alleging
that his book was political -- in truth it seems that it is your criticism
which is politically motivated, through and through.
Again, provide us any evidence either that his data is wrong (something which even
his critics have not suggested), or that his conclusions are unwarranted (something
his critics have suggested without providing examples or counter-arguments). Otherwise
you're just blowing hot air.
Well, as I have read the book through, and found it to
be entirely a presentation of statistics which no one
is contesting, and a reasoned interpretation thereof,
I would be very interested to hear any examples of where
you believe it is `biased' and `a crock'.
Simply throwing around such charges without backing them up
suggests that you are condemning the book merely for not
agreeing with your politics -- in which case you are
the one deserving rebuke for unscientific conduct...
First off, let's repeat the obvious: if our goal was to get oil
from Iraq, we would need only to lift the UN sanctions to do so. That
we have not done so demonstrates that this is not our goal.
Second, no serious scientist still believes that we will `run out' of
oil anytime soon. Many oil fields have been discovered since Hubbert's
time, and many existing fields have been shown to have higher capacity
than previously believed. More to the point, new discoveries, such as
the possibility of extracting oil from tar shoals have greatly increased
estimates of the Earth's oil supply.
Are their good reasons (mostly geopolitical) to move away from oil? Sure.
Do your chicken-little claims and black-helicopter conspiracy theories
make any sense? Sorry, no.
North Korea is immensely dependent on us for food aid
and heating oil, which means we have a lot of leverage we don't directly have in
Iraq
North Korea already has at least a few nukes, and
better missile technology to use with them, which means that we have to be more
careful -- this is exactly the type of situation we hope to avoid in Iraq,
if it's not already too late.
A decade of broken promises and ignored UN resolutions on the part of Iraq
show that it is extremely unlikely that a diplomatic solution will do
any good -- and we're still giving it a chance.
Not every international problem needs to be solved the same way -- you guys
like to claim that us Conservatives are the ones who see the same answer to every
problem, so how do you not see this?
Despite all of these, if North Korea becomes the same level of threat to us as
Iraq now is, have no fear that we will act. It has not yet done so, however.
So how seriously are we supposed to take your analysis of
Ari Fleischer and Don Rumsfeld when you can't even be bothered
to find out how to spell their names right?
That aside, your proposal makes about zero sense -- as another poster
has already mentioned, if the goal was cheap oil, there are a lot of
cheaper and easier ways to get there from here, such as lifting the
current sanctions on Iraqi oil exports.
Of course, since our goal isn't oil, it's preventing a madman from attacking
us with WMD (or providing WMD to others to attack us with), that's not
what we're doing.
You're making the same mistake the previous poster did -- pretending that `the minorities'
are a block who all think the same, and necessarily have the same views.
It used to be well understood that to say you could tell someone's opinions by looking at his
skin color was a form of racism. Just because we now call that view `diversity' doesn't make
it any less racist.
I'm going to make a wild guess here -- you don't live in New York at all, right?
If you do, you must not get off campus much, eh?
You've just presented a remarkably inaccurate picture of the police program which
turned New York around, and had already improved relations between police and
communities (including minority communities) long before 9/11.
See, `the minorities' aren't any different than the rest of us. Everyone wants to be
safe in their home and neighborhood. By having the police fight crime in minority neighborhoods
as well as rich neighborhoods, instead of just giving up on areas like East Harlem and Bed-Stuy,
Giuliani did more for police-community relations than any of the hundreds of `outreach programs'
ever had.
Actually no -- crime in New York during the Giuliani years dropped at a substantially higher rate
than in the nation as a whole, at a time when other Northeastern cities
such as Boston saw slight increases in the crime rate.
Quality of life enforcement was one of the two main components of this drop, the other was the
Compstat program of tracking crims statistics on a precinct-by-precinct basis and transferring
cops as needed to focus enforcement on emerging high-crime areas.
You're missing the point -- the JSF doesn't break the limits set by the F-22 either, nor is
it intended to. It is intended to provide a cheap versatile platform suitable for
common usage by a variety of services in a variety of nations, and with enough capability
and punch to top anything it's actually likely to meet in combat. For hardcore air-superiority
missions (if there are any), things like the F22, the new boeing daylight stealth designs, and
other things now on the drawing board will serve quite well, thank you.
For a good piece on the design goals and selection process of the JSF, check out
this piece from the Atlantic.
As for the Su-27, what of it? It's a nice trick plane, but aerobatics and raw platform capabilities
have much less to do with modern air combat than targeting technologies and smart munitions -- check
out, e.g. recent joint training sessions, in which Israeli pilots armed
with 180 degree targeting capabilities and in-helmet HUDs won 220 out of 240 mock engagements
against USMC pilots in identical aircraft, but without such toys. (and yes, unlike USMC, the USAF
and to some extent the Navy have such toys and more...)
Of course, Dante, as a specific example, throws in a whole other set of challenges
to the translator, as so much of the Divine Comedy is taken up with sending up various
major and minor social and political figures of the author's time.:-)
Re:Green is not the real color...
on
Green Geeks?
·
· Score: 2
I think the phrase you're looking for is `Watermelon' (green on the outside,
red on the inside). At least, that's the impression I get when I note
that the party platform of the Greens includes such ``environmental'' issues
as redistribution of wealth and race-based quotas for hiring (not sure that
these are part of the Green platform? Don't take my word for it.
Umm, since even the papers which backed Gore in the recounts have now done their own
recounts and confirmed that Bush won Florida, it's not clear what
you mean by `won by judicial decision'...
Actually, we have a constitutional government and the rule of law in this country, and
the Constitution lays out a specific procedure for electing the President. Now that that
procedure picked the candidate you don't like, suddenly you want to change to procedure.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I understand why you don't want to discuss the 2002 election, and are
looking back to two elections before instead...
The irony is palpable -- in one breath you tell us that instead of doing what the law and the
constitution says, we should do things the way you say, and make the guy who lost the electoral
vote the President, and in the next breath you tell us that the other side has no
regard for the law as long as they get the winner they want.
Actually, that's not currently correct -- while there are many arguments whether the law
should ban simulated sex with minors, it does not at the moment, as per a Supreme
Court ruling earlier this year.
And snuff films (if they existed) would be illegal -- see here for
the snopes.com write-up of the furor surrounding the US release of
the fake snuff film `Snuff' in 1976.
Umm, you haven't seen too many American movies, have you?
Showing actual non-simulated sex is pornography, and is legal with age limits. Showing actual
non-simulated murder would be a snuff film, and if anyone did it, they'd go to jail.
Hell, nudity and sex won't even get you past a PG-13 any more, as demonstrated by the new film of Solaris.
Re:Send the Sales VP to California!
on
Solar Power Play
·
· Score: 2
Well and good, except that even with the best photovoltaic technology
projected to be available within the foreseeable future, you would
need to convert the whole Mojave desert -- and a lot more -- to make
a dent in the power needs of the state of California (which is where
this discussion began). Indeed, given that there is a specific and
finite amount of solar energy hitting the Earth's surface, it is unlikely
that terrestrial solar arrays will ever be particularly interesting
as an energy source -- do the math.
Nor is the vegetation comparison particularly interesting -- irrigating and
planting the whole Mojave would indeed have a massive impact, and even so,
photosynthesis is a lot less than 20% efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
You're making a very serious allegation without backing it up. Please show us any information which Lomborg `ignored because it didn't fit his thesis'.
Leaving aside the absurdity of calling for muzzling anyone who `disagrees with scientific opinion' (as did, oh, Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein, need I remind you?), your tactic of calling Lomborg's work `lies' without providing evidence suggests that you are engaging in dogma, not science.
Actually, just above, you finally admitted that you have only read about two chapters of Lomborg's book (in this post of yours), and as you don't provide a single example of Lomborg doing what you claim, how seriously should we take this accusation.
You are making a very serious claim (that Lomborg ignores sources which contradict him) without providing any evidence (such as an example of a source which he ignored). In other words, you're just blowing hot air.
You're trolling right? Far from being `content-free', the chapter you choose to cite (on Forestation) has eighty-six footnotes citing a very wide range of sources. This in a chapter which runs only eight pages.
Quite seriously, are we really supposed to take your complaint seriously, when the only thing you find to say is that one particular eight-page chapter in the midst of a five-hundred page large-format trade paperback does not have more graphs? Really?
Incidentally, if you'll actually read those footnotes (on pages 375-378 of the paperback edition) you'll find that in addition to citing a range of sources, they add considerable discussion of the subject at hand.
And your next complaint is what? That he doesn't interrupt a chapter on oil supplies for a disquisition on mideast politics? I thought you were alleging that his book was political -- in truth it seems that it is your criticism which is politically motivated, through and through.
Again, provide us any evidence either that his data is wrong (something which even his critics have not suggested), or that his conclusions are unwarranted (something his critics have suggested without providing examples or counter-arguments). Otherwise you're just blowing hot air.
Well, as I have read the book through, and found it to be entirely a presentation of statistics which no one is contesting, and a reasoned interpretation thereof, I would be very interested to hear any examples of where you believe it is `biased' and `a crock'.
Simply throwing around such charges without backing them up suggests that you are condemning the book merely for not agreeing with your politics -- in which case you are the one deserving rebuke for unscientific conduct...
I've read the book through, so I welcome you to provide any such example.
Otherwise, you're just spouting hot air.
First off, let's repeat the obvious: if our goal was to get oil from Iraq, we would need only to lift the UN sanctions to do so. That we have not done so demonstrates that this is not our goal.
Second, no serious scientist still believes that we will `run out' of oil anytime soon. Many oil fields have been discovered since Hubbert's time, and many existing fields have been shown to have higher capacity than previously believed. More to the point, new discoveries, such as the possibility of extracting oil from tar shoals have greatly increased estimates of the Earth's oil supply.
Are their good reasons (mostly geopolitical) to move away from oil? Sure. Do your chicken-little claims and black-helicopter conspiracy theories make any sense? Sorry, no.
A couple of reasons spring immediately to mind:
- North Korea is immensely dependent on us for food aid
and heating oil, which means we have a lot of leverage we don't directly have in
Iraq
- North Korea already has at least a few nukes, and
better missile technology to use with them, which means that we have to be more
careful -- this is exactly the type of situation we hope to avoid in Iraq,
if it's not already too late.
- A decade of broken promises and ignored UN resolutions on the part of Iraq
show that it is extremely unlikely that a diplomatic solution will do
any good -- and we're still giving it a chance.
- Not every international problem needs to be solved the same way -- you guys
like to claim that us Conservatives are the ones who see the same answer to every
problem, so how do you not see this?
Despite all of these, if North Korea becomes the same level of threat to us as Iraq now is, have no fear that we will act. It has not yet done so, however.So how seriously are we supposed to take your analysis of Ari Fleischer and Don Rumsfeld when you can't even be bothered to find out how to spell their names right?
That aside, your proposal makes about zero sense -- as another poster has already mentioned, if the goal was cheap oil, there are a lot of cheaper and easier ways to get there from here, such as lifting the current sanctions on Iraqi oil exports.
Of course, since our goal isn't oil, it's preventing a madman from attacking us with WMD (or providing WMD to others to attack us with), that's not what we're doing.
<sarcasm>Oh, clearly. Heaven forbid they try to secure both the hardware and the network!</sarcasm>
Huh?
You're making the same mistake the previous poster did -- pretending that `the minorities' are a block who all think the same, and necessarily have the same views.
It used to be well understood that to say you could tell someone's opinions by looking at his skin color was a form of racism. Just because we now call that view `diversity' doesn't make it any less racist.
I'm going to make a wild guess here -- you don't live in New York at all, right?
If you do, you must not get off campus much, eh?
You've just presented a remarkably inaccurate picture of the police program which turned New York around, and had already improved relations between police and communities (including minority communities) long before 9/11.
See, `the minorities' aren't any different than the rest of us. Everyone wants to be safe in their home and neighborhood. By having the police fight crime in minority neighborhoods as well as rich neighborhoods, instead of just giving up on areas like East Harlem and Bed-Stuy, Giuliani did more for police-community relations than any of the hundreds of `outreach programs' ever had.
Actually no -- crime in New York during the Giuliani years dropped at a substantially higher rate than in the nation as a whole, at a time when other Northeastern cities such as Boston saw slight increases in the crime rate.
Quality of life enforcement was one of the two main components of this drop, the other was the Compstat program of tracking crims statistics on a precinct-by-precinct basis and transferring cops as needed to focus enforcement on emerging high-crime areas.
Cool -- I often miss a thread when it archives and I don't get `Reply to ...' messages,
so wanted to drop a heads-up. :-)
Happy holidays!
You're missing the point -- the JSF doesn't break the limits set by the F-22 either, nor is it intended to. It is intended to provide a cheap versatile platform suitable for common usage by a variety of services in a variety of nations, and with enough capability and punch to top anything it's actually likely to meet in combat. For hardcore air-superiority missions (if there are any), things like the F22, the new boeing daylight stealth designs, and other things now on the drawing board will serve quite well, thank you.
For a good piece on the design goals and selection process of the JSF, check out this piece from the Atlantic.
As for the Su-27, what of it? It's a nice trick plane, but aerobatics and raw platform capabilities have much less to do with modern air combat than targeting technologies and smart munitions -- check out, e.g. recent joint training sessions, in which Israeli pilots armed with 180 degree targeting capabilities and in-helmet HUDs won 220 out of 240 mock engagements against USMC pilots in identical aircraft, but without such toys. (and yes, unlike USMC, the USAF and to some extent the Navy have such toys and more...)
[ I'm posting this without +1, as it's already offtopic. ]
Paging NumberSyx. See here.
Of course, Dante, as a specific example, throws in a whole other set of challenges to the translator, as so much of the Divine Comedy is taken up with sending up various major and minor social and political figures of the author's time. :-)
I think the phrase you're looking for is `Watermelon' (green on the outside, red on the inside). At least, that's the impression I get when I note that the party platform of the Greens includes such ``environmental'' issues as redistribution of wealth and race-based quotas for hiring (not sure that these are part of the Green platform? Don't take my word for it.
Umm, since even the papers which backed Gore in the recounts have now done their own recounts and confirmed that Bush won Florida, it's not clear what you mean by `won by judicial decision'...
Actually, we have a constitutional government and the rule of law in this country, and the Constitution lays out a specific procedure for electing the President. Now that that procedure picked the candidate you don't like, suddenly you want to change to procedure.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I understand why you don't want to discuss the 2002 election, and are looking back to two elections before instead...
The irony is palpable -- in one breath you tell us that instead of doing what the law and the constitution says, we should do things the way you say, and make the guy who lost the electoral vote the President, and in the next breath you tell us that the other side has no regard for the law as long as they get the winner they want.
Hahahahahaha.
Steve Wozniak (co-founder of the Wheels of Zeus start-up)
In unrelated news, Paul McCartney (former frontman for Wings) will be touring soon.
Not all film of murders are illegal, but snuff films are -- follow the link I posted elsewhere in this thread.
Actually, that's not currently correct -- while there are many arguments whether the law should ban simulated sex with minors, it does not at the moment, as per a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.
And snuff films (if they existed) would be illegal -- see here for the snopes.com write-up of the furor surrounding the US release of the fake snuff film `Snuff' in 1976.
Umm, you haven't seen too many American movies, have you?
Showing actual non-simulated sex is pornography, and is legal with age limits. Showing actual non-simulated murder would be a snuff film, and if anyone did it, they'd go to jail.
Hell, nudity and sex won't even get you past a PG-13 any more, as demonstrated by the new film of Solaris.
Well and good, except that even with the best photovoltaic technology projected to be available within the foreseeable future, you would need to convert the whole Mojave desert -- and a lot more -- to make a dent in the power needs of the state of California (which is where this discussion began). Indeed, given that there is a specific and finite amount of solar energy hitting the Earth's surface, it is unlikely that terrestrial solar arrays will ever be particularly interesting as an energy source -- do the math.
Nor is the vegetation comparison particularly interesting -- irrigating and planting the whole Mojave would indeed have a massive impact, and even so, photosynthesis is a lot less than 20% efficient.