How many people here would go on the shuttle today - given that failure rate - under 1%.
Me. In a hearbeat. I'd go to Mars if the odds were at least 4:1 in my favour (20% or lower chance of failure), and stay there as long as the odds were better than 50-50 in any given decade.
What's even more confusing is that the summary seems to be implying that there's some big debate going on. NASA wants more assurance of crew safety. Lawmakers want more assurance of crew safety. Where's the problem here?
The problem is that NASA is mentioning this so they can get a bigger budget.
Congress, on the other hand, is mentioning this so they can justify lowering the budget.
The question is the timeframe and the associated temperature increase over that timeframe.
The time frame is "in the next century" from your original post.
The timeframe of the IPCC report is from 2000-2100.
Both of those timeframes seem, at first glance, to be about the same. The only real difference is that your claim of sealevel rise "in the next century" (1-4 meters) is much higher than the IPCC expectations of sealevel rise "from 2000 to 2100" (0.1 to 1.0 meters).
The scientific argument is simple: the Earth will grow warmer in the next century, and as a result sea levels will rise by at least a meter, but probably 4 or so.
Oddly enough, the IPCC report doesn't seem to mention your 1-4 meter sea level rise. It seems to range from 0.1 meters (best case) to 1.0 meter (worst case), with most likely results between 0.2 and 0.7 meters.
There are hundreds of different pizza recipes here in Italy (the base is the same and the toppings vary). Some variations might be unique to the US but the pizzas I had in the US were no so different from the ones I have in Italy. There is basically one pizza and some country specific toppings.
By the way, I like the US pizzas more than the mid-to-north European ones. That probably means that they are closer to the Italian ones: you know, everybody prefers the taste of food he grown up with.
American pizzas were introduced by America's large Italian immigrant population. They became generally popular after WW2 when returning servicemen went looking for pizzas after being introduced to them in Italy.
The debt went up negligibly in the last three years of his Presidency. The deficit was nearly down to zero by 1998, and IIRC, if you include Social Security's surplus, there was a budget surplus every year from 1998-2000 or possibly 2001, though this is, in effect, borrowing against Social Security's future to pay down the national debt. Either way, the $5 billion dollar deficit in FY 2000 under Clinton was only 1.1 percent of the $459 billion dollar deficit in 2008 under Bush. Just putting things in perspective, since you claim there is no significant difference in the rate of overspending between Democrats and Republicans.
1) About $250 billion over the last three years of Clinton's terms. Note the Republican Congress during that period.
2) About $110 billion by 1998.
3) $20 billion in 2000. Yes, it was much lower than Bush's $125 billion in 2001.
4) No, the National Debt is the difference between what you take in (including SS taxes), and what you spend. There was never a real surplus.
5) I never complained that there was "no significant difference" in the rate of overspending between Democrats and Republicans. That said, it should be noted that of the total surplus since 1900, Republicans managed more than Democrats, but not overwhelmingly more.
Note, further, that when you compare spending by the House's of Representatives (the guys who have the Purse Strings, according to the Constitution), you find that the overwhelming majority of the deficits have been run up under the Democrats, not the Republicans. Of course, that's mostly because the Democrats have controlled the House for most of the last century.
In other words, there's really not much evidence that the Democrats are more frugal about running up deficits than the Republicans, or vice versa.
By the by, for perspective, the last time we had a surplus was 1957 (where, I note, we had a Democrat House and a Republican President - the same composition we had during most of our deficits). Which was before I was born (and I'm older than most of you by quite a few years). If you're not in your mid-50's or older, you've never seen a real surplus....
So basically,
1) Cops have a warrant to search your house for pot.
2) They find that you have cocaine sitting next to the pot in your sock drawer.
3) A judge rules that they can't prosecute you for possession of cocaine, since they were only looking for pot.
4) The judge's superior claims that you can be prosecuted of possession of cocaine.
A better analogy:
1) Cops have a warrant to search your house for Oleanders.
2) They find that you have a newsletter from the Oleander Growers Association on your Dining Room Table.
3) A judge rules that they can't investigate the people who wrote letters shown in the letter column of the newsletter
4) The judge's superior claims that they investigate the people who wrote letters to the newsletter.
Explanatory notes for those who don't quite get it.
1) Oleanders are quite poisonous, but also quite legal.
2) It may surprise many, but steroids are quite legal also. Unethical, perhaps, but legal.
Could anyone here have honestly voted for McCain with Palin on the ticket as well?
Actually, Palin had nothing to do with why I refused to vote for McCain. He managed that quite nicely back in 2002 all by himself.
Which is not to imply I voted for Obama. His voting record was enough to make sure of that, even without speeches that suggested entirely too many impossible things....
Note: if you vote the campaign speeches, you'll always be disappointed - vote the candidate's voting record, if one is to be had.
I expect the definition has changed by now, but a few years ago when I checked, "suffering from hunger" included me, since the definition basically reduced to "has missed a meal this month".
And no, this wasn't from a corporate site, it was from one of the big "People are starving!!" sites.
Actually, no, the Democrats because they pay for what they spend, and thus generally reduce the debt slightly over time. You can remember which is which this way: the Democrats tax and spend, while the Republicans borrow and spend.
Since 1900, the National Debt has gone down in 16 separate years.
In twelve of those years, the President was a Republican. In the other four, the President was a Democrat.
Note, for the record, that the Democrats in question were Truman and Wilson. The debt went up every year of Clinton's Presidency.
Note further that until the Republican takeover of the House (the body required to initiate all spending bills) in 1994, the Democrats had controlled that body for 40 years. The Debt went down for two of those years, and increased in 38 of them.
In other words, there is relatively little evidence that the Democrats are more fiscally responsible than the Republicans. Basically, both Parties spend more than they take in as a matter of course, and neither has any real inclination to change.
The government can reinstate the draft tomorrow and send you to Afghanistan or some other hellhole if it wanted.
Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.
If an attempt were made to re-institute the Draft outside a major war, the congresscritters would all look at the screaming mob that elected them last time around, realize that a "For" vote on the Draft would be the same as "I always planned to retire after this term", and vote "Against"....
Senators don't sign laws or treaties, they only approve them.
The President is the one who ultimately wields the pen.
THe President's signature on a Treaty means absolutely nothing. Consider the Kyoto Treaty as an example of a Treaty signed by the USA, but never ratified by the Senate.
Until the Senate ratifies a Treaty, it's just a scrap of parchment, even if the President has signed it.
Note that this is the reverse of the usual process, where the Senate proposes and the President disposes. In a Treaty, the President proposes, the Senate has the final voice. Which can include telling the President to go pound sand and start over.
Well since the government has the power to throw you in jail, draft you into the army and send you to your death (Vietnam/Afghanistan),
Umm, no. No draft in the USA. Hasn't been one in better than 30 years.
Yes, yes, I know, all you young whippersnappers have to register for one (actually, pretty much everyone older than me and younger than me has to register, I carefully chose my birth year so that I'd be among the small set of American men who never had to register for the draft). But unless your friends the Democrats vote one in (as they threatened to do repeatedly during Bush's terms, for reasons that aren't terribly clear), there isn't one.
I dont except to get a same kind of refund value for my 15 year old SDTV either than I would get for my new HDTV.
So, you think that if you were to buy something today (a couch, a table, a pair of pants) that was first marketed 15 years ago, that you should get a depreciated refund if you returned it?
Brand new table, buy for $1100, return it, get $200? I think not.
I can't help but wonder why this report surfaced just before the Copenhagen talks.
It's almost like someone was trying to influence the outcome of those talks by dropping in a really dire prediction of the results if the talks didn't come out the way they wanted them to.
Lastly, I'd offer up that fewer SciFi authors are being published because SciFi is being muddled with Fantasy. I don't know why they're doing it, perhaps that hard SciFi traditionally had a predominately male readership; while fantasy has broader appeal?
I read somewhere, many years ago, that sci-fi is popular in good times, when people in general are looking forward to the future, and fantasy is popular in bad times when people are afraid of the future.
Considering that "fearing the future" has become the norm for most of even the "enlightened" societies, I'd expect that sci-fi would be sinking into obsurity for at least the next generation.
I trust that by "all-time record" you really meant "since 1983"?
more than 1 billion starving
"more than 1 billion threatened with hunger", perhaps? Note that the definition of "threatened with hunger" doesn't include actually being "hungry", much less "starving".
You can't help idiocy. This idiot multiplied 508 by 1.84 instead of by 0.0184. People make stupid mistakes, and the failure here is that no one checked it.
NO, the failure here is the assumption that a 1.84% pay raise for 504 people has any relation to jobs "saved".
If a woman doesn't marry someone deemed suitable for her (heaven forbid it's a non-muslim), her whole family can turn against her. They don't do a "well funded smear campaign". They kill her and her partner, often torturing beforehand.
This is not specific to Islam, sorry. It was typical of the culture that existed pre-Islam in the parts of the world where Islam began.
Note, by the way, that "arranged marriages" were the norm throughout most of history. It's only in recent centuries that we've become wealthy enough to allow ourselves the luxury of marrying whomever we will.
The Salem Witch trials came about because stupid people - who happened to be extremely religious and thus invoked God in everything including criminal trials - were afraid of their own neighbors.
There is a certain amount of evidence that the Witch Trials were largely about acquiring some valuable land without going through the conventional process of paying for it. So including it as a "religious" issue is perhaps unwarranted.
And it's not really the same at all, not even close, Fox News doesn't further the discourse in this country.
Hint: The First Amendment isn't limited to those who "further discourse in this country". Keeping FOX out of the White House is teetering right on the edge of violating the First Amendment.
And I expect that a Supreme Court challenge would come down on FOX's side, not the President's, if FOX bothered to make one.
And yes, while the Chinese budget isn't enough on its own to achieve the magic $3B Norm and crew recommend, its a lot.
No, actually it's not a lot. It would be a lot if they just gave us the money. But they won't. So most of their budget will be spent on things that make their administrators happy, not things that'll make our job easier.
By cooperating, they would be able to spend less focusing on basics, and be able to learn from us and gain experience.
Which is why the deal is good for them. Not arguing that. Wondering how the deal is good for US though. If we don't get anything from the deal, why bother doing it?
And frankly, in spite of all the good this'll do the Chinese, I don't see that it'll do anything meaningful for us....
Slashdot Mirror
Me. In a hearbeat. I'd go to Mars if the odds were at least 4:1 in my favour (20% or lower chance of failure), and stay there as long as the odds were better than 50-50 in any given decade.
The problem is that NASA is mentioning this so they can get a bigger budget.
Congress, on the other hand, is mentioning this so they can justify lowering the budget.
Nah, they didn't get to the Americas that long ago.
The time frame is "in the next century" from your original post.
The timeframe of the IPCC report is from 2000-2100.
Both of those timeframes seem, at first glance, to be about the same. The only real difference is that your claim of sealevel rise "in the next century" (1-4 meters) is much higher than the IPCC expectations of sealevel rise "from 2000 to 2100" (0.1 to 1.0 meters).
Again, odd....
Oddly enough, the IPCC report doesn't seem to mention your 1-4 meter sea level rise. It seems to range from 0.1 meters (best case) to 1.0 meter (worst case), with most likely results between 0.2 and 0.7 meters.
American pizzas were introduced by America's large Italian immigrant population. They became generally popular after WW2 when returning servicemen went looking for pizzas after being introduced to them in Italy.
1) About $250 billion over the last three years of Clinton's terms. Note the Republican Congress during that period.
2) About $110 billion by 1998.
3) $20 billion in 2000. Yes, it was much lower than Bush's $125 billion in 2001.
4) No, the National Debt is the difference between what you take in (including SS taxes), and what you spend. There was never a real surplus.
5) I never complained that there was "no significant difference" in the rate of overspending between Democrats and Republicans. That said, it should be noted that of the total surplus since 1900, Republicans managed more than Democrats, but not overwhelmingly more.
Note, further, that when you compare spending by the House's of Representatives (the guys who have the Purse Strings, according to the Constitution), you find that the overwhelming majority of the deficits have been run up under the Democrats, not the Republicans. Of course, that's mostly because the Democrats have controlled the House for most of the last century.
In other words, there's really not much evidence that the Democrats are more frugal about running up deficits than the Republicans, or vice versa.
By the by, for perspective, the last time we had a surplus was 1957 (where, I note, we had a Democrat House and a Republican President - the same composition we had during most of our deficits). Which was before I was born (and I'm older than most of you by quite a few years). If you're not in your mid-50's or older, you've never seen a real surplus....
A better analogy:
1) Cops have a warrant to search your house for Oleanders.
2) They find that you have a newsletter from the Oleander Growers Association on your Dining Room Table.
3) A judge rules that they can't investigate the people who wrote letters shown in the letter column of the newsletter
4) The judge's superior claims that they investigate the people who wrote letters to the newsletter.
Explanatory notes for those who don't quite get it.
1) Oleanders are quite poisonous, but also quite legal.
2) It may surprise many, but steroids are quite legal also. Unethical, perhaps, but legal.
Actually, Palin had nothing to do with why I refused to vote for McCain. He managed that quite nicely back in 2002 all by himself.
Which is not to imply I voted for Obama. His voting record was enough to make sure of that, even without speeches that suggested entirely too many impossible things....
Note: if you vote the campaign speeches, you'll always be disappointed - vote the candidate's voting record, if one is to be had.
I expect the definition has changed by now, but a few years ago when I checked, "suffering from hunger" included me, since the definition basically reduced to "has missed a meal this month".
And no, this wasn't from a corporate site, it was from one of the big "People are starving!!" sites.
Since 1900, the National Debt has gone down in 16 separate years.
In twelve of those years, the President was a Republican. In the other four, the President was a Democrat.
Note, for the record, that the Democrats in question were Truman and Wilson. The debt went up every year of Clinton's Presidency.
Note further that until the Republican takeover of the House (the body required to initiate all spending bills) in 1994, the Democrats had controlled that body for 40 years. The Debt went down for two of those years, and increased in 38 of them.
In other words, there is relatively little evidence that the Democrats are more fiscally responsible than the Republicans. Basically, both Parties spend more than they take in as a matter of course, and neither has any real inclination to change.
Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.
If an attempt were made to re-institute the Draft outside a major war, the congresscritters would all look at the screaming mob that elected them last time around, realize that a "For" vote on the Draft would be the same as "I always planned to retire after this term", and vote "Against"....
THe President's signature on a Treaty means absolutely nothing. Consider the Kyoto Treaty as an example of a Treaty signed by the USA, but never ratified by the Senate.
Until the Senate ratifies a Treaty, it's just a scrap of parchment, even if the President has signed it.
Note that this is the reverse of the usual process, where the Senate proposes and the President disposes. In a Treaty, the President proposes, the Senate has the final voice. Which can include telling the President to go pound sand and start over.
Umm, no. No draft in the USA. Hasn't been one in better than 30 years.
Yes, yes, I know, all you young whippersnappers have to register for one (actually, pretty much everyone older than me and younger than me has to register, I carefully chose my birth year so that I'd be among the small set of American men who never had to register for the draft). But unless your friends the Democrats vote one in (as they threatened to do repeatedly during Bush's terms, for reasons that aren't terribly clear), there isn't one.
So, you think that if you were to buy something today (a couch, a table, a pair of pants) that was first marketed 15 years ago, that you should get a depreciated refund if you returned it?
Brand new table, buy for $1100, return it, get $200? I think not.
I can't help but wonder why this report surfaced just before the Copenhagen talks.
It's almost like someone was trying to influence the outcome of those talks by dropping in a really dire prediction of the results if the talks didn't come out the way they wanted them to.
I read somewhere, many years ago, that sci-fi is popular in good times, when people in general are looking forward to the future, and fantasy is popular in bad times when people are afraid of the future.
Considering that "fearing the future" has become the norm for most of even the "enlightened" societies, I'd expect that sci-fi would be sinking into obsurity for at least the next generation.
I trust that by "all-time record" you really meant "since 1983"?
"more than 1 billion threatened with hunger", perhaps? Note that the definition of "threatened with hunger" doesn't include actually being "hungry", much less "starving".
NO, the failure here is the assumption that a 1.84% pay raise for 504 people has any relation to jobs "saved".
Oddly enough, the Catholic Church funded most of the scientists of the day. Including Copernicus and Kepler....
I might have thought you were making sense up to the point where you labeled the Jesuits a different religion than the Catholics....
This is not specific to Islam, sorry. It was typical of the culture that existed pre-Islam in the parts of the world where Islam began.
Note, by the way, that "arranged marriages" were the norm throughout most of history. It's only in recent centuries that we've become wealthy enough to allow ourselves the luxury of marrying whomever we will.
There is a certain amount of evidence that the Witch Trials were largely about acquiring some valuable land without going through the conventional process of paying for it. So including it as a "religious" issue is perhaps unwarranted.
Hint: The First Amendment isn't limited to those who "further discourse in this country". Keeping FOX out of the White House is teetering right on the edge of violating the First Amendment.
And I expect that a Supreme Court challenge would come down on FOX's side, not the President's, if FOX bothered to make one.
No, actually it's not a lot. It would be a lot if they just gave us the money. But they won't. So most of their budget will be spent on things that make their administrators happy, not things that'll make our job easier.
Which is why the deal is good for them. Not arguing that. Wondering how the deal is good for US though. If we don't get anything from the deal, why bother doing it?
And frankly, in spite of all the good this'll do the Chinese, I don't see that it'll do anything meaningful for us....