-How by your own admission make predictions and models with a third of the input in your equations being unknown (the engry received from the sun)
It isn't unknown. How do you think they correlated global temperature changes with solar output? Sheesh.
Demonstrate why anyone should accept a theory that has no known working model with an acceptable error margin and high confidence. I do, and I think most sane people would agree with me, that you should have at least better odds at making a prediction with your hypothesis than randomly placing your money down at a craps table
When "crapping out" means disaster for the human race, most sane people would place their bets rather differently.
It's amazing how you missed that there was over a 500 degree celcius difference between the differnet sides of the planet venus when it was listed right there in front of you on the summary bar.
Good lord. You didn't read my post and you didn't even read that summary bar yourself. I repeat: (*min temperature refers to cloud tops only). The surface of the planet, under the greenhouse-effect-causing clouds, is not significantly cooler on the nighttime side of the planet, which you would know if you had actually read the Wikipedia article. Which you didn't. Congrats on the self-own there.
Anyways if you do the math, if earth were venus, we would need something like 426x more CO2 to get 1 degree more heat (if of course venus were just like earth in every respect), not this peddly.0001 percent increase that enviro whacky scienctists are complaining about.
Yeah, let's not let the "enviro whacky scientists" do the math, and instead let someone who made up their mind before they read a single fact and can't even be arsed to read all the way through a summary of planet Venus and can't distinguish between surface temperature and cloud top temperature do the math. That'll get rid of all bias for sure.
Let me guess: you assumed a linear relationship and no feedback. That's some rigorous science you got there.
How your predictions take into accout the natural flux in global temprature, instead of irrationally assuming that any current trend up or down in globabl temprature is part of some man made catastrophe.
Well to know that you would have to actually read up on the research that has been done on historic global temperature change (not some global-warming-denier's blog's summary of the research), but that would be like education and you might read something that goes against your pre-conceived notions. Continue wallowing in ignorance, you'll be happier that way.
clearly the greenhouse effect hypothesis is right up there with ID in scienctific merit.
Not at all, since the greenhouse effect is falsifiable, unlike ID. However your beliefs are much like ID, in that it has as its prerequisite deliberate ignorance of the actual state of scientific knowledge, and misrepresentation of those few facts that you've bothered to aquire.
I refuse to engage in discussion with the deliberately stupid.
To those unknowledgeable about the origins of the word, it sounded like New Yorkers had particularly horrific taste.
That's pretty dang funny. Particularly because, instead of what at first seems like a bizarre and violent name for a landfill, it turns out to be the completely commonplace convention of naming a development after what you destroyed to put it there (naming a housing complex "Cedar Grove", a landfill "Fresh Water").
Unless, of course, eMusic was different when you used it; I'm a relatively new subscriber
Yep, it used to be different. Sadly, the problem with an all-you-can-eat service is that some people can easily abuse the system. People downloading more music than it was physically possible for them to listen too cost too much for a relatively small service company. I dropped my subscription when they changed, since it no longer worked for me. I had basically never heard of most band on emusic, so I would download ten albums of different bands and listen to them over the course of a month to decide which I liked, then download more of those. A fixed number of tracks isn't as ammenable to this kind of exploration. Oh well.
Emusic had their own business model problems, but they have nothing to do with the presence or absence of DRM (well other than the RIAA studios not getting on board).
My brother used to subscribe to the Napster "all you can eat" music service, in which you basically rent music - you pay a fixed amount each month and just listen to however much you like. If you stop subscribing you lose access to the music.
I used to subscribe to the Emusic service, which was the same except for the part about losing the music if you stop paying (or the server crashes, or the company goes out of business, or they think your keys may have been compromised, etc etc).
There isn't any way to implement this without DRM, and if DRM is not robust, that business model will die.
The only thing that can't be implemented without robust DRM is the "you lose your music" part.
And frankly, I want that business model to die.
Funny how Napster is a thing of the past, and the most successfull online music service doesn't make you lose your music and allows you to burn DRM-free CDs of your purchased songs. That's not very robust DRM.
You've gotta love how one sided DRM debates here always are... the artists and non-technical users are sort of presumed to not exist, or not be important.
Yeah, because artists can only make money through DRM, and non-technical users love losing their music.
That's why CDs were never popular, and in fact you don't even see them anymore -- artists made no money off them, and customers hated being able to keep them forever and exercising their fair-use rights like making mix tapes for their cars.
Lots of times in the past, both creators and customers have bought into detrimental business models because there wasn't a realistic alternative or because they just didn't know any better. That doesn't make it a good business model.
Let me be frank here: The Napster business model is screwing both you and the artist, assuming the artists are going through an RIAA label.
Acting like you speak for them and only have their best interests in heart doesn't convince me that you do when this is so obviously bad for both. And no, it isn't a necessary evil at all.
Is it proof that MS doesn't care enough about users, or is it (by extension) proof that users don't care much about OS vulnerabilities? Sure, they may complain, but do they actually take action and demonstrate that they care, by switching to more secure OS's (by moving to Apple or Linux)?
Users do complain, and I say that means they care. The problems is that first, they may not realize that the problems they complain about (spyware, viruses, the slowness and random crashing caused by the former) are the fault of Microsoft Windows/Explorer/Outlook, they may not realize that these MS products are not an inherent part of their computer, they may not realize that there are alternatives to these products, they may believe for reasons valid or FUD-based that they cannot use these alternatives, or they may believe that the alternative will not be enough of an improvement to justify the time/effort to switch.
Now you could argue that from Microsoft's perspective all these situations are the same, and that what matters is that the user doesn't care enough to give Microsoft any reason to change their behavior. You would be correct. Except that even Microsoft is aware that users care, and is desperate to keep it from reaching that enough stage. This is why Microsoft pays lip service to fixing security and stoping the spread of spyware/viruses, ties their own products as heavily into the OS as possible and tries to prevent computers from being sold without their products pre-installed, refrains from mentioning the exsitence of alternatives whenever possible, when forced to acknowledge alternatives spreads FUD about their capabilities and even legality, and finally when all else fails falls back on the "all software has bugs" excuse.
I've always liked that last one, because it's the equivalent of saying "all packaged food products contain animal waste" to blow off someone who opened up a can of green beens and found it full to the brim with rat shit.
Still, times are changing. Not in the sense that Microsoft has to or does pay more attention to these flaws that people complain about, but they are getting pushed farther and farther down the list of excuses. Will they truly change such that security bugs are fixed in days? Only when they are truly desperate. Personally I think they are too used to their monopoly position in which the common user is considered a captive customer they don't have to worry about keeping, so only big-money involving their media or other enterprises really gets their attention. By the time they switch, I think it will be too late.
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
You mean you don't destroy yours? I find that burning books after I read them gives them a satisfying sense of finality.
There is something to the lack of long-term effects on the game when you beat bosses, though. The fact is you aren't replaying an entire story arc in its entirety, but repeatedly replaying specific parts of the story in order to be able to progress to the next one, each time failing to see much of an even temporary effect of your actions. It's as if the ending of Dragons of Autumn Twilight had gone:
"And thus did the Heroes slay the Dragon Highlord Verminaard and free the slaves of Pax Tharkas. Then they slew him again, because he didn't drop the helm that Caramon wanted. Then they once again ventured into the fortress, hoping to find a pair of healer boots for Goldmoon. Finally, after the forty sixth slaying and subsequent celebration of the end of the greatly feared Dragon Highlord, the Heroes thought themselves prepared to move on to the next great challenge..."
Still I think it is just something that needs to be accepted as part of the game. They could make it so that you didn't repeat content and at least your own personal trek through the story was unbroken by giving you every relevent item from a dungeon on your first trip through, like a console RPG. Random drops are why you have to go back seven times seven times, but that may be a decent tradeoff for being able to find a group for dungeons instead of everyone saying they've already done it. Stories are great, but they do have to make a game (with thousands of people following the same story) out of it.
I do wish there were more examples of having at least a temporary effect on the world. For example, the quest in the Barrens which summons a mass of centaur invaders. As long as that quest is going on, anyone in the area needs to content with those invaders. They could do a lot more like this, giving the impression that your actions are doing at least something that affects those outside of your own group.
I can't tell if this is just a case of wearing rose-colored glasses when looking into your past-looker-tube, or if you're just on crack.
Duke Nukem's sprites looked like crap, since they were limited to the number of angles the artist drew, and real-time mirrored surfaces with -actual- surface texture applied over the mirror image are quite easy to do today, but in a truly 3D environment instead of 2.5D. Shattered Steel only looked smooth and contoured because the resolution and detail were low enough that your eye filled in the details.
You're talking about shading and sheens as if modern graphics cards are incapable of them, as if pixel shaders don't exist. All those things you mention are the easiest of tricks these days, and even more can be done because you don't have to spend months searching for an optimized way to pull off your one trick. Doom3 had the most realistic material appearances of any game I've ever played. The monsters looked plasticy, sure, but skin is extremely hard. The metal gratings looked like metal. The glass like glass.
Instead of restricting your style to one, the spread of shaders has allowed an expansion of game style. There's been a hell of a lot more than just polygon count, that's for sure.
As for style: I give you Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and SOCOM. Same platform, same hardware, completely different styles.
Yet you're right in that the old aspect of each game having a very unique graphics style has faded away, gross separations like Wind Waker being exceptions, not the rule. This has nothing to do with the limitations of 3D hardware, which allows more stylistic expression than any software game engine* ever did. It rather has to do with the ability, which never existed before, of attempting to attain the holy grail of "photo realism". Increasing poly count, better shaders, these allow more "realistic" graphics, and game makers have gravitated towards this style in droves. Graphics power keeps increasing, and with it so does the desire to make realistic graphics, but already we are seeing a push back to try to expand in other directions.
Old games too sought "realism" in their graphics. Duke Nukem certainly did, it was just not very good at looking realistic. Same with Doom. That realism was hard to come by, and thus any graphics were of necessity highly iconic with detail filled in by the user, was an effect of the hardware of the day, not style.
Trying to rephrase the above rambling into a coherent point: Modern hardware is not restrictive, it is more flexible and allows more expression than software hacks did before. It is the game designers who have consolidated on one style, and while that style will certainly remain there are plenty of moves away from it, and these branches will expand in the future as hardware gets better.
* Every software game engine was an approximation or simplification of what modern hardware can do. A lot of the "style" was simply an effect of whatever hack the engine author used to get around the inherent processing limitations of the CPU. Software algorithms can be better, like ray tracing, but CPUs are only barely approaching the point where real-time ray tracing is feasible.
Charlie is an author for The Inquirer, which has been the main source for leaks from HP since Carly started fucking things up. Including leaks about witchhunts for previous leakers, ampling demonstrating that the witchhunts weren't working. Charlie keeps his sources secret, HP has no way to compel him to release them, and all this is known by anyone who reads The Inquirer which is where the leaks show up. If he had posted anonymously, I would have ignored him. As it is, I've read many previous leaks on The Inq (including the sad/hilarious case of HP purchasing a new corporate jet in the midst of layoff season), and know what he is saying is probably true.
HP has a fundamental problem. The leakers are the symptom, and their inability to catch any significant number of leakers is evidence that the problem is truly endemic and well known by the employees. It's like catching insurgents -- to do it, you need intelligence, and to get intelligence you need cooperation. If the insurgents have grass roots support, you won't get that cooperation, and you're doomed.
I would say that if someone tried to tell me that a study said 60% + 30% = 100%, I would say they were pulling numbers out of their ass.
Subtraction error, get over it.
Now if you are going to also tell me that "heat radiated" and "heat retained" are in fact direct functions of the out put of the sun, I would also say you were full of it.
No, the amount of heat retained is a function of the conditions on the planet that cause heat to be retained. Do you think the temperature of your house is a direct function of the output of your heater, or do you think maybe that this so-called "insulation" might have some effect on keeping that heat output in your house instead of heating your neighborhood?
Not to be brutual, but let's face it, what other sources of heat are we talking about? Are you going to tell me that if the sun disappeared tomorrow that the earth would be at least 60% as warm as it is today when in fact during winter where I live in NYC the tempature fluctuates by 100 degrees in a normal year just by chainging the angle the sun's radiation hits my city?
No, I'm not going to tell you that, that's your retarded interpretation of what the actual theory is. The theory is about the total amount of energy retained, and its affects on global temperature. Of course the temperature at any particular location varies largely as the seasons change. This is irrelevent, because the opposite hemisphere gets commensurately warmer, and the total energy received by the earth is the same. You could just as easily dismiss the increasing solar output as having any effect based on this "logic", because clearly the fact that winter comes to NY means it isn't any warmer even though solar output is higher! This is about total energy in the system and global trends. Energy comes in from the sun, and that energy is either contained by the surface, the atmosphere, or radiated into space. This is basic, and your rejection of this basic fact denies the existence of insulation, heat capacity, or a thousand other "how much energy goes in, how much goes out" factors that you depend on every day.
Seriously. This is about the "greenhouse effect". But what is a greenhouse? It's a shelter designed to allow light in, and then retain the heat, allowing the growing of plants even in cold winter months. Do you deny that greenhouses themselves work?
Finnally lets put the final nail in this "theory" by making a simple comparison to venus, which is currently composed of 97% carbon dioxide, at an amospheric density 90x of our own but despite its atmosphere almost entirely compossed of greenhouse gases, its tempature varies from 775 Kelvins to 228 Kelvins. You wouldd think that if Venus's Greenhouse effect would be as pronouced if the applied the same math they applied to earth which only has an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 0.038% and that even the coolest part of Venus would sweltering by earth's standards, but its actually freezing during the Venian nights. Of course you could object by saying venian nights are 246 days longer, but you would forget that it also has 213000x as much Carbon Dioxide. Thus you can discount heat retention as the other "60%" on earth
Indeed. Let's put the final nail in this "theory" of yours.
Exhibit A: Mercury Mercury is half the distance to the sun than Venus, and therefore receives four times as much solar energy per unit of area, and yet its surface temperature ranges from 90 K - 700 K, and is thus actually cooler than Venus. Do atmospheric conditions affect heat retention and thus temperature? Obviously.
Exhibit B: From the Wiki page on Venus: "(*min temperature refers to cloud tops only)". Bet you didn't notice that little footnote, or was it just to inconvenient to recognize? So the temperature above the dense clouds of Venus that give it a higher surface temperature than Mercury are still higher than Merc
FYI, this is what I said, with emphasis added: "Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars?"
So, apparently you can go carbon neutral via large amounts of money. For those of us who are not millionare members of the liberal elite, how shall we make this change in our lives? Gore still rides SUVs and airplanes, and lives in a huge house. I'm not seeing the solution for the common man here.
Well, if all of the rich -- including, especially, those who own and run large corporations -- made a commitment to being carbon neutral, then there wouldn't be much left for the common man to do but buy fuel efficient (and hopefully eventually non-gas-burning) vehicles. The vast majority of environmental damage is done by industry, not consumers (directly anyway), so if those industries spent their own money to undo the damage they cause then that's pretty much all that needs to be done.
But of course this would be very expensive, and the money to do it would have to come from somewhere. Take a guess whether it would come from: A) The 5% of the population that controls 50% of the wealth (I.e. themselves, by reducing their own salaries) B) The 95% of the population that controls the other 50% (I.e. the 'common man', by increasing prices of goods and services).
I have a guess, myself.
But what this means is that Al Gore is setting an example. He is setting an example for his peers. An example that were they to follow, it would reduce the burden on us.
In those days, depletion of groundwater was not a big issue, since drawing water out of a well was so much work. The decline of agriculture in that area was probably due to either the Mongols or just soil salinity building up over the long term.
Yes, soil salinity was a major reason why the ground became unsuitable for aggriculture, which is related to both irrigation (which causes salt to build up in the irrigation channels) and lack of rainfall (more plentiful rainfall would wash away more of the salt). Forrests were felled for lumber and to make room for farmland, allowing the winds to carry away the topsoil (a problem seen in the U.S. Midwest).
It was the agriculture and lumber practices of the day, combined with an environment unable to withstand them, that resulted in the Fertile Crescent becoming a desert.
Oh, I see the confusion; when I said "the region doesn't receive enough rainfall to easily replace what was taken" I didn't mean specifically water, I meant natural resources in general.
First off, I am not against change. I am against regulating change. In all of human history, no innovation has been mandated ahead of time. This is what I'm against. The insane reactionist movement that believes that if I only regulate that things should be so, they will somehow become so.
It's only the word "only" that makes that an "insane reactionist" viewpoint. It is equally insane to think that if you "only" allow things to progress as they will without influence that they will have a desireable outcome.
Consider LA. Ever been there? It's a stinky shit-hole, and when you fly into LAX on a hot summer day you can see the huge brown cloud floating over downtown, obscuring the buildings.
Ask someone who has lived there since the early 80s, and they'll tell you that it's much better. While that is in some ways a scary thought (seriously, it must have fucking reeked), it also shows there is some hope for government mandates. California's vehicle emissions regulations, the toughest in the nation and the driving force behind many emissions technologies used today, are what is responsible for the improvement in LA's air "quality". Without the regulations, and the commensurate testing and certifications of new vehicle models, and annual inspections of vehicles on the road, LA would still look like its extra-stinky 1980s self.
I've worked for the EPA's vehicle emissions testing facility. I've seen representatives of the auto industries argue vehemenently against more stringent regulations, how they don't have the technology, they couldn't develop the technology, and if they could the extra cost per car would bankrupt them. They compromised with a lesser reduction in emmission levels and an effective date several years later than originally planned. Only six months later -- exactly as my senior coworker predicted -- they were using compliance with those future regulations as an advertising slogan for their next model year. Basically they were sitting on the technology, unwilling to use it until they were forced to by government regulation. How would the consumer, ignorant that such a thing was even possible and with no way to verify that their vehicles indeed emitted less polutants, force the manufacturer to implement these things?
Consider the rate of adoption of hybrid vehicles. Certainly this is fueled by normal market forces and the public's desire for more fuel-efficient (and environmentally friendly) vehicles. Yet these vehicles are more expensive than similar non-hybrid cars, and would not be adopted as quickly as they are were it not for government tax deductions that make them more economically attractive.
Consider also the negative effect of tax rebates for anyone who can claim some kind of business use from their SUV.
The point being that government regulation is neither inherently good nor bad, and the absence of regulation is neither inherently good nor bad. Each must be considered in the particular circumstance. Environmental controls are one of those cases where regulation makes the most sense because 1) there is often a little to no market pressure to improve environmental controls while there is a great deal of pressure to save costs by ignoring them and 2) to the extent that the public would demand improved environmental controls they have very little way of evaluating any corporation's alleged compliance with those demands. While an environmentally-conscious person can go to the store and purchase recycled paper products over new ones if they choose, they have little ability to tell which prescription medication manufacturer is most environmentally sound and more importantly can't realistically refrain from purchasing the product if they aren't happy with the company's policies.
By the way, neither of your links supported the idea that the U.S. has reduced their emissions as the Kyoto protocol would have them do. That signatory countries have not complied is saddening, but not surprising. Neither would I be s
Care to cite a source on this? The whole region (the Sahara) was much greener in the past, this is true, but desertification started long before the advent of agriculture, and has been creeping along for the last 30,000 years or so.
Egypt may be a bad example, because the climate change in the Sahara was naturally occuring, but if I'm not mistaken Mesopotamia -- the famed "Fertile Crescent" -- is a good example of what irrigation and deforestation can do to a region if that region is not capable of supporting it. The problem was simply that the region doesn't receive enough rainfall to easily replace what was taken. Most of Europe was treated equally badly as Mesopotamia, but because it receives more rainfall it was able to sustain itself.
I think Brazil receives more than enough rain fall to sustain itself, if as you say it is done intelligently. The only reason it was ever in danger was because of modern industrial techniques that allow completely flagrant abuse of natural resources.
I am unwilling to shut down half a dozen industries, reduce lifestyles back to the 17th century and potentially kill millions through half a dozen causes that can be avoided by maintaining an oil based economy (think no fertilizers, no shipping, no refrigeration), based on, "Well this *might* be really bad."
Irony: you are unwilling to return to a 17th century lifestyle, but that is exactly where you will end up if you do nothing.
It is we, the rational conservationists, who wish to maintain our current standards of living through rational response to environmental dangers. Forget about the extreme fringe, the tree-huggers who think humanity itself is a blight on the earth, they're loons and not representative of the scientists and conservationists. I want to keep driving a car to the grocery store or to the modern hospital. I recognize that this may not mean my current car, because the things it is based on are untennable in the long term, and this is undeniable. Speculation on exactly how long should not lead one to refuse to act until the speculation can be resolved, because you simply invite disaster that way. By the time we can place an exact date on when it is too late to act, that date may have passed. We must begin taking action now as the evidence accumulates. We do not have to abandon industry, but we do have to make significant changes. If we make those changes now, when we discover that exact date we may find that we have given ourselves more time to more comfortably make the further changes that are needed. If we wait until the last possible moment, then it may in fact be that a 17th century lifestyle is the only thing that can save us, and the potentially millions of lives you fear for would be a mere drop in the bucket of the consequences of further inaction, such that even those like you will have no choice but to abandon our lifestyles.
I refuse to be forced into that situation.
The problem with conservatism (as in the resistence to change) is that things change whether you want them to or not. Trying to maintain stasis by not moving is to fail.
Sure we can, just fire off all our nukes at once and you'll see our temprature change. the big point is, is that after all that is said and done, the 1 and only major contributor to the average global temprature is the amount of energry radiated by the sun, by about 99.999999%.
Actually, studies of just this have indicated that changes in the sun's output account for about 30% of the changes in global temperature. That's significant to be sure, but still leaves 60% to be accounted for from other sources.
And even at the most basic, think-about-it-for-five-seconds common sense level, there are clearly at least two major contributors to global temperature: 1) the amount of energy received by the sun and 2) the amount of energy retained. Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars? Do you not believe in greenhouses?
The problem with dealing with the owners is that, many times, the owners have no real money or assets to sue for (for some reason, it seems that usually only dirt-poor people like to own vicious dogs).
I think it's pretty obvious: Poor people usually live in areas with higher crime rates, and a dog is cheaper than a security system (that you aren't even sure the police will care to respond to). Plus it works better. Some crack head may not notice or care about your alarm, but if they "don't care" about the big, angry dog in your yard they're going to lose a limb.
Yes kiddy porn gives them gratification without them actually kidnapping a child themself, but for the film to be made some child would have to have been violated.
You pointed out the difference yourself. So why would this also be a defense used for child pornography?
If it is legal to do, it should be legal to film and distribute.
It is legal to engage in violent sex acts as long as all parties are consenting adults. So I'm surprised you don't see how this law is a bad thing: It is making illegal the filming and distribution of acts which are legal.
This person was obviously negligent. They did nothing to stop their dog from escaping after it had already done so twice and bit someone once and been nearly shot another time. The health and safety of this dog was clearly a distant concern for their owner.
I'm all for exterminating pit bulls.
That's a wonderfully extreme and irrational viewpoint, and while I can understand having that gut reaction in response to this particular dog and their negligent owner, I hope you realize that it really doesn't make any sense. I hope you'd rethink this before signing any petitions with enacting this policy as a goal.
You want to do something to help situations like this? Enact laws for prosecuting negligent pet owners whose actions create mal-adjusted dogs. In fact I believe there already laws like this in many states. It sounds like yours may be one; I don't know. Either way the real problem here is the lack of government response. If "animal cruelty" is a concern, they should have investigated after the first incident and discovered if this animal needed to be taken away from their owner, or just put down.
Pit bulls have established a spectacular record for attacking and maiming and killing people.
Pit bulls only established this spectacular record after becoming popular as guard, attack, and fighting dogs in the 80s. Dogs that were deliberately abused and mal-socialized so as to make them mean, aggressive, and liable to bite anyone who comes near them. People started buying pit bulls, leashing them in the back yard, and basically doing nothing with them other than feeding them so they'd be crazy with boredom and loneliness, because the whole point was to make them mean.
Rottweilers and Dobermans have both had their stints as the popular guard dog as well, and both were canonically "viscious". But really, they're just big strong dogs with traits suitable for guarding, treated or trained in such a way as to make them aggressive.
And as a counterpoint, my grandmother owned a pitbull. This animal was loved and cared for and thus was, like you would expect of most any dog, a loving and harmless animal in return. The dog never harmed anyone. Well, okay, there were a few bruised shins from the dog's tail wagging so much. Nevertheless, the fact is that visciousness is not an inherent trait of pit bulls. Do not allow some peoples' desire for a viscious dog taint your perception of an entire breed.
Though as far as any specific animal who has suffered this fate and is in fact dangerous, then I wholeheartedly (though sadly) support destroying it. But a whole breed? That's stupid.
Nobody seems to get the joke, which is that Heinlein's earlier books were more-or-less sex-free, or at least keeping it to a minimum, while his later books got more and more randy and referenced group sex, underage sex, incest, and other taboos. I'm not Heinlen-ologist, but it seems the turning point was Stranger in a Strange Land, which was an excellent book. Some of the later ones seem to be more dominated by the sex themes, and very light on substance. In other words he slowly transitioned from young serious author to mature exploratory author to dirty old man.
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-How by your own admission make predictions and models with a third of the input in your equations being unknown (the engry received from the sun)
.0001 percent increase that enviro whacky scienctists are complaining about.
It isn't unknown. How do you think they correlated global temperature changes with solar output? Sheesh.
Demonstrate why anyone should accept a theory that has no known working model with an acceptable error margin and high confidence. I do, and I think most sane people would agree with me, that you should have at least better odds at making a prediction with your hypothesis than randomly placing your money down at a craps table
When "crapping out" means disaster for the human race, most sane people would place their bets rather differently.
It's amazing how you missed that there was over a 500 degree celcius difference between the differnet sides of the planet venus when it was listed right there in front of you on the summary bar.
Good lord. You didn't read my post and you didn't even read that summary bar yourself. I repeat: (*min temperature refers to cloud tops only). The surface of the planet, under the greenhouse-effect-causing clouds, is not significantly cooler on the nighttime side of the planet, which you would know if you had actually read the Wikipedia article. Which you didn't. Congrats on the self-own there.
Anyways if you do the math, if earth were venus, we would need something like 426x more CO2 to get 1 degree more heat (if of course venus were just like earth in every respect), not this peddly
Yeah, let's not let the "enviro whacky scientists" do the math, and instead let someone who made up their mind before they read a single fact and can't even be arsed to read all the way through a summary of planet Venus and can't distinguish between surface temperature and cloud top temperature do the math. That'll get rid of all bias for sure.
Let me guess: you assumed a linear relationship and no feedback. That's some rigorous science you got there.
How your predictions take into accout the natural flux in global temprature, instead of irrationally assuming that any current trend up or down in globabl temprature is part of some man made catastrophe.
Well to know that you would have to actually read up on the research that has been done on historic global temperature change (not some global-warming-denier's blog's summary of the research), but that would be like education and you might read something that goes against your pre-conceived notions. Continue wallowing in ignorance, you'll be happier that way.
clearly the greenhouse effect hypothesis is right up there with ID in scienctific merit.
Not at all, since the greenhouse effect is falsifiable, unlike ID. However your beliefs are much like ID, in that it has as its prerequisite deliberate ignorance of the actual state of scientific knowledge, and misrepresentation of those few facts that you've bothered to aquire.
I refuse to engage in discussion with the deliberately stupid.
To those unknowledgeable about the origins of the word, it sounded like New Yorkers had particularly horrific taste.
That's pretty dang funny. Particularly because, instead of what at first seems like a bizarre and violent name for a landfill, it turns out to be the completely commonplace convention of naming a development after what you destroyed to put it there (naming a housing complex "Cedar Grove", a landfill "Fresh Water").
Unless, of course, eMusic was different when you used it; I'm a relatively new subscriber
Yep, it used to be different. Sadly, the problem with an all-you-can-eat service is that some people can easily abuse the system. People downloading more music than it was physically possible for them to listen too cost too much for a relatively small service company. I dropped my subscription when they changed, since it no longer worked for me. I had basically never heard of most band on emusic, so I would download ten albums of different bands and listen to them over the course of a month to decide which I liked, then download more of those. A fixed number of tracks isn't as ammenable to this kind of exploration. Oh well.
Emusic had their own business model problems, but they have nothing to do with the presence or absence of DRM (well other than the RIAA studios not getting on board).
My brother used to subscribe to the Napster "all you can eat" music service, in which you basically rent music - you pay a fixed amount each month and just listen to however much you like. If you stop subscribing you lose access to the music.
... the artists and non-technical users are sort of presumed to not exist, or not be important.
I used to subscribe to the Emusic service, which was the same except for the part about losing the music if you stop paying (or the server crashes, or the company goes out of business, or they think your keys may have been compromised, etc etc).
There isn't any way to implement this without DRM, and if DRM is not robust, that business model will die.
The only thing that can't be implemented without robust DRM is the "you lose your music" part.
And frankly, I want that business model to die.
Funny how Napster is a thing of the past, and the most successfull online music service doesn't make you lose your music and allows you to burn DRM-free CDs of your purchased songs. That's not very robust DRM.
You've gotta love how one sided DRM debates here always are
Yeah, because artists can only make money through DRM, and non-technical users love losing their music.
That's why CDs were never popular, and in fact you don't even see them anymore -- artists made no money off them, and customers hated being able to keep them forever and exercising their fair-use rights like making mix tapes for their cars.
Lots of times in the past, both creators and customers have bought into detrimental business models because there wasn't a realistic alternative or because they just didn't know any better. That doesn't make it a good business model.
Let me be frank here: The Napster business model is screwing both you and the artist, assuming the artists are going through an RIAA label.
Acting like you speak for them and only have their best interests in heart doesn't convince me that you do when this is so obviously bad for both. And no, it isn't a necessary evil at all.
Is it proof that MS doesn't care enough about users, or is it (by extension) proof that users don't care much about OS vulnerabilities? Sure, they may complain, but do they actually take action and demonstrate that they care, by switching to more secure OS's (by moving to Apple or Linux)?
Users do complain, and I say that means they care. The problems is that first, they may not realize that the problems they complain about (spyware, viruses, the slowness and random crashing caused by the former) are the fault of Microsoft Windows/Explorer/Outlook, they may not realize that these MS products are not an inherent part of their computer, they may not realize that there are alternatives to these products, they may believe for reasons valid or FUD-based that they cannot use these alternatives, or they may believe that the alternative will not be enough of an improvement to justify the time/effort to switch.
Now you could argue that from Microsoft's perspective all these situations are the same, and that what matters is that the user doesn't care enough to give Microsoft any reason to change their behavior. You would be correct. Except that even Microsoft is aware that users care, and is desperate to keep it from reaching that enough stage. This is why Microsoft pays lip service to fixing security and stoping the spread of spyware/viruses, ties their own products as heavily into the OS as possible and tries to prevent computers from being sold without their products pre-installed, refrains from mentioning the exsitence of alternatives whenever possible, when forced to acknowledge alternatives spreads FUD about their capabilities and even legality, and finally when all else fails falls back on the "all software has bugs" excuse.
I've always liked that last one, because it's the equivalent of saying "all packaged food products contain animal waste" to blow off someone who opened up a can of green beens and found it full to the brim with rat shit.
Still, times are changing. Not in the sense that Microsoft has to or does pay more attention to these flaws that people complain about, but they are getting pushed farther and farther down the list of excuses. Will they truly change such that security bugs are fixed in days? Only when they are truly desperate. Personally I think they are too used to their monopoly position in which the common user is considered a captive customer they don't have to worry about keeping, so only big-money involving their media or other enterprises really gets their attention. By the time they switch, I think it will be too late.
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
You mean you don't destroy yours? I find that burning books after I read them gives them a satisfying sense of finality.
There is something to the lack of long-term effects on the game when you beat bosses, though. The fact is you aren't replaying an entire story arc in its entirety, but repeatedly replaying specific parts of the story in order to be able to progress to the next one, each time failing to see much of an even temporary effect of your actions. It's as if the ending of Dragons of Autumn Twilight had gone:
"And thus did the Heroes slay the Dragon Highlord Verminaard and free the slaves of Pax Tharkas. Then they slew him again, because he didn't drop the helm that Caramon wanted. Then they once again ventured into the fortress, hoping to find a pair of healer boots for Goldmoon. Finally, after the forty sixth slaying and subsequent celebration of the end of the greatly feared Dragon Highlord, the Heroes thought themselves prepared to move on to the next great challenge..."
Still I think it is just something that needs to be accepted as part of the game. They could make it so that you didn't repeat content and at least your own personal trek through the story was unbroken by giving you every relevent item from a dungeon on your first trip through, like a console RPG. Random drops are why you have to go back seven times seven times, but that may be a decent tradeoff for being able to find a group for dungeons instead of everyone saying they've already done it. Stories are great, but they do have to make a game (with thousands of people following the same story) out of it.
I do wish there were more examples of having at least a temporary effect on the world. For example, the quest in the Barrens which summons a mass of centaur invaders. As long as that quest is going on, anyone in the area needs to content with those invaders. They could do a lot more like this, giving the impression that your actions are doing at least something that affects those outside of your own group.
I can't tell if this is just a case of wearing rose-colored glasses when looking into your past-looker-tube, or if you're just on crack.
Duke Nukem's sprites looked like crap, since they were limited to the number of angles the artist drew, and real-time mirrored surfaces with -actual- surface texture applied over the mirror image are quite easy to do today, but in a truly 3D environment instead of 2.5D. Shattered Steel only looked smooth and contoured because the resolution and detail were low enough that your eye filled in the details.
You're talking about shading and sheens as if modern graphics cards are incapable of them, as if pixel shaders don't exist. All those things you mention are the easiest of tricks these days, and even more can be done because you don't have to spend months searching for an optimized way to pull off your one trick. Doom3 had the most realistic material appearances of any game I've ever played. The monsters looked plasticy, sure, but skin is extremely hard. The metal gratings looked like metal. The glass like glass.
Instead of restricting your style to one, the spread of shaders has allowed an expansion of game style. There's been a hell of a lot more than just polygon count, that's for sure.
As for style: I give you Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and SOCOM. Same platform, same hardware, completely different styles.
Yet you're right in that the old aspect of each game having a very unique graphics style has faded away, gross separations like Wind Waker being exceptions, not the rule. This has nothing to do with the limitations of 3D hardware, which allows more stylistic expression than any software game engine* ever did. It rather has to do with the ability, which never existed before, of attempting to attain the holy grail of "photo realism". Increasing poly count, better shaders, these allow more "realistic" graphics, and game makers have gravitated towards this style in droves. Graphics power keeps increasing, and with it so does the desire to make realistic graphics, but already we are seeing a push back to try to expand in other directions.
Old games too sought "realism" in their graphics. Duke Nukem certainly did, it was just not very good at looking realistic. Same with Doom. That realism was hard to come by, and thus any graphics were of necessity highly iconic with detail filled in by the user, was an effect of the hardware of the day, not style.
Trying to rephrase the above rambling into a coherent point: Modern hardware is not restrictive, it is more flexible and allows more expression than software hacks did before. It is the game designers who have consolidated on one style, and while that style will certainly remain there are plenty of moves away from it, and these branches will expand in the future as hardware gets better.
* Every software game engine was an approximation or simplification of what modern hardware can do. A lot of the "style" was simply an effect of whatever hack the engine author used to get around the inherent processing limitations of the CPU. Software algorithms can be better, like ray tracing, but CPUs are only barely approaching the point where real-time ray tracing is feasible.
Charlie is an author for The Inquirer, which has been the main source for leaks from HP since Carly started fucking things up. Including leaks about witchhunts for previous leakers, ampling demonstrating that the witchhunts weren't working. Charlie keeps his sources secret, HP has no way to compel him to release them, and all this is known by anyone who reads The Inquirer which is where the leaks show up. If he had posted anonymously, I would have ignored him. As it is, I've read many previous leaks on The Inq (including the sad/hilarious case of HP purchasing a new corporate jet in the midst of layoff season), and know what he is saying is probably true.
HP has a fundamental problem. The leakers are the symptom, and their inability to catch any significant number of leakers is evidence that the problem is truly endemic and well known by the employees. It's like catching insurgents -- to do it, you need intelligence, and to get intelligence you need cooperation. If the insurgents have grass roots support, you won't get that cooperation, and you're doomed.
I would say that if someone tried to tell me that a study said 60% + 30% = 100%, I would say they were pulling numbers out of their ass.
Subtraction error, get over it.
Now if you are going to also tell me that "heat radiated" and "heat retained" are in fact direct functions of the out put of the sun, I would also say you were full of it.
No, the amount of heat retained is a function of the conditions on the planet that cause heat to be retained. Do you think the temperature of your house is a direct function of the output of your heater, or do you think maybe that this so-called "insulation" might have some effect on keeping that heat output in your house instead of heating your neighborhood?
Not to be brutual, but let's face it, what other sources of heat are we talking about? Are you going to tell me that if the sun disappeared tomorrow that the earth would be at least 60% as warm as it is today when in fact during winter where I live in NYC the tempature fluctuates by 100 degrees in a normal year just by chainging the angle the sun's radiation hits my city?
No, I'm not going to tell you that, that's your retarded interpretation of what the actual theory is. The theory is about the total amount of energy retained, and its affects on global temperature. Of course the temperature at any particular location varies largely as the seasons change. This is irrelevent, because the opposite hemisphere gets commensurately warmer, and the total energy received by the earth is the same. You could just as easily dismiss the increasing solar output as having any effect based on this "logic", because clearly the fact that winter comes to NY means it isn't any warmer even though solar output is higher! This is about total energy in the system and global trends. Energy comes in from the sun, and that energy is either contained by the surface, the atmosphere, or radiated into space. This is basic, and your rejection of this basic fact denies the existence of insulation, heat capacity, or a thousand other "how much energy goes in, how much goes out" factors that you depend on every day.
Seriously. This is about the "greenhouse effect". But what is a greenhouse? It's a shelter designed to allow light in, and then retain the heat, allowing the growing of plants even in cold winter months. Do you deny that greenhouses themselves work?
Finnally lets put the final nail in this "theory" by making a simple comparison to venus, which is currently composed of 97% carbon dioxide, at an amospheric density 90x of our own but despite its atmosphere almost entirely compossed of greenhouse gases, its tempature varies from 775 Kelvins to 228 Kelvins. You wouldd think that if Venus's Greenhouse effect would be as pronouced if the applied the same math they applied to earth which only has an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 0.038% and that even the coolest part of Venus would sweltering by earth's standards, but its actually freezing during the Venian nights. Of course you could object by saying venian nights are 246 days longer, but you would forget that it also has 213000x as much Carbon Dioxide. Thus you can discount heat retention as the other "60%" on earth
Indeed. Let's put the final nail in this "theory" of yours.
Exhibit A: Mercury
Mercury is half the distance to the sun than Venus, and therefore receives four times as much solar energy per unit of area, and yet its surface temperature ranges from 90 K - 700 K, and is thus actually cooler than Venus. Do atmospheric conditions affect heat retention and thus temperature? Obviously.
Exhibit B: From the Wiki page on Venus: "(*min temperature refers to cloud tops only)". Bet you didn't notice that little footnote, or was it just to inconvenient to recognize? So the temperature above the dense clouds of Venus that give it a higher surface temperature than Mercury are still higher than Merc
Ok, so what is the last 10%? Is it from sources other than the other sources?
Dark matter, of course.
FYI, this is what I said, with emphasis added: "Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars?"
:)
To which you responded "yes".
Have a nice day, Plutonian.
So, apparently you can go carbon neutral via large amounts of money. For those of us who are not millionare members of the liberal elite, how shall we make this change in our lives? Gore still rides SUVs and airplanes, and lives in a huge house. I'm not seeing the solution for the common man here.
Well, if all of the rich -- including, especially, those who own and run large corporations -- made a commitment to being carbon neutral, then there wouldn't be much left for the common man to do but buy fuel efficient (and hopefully eventually non-gas-burning) vehicles. The vast majority of environmental damage is done by industry, not consumers (directly anyway), so if those industries spent their own money to undo the damage they cause then that's pretty much all that needs to be done.
But of course this would be very expensive, and the money to do it would have to come from somewhere. Take a guess whether it would come from:
A) The 5% of the population that controls 50% of the wealth (I.e. themselves, by reducing their own salaries)
B) The 95% of the population that controls the other 50% (I.e. the 'common man', by increasing prices of goods and services).
I have a guess, myself.
But what this means is that Al Gore is setting an example. He is setting an example for his peers. An example that were they to follow, it would reduce the burden on us.
In those days, depletion of groundwater was not a big issue, since drawing water out of a well was so much work. The decline of agriculture in that area was probably due to either the Mongols or just soil salinity building up over the long term.
Yes, soil salinity was a major reason why the ground became unsuitable for aggriculture, which is related to both irrigation (which causes salt to build up in the irrigation channels) and lack of rainfall (more plentiful rainfall would wash away more of the salt). Forrests were felled for lumber and to make room for farmland, allowing the winds to carry away the topsoil (a problem seen in the U.S. Midwest).
It was the agriculture and lumber practices of the day, combined with an environment unable to withstand them, that resulted in the Fertile Crescent becoming a desert.
Oh, I see the confusion; when I said "the region doesn't receive enough rainfall to easily replace what was taken" I didn't mean specifically water, I meant natural resources in general.
First off, I am not against change. I am against regulating change. In all of human history, no innovation has been mandated ahead of time. This is what I'm against. The insane reactionist movement that believes that if I only regulate that things should be so, they will somehow become so.
It's only the word "only" that makes that an "insane reactionist" viewpoint. It is equally insane to think that if you "only" allow things to progress as they will without influence that they will have a desireable outcome.
Consider LA. Ever been there? It's a stinky shit-hole, and when you fly into LAX on a hot summer day you can see the huge brown cloud floating over downtown, obscuring the buildings.
Ask someone who has lived there since the early 80s, and they'll tell you that it's much better. While that is in some ways a scary thought (seriously, it must have fucking reeked), it also shows there is some hope for government mandates. California's vehicle emissions regulations, the toughest in the nation and the driving force behind many emissions technologies used today, are what is responsible for the improvement in LA's air "quality". Without the regulations, and the commensurate testing and certifications of new vehicle models, and annual inspections of vehicles on the road, LA would still look like its extra-stinky 1980s self.
I've worked for the EPA's vehicle emissions testing facility. I've seen representatives of the auto industries argue vehemenently against more stringent regulations, how they don't have the technology, they couldn't develop the technology, and if they could the extra cost per car would bankrupt them. They compromised with a lesser reduction in emmission levels and an effective date several years later than originally planned. Only six months later -- exactly as my senior coworker predicted -- they were using compliance with those future regulations as an advertising slogan for their next model year. Basically they were sitting on the technology, unwilling to use it until they were forced to by government regulation. How would the consumer, ignorant that such a thing was even possible and with no way to verify that their vehicles indeed emitted less polutants, force the manufacturer to implement these things?
Consider the rate of adoption of hybrid vehicles. Certainly this is fueled by normal market forces and the public's desire for more fuel-efficient (and environmentally friendly) vehicles. Yet these vehicles are more expensive than similar non-hybrid cars, and would not be adopted as quickly as they are were it not for government tax deductions that make them more economically attractive.
Consider also the negative effect of tax rebates for anyone who can claim some kind of business use from their SUV.
The point being that government regulation is neither inherently good nor bad, and the absence of regulation is neither inherently good nor bad. Each must be considered in the particular circumstance. Environmental controls are one of those cases where regulation makes the most sense because 1) there is often a little to no market pressure to improve environmental controls while there is a great deal of pressure to save costs by ignoring them and 2) to the extent that the public would demand improved environmental controls they have very little way of evaluating any corporation's alleged compliance with those demands. While an environmentally-conscious person can go to the store and purchase recycled paper products over new ones if they choose, they have little ability to tell which prescription medication manufacturer is most environmentally sound and more importantly can't realistically refrain from purchasing the product if they aren't happy with the company's policies.
By the way, neither of your links supported the idea that the U.S. has reduced their emissions as the Kyoto protocol would have them do. That signatory countries have not complied is saddening, but not surprising. Neither would I be s
I live on Earth, and let me be the first to welcome you, Plutonian brother!
Care to cite a source on this? The whole region (the Sahara) was much greener in the past, this is true, but desertification started long before the advent of agriculture, and has been creeping along for the last 30,000 years or so.
Egypt may be a bad example, because the climate change in the Sahara was naturally occuring, but if I'm not mistaken Mesopotamia -- the famed "Fertile Crescent" -- is a good example of what irrigation and deforestation can do to a region if that region is not capable of supporting it. The problem was simply that the region doesn't receive enough rainfall to easily replace what was taken. Most of Europe was treated equally badly as Mesopotamia, but because it receives more rainfall it was able to sustain itself.
I think Brazil receives more than enough rain fall to sustain itself, if as you say it is done intelligently. The only reason it was ever in danger was because of modern industrial techniques that allow completely flagrant abuse of natural resources.
I am unwilling to shut down half a dozen industries, reduce lifestyles back to the 17th century and potentially kill millions through half a dozen causes that can be avoided by maintaining an oil based economy (think no fertilizers, no shipping, no refrigeration), based on, "Well this *might* be really bad."
Irony: you are unwilling to return to a 17th century lifestyle, but that is exactly where you will end up if you do nothing.
It is we, the rational conservationists, who wish to maintain our current standards of living through rational response to environmental dangers. Forget about the extreme fringe, the tree-huggers who think humanity itself is a blight on the earth, they're loons and not representative of the scientists and conservationists. I want to keep driving a car to the grocery store or to the modern hospital. I recognize that this may not mean my current car, because the things it is based on are untennable in the long term, and this is undeniable. Speculation on exactly how long should not lead one to refuse to act until the speculation can be resolved, because you simply invite disaster that way. By the time we can place an exact date on when it is too late to act, that date may have passed. We must begin taking action now as the evidence accumulates. We do not have to abandon industry, but we do have to make significant changes. If we make those changes now, when we discover that exact date we may find that we have given ourselves more time to more comfortably make the further changes that are needed. If we wait until the last possible moment, then it may in fact be that a 17th century lifestyle is the only thing that can save us, and the potentially millions of lives you fear for would be a mere drop in the bucket of the consequences of further inaction, such that even those like you will have no choice but to abandon our lifestyles.
I refuse to be forced into that situation.
The problem with conservatism (as in the resistence to change) is that things change whether you want them to or not. Trying to maintain stasis by not moving is to fail.
Sure we can, just fire off all our nukes at once and you'll see our temprature change. the big point is, is that after all that is said and done, the 1 and only major contributor to the average global temprature is the amount of energry radiated by the sun, by about 99.999999%.
Actually, studies of just this have indicated that changes in the sun's output account for about 30% of the changes in global temperature. That's significant to be sure, but still leaves 60% to be accounted for from other sources.
And even at the most basic, think-about-it-for-five-seconds common sense level, there are clearly at least two major contributors to global temperature: 1) the amount of energy received by the sun and 2) the amount of energy retained. Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars? Do you not believe in greenhouses?
I mean whack-a-mole. =)
Perv.
The problem with dealing with the owners is that, many times, the owners have no real money or assets to sue for (for some reason, it seems that usually only dirt-poor people like to own vicious dogs).
I think it's pretty obvious: Poor people usually live in areas with higher crime rates, and a dog is cheaper than a security system (that you aren't even sure the police will care to respond to). Plus it works better. Some crack head may not notice or care about your alarm, but if they "don't care" about the big, angry dog in your yard they're going to lose a limb.
Yes kiddy porn gives them gratification without them actually kidnapping a child themself, but for the film to be made some child would have to have been violated.
You pointed out the difference yourself. So why would this also be a defense used for child pornography?
If it is legal to do, it should be legal to film and distribute.
It is legal to engage in violent sex acts as long as all parties are consenting adults. So I'm surprised you don't see how this law is a bad thing: It is making illegal the filming and distribution of acts which are legal.
This person was obviously negligent. They did nothing to stop their dog from escaping after it had already done so twice and bit someone once and been nearly shot another time. The health and safety of this dog was clearly a distant concern for their owner.
I'm all for exterminating pit bulls.
That's a wonderfully extreme and irrational viewpoint, and while I can understand having that gut reaction in response to this particular dog and their negligent owner, I hope you realize that it really doesn't make any sense. I hope you'd rethink this before signing any petitions with enacting this policy as a goal.
You want to do something to help situations like this? Enact laws for prosecuting negligent pet owners whose actions create mal-adjusted dogs. In fact I believe there already laws like this in many states. It sounds like yours may be one; I don't know. Either way the real problem here is the lack of government response. If "animal cruelty" is a concern, they should have investigated after the first incident and discovered if this animal needed to be taken away from their owner, or just put down.
Pit bulls have established a spectacular record for attacking and maiming and killing people.
Pit bulls only established this spectacular record after becoming popular as guard, attack, and fighting dogs in the 80s. Dogs that were deliberately abused and mal-socialized so as to make them mean, aggressive, and liable to bite anyone who comes near them. People started buying pit bulls, leashing them in the back yard, and basically doing nothing with them other than feeding them so they'd be crazy with boredom and loneliness, because the whole point was to make them mean.
Rottweilers and Dobermans have both had their stints as the popular guard dog as well, and both were canonically "viscious". But really, they're just big strong dogs with traits suitable for guarding, treated or trained in such a way as to make them aggressive.
And as a counterpoint, my grandmother owned a pitbull. This animal was loved and cared for and thus was, like you would expect of most any dog, a loving and harmless animal in return. The dog never harmed anyone. Well, okay, there were a few bruised shins from the dog's tail wagging so much. Nevertheless, the fact is that visciousness is not an inherent trait of pit bulls. Do not allow some peoples' desire for a viscious dog taint your perception of an entire breed.
Though as far as any specific animal who has suffered this fate and is in fact dangerous, then I wholeheartedly (though sadly) support destroying it. But a whole breed? That's stupid.
I don't want to know what you're going to do when you get there.
Nobody seems to get the joke, which is that Heinlein's earlier books were more-or-less sex-free, or at least keeping it to a minimum, while his later books got more and more randy and referenced group sex, underage sex, incest, and other taboos. I'm not Heinlen-ologist, but it seems the turning point was Stranger in a Strange Land, which was an excellent book. Some of the later ones seem to be more dominated by the sex themes, and very light on substance. In other words he slowly transitioned from young serious author to mature exploratory author to dirty old man.
Well for one I am religious folk, and for two it was a joke.