"You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions... right?"
And I suppose you can point to this HARD PROOF, right?
Anyone with any idea about climate science has known for years that Lomborg's work is an exercise in propoganda. The literary term for the style of writing in his book is called false document, it's the same style used in other fictional works such as "State of Fear" and "The DaVinci Code".
I find it ironic that self proclaimed skeptics consistently fail to spot obvious propoganda even when it is repeatedly pointed out to them.
IMHO Americans really need to get past the solialist bogeyman that is preventing the implementation of a sane health system.
UHC here in Australia costs 1.5% tax on income, I can see whatever doctor I like, often without an appointment. The doctor prescribes whatever tests/pills I need without input from an accountant. I never have to pay more than $1200/yr for medicine, nobody cares if I have a pre-existing illness, if I travel to Europe I get reciprocal care from their governments at no cost to me other than said 1.5% tax. I have statistically better medical outcomes than a US citizen and never have to worry about medically induced bankruptcy. Currently government sponsered doctors are visiting every workplace in the country to offer free health checks as part of the preventative care provided by UHC.
I'm single with grandkids, I earn well above average wage and a back of the envolope calculation says my 1.5% covers 5-6 other Aussies I have never met. However I'm more than happy and proud to pay above my fair share since when I was a young dad the same system looked after my chronicly asthmatic son during the times he needed a hospital bed and specialist care, it also paid for his medicine and saved me from certain bankruptcy.
US citizens already pay more in tax per head for Medicare/Medicaid than Aussies pay for a full blown UHC. I think this is mainly due to the army of paper pushers the US employs to console ignorant people who think of socialised medicine as a government handout.
I'm not saying our system is perfect but it's run by health proffesionals and is demonstratably light years ahead of the US. It is supported by 80% of Aussie voters. It recieves true bipartisan support from politicians, any politician who dared to suggest going back to the previous US style system we had in the 70's would find himself unemployed at the next election.
In the end I really don't care what the US does with health system but having experienced both fully privatised and socialised health care my impartial advise would be to upgrade to a 21st century UHC system and ignore the corporate propoganda that is telling you socilaist death panels will kill your grandma to save a buck.
Transendenatal would be a better word than immaterial. Your brain is not the logic, as you say yourself it's a representation of the logic. Even if the universe did not exist the logical rule that it cannot simultanously exist and not exist would still exist...BANG...OUCH.
"These people were as smart as us and may have known a lot more about the world than we give them credit for."
Agreed, finding evidence they had boats/rafts is giving them more credit than they were previously afforded. The problem with the diliberate navigation idea is there is currently no evidence to support it. Until such evidence is found the idea can only be considered speculation at best.
Ignorance of technologoy does not imply they were stupid. Modern humans are much less ignorant about technology but most would starve to death if they had to track and kill an antelope with nothing more than carefull observation and a sharp stick.
"Turning a few old tools into a theory that humans were sea travelers a hundred thousand years before previously thought is a stretch."
The article states Crete has been an island for five millions years. It also states that previously the earliest known sea crossings were 60Kya.
How did the tools get there without some species of hominoid crossing the water? 200 miles is a long way to swim, so how did the hominoids cross the water? What makes you think they brought the tools with them? How do you know that quartz is not the only suitable tool making rock found on Crete?
Nobody is suggesting they deliberately navigated to Crete but it's not a streach to think they were "going to sea" in some sort of raft/boat that was used for near shore spear fishing. Nor is it a streach to think a some of them were swept away to sea by currents/storms and ended up accidently colonising Crete.
Science is about the best available explaination that fits the evidence, do you have a better explaination of how hominoids got to Crete other than the one that says they arrived by some sort of prehistoric boat/raft?
You highlight the quote - "Crete has been an island for more than five million years"
What part of the quote are you and the GP failing to understand? Why do you both seem to be under the delusion that archeoligists have never heard of ice age migration when archeology was the discipline that discovered it?
Where are people getting the idea that you don't have to surrender your privacy to obtain welfare? If you apply for welfare they are going to want to know everything about you, including wether or not you're having sex with your flatmate.
"If this was such a big deal, ACA and TT and the rest of the commercial bottom-feeders would be all over it, especially given that it's foreigners ripping off hard-working Australians."
Wether such a story gets the attention of ACA/TT would depend entirely on the political and commercial affiliations of said forigner.
"Just like an insurer will not offer a policy on an uncertified structure, the day may come when insurers will not indemnify for losses involving the use of uncertified software."
That day has already arrived in the form of recognised quality assurance standards (eg: ISO-9000). Such standards in both software and civil engineering are concerned with prevention, detection and remedy of faults rather than the individual's skill at bolting things together.
This is what philosophy education buys you: you pay to learn to enjoy hearing yourself talk.;-)
For what it's worth, I'm partial to the materialism.
For what it's worth, the philosophy of (scientific) materialism is based on the immaterial rules of formal logic, as are the materialistic ideas in the book the GP referenced.
"Recognition that the Universe, Biology, and Evolution are all Computational is just taking time to work it's way through the teaching material."
Thanks for the reading tip. Like many other people trained in computer science I also belive that combined with Darwinian ideas it will radically change our understanding of biology and ultimately ourselves.
To paraphrase how Douglas Adams put it for millenia science has been done by pulling things apart, but the first thing that happens when you pull a cat apart is you have a non-working cat, computers have given us the ability to do science by putting things together from the bottom up.
Despite what many people erroneously belive about computer models of things such as climate and the mammalian brain they have already demonstrated a level of sophistication that we could only dream of 30yrs ago.
BTW: My definition of life is; the process by which the universe achieves self awareness.
As I posted in a reply to someone else ANY student coming from a defined remote area can apply for rental assistance so I would expect aboriginals to be overrepresented in that particular payment. I am also ideologically against race based legislation but in my book pragmatisim trumps ideology and therefore I support laws such as banning the sale of alcohol in aboriginal settlements and the special un-sniffable petrol sold in the outback.
Given the level of misinfomation on aboriginal issues on both sides of the argument I suspect that any political party who tried to streamline the payment system would be painted as racist by their opposition. As an example I don't like Howard but I believe his intentions and actions were noble in the "NT military takeover" and were painted as racist by a large number of people who should have known better.
Just to be clear I don't think you are racists but I admit I was pushing buttons to see how you would react. I appologise for doubting your character.
Yes, the seperate schemes are a hangover from affirmative action of the 70's and 80's. As I posted in my reply to walshv007 the extreme benefits that no white man could hope for amount to an extra $6.50 per week. ANY student coming from a defined remote area can also apply for rental assistance, people living in remote areas tend to be aboriginals.
Ideologically I'm also not in favour of legislation based on race but pragmatically the aboriginals have not benifited from the so called "lucky country". Until very recently most lived in what can only be described as thrird world conditions, lost between stone age traditions and the 20th century laws.
We also have race based legislation banning the sale of alcohol in many of the aboriginal settlements, their traditional social structures are 40kyrs old and have never had to deal with alcoholisim until the last hundred years or so. Aborigines are also permitted to hunt otherwise protected species on their reserves. IMHO these laws are a GoodThing(TM).
"Call me crazy" - Ok you're crazy, $6.50 extra per week is hardly an "extreme benifit".
"Very few people would disagree that the way she handled politics wasn't very smart, or politically correct. However I believe racist would greatly depend on your definition." - Given you define two extra cups of coffee per week as an "extreme benifit", can you please explain your definition of racist.
"I just don't get it." - Yes, I figured that one out from your first post.
I stand corrected, apparently the scheme was brought in by the Howard government and I was using outdated personal anecdote. My brother-in-law lost ~$10K when the panel beaters he was working for in the 90's went tits up. Part of that $10K was super that had not been paid for almost a year. The bank came in and auctioned all the equipment in the shop, the employees saw none of the proceeds.
"We may have a ridiculous amount of asian immigrants that still speak chinese/japanese after they get here, but that still does not make us a part of asia."
We actually have very few Japanese immigrants but they do love spending their holidays and money here, particularly in Queensland where the local economy is heavily dependent on tourisim.
The Japanese are golf mad and a golf trip to Oz to play on a real golf course is cheaper than a golf club membership in Tokyo to play on a multi story driving range. On the whole they are very well mannered guests in our country and tend to stick to organised tour groups because of the language barrier.
Also every chineese immigrant I have ever met speaks english, it's a requirement to get into the country unless you come in as a refugee and we do not recognise people from China as refugees.
As you probably know there is a minority racist element in our population who idolise people such as Pauline Hanson. Hanson is ironically now emmigrating to the UK after basically being ridiculed and laughed out of politics by the rest of us. I think she is in for a shock when she finds out how many second and third generation "brown people" are wandering around the UK.
For the non-Aussie readers, members of Hansen's minority are generally refered to as "yobbos", which when translated into American means "rednecks".
He has committed tax fraud, the taxman is first in the line of creditors and has an extradition treaty with the Irish taxman. He will wake up one day in the very near future to find his bank accounts frozen.
The employees are the last in line when it comes to the creditors of a defunct company, once the taxman and banks have split up what's left the employees will get fuck all. The best the employees can hope for is seeing the prick behind bars which IMHO is a very likely outcome.
"Hasn't Enron proven without a doubt that energy trading is nothing more than a huge sham"
Err no, it proves crooks can line their own pockets by running a successful company into the ground. Take 15 seconds to think about how power is distributed across THE grid and you will see why TRADING in the wholesale energy MARKET is common sense.
"The ultimate question: Should we really be trading something which is necessary for modern life?"
The ultimate answer: Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward is generally considered to have been a bit of a cock up.
"I guess the days of doing one or two things really well are gone"
They will definitely be gone if we stop trading in essentials.
Slashdot Mirror
"You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions ... right?"
And I suppose you can point to this HARD PROOF, right?
Anyone with any idea about climate science has known for years that Lomborg's work is an exercise in propoganda. The literary term for the style of writing in his book is called false document, it's the same style used in other fictional works such as "State of Fear" and "The DaVinci Code".
I find it ironic that self proclaimed skeptics consistently fail to spot obvious propoganda even when it is repeatedly pointed out to them.
IMHO Americans really need to get past the solialist bogeyman that is preventing the implementation of a sane health system.
UHC here in Australia costs 1.5% tax on income, I can see whatever doctor I like, often without an appointment. The doctor prescribes whatever tests/pills I need without input from an accountant. I never have to pay more than $1200/yr for medicine, nobody cares if I have a pre-existing illness, if I travel to Europe I get reciprocal care from their governments at no cost to me other than said 1.5% tax. I have statistically better medical outcomes than a US citizen and never have to worry about medically induced bankruptcy. Currently government sponsered doctors are visiting every workplace in the country to offer free health checks as part of the preventative care provided by UHC.
I'm single with grandkids, I earn well above average wage and a back of the envolope calculation says my 1.5% covers 5-6 other Aussies I have never met. However I'm more than happy and proud to pay above my fair share since when I was a young dad the same system looked after my chronicly asthmatic son during the times he needed a hospital bed and specialist care, it also paid for his medicine and saved me from certain bankruptcy.
US citizens already pay more in tax per head for Medicare/Medicaid than Aussies pay for a full blown UHC. I think this is mainly due to the army of paper pushers the US employs to console ignorant people who think of socialised medicine as a government handout.
I'm not saying our system is perfect but it's run by health proffesionals and is demonstratably light years ahead of the US. It is supported by 80% of Aussie voters. It recieves true bipartisan support from politicians, any politician who dared to suggest going back to the previous US style system we had in the 70's would find himself unemployed at the next election.
In the end I really don't care what the US does with health system but having experienced both fully privatised and socialised health care my impartial advise would be to upgrade to a 21st century UHC system and ignore the corporate propoganda that is telling you socilaist death panels will kill your grandma to save a buck.
They don't play baseball?
Thanks, I was thinking of fixing a snack until I saw that guy holding his gut in the air.
"Transendenatal would be a better word than immaterial." - Well...it would be if I could spell it :)
Transendenatal would be a better word than immaterial. Your brain is not the logic, as you say yourself it's a representation of the logic. Even if the universe did not exist the logical rule that it cannot simultanously exist and not exist would still exist...BANG...OUCH.
"These people were as smart as us and may have known a lot more about the world than we give them credit for."
Agreed, finding evidence they had boats/rafts is giving them more credit than they were previously afforded. The problem with the diliberate navigation idea is there is currently no evidence to support it. Until such evidence is found the idea can only be considered speculation at best.
Ignorance of technologoy does not imply they were stupid. Modern humans are much less ignorant about technology but most would starve to death if they had to track and kill an antelope with nothing more than carefull observation and a sharp stick.
"Turning a few old tools into a theory that humans were sea travelers a hundred thousand years before previously thought is a stretch."
The article states Crete has been an island for five millions years. It also states that previously the earliest known sea crossings were 60Kya.
How did the tools get there without some species of hominoid crossing the water? 200 miles is a long way to swim, so how did the hominoids cross the water? What makes you think they brought the tools with them? How do you know that quartz is not the only suitable tool making rock found on Crete?
Nobody is suggesting they deliberately navigated to Crete but it's not a streach to think they were "going to sea" in some sort of raft/boat that was used for near shore spear fishing. Nor is it a streach to think a some of them were swept away to sea by currents/storms and ended up accidently colonising Crete.
Science is about the best available explaination that fits the evidence, do you have a better explaination of how hominoids got to Crete other than the one that says they arrived by some sort of prehistoric boat/raft?
You highlight the quote - "Crete has been an island for more than five million years"
What part of the quote are you and the GP failing to understand? Why do you both seem to be under the delusion that archeoligists have never heard of ice age migration when archeology was the discipline that discovered it?
"Surrender your privacy or go on welfare."
Where are people getting the idea that you don't have to surrender your privacy to obtain welfare? If you apply for welfare they are going to want to know everything about you, including wether or not you're having sex with your flatmate.
"If this was such a big deal, ACA and TT and the rest of the commercial bottom-feeders would be all over it, especially given that it's foreigners ripping off hard-working Australians."
Wether such a story gets the attention of ACA/TT would depend entirely on the political and commercial affiliations of said forigner.
"Just like an insurer will not offer a policy on an uncertified structure, the day may come when insurers will not indemnify for losses involving the use of uncertified software."
That day has already arrived in the form of recognised quality assurance standards (eg: ISO-9000). Such standards in both software and civil engineering are concerned with prevention, detection and remedy of faults rather than the individual's skill at bolting things together.
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater." - Albert Einstein
This is what philosophy education buys you: you pay to learn to enjoy hearing yourself talk. ;-)
For what it's worth, I'm partial to the materialism.
For what it's worth, the philosophy of (scientific) materialism is based on the immaterial rules of formal logic, as are the materialistic ideas in the book the GP referenced.
"Recognition that the Universe, Biology, and Evolution are all Computational is just taking time to work it's way through the teaching material."
Thanks for the reading tip. Like many other people trained in computer science I also belive that combined with Darwinian ideas it will radically change our understanding of biology and ultimately ourselves.
To paraphrase how Douglas Adams put it for millenia science has been done by pulling things apart, but the first thing that happens when you pull a cat apart is you have a non-working cat, computers have given us the ability to do science by putting things together from the bottom up.
Despite what many people erroneously belive about computer models of things such as climate and the mammalian brain they have already demonstrated a level of sophistication that we could only dream of 30yrs ago.
BTW: My definition of life is; the process by which the universe achieves self awareness.
As I posted in a reply to someone else ANY student coming from a defined remote area can apply for rental assistance so I would expect aboriginals to be overrepresented in that particular payment. I am also ideologically against race based legislation but in my book pragmatisim trumps ideology and therefore I support laws such as banning the sale of alcohol in aboriginal settlements and the special un-sniffable petrol sold in the outback.
Given the level of misinfomation on aboriginal issues on both sides of the argument I suspect that any political party who tried to streamline the payment system would be painted as racist by their opposition. As an example I don't like Howard but I believe his intentions and actions were noble in the "NT military takeover" and were painted as racist by a large number of people who should have known better.
Just to be clear I don't think you are racists but I admit I was pushing buttons to see how you would react. I appologise for doubting your character.
Yes, the seperate schemes are a hangover from affirmative action of the 70's and 80's. As I posted in my reply to walshv007 the extreme benefits that no white man could hope for amount to an extra $6.50 per week. ANY student coming from a defined remote area can also apply for rental assistance, people living in remote areas tend to be aboriginals.
Ideologically I'm also not in favour of legislation based on race but pragmatically the aboriginals have not benifited from the so called "lucky country". Until very recently most lived in what can only be described as thrird world conditions, lost between stone age traditions and the 20th century laws.
We also have race based legislation banning the sale of alcohol in many of the aboriginal settlements, their traditional social structures are 40kyrs old and have never had to deal with alcoholisim until the last hundred years or so. Aborigines are also permitted to hunt otherwise protected species on their reserves. IMHO these laws are a GoodThing(TM).
"Call me crazy" - Ok you're crazy, $6.50 extra per week is hardly an "extreme benifit".
"Very few people would disagree that the way she handled politics wasn't very smart, or politically correct. However I believe racist would greatly depend on your definition." - Given you define two extra cups of coffee per week as an "extreme benifit", can you please explain your definition of racist.
"I just don't get it." - Yes, I figured that one out from your first post.
I stand corrected, apparently the scheme was brought in by the Howard government and I was using outdated personal anecdote. My brother-in-law lost ~$10K when the panel beaters he was working for in the 90's went tits up. Part of that $10K was super that had not been paid for almost a year. The bank came in and auctioned all the equipment in the shop, the employees saw none of the proceeds.
:)
Thanks for the education.
"We may have a ridiculous amount of asian immigrants that still speak chinese/japanese after they get here, but that still does not make us a part of asia."
We actually have very few Japanese immigrants but they do love spending their holidays and money here, particularly in Queensland where the local economy is heavily dependent on tourisim.
The Japanese are golf mad and a golf trip to Oz to play on a real golf course is cheaper than a golf club membership in Tokyo to play on a multi story driving range. On the whole they are very well mannered guests in our country and tend to stick to organised tour groups because of the language barrier.
Also every chineese immigrant I have ever met speaks english, it's a requirement to get into the country unless you come in as a refugee and we do not recognise people from China as refugees.
As you probably know there is a minority racist element in our population who idolise people such as Pauline Hanson. Hanson is ironically now emmigrating to the UK after basically being ridiculed and laughed out of politics by the rest of us. I think she is in for a shock when she finds out how many second and third generation "brown people" are wandering around the UK.
For the non-Aussie readers, members of Hansen's minority are generally refered to as "yobbos", which when translated into American means "rednecks".
The region is sometimes refered to a Australasia but even here in Oz it's not a well known term, nor has it got anything to do with Asia.
Yes, quite a hat trick.
The devil has been spotted shopping for ice skates.
He has committed tax fraud, the taxman is first in the line of creditors and has an extradition treaty with the Irish taxman. He will wake up one day in the very near future to find his bank accounts frozen.
The employees are the last in line when it comes to the creditors of a defunct company, once the taxman and banks have split up what's left the employees will get fuck all. The best the employees can hope for is seeing the prick behind bars which IMHO is a very likely outcome.
"Hasn't Enron proven without a doubt that energy trading is nothing more than a huge sham"
Err no, it proves crooks can line their own pockets by running a successful company into the ground. Take 15 seconds to think about how power is distributed across THE grid and you will see why TRADING in the wholesale energy MARKET is common sense.
"The ultimate question: Should we really be trading something which is necessary for modern life?"
The ultimate answer: Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward is generally considered to have been a bit of a cock up.
"I guess the days of doing one or two things really well are gone"
They will definitely be gone if we stop trading in essentials.