I'd say a one of a kind vintage car is news-worthy by itself, but the fact that it was Bucky's car also makes it geek-news-worthy.
My dad used to take me to vintage rallys when I was a kid in the 60's. TFA reminds me of a car that used to show up at most of the rallys. It had one ornate kerosene headlamp, there was a card inside the lamp offering a reward for "my other eye". The card was there for at least 10yrs that I know of, I often wonder if he found it?
"Are you that immature, and do you presume anyone not British to be equally immature as to interpret that as some junior high "you said fag huhuhuh" joke?"
An immature joke does not imply an immature jester or even an immature audience. I'm 50 and I still get the occasional chuckle out of the way "fanny" is used in the US. The city in SE Asia called "Phuket" also amuses me in a Bevis and Butthead kinda way.
Personally I found the OP's joke too obvious to be funny but why do you feel compelled to throw a wet blanket on it and him? Even if you are a fag (or a smoker) I can't see anything offensive and nor is that what you are complaining about.
Is it that difficult for you to show a different kind of maturity and just be indifferent (or even pleased) that someone else is having a laugh?
Just to be clear, I don't think it's a good idea to extend it to parliment, I do however think the laws as they are practiced right more wrongs than they create.
No it only applies if a "reasonable person" would take it to be true and of course I'm entitled to my opinion that the sherriff is a tin-pot dictator with delusions of granduer.
The libel/defamation laws in UK/AU are designed to make infuential people/organisations responsible for the consequenses of false accusations they make in public. Americans might see that as censorship. Like the OP I'm also a British born Aussie and see it more along the lines of enforcing common descency and keeping the highly politicised mass-media on a leash.
Sir Arthur C Clarke used the laws to force a tabloid to retract allegations of pedophilia against him. He refused to accept his knighthood for the 2yrs it took to clear his name through the courts. However these laws do not apply in parliment, "parlimentry privlage" means politicians can bullshit to their hearts content in the house.
In other words I can say I think the sheriff is a dickhead and quote him out of context to demonstrate it, but I can't put words in his mouth or lie about his actions. OTOH it's doubtfull a "reasonable person" would accept a random slashdot post at face value.
"hate to suggest it, but aren't retroactive laws mostly unconstitutional?"
I'm a 50yo Aussie who used to think he would never see the US and AU collude at the highest level to prosecute a restrospective law on a political prisoner for domestic propoganda purposes. I was wrong. The fact that Hicks is a dickhead didn't help his case but what bothered me a lot more is that for a few years a large number of people on both sides of the pacific continued to tow the government line long after it became obvious Hicks was a political pawn.
...parent informative. Ex Post Facto law is prosecuting someone for a crime that was not a crime at the time it was commited, like they did to David Hicks.
Is it "piercing the corporate veil" or a "fishing expedition"? - I would also describe it as the first, but the answer probably depends on one's politics.
"the left also attempts to take our liberties away by introducing universal healthcare" - Only in america could politics be so fucked up that implementing UHC is seen as attacking liberties.
....I would judge b) thru e) as incompetence, and a) as malice of forethought.
The woman is a careless victim, the patients are innocent victims, the hospital is a victim of it's own incompetence, the guy is a creepy bunny-boiler who got more than he bargained for when he deliberately hacked her computer.
If I were Judge Judy, after lecturing all three on their different styles of stupidity I would then award as follows...;
The hospital would get nothing in the way of compenstation and would be forced to come back in a month with a happy court appointed ipsec auditor.
The woman would at worst get a written warning from the hospital.
$30K, Three months, plus a GPS braclet for a year, plus costs would seriously fuck with the guys personal life, which seems fair punishment to me in an eye for an eye kind of way.
It's impractical to involve individual patients so the $30K would compensate the "patients" by seriously upgrading the box of broken plastic and tattered books that childrens wards euphemistically call their "toy box".
Nice selective quote, the sentance that precedes it was "...it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy".
Presumably for your own political reasons you chose to ignore that and start into a rant about how the right are acting rationally and the left are bat-shit crazy. Then you go on to dissmiss Hansen because you don't trust him. That right there my friend is called arguing from authority and is no different to the creationist habit of calling people "Darwinists" in an effort to make the argument about choosing between God's authority and Darwin's authority (neither of which actually exist in any tangible form).
Besides, if Hansen is a liar and a cheat, how do you explain "alarmist" articles such as this one in Nature or this list of similar articles in Science, are they all part of the left-wing "cosensus" conspiracy? Do you really belive that they all respect Hansen because he is the second in command behind Gore in their conspiracy, or is it because your politics won't allow to consider that they might actually respect him because his predictions have been remarkably **accurate?
"...it is HONEST to disregard the word of someone who's been caught altering data to suit his conclusions time and again".
Yes, lying is dishonest, so why are you clinging on to your beliefs by inventing/repeating lies about Hansen? And why do lie to yourself by ignoring the mountain of data, observations, experiments, and predictions that do not suit your conclusions? Are you paid to make such "grassroot" comments? Or are you really gullible enough to fall for the anti-science conspiracy theories of less rationalright wing think tankslobbyists?
**A selction of Hansens accurate predictions, I belive the first four were made in his now famous 1988(?) testimony to the senate...
# - Cooling stratosphere. - observed by sattelite and used by (amoung others) Bob Carter to confuse people.
# - More warming over land and ice - observed
# - More warming over poles - observed, the phenomena is now known as Polar Amplification .
# - More warming in the winter - observed (IPCC 2007).
# - Rapid disintergration of Artic sea ice - observed (NSIDC,WMO,NOAA,ect).
You would think people who call themselves geeks would point out that Hansen made all those predictions using the much maligned computer models rather than poo-pooing the whole idea of models, as is often the case here on slashdot. I have argued with thousands of people like you over the last decade or so, over that time people with your opinion on AGW have shrunk dramatically due solely to the overwhelming weight of the evidence.
"look at a major problem in the medical world today."
Good idea!
I agree some drug companies attempt to abuse the scientific process even going to extremes such as publishing their own journals through front groups. They use the same disinformation methods as the tabacco industry uses for it's propoganda, which also happens to be identical to the disinformation methods that the fossil fuel companies are (successfully) using on you. If you were alive duri
Correct "Science =! Public Policy" but one would hope science informs policy, which is exactly what the IPCC was set up to do.
"Rather it's unpopular because for every honest scientist out there, there's a hundred James Hanson or Al Gore types shouting about the end of the world, or a new way to "cure" male pattern baldness, or herbally make erections larger or breasts bigger, or a thousand other things that turn out later to be absolute bullshit."
Your post demonstrates a peculiar problem in the US in that many people don't even recognise science when it's shoved under their nose, it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy. Occasionally this culture of believing what suits you spills over into serious matters such as the right wing anti-environmental dogma getting in the way of rational discussions.
It seems to be a culturally acceptable thing in the US to ignore a mountain of data because you don't agree with the messenger's politics. Or perhaps a lack of scientific understanding leaves a vast audience susceptible to the misinformation of lobbyists from the heartland institute (amoung others) who supply an endless stream of irrelevant cherry-picks and red-herrings via their "front" sites such as iceap and WUWT. Either way calling Hansen's science "snake oil" only demonstrates the lack of basic scientific awareness TFA is banging on about.However as an adult you have nobody to blame for your ignorance except yourself, perhaps if you could stop taking pot shots at the messengers for a few moments and actually investigate the claims you might appreciate two world renowned geeks a bit more.
Not in my school (Australian public HS, Form 2 - circa 1972), we were not ALLOWED to sit next to girls either. Most of this STATE SANCTIONED sexual segregation was gone by time I left in 1976, IIRC 72-76 coincides with the burning bras fad that I would like to see come back in style.
Filters on space telescopes are normally tuned to gather different emission spectra of certain atoms and molecules, the colour pictures are often combinations that show (say) red for hydrogen, green for oxygen and blue for nitrogen. Sometimes these spectra are visable to a human eye, sometimes there not. Astronomers do not "touch up" the colours but they often select an asthetically pleasing view of the data.
"The world has changed in the last fifty years.The world has changed in the last fifty years."
Dropped out of HS in 1975, I get about 35wpm with 2 fingers. Boys were not allowed to take typing or cooking classes. Girls were not allowed to take wood/metal-work or mechanical drawing classes.
Yes it is bullshit and it's no better than the greenpeace bullshit on the other side of politics. I can recall a recent discovery in Australia earlier this year that was reported in the local news. Allthough I can't remeber who or where the discovery was made, a quick google shows thare are lots of companies actively prospecting for uranium in Oz.
Simarly the "enough uranium for 1000yrs" is also overly optimitic (ie:bullshit), the most common figure I have read is 100-150yrs.
As for TFA, the solar pre-heat is a great idea and can be adapted to suit most industrial boilers. However as another poster remarked, I hope it is not used as greenwash to justify building more coal plants.
In the abscense of a working cap and trade scheme I like the UK idea where I believe they have banned new coal plants unless they reduce the emmissions of the plant by X%. In other words I'm waiting for the coal companies to put their taxpayer donated carbon capture money where their mouth is, until then I think they should be stoppped from adding to the problem.
"A good start would be to remove the grandfather clause from plants exempt from emissions control. A bad choice would be to radically change our power grid on the issue that coal contains naturally radioactive isotopes."
The main issues with coal plants is CO2, areosols, and acid rain, radioactive isotopes are a bonus feature. Cleaning up old plants for areosols but not CO2 is a double edge sword. Yes you get rid of the acid rain and the kind of smog seen in China as the west did in the 50-60's but manmade areosols are the largest -ve forcing factor in climate change (CO2 being the largest +ve forcing), ie: the planet will heat up faster if Asia decides to clean up their soot but not their C02.
My physics lecturer at uni had a similar attitude to alpha sources, he was a non smoker who died of lung cancer before he hit 40.
"What comes-out is basically just water vapor"
Now that's Penn & Teller, coal plant smoke stack scrubbers do not remove ALL the areosols and they do nothing for the CO2. All the personal gas heaters in the world do not come close to the 4-5 BILLION TONS of coal burnt by coal plants each year.
"what if mom unplugs your server to give your basement it's annual vacuum?"
Who cares about a power blip? - I would love mum to come over and shovel the crap off the carpet but she keeps giving me all this shit about how being 80 means she's too old to push a wheelbarrow.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say a one of a kind vintage car is news-worthy by itself, but the fact that it was Bucky's car also makes it geek-news-worthy.
My dad used to take me to vintage rallys when I was a kid in the 60's. TFA reminds me of a car that used to show up at most of the rallys. It had one ornate kerosene headlamp, there was a card inside the lamp offering a reward for "my other eye". The card was there for at least 10yrs that I know of, I often wonder if he found it?
"Are you that immature, and do you presume anyone not British to be equally immature as to interpret that as some junior high "you said fag huhuhuh" joke?"
An immature joke does not imply an immature jester or even an immature audience. I'm 50 and I still get the occasional chuckle out of the way "fanny" is used in the US. The city in SE Asia called "Phuket" also amuses me in a Bevis and Butthead kinda way.
Personally I found the OP's joke too obvious to be funny but why do you feel compelled to throw a wet blanket on it and him? Even if you are a fag (or a smoker) I can't see anything offensive and nor is that what you are complaining about.
Is it that difficult for you to show a different kind of maturity and just be indifferent (or even pleased) that someone else is having a laugh?
Just to be clear, I don't think it's a good idea to extend it to parliment, I do however think the laws as they are practiced right more wrongs than they create.
Yes but you might not want bystanders to read the note, especially if you just write "sorry" and omit your contact details.
Great word!
define:phlebotomist
#1 - (Princeton): "Someone who practices phlebotomy".
No it only applies if a "reasonable person" would take it to be true and of course I'm entitled to my opinion that the sherriff is a tin-pot dictator with delusions of granduer.
The libel/defamation laws in UK/AU are designed to make infuential people/organisations responsible for the consequenses of false accusations they make in public. Americans might see that as censorship. Like the OP I'm also a British born Aussie and see it more along the lines of enforcing common descency and keeping the highly politicised mass-media on a leash.
Sir Arthur C Clarke used the laws to force a tabloid to retract allegations of pedophilia against him. He refused to accept his knighthood for the 2yrs it took to clear his name through the courts. However these laws do not apply in parliment, "parlimentry privlage" means politicians can bullshit to their hearts content in the house.
In other words I can say I think the sheriff is a dickhead and quote him out of context to demonstrate it, but I can't put words in his mouth or lie about his actions. OTOH it's doubtfull a "reasonable person" would accept a random slashdot post at face value.
"hate to suggest it, but aren't retroactive laws mostly unconstitutional?"
I'm a 50yo Aussie who used to think he would never see the US and AU collude at the highest level to prosecute a restrospective law on a political prisoner for domestic propoganda purposes. I was wrong. The fact that Hicks is a dickhead didn't help his case but what bothered me a lot more is that for a few years a large number of people on both sides of the pacific continued to tow the government line long after it became obvious Hicks was a political pawn.
...parent informative. Ex Post Facto law is prosecuting someone for a crime that was not a crime at the time it was commited, like they did to David Hicks.
Is it "piercing the corporate veil" or a "fishing expedition"? - I would also describe it as the first, but the answer probably depends on one's politics.
"In order to stand trial for war crimes, don't you have to lose a war?"
In theory no, in practice yes.
"the left also attempts to take our liberties away by introducing universal healthcare" - Only in america could politics be so fucked up that implementing UHC is seen as attacking liberties.
Cat got your tounge?
....I would judge b) thru e) as incompetence, and a) as malice of forethought.
The woman is a careless victim, the patients are innocent victims, the hospital is a victim of it's own incompetence, the guy is a creepy bunny-boiler who got more than he bargained for when he deliberately hacked her computer.
If I were Judge Judy, after lecturing all three on their different styles of stupidity I would then award as follows...;
The hospital would get nothing in the way of compenstation and would be forced to come back in a month with a happy court appointed ipsec auditor.
The woman would at worst get a written warning from the hospital.
$30K, Three months, plus a GPS braclet for a year, plus costs would seriously fuck with the guys personal life, which seems fair punishment to me in an eye for an eye kind of way.
It's impractical to involve individual patients so the $30K would compensate the "patients" by seriously upgrading the box of broken plastic and tattered books that childrens wards euphemistically call their "toy box".
Nice selective quote, the sentance that precedes it was "...it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy".
Presumably for your own political reasons you chose to ignore that and start into a rant about how the right are acting rationally and the left are bat-shit crazy. Then you go on to dissmiss Hansen because you don't trust him. That right there my friend is called arguing from authority and is no different to the creationist habit of calling people "Darwinists" in an effort to make the argument about choosing between God's authority and Darwin's authority (neither of which actually exist in any tangible form).
Besides, if Hansen is a liar and a cheat, how do you explain "alarmist" articles such as this one in Nature or this list of similar articles in Science, are they all part of the left-wing "cosensus" conspiracy? Do you really belive that they all respect Hansen because he is the second in command behind Gore in their conspiracy, or is it because your politics won't allow to consider that they might actually respect him because his predictions have been remarkably **accurate?
"...it is HONEST to disregard the word of someone who's been caught altering data to suit his conclusions time and again".
Yes, lying is dishonest, so why are you clinging on to your beliefs by inventing/repeating lies about Hansen? And why do lie to yourself by ignoring the mountain of data, observations, experiments, and predictions that do not suit your conclusions? Are you paid to make such "grassroot" comments? Or are you really gullible enough to fall for the anti-science conspiracy theories of less rationalright wing think tankslobbyists?
**A selction of Hansens accurate predictions, I belive the first four were made in his now famous 1988(?) testimony to the senate...
# - Cooling stratosphere. - observed by sattelite and used by (amoung others) Bob Carter to confuse people.
# - More warming over land and ice - observed
# - More warming over poles - observed, the phenomena is now known as Polar Amplification .
# - More warming in the winter - observed (IPCC 2007).
# - Rapid disintergration of Artic sea ice - observed (NSIDC,WMO,NOAA,ect).
You would think people who call themselves geeks would point out that Hansen made all those predictions using the much maligned computer models rather than poo-pooing the whole idea of models, as is often the case here on slashdot. I have argued with thousands of people like you over the last decade or so, over that time people with your opinion on AGW have shrunk dramatically due solely to the overwhelming weight of the evidence.
"look at a major problem in the medical world today."
Good idea!
I agree some drug companies attempt to abuse the scientific process even going to extremes such as publishing their own journals through front groups. They use the same disinformation methods as the tabacco industry uses for it's propoganda, which also happens to be identical to the disinformation methods that the fossil fuel companies are (successfully) using on you. If you were alive duri
Correct "Science =! Public Policy" but one would hope science informs policy, which is exactly what the IPCC was set up to do.
"Rather it's unpopular because for every honest scientist out there, there's a hundred James Hanson or Al Gore types shouting about the end of the world, or a new way to "cure" male pattern baldness, or herbally make erections larger or breasts bigger, or a thousand other things that turn out later to be absolute bullshit."
Your post demonstrates a peculiar problem in the US in that many people don't even recognise science when it's shoved under their nose, it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy. Occasionally this culture of believing what suits you spills over into serious matters such as the right wing anti-environmental dogma getting in the way of rational discussions.
It seems to be a culturally acceptable thing in the US to ignore a mountain of data because you don't agree with the messenger's politics. Or perhaps a lack of scientific understanding leaves a vast audience susceptible to the misinformation of lobbyists from the heartland institute (amoung others) who supply an endless stream of irrelevant cherry-picks and red-herrings via their "front" sites such as iceap and WUWT. Either way calling Hansen's science "snake oil" only demonstrates the lack of basic scientific awareness TFA is banging on about.However as an adult you have nobody to blame for your ignorance except yourself, perhaps if you could stop taking pot shots at the messengers for a few moments and actually investigate the claims you might appreciate two world renowned geeks a bit more.
"It's not the job of Albany or Washington to protect me from my own stupidity. "
Yes, but it is their job to protect my insurance premiums from your stupidity .
Not in my school (Australian public HS, Form 2 - circa 1972), we were not ALLOWED to sit next to girls either. Most of this STATE SANCTIONED sexual segregation was gone by time I left in 1976, IIRC 72-76 coincides with the burning bras fad that I would like to see come back in style.
Filters on space telescopes are normally tuned to gather different emission spectra of certain atoms and molecules, the colour pictures are often combinations that show (say) red for hydrogen, green for oxygen and blue for nitrogen. Sometimes these spectra are visable to a human eye, sometimes there not. Astronomers do not "touch up" the colours but they often select an asthetically pleasing view of the data.
Must be an echo in my keyboard. ;)
"The world has changed in the last fifty years.The world has changed in the last fifty years."
Dropped out of HS in 1975, I get about 35wpm with 2 fingers. Boys were not allowed to take typing or cooking classes. Girls were not allowed to take wood/metal-work or mechanical drawing classes.
Hmmmmmm, that gives me an idea...
Yes it is bullshit and it's no better than the greenpeace bullshit on the other side of politics. I can recall a recent discovery in Australia earlier this year that was reported in the local news. Allthough I can't remeber who or where the discovery was made, a quick google shows thare are lots of companies actively prospecting for uranium in Oz.
Simarly the "enough uranium for 1000yrs" is also overly optimitic (ie:bullshit), the most common figure I have read is 100-150yrs.
As for TFA, the solar pre-heat is a great idea and can be adapted to suit most industrial boilers. However as another poster remarked, I hope it is not used as greenwash to justify building more coal plants.
In the abscense of a working cap and trade scheme I like the UK idea where I believe they have banned new coal plants unless they reduce the emmissions of the plant by X%. In other words I'm waiting for the coal companies to put their taxpayer donated carbon capture money where their mouth is, until then I think they should be stoppped from adding to the problem.
"A good start would be to remove the grandfather clause from plants exempt from emissions control. A bad choice would be to radically change our power grid on the issue that coal contains naturally radioactive isotopes."
The main issues with coal plants is CO2, areosols, and acid rain, radioactive isotopes are a bonus feature. Cleaning up old plants for areosols but not CO2 is a double edge sword. Yes you get rid of the acid rain and the kind of smog seen in China as the west did in the 50-60's but manmade areosols are the largest -ve forcing factor in climate change (CO2 being the largest +ve forcing), ie: the planet will heat up faster if Asia decides to clean up their soot but not their C02.
My physics lecturer at uni had a similar attitude to alpha sources, he was a non smoker who died of lung cancer before he hit 40.
"What comes-out is basically just water vapor"
Now that's Penn & Teller, coal plant smoke stack scrubbers do not remove ALL the areosols and they do nothing for the CO2. All the personal gas heaters in the world do not come close to the 4-5 BILLION TONS of coal burnt by coal plants each year.
"what if mom unplugs your server to give your basement it's annual vacuum?"
Who cares about a power blip? - I would love mum to come over and shovel the crap off the carpet but she keeps giving me all this shit about how being 80 means she's too old to push a wheelbarrow.