I am not an American but it sure would help if certain American's and their pet lobbyists stopped using psuedo-science and lies to convince small-minded gullible fools that Al Gore has the power and/or charisma to corrupt the members of every major scientific instutution on Earth. I have even had such fools here on slashdot tell me I can't point to the journals Nature or Science when talking about AGW because apparently they too are part of Al Gore's global conspiracy.
Here are some examples of the lies and lobbying I am talking about, Senator Inhofe who's list of desenting scientists, has as much cedibility as the dicovery institute list of scientists that supposedly reject evolution but that has not stopped a large number of slashdotter's from waving it around like a magic wand that somehow makes facts dissapear. Then there is the "Heartland institute" run by one Fred Singer who was also prominent in the tabacco industry's anti-science propoganda. Another site that has raised it's ugly head and that can also be related to the anti-science lobby of the tabacco companies is called IceCap, this site specializes in conflating various regions of ice all over the planet and is incapable of ditingushing the North pole from the south pole. It is run by a guy who is on the payroll at the "Science and Public Policy Institute", who are in turn funded by the "Frontiers of Freedom" which is the lobbting brain fart of yet another (ex) US senator. Wallop and Singer are mates from the tabacco industries anti-science cmapaign, the major contributors to the Frontiers of Freedom include Philip Morris and ExxonMobil.
Yep, these anti-science and anti-environment politicians/CEO's have nothing but good intentions, they publish their propoganda to protect you from "environmental whack jobs" and the scientific community who make ludicrous claims such as smoking causes cancer or that a healthy economy and a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive. They have somehow convinced a large chunk of the US that it's not them who are running scams and lying it's the scientific community under the direction of Al Gore who are the liars and scammers.
"Get real."
How about you get real, pull your head out of the sand and drop the alarmist hyperbole, nobody is putting greenpeace in charge of anything but there is a problem and the anti-enviroment/anti-science rhetoric/popoganda coming from the US over the last decade is what has perverted any attempt at a real solution.
"(Yeah, I know. This will almost certainly get modded down to oblivion by KOSdot mods, probably modded "-1 Troll" but screw it. I've got the karma to burn.)"
I have no idea who KOSdot are and I'm not a fan of greenpeace but I agree that your misguided alarmisim should be moderated into oblivion.
Here in Australia we used to have a TV/Radio license similar to what the UK have. The problem is that the licenses are beuracratically costly and difficult to enforce. We dumped the 1920's idea of licenses decades ago in favor of funding the ABC, SBS, Radio Australia, etc, via general revenue. The ABC/SBS have some great shows, the ABC make thier shows available on the net for a week after broadcasting.
As with the BBC they are funded by the government as opposed to run by the government and IMHO it's worth my $0.08/day to maintain the wonderfull tradition of taking the piss out of the government of the day, however I don't want to pay an extra $0.10/day just to support a goverment department that issues bits of paper to those who pay their $0.08/day.
"Simply put, the ACLU seems to be more interested in fringe cases."
It is NOT a fringe case to suspend Habeas corpus and enact retrospective laws to keep one of my countrymen locked up for political reasons. And no, this does not make me a "Hicks supporter" as our prime minister was fond of saying about anyone who thought keeping Hicks as a political prisoner was morally repugnent and illeagal.
You are making the same "mistake" about the ACLU as our PM did about me and others in this country who were appalled to see a "kangaroo court" sweep the rule of law under the rug for political reasons. The ACLU are not "defending terrorists" they are defending the rule of law and the civil liberties that those laws enshrine.
"when it's something that affects all freedom-loving internet users"
Specifically, what rights does a "freedom-loving internet user" have that are being abused by keeping treaty negotiations secret?
I agree that in yrs 11-12 the school make a big difference since each school specializes in certain areas, music, computers, etc, private schools have better resources to buy the equipment and pay for specialist teachers. But still my son's public HS had a very nice purpose built theater for their music/drama speciality.
People think they are getting better education because they pay out a fortune. However what they are paying for is a school that agrees with their own religious dogma or that offers a chance for their kids to socialise with the kids of the rich and famous. For example, my Son-in-law went to a private catholic school in Melbourne, my daughter went public, guess which one has a better understanding of scientific concepts such as evolution (and yes I know what the vatican says about evoultion but apparently many Catholics did not get the memo). The biggest factor in a childs eductaion is not the teacher or school, it's the parent.
"This information is the only thing that stands between us and the knowledge of how much you do care!"
Only if we know what total_care is, AFAIK total_care is a variable that max-es out around care_too_much, minimum total_care is always related to a power of insurance_company or gov_dept.
"Considering there is no human on board to generate a murder charge, that little fucker wouldn't last a minute over Los Angeles, but then again, we got guns."
1. Shoot at drone that is filming you.
2. Watch as drone drops from the sky over a densely populated area.
3. Continue watering plants.
What could possibly go wrong?
It's also worth pointing out galaxies orbit each other and when the galaxies are of similar size you get repeated collisions before a merger. Black holes were a mathematical conjecture when I was a kid and we still tend to think of galaxies as islands that occasionally bump into each other but advances in astronomy and computing are telling us it's a much more dynamic and structured universe than we thought existed 30-40yrs ago.
It's the place where the bones were found that is remarkable, obviously some things survived somewhere on the planet and evolved into birds, humans, etc. However America was closest to the impact and the KT-boundry in N America is preserved in the rock as a layer of tiny glass beads (vaporised sand) that covers the entire continent. The only thing in the American fossil record for a couple of million years after the hit is an abundance of plants and some marine animals.
To find a bunch of dinosaurs that survived what the entire insect population could not, is an extrodinary claim. However I don't think the scientists themselves are explicitly making this claim, I think they are just reporting their evidence and asking "how could this be?".
"So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm..."
No, but the good news is modern technology has brought the internet into our caves and in the time it takes to post this comment another 2 "Cave chicks go Rex riding" websites will have been created.
As for TFA, interesting but only just outside the uranium dating error bars and no mention of the error margin in the strike date ~65mya. No mention of a KT boundry at the site that is clearly below the fossils. There is very strong evidence that insects were wiped out across the Americas for over a million years, so I think a bit more extrodinary evidence is required to belive a band of dinosours somehow survived in a "lost valley".
"we have no consistent morals other than acting in ways that support others most like us"
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with what you say, others have said it before but none with such insight and humour as found in the monkeysphere We do have a moral code that applies to "us", some of "them" may share it but who cares? ie: the reason it's inconsistent is that our brain is designed to see 99.99999% of humanity as something that is inferior to our family and friends.
"We are horrifically selfish beings (myself included, unfortunately)."
I don't think recognising you are part of the monkeysphere is unfortunate, in fact I think it has the potential to enumarate a more rational set of mores and let go of the bronze age ideals of genocide, murder, slavery, etc, as enshrined in holy scriptures and innumerable legal codes.
This years vaccine protects against influenza A, the outbreak is also a strain of influenza A, but because it's a new strain it will be weeks/months before they can say with certainty wether the vaccine is effective.
IMHO if it is a major pandemic then they don't have weeks/months to run tests and the most prudent course of action would be to take whatever is on offer.
"If you are a religious person than I can understand your position. If you are not then I wonder how you arrived at it. I don't know where you are coming from here, but I do wonder about the large number of people in the West who renounce or ignore religious faith and yet still have this sense of moral certainty and who freely make moral judgement of one and all."
Religion was invented to explain and exploit our existing "morals". "Thou shall not kill" did not come from God it came from a man who was expressing what billions of years of evolution has made him think. Sure you can attempt to rationalise these inate morals away but if you manage to that then you will probably be classified as a phycopath or at the very least a sociopath.
I disagree, enumerating and testing assumptions is at the core of their job description. They don't have any examples of "life as we don't know it" so they cannot make ANY TESTABLE ASSUMPTIONS about it, if scientists cannot test it then it's NOT science. This probably explains why your dragon's egg link is classified as fiction.
Life requires self-replication... that's it. It doesn't require water and it doesn't require chirality. It doesn't require a whole host of things that scientists tend to assume it requires simply because it's a characteristic we've observed about life on earth.
Crystals self replicate on the atomic scale so I think your definition requires some work. The characteristics we have observed on Earth are the ONLY KNOWN characteristics for differentiating between life and "something else". Sure there may be "life as we don't know it" somewhere, it could even turn out to be god, but why waste telescope time and probes looking for something with unknown characteristics? It's much, much, much, more efficient to SCIENTIFICALLY narrow the search to "life as we know it". You can prove this efficientcy claim to yourself by simply picking up a rock and listing it's infinite set of unknwon characteristics.
It's a shame you felt you had to take a poke at scientists since you are obviously an intelligent life form and the rest of your post contains some interesting speculation.
How insightfull of you to put your words in other people's mouths.
The last few years have been warmer than any year in the 20th centry except 1998.
Antartic sea ice was PREDITED to expand using climate models.
The last one is just mindless.
As for religion, I'm afraid you are the one who's dogma is impervious to science. OTOH it's a free country and you have the right to make a fool of yourself.
Thanks for that, I agree the madman is indeed a bright spark. Also your links look ok to me in FF, could be because it's twilight here in Oz right now, perhaps he has only just noticed he left the plasma halo around his server switched on.
...and the difference in death tolls. The warm weather followed us to N scotland. The pubs are built of stone with meter thick walls and low heavy ceilings, they were like an oven when full of people.
Slashdot Mirror
For fuck's sake, climate != weather, go read something.
I am not an American but it sure would help if certain American's and their pet lobbyists stopped using psuedo-science and lies to convince small-minded gullible fools that Al Gore has the power and/or charisma to corrupt the members of every major scientific instutution on Earth. I have even had such fools here on slashdot tell me I can't point to the journals Nature or Science when talking about AGW because apparently they too are part of Al Gore's global conspiracy.
Here are some examples of the lies and lobbying I am talking about, Senator Inhofe who's list of desenting scientists, has as much cedibility as the dicovery institute list of scientists that supposedly reject evolution but that has not stopped a large number of slashdotter's from waving it around like a magic wand that somehow makes facts dissapear. Then there is the "Heartland institute" run by one Fred Singer who was also prominent in the tabacco industry's anti-science propoganda. Another site that has raised it's ugly head and that can also be related to the anti-science lobby of the tabacco companies is called IceCap, this site specializes in conflating various regions of ice all over the planet and is incapable of ditingushing the North pole from the south pole. It is run by a guy who is on the payroll at the "Science and Public Policy Institute", who are in turn funded by the "Frontiers of Freedom" which is the lobbting brain fart of yet another (ex) US senator. Wallop and Singer are mates from the tabacco industries anti-science cmapaign, the major contributors to the Frontiers of Freedom include Philip Morris and ExxonMobil.
Yep, these anti-science and anti-environment politicians/CEO's have nothing but good intentions, they publish their propoganda to protect you from "environmental whack jobs" and the scientific community who make ludicrous claims such as smoking causes cancer or that a healthy economy and a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive. They have somehow convinced a large chunk of the US that it's not them who are running scams and lying it's the scientific community under the direction of Al Gore who are the liars and scammers.
"Get real."
How about you get real, pull your head out of the sand and drop the alarmist hyperbole, nobody is putting greenpeace in charge of anything but there is a problem and the anti-enviroment/anti-science rhetoric/popoganda coming from the US over the last decade is what has perverted any attempt at a real solution.
"(Yeah, I know. This will almost certainly get modded down to oblivion by KOSdot mods, probably modded "-1 Troll" but screw it. I've got the karma to burn.)"
I have no idea who KOSdot are and I'm not a fan of greenpeace but I agree that your misguided alarmisim should be moderated into oblivion.
Here in Australia we used to have a TV/Radio license similar to what the UK have. The problem is that the licenses are beuracratically costly and difficult to enforce. We dumped the 1920's idea of licenses decades ago in favor of funding the ABC, SBS, Radio Australia, etc, via general revenue. The ABC/SBS have some great shows, the ABC make thier shows available on the net for a week after broadcasting.
As with the BBC they are funded by the government as opposed to run by the government and IMHO it's worth my $0.08/day to maintain the wonderfull tradition of taking the piss out of the government of the day, however I don't want to pay an extra $0.10/day just to support a goverment department that issues bits of paper to those who pay their $0.08/day.
You seem to be conflating the ACLU with legal aid.
"Simply put, the ACLU seems to be more interested in fringe cases."
It is NOT a fringe case to suspend Habeas corpus and enact retrospective laws to keep one of my countrymen locked up for political reasons. And no, this does not make me a "Hicks supporter" as our prime minister was fond of saying about anyone who thought keeping Hicks as a political prisoner was morally repugnent and illeagal.
You are making the same "mistake" about the ACLU as our PM did about me and others in this country who were appalled to see a "kangaroo court" sweep the rule of law under the rug for political reasons. The ACLU are not "defending terrorists" they are defending the rule of law and the civil liberties that those laws enshrine.
"when it's something that affects all freedom-loving internet users"
Specifically, what rights does a "freedom-loving internet user" have that are being abused by keeping treaty negotiations secret?
I agree that in yrs 11-12 the school make a big difference since each school specializes in certain areas, music, computers, etc, private schools have better resources to buy the equipment and pay for specialist teachers. But still my son's public HS had a very nice purpose built theater for their music/drama speciality.
In '76 I used to dream of $5/hr (AU), now get off my lawn.
People think they are getting better education because they pay out a fortune. However what they are paying for is a school that agrees with their own religious dogma or that offers a chance for their kids to socialise with the kids of the rich and famous. For example, my Son-in-law went to a private catholic school in Melbourne, my daughter went public, guess which one has a better understanding of scientific concepts such as evolution (and yes I know what the vatican says about evoultion but apparently many Catholics did not get the memo). The biggest factor in a childs eductaion is not the teacher or school, it's the parent.
"This information is the only thing that stands between us and the knowledge of how much you do care!"
Only if we know what total_care is, AFAIK total_care is a variable that max-es out around care_too_much, minimum total_care is always related to a power of insurance_company or gov_dept.
"Considering there is no human on board to generate a murder charge, that little fucker wouldn't last a minute over Los Angeles, but then again, we got guns."
1. Shoot at drone that is filming you.
2. Watch as drone drops from the sky over a densely populated area.
3. Continue watering plants.
What could possibly go wrong?
"so why are you afraid to admit that the biblical account of creation and history might be a better way to explain the evidence presented?"
If "god did it" satisfies your intellectual curiosity then your own bible says you are a fool.
It's also worth pointing out galaxies orbit each other and when the galaxies are of similar size you get repeated collisions before a merger. Black holes were a mathematical conjecture when I was a kid and we still tend to think of galaxies as islands that occasionally bump into each other but advances in astronomy and computing are telling us it's a much more dynamic and structured universe than we thought existed 30-40yrs ago.
It's the place where the bones were found that is remarkable, obviously some things survived somewhere on the planet and evolved into birds, humans, etc. However America was closest to the impact and the KT-boundry in N America is preserved in the rock as a layer of tiny glass beads (vaporised sand) that covers the entire continent. The only thing in the American fossil record for a couple of million years after the hit is an abundance of plants and some marine animals.
To find a bunch of dinosaurs that survived what the entire insect population could not, is an extrodinary claim. However I don't think the scientists themselves are explicitly making this claim, I think they are just reporting their evidence and asking "how could this be?".
"I program computers for a living."
CS degree, 20yrs commercial experience - IMHO the parent is one of the best posts I have read on electronic voting.
"So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm..."
No, but the good news is modern technology has brought the internet into our caves and in the time it takes to post this comment another 2 "Cave chicks go Rex riding" websites will have been created.
As for TFA, interesting but only just outside the uranium dating error bars and no mention of the error margin in the strike date ~65mya. No mention of a KT boundry at the site that is clearly below the fossils. There is very strong evidence that insects were wiped out across the Americas for over a million years, so I think a bit more extrodinary evidence is required to belive a band of dinosours somehow survived in a "lost valley".
"we have no consistent morals other than acting in ways that support others most like us"
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with what you say, others have said it before but none with such insight and humour as found in the monkeysphere We do have a moral code that applies to "us", some of "them" may share it but who cares? ie: the reason it's inconsistent is that our brain is designed to see 99.99999% of humanity as something that is inferior to our family and friends.
"We are horrifically selfish beings (myself included, unfortunately)."
I don't think recognising you are part of the monkeysphere is unfortunate, in fact I think it has the potential to enumarate a more rational set of mores and let go of the bronze age ideals of genocide, murder, slavery, etc, as enshrined in holy scriptures and innumerable legal codes.
It's a bit premature to say "no".
This years vaccine protects against influenza A, the outbreak is also a strain of influenza A, but because it's a new strain it will be weeks/months before they can say with certainty wether the vaccine is effective.
IMHO if it is a major pandemic then they don't have weeks/months to run tests and the most prudent course of action would be to take whatever is on offer.
"If you are a religious person than I can understand your position. If you are not then I wonder how you arrived at it. I don't know where you are coming from here, but I do wonder about the large number of people in the West who renounce or ignore religious faith and yet still have this sense of moral certainty and who freely make moral judgement of one and all."
Religion was invented to explain and exploit our existing "morals". "Thou shall not kill" did not come from God it came from a man who was expressing what billions of years of evolution has made him think. Sure you can attempt to rationalise these inate morals away but if you manage to that then you will probably be classified as a phycopath or at the very least a sociopath.
"Scientists make too many assumptions."
I disagree, enumerating and testing assumptions is at the core of their job description. They don't have any examples of "life as we don't know it" so they cannot make ANY TESTABLE ASSUMPTIONS about it, if scientists cannot test it then it's NOT science. This probably explains why your dragon's egg link is classified as fiction.
Life requires self-replication... that's it. It doesn't require water and it doesn't require chirality. It doesn't require a whole host of things that scientists tend to assume it requires simply because it's a characteristic we've observed about life on earth.
Crystals self replicate on the atomic scale so I think your definition requires some work. The characteristics we have observed on Earth are the ONLY KNOWN characteristics for differentiating between life and "something else". Sure there may be "life as we don't know it" somewhere, it could even turn out to be god, but why waste telescope time and probes looking for something with unknown characteristics? It's much, much, much, more efficient to SCIENTIFICALLY narrow the search to "life as we know it". You can prove this efficientcy claim to yourself by simply picking up a rock and listing it's infinite set of unknwon characteristics.
It's a shame you felt you had to take a poke at scientists since you are obviously an intelligent life form and the rest of your post contains some interesting speculation.
Stop stalking me with your idiocy, wanker!
How insightfull of you to put your words in other people's mouths.
The last few years have been warmer than any year in the 20th centry except 1998.
Antartic sea ice was PREDITED to expand using climate models.
The last one is just mindless.
As for religion, I'm afraid you are the one who's dogma is impervious to science. OTOH it's a free country and you have the right to make a fool of yourself.
"Check out the molecular weight of CO2 sometime."
Why? - Is there a problem with Earth's gravity?
TFA states the iron leaches from the bedrock, I presume the sulphur does too.
Thanks for that, I agree the madman is indeed a bright spark. Also your links look ok to me in FF, could be because it's twilight here in Oz right now, perhaps he has only just noticed he left the plasma halo around his server switched on.
...and the difference in death tolls. The warm weather followed us to N scotland. The pubs are built of stone with meter thick walls and low heavy ceilings, they were like an oven when full of people.