"What is wrong is Slashdot carrying a lot of stories about fake science that happens to want investors.
This site is about the comments. The articles feed the debates, sometimes science is seen as crap and sometimes it's the other way around. I know of no other place where after the initial mod frenzy settles can you find such an array of both proffesional and amature experts commenting on the internet equivalent of the "science" section in a global newsagent. All other science orientated boards I know of are either special interest or have crappy moderation/threading systems.
Your sig talks about the importance of knowing the meaning of science and you mention fake science in you post. I can think of no better tool for quickly determing the difference than to have the issue posted on slashdot and subsequently fiercly debated over the next 24hrs by hundreds of geeks and moderated/read by hundreds of thousands more geeks many of them who indeed know the meaning of science, law, economics, maths, philosphy, etc.
If all you do on slashdot is post your opinion or RTFA then you are missing the point, wether by design or accident it serves the role of skeptic to your own assumptions about what appears in the press. Outright lies, voodoo and sock-puppets are pounced apon, for the rest of the articles the moderated version is rarely clear cut, sometimes biased, always informative, and often humorous.
In otherwords if you cannot understand that a story about rat brained robots was just made for slashdot then I think it's time to hand in your geek card.
Apart from the ad-homs that was an informative and insightful reply, right up until the point you assume to know everything about the GP's political views.
Disclaimers: Non American. I don't actually agree with your reply. I'm an old fart and feel like posting a rant.
rant/
I was born in 1959, I remeber the wall coming down but I don't remember the end of the cold war. As I see it the wars in the ME are between two fading empires. The first is a bankrupt empire run by a crime syndicate who's main customer is China, the second is an empire that is indebted to China and has recently lost a lot of it's clout as an essential Chinese customer, this empire has been in the process of consolidating power under one man while the empire itself spirals toward bankruptcy. China itself over the last 3-4 decades has gone from a famine infested hell hole to a well oiled economic jugernaught representing 1/5 of mankind.
The alternative to international fuedalisim is the picture painted by the UN where international politics is exemplyfied by the response to the tsunami and dammed by the reponse to Rawanda/Burma/etc.
Neither version particularly inspires me, humans are tribal creatures living in a global society, our technology has outpaced our evolution such that personal tribes are constantly changing as people jump from job to job. You can know the guy at the local shop for 10yrs, suddenly he sells up and you are no longer part of each others tribe. But hey, I'm too old for spear chucking of the modern or ancient variety and I'd be dead several times over if not for modern medicine.
Gerogia, LOTR style: The Bear and the Eagle had words at the inter-kingdom games, the Bear accused the Eagle of enslaving Kosovo into the guild and said he was making sure the same thing didn't happen to Osetia, "If the Eagle tries to stop me I will take all of Georgia and sever the black snake, and if the Eagle puts his magic shield on my doorstep I will send it to the rubbish heap".
The frog heard of the argument and became concerned about the black snake as it helps keep his guild ice-free in the winter time. He said to the Eagle "Let the Bear have Osetia if he promises not to touch the black snake". The Eagle's pride was hurt at the suggestion of backing down, his feathers started to puff up in frustration. The Frog gulped and started to turn away, as he turned he spied the orange puppet all torn and tattered after the Bear had swiped it with a paw, "The world needs a scapegoat" he said.
Postscript (in jest): After several frustrating hours of trying to explain what that meant to a birdbrain the Frog and his backers at the guild simply gave up and announced the ceasefire anyway, the Bear accepted and demanded the Eagle sacrafice the orange puppet. Later the guild managed to distract the Eagle by pointing out the orange puppet's face was turning green again.
/rant
Edison by Mathew Josephson.
Public whipping - Pg-13.
Deafness - Pg-31.
But now I have to admit I totally mangled what the book says, my feeble excuse is that I read it nearly two decades ago.
I admire Edison and liked the book so much it's still on my bookshelf, so to set the record straight: His father publicly whipped him on several occasions, the worst of his offences was setting fire to the barn, he also got caught screwing with the minds of civil war troops camped near his home. The railway worker was called Stevenson, he did not smack Edison in the head, he lifted him on to the train by his ears!!! ( Tom had his arms full of glass beakers, Stevenson was trying to help? ).
Edison himself blamed the deafness on Stevenson, without ill feeling since by 19th century standards Stevenson was good to him as was his father. Edison said that he heard a pop and went deaf in that ear when he was picked up however modern medical experts think it had more to do with an earlier bout of scarlet fever and that Stevenson was simply the "last straw", they belive the pop that Edison heard was the sound of ligaments snapping and had nothing to do with the loss of hearing.
I have no idea where the poision thing came from but I now have something to (re)read.;)
I think the current state of affairs is also eloquently summed up by Mrchaotica, however I think that in the past science evolved from religion.
I am a computer scientist but I make a living from programming and have never worked as a 'real' scientist. Your comparison of science to art may confound some people but as far as I'm concerned it's spot on.
Not picking on you personally but what's up with all the high-karma bitching about scientists generating attention for their work.
Why is it wrong for scientists to attract attention? Should scientists hide in the basement and wait to be discovered? Do scientist not deserve to get payed? Should we not bother about public funding and just wait for another Edison (or Gates)? Are the people who supply the funding simply idiots with a cheque book?
I really want to know why slashdot thinks the funding meme is insightful, what is the fucking problem with scientists promoting their successfull work to potential supporters?
Now to get back to you personally, you state: "That outcome is very much exaggerated" - There is no fucking outcome, read the quote you posted it says HOPE and HELP!
The last picture has a large fissure across the center with a small sharply defined fissure barnching off and pointing NNE. At the end of the branch there is a giant fish head frozen in the ice.
"How do you, or anybody KNOW for sure that fusion on the SUN is natural?"
You don't, you also don't KNOW aliens did it, therefore Occam's razor applies and it is assumed to be natural until evidence to the contrary is available.
Same deal with the monolith in 2001 except this time the razor says that such an object is likely to be either a life-form or an artificial construct because of evidence such as it's shape and the ability to terraform gas giants.
"Unweaving the Rainbow" is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who thinks they have to be religious to experience religious awe. However I think that Dawkin's mission to convert people to Atheisim is just as pointless as missionaries converting people to Theisim.
I don't think of religion as an 'outcrop' of science, I think of it as pre-formalised science. It is far more productive to educate people on the philosophy and methods of science (as opposed to the pile of factoids approach you find at most schools), and let them come to their own religious conclusions.
This is how the law has worked in the tribal areas of the middle east for thousands of years and yet they can still find plenty of criminals to punish. Am I correct in assuming you don't want to join such a tribe because you would be considered the criminal?
I do agree that western media routinely portray the incident as a one sided massacare but I also think that the BBC have done more than most to dispell that myth. I'm glad you are open minded enough to give them a second look.
I also would recommend an organisation called "reporters without borders". My only real opinion on Tibet is that I would like China to allow the BBC and others reasonable access to the area.
"In 1857, at the age of 10, Thomas Edison set up a chemical laboratory in the cellar of his home. Good thing his house wasn't raided by the authorities."
Actually it's not a 'good thing' since a 'raid' on young Edisons lab may have saved his friends life.
After Edison set up the lab he convinced a younger friend to drink a mixture he had made by telling him it would make him fly. The child died from poisioning. As punishment his father dismantled the lab and took Thomas into town where he flogged him in public for his mis-deeds.
Edison did not have a lab for a few years until he started work on the railway (IIRC at age 14). He obtained permission to set up a lab in the caboose of a train for a while but after another chemical accident the train conductor slapped him on the side of the head so hard that it caused permenant deafness in one ear.
"In any case, I still am unable to conclude that it is a one-sided 'massacre' as is typically suggested. I started to suspect it wasn't as I had been lead to believe after watching the BBC video[1] where protesters burn soldiers alive in their vehicle."
Neither side has a monopoly on the truth and both sides must take the blame for the actions of their members. The video I saw of the tanks/APC's was probably from the ABC, ABC is Australia's version of the BBC and in my experience a trustworthy news source.
From my distant vantage point I see similarities between China's society now and that of the west 50yrs ago. In the west the fight was called the "civil rights movement", western governments of all stripes used overt censorship, secret police and soldiers in an attempt to crush the movement. The movement itself also employed violence and rioting against the government.
I hope the Chinese can settle their differences without the violence and social upheaval, but somehow I doubt it.
I sat on my couch and watched tanks drive over barricades and into people, they were obviuosly killed. I don't have the video because it happened 20yrs ago, all I can say was that I did not watch it on BBC since I am Australian and we didn't get BBC here until cable TV was introduced in the 90's.
The wikipedia entry also mentions tanks...Around four or five the following morning, June 4, Charlie Cole reports to have seen tanks smashing into the square, crushing vehicles and people with their tank treads. By 5:40 a.m. June 4, the Square had been cleared.
"Speaking of soot, there are multiple proposals to control global warming by dispersing particulates in the upper atmosphere. Sounds like an easy fix, right?"
Thankfully none of those proposal have been taken seriously, seems most people think acid rain is worse than AGW.
I agree. IIRC we pump about 10Gt of C02 into the atmosphere each year, this is several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of oil burnt in Kuwait.
"would be interested in a series by the BBC about the atrocities perpetrated by the British"
I found about 24 relevant articles and broadcasts using the BBC search function. How can I belive you when you say "they haven't anticipated obvious questions", have you bothered to search the rest of the BBC or are we still judging the entire organisation from one show?
"I had been brought up in the west with the opinion that the Tian'anmen Square events were some sort of 'massacre', and yet, when I try to find evidence of mass shootings, all I can find is evidence to the contrary."
I watched it unfold on T.V. as an adult. You won't find video of the mass shootings because they didn't have 'mass shootings', they drove tanks into the crowd. I'm also old enough to remeber watching news of US state troopers shooting at anti-war protesters, try finding that on the web.
I did not see the show so I can't really give an opinion as to how biased the show you saw was. Since you haven't provided a link I don't even know if it was a BBC reporter, or just a independent doco broadcast by the BBC (a big difference there). Yes the BBC is biased against China's arms sales, it is also biased against UK arms sales, in fact I'd say the BBC is very biased against arms sales. Since the BBC is meant to report NEWS in the public interest then I think that bias is "good bias", arms dealers of course think of it as "bad bias" and nationalists think of it as "anti-(insert nation) bias".
"It is for money and/or some desire to point the finger; evidence of bias within the bbc.
Money from whom - the hippies? Let's assume your are correct and that the show you saw was totally biased against China for some reason. What you are now doing is letting your own bias see this one "anti-China" program as proof that the BBC is biased against China, but how do you explain the acticles in my links? What I am trying to say is that nobody can escape bias, you, me, the pope, nobody! However, there are some easy things you can do to check just what that bias is and how strong it is ( as I did with the BBC )....
1. Transparency: I am biased against China in respect to Tibet specifically because they will not let the BBC or any other media walk around and talk to people (same in Sudan). Please don't take offence to that, I was biased against my own govt. when they wouldn't let the media look around immigration detention centers.
2. Critical thinking: Is a skill. If you practice you will be able to spot some (but never all) of your own bias and maybe those of others. The beauty of an open web is you can jump around and get different views from different outlets on both sides of any fence allowing you to speak directly to a brain-washed westener such as myself.
BTW: Google news is an excellent source of different media from around the world. I have found China's news outlets much more informative than US papers when it comes to Isreal and the Palestinians. It's not because of what the US papers say, it's what they don't say. Same deal with China's press where Tibet and Sudan are involved.
"I am not the most well educated person, especially when it comes to politics and such like, but if *I'm* coming up with these questions, surely they must too; but they weren't addressed, so I ended up writing the report off as biased."
Perhaps you should start by asking why a BBC journalist would risk his life for such a "pathetic" story.
Slashdot Mirror
"What is wrong is Slashdot carrying a lot of stories about fake science that happens to want investors.
This site is about the comments. The articles feed the debates, sometimes science is seen as crap and sometimes it's the other way around. I know of no other place where after the initial mod frenzy settles can you find such an array of both proffesional and amature experts commenting on the internet equivalent of the "science" section in a global newsagent. All other science orientated boards I know of are either special interest or have crappy moderation/threading systems.
Your sig talks about the importance of knowing the meaning of science and you mention fake science in you post. I can think of no better tool for quickly determing the difference than to have the issue posted on slashdot and subsequently fiercly debated over the next 24hrs by hundreds of geeks and moderated/read by hundreds of thousands more geeks many of them who indeed know the meaning of science, law, economics, maths, philosphy, etc.
If all you do on slashdot is post your opinion or RTFA then you are missing the point, wether by design or accident it serves the role of skeptic to your own assumptions about what appears in the press. Outright lies, voodoo and sock-puppets are pounced apon, for the rest of the articles the moderated version is rarely clear cut, sometimes biased, always informative, and often humorous.
In otherwords if you cannot understand that a story about rat brained robots was just made for slashdot then I think it's time to hand in your geek card.
Apart from the ad-homs that was an informative and insightful reply, right up until the point you assume to know everything about the GP's political views.
/rant
Disclaimers: Non American. I don't actually agree with your reply. I'm an old fart and feel like posting a rant.
rant/
I was born in 1959, I remeber the wall coming down but I don't remember the end of the cold war. As I see it the wars in the ME are between two fading empires. The first is a bankrupt empire run by a crime syndicate who's main customer is China, the second is an empire that is indebted to China and has recently lost a lot of it's clout as an essential Chinese customer, this empire has been in the process of consolidating power under one man while the empire itself spirals toward bankruptcy. China itself over the last 3-4 decades has gone from a famine infested hell hole to a well oiled economic jugernaught representing 1/5 of mankind.
The alternative to international fuedalisim is the picture painted by the UN where international politics is exemplyfied by the response to the tsunami and dammed by the reponse to Rawanda/Burma/etc.
Neither version particularly inspires me, humans are tribal creatures living in a global society, our technology has outpaced our evolution such that personal tribes are constantly changing as people jump from job to job. You can know the guy at the local shop for 10yrs, suddenly he sells up and you are no longer part of each others tribe. But hey, I'm too old for spear chucking of the modern or ancient variety and I'd be dead several times over if not for modern medicine.
Gerogia, LOTR style: The Bear and the Eagle had words at the inter-kingdom games, the Bear accused the Eagle of enslaving Kosovo into the guild and said he was making sure the same thing didn't happen to Osetia, "If the Eagle tries to stop me I will take all of Georgia and sever the black snake, and if the Eagle puts his magic shield on my doorstep I will send it to the rubbish heap".
The frog heard of the argument and became concerned about the black snake as it helps keep his guild ice-free in the winter time. He said to the Eagle "Let the Bear have Osetia if he promises not to touch the black snake". The Eagle's pride was hurt at the suggestion of backing down, his feathers started to puff up in frustration. The Frog gulped and started to turn away, as he turned he spied the orange puppet all torn and tattered after the Bear had swiped it with a paw, "The world needs a scapegoat" he said.
Postscript (in jest): After several frustrating hours of trying to explain what that meant to a birdbrain the Frog and his backers at the guild simply gave up and announced the ceasefire anyway, the Bear accepted and demanded the Eagle sacrafice the orange puppet. Later the guild managed to distract the Eagle by pointing out the orange puppet's face was turning green again.
Nah, that would make me a troll when I'm really just a confused old fart - see my reply to Venom619.
"Citations please?"
;)
Edison by Mathew Josephson.
Public whipping - Pg-13.
Deafness - Pg-31.
But now I have to admit I totally mangled what the book says, my feeble excuse is that I read it nearly two decades ago.
I admire Edison and liked the book so much it's still on my bookshelf, so to set the record straight: His father publicly whipped him on several occasions, the worst of his offences was setting fire to the barn, he also got caught screwing with the minds of civil war troops camped near his home. The railway worker was called Stevenson, he did not smack Edison in the head, he lifted him on to the train by his ears!!! ( Tom had his arms full of glass beakers, Stevenson was trying to help? ).
Edison himself blamed the deafness on Stevenson, without ill feeling since by 19th century standards Stevenson was good to him as was his father. Edison said that he heard a pop and went deaf in that ear when he was picked up however modern medical experts think it had more to do with an earlier bout of scarlet fever and that Stevenson was simply the "last straw", they belive the pop that Edison heard was the sound of ligaments snapping and had nothing to do with the loss of hearing.
I have no idea where the poision thing came from but I now have something to (re)read.
I think the current state of affairs is also eloquently summed up by Mrchaotica, however I think that in the past science evolved from religion.
I am a computer scientist but I make a living from programming and have never worked as a 'real' scientist. Your comparison of science to art may confound some people but as far as I'm concerned it's spot on.
Heh, as you yourself reminded me, you said upper atmosphere. I am mistaken in thinking that gravity still operates in the upper atmosphere?
Not picking on you personally but what's up with all the high-karma bitching about scientists generating attention for their work.
Why is it wrong for scientists to attract attention? Should scientists hide in the basement and wait to be discovered? Do scientist not deserve to get payed? Should we not bother about public funding and just wait for another Edison (or Gates)? Are the people who supply the funding simply idiots with a cheque book?
I really want to know why slashdot thinks the funding meme is insightful, what is the fucking problem with scientists promoting their successfull work to potential supporters?
Now to get back to you personally, you state: "That outcome is very much exaggerated" - There is no fucking outcome, read the quote you posted it says HOPE and HELP!
I for one welcome the Shrek of AC trolls.
The last picture has a large fissure across the center with a small sharply defined fissure barnching off and pointing NNE. At the end of the branch there is a giant fish head frozen in the ice.
"How do you, or anybody KNOW for sure that fusion on the SUN is natural?"
You don't, you also don't KNOW aliens did it, therefore Occam's razor applies and it is assumed to be natural until evidence to the contrary is available.
Same deal with the monolith in 2001 except this time the razor says that such an object is likely to be either a life-form or an artificial construct because of evidence such as it's shape and the ability to terraform gas giants.
"Unweaving the Rainbow" is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who thinks they have to be religious to experience religious awe. However I think that Dawkin's mission to convert people to Atheisim is just as pointless as missionaries converting people to Theisim.
I don't think of religion as an 'outcrop' of science, I think of it as pre-formalised science. It is far more productive to educate people on the philosophy and methods of science (as opposed to the pile of factoids approach you find at most schools), and let them come to their own religious conclusions.
This is how the law has worked in the tribal areas of the middle east for thousands of years and yet they can still find plenty of criminals to punish. Am I correct in assuming you don't want to join such a tribe because you would be considered the criminal?
I do agree that western media routinely portray the incident as a one sided massacare but I also think that the BBC have done more than most to dispell that myth. I'm glad you are open minded enough to give them a second look.
I also would recommend an organisation called "reporters without borders". My only real opinion on Tibet is that I would like China to allow the BBC and others reasonable access to the area.
What goes up must come down.
"In 1857, at the age of 10, Thomas Edison set up a chemical laboratory in the cellar of his home. Good thing his house wasn't raided by the authorities."
Actually it's not a 'good thing' since a 'raid' on young Edisons lab may have saved his friends life.
After Edison set up the lab he convinced a younger friend to drink a mixture he had made by telling him it would make him fly. The child died from poisioning. As punishment his father dismantled the lab and took Thomas into town where he flogged him in public for his mis-deeds.
Edison did not have a lab for a few years until he started work on the railway (IIRC at age 14). He obtained permission to set up a lab in the caboose of a train for a while but after another chemical accident the train conductor slapped him on the side of the head so hard that it caused permenant deafness in one ear.
"In any case, I still am unable to conclude that it is a one-sided 'massacre' as is typically suggested. I started to suspect it wasn't as I had been lead to believe after watching the BBC video[1] where protesters burn soldiers alive in their vehicle."
Neither side has a monopoly on the truth and both sides must take the blame for the actions of their members. The video I saw of the tanks/APC's was probably from the ABC, ABC is Australia's version of the BBC and in my experience a trustworthy news source.
From my distant vantage point I see similarities between China's society now and that of the west 50yrs ago. In the west the fight was called the "civil rights movement", western governments of all stripes used overt censorship, secret police and soldiers in an attempt to crush the movement. The movement itself also employed violence and rioting against the government.
I hope the Chinese can settle their differences without the violence and social upheaval, but somehow I doubt it.
"After all, we barely use 10% of our brains and if you take into consideration people with telepathy and telekinesis and other "psychic" abilities."
/sarcasm
/unsolicited_advice
Just think, if people with "psychic abilities" used 11% of their brain they could be millionaires.
Read this book, understanding it's message will change your life.
I sat on my couch and watched tanks drive over barricades and into people, they were obviuosly killed. I don't have the video because it happened 20yrs ago, all I can say was that I did not watch it on BBC since I am Australian and we didn't get BBC here until cable TV was introduced in the 90's.
The wikipedia entry also mentions tanks...Around four or five the following morning, June 4, Charlie Cole reports to have seen tanks smashing into the square, crushing vehicles and people with their tank treads. By 5:40 a.m. June 4, the Square had been cleared.
"Speaking of soot, there are multiple proposals to control global warming by dispersing particulates in the upper atmosphere. Sounds like an easy fix, right?"
Thankfully none of those proposal have been taken seriously, seems most people think acid rain is worse than AGW.
I agree. IIRC we pump about 10Gt of C02 into the atmosphere each year, this is several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of oil burnt in Kuwait.
"Smog is a fairly localized problem.....Attaching random problems to global warming is a great way to give the climate hoax people credibility."
Those "hoaxers" at the IPCC have been claiming that smog cools the globe for quite some time (purple line in graph).
"would be interested in a series by the BBC about the atrocities perpetrated by the British"
I found about 24 relevant articles and broadcasts using the BBC search function. How can I belive you when you say "they haven't anticipated obvious questions", have you bothered to search the rest of the BBC or are we still judging the entire organisation from one show?
"I had been brought up in the west with the opinion that the Tian'anmen Square events were some sort of 'massacre', and yet, when I try to find evidence of mass shootings, all I can find is evidence to the contrary."
I watched it unfold on T.V. as an adult. You won't find video of the mass shootings because they didn't have 'mass shootings', they drove tanks into the crowd. I'm also old enough to remeber watching news of US state troopers shooting at anti-war protesters, try finding that on the web.
"It seemed clearly biased to me"
I did not see the show so I can't really give an opinion as to how biased the show you saw was. Since you haven't provided a link I don't even know if it was a BBC reporter, or just a independent doco broadcast by the BBC (a big difference there). Yes the BBC is biased against China's arms sales, it is also biased against UK arms sales, in fact I'd say the BBC is very biased against arms sales. Since the BBC is meant to report NEWS in the public interest then I think that bias is "good bias", arms dealers of course think of it as "bad bias" and nationalists think of it as "anti-(insert nation) bias".
"It is for money and/or some desire to point the finger; evidence of bias within the bbc.
Money from whom - the hippies? Let's assume your are correct and that the show you saw was totally biased against China for some reason. What you are now doing is letting your own bias see this one "anti-China" program as proof that the BBC is biased against China, but how do you explain the acticles in my links? What I am trying to say is that nobody can escape bias, you, me, the pope, nobody! However, there are some easy things you can do to check just what that bias is and how strong it is ( as I did with the BBC )....
1. Transparency: I am biased against China in respect to Tibet specifically because they will not let the BBC or any other media walk around and talk to people (same in Sudan). Please don't take offence to that, I was biased against my own govt. when they wouldn't let the media look around immigration detention centers.
2. Critical thinking: Is a skill. If you practice you will be able to spot some (but never all) of your own bias and maybe those of others. The beauty of an open web is you can jump around and get different views from different outlets on both sides of any fence allowing you to speak directly to a brain-washed westener such as myself.
BTW: Google news is an excellent source of different media from around the world. I have found China's news outlets much more informative than US papers when it comes to Isreal and the Palestinians. It's not because of what the US papers say, it's what they don't say. Same deal with China's press where Tibet and Sudan are involved.
"I am not the most well educated person, especially when it comes to politics and such like, but if *I'm* coming up with these questions, surely they must too; but they weren't addressed, so I ended up writing the report off as biased."
Perhaps you should start by asking why a BBC journalist would risk his life for such a "pathetic" story.
"...although 'pure' chlorine is more of an irritant..."
Yes, having your eyes and lungs dissolved by chlorine gas can be very irritating.