"Then what is the basis for claiming India had it first..."
My basis was a vague memory of the Smiling Buddha, however I had to look up the exact year since I was only 15 when India first tested a nuke back in 1974.
Funny you should say that, I was wondering how much code does the "senior vice president of engineering" at Ingress read, let alone write?
Disclaimer: The handfull of female coders I have worked with over the last couple of decades have all been competent, none of them struck me as brilliant.
India no longer treats Pakistan with contempt, as soon as both sides were 'equal' India was forced to the negotiating table over Kashmire and a few other border disputes. I'm not sure how far a Pakistani missile can travel but IIRC at the time of the test blasts there was mild panic in the west about the relative proximity of Israel. Also worthy of mention is Pakistan's ability to control it's strategic position in relation to sucking oil from the Caspian sea and delivering it to tankers in the Indian ocean.
War is what you get when politics fails, without politics there is no order, without order there is no economy. I agree that people suffer because of the money that is poured into weapons (not to mention the people they land on), I wish there was a more enlightened world politics but sadly it's against our nature.
Sorry but you are mixing science and law. Philosophically there is only one thing that you can 'know' in the absolute sense of the word, ie: 'I think therefore I am'.
Science itself is based on the faith that the 'real world' exists, the reason I have 'faith' in science is that unlike other philosophies it's methods are actually usefull in every day life.
"your comment seems to autoexclude you"
You cannot 'know' the real world exists, you simply 'belive' your perceptions give you some sort of magical insight into truth. The more stubbornly you belive that only your own eyes are the ultimate arbitrator, the less likely you are to learn anything.
I disagree with the Orwellian view of TV. It is said that a wise man knows nothing, meaning it is humanly impossible to weigh every issue by doing your own exhaustive verification, this is the precise reason why the scientific method is so usefull.
As for TV's influence in general, "the whole world is watching" chant that arose during a 1960's protest has changed politics in a profound manner over the last 40yrs. Over here in Australia we have two public service stations that are run along the lines of the BBC, ironically it is these government sponsered stations that are prepared to go to Afghanistan, Burma, etc and check things out with real reporters. It is also these stations that ask our politicians the hard question and bring in ALL interested parties to debate current issues in person. They can do this because they are not affraid of losing their sponsers (ie: the aussie taxpayer).
Problem is that a large number of Aussies consider both these stations to be 'boring' when compared to big brother or whatever circus is playing on the commercial stations. But most people do at least respect the ABC and will loudly applaude their occasional naked emporer stunts. BTW:
My own kids are 28 and 23, consequently anyone under 30 looks like a kid to me (and yes this includes most of the police force). However I have to ask, is there such a thing as a 20yo French virgin? I say this because there is a huge difference between images of a prepubecent child being physically and phycologically abused and a 20yo bonking on the internet for money. One is evidence of a vile crime, the other is a modern day implementation of the oldest proffesion.
Of course there is a huge grey area between pubecence and 21, my take on the pre-teen links is that some are 'honeypots' (no pun intended), ie: they are set up by law-enforcement. Most are simply pettite 18-20yo's with their hair in pigtails, it's quite obvious the sites are aiming at the pedeophile market. Personally I hate the idea that rock spiders still have their genitals attached let alone the idea people would provide this kind of material for them, but as Larry Flynt would say, the only thing most of these sites are guilty of is bad taste.
"Until I see a proof and more than just a "not possible" debunking"
The 'water car breakthrough' has been trotted out at regular intervals since before I bought my first car in the 70's, in all that time the only thing stopping it from taking off has been the second law of thermodynamics.
Just last week in Australia, channel 10's national news was running a story about two young guys who were using a plastic bottle of water to make hydrogen from a car battery, and a plastic tube to vent the gas back into the carburettor. They were claiming a 20% improvement in fuel efficency but there was not even a squeak of skepticisim from the news program, nor any attempt to ask someone who might have a clue.
You would think that the editors in the news room of one of our nations three commercial stations would have been embarrased to show such ignorance, but not channel 10, they used a clip from the story throughout the day as a promo for the evening news!
It really depends on the judges idea of obvious. You could write a very simple program to XOR each pixel in the rectangle with a randomly defined constant so the data and display would look scrambled. However it's fairly well known that XOR'ing pixels a second time with the same value will unscramble it.
I would argue that everybody should be represented in the house of Lords. And in general the people who are appointed have either held power or are well versed in 'speaking truth to power'. Together they make up a broad political cross-section of society that is largely driven by the priciples of science and law, it's quite amazing sometimes to sudenly hear a politican make sense and express doubt when they have been freed from the schackles of party policy. I would also argue that the US copyright regime and a large spontaneous US festival in the 60's should not be on top of their agenda.
IMHO setting up shop on youtube is an excercise in transperancy (others may see it as propoganda), either way there are plenty of old farts from the 60's like me who use it, and transperancy (or access to all propoganda's if you like) is always a GoodThing(TM). OTOH the second life thing sounds like an experiment with 'the new media' that was sold to someone without a clue, I would expect better from THoL.
To many people the term 'skeptic' has come to mean someone who disagrees, logic and training don't come into it. However skepticisim is an integral part of science and every scientist worth their salt practices skepticisim on their OWN ideas before using it to attack the ideas of others. The term the GP was looking for is 'psuedo-skeptics', ie: a person who fails to be skeptical of what they themselves 'know' and does not entertain criticisim. The worst kind of 'skeptic' is a denier, ie: someone who is willfully ignorant.
Personally I am skeptical that any individual fits neatly into one category althogh I do agree fundamentalist nut jobs are an 'edge case'.
Carl Sagan's book on the subject is a great read and can speak for itself...
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness."
OTOH, a skeptic might argue that Sagan's forboding is, and always has been, the status-quo.
"Don't confuse environmentalists who are worried about the environment in general and "global warmalists" who are after only one thing. Some of them wouldn't bat an eye at an environmental disaster that didn't increase greenhouse gases or carbon emissions."
Who are these people? How influential are they? - I know you get the occasional raving looney at the train station and as soon as there is a protest the media will head straight to the stoners in the crowd for comment (just as they head towards the drunken flag draped red-neck or any other extreme stereotype). But hey, I grew up in the 60s so what would I know about a bunch of ineffectual fringe dwellers being used to ridicule serious concerns.
Pre-emptive: Please don't answer with 'Al Gore'. He has political conotations for the US but the rest of the world know him mainly for his slide-show of the IPCC reports. Personally I have not watched the film (I was fimiliar with the reports, so why bother?), what matters to me is his doco recieved the thumbs up for accuracy from scientists who wrote the IPCC report. Pointing out how hypocritical/greedy/unamerican he is does not change the message in the film.
I read GEB quite a while ago, what I took away from the book was that we can never trully understand ourselves.
And yes, as someone once said: If you make computers as smart as humans you will have invented a machine that can sing the words to the Flintstones tune but will forget to pay the phone bill.
"Global warming cultists are *not* environmentalist. They're easily led rubes that have bought into a self flagellating religion born out of politics."
Thakyou for opening my eyes. I now see how the science I have been following for at least 25yrs is really a massive political conspiracy that has managed to infiltrate and control every national science body on the planet.
Thanks also for sharing your thoughts on 'self-flagellation', it was enough to convince this 'easily led rube' that a massive muti-decadal plot has been hiding right before his very eyes, matter of fact it's now so fucking obvious that I have been led by poitics that I will promptly find and burn my BSc.
I think you might have missed my point which was: a system by definition is a "set of rules governing behavior". I'm not from the US but like most people here I think that on the whole capitalisim to serve customers, democracy to serve people, and most of all informed debate between people, are all GoodThings(TM).
To further emphasise my original point, in your post the very words 'service', 'property', 'trade', 'pay', 'work' are concepts found in economic systems. Without a system to connect these concepts together their definition is at the mercy of the default 'might is right' rule of natural selection.
Sure, the 'might is right' instinct got us to the top of the food chain, but it won't keep us there much longer if we don't address some 'big picture' issues that when combined have become a serious threat to the food and water supply in every nation. However like I said I don't have the answers even though I have had five decades to ponder all the random assed cruelty in the world.
I have never been to the US but they are certainly not the only ones that (when it comes to drugs), define altruisim as: incarcerating/executing someone for the 'crime' of self-abuse. No matter what a misinformed control freak belives they are not being alturistic by supporting a war on drugs, wether they know it or not these ignoramasus are simply confirming that when it comes to drugs the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
I have two personal anecdotes but neither of them are good. A woman I knew would start pacing and pulling her hair out after smoking and a guy I knew would become extremely parinoid. One day about 5yrs ago the forty something year old guy drove off into the Aussie bush, the cops found his abandodned car a few days later but nobody has seen him since. The guy was a regular smoker and the woman smoke only on rare occasions but in both cases it seemed to me that dope made their symptoms much worse.
These people were in their early 40's and were both diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in their late teens, in both cases the onset of the illness coincided with traumatic 'betrayal of trust' type events.
"But don't try to tell any of this to the cult of global warming. They don't like facts interfering in their religion."
Your post started of by making a good deal of sense, but then you brought politics into it and fucked it up. I am assuming you have done this because it's a popular US pastime to bash environmentalists and not because you have actually done any reasearch into climate science.
The AGW 'cult' have been telling the neo-cons that corn to ethonol is a bad idea since before the first government subsidy cheque was cut. Yes the 'giant dead zone' is caused mainly by fertilzer run-off, but how about pointing out it existed well before the corporate welfare crowd started sponsering hairbrained biofuel schemes?
OTOH, lets not let facts stand in the way of yet another contorted excuse to bash environmentalists, most of whom would agree with your stance that corn for fuel is an exceptionally bad idea.
"Well, capitalism is the free [ex]change of goods...there's nothing inherently free about government....get a real job...anyone who can't provide value above that [$$$] threshold is left to live on charity....other economic systems [snip] are descriptions on how people should be forced to interact."
All economic systems force people to comply with rules when they interact, that's pretty much why it's called a 'system'. At the very minimum capitialisim must force people to respect the concept of private property before it could be considered usefull, it must also attempt to care for old/sick/stupid or just plain unlucky people who fall below your arbitrary 'value' to be considered humane.
"Anyway, the beautiful thing about capitalism is that you don't have to be an economist to do it - capitalism is a qualitative description"
To be fair to economists, any two systems that can be measured are by definition amenable to quantitative analysis. Oh and please don't take my awareness of problems with capitalisim (such as the proposed legalised corruption in TFA) to mean I have a better idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"Then what is the basis for claiming India had it first..."
My basis was a vague memory of the Smiling Buddha, however I had to look up the exact year since I was only 15 when India first tested a nuke back in 1974.
"Back when I wrote code..."
Funny you should say that, I was wondering how much code does the "senior vice president of engineering" at Ingress read, let alone write?
Disclaimer: The handfull of female coders I have worked with over the last couple of decades have all been competent, none of them struck me as brilliant.
"And your point is?"
India no longer treats Pakistan with contempt, as soon as both sides were 'equal' India was forced to the negotiating table over Kashmire and a few other border disputes. I'm not sure how far a Pakistani missile can travel but IIRC at the time of the test blasts there was mild panic in the west about the relative proximity of Israel. Also worthy of mention is Pakistan's ability to control it's strategic position in relation to sucking oil from the Caspian sea and delivering it to tankers in the Indian ocean.
War is what you get when politics fails, without politics there is no order, without order there is no economy. I agree that people suffer because of the money that is poured into weapons (not to mention the people they land on), I wish there was a more enlightened world politics but sadly it's against our nature.
"the weapons are out of reach of mostly every state, and those countries who make them profit very little from having them per se"
Funny how India suddenly respected Pakistan when Pakistan demonstrated they could also make nukes.
"Also known as hearsay"
Sorry but you are mixing science and law. Philosophically there is only one thing that you can 'know' in the absolute sense of the word, ie: 'I think therefore I am'.
Science itself is based on the faith that the 'real world' exists, the reason I have 'faith' in science is that unlike other philosophies it's methods are actually usefull in every day life.
"your comment seems to autoexclude you"
You cannot 'know' the real world exists, you simply 'belive' your perceptions give you some sort of magical insight into truth. The more stubbornly you belive that only your own eyes are the ultimate arbitrator, the less likely you are to learn anything.
I disagree with the Orwellian view of TV. It is said that a wise man knows nothing, meaning it is humanly impossible to weigh every issue by doing your own exhaustive verification, this is the precise reason why the scientific method is so usefull.
As for TV's influence in general, "the whole world is watching" chant that arose during a 1960's protest has changed politics in a profound manner over the last 40yrs. Over here in Australia we have two public service stations that are run along the lines of the BBC, ironically it is these government sponsered stations that are prepared to go to Afghanistan, Burma, etc and check things out with real reporters. It is also these stations that ask our politicians the hard question and bring in ALL interested parties to debate current issues in person. They can do this because they are not affraid of losing their sponsers (ie: the aussie taxpayer).
Problem is that a large number of Aussies consider both these stations to be 'boring' when compared to big brother or whatever circus is playing on the commercial stations. But most people do at least respect the ABC and will loudly applaude their occasional naked emporer stunts. BTW:
My own kids are 28 and 23, consequently anyone under 30 looks like a kid to me (and yes this includes most of the police force). However I have to ask, is there such a thing as a 20yo French virgin? I say this because there is a huge difference between images of a prepubecent child being physically and phycologically abused and a 20yo bonking on the internet for money. One is evidence of a vile crime, the other is a modern day implementation of the oldest proffesion.
Of course there is a huge grey area between pubecence and 21, my take on the pre-teen links is that some are 'honeypots' (no pun intended), ie: they are set up by law-enforcement. Most are simply pettite 18-20yo's with their hair in pigtails, it's quite obvious the sites are aiming at the pedeophile market. Personally I hate the idea that rock spiders still have their genitals attached let alone the idea people would provide this kind of material for them, but as Larry Flynt would say, the only thing most of these sites are guilty of is bad taste.
"Until I see a proof and more than just a "not possible" debunking"
The 'water car breakthrough' has been trotted out at regular intervals since before I bought my first car in the 70's, in all that time the only thing stopping it from taking off has been the second law of thermodynamics.
Just last week in Australia, channel 10's national news was running a story about two young guys who were using a plastic bottle of water to make hydrogen from a car battery, and a plastic tube to vent the gas back into the carburettor. They were claiming a 20% improvement in fuel efficency but there was not even a squeak of skepticisim from the news program, nor any attempt to ask someone who might have a clue.
You would think that the editors in the news room of one of our nations three commercial stations would have been embarrased to show such ignorance, but not channel 10, they used a clip from the story throughout the day as a promo for the evening news!
"Let me suggest that you lay off three-syllable words like "monpopole" until you've learned at least to look them up on wikipedia."
You can't really blame the GP. I just checked WP and found the "monpopole" page has been censored!
It really depends on the judges idea of obvious. You could write a very simple program to XOR each pixel in the rectangle with a randomly defined constant so the data and display would look scrambled. However it's fairly well known that XOR'ing pixels a second time with the same value will unscramble it.
"Represent US rather than them"
I would argue that everybody should be represented in the house of Lords. And in general the people who are appointed have either held power or are well versed in 'speaking truth to power'. Together they make up a broad political cross-section of society that is largely driven by the priciples of science and law, it's quite amazing sometimes to sudenly hear a politican make sense and express doubt when they have been freed from the schackles of party policy. I would also argue that the US copyright regime and a large spontaneous US festival in the 60's should not be on top of their agenda.
IMHO setting up shop on youtube is an excercise in transperancy (others may see it as propoganda), either way there are plenty of old farts from the 60's like me who use it, and transperancy (or access to all propoganda's if you like) is always a GoodThing(TM). OTOH the second life thing sounds like an experiment with 'the new media' that was sold to someone without a clue, I would expect better from THoL.
loser.
To many people the term 'skeptic' has come to mean someone who disagrees, logic and training don't come into it. However skepticisim is an integral part of science and every scientist worth their salt practices skepticisim on their OWN ideas before using it to attack the ideas of others. The term the GP was looking for is 'psuedo-skeptics', ie: a person who fails to be skeptical of what they themselves 'know' and does not entertain criticisim. The worst kind of 'skeptic' is a denier, ie: someone who is willfully ignorant.
... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness."
Personally I am skeptical that any individual fits neatly into one category althogh I do agree fundamentalist nut jobs are an 'edge case'.
Carl Sagan's book on the subject is a great read and can speak for itself...
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time
OTOH, a skeptic might argue that Sagan's forboding is, and always has been, the status-quo.
"Don't confuse environmentalists who are worried about the environment in general and "global warmalists" who are after only one thing. Some of them wouldn't bat an eye at an environmental disaster that didn't increase greenhouse gases or carbon emissions."
Who are these people? How influential are they? - I know you get the occasional raving looney at the train station and as soon as there is a protest the media will head straight to the stoners in the crowd for comment (just as they head towards the drunken flag draped red-neck or any other extreme stereotype). But hey, I grew up in the 60s so what would I know about a bunch of ineffectual fringe dwellers being used to ridicule serious concerns.
Pre-emptive: Please don't answer with 'Al Gore'. He has political conotations for the US but the rest of the world know him mainly for his slide-show of the IPCC reports. Personally I have not watched the film (I was fimiliar with the reports, so why bother?), what matters to me is his doco recieved the thumbs up for accuracy from scientists who wrote the IPCC report. Pointing out how hypocritical/greedy/unamerican he is does not change the message in the film.
I read GEB quite a while ago, what I took away from the book was that we can never trully understand ourselves.
And yes, as someone once said: If you make computers as smart as humans you will have invented a machine that can sing the words to the Flintstones tune but will forget to pay the phone bill.
Good comeback, where's the link?
The studies have been done
If you expect me to go to the trouble of debunking your misinformed ass you will need to provide a link.
"Global warming cultists are *not* environmentalist. They're easily led rubes that have bought into a self flagellating religion born out of politics."
Thakyou for opening my eyes. I now see how the science I have been following for at least 25yrs is really a massive political conspiracy that has managed to infiltrate and control every national science body on the planet.
Thanks also for sharing your thoughts on 'self-flagellation', it was enough to convince this 'easily led rube' that a massive muti-decadal plot has been hiding right before his very eyes, matter of fact it's now so fucking obvious that I have been led by poitics that I will promptly find and burn my BSc.
Thanks. And yeah, I'm an old fart. I got the joke from a Bugs Bunny cartoon that I first saw in the 60's.
I think you might have missed my point which was: a system by definition is a "set of rules governing behavior". I'm not from the US but like most people here I think that on the whole capitalisim to serve customers, democracy to serve people, and most of all informed debate between people, are all GoodThings(TM).
To further emphasise my original point, in your post the very words 'service', 'property', 'trade', 'pay', 'work' are concepts found in economic systems. Without a system to connect these concepts together their definition is at the mercy of the default 'might is right' rule of natural selection.
Sure, the 'might is right' instinct got us to the top of the food chain, but it won't keep us there much longer if we don't address some 'big picture' issues that when combined have become a serious threat to the food and water supply in every nation. However like I said I don't have the answers even though I have had five decades to ponder all the random assed cruelty in the world.
I have never been to the US but they are certainly not the only ones that (when it comes to drugs), define altruisim as: incarcerating/executing someone for the 'crime' of self-abuse. No matter what a misinformed control freak belives they are not being alturistic by supporting a war on drugs, wether they know it or not these ignoramasus are simply confirming that when it comes to drugs the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
Very interesting!
I have two personal anecdotes but neither of them are good. A woman I knew would start pacing and pulling her hair out after smoking and a guy I knew would become extremely parinoid. One day about 5yrs ago the forty something year old guy drove off into the Aussie bush, the cops found his abandodned car a few days later but nobody has seen him since. The guy was a regular smoker and the woman smoke only on rare occasions but in both cases it seemed to me that dope made their symptoms much worse.
These people were in their early 40's and were both diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in their late teens, in both cases the onset of the illness coincided with traumatic 'betrayal of trust' type events.
"But don't try to tell any of this to the cult of global warming. They don't like facts interfering in their religion."
Your post started of by making a good deal of sense, but then you brought politics into it and fucked it up. I am assuming you have done this because it's a popular US pastime to bash environmentalists and not because you have actually done any reasearch into climate science.
The AGW 'cult' have been telling the neo-cons that corn to ethonol is a bad idea since before the first government subsidy cheque was cut. Yes the 'giant dead zone' is caused mainly by fertilzer run-off, but how about pointing out it existed well before the corporate welfare crowd started sponsering hairbrained biofuel schemes?
OTOH, lets not let facts stand in the way of yet another contorted excuse to bash environmentalists, most of whom would agree with your stance that corn for fuel is an exceptionally bad idea.
Air brakes.
"Well, capitalism is the free [ex]change of goods...there's nothing inherently free about government....get a real job...anyone who can't provide value above that [$$$] threshold is left to live on charity....other economic systems [snip] are descriptions on how people should be forced to interact."
All economic systems force people to comply with rules when they interact, that's pretty much why it's called a 'system'. At the very minimum capitialisim must force people to respect the concept of private property before it could be considered usefull, it must also attempt to care for old/sick/stupid or just plain unlucky people who fall below your arbitrary 'value' to be considered humane.
"Anyway, the beautiful thing about capitalism is that you don't have to be an economist to do it - capitalism is a qualitative description"
To be fair to economists, any two systems that can be measured are by definition amenable to quantitative analysis. Oh and please don't take my awareness of problems with capitalisim (such as the proposed legalised corruption in TFA) to mean I have a better idea.