Yes that's all well and good for what we can observe, which is a black hole in our knowable universe. It tells us nothing about what a BH looks like from the "inside", nor what our knowable universe looks like from the "outside". I was not agruing for any particular idea, mearly pointing out that these ideas are not testable, they are conjecture and will remain so unless we work out a way to cross the information boundry.
Yes, but let's not confuse the visable universe with the Universe, Hawking's "Breif History of Time" includes a description of the visable universe as a black hole residing in the Universe. The funny thing about universe size black holes is that you could fall through the event horizon of one and not even notice.
The "boundry" from our point of view is the edge of the visable universe, we can never get information from beyond that distance in any direction. We also don't know what happenes to spacetime (or anything else) inside a black hole because of a similar information boundry. Who can say if the inside has a boundry when viewed from the inside, could it not have a similar "boundry" to the one we encounter when we look to the edge of the knowable universe? Perhaps our 4D spacetime "rolls up" inside a black hole and a spacetime using a differet set of 4 higher dimentions "unfulrs"?
Disclaimer: There is no way to test any of this, like god, string theory, parallel universes, branes, higher dimentions, ect, it all boils down to metaphysics and mathematical curiosity. As Godel and Shakespear both pointed out, there are "unknowable truths". My $0.02 is to accept that the Universe "just is", pick a model you like (or mix & match) but don't take it too seriously or shove it down peoples throats. My personal favorite is the multiverse - it means that "somewhere" exists another "me", 30yrs younger and living it up in the playboy mansion.
I can see now how it's all a big cover-up (just like the moon landing) and all the independent and peer-rewiewed answers have been predetermined since that monk with the pea plants forged his results. It was just one monk who started all this but generations of scientists have conspired to ignore the methods handed from God to Newton in favour of "piltdown-science", these modern day monks make a concerted and largely sucessfull effort to hide the "truth" that is known only to "God's messengers", the creationists.
The evil misinformation about pea plants and hominoids that pours from the monks of modern science is the contents of pandoras box, we can't close the lid but surely we can dispose of the box. It's high time we gave authority over natures laws back to the church, the inquisition got rid of witches and they can get rid of those heretics who won't conform to the alice-in-wonderland world view of gods chosen people. And I don't mean "wonderland" in a derogatory sense, who are they to judge God's plan for humans and dinosours as revealed by the creationist's "truth", it is plain the creationists are right the references they quote are right there in the bible for all motel patrons to see and in their museam they physicaly demonstarte that dinosurs could indeed wear a saddle.
BTW: Now that I am converted, where are my slaves, don't give me that namby-pamby UN BS about human rights, the bible says I can have slaves, dammit I need my slaves to look after all the kids god is going to bless me with, and don't forget my conqubines - I imagine rotating the same 6 wives will rapidly become as sexually boring as monogomy.
/sarcasm
BTW: This post required a rather large hit of angel dust to work up the right level of parinioa and religous ferver to do it justice and several bongs to calm down afterwards. I am not hostile towards personal faith, my partner is religious and just last year I was lucky enough to sit in on a public service at Westminster abbey with her. But please, show me and others educated in science the same kind of respect and "christian charity". Learn something about what you are critisizing and critisize the "science" you are preaching, none of this means you have to "question your faith" but it may result in you dumping organised religion.
Start with the skill of skeptcisim (AKA "critical thinking"), "Doubting Thomas", JREF and Sagan are good guides from different view points. Learning the skill takes a lifetime but the basics are not hard, find out why "peer-review" is so important, look up the meaning of "the republic of science" and "the scientific method", while you are there find out what the difference is between "opinion/fact", "anecdote/observastion", "idea/debunked idea", "theory/dogma", "testable/tested", "logic/rhetoric", "statistics/individual outcome", "science" and "established science". If you are connected to the net there is very little excuse for the unfortuately common ignorance about the philosphy and methods of modern science and the awe inspiring miricales it reveals for all to see.
I assume they are hardwood species, most commercial "gum" trees are hardwood and grow a lot faster than the "old world" hardwoods such as oak. Slow growing native Aussie trees such as blackwood have all but dissapeared outside national parks, we pissed away a valuable natural resource to make cheap railway sleepers and such, now if you can find a supplier it is as expensive as oak or teak.
I once read that France has a 300yr harvest cycle for their remaining oak stands, where as a 100yro gum tree is considered "mature" for logging purposes. I know that Spain now also has a healthy population of Aussie "blowflys" residing in their eucalyptus plantations, I would imagine the gum trees in general cause similar problems for native flora/fauna as pine plantations do over here.
OT: One slow growing species we did manage to to keep long enough to learn how to manage is the rather odd "ironbark". The grain so dense it sinks in water (as does good quality teak and mahogany), it cannot be nailed without drilling pilot holes (personal experience both manually and with a 2.5" nail gun). It is also extremely resistant to fire, rough slabs and sometimes hollow logs of the stuff were used by settlers to build chimmneys in their homes and it is still used widely for door sills and posts. I have seen news footage from Perth where ironbark posts (2-3' in diameter) were chared but still intact after surviving a warehouse fire hot enough to melt the steel framing they were supporting, they are a classic example of adaptaion to an environment where bushfires are viewed as a "season".
"Hardwood is a piss-poor way to generate pulpwood, because hardwood grows so slowly."
I agree, my point is that in the large tropical rainforests of the world virtually nobody replants and no care is taken to ensure the resource can grow back naturally. The trees are in effect "free" and make excellent raw material for high quality paper. What makes you think these people give a flying fuck about regrowth, in many places they don't even give a fuck about the natives who have lived there for millenia. Natives are simply a hinderance to operations and are chased of their land by armed corporate mercenaries and prevented from returning because they don't have a bit of government paper that says they can continue to live there.
I also generally agree with the rest of your post, I was not attempting to say anything about US forestry practices in particular only that we have significantly better native alternatives for pulpwood here in Oz that can use the same harvesting equipment, produce a similar yeild in 1/3 of the time, and are good for the environment to boot. Yet we continue to plant pine for domestic pulpwood. (Not sure if they are useful for plywood or structural purposes)
We don't really have a problem with residential creep (imagine the US with only 20M people), most of our forests have dissapeared over the last 150yrs or so to make way for farmland or pasture but there are still large areas covered with virgin forests.
OTOH: I think the US does share in some culpability for negligent destruction and corrupt governments in the other two thirds of the world, western business and politics in general have, and still are, screwing the poor and "uncivilized" to profit from the rich on a global scale.
I have for a long time supported the idea that media featuring a politicians official pontifications should automatically be in the public domain so that large media players (with access to..say...the WH press room), can't hoard this stuff in an effort to pick and choose what the public should be constantly reminded of. Media businesses should be compelled to deposit a copy of the raw footage or transcript to an extended public library service (libraians are tougher than they look). I belive in some countries a similar idea was/is a requirement of running a newspaper?
OTOH: The general public needs to be more forgiving when a politcian "flip-flops", consistency is an admirable trait but impossible for a leader that is willing to listen, learn and adapt to "changes on the ground". "Sorry I fucked up" should not automatically bring calls for resignation, impeachment, ect. (BTW: Don't take this as support for anyone in particular, IMHO some of the neo-cons deserve a CIA trip to ***stan for questioning).
"Making paper out of oak and maple is financially the equivalent to melting down dimes and reforming them in the shape of nickels."
Yep, and that is exactly what is happening in the large rainforests around the world. Except the species are murbu, kapur, ect and the good lumber is used for window frames, plywood, decking/flooring, ect.
I have no objection to pine forests in the US (I don't know much about them), AFAIK they are native to the US where as over here they are an "alien" species. We have native softwoods that will grow 3X as fast as pine and actually enhance the environment. I also hear dope plants are very efficient at turning sunlight into paper.
"but please let's not spread BS about paper production"
If you look at my post I was not attacking US forestry, as I said most wealthy countries look after whatever they have left. But lets not kid ourselves that the bulk of the worlds woodchips come from from wealthy countries. High quality hardwood chips from the places I mentioned are extremely cheap when compared to what the original resource is really worth.
"It is not people sneaking in to the rain forest and cutting down huge, thousand year old trees"
Not sure about 1kyrs but the mill I worked at (early 80's) used 350yro mountain ash (Australian version is a huge tree) for house frames and bridge timber, the substantial amount of waste was chipped, the "hearts" are full of red dirt and are burned. The area is now a national park but the practice continues in other areas. Even in the eighties that was small scale and highly regulated compared to the modern day practices in the other places I mentioned, look it up - these people aren't "sneaking" they are large companies with the type of political clout the *IAA has wet dreams over.
And if bulldozing eveything in sight is not bad enough, take a look at the Shell's practices in Nigeria or Texaco in Ecuador, or any of the countless number of times that western society has shat on it's neighbours veggie garden.
"...if this had been the bone of a still living species,..." (my em.)
Don't bother posting links 'cause in your case I don't need them, to paraphrase your logic: "If the evidence was something different then the results would be different".
You my friend should be a philosopher, your talent for pointing out the obvious borders on genius.
"Actually the more people need paper the more trees get planted to supply that demand"
I think you will find most paper pulp comes from native hardwood forests, eg: Indonesia, Malaysia, S.America and even here in Australia. Some wealthy countries replant and/or carefully manage the natural regrowth, most just hack it down leaving large areas of barren hills. In Australia we plant non-native pine trees for timber resulting in vast areas of land covered with a pine tree monoculture that is largely devoid of any other lifeforms (even the bugs refuse to live in those forests).
Speaking of cost, how much do you think it costs to cut a ton of timber, turn it into chips, ship it from Australia to Japan and then turn it into paper that is shipped all over the planet. I will wager those costs are far more than the cost of an extra garbage run to collect a ton of used paper that is ready for pulping. Having worked at a sawmill many moons ago the waste timber that was chipped on site was collected by a truck and driven ~200miles to a sea port.
"However we should spend those thousand years experimenting on other planets and discovering
the universe rather than sitting "home" sustaining the Agenda-21 fraud."
Never heard of A21, I will google it later but I think I get the gist and agree we should not "sit on our hands". However I think for the most part reseach on adapting to (say) mars can be done much more efficiently here on Earth. NASA's "great observertries" project has been an absolute goldmine for science. Autonomous scientific observation from space (both inward and outward) has been a great success and it is a shame it was so casually tossed aside by politics.
Disclaimer: I watched Armstrong walk on the moon as a ten year old, and yes the world did stand together to watch one man. That was a different world, I don't think a game of golf on Mars would achive a similar reaction (if they were playing against martians it may be a different story).
"I don't think it's unfair to say that it is a reasonable standard of evidence which should cause us to at least question if man and dinosaurs did live at the same time."
This is where science and opinion radically diverge, that those artifacts represent or describe dinosours is but one interpretation of said artifacts, at best science can authenticate claims such as the artfacts age, composition, method of manafacture, source of raw materials, trade of artifact between tribes, ect.
From direct observation of the remains of dinosours science can demonstrate the youngest known remains predate the oldest know human remains by tens of millions of years. This direct observation far outweighs any anecdotal observations from some long forgotten paintings and text, the interpretation of which is limited only by man's imagination and flair for story telling.
In other words, since established science specifically contradicts the creationist interpretation of the bible and other relics, it is fair to say that no human has ever layed eyes on a living dinosour, the idea therefore is not even a reasonable interpretation of their own evidence when taken in context of what science does "know" about humans and dinosours.
As for the idea that finding ET would eliminate religion I find hard to belive that religious behaviour can be espunged from our species, even pigeons devise random rituals in an attempt to "influence" a random reward which suggests the basic "wetware feature" is deeply rooted in the evolutionary tree. It's hard enough for some humans to acknowlage humans from other religions posess what they call a soul, let alone contemplate an animal or an alien may posess these "god given" wetware features.
As far a science goes the "soul" and mind are emergent properties of a sophisticated simulation of reality calculated by our brain. Inside us all is an etheral thing described variously as mind, soul, consiousness, ego, id, ect, that to the best of our knowledge appears to be the embodiment of an ongoing calculation, one that can be turned off temporarily by getting really shitfaced or permenently by dropping dead. When you look at "reality" this way it comes as no surprise that mathematics and the scientific method are so effective at modeling the RealWord(TM). What maths and science "model" is not one "reality" but a common thread of perception amoungst the majority of individual "realities".
Having said that: I agree that the fact I exists at all is a "miracle" in so much as there will not and should never be a one-size-fits-all answer to the philosophers question of "why?".
1) So mice have thicker bones and birds run rather than fly.
2) I don't think quakes are a big problem for life in general.
3 & 4) Complex life forms live around thermal vents where the temprature varies by hundredes of degrees over a few inches. Our own biosphere is also a chaotic system where order "emerges" in the form of a dynamic equilibrium.
"Even if I could travel a light-year a minute for a buck, I'd never consider trying to live there."
I think you missed the point (or maybe you were aiming for cynical humour), we are a long way technologically from colonising the stars, so much so that we are only now infering the existance of interesting targets. We co-evolved with Earth's biosphere and it's very unlikely we will find a hospitable duplicate where we can lay around on a beach or picnic by a river. Given the huge technology gap, our species must first learn how to sustain the only hospitable biosphere we have for millenia before we can "consider" moving to another planet.
"Next?"
Yes, by all means keep this research going, great stuff!
WTF are you talking about, open the 2007 IPCC SPM, got to figure SPM-2 and "heaven forbid" you will find the evil money grubbing scientists have estimiated the (non-zero) contribution of solar flux to the current warming trend.
The first I heard of "who moved my cheese" was when I had my sorry arse dragged into a confrence room by big blue to watch the video. I find it more than a little sad that the book is still on the best sellers list.
"...the point that it's useless to compare a human to an animal that has been _trained_ to do something..."
I agree with your point but lets not forget that humans are also "trained", the only part that is "instinctive learned" is language, writing, maths, farming, building, ect, are all taught. Our unmatched ability to manipulate symbols means thousands of generations of "trainning" can be condensed into a text book, or a comprehensive model of the known universe in a handfull of equations and a periodic table. Despite our seemingly "vast superiority" the basic behavioural featue is "the ability to manipulate symbols". I think there are many social and behavioural similarities between apes and humans, apes have enough language capability for basic conversation, they can convey simple happy/sad/angry expressions of emotion and can compose simple sentences. Not surprisingly expressions of emotion and satifaction of physical needs take up most of the conversation and the apes learn far slower than a human child.
Since the apes are capable of composing their own sentences using the correct context and not just giving a "parrot" type response or request, I think it is very useful to comapre what they are communicating to (say) what a child's response might be. I also think it's tad unfair that some scientists entirely dismiss the work of people like Jane Goodall based on the claim that her data is corrupt because she "inadvertently trained" the chimps with food and artificial situations.
Many people (including scientists) insist all animal behaviour is instinctive. Yes humans have far "superior" cognative skills when compared to any other animal, but we are still animals. Why is it taken as the default position that all animals are some sort of organic automotron except for humans? - Is this not a religious throwback to the idea that humans are endowed with a "soul"? - Is it not far more likely that emotion, cognition and language "emerge" from increasingly sophisticated brain and social structures, and that many of these "wetware features" could reasonably be expected to be similar in closely related species such as humans and the great apes?
As for monkeys prostituting themselves, if penguins do it, why not primates?
"You appear to possess very idealistic views of the peer-review system. Instead of acknowledging that consensus science deprives out-of-the-mainstream scientists from receiving funding that would enable them to debunk the consensus, you specifically focus on the idealistic notion that it somehow makes the consensus more of a target."
You sir have demonstrated through your tedious, rambling posts that you are a crank, like the majority of cranks you have little or no understanding that science is a process. Until you actually attempt to understand how this process works in the real world I see little point in continuing the discussion (refer to implication 2 in my link).
"In other words, it appears that we have prematurely formed consensuses on many issues. And once solidified, the consensus is used as a mechanism to prop up the status quo. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you accept, for instance, that the Mammoths were just slaughtered by a bunch of Indians, then this will drastically reduce the chances that you will be motivated to actually learn about the completely surreal circumstances of their death."
Excellent example of what I mean when I say that you don't understand the scientific method and skepticisim, the whole point of building a consensus is to give people a solid target to attack. It's simple to dissmiss EU as unsupported conjecture, all I have to say is "show me the peer-reviewed research".
Now before you go into a rant about how EU has been suppressed by a conspiracy that prevents them from being published in a recognised journal, take a deep breath, sit back and look at it in a dispassionate way. From what your posts say (and the bits I have read) the EU proponents are claiming astrophysics is wrong, cosmology is wrong, climatology is wrong, nuclear physics is wrong (and thus chemistry is wrong), "ancient writings" are a warning, something mysterious happened to mammoths, ect.
This many things cannot be wrong unless we have seriously fucked up centuries of research into physics, chemistry and maths. The chances that Don Scott and Wallace Thornhill are correct and the rest of us are complacent morons who spend their time supressing obvious genius is not zero, but it might as well be.
"When you can't account for 95% of the particles within your universe"
What are you talking about, everyone knows the Universe is mainly hydrogen and ignorance.
I did read some of the materials well before I started talking to you and it seems to me they are claiming to have reinvented pratically all of modern science along with disproving man-made global warming. They (like yourself) attack "consensus science" without understanding that consensus amoung investigators is what defines a scientific finding as "established", leading to the term "established science".
Your posts contain a large amount of ad-homs that target the competence of the scientific community and the value of "established science" yet you/they are proposing we should throw it all out and replace it with a theory that cannot make it past the first level of peer-review. It is not the astrophysicist's "lack of education" that is the problem here, it is the inability of EU theory to withstand formal scrutiny.
If you enjoy that sort of thing you may also like reading Michael Chritchton's "State of fear", Dan Brown's "Davinici code" or Eric Von-Daniken's "Chariot of the gods". They all work on the same principle, ie: selective facts, biased interpretations and incorrect conclusions. This does not mean these books do not contain usefull information/ideas but it does mean they fail to qualify as science.
As for a "purpose" for my posts I don't really have one, but I do have a habit of objecting to psuedo-science and psuedo-skepticisim where and when I see it.
I don't think the time from puberty to fully fledged adult is our "invention", it's simply a label for that stage of life. Other than that your post basically expresses what I was trying to say.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes that's all well and good for what we can observe, which is a black hole in our knowable universe. It tells us nothing about what a BH looks like from the "inside", nor what our knowable universe looks like from the "outside". I was not agruing for any particular idea, mearly pointing out that these ideas are not testable, they are conjecture and will remain so unless we work out a way to cross the information boundry.
"Nice refutation of a heap of stuff I didn't say."
You know what? - you are right. I had mixed our conversation up with something else, sorry about that.
I agree that science is never "finished", an interesting find should be thoughoughly and openly investigated.
Yes, but let's not confuse the visable universe with the Universe, Hawking's "Breif History of Time" includes a description of the visable universe as a black hole residing in the Universe. The funny thing about universe size black holes is that you could fall through the event horizon of one and not even notice.
The "boundry" from our point of view is the edge of the visable universe, we can never get information from beyond that distance in any direction. We also don't know what happenes to spacetime (or anything else) inside a black hole because of a similar information boundry. Who can say if the inside has a boundry when viewed from the inside, could it not have a similar "boundry" to the one we encounter when we look to the edge of the knowable universe? Perhaps our 4D spacetime "rolls up" inside a black hole and a spacetime using a differet set of 4 higher dimentions "unfulrs"?
Disclaimer: There is no way to test any of this, like god, string theory, parallel universes, branes, higher dimentions, ect, it all boils down to metaphysics and mathematical curiosity. As Godel and Shakespear both pointed out, there are "unknowable truths". My $0.02 is to accept that the Universe "just is", pick a model you like (or mix & match) but don't take it too seriously or shove it down peoples throats. My personal favorite is the multiverse - it means that "somewhere" exists another "me", 30yrs younger and living it up in the playboy mansion.
If you can grow pine trees in the simpson desert then more power to you.
I'm glad you cleared that up!
/sarcasm
I can see now how it's all a big cover-up (just like the moon landing) and all the independent and peer-rewiewed answers have been predetermined since that monk with the pea plants forged his results. It was just one monk who started all this but generations of scientists have conspired to ignore the methods handed from God to Newton in favour of "piltdown-science", these modern day monks make a concerted and largely sucessfull effort to hide the "truth" that is known only to "God's messengers", the creationists.
The evil misinformation about pea plants and hominoids that pours from the monks of modern science is the contents of pandoras box, we can't close the lid but surely we can dispose of the box. It's high time we gave authority over natures laws back to the church, the inquisition got rid of witches and they can get rid of those heretics who won't conform to the alice-in-wonderland world view of gods chosen people. And I don't mean "wonderland" in a derogatory sense, who are they to judge God's plan for humans and dinosours as revealed by the creationist's "truth", it is plain the creationists are right the references they quote are right there in the bible for all motel patrons to see and in their museam they physicaly demonstarte that dinosurs could indeed wear a saddle.
BTW: Now that I am converted, where are my slaves, don't give me that namby-pamby UN BS about human rights, the bible says I can have slaves, dammit I need my slaves to look after all the kids god is going to bless me with, and don't forget my conqubines - I imagine rotating the same 6 wives will rapidly become as sexually boring as monogomy.
BTW: This post required a rather large hit of angel dust to work up the right level of parinioa and religous ferver to do it justice and several bongs to calm down afterwards. I am not hostile towards personal faith, my partner is religious and just last year I was lucky enough to sit in on a public service at Westminster abbey with her. But please, show me and others educated in science the same kind of respect and "christian charity". Learn something about what you are critisizing and critisize the "science" you are preaching, none of this means you have to "question your faith" but it may result in you dumping organised religion.
Start with the skill of skeptcisim (AKA "critical thinking"), "Doubting Thomas", JREF and Sagan are good guides from different view points. Learning the skill takes a lifetime but the basics are not hard, find out why "peer-review" is so important, look up the meaning of "the republic of science" and "the scientific method", while you are there find out what the difference is between "opinion/fact", "anecdote/observastion", "idea/debunked idea", "theory/dogma", "testable/tested", "logic/rhetoric", "statistics/individual outcome", "science" and "established science". If you are connected to the net there is very little excuse for the unfortuately common ignorance about the philosphy and methods of modern science and the awe inspiring miricales it reveals for all to see.
I assume they are hardwood species, most commercial "gum" trees are hardwood and grow a lot faster than the "old world" hardwoods such as oak. Slow growing native Aussie trees such as blackwood have all but dissapeared outside national parks, we pissed away a valuable natural resource to make cheap railway sleepers and such, now if you can find a supplier it is as expensive as oak or teak.
I once read that France has a 300yr harvest cycle for their remaining oak stands, where as a 100yro gum tree is considered "mature" for logging purposes. I know that Spain now also has a healthy population of Aussie "blowflys" residing in their eucalyptus plantations, I would imagine the gum trees in general cause similar problems for native flora/fauna as pine plantations do over here.
OT: One slow growing species we did manage to to keep long enough to learn how to manage is the rather odd "ironbark". The grain so dense it sinks in water (as does good quality teak and mahogany), it cannot be nailed without drilling pilot holes (personal experience both manually and with a 2.5" nail gun). It is also extremely resistant to fire, rough slabs and sometimes hollow logs of the stuff were used by settlers to build chimmneys in their homes and it is still used widely for door sills and posts. I have seen news footage from Perth where ironbark posts (2-3' in diameter) were chared but still intact after surviving a warehouse fire hot enough to melt the steel framing they were supporting, they are a classic example of adaptaion to an environment where bushfires are viewed as a "season".
"Hardwood is a piss-poor way to generate pulpwood, because hardwood grows so slowly."
I agree, my point is that in the large tropical rainforests of the world virtually nobody replants and no care is taken to ensure the resource can grow back naturally. The trees are in effect "free" and make excellent raw material for high quality paper. What makes you think these people give a flying fuck about regrowth, in many places they don't even give a fuck about the natives who have lived there for millenia. Natives are simply a hinderance to operations and are chased of their land by armed corporate mercenaries and prevented from returning because they don't have a bit of government paper that says they can continue to live there.
I also generally agree with the rest of your post, I was not attempting to say anything about US forestry practices in particular only that we have significantly better native alternatives for pulpwood here in Oz that can use the same harvesting equipment, produce a similar yeild in 1/3 of the time, and are good for the environment to boot. Yet we continue to plant pine for domestic pulpwood. (Not sure if they are useful for plywood or structural purposes)
We don't really have a problem with residential creep (imagine the US with only 20M people), most of our forests have dissapeared over the last 150yrs or so to make way for farmland or pasture but there are still large areas covered with virgin forests.
OTOH: I think the US does share in some culpability for negligent destruction and corrupt governments in the other two thirds of the world, western business and politics in general have, and still are, screwing the poor and "uncivilized" to profit from the rich on a global scale.
I have for a long time supported the idea that media featuring a politicians official pontifications should automatically be in the public domain so that large media players (with access to..say...the WH press room), can't hoard this stuff in an effort to pick and choose what the public should be constantly reminded of. Media businesses should be compelled to deposit a copy of the raw footage or transcript to an extended public library service (libraians are tougher than they look). I belive in some countries a similar idea was/is a requirement of running a newspaper?
OTOH: The general public needs to be more forgiving when a politcian "flip-flops", consistency is an admirable trait but impossible for a leader that is willing to listen, learn and adapt to "changes on the ground". "Sorry I fucked up" should not automatically bring calls for resignation, impeachment, ect. (BTW: Don't take this as support for anyone in particular, IMHO some of the neo-cons deserve a CIA trip to ***stan for questioning).
"Making paper out of oak and maple is financially the equivalent to melting down dimes and reforming them in the shape of nickels."
Yep, and that is exactly what is happening in the large rainforests around the world. Except the species are murbu, kapur, ect and the good lumber is used for window frames, plywood, decking/flooring, ect.
I have no objection to pine forests in the US (I don't know much about them), AFAIK they are native to the US where as over here they are an "alien" species. We have native softwoods that will grow 3X as fast as pine and actually enhance the environment. I also hear dope plants are very efficient at turning sunlight into paper.
"but please let's not spread BS about paper production"
If you look at my post I was not attacking US forestry, as I said most wealthy countries look after whatever they have left. But lets not kid ourselves that the bulk of the worlds woodchips come from from wealthy countries. High quality hardwood chips from the places I mentioned are extremely cheap when compared to what the original resource is really worth.
"It is not people sneaking in to the rain forest and cutting down huge, thousand year old trees"
Not sure about 1kyrs but the mill I worked at (early 80's) used 350yro mountain ash (Australian version is a huge tree) for house frames and bridge timber, the substantial amount of waste was chipped, the "hearts" are full of red dirt and are burned. The area is now a national park but the practice continues in other areas. Even in the eighties that was small scale and highly regulated compared to the modern day practices in the other places I mentioned, look it up - these people aren't "sneaking" they are large companies with the type of political clout the *IAA has wet dreams over.
And if bulldozing eveything in sight is not bad enough, take a look at the Shell's practices in Nigeria or Texaco in Ecuador, or any of the countless number of times that western society has shat on it's neighbours veggie garden.
"Maybe they don't like the smell of cheap disinfectant."
I think you are spot on!
"...if this had been the bone of a still living species,..." (my em.)
Don't bother posting links 'cause in your case I don't need them, to paraphrase your logic: "If the evidence was something different then the results would be different".
You my friend should be a philosopher, your talent for pointing out the obvious borders on genius.
"Actually the more people need paper the more trees get planted to supply that demand"
I think you will find most paper pulp comes from native hardwood forests, eg: Indonesia, Malaysia, S.America and even here in Australia. Some wealthy countries replant and/or carefully manage the natural regrowth, most just hack it down leaving large areas of barren hills. In Australia we plant non-native pine trees for timber resulting in vast areas of land covered with a pine tree monoculture that is largely devoid of any other lifeforms (even the bugs refuse to live in those forests).
Speaking of cost, how much do you think it costs to cut a ton of timber, turn it into chips, ship it from Australia to Japan and then turn it into paper that is shipped all over the planet. I will wager those costs are far more than the cost of an extra garbage run to collect a ton of used paper that is ready for pulping. Having worked at a sawmill many moons ago the waste timber that was chipped on site was collected by a truck and driven ~200miles to a sea port.
"However we should spend those thousand years experimenting on other planets and discovering the universe rather than sitting "home" sustaining the Agenda-21 fraud."
Never heard of A21, I will google it later but I think I get the gist and agree we should not "sit on our hands". However I think for the most part reseach on adapting to (say) mars can be done much more efficiently here on Earth. NASA's "great observertries" project has been an absolute goldmine for science. Autonomous scientific observation from space (both inward and outward) has been a great success and it is a shame it was so casually tossed aside by politics.
Disclaimer: I watched Armstrong walk on the moon as a ten year old, and yes the world did stand together to watch one man. That was a different world, I don't think a game of golf on Mars would achive a similar reaction (if they were playing against martians it may be a different story).
"I don't think it's unfair to say that it is a reasonable standard of evidence which should cause us to at least question if man and dinosaurs did live at the same time."
This is where science and opinion radically diverge, that those artifacts represent or describe dinosours is but one interpretation of said artifacts, at best science can authenticate claims such as the artfacts age, composition, method of manafacture, source of raw materials, trade of artifact between tribes, ect.
From direct observation of the remains of dinosours science can demonstrate the youngest known remains predate the oldest know human remains by tens of millions of years. This direct observation far outweighs any anecdotal observations from some long forgotten paintings and text, the interpretation of which is limited only by man's imagination and flair for story telling.
In other words, since established science specifically contradicts the creationist interpretation of the bible and other relics, it is fair to say that no human has ever layed eyes on a living dinosour, the idea therefore is not even a reasonable interpretation of their own evidence when taken in context of what science does "know" about humans and dinosours.
As for the idea that finding ET would eliminate religion I find hard to belive that religious behaviour can be espunged from our species, even pigeons devise random rituals in an attempt to "influence" a random reward which suggests the basic "wetware feature" is deeply rooted in the evolutionary tree. It's hard enough for some humans to acknowlage humans from other religions posess what they call a soul, let alone contemplate an animal or an alien may posess these "god given" wetware features.
As far a science goes the "soul" and mind are emergent properties of a sophisticated simulation of reality calculated by our brain. Inside us all is an etheral thing described variously as mind, soul, consiousness, ego, id, ect, that to the best of our knowledge appears to be the embodiment of an ongoing calculation, one that can be turned off temporarily by getting really shitfaced or permenently by dropping dead. When you look at "reality" this way it comes as no surprise that mathematics and the scientific method are so effective at modeling the RealWord(TM). What maths and science "model" is not one "reality" but a common thread of perception amoungst the majority of individual "realities".
Having said that: I agree that the fact I exists at all is a "miracle" in so much as there will not and should never be a one-size-fits-all answer to the philosophers question of "why?".
1) So mice have thicker bones and birds run rather than fly.
2) I don't think quakes are a big problem for life in general.
3 & 4) Complex life forms live around thermal vents where the temprature varies by hundredes of degrees over a few inches. Our own biosphere is also a chaotic system where order "emerges" in the form of a dynamic equilibrium.
"Even if I could travel a light-year a minute for a buck, I'd never consider trying to live there."
I think you missed the point (or maybe you were aiming for cynical humour), we are a long way technologically from colonising the stars, so much so that we are only now infering the existance of interesting targets. We co-evolved with Earth's biosphere and it's very unlikely we will find a hospitable duplicate where we can lay around on a beach or picnic by a river. Given the huge technology gap, our species must first learn how to sustain the only hospitable biosphere we have for millenia before we can "consider" moving to another planet.
"Next?"
Yes, by all means keep this research going, great stuff!
WTF are you talking about, open the 2007 IPCC SPM, got to figure SPM-2 and "heaven forbid" you will find the evil money grubbing scientists have estimiated the (non-zero) contribution of solar flux to the current warming trend.
"I've come to the realization that I'm already an old fart."
Me too, but I have been told that suspenders are no longer as fashionable as they were in the "clockwork orange" days.
The first I heard of "who moved my cheese" was when I had my sorry arse dragged into a confrence room by big blue to watch the video. I find it more than a little sad that the book is still on the best sellers list.
"...the point that it's useless to compare a human to an animal that has been _trained_ to do something..."
I agree with your point but lets not forget that humans are also "trained", the only part that is "instinctive learned" is language, writing, maths, farming, building, ect, are all taught. Our unmatched ability to manipulate symbols means thousands of generations of "trainning" can be condensed into a text book, or a comprehensive model of the known universe in a handfull of equations and a periodic table. Despite our seemingly "vast superiority" the basic behavioural featue is "the ability to manipulate symbols". I think there are many social and behavioural similarities between apes and humans, apes have enough language capability for basic conversation, they can convey simple happy/sad/angry expressions of emotion and can compose simple sentences. Not surprisingly expressions of emotion and satifaction of physical needs take up most of the conversation and the apes learn far slower than a human child.
Since the apes are capable of composing their own sentences using the correct context and not just giving a "parrot" type response or request, I think it is very useful to comapre what they are communicating to (say) what a child's response might be. I also think it's tad unfair that some scientists entirely dismiss the work of people like Jane Goodall based on the claim that her data is corrupt because she "inadvertently trained" the chimps with food and artificial situations.
Many people (including scientists) insist all animal behaviour is instinctive. Yes humans have far "superior" cognative skills when compared to any other animal, but we are still animals. Why is it taken as the default position that all animals are some sort of organic automotron except for humans? - Is this not a religious throwback to the idea that humans are endowed with a "soul"? - Is it not far more likely that emotion, cognition and language "emerge" from increasingly sophisticated brain and social structures, and that many of these "wetware features" could reasonably be expected to be similar in closely related species such as humans and the great apes?
As for monkeys prostituting themselves, if penguins do it, why not primates?
"You appear to possess very idealistic views of the peer-review system. Instead of acknowledging that consensus science deprives out-of-the-mainstream scientists from receiving funding that would enable them to debunk the consensus, you specifically focus on the idealistic notion that it somehow makes the consensus more of a target."
You sir have demonstrated through your tedious, rambling posts that you are a crank, like the majority of cranks you have little or no understanding that science is a process. Until you actually attempt to understand how this process works in the real world I see little point in continuing the discussion (refer to implication 2 in my link).
"In other words, it appears that we have prematurely formed consensuses on many issues. And once solidified, the consensus is used as a mechanism to prop up the status quo. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you accept, for instance, that the Mammoths were just slaughtered by a bunch of Indians, then this will drastically reduce the chances that you will be motivated to actually learn about the completely surreal circumstances of their death."
Excellent example of what I mean when I say that you don't understand the scientific method and skepticisim, the whole point of building a consensus is to give people a solid target to attack. It's simple to dissmiss EU as unsupported conjecture, all I have to say is "show me the peer-reviewed research".
Now before you go into a rant about how EU has been suppressed by a conspiracy that prevents them from being published in a recognised journal, take a deep breath, sit back and look at it in a dispassionate way. From what your posts say (and the bits I have read) the EU proponents are claiming astrophysics is wrong, cosmology is wrong, climatology is wrong, nuclear physics is wrong (and thus chemistry is wrong), "ancient writings" are a warning, something mysterious happened to mammoths, ect.
This many things cannot be wrong unless we have seriously fucked up centuries of research into physics, chemistry and maths. The chances that Don Scott and Wallace Thornhill are correct and the rest of us are complacent morons who spend their time supressing obvious genius is not zero, but it might as well be.
"When you can't account for 95% of the particles within your universe"
What are you talking about, everyone knows the Universe is mainly hydrogen and ignorance.
I did read some of the materials well before I started talking to you and it seems to me they are claiming to have reinvented pratically all of modern science along with disproving man-made global warming. They (like yourself) attack "consensus science" without understanding that consensus amoung investigators is what defines a scientific finding as "established", leading to the term "established science".
Your posts contain a large amount of ad-homs that target the competence of the scientific community and the value of "established science" yet you/they are proposing we should throw it all out and replace it with a theory that cannot make it past the first level of peer-review. It is not the astrophysicist's "lack of education" that is the problem here, it is the inability of EU theory to withstand formal scrutiny.
If you enjoy that sort of thing you may also like reading Michael Chritchton's "State of fear", Dan Brown's "Davinici code" or Eric Von-Daniken's "Chariot of the gods". They all work on the same principle, ie: selective facts, biased interpretations and incorrect conclusions. This does not mean these books do not contain usefull information/ideas but it does mean they fail to qualify as science.
As for a "purpose" for my posts I don't really have one, but I do have a habit of objecting to psuedo-science and psuedo-skepticisim where and when I see it.
I don't think the time from puberty to fully fledged adult is our "invention", it's simply a label for that stage of life. Other than that your post basically expresses what I was trying to say.
You forgot knees, they start to go around the same time as the funny looking hairs start popping out of odd places, I think they could be related.