"A lot of cosmology seems like common sense.....I could have told someone this while bs'ing over a beer in a bar while just joking around on crazy topics."
Yes, using the properties of galaxies to infer the early state of the primordial quantum flux of a dimentionless quantum dot that exploded into nothing to create everthing and everywhen will be a hot topic in bars tonight./sarcasm
Gorilla skins are probably the best "off the rack" fit nature provides, let's face it - Chimpas are too small and the sleaves on an Oragutang are way too long.
Seriously though, INA-Anthorpologist but I would have thought that prototype clothing was made from animal skins? Early Europeans are known to have used whale skins to make portable huts and what little is left of tribal cultures today still wear animal skins or plated leaves.
TFA - Another thing to take into consideration is that tribal people have a strong tendancy to look at other tribes as an inferior race of humans. The point here is that tribes who come into regular contact with great apes refer to them as an inferior tribe.
Disclaimer: I don't subscribe to racisim but I acknowledge I live inside the MonkeySphere.
"It was a long time ago. I am guessing, before you were born or at least old enough to read?"
Bzzzzt, I was ten years old when Armstrong walked on the moon and I do indeed remember the "coming ice age". However, Uri Geller's spoon bending, Eric Von Daniken's chariots of the gods, and oversized red platform shoes were much bigger "fads" in Australia. Most kids that I knew in the '60s & '70s were "breathlessly waiting" to be conscipted to Vietnam and "worried" about nuclear war.
The root source of the "coming ice age" story can be traced back to a National Geographic article, I know of no scientific paper concerning global cooling that was produced in the 70's (see the other posters links).
OTOH: You are talking to a guy who at one time thought he looked good in oversized red platform shoes.
Years ago I worked shift work in a large factory that had those old fasioned synconized clocks on the shop floor, if you were on night shift you could watch it go forward (woohoo) or backward (doh). It didn't effect anyones pay, it was just luck if you hit a short/long shift.
I fail to see how mars can have much of a "greenhouse effect" when it doesn't have much of an atmosphere. Perhaps Mars is getting warmer I really don't know, 3yrs of data is too insignificant to say much at all but I certainly don't want to stop people looking at Mars.
However, claiming that the sun is responsible for Earth's current warming and "proving" it by looking at Mars is pure bullshit designed to confuse people. Zonk is always posting this type of crap, I wouldn't have a problem with it if he didn't insist on labeling it "science".
It's interesting to note that a National Geographic article is also the source of the "in the 70's scientists predicted global cooling" myth that psuedo-skeptics drag up all the time. As I said, if you are interested in solid research about the attribution of forcings in Earth's recent warming then look at figure SPM-2 in the IPCC report (LOSU = Level Of Scientific Understanding).
I was yanking your chain because because what you said was ambigous (thus the "/sarcasm" tag).
Your link says EITC will reduce or eliminate tax for low wage earners, that is not "getting more back in rebates" it is basically a free one year loan from the poor to the government. Nor is giving the boss a subisdy to pay you the minimum wage, a "rebate". (My attention span is weak for financial matters, so that's as far as I got into the article.)
Having worked under such a scheme (almost 30yrs ago) I can tell you that the workers learn precious little in the way of marketable skills since the job you are doing is either seasonal or meanial. And since "the boss" has an ROI higher than what he spends on each worker, he is getting the lions share of the benifit generated by these type of subsidies.
Without going into a long drawn out rant, this type of scheme if implemented without an independently recognised training program is corporate welfare, not social welfare.
"But this is not a troll; there are plenty of scientists observing the sun."
Your post is not a troll but TFA certainly is.
For anybody wondering about the attribution of various +/- forcings affecting climate, including variations in solar flux, please see figure SPM-2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM report. For those who like the Mars idea as expressed in TFA please explain why 3yrs of data should be accepted as a trend, let only accepted in preference to a theory that has made some accuate predictions and has an observational record that uses multiple idependent lines of inquiry for periods that are up to a few orders of magnitute longer?
"Ironically, 50% of the wage earners in the US pay 97% of the taxes. And the top 3% pay over half the income taxes in the US."
I'm no maths wizz but you seem to be saying that 53% of wage earners pay ~150% of income taxes. Does that mean the other 47% get back more in tax rebates than they paid in tax? If so then that really is "free money"!/sarcasm
I agree wholeheartedly, blaming MS is pure idiocy. Here in Australia we had DST well before we had computers plugged into everything. Didin't stop the bullshit though, the main complaints were...
1. Dairy cows will require milking at the "wrong time" and will suffer from overfull udders.
2. Drapes will fade quicker due to the "extra" UV light.
BTW: This DST "calamity" is not restricted to MS software, I mean how the hell does someone with a traditional diary get around the problem, I have never seen a diary that has a 23 or 25 hour day on the change over date. Will receptionists in small offices all across the US go into meltdown? Will the publishers responsible for the "defective" diaries be issuing page updates? - Nah, but hopefull it will convince the remaining ludites to dump Win2000 and look for something better.
"I'm just waiting for some environmental group to start whining about these, too."
Sure there are plenty of NIMBY's, but they come from all walks of life and politics not just the environmental fringe, for example do you want to live within earshot of a windfarm or do you want it hidden from view by the ocean's horizon?
"They complain that windmills kill too many birds."
Here in Australia the last group to "complain that windmills kill too many birds" was the conservative federal government who put a halt to a windfarm in my (coal rich) state because of a rare parrot. The (ex) fedral enviroment minister responsible for the decision was unashamedly in the pocket of the coal industry that is busy chewing up the bulk of our "green energy research" subsidies looking for the "clean coal" magic bullet. The windfarm project is now back on track but the procrastination was deliberate political posturing that had nothing to do with parrots or the environment.
Also just because these things don't spew CO2 does not mean that they won't have a some unforseen consequences, large structures can change currents and the shoreline, you might end up inadvertantly filling a shipping channel with sand or washing away sand dunes that hold wetlands in place. The envionmental impact of any large infrastructure should be studied and assesed to reduce the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot.
I for one would certainly not like to see them dotting the coast of the Whitsunday islands, shark bay, the Shetland isles, or any other fragile breeding ground for fish and wildlife. I would also like to see these things up and running but the TCO (including the environmental costs) needs to be proven on something other than paper before we make them ubiquitous.
Do you see the connection with the parrots - they were used as a scapegoat to trivialise environmental concerns, just as you are using them as a scapegoat for why the uptake of this tech has been so arduosly slow.
""Honestly, I think it's a good idea, on par with offshore windmills and such, but I think that it's only a matter of time before some group starts a resistance movement for some idiotic and quite negligible reason."
There is an effective "resistant movement" in the form of the fossil fuel industry that has been successfull in stagnating these projects for many decades (although it's effacacy here in Oz has diminished dramatically over the past 2-3 years). Wind and water power ideas have been politically pushed by "environmental groups" since the club of rome, if not before. You say yourself they are a "good idea" but then claim that "enviromental groups" will hamper the progress of such projects with trivial complaints. After decades of pushing for these project (against many trivial objections) why the hell would they do that?
This bashing of environmentalists is patently false doublespeak. So what exactly do you find so objectionable about the concept of people organising in groups with the aim of preserving the environment, and is it so far fetched to think of the people who are financing this project as an "environmental group"? My guess is that you have thought about power generation but haven't done much thinking about the society and enviroment around you, you have simply sucked up some propoganda about "environmental groups" that for some reason you thought was worth repeating.
With all due respect the level of technology and organization in those cultures is (IMHO), not in the same leauge as the Aztecs, Myan's, ect. It's a bit like comparing stonehenge to the pyramids, both were built in roughly the same time period and were improved and maintained for millenian, both would have needed all the technology, resources and organization that their society's could muster. The resulting structures speak to the relative technological and political powers of each society.
Note however that both societies (stonehenge vs pyramids) were obviously very successfull since they both managed to hold thier civilizations together for few millenia without requiring another "quantum leap" in technology like the one that kick started their dominance in the first place. For better or worse the entire human race has been merging into one civilization since the end of WW2. IMHO, the technology that started this "quantum leap" into a single civilization was "communication technology" starting with Guttenburgh and (probably) culminating with digital comms. OTOH: It looks like this currently forming civilization is banging up against some hard environmental limits and we may see the industrial revolution "plateau" for a few millenia while it's sorts out how to sustain what it already has, either that or it will nose dive into the apocolyptic predictions of so called "alarmists".
As for what you quoted, I was wondering (if people arrived from the north) why did the technology sprout in the south. Also why didn't the tech from the south spread rapidly through the north, was it a natural barrier, a political/tribal barrier, or was the tech that didn't spread unsuitable for the north?
I will be the first to admit I know very little about N American pre-history. I did know some southern tribes built large towns with multi-storey wooden buildings. However I had always assumed most tribes followed the migration of buffalo heards like the nomadic hearders of Mongolia (the only country in the world that describes itself as a "nomadic society").
Have I got the wrong picture? I only ask because I grew up in the 60's, John Wayne, Danniel Boone, ect, great entertainment but who knows what erroneous memes my brain has decided to keep.
Actually I am on my way to becoming a grand-parent, my son built and ran his own BBS at the age of 12 (circa 1992).
"Not grokking wi-if doesn't make someone senile or "dumb as dog shit".
That is not what I said.
"Here's a scenario: family has a cable modem. They use a wireless router."
Who set this up and pays for both the connection and the Wii, the kid or the parent? Granted that some parents may spend so much on expensive hardware and services for their kids that they don't have a clue what their kids are doing, but I would also put those "parents" in the dumb as dogshit categegory.
I often tell people I have seen UFO's, after a short conversation about aliens I explain that I mean "flying objects" that I could not identify at the time and still haven't got a good explaination for. Yes, it could be little green men but it could also be a flying pig with after-burners, that's the whole point of the word unidentified - UFO literaly means "I dont know what it is, but it's flying".
From my informal "straw poll", I reckon a third of people just accept UFO's==Alien's as a "scientific theory", they're not dumb, they simply don't understand what science is and often confuse it with technology and fiction. Try a straw poll yourself on strangers at parties, the pub, whatever, it really is quite amazing how quick people are willing to admit they "just don't know" when you are willing to demonstrate a well reasoned case for mutual ignorance.
"We can keep doing this all day if you lot don't stop being so half-arsed about it."
I know, adding a symetrical cheek to make it a full-arsed Universe is a GoodIdea(TM), but I don't think we can streach the budget enough to afford such a radical change. For a start, just think of how many god years it will take to test the whole Universe for the absence of ethical values. And who's going to do the documnets, sacred texts don't write themselves you know.
Indeed, science can tell you how the pyrimids were built, but it can't begin to explain why they were built. As for astrology, it's basically an ancient form of science (or "natural philosophy"), predicting the movement of the "heavens" was extremely important because it enabled the prediction of seasons, animal migrations, ect, everything that had any sort of "behaviour" was explained by a "spirit".
Modern science took the personification away from natural forces and entities (spacetime, matter, gravity, ect), the great religions centralized the spirit world, united tribes, and fought bloody wars against each other, they also made modern science and government possible in the first place.
Astrology is an example of "mom & apple pie" writing. A well written horoscope is an art that could be used as an example in many teaching situtions ranging from politics to science.
Slashdot Mirror
"A lot of cosmology seems like common sense.....I could have told someone this while bs'ing over a beer in a bar while just joking around on crazy topics."
/sarcasm
Yes, using the properties of galaxies to infer the early state of the primordial quantum flux of a dimentionless quantum dot that exploded into nothing to create everthing and everywhen will be a hot topic in bars tonight.
"Earlier in that article, he mentions how he's only ever used word processors with four features: "backspace, delete, cut and paste and print"
...and then goes on to prove it...
"Do you how many person sentries that is?"
Gorilla skins are probably the best "off the rack" fit nature provides, let's face it - Chimpas are too small and the sleaves on an Oragutang are way too long.
Seriously though, INA-Anthorpologist but I would have thought that prototype clothing was made from animal skins? Early Europeans are known to have used whale skins to make portable huts and what little is left of tribal cultures today still wear animal skins or plated leaves.
TFA - Another thing to take into consideration is that tribal people have a strong tendancy to look at other tribes as an inferior race of humans. The point here is that tribes who come into regular contact with great apes refer to them as an inferior tribe.
Disclaimer: I don't subscribe to racisim but I acknowledge I live inside the MonkeySphere.
I agree, debunking the same psudeo-scientific crap over and over again is boring.
"Bloomin' Onions"
Don't come the raw prawn with me mate, we have fucking onions on our fucking steak, and don't forget the fucking beetroot.
"It makes for some really unreadable code. Is it really that much more effort to make a boolean var with a meaningful name?"
#define _SARCASM (~0)
#include "sarcasm.h"
boolean it_is_called_code_for_a_reason = true;
"It was a long time ago. I am guessing, before you were born or at least old enough to read?"
Bzzzzt, I was ten years old when Armstrong walked on the moon and I do indeed remember the "coming ice age". However, Uri Geller's spoon bending, Eric Von Daniken's chariots of the gods, and oversized red platform shoes were much bigger "fads" in Australia. Most kids that I knew in the '60s & '70s were "breathlessly waiting" to be conscipted to Vietnam and "worried" about nuclear war.
The root source of the "coming ice age" story can be traced back to a National Geographic article, I know of no scientific paper concerning global cooling that was produced in the 70's (see the other posters links).
OTOH: You are talking to a guy who at one time thought he looked good in oversized red platform shoes.
Yes, you can drink 25hrs a day. :)
Years ago I worked shift work in a large factory that had those old fasioned synconized clocks on the shop floor, if you were on night shift you could watch it go forward (woohoo) or backward (doh). It didn't effect anyones pay, it was just luck if you hit a short/long shift.
I fail to see how mars can have much of a "greenhouse effect" when it doesn't have much of an atmosphere. Perhaps Mars is getting warmer I really don't know, 3yrs of data is too insignificant to say much at all but I certainly don't want to stop people looking at Mars.
However, claiming that the sun is responsible for Earth's current warming and "proving" it by looking at Mars is pure bullshit designed to confuse people. Zonk is always posting this type of crap, I wouldn't have a problem with it if he didn't insist on labeling it "science".
It's interesting to note that a National Geographic article is also the source of the "in the 70's scientists predicted global cooling" myth that psuedo-skeptics drag up all the time. As I said, if you are interested in solid research about the attribution of forcings in Earth's recent warming then look at figure SPM-2 in the IPCC report (LOSU = Level Of Scientific Understanding).
I was yanking your chain because because what you said was ambigous (thus the "/sarcasm" tag).
Your link says EITC will reduce or eliminate tax for low wage earners, that is not "getting more back in rebates" it is basically a free one year loan from the poor to the government. Nor is giving the boss a subisdy to pay you the minimum wage, a "rebate". (My attention span is weak for financial matters, so that's as far as I got into the article.)
Having worked under such a scheme (almost 30yrs ago) I can tell you that the workers learn precious little in the way of marketable skills since the job you are doing is either seasonal or meanial. And since "the boss" has an ROI higher than what he spends on each worker, he is getting the lions share of the benifit generated by these type of subsidies.
Without going into a long drawn out rant, this type of scheme if implemented without an independently recognised training program is corporate welfare, not social welfare.
One of the last few psuedo-skeptics....*sigh*.
"But this is not a troll; there are plenty of scientists observing the sun."
Your post is not a troll but TFA certainly is.
For anybody wondering about the attribution of various +/- forcings affecting climate, including variations in solar flux, please see figure SPM-2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM report. For those who like the Mars idea as expressed in TFA please explain why 3yrs of data should be accepted as a trend, let only accepted in preference to a theory that has made some accuate predictions and has an observational record that uses multiple idependent lines of inquiry for periods that are up to a few orders of magnitute longer?
"Ironically, 50% of the wage earners in the US pay 97% of the taxes. And the top 3% pay over half the income taxes in the US."
/sarcasm
I'm no maths wizz but you seem to be saying that 53% of wage earners pay ~150% of income taxes. Does that mean the other 47% get back more in tax rebates than they paid in tax? If so then that really is "free money"!
You just demonstrated my point, different cultures have different ethical/moral priorities.
I agree wholeheartedly, blaming MS is pure idiocy. Here in Australia we had DST well before we had computers plugged into everything. Didin't stop the bullshit though, the main complaints were...
1. Dairy cows will require milking at the "wrong time" and will suffer from overfull udders.
2. Drapes will fade quicker due to the "extra" UV light.
BTW: This DST "calamity" is not restricted to MS software, I mean how the hell does someone with a traditional diary get around the problem, I have never seen a diary that has a 23 or 25 hour day on the change over date. Will receptionists in small offices all across the US go into meltdown? Will the publishers responsible for the "defective" diaries be issuing page updates? - Nah, but hopefull it will convince the remaining ludites to dump Win2000 and look for something better.
Obviously the GP has never watched "The king and I".
"I'm just waiting for some environmental group to start whining about these, too."
Sure there are plenty of NIMBY's, but they come from all walks of life and politics not just the environmental fringe, for example do you want to live within earshot of a windfarm or do you want it hidden from view by the ocean's horizon?
"They complain that windmills kill too many birds."
Here in Australia the last group to "complain that windmills kill too many birds" was the conservative federal government who put a halt to a windfarm in my (coal rich) state because of a rare parrot. The (ex) fedral enviroment minister responsible for the decision was unashamedly in the pocket of the coal industry that is busy chewing up the bulk of our "green energy research" subsidies looking for the "clean coal" magic bullet. The windfarm project is now back on track but the procrastination was deliberate political posturing that had nothing to do with parrots or the environment.
Also just because these things don't spew CO2 does not mean that they won't have a some unforseen consequences, large structures can change currents and the shoreline, you might end up inadvertantly filling a shipping channel with sand or washing away sand dunes that hold wetlands in place. The envionmental impact of any large infrastructure should be studied and assesed to reduce the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot.
I for one would certainly not like to see them dotting the coast of the Whitsunday islands, shark bay, the Shetland isles, or any other fragile breeding ground for fish and wildlife. I would also like to see these things up and running but the TCO (including the environmental costs) needs to be proven on something other than paper before we make them ubiquitous.
Do you see the connection with the parrots - they were used as a scapegoat to trivialise environmental concerns, just as you are using them as a scapegoat for why the uptake of this tech has been so arduosly slow.
""Honestly, I think it's a good idea, on par with offshore windmills and such, but I think that it's only a matter of time before some group starts a resistance movement for some idiotic and quite negligible reason."
There is an effective "resistant movement" in the form of the fossil fuel industry that has been successfull in stagnating these projects for many decades (although it's effacacy here in Oz has diminished dramatically over the past 2-3 years). Wind and water power ideas have been politically pushed by "environmental groups" since the club of rome, if not before. You say yourself they are a "good idea" but then claim that "enviromental groups" will hamper the progress of such projects with trivial complaints. After decades of pushing for these project (against many trivial objections) why the hell would they do that?
This bashing of environmentalists is patently false doublespeak. So what exactly do you find so objectionable about the concept of people organising in groups with the aim of preserving the environment, and is it so far fetched to think of the people who are financing this project as an "environmental group"? My guess is that you have thought about power generation but haven't done much thinking about the society and enviroment around you, you have simply sucked up some propoganda about "environmental groups" that for some reason you thought was worth repeating.
Don't get rid of it on my account. :)
With all due respect the level of technology and organization in those cultures is (IMHO), not in the same leauge as the Aztecs, Myan's, ect. It's a bit like comparing stonehenge to the pyramids, both were built in roughly the same time period and were improved and maintained for millenian, both would have needed all the technology, resources and organization that their society's could muster. The resulting structures speak to the relative technological and political powers of each society.
Note however that both societies (stonehenge vs pyramids) were obviously very successfull since they both managed to hold thier civilizations together for few millenia without requiring another "quantum leap" in technology like the one that kick started their dominance in the first place. For better or worse the entire human race has been merging into one civilization since the end of WW2. IMHO, the technology that started this "quantum leap" into a single civilization was "communication technology" starting with Guttenburgh and (probably) culminating with digital comms. OTOH: It looks like this currently forming civilization is banging up against some hard environmental limits and we may see the industrial revolution "plateau" for a few millenia while it's sorts out how to sustain what it already has, either that or it will nose dive into the apocolyptic predictions of so called "alarmists".
As for what you quoted, I was wondering (if people arrived from the north) why did the technology sprout in the south. Also why didn't the tech from the south spread rapidly through the north, was it a natural barrier, a political/tribal barrier, or was the tech that didn't spread unsuitable for the north?
I will be the first to admit I know very little about N American pre-history. I did know some southern tribes built large towns with multi-storey wooden buildings. However I had always assumed most tribes followed the migration of buffalo heards like the nomadic hearders of Mongolia (the only country in the world that describes itself as a "nomadic society").
Have I got the wrong picture? I only ask because I grew up in the 60's, John Wayne, Danniel Boone, ect, great entertainment but who knows what erroneous memes my brain has decided to keep.
"Turing test - tell the computer to simulate Alan Turing, then ask him if he's "just a simulation"."
**Tester** - Speaking into mouse (ala Scottie) - "Computer. Simulate Alan Turing."
**Computer** - "I am Alan Turing, would you like to chat?"
**Tester** - "Are you just a simulation?"
**Computer** - "Depends on what you mean by "just a simulation". Why do you ask?"
**Tester** - "Because it's a test."
**Computer** - "What's a test?"
**Tester** - "This is, it's a Turing test."
**Computer** - "I am Alan Turing, would you like to chat?"
"Clearly not a parent."
Actually I am on my way to becoming a grand-parent, my son built and ran his own BBS at the age of 12 (circa 1992).
"Not grokking wi-if doesn't make someone senile or "dumb as dog shit".
That is not what I said.
"Here's a scenario: family has a cable modem. They use a wireless router."
Who set this up and pays for both the connection and the Wii, the kid or the parent? Granted that some parents may spend so much on expensive hardware and services for their kids that they don't have a clue what their kids are doing, but I would also put those "parents" in the dumb as dogshit categegory.
I often tell people I have seen UFO's, after a short conversation about aliens I explain that I mean "flying objects" that I could not identify at the time and still haven't got a good explaination for. Yes, it could be little green men but it could also be a flying pig with after-burners, that's the whole point of the word unidentified - UFO literaly means "I dont know what it is, but it's flying".
From my informal "straw poll", I reckon a third of people just accept UFO's==Alien's as a "scientific theory", they're not dumb, they simply don't understand what science is and often confuse it with technology and fiction. Try a straw poll yourself on strangers at parties, the pub, whatever, it really is quite amazing how quick people are willing to admit they "just don't know" when you are willing to demonstrate a well reasoned case for mutual ignorance.
"We can keep doing this all day if you lot don't stop being so half-arsed about it."
I know, adding a symetrical cheek to make it a full-arsed Universe is a GoodIdea(TM), but I don't think we can streach the budget enough to afford such a radical change. For a start, just think of how many god years it will take to test the whole Universe for the absence of ethical values. And who's going to do the documnets, sacred texts don't write themselves you know.
Indeed, science can tell you how the pyrimids were built, but it can't begin to explain why they were built. As for astrology, it's basically an ancient form of science (or "natural philosophy"), predicting the movement of the "heavens" was extremely important because it enabled the prediction of seasons, animal migrations, ect, everything that had any sort of "behaviour" was explained by a "spirit".
Modern science took the personification away from natural forces and entities (spacetime, matter, gravity, ect), the great religions centralized the spirit world, united tribes, and fought bloody wars against each other, they also made modern science and government possible in the first place.
Astrology is an example of "mom & apple pie" writing. A well written horoscope is an art that could be used as an example in many teaching situtions ranging from politics to science.
"Seconded. But sadly in china, [western] ethical values don't seem to matter that much." - Fixed.