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User: TapeCutter

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Comments · 12,137

  1. Re:I don't even... on Putting Time Out In Time Out: The Science of Discipline · · Score: 1

    "Talking" simply means telling the kid what they did was wrong before you punish them, if you haven't told them beforehand then don't punish them. The worst thing you can do as a parent is to be inconsistent, the kids will soon learn the rules are based on your mood and by the tender age of five will be playing you like a fiddle.

  2. Re:I don't even... on Putting Time Out In Time Out: The Science of Discipline · · Score: 0

    I'm a grandfather, when it comes to things like kicking the cat a 2yo has a pretty good grasp of right and wrong, what they don't understand is that sound travels when they are up to no good. Also I would, and have, encouraged a 2yo to play with woodworking tools and a piece of wood. Yes, they will bang their fingers and scratch their hands, but they will persist because they are hard wired to mimic adults, and if the nail stands up by itself in the wood they get a natural rush of reward chemicals. You certainly don't give a 2yo a nail gun but at the end of the day there isn't a tradesman on earth who hasn't hit himself with a hammer.

  3. Re:I don't even... on Putting Time Out In Time Out: The Science of Discipline · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think what they really want are children who are so unruly that their parents can't control them, and they can't function in society. They make for perfect lemmings fully dependent on the government.

    If you honestly think it's a government conspiracy then you are at least a little bit "broken, psychotic, or socially maladjusted".

  4. Re:Just don't drive creatively too on Problem Solver Beer Tells How Much To Drink To Boost Your Creativity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Plenty of way more fun things to do around here.

    I'm a pretty good pool player, a few beers makes me a pool champion because it stops me overthinking the shots.

  5. Re:6th sense on Birds Fled Area Before Tornadoes Appeared · · Score: 1

    Yep, he bolts from the swivel chair in the background a split second after the dog takes off. Hindsight is 20/20, but they would all have been safer just standing next to the big pillar.

  6. Re:Great observational skills on Birds Fled Area Before Tornadoes Appeared · · Score: 1

    psst - Mr IT and Joe Sixpack are the same person!

  7. Re:Great observational skills on Birds Fled Area Before Tornadoes Appeared · · Score: 3, Interesting

    [Animals are] FAR more accurate than any weather forecast I've seen.

    You see ants moving eggs, maybe it will rain in the next day or two, but how much rain? How much wind? Any hail, tornados? King tide?

    You see humans boarding up windows, sandbagging shops, anchoring boats away from the dock, etc, you know a destructive storm is on it's way.

    Weather forecasts are pretty accurate to 5 days out even here in Melbourne which (like NYC) is notoriously fickle, but you don't need doppler radar and a supercomputer to match the forecasting skill of ants. With a bit of practice mentally tracking wind direction, looking at clouds and feeling/smelling the (fresh) air will give you a fair idea of tomorrow's weather.

    Natural disasters happen to both species, by all reasonable standards humans are much better at predicting severe weather than animals since (at worst) we have the capacity to simultaneously observe many diverse species to make a statistically combined animal/plant forecast. Having said that, even the humble ants will have buried their dead and rebuilt their city in under a week.

  8. Re:So the question is... on Birds Fled Area Before Tornadoes Appeared · · Score: 5, Interesting

    so why don't we start listening for it with our warning systems?

    That's what I was thinking, also how can a tornado make any type of noise 2 days before it forms? I can understand animals picking up things we can't, deer may hear the rumble of a quake that causes a tsunami, my dog routinely hears thunder 15-20 minutes before I do and looks for a hiding spot, but how the hell does any animal "hear" something that won't exist for another two days?

    Having said that the animal kingdom is full of "mysterious knowledge", for example crocodiles in Northern Australia can somehow "calculate" when a king tide will occur, about an hour before the event they gather at a particular ford across a river where the unusually high tide spills over the ford leaving a bonanza of fish stranded on the rocks. Even Attenborough admits he doesn't have a clue how the crocodiles "know" when to gather at the ford.

  9. Re:This synopsis on Research Highlights How AI Sees and How It Knows What It's Looking At · · Score: 1

    There are exceptions - Calculus is a good example, That's why everyone knows the name Newton more than three centuries after his death, calculus and his laws of motion enabled the leap called the industrial revolution and inspired the social leap known as the enlightenment.

  10. Re:This synopsis on Research Highlights How AI Sees and How It Knows What It's Looking At · · Score: 1

    It's like expecting Google search to suddenly gain sentience

    Meet Watson, it beat the best humans in the open ended problem domain of "game show trivia" using natural language processing. When it won the Jeopardy championship it had 20 tons of air-conditioning and a room full of servers. Today it runs on a "pizza box" server and you can try it out yourself. After Jeopardy it went back to working with various medical institutes where it was trained and fed on a steady diet of medical journals, it's now well past the point where it became knowledgeable enough to pass the test for a US GP's license.

    True Watson is blind, but I suspect the problems with visual input is more about the human teacher's failure to provide the right context and experience than it is about the artificial students ability to learn.

  11. Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult on Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do · · Score: 1

    Take your meds, the paranoia will subside.

  12. Re:Duh. on Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isn't this something everyone already knew, radical warmists and evil deniers alike?

    Maybe, but statistical thinking doesn't come naturally. People cheat at gambling by loading dice so that they come up snake eyes (say) 1 in 20 throws. They get away with it because even if you know the dice are loaded there is no way to link any particular snake eye event to the hidden weights. The victims simply subscribe it to luck, but the longer you play the more suspicious they will become of your "lucky streak". Same deal with storms, floods, and droughts.

  13. No true Scotsman on Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney · · Score: 1

    Eternal damnation in the fires of hell was not mentioned in the old testament, it was introduced by gentle Jesus in the new testament.

  14. Re:Check your math. on Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney · · Score: 1

    You obviously haven't heard of Tony Abbot's humanitarian fighter jets.

  15. Aussie favorite.. on Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics · · Score: 1

    It's a long way to the shop. If you want a sausage roll.

  16. Re:The problem with human beings on The Shale Boom Won't Stop Climate Change; It Could Make It Worse · · Score: 1

    Pieroxy(2014) or Fourier(1824)? - Tough choice.

  17. Re:THERE HAS NEVER BEEN CLIMATE STASIS! on The Shale Boom Won't Stop Climate Change; It Could Make It Worse · · Score: 1

    Seriously?

    If we are being 'serious', nobody has claimed there is such a thing, however the climate our civilization has experienced in the last 10k yrs has been in a very stable "dynamic equilibrium". That is set to change because humans are kicking the crap out of the climate system, it will fuck up our agriculture, flood our coastal cities, and cause mass migration. How much worse it gets is depends on how we behave, if continue on our current course then the laws of physics say the ocean will become acidic in the 2100's - the last time such an event happened naturally, it coincided with the worst ever extinction event known to man.

    We have already got a taste of how climatic changes can cause social disruption in Syria. The "arab spring" was preceded by the worst drought in the 10ky history of the fertile crescent (the birthplace of agriculture). The 'unprecedented' drought caused people to abandon their farms and set off food riots in major cities such as Cairo and Aleppo. In Syria agriculture totally collapsed, a full 10% of the population (2M people) simply walked off their "dust bowl" farms just prior to the civil war, coincidence?

  18. Re:Out with the old... or not? on French Cabbies Say They'll Block Paris Roads On Monday Over Uber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I drove a cab in Australia for 3yrs, it's not the worst job I've had but it's certainly the worst paid job, think fruit picking money. Most cabbies don't own the cab or the plates (medallion). The cab owners are the ones who are understandably getting upset since if uber is legal the plates they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for suddenly become worthless.

    Uber drivers are desperate for work and silly enough to run their own car into the ground for little more than petrol money, when it's dead they can't afford a new one and walk away in a worse situation than they started. Courier companies do the same thing here in Melbourne, they call you a "sub-contractor" get you to stick a "courier" sign on your own car then you drive it at your own expense until it falls apart. And if you're unlucky enough to fuck up without the right insurance, you will be paying for it the rest of your life.

    From my experience with real cabs, sticking with a regulated taxi industry is the best thing any of us can do to stop uber exploiting desperate people in a race to the bottom.

  19. Re:Choices. on MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin · · Score: 1

    His physics lectures are still as good as they were yesterday.

    Sure, but I want nothing to do with them or him now that I know the particular kind of "imperfection" we are dealing with. There are plenty of other entertaining lecturers, nothing of unique value has been lost.

  20. Choices. on MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Makes perfect sense, according to the public.

    I loved Rolf Harris, I grew up in the 60's watching his show on B&W TV, now he turns my stomach. I've laughed my arse off to Bill Cosby for 40yrs but now I look at him with suspicion. I came across the video in TFA earlier this year and reposted it to FB, now I want to unpost it. These people have made fools of all who applauded them in the past, they were "grooming" everyone, not just the immediate victim. It's human nature to want violent revenge, it's much more civilised to simply have nothing to do with them. So as a grandfather to 3 girls, I say publically ostracising sexual predators for their crimes makes perfect sense, they know the social and legal punishment, they know they will be a target in jail, but they still choose to do it.

  21. Re:This is a good thing. on Australia Pushes Ahead With Website Blocking In Piracy Fight · · Score: 2

    I can tell you the current Australian government has a "make more poverty" policy rather than a "war on poverty" policy.

    Yes, blocking pirate movies is among the least offensive things this government has done since coming to power.

  22. Re:why is it always comets and asteroids? on Asteroid Impacts May Have Formed Life's Building Blocks · · Score: 1

    But I would imagine that if they thought geothermal was sufficient, they would have considered it.

    Not only have geothermal vents been considered, it is currently the leading theory

  23. Re:Edge on perspctive on How Astronomers Will Take the "Image of the Century": a Black Hole · · Score: 1

    Thanks, good answer to my original question. :)

  24. Re:Is it legally binding on Displaced IT Workers Being Silenced · · Score: 1

    Agree, but there's honour among pimps and personally I wouldn't want to hire someone who scammed the pimp I'm paying to do the grunt work of finding someone who can fulfill my needs. The standard thing to do if the company finds someone by chance is to hire them thru the agency. The reason that large corporations do this is because they know that for a business deal to work BOTH sides have to profit, but they don't need to profit on every transaction, just the bottom line.

    Disclaimer: I was a contractor for 15yrs and permanent for the last 10, I would rather deal with a pimp than HR anyday, most pimps I've met are ex-IT and can actually discuss the "technical bits" without reading from the advertised job description. All you need to know about them is you are their "product", not their customer, they want to make their product attractive. The employer pays the agent for the most attractive, if the employer stops paying for an agent he isn't going to give the money he "saved" to you, he will still need it to hire more HR people to do the work of the agent.

  25. Re:Wow... on Displaced IT Workers Being Silenced · · Score: 1

    When both sides attack you as biased then you must be doing something right.