And yet, your post accusing people of censorship stays and is modded up. Scroll up, and read the highly modded anti-global warming posts.
So, anything which is said against the AGW argument gets modded down.
This is demonstrably untrue. Literally, all you have to do is scroll up and read the highly modded anti-AGW posts. Seriously, you are either extremely lazy, or lying, or both. Before you accuse people of hysterical, systematic, suppression, you should consider whether what you are actually saying is true, especially when it is so easy to verify.
You've missed the point of taking a bomb onto a plane. The vast majority of terrorist plane hijackings have NOT been like September 11 - that is, they usually don't want to blow up the plane. They want to take people captive and extract promises and get attention. The bomb is just a last resort, IF things don't go well. The captive environment of an airplane is ideal for this. The open environment of a security line is not.
Freedom of association is protected by the 1st amendment. The 4th amendment protects the privacy of my papers and effects. The 10th amendment reserves all powers not specifically granted to Congress to the states or the people. I'd say that's enough reference for anybody.
You have a very simplistic view of the law. You are aware that there have been well over 200 years of case law between the ratification of the Constitution and now, right? The framers didn't do us many favors by only spending a few sentences on the first, fourth, and tenth amendments. They are not as straightforward to interpret as you seem to think they are, and many smart people have spent books writing about what they mean. In other words, no, that's not enough references for anybody; or, at least, anybody who gives the Constitution more than just a quick read.
And to the "love it or leave it" poster - screw you. You don't have any more right to decide how the country will be run than anyone else. If you think you're a liberal and you say "love it or leave it" you missed the whole point of liberalism.
I live in Europe right now too. I used to do Netflix when I lived in the States, and I liked it. I suspect that they will block European IPs due to the demands of the content owners. I plan to split this with a friend in the States - they can have all the mail DVDs, and I'll get a fast US proxy to use the streaming. We'll see if it works out.
If you think this is a flame war, you've obviously never been in a flame war:)
Regardless, I said that people who are "doing it wrong" are retarded.
OK, I'll take it for granted that's what you meant. You said that in the context of a post where a person made Carl Sagan "sing". Clearly he was going for effect, because he made Carl Sagan harmonize with himself. Your RIAA crap was just out of nowhere. You think, maybe, that the guy who made the Carl Sagan video is hoping to be the next T-Pain?
I am not defending the auto-tune fad. What I'm doing is defending people who experiment. No effect is inherently "retarded," although all effects can be misused. The problem with T-Pain and the like is not autotune. Most of those songs would be just as retarded without the autotune.
Re:Autotune the News
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Carl Sagan Sings
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ah, the classic "I'll change what I said; maybe people won't notice that I said something different TWO POSTS ABOVE" technique. No, you didn't say that the (non)musicians were retarded. You said that anyone who thinks the effect is cool is retarded. This covers ANYONE who likes the effect, not just stupid RIAA brands. I am a musician. I am just as offended by modern pop music, if not more, than you are. But don't be silly and make blanket statements about ANYONE who likes the effect. I'll ask again: Do you think Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton are retards? Or musicians?
Re:Autotune the News
on
Carl Sagan Sings
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· Score: 4, Insightful
That you've noticed. If your pitch correction is noticeable, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think the effect is cool - in which case you're a retard.
I could say the same about synthesizers: "If your synthesizer is noticeably different from a real instrument, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think synthesizer effects are cool - in which case you're a retard." Artists have always looked for new ways to create sounds. The repurposing of autotune is no different from the creation of synthesizers, or any other new instrument. Why is someone "retarded" for thinking that the use of autotune as a new musical tool is cool?
I mean, it annoys me too, but your point of view is really condescending. Let musicians play. Autotune is just a set of algorithms; there's no reason why it can't be used in a way that the original programmers didn't anticipate. And anyway, Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton both used vocoders for a similar effect. Are they "retarded"?
As a reviewer, I always ask what the manuscript I'm reviewing adds to the literature. Since (1) the imaging of inanimate objects is routine (2) warnings about multiple comparisons are standard in texts (3) the multiple comparison problem can better be shown through simulation, and (4) most researchers are aware of the problem, the work adds little to the literature, in my opinion. Reviewers (should) look for more than a point and a cute gimmick.
Now, for the question of what to do when editors let manuscripts through with uncorrected p-values: I say, we invite them all to a conference, along with all researchers who accept the null hypothesis based on p>.05, and those who think that p is the probability of the null being true. Then, we laugh at them. Maybe they'll get the point. (Can you tell I'm a bitter methodologist?:)
The need for multiple comparison corrections is standard knowledge among cognitive neuroscientists. It is actually common practice for manufacturers of MRI machines to image inanimate objects as a test of the machine. You could easily get that data, rather than imaging a dead fish. Once you know the amount of noise, it would be easier to just simulate within a statistical program to determine the effects of not correcting.
If the authors of the poster weren't aware of the value of multiple comparison corrections BEFORE they stuck a fish in the magnet, at least they learned a lesson everyone else gets in second year stat.
Researchers should either write their own press releases or else not bother talking to the press at all.
I don't think you understand how this works at all. The researchers do research. The University has people on staff that are paid to publicize research. They try to understand the research as best they can. Then, they publicize it, trying to get the research all over the place, and THEY contact the press. If you are lucky (or unlucky, actually - it is a waste of time) the press may talk to you. The researchers are often several steps away from the reporters that report on it. I say this as a researcher who had research that I did at the University of Missouri (the university in question here) publicized, so I know how this works.
The process is pretty much completely beyond your control as a researcher. If the University wants to publicize your research, and they're going to do it regardless of what you say. You can't just not talk to your own university about your research.
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real
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Tetris Improves Your Brain
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· Score: 3, Informative
You do realize that not all fMRI research uses the methodology in the paper referred to by the slashdot article you linked to, right? Not even most of it, actually. The article you referred to only discusses the case where the regions of interest for correlations between behavioral and fMRI measures are selected by the size of the correlation itself. Much of that bad stuff happens in the field of social neuroscience. Although I haven't read the paper in question because it evidently won't be out until Thursday, there's no reason to believe based on the blurb that they had any reason to use that (horribly flawed) methodology.
I don't understand the modern viewpoint that cars are evil, and their usage should be discouraged. They are simply an update of the classic horse-and-cart that humans have used for 10,000 years, and the reason humans used these carts was because they were great for carrying lots of stuff.
Don't believe me? Well I just bought almost a month's worth of groceries. Try carrying 20 bags onto the local subway or bus or walk home. I think I'll keep my horseless cart. Thanks.
Horse carts and cars are very different. Don't believe me? Look at what cars have done to the evolution of the American city. European cities, designed when there were no cars, are DRASTICALLY different than modern American cities, where things are spread out. I live in a compact, older city. I would never THINK of getting a month's worth of groceries at a time. Why would I want to? I just walk home, and pick what I need up every other day or so. IT takes only a few minutes. But this is impossible in a modern American city. So, people use more gas, because they have to.
Cars have had a serious impact on the way cities are designed. The very fabric of American society, from the rise of the suburbs to the destruction of the small, local store (and the rise of big box stores), to the immense pollution and health problems in major cities, have been all consequences of cheap automobiles and cheap gas. They are much, much more than a simple upgrade of horse carts. That's not to say they're all bad, but man, to think they're a simple upgrade is missing an entire century of American history.
Consider the two following statements: 1) If you are a US congressman, the probability you are an American citizen is 1. 2) If you are an American citizen, the probability that you are a US congressman is (about) 1.5e-6. The difference in the two statements, although they both involve the same events (US congressman and US citizen) is the conditioning. (2) conditions on the US citizenship, and (1) conditions on congressional membership. The difference is critical. p values are conditioned on a null hypothesis being true. Think: "If you there is truly no difference between the groups, the probability of finding this evidence (or more extreme evidence) is 0.01" The statement in the summary was conditioned in the opposite way: "Given this observed difference in the groups, the probability of the observed difference being due to chance (that is, that the chance hypothesis is true) is.01"
The p value computed in the summary is the former statement. In order to get the later statement, you have to use Bayes theorem and the p value, which requires additional assumptions and could be a wildly different number. I teach stats, and I have to cram this into my students' heads every year. It is critical to understand the difference in the two statements in order to understand the statistics you use.
If the results are significant at the 1% level (you mean.01, not.99 - low p values indicate higher significance), then this does NOT mean that there is less than a 1% change that the results are due to chance. It means that IF THERE WERE TRULY NO DIFFERENCE, we'd expect to see an effect this large or larger only 1% of the time. This is Statistics 101 stuff. A p value conditions on the null hypothesis being true; it is not a statement about the probability of the null hypothesis. For that you need a Bayesian inferential technique.
Yeah, except we couldn't deal with the slow internet on the space station. Slashdot would take forever to load, especially if your fellow slashdotter/astronaut is downloading porn via bittorrent in the next module...
People are modding the parent insightful? I thought it was supposed to be a joke, the reasoning is so far off.
Here's a car analogy for you. Suppose someone comes out and says "A tire blow out may cause car accidents." Then I say "That's stupid. I've been in car accidents, but never had a tire blow out. Some study..." then clearly my reasoning sucks. That argument is isomorphic to the one made by the parent.
I haven't read the study in question yet, so I can't comment on the merits, but come ON, use your brain when commenting, people!
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress
Sorry, but most of the things Bush is blamed for Bush started and Congress later enabled. For instance, consider warrantless wiretapping, which the major issue Bush wanted Harman to help with. Bush was breaking the FISA law for years, when the news broke, Congress first did nothing, and then passed a law retroactively making it 1) legal and 2) impossible to prosecute.
Also, consider the Iraq war. Bush used manufactured intelligence to justify the war, but Congress did nothing; they even cheerleaded for it.
All this is not to say that Congress has no culpability, because they do. But Congress was Republican for most of the Bush years. To say, in the context of this conversation that many of the things blamed on Bush should be blamed on Democrats, who have only been in power for two years? That's way off. You are the one with the obvious agenda.
That said, none of them deserve to keep their jobs. I can't believe people still identify with Republicans or Democrats these days.
Assuming you use latex, PHP bibtex database manager might be a good option. I use it, and it is quite handy if you want to share the database among several researchers.
All of your "real world" examples of perpetual motion are based on mistaken understanding.
Some real-universe examples:
Light on the fringes of the universe will continue travelling forever (unless we assume something new to stop it).
Photons don't have mass, so they don't require energy to move. This isn't what "perpetual motion machines" are about.
The electron on an atom that never falls into a star, black hole, or the like will forever circle the nucleus.
Electrons don't "circle" nuclei - that's a century-old model of the atom.
Heck: the atom itself will never stop moving.
In other instances when atoms are cooled to near absolute zero they cease to be individual atoms. Groups of them become Bose-Einstein condensate. I'm not sure it is meaningful to talk about whether individual atoms can "stop moving".
Nor, best as we can tell, will the universe. It will be in motion perpetually (I suppose unless it all disintegrates into Hawking radiation, but then *that* will be in motion.
The universe is not in motion. Space-time is a property of the universe, and so there is nothing for the universe to move relative to.
The second is 100% effeciency, which is required for perpetual motion to obey thermodynamics, is not possible in what we would likely call "a machine"
Huh? What does what we call it have anything to do with it?
The Euro has always been worth more than the Dollar.
No, when the Euro was first introduced it dropped to less than $1 US. I was in France around that time, and I believe it was roughly $0.90 US to 1 Euro.
Functions? Back when I started, we didn't have functions. We had jump instructions.
When I first learned to program as a kid, I taught myself how to write pseudo-functions using goto. I looked back at those programs a few years later, and they were completely unreadable. Now,
my wife does a little programming on the side (we're both researchers) and she loves goto. I keep trying to tell her NOT TO USE GOTO, but she never listens.
It's painful to read her code. I think we might need counseling for this...
Slashdot Mirror
So, anything which is said against the AGW argument gets modded down.
This is demonstrably untrue. Literally, all you have to do is scroll up and read the highly modded anti-AGW posts. Seriously, you are either extremely lazy, or lying, or both. Before you accuse people of hysterical, systematic, suppression, you should consider whether what you are actually saying is true, especially when it is so easy to verify.
You've missed the point of taking a bomb onto a plane. The vast majority of terrorist plane hijackings have NOT been like September 11 - that is, they usually don't want to blow up the plane. They want to take people captive and extract promises and get attention. The bomb is just a last resort, IF things don't go well. The captive environment of an airplane is ideal for this. The open environment of a security line is not.
Freedom of association is protected by the 1st amendment. The 4th amendment protects the privacy of my papers and effects. The 10th amendment reserves all powers not specifically granted to Congress to the states or the people. I'd say that's enough reference for anybody.
You have a very simplistic view of the law. You are aware that there have been well over 200 years of case law between the ratification of the Constitution and now, right? The framers didn't do us many favors by only spending a few sentences on the first, fourth, and tenth amendments. They are not as straightforward to interpret as you seem to think they are, and many smart people have spent books writing about what they mean. In other words, no, that's not enough references for anybody; or, at least, anybody who gives the Constitution more than just a quick read.
And to the "love it or leave it" poster - screw you. You don't have any more right to decide how the country will be run than anyone else. If you think you're a liberal and you say "love it or leave it" you missed the whole point of liberalism.
Come on, Firefox has such bad feature bloat. I just use Emacs-w3m to surf. It's just as nice, but instead of feature bloat, you get the web via Emacs!
I live in Europe right now too. I used to do Netflix when I lived in the States, and I liked it. I suspect that they will block European IPs due to the demands of the content owners. I plan to split this with a friend in the States - they can have all the mail DVDs, and I'll get a fast US proxy to use the streaming. We'll see if it works out.
Because even crap 48Kbps-encoded audio sounds great with Monster cables!
in fact as a Postdoc dong simulation research in Germany....
How's dong simulation in Germany? I've heard the US is years behind Europe in that field...
Regardless, I said that people who are "doing it wrong" are retarded.
OK, I'll take it for granted that's what you meant. You said that in the context of a post where a person made Carl Sagan "sing". Clearly he was going for effect, because he made Carl Sagan harmonize with himself. Your RIAA crap was just out of nowhere. You think, maybe, that the guy who made the Carl Sagan video is hoping to be the next T-Pain?
I am not defending the auto-tune fad. What I'm doing is defending people who experiment. No effect is inherently "retarded," although all effects can be misused. The problem with T-Pain and the like is not autotune. Most of those songs would be just as retarded without the autotune.
Ah, the classic "I'll change what I said; maybe people won't notice that I said something different TWO POSTS ABOVE" technique. No, you didn't say that the (non)musicians were retarded. You said that anyone who thinks the effect is cool is retarded. This covers ANYONE who likes the effect, not just stupid RIAA brands. I am a musician. I am just as offended by modern pop music, if not more, than you are. But don't be silly and make blanket statements about ANYONE who likes the effect. I'll ask again: Do you think Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton are retards? Or musicians?
That you've noticed. If your pitch correction is noticeable, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think the effect is cool - in which case you're a retard.
I could say the same about synthesizers: "If your synthesizer is noticeably different from a real instrument, you're doing it wrong. Unless you think synthesizer effects are cool - in which case you're a retard." Artists have always looked for new ways to create sounds. The repurposing of autotune is no different from the creation of synthesizers, or any other new instrument. Why is someone "retarded" for thinking that the use of autotune as a new musical tool is cool?
I mean, it annoys me too, but your point of view is really condescending. Let musicians play. Autotune is just a set of algorithms; there's no reason why it can't be used in a way that the original programmers didn't anticipate. And anyway, Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton both used vocoders for a similar effect. Are they "retarded"?
Now, for the question of what to do when editors let manuscripts through with uncorrected p-values: I say, we invite them all to a conference, along with all researchers who accept the null hypothesis based on p>.05, and those who think that p is the probability of the null being true. Then, we laugh at them. Maybe they'll get the point. (Can you tell I'm a bitter methodologist? :)
The need for multiple comparison corrections is standard knowledge among cognitive neuroscientists. It is actually common practice for manufacturers of MRI machines to image inanimate objects as a test of the machine. You could easily get that data, rather than imaging a dead fish. Once you know the amount of noise, it would be easier to just simulate within a statistical program to determine the effects of not correcting. If the authors of the poster weren't aware of the value of multiple comparison corrections BEFORE they stuck a fish in the magnet, at least they learned a lesson everyone else gets in second year stat.
Researchers should either write their own press releases or else not bother talking to the press at all.
I don't think you understand how this works at all. The researchers do research. The University has people on staff that are paid to publicize research. They try to understand the research as best they can. Then, they publicize it, trying to get the research all over the place, and THEY contact the press. If you are lucky (or unlucky, actually - it is a waste of time) the press may talk to you. The researchers are often several steps away from the reporters that report on it. I say this as a researcher who had research that I did at the University of Missouri (the university in question here) publicized, so I know how this works.
The process is pretty much completely beyond your control as a researcher. If the University wants to publicize your research, and they're going to do it regardless of what you say. You can't just not talk to your own university about your research.
The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous now would they?
You do realize that not all fMRI research uses the methodology in the paper referred to by the slashdot article you linked to, right? Not even most of it, actually. The article you referred to only discusses the case where the regions of interest for correlations between behavioral and fMRI measures are selected by the size of the correlation itself. Much of that bad stuff happens in the field of social neuroscience. Although I haven't read the paper in question because it evidently won't be out until Thursday, there's no reason to believe based on the blurb that they had any reason to use that (horribly flawed) methodology.
I don't understand the modern viewpoint that cars are evil, and their usage should be discouraged. They are simply an update of the classic horse-and-cart that humans have used for 10,000 years, and the reason humans used these carts was because they were great for carrying lots of stuff.
Don't believe me? Well I just bought almost a month's worth of groceries. Try carrying 20 bags onto the local subway or bus or walk home. I think I'll keep my horseless cart. Thanks.
Horse carts and cars are very different. Don't believe me? Look at what cars have done to the evolution of the American city. European cities, designed when there were no cars, are DRASTICALLY different than modern American cities, where things are spread out. I live in a compact, older city. I would never THINK of getting a month's worth of groceries at a time. Why would I want to? I just walk home, and pick what I need up every other day or so. IT takes only a few minutes. But this is impossible in a modern American city. So, people use more gas, because they have to.
Cars have had a serious impact on the way cities are designed. The very fabric of American society, from the rise of the suburbs to the destruction of the small, local store (and the rise of big box stores), to the immense pollution and health problems in major cities, have been all consequences of cheap automobiles and cheap gas. They are much, much more than a simple upgrade of horse carts. That's not to say they're all bad, but man, to think they're a simple upgrade is missing an entire century of American history.
There are some words one just can't justify spewing at even the lowest scum. Words like GOTO.
Don't use that kind of language here - there are young programmers around!
Consider the two following statements: 1) If you are a US congressman, the probability you are an American citizen is 1. 2) If you are an American citizen, the probability that you are a US congressman is (about) 1.5e-6. The difference in the two statements, although they both involve the same events (US congressman and US citizen) is the conditioning. (2) conditions on the US citizenship, and (1) conditions on congressional membership. The difference is critical. p values are conditioned on a null hypothesis being true. Think: "If you there is truly no difference between the groups, the probability of finding this evidence (or more extreme evidence) is 0.01" The statement in the summary was conditioned in the opposite way: "Given this observed difference in the groups, the probability of the observed difference being due to chance (that is, that the chance hypothesis is true) is .01"
The p value computed in the summary is the former statement. In order to get the later statement, you have to use Bayes theorem and the p value, which requires additional assumptions and could be a wildly different number. I teach stats, and I have to cram this into my students' heads every year. It is critical to understand the difference in the two statements in order to understand the statistics you use.
If the results are significant at the 1% level (you mean .01, not .99 - low p values indicate higher significance), then this does NOT mean that there is less than a 1% change that the results are due to chance. It means that IF THERE WERE TRULY NO DIFFERENCE, we'd expect to see an effect this large or larger only 1% of the time. This is Statistics 101 stuff. A p value conditions on the null hypothesis being true; it is not a statement about the probability of the null hypothesis. For that you need a Bayesian inferential technique.
Yeah, except we couldn't deal with the slow internet on the space station. Slashdot would take forever to load, especially if your fellow slashdotter/astronaut is downloading porn via bittorrent in the next module...
Here's a car analogy for you. Suppose someone comes out and says "A tire blow out may cause car accidents." Then I say "That's stupid. I've been in car accidents, but never had a tire blow out. Some study..." then clearly my reasoning sucks. That argument is isomorphic to the one made by the parent.
I haven't read the study in question yet, so I can't comment on the merits, but come ON, use your brain when commenting, people!
(No, I'm not new here :)
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress
Sorry, but most of the things Bush is blamed for Bush started and Congress later enabled. For instance, consider warrantless wiretapping, which the major issue Bush wanted Harman to help with. Bush was breaking the FISA law for years, when the news broke, Congress first did nothing, and then passed a law retroactively making it 1) legal and 2) impossible to prosecute.
Also, consider the Iraq war. Bush used manufactured intelligence to justify the war, but Congress did nothing; they even cheerleaded for it.
All this is not to say that Congress has no culpability, because they do. But Congress was Republican for most of the Bush years. To say, in the context of this conversation that many of the things blamed on Bush should be blamed on Democrats, who have only been in power for two years? That's way off. You are the one with the obvious agenda.
That said, none of them deserve to keep their jobs. I can't believe people still identify with Republicans or Democrats these days.
Link
Some real-universe examples:
Light on the fringes of the universe will continue travelling forever (unless we assume something new to stop it).
Photons don't have mass, so they don't require energy to move. This isn't what "perpetual motion machines" are about.
The electron on an atom that never falls into a star, black hole, or the like will forever circle the nucleus.
Electrons don't "circle" nuclei - that's a century-old model of the atom.
Heck: the atom itself will never stop moving.
In other instances when atoms are cooled to near absolute zero they cease to be individual atoms. Groups of them become Bose-Einstein condensate. I'm not sure it is meaningful to talk about whether individual atoms can "stop moving".
Nor, best as we can tell, will the universe. It will be in motion perpetually (I suppose unless it all disintegrates into Hawking radiation, but then *that* will be in motion.
The universe is not in motion. Space-time is a property of the universe, and so there is nothing for the universe to move relative to.
The second is 100% effeciency, which is required for perpetual motion to obey thermodynamics, is not possible in what we would likely call "a machine"
Huh? What does what we call it have anything to do with it?
The Euro has always been worth more than the Dollar.
No, when the Euro was first introduced it dropped to less than $1 US. I was in France around that time, and I believe it was roughly $0.90 US to 1 Euro.
Functions? Back when I started, we didn't have functions. We had jump instructions.
When I first learned to program as a kid, I taught myself how to write pseudo-functions using goto. I looked back at those programs a few years later, and they were completely unreadable. Now, my wife does a little programming on the side (we're both researchers) and she loves goto. I keep trying to tell her NOT TO USE GOTO, but she never listens. It's painful to read her code. I think we might need counseling for this...