The Chinese economy's been cranking along at double digit growth for years now, and this project could guarantee it keeps on doing so. Pyramid building is always good business, and it leads to full employment that tends to take the wind out of the sails of the malcontents and democracy demonstrators.
I think these statements miss the mark. The figures for growth in the Chinese economy are notoriously unreliable. There is also nothing magical about spending on space projects vs. any other kind of project. Based on the lack of private sector moonbase work, capital would probably be more profitably employed (i.e., allow more future economic growth) in other technology areas.
Finally, the problem of jobless discontent in China is that of peasant would-be farmers and low-skill workers at closing state-owned industrial firms. Neither labor pool could be usefully employed in aerospace industry.
Finite: if the universe is closed and finite in extent, then it is finite in total energy; quantum states of the universe with E != E_universe cannot be occupied.
It gets tricky when you incorporate general relativity: spacetime itself contains energy, so when the universe expands, the E_universe changes. I'm no GR expert, but I dimly recall, probably in Landau's stat mech book, that you can fit this in without too much trouble---thermodynamically, you can treat this as an external source of work on the universe. Still, the overall energy is finite, so the number of realizable quantum states of the universe is finite, though beyond mind-bogglingly huge.
Now, the problem of considering the universe to be in a quantum state is philosophically difficult, but not as difficult as the many-world people would have you believe.
The infinity of orbitals in the hydrogen atom is artificial; it only works of the universe is indeed infinite, and consists only of the hydrogen nucleus.
If you put the hydrogen atom in a box, say the size of the universe, then the asymptotic behavior you mention will go away.
Re:The one thing you can say about China...
on
China Plans Moonbase
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, the Chinese have it great. That political system of their has to figure out how to handle hundreds of millions of people who have lost, or are about to lose, their jobs in state-owned firms, in addition to the hundreds of millions of rural peasants who have decided to go to the cities, because things have got to be better there, right?
Moon mines being "good for them" is going to have to wait. Hundreds of millions of pissed-off Chinese isn't good for anyone, and the real operators in the Chinese government hopefully realize this. I suspect that these plans will get quietly shelved and not amount to anything, just as similar plans by US defense agencies and vendors got dramatically scaled back or cut off as well.
Re:The one thing you can say about China...
on
China Plans Moonbase
·
· Score: 1
Just thought I'd add another amusing insight:
Chinese leaders are also fond of predicting "democracy in China" in a timeframe of something like "50 years." As in, "over my dead body."
My take on Chinese manned spaceflight including "moon mines": welcome to the 1960's, but the rest of us are in the 21st century. Have fun!
Re:Lisp is great. Where is Lisp?
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 2
To clarify, and to hopefully cut off this hydra's head of an argument/troll, when I (and most Lisp programmers) say "Lisp" I mean "ANSI Common Lisp" as in the first object-oriented programming language to have an ANSI standard associated with it.
The multiplicity of Lisp dialects was a problem that went away in the mid-1980's, whether you realized it or not.
The only possible source of confusion I can imagine that would make this an honest post, rather than a troll, is Scheme. So the choice is "Common Lisp" or "Scheme." Which to me are as different as C++ and Java.
That's an interesting example...Now that C has changed into C++, I find I can no longer understand the code analogies that people write. I always feel the need to check the.h files to see how things are defined.
Re:C++ templates vs. Lisp macros
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Lisp macros are also compile-time. And, because the transformations they perform end up producing "ordinary" Lisp code, all Lisp compilers get them correct. Also, since the macro language is the same as the base language, it is well-defined. In fact, a substantial portion of a Lisp compiler is likely to be written using Lisp macros.
C++ templates share much of the power of Lisp macros, but they are somewhat more restricted in what they can do and express. They play an essential role in writing generic algorithms, which is a great thing. But once you've decided to write your C++ code using templates, you're committed to doing things in the template style. Lisp macros are completely transparent, in the sense that macro code and Lisp code look the same, and fit together.
I concede that the STL folks and Blitz++ folks have done amazing things with the template system. But C++ compilers still have issues with getting the STL to work consistently.
I think the way I would summarize it is that writing Lisp macros is continually improving the language, without narrowing the scope of your options. C++ templates feel to me like building a tower. Sure, each floor is higher than the one before, but soon, the only way to build is up. If you don't like the choices you made building the ground floor, you have to abandon the work built on top, as well.
Re:OO and functional
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OO and functional are not opposing concepts. Also, you may have missed the subtle point, but Lisp is not a strictly functional language, although it is obviously function-oriented.
Lisp has a full-blown object system called CLOS (Common Lisp Object System), which frankly blows C++'s object system out of the water, in terms of flexibility, power, and syntactic cleanliness, just for starters. Lisp programmers aren't scared of OO. It's C++ programmers who are scared of Lisp, although why anyone would be less scared of C++ is a mystery to me.
OO doesn't magically mean "easy to maintain." It may mean "easy to find drones who think they learned the language from a book in 21 days, so they put in on their resume" which I think was your real point.
To address the original issue, functional designs tend to be much more "factored" than procedural designs, because things are designed to use functional abstraction rather than interactions between different bits of code and variables. This tends to make them much more robust and maintainable.
Re:Design patterns and Lisp
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not that every Lisp program has a different design, any more than every machine has the same design; however, in Lisp, there tend to be fewer obstacles to expressing a particular program design in the language. There are a wide range of reasons for that.
One is the pervasive nature of intrinsic typing. Variables are not typed, values are. Object-oriented methods, of course, explicitly mention classes, but non-OO code does not need to explicitly type variables, except to improve performance. The flexibility of many built-in Lisp operators helps deal with multiple types transparently. For instance, length of array, length of a string, and length of a list all use the same function: LENGTH.
Another source of flexibility is Lisp macros, which can use the full power of the Lisp programming language to rearrange and process Lisp macro calls into Lisp code. If there is some design pattern that Lisp does not natively support, you can use Lisp macros to create a Lisp "dialect" that cleanly expresses the design.
Paul Graham, in his books, demonstrates, for instance, that if Lisp did not already have CLOS to express object-oriented concepts, that in about a hundred lines of pretty clean Lisp macrology, you can add single-dispatch methods to the language, and it looks just like "real" Lisp, and mixes with the base language transparently.
It took Stroustrup a large effort (cfront) to add objects and methods to C, and it requires explicitly invoking a compiler program to do the translation, with name-mangling and everything else. In Lisp, you would write Lisp macros to do the same thing, and you would still be working in true Lisp. You can also add macros on macros: cfront is basically a monolith, but Lisp macros can work together; you can continuously "build up" from the language foundation, and the various layers can be overlapped.
Any time you find yourself repeating a pattern, it suggests a Lisp macro. If you have an example of the pattern already written, it is pretty much cut-and-paste to create the general macro from the specific pattern instance.
That kind of flexibility, which allows the programmer to mold the language to fit his (and his tasks) needs, is really what makes Lisp great to work with.
It's something like the difference between working with Legos and clay. If you're missing a Lego part to serve a particular function, you're pretty much stuck, unless you want to injection-mold your own custom blocks. Therefore, Lego models tend to use "design patterns" where the standard blocks or parts fit together a certain way that solves a certain class of problems. Lego models, although they can be amazing achievements, all tend to look like Lego models.
With clay, however, the medium is fluid. You can mold it to just about any shape you want. Sculptures usually look like their subject, not like clay.
"Digitally edited" does not mean "digitally imaged."
Editing, roughly speaking, is the cutting-and-pasting of the daily shoots into something that actually tells a story.
For digital editing, a copy of the daily shoots is made in digital form for assembly. HOWEVER, the sequence of film segments can then be referred back to the originally shot film, which is PHYSICALLY cut and assembled in order to form an "analog master" from which the final prints are made.
There are obvious reasons why digital editing is superior: you don't have to bother with physically cutting and splicing many pieces of film. It is easier to cut and recut. The film itself is handled only the minimal amount. The digital copy that the editor works with does not need to be high resolution, as it is only used to establish the cuts, not fed into the projector in the cinema.
But CD is clearly more capable than the previous analog recording media. As in, more dynamic range than the analog mastering media.
Early CD recordings had trouble because of a lack of experience in mixing for the new medium, and building a good reconstruction filter for the analog stage of a CD player is not trivial, but the medium is unquestionably better, except for audiophile mystics.
Digital projection is still not more capable than film, especially not the 70mm film shown under art house conditions that Ebert is comparing it to. Compared to an abused 35mm print shown at your local mall cinema, digital probably is better. In color saturation, digital is probably better. But the resolution is not quite there, and that is really what makes the difference in Ebert's comparison.
So, a movie full of eye candy without a comprehensible plot. What a surprise. Sounds like a movie for people who wave around plastic light sabers, as opposed to people who go to the movies to see, oh, I don't know, a drama? As in a compelling plot with emotionally interesting characters? Where dialog serves to develop and expose character, as opposed to recite history? Where actors interact with one another, instead of with a digital scene to-be-inserted-later?
Maybe you had fun, but I like to enjoy movies without dressing in silly nerd costumes.
Spinal Tap is a great source of lines, right up there with Monty Python's Holy Grail.
"Money talks and bullsh*t walks." "How much more black could it be, and the answer is none...none more black" "Listen to the Flower People" "Gimme some Money" "Lick My Love Pump" "Too much f*cking perspective." "Currently residing in the where-are-they-now file" "And on bass, Derek Smalls...he wrote this [jazz odyssey]" "My job is to be in the middle, sort of like lukewarm water." "Patron saint of quality footwear"
Then again, a turd shit by George Lucas in the shape of Darth Vader's head delivers better lines than most in his movies.
The only well-delivered lines I remember were Harrison Ford & Carrie Fisher. "You call this a rescue?" "Get this walking carpet out of my way" "You're braver than I thought." "I love you./I know."
By now, Lucas is definitely counting on special effects to override the need for compelling dialogue between characters.
I can't tell what sport you think you are making fun of. The biggest "mass" of points you get at one time in American football is 6. Forty points by one side is usually a rout.
The point of a game is to win by scoring more points. In soccer, scoring almost never actually happens. That is, the game is pointless.
1) Break your leg on the field, ref waves at you to get up and play on, while if you dramatically flop with no real injury, you can get carried off the field on a stretcher.
2a) Play 90 minutes, have nil-nil tie broken by penalty kicks
2b) Or play 20 minutes, have one-nil lead preserved by falling back into defense.
3) Real scoring so rare that the hint that a goal might become possible in the near future causes a roar from the crowd.
You've done nothing to respond except introduce another spurious example: the stock market is not analogous because the "long"-term trends are monotonic. [Which has something to do with economic growth, and also to do with the fact that stock markets are a relatively recent invention. Consider something like the price of grain or day labor to get something more like climate.] In the distant past, we have had climates that are both warmer and cooler than the present. The long term effects appear to be no more predictable than the short term effects.
Your comment about the melting icecaps makes my point for me. That the longer term climate can shift between qualitiatively different regimes (ice age vs. tropical) with small quantitative changes indicates that the longer term trends are indeed chaotic. The climate signal you are looking for in the presence of large short-term effects is both small and likely chaotic---exactly opposed to the examples you present.
To further explain the "dynamics" comment I made; the presence of the large radio signal does not feedback in any way to affect the nonlinear oscillator, and the nonlinear oscillator does not affect Radio Luxembourg [Neglecting the unfortunate fact that RTL is now off the air.] To use the linear combination of the two as an analogy to the weather only works if the melting of ice doesn't depend on the daily temperature.
The other contributing factor for red LEDs replacing red lamps is that "red" incandescent lamps are white incandescent bulbs with red filters in front. The filtering substantially lowers the emitted light per unit input power, increasing the advantage of red LEDs.
The reason your filtering is so easy is that the operation of addition is linear! Try a non-linear operation, then try tuning in Radio Luxembourg as its carrier is shifted chaotically.
Your example has no dynamics at all, so it hardly qualifies as a useful example of a non-linear dynamical system.
Furthermore, if your example is to be applied to weather/climate, you seem to be suggesting that weather is a small effect compared to long-term climate variation, but the daily fluctuations in temperature, not to mention the annual differences between summer and winter are *larger* or comparable to the long-term climate variations. The longer-term secular trends are much smaller (a few degrees per century, say) compared to the chaotic portion (tens of degrees daily departure from "average")!
Slashdot Mirror
streetlawyer chose not to respond, but a few minutes with Google yielded the following information about EMI Recorded Music's 2001 results:
EMI Recorded Music: 2001
Sales 2282 million UKP
Operating Profit: 227.5 million UKP
I.e. 10% operating margin
That doesn't seem outstanding to me.
Unfortunately, I can't find my previous slashdot posts indicating Microsoft's operating margin for comparison, but it is much higher.
The asteroid is in solar orbit, and isn't going to leave the solar system.
Intentionally blowing up dams is a violation of the rules of war.
The Chinese economy's been cranking along at double digit growth for years now, and this project could guarantee it keeps on doing so. Pyramid building is always good business, and it leads to full employment that tends to take the wind out of the sails of the malcontents and democracy demonstrators.
I think these statements miss the mark. The figures for growth in the Chinese economy are notoriously unreliable. There is also nothing magical about spending on space projects vs. any other kind of project. Based on the lack of private sector moonbase work, capital would probably be more profitably employed (i.e., allow more future economic growth) in other technology areas.
Finally, the problem of jobless discontent in China is that of peasant would-be farmers and low-skill workers at closing state-owned industrial firms. Neither labor pool could be usefully employed in aerospace industry.
Read Hume: nothing can be known. And Kant didn't refute him. :-)
Finite: if the universe is closed and finite in extent, then it is finite in total energy; quantum states of the universe with E != E_universe cannot be occupied.
It gets tricky when you incorporate general relativity: spacetime itself contains energy, so when the universe expands, the E_universe changes. I'm no GR expert, but I dimly recall, probably in Landau's stat mech book, that you can fit this in without too much trouble---thermodynamically, you can treat this as an external source of work on the universe. Still, the overall energy is finite, so the number of realizable quantum states of the universe is finite, though beyond mind-bogglingly huge.
Now, the problem of considering the universe to be in a quantum state is philosophically difficult, but not as difficult as the many-world people would have you believe.
The infinity of orbitals in the hydrogen atom is artificial; it only works of the universe is indeed infinite, and consists only of the hydrogen nucleus.
If you put the hydrogen atom in a box, say the size of the universe, then the asymptotic behavior you mention will go away.
Yeah, the Chinese have it great. That political system of their has to figure out how to handle hundreds of millions of people who have lost, or are about to lose, their jobs in state-owned firms, in addition to the hundreds of millions of rural peasants who have decided to go to the cities, because things have got to be better there, right?
Moon mines being "good for them" is going to have to wait. Hundreds of millions of pissed-off Chinese isn't good for anyone, and the real operators in the Chinese government hopefully realize this. I suspect that these plans will get quietly shelved and not amount to anything, just as similar plans by US defense agencies and vendors got dramatically scaled back or cut off as well.
Just thought I'd add another amusing insight:
Chinese leaders are also fond of predicting "democracy in China" in a timeframe of something like "50 years." As in, "over my dead body."
My take on Chinese manned spaceflight including "moon mines": welcome to the 1960's, but the rest of us are in the 21st century. Have fun!
To clarify, and to hopefully cut off this hydra's head of an argument/troll, when I (and most Lisp programmers) say "Lisp" I mean "ANSI Common Lisp" as in the first object-oriented programming language to have an ANSI standard associated with it.
The multiplicity of Lisp dialects was a problem that went away in the mid-1980's, whether you realized it or not.
The only possible source of confusion I can imagine that would make this an honest post, rather than a troll, is Scheme. So the choice is "Common Lisp" or "Scheme." Which to me are as different as C++ and Java.
That's an interesting example...Now that C has changed into C++, I find I can no longer understand the code analogies that people write. I always feel the need to check the .h files to see how things are defined.
More lisp-like, I think, would be
(let ((*student* (new-cs-major))
(*Lisp-curriculum* 'outdated))
(causes-irrational-fear? 'Lisp))
--> T
Lisp macros are also compile-time. And, because the transformations they perform end up producing "ordinary" Lisp code, all Lisp compilers get them correct. Also, since the macro language is the same as the base language, it is well-defined. In fact, a substantial portion of a Lisp compiler is likely to be written using Lisp macros.
C++ templates share much of the power of Lisp macros, but they are somewhat more restricted in what they can do and express. They play an essential role in writing generic algorithms, which is a great thing. But once you've decided to write your C++ code using templates, you're committed to doing things in the template style. Lisp macros are completely transparent, in the sense that macro code and Lisp code look the same, and fit together.
I concede that the STL folks and Blitz++ folks have done amazing things with the template system. But C++ compilers still have issues with getting the STL to work consistently.
I think the way I would summarize it is that writing Lisp macros is continually improving the language, without narrowing the scope of your options. C++ templates feel to me like building a tower. Sure, each floor is higher than the one before, but soon, the only way to build is up. If you don't like the choices you made building the ground floor, you have to abandon the work built on top, as well.
OO and functional are not opposing concepts. Also, you may have missed the subtle point, but Lisp is not a strictly functional language, although it is obviously function-oriented.
Lisp has a full-blown object system called CLOS (Common Lisp Object System), which frankly blows C++'s object system out of the water, in terms of flexibility, power, and syntactic cleanliness, just for starters. Lisp programmers aren't scared of OO. It's C++ programmers who are scared of Lisp, although why anyone would be less scared of C++ is a mystery to me.
OO doesn't magically mean "easy to maintain." It may mean "easy to find drones who think they learned the language from a book in 21 days, so they put in on their resume" which I think was your real point.
To address the original issue, functional designs tend to be much more "factored" than procedural designs, because things are designed to use functional abstraction rather than interactions between different bits of code and variables. This tends to make them much more robust and maintainable.
It's not that every Lisp program has a different design, any more than every machine has the same design; however, in Lisp, there tend to be fewer obstacles to expressing a particular program design in the language. There are a wide range of reasons for that.
One is the pervasive nature of intrinsic typing. Variables are not typed, values are. Object-oriented methods, of course, explicitly mention classes, but non-OO code does not need to explicitly type variables, except to improve performance. The flexibility of many built-in Lisp operators helps deal with multiple types transparently. For instance, length of array, length of a string, and length of a list all use the same function: LENGTH.
Another source of flexibility is Lisp macros, which can use the full power of the Lisp programming language to rearrange and process Lisp macro calls into Lisp code. If there is some design pattern that Lisp does not natively support, you can use Lisp macros to create a Lisp "dialect" that cleanly expresses the design.
Paul Graham, in his books, demonstrates, for instance, that if Lisp did not already have CLOS to express object-oriented concepts, that in about a hundred lines of pretty clean Lisp macrology, you can add single-dispatch methods to the language, and it looks just like "real" Lisp, and mixes with the base language transparently.
It took Stroustrup a large effort (cfront) to add objects and methods to C, and it requires explicitly invoking a compiler program to do the translation, with name-mangling and everything else. In Lisp, you would write Lisp macros to do the same thing, and you would still be working in true Lisp. You can also add macros on macros: cfront is basically a monolith, but Lisp macros can work together; you can continuously "build up" from the language foundation, and the various layers can be overlapped.
Any time you find yourself repeating a pattern, it suggests a Lisp macro. If you have an example of the pattern already written, it is pretty much cut-and-paste to create the general macro from the specific pattern instance.
That kind of flexibility, which allows the programmer to mold the language to fit his (and his tasks) needs, is really what makes Lisp great to work with.
It's something like the difference between working with Legos and clay. If you're missing a Lego part to serve a particular function, you're pretty much stuck, unless you want to injection-mold your own custom blocks. Therefore, Lego models tend to use "design patterns" where the standard blocks or parts fit together a certain way that solves a certain class of problems. Lego models, although they can be amazing achievements, all tend to look like Lego models.
With clay, however, the medium is fluid. You can mold it to just about any shape you want. Sculptures usually look like their subject, not like clay.
Yes, but which code is easier to maintain? Slashdot opinion evolves over time.
"Digitally edited" does not mean "digitally imaged."
Editing, roughly speaking, is the cutting-and-pasting of the daily shoots into something that actually tells a story.
For digital editing, a copy of the daily shoots is made in digital form for assembly. HOWEVER, the sequence of film segments can then be referred back to the originally shot film, which is PHYSICALLY cut and assembled in order to form an "analog master" from which the final prints are made.
There are obvious reasons why digital editing is superior: you don't have to bother with physically cutting and splicing many pieces of film. It is easier to cut and recut. The film itself is handled only the minimal amount. The digital copy that the editor works with does not need to be high resolution, as it is only used to establish the cuts, not fed into the projector in the cinema.
But CD is clearly more capable than the previous analog recording media. As in, more dynamic range than the analog mastering media.
Early CD recordings had trouble because of a lack of experience in mixing for the new medium, and building a good reconstruction filter for the analog stage of a CD player is not trivial, but the medium is unquestionably better, except for audiophile mystics.
Digital projection is still not more capable than film, especially not the 70mm film shown under art house conditions that Ebert is comparing it to. Compared to an abused 35mm print shown at your local mall cinema, digital probably is better. In color saturation, digital is probably better. But the resolution is not quite there, and that is really what makes the difference in Ebert's comparison.
So, a movie full of eye candy without a comprehensible plot. What a surprise.
Sounds like a movie for people who wave around plastic light sabers, as opposed to people who go to the movies to see, oh, I don't know, a drama? As in a compelling plot with emotionally interesting characters? Where dialog serves to develop and expose character, as opposed to recite history? Where actors interact with one another, instead of with a digital scene to-be-inserted-later?
Maybe you had fun, but I like to enjoy movies without dressing in silly nerd costumes.
Spinal Tap is a great source of lines, right up there with Monty Python's Holy Grail.
"Money talks and bullsh*t walks."
"How much more black could it be, and the answer is none...none more black"
"Listen to the Flower People"
"Gimme some Money"
"Lick My Love Pump"
"Too much f*cking perspective."
"Currently residing in the where-are-they-now file"
"And on bass, Derek Smalls...he wrote this [jazz odyssey]"
"My job is to be in the middle, sort of like lukewarm water."
"Patron saint of quality footwear"
Then again, a turd shit by George Lucas in the shape of Darth Vader's head delivers better lines than most in his movies.
The only well-delivered lines I remember were Harrison Ford & Carrie Fisher. "You call this a rescue?" "Get this walking carpet out of my way" "You're braver than I thought." "I love you./I know."
By now, Lucas is definitely counting on special effects to override the need for compelling dialogue between characters.
Also, the GVS9000 is 2U high, vs. 1U for the XServe.
I can't tell what sport you think you are making fun of. The biggest "mass" of points you get at one time in American football is 6. Forty points by one side is usually a rout.
The point of a game is to win by scoring more points. In soccer, scoring almost never actually happens. That is, the game is pointless.
Hmmm. Better than the stupidity of
1) Break your leg on the field, ref waves at you to get up and play on, while if you dramatically flop with no real injury, you can get carried off the field on a stretcher.
2a) Play 90 minutes, have nil-nil tie broken by penalty kicks
2b) Or play 20 minutes, have one-nil lead preserved by falling back into defense.
3) Real scoring so rare that the hint that a goal might become possible in the near future causes a roar from the crowd.
Etc.
You've done nothing to respond except introduce another spurious example: the stock market is not analogous because the "long"-term trends are monotonic. [Which has something to do with economic growth, and also to do with the fact that stock markets are a relatively recent invention. Consider something like the price of grain or day labor to get something more like climate.] In the distant past, we have had climates that are both warmer and cooler than the present. The long term effects appear to be no more predictable than the short term effects.
Your comment about the melting icecaps makes my point for me. That the longer term climate can shift between qualitiatively different regimes (ice age vs. tropical) with small quantitative changes indicates that the longer term trends are indeed chaotic. The climate signal you are looking for in the presence of large short-term effects is both small and likely chaotic---exactly opposed to the examples you present.
To further explain the "dynamics" comment I made; the presence of the large radio signal does not feedback in any way to affect the nonlinear oscillator, and the nonlinear oscillator does not affect Radio Luxembourg [Neglecting the unfortunate fact that RTL is now off the air.] To use the linear combination of the two as an analogy to the weather only works if the melting of ice doesn't depend on the daily temperature.
The other contributing factor for red LEDs replacing red lamps is that "red" incandescent lamps are white incandescent bulbs with red filters in front. The filtering substantially lowers the emitted light per unit input power, increasing the advantage of red LEDs.
The reason your filtering is so easy is that the operation of addition is linear! Try a non-linear operation, then try tuning in Radio Luxembourg as its carrier is shifted chaotically.
Your example has no dynamics at all, so it hardly qualifies as a useful example of a non-linear dynamical system.
Furthermore, if your example is to be applied to weather/climate, you seem to be suggesting that weather is a small effect compared to long-term climate variation, but the daily fluctuations in temperature, not to mention the annual differences between summer and winter are *larger* or comparable to the long-term climate variations. The longer-term secular trends are much smaller (a few degrees per century, say) compared to the chaotic portion (tens of degrees daily departure from "average")!