"Judaism was the world's first master race theory."
Yah, the first self-loathing, self-deprecating master race. LOL. You don't actually take yourself seriously, do you?
"otherwise known as "The Worship of Money" or "Eating Arab Babies""
Ooops, maybe you do? Well, don't forget your tin foil hat and remember to take your lithium, if not for yourself, at least to protect your family from your mild mood swings and vile behavior. Final word to ya, even if 10% of what you say is true, I think you ought to look yourself in the mirror and see what an ugly and venial defect envy and hatred is.
Same exact thing happened to me in Utah, so I called up injury attorneys Young, Young & Young in SLC and asked to speak to Mr. Young. "He's in trial right now". So I asked to speak with the other Mr. Young, "Sorry, he's away on a business trip." Well, then, can I speak to Mr. Young? "You're talking to him!".
I'd like to see them in a face-off with Schwartz, Schwartz & Schwartz in L.A., but between them I don't think they could figure out who the gentiles are.
Doh! I had a bad source for the loss in electrical transmissions (should have been for 10 miles, not 1 mile, though who wants to live a mile from a power plant, not me), so it would be 20 miles from the power plant that the charging station runs at only 49% efficiency.
Other than the stupid little fact that long term reflection measurements are... nonexistent. Short term reflection measurements are scarce (and do not include a great many weather fenomena, nor are they anywhere near global measurements). So we don't know that. We could say that simple, initial measurements seem to indicate as much.
We don't need long term measurements. We just need to know how the mechanism works. Follow the logic... EM Radiation emitted from the sun hits the earth. A certain percentage is reflected away again, but the balance is absorbed and contributes to the (non-equilibrium) thermodynamic state which is ever increasing in kinetic energy (heat). So, even if there's variance in the ratio of absorption to reflection, until we light up like a sun ourselves and begin emitting EMR, we'll always be an open system with a positive caloric intake. That's the reality of any terrestrial body (until it becomes bursts in celestial glory or is consumed by a neighboring celestial body).
the fact that the earth remained between 10 and 25 degrees celcius for 2.8 billion years probably means that... did not kill all life on earth, nor did it kill all humans
Whoa, cowboy, where'd you get those numbers!? 2.8 Billion? Are you sure it's not 2.7 Billion? Maybe it's 2.9 Billion? Just because Congress spends that in dollars with a swipe of the pen, doesn't give credence or license to similar big number conclusions in science. I recently had my son go through his science text and white-out all the floating point decimals in the geology and astronomy sections. The nerve of any scientist who can't conform to the convention of least significant digits!
If you want to play with some math, here's an equation for you:
P(final) = P(initial) * e ^ (rate * time)
with a very low reproductive rate (less than 1/2%), homo sapien sapien haven't been on the planet for more than about 4,500 years (P(present) = 6.5B). It's unlikely that any species has been around more than 6,000 or 7,000 years or we'd be knee deep in whatever that species. Life isn't some billion year or even million year event, it tops out at about 8,000 years on a planet this size. Or (and this flies in the face of prevailing environmentalist efforts and ideology), prolonged life relies upon catastrophic global events to periodically wipe out life and we just happen to have no evidence that such abundance of life, let alone that many humans ever previously abode on this planet. Under that scenario, we'd be helping nature along by snuffing ourselves out through global warming or whatever the sky-is-falling catastrophe-of-the day is.
Next, ask how we derive the age of the earth and life thereon. It used to be carbon dating, but that was based on an assumption of a constant level and rate of absorption of Carbon 14 over eons, somewhat unlikely and unpredictable in an open system bombarded 24/7/365 with radiation, and equally unlikely to extrapolate on a linear basis (perhaps the short term/long term measurement problem is more applicable to this than earthly reflective measurements).
So, the dating methodology of choice is now based on a combination of Argon-Argon or Argon-Potassium Dating. Argon-Argon gets you a precise relative date (two samples in geographic proximity can be compared), Argon-Potasium gets you a good absolute date. But the problem is that Argon-Argon dating requires the sample have the Argon infused (AR is a gas and a noble gas at that) in the rock which only happens with igneous rock formations (like lava), and since lava flows generally consume (er, vaporize) living things in it's path, it's only good to fix the age of inanimate objects. But a bigger problem persists in that it also indicates re-constitution of rock formations, not necessarily the initial constitution. In fact, if I were to venture a guess, I'd put the age of the materials composing the earth at much more than 2.8B years old, while guessing the age of the planet a
Seriously, AGW is a scam and if these 255 NAS members really resorted to calling those that dissent as "McCarthiests" and "Climate Deniers", they're not helping their cause, but showing themselves as naked hypocrites and fear mongerers.
Fact is, you don't need a degree in rocket science to see that AGW doesn't congeal either in scale of numbers, or economics, nor in accepted scientific laws. In the realm of numerical scale, one volcano (take for example Krakatoa off Java, circa 1800) can do more "damage" to the environment than the concurrent century of human industry. In the area of economics, politically neutral studies show that totally eliminating the combustion engine might curtail less than a degree of increase in temperature in 50 years, so we have to question if our efforts that have catastrophic effects on human productivity and survival can even slightly curtail the natural forces. Finally, and most importantly (with respect to the scientific method), the issue of AGW is truly such a wedge issue with no middle ground, so highly politicized by both camps (but most recently, these 255 demagogues who rather than debate science are reverting to pejoratives), that critical thinking has flown out the window.
For example, we have nothing but computer models to support the assumption that so-called "green house" gases contribute to warming. A junior high science student can tell you that a real green house works not because of the flavor of the glass enclosure, but because of the color of the plants and the way they change the wavelength of inbound light. Sure, the glass captures the heat, but not until it was reflected at a different wavelength and energy level than it penetrated. We're all fussing about carbon dioxide, a vital and natural component of the atmosphere, when it's the reflective quality of Earth's various surfaces that contributes more to any warming effect. If you want to capture the heat (say to divert it), paint everything black, to reflect, put a mirrored finish on everything. But 75% of the Earth (the oceans) is already semi-reflective and the remainder brown or green. I'd rather our environment warm a degree or two than deal with the chemical side effects of painting everything.
But the Global Warming detractors (the "climate deniers") are equally entrenched. The same eighth grader could tell you that the first law of thermodynamics is fully applicable. The Earth has to be warming on a global scale. The sun beats on the earth 24/7/365 and the only reduction to the temperature of the Earth's system is what is reflected back into space as UV and visible light, but that can only be in a less-than equal ratio to that which the Earth receives from the sun, so the net increase is always positive on the system over time. So where does the heat go? Natural conduits such as the oceans drive it into the core, which acts as a heat sink. One day, it will have absorbed so much that the surface is no longer inhabitable, but there's no amount of conservation or abuse that man can affect that will change that inevitability, so chill and learn to live life without worrying about that over which you have no influence.
But the monopoly for idiocy rests with the electric vehicle proponents. These nimby folk need to wise up and educate themselves on how power gets on the grid. Somewhere they pick up a short slogan, start chanting it, and it carries them away in a frenzied euphoria. Fact, 1 mile of electrical transmission has 30% loss (don't believe me, take a 3 foot fluorescent tube under a power line at night and watch it glow). Batteries charge with approximately a 50% loss (don't believe me, feel the heat coming off a battery and the charger circuitry during charging). So a charging station 2 miles down line from the generation source captures less than 25% of the energy input (.7 x.7 x.5), and that's just on charging. A good battery might retain 90% charge over a week, so by the end of the week, you're at around 22%. Back to
"Whoever it is selling this deserves a lot of pity"
or maybe the jig is up and he wants to unload the bundle while it's still worth something. Nyuk, nyuk (just making fun of the tin-foil crowd)
Here's a question for all the lunar landing conspiracists (you see, those that indulge in conspiracy are really racists - "conspiRACISTs")...
You know the original tape recording of the lunar landing, you know, the one they found in Australia? And I don't mean the 1967 "Simulation Footage", I mean the real footage that was recorded along with the telemetry data, I thought it was lost but found, and so I've been waiting around for it to show up on YouTube. Of course, I shouldn't get my expectations up too much, I remember watching the interlaced JPEG of the Lunar Landing Site from Hubble download on my browser window expecting to see vivid outlines of the flag and the base of the Eagle, but found myself straining at fuzzy shadows, but I digress...
Here's where we were in 2006, according to NPR:
"The original lunar footage did get recorded -- onto 14-inch spools of magnetic tape, along with telemetry data. And by 1970, the tapes had made their way to a giant government facility known as the National Records Center in Suitland, Md. Soon after that, records show that NASA brought the tapes to Goddard for "permanent retention."
A Race Against Time
Fast forward to April 2002. Someone who'd worked at one of the Australian tracking stations finds a tape in his garage. He thinks it's a copy he made of the original, high-quality footage. It goes to Building 25 at Goddard Space Flight Center, which houses the Data Evaluation Lab. This lab is full of giant blue cabinets that hold 40-year-old playback machines.
"This is equipment that would process any tapes we find of the original television," says Nafzger, who adds that this lab is the only place left that can play NASA tapes from the Apollo era.
It turned out, the Australian tape wasn't the moonwalk; it was a simulation from 1967. But it made Nafzger and others keen to find the originals."
Now, I know what the conspiracy nuts are thinking, WHY, Oh, Why would some simulation footage be found in Australia!? We expect to find the REAL footage in Australia from whence some of the telecast was received and relayed, but simulation footage? But don't put on your foil hats just yet, because even though you're thinking, "it was all simulation footage, so whether it was 1969 simulation footage or 1967 simulation footage, it was ALL simulated." Not so, you have to remember that Jim Lovell's brother-in-law's second cousin was a British ex-pat living in Jakarta at the time, and somehow the 1967 footage ended up in his luggage, which knowing 1960's lack of variety in the Samsonite line could easily have been swapped for his brother-in-law's cousin's cousin's luggage and then let's get together in Sydney, put some shrimps on the bar-b, yada, yada, yada, and it's obvious, this 1967 reel is going to end up in some garage Down Under.
Anyway, it's only the most frequently referenced achievement in human history, "we can put a man on the moon but we can't make a tea bag that's good for a second batch", so what do we need to keep the footage for, it's burned into our memory cells like the image of Jesus in that piece of toast that guy in Topeka has kept under glass since 1973.
I'm sorry but that sounds like a racist comment. Like you really wanted to say "How about sending a Kenyan out into space".
Or "Let's put a Kenyan in charge of our Space Program and see what happens."
You, sir, indulge in way too much unfounded conspiracy and idle fantasy!
Next thing you're going to tell me we've never been to the moon (which is really going to hamper bidding on the auction for the Apollo 13 note books). I mean just because we haven't been back, let alone even left sub-orbital altitudes for like 30+ years when it seemed like child's play back in the 1960's - oh, wait, that's more like 40+ years ago - anyway, these highly technical endeavors, like building computers and such, they're more difficult to do now, cost a lot more, and with that war on poverty, er drugs, er terror, er, climate change, er, what are we warring on right now? Even if my iPhone has 10X the memory capacity and computing power* of all of the 1969 Houston Space Center and Cape Canaveral combined, have you seen how tall those Saturn Rockets were? I think you forget the challenges we faced back in the 1960s, the Cold War, which took 20 years to win it too, not to mention the costs of an imaginary "Star Wars" program in the 1980s, that was supposed to shoot down ICBMs from space using Ion Cannons.
And so what if we STILL can't reliably shoot down inbound missiles and what the hell is an ion cannon, anyway? Sorry, I'm losing it, I'm just getting nostalgic for those days of Gene Rodenberry and the "Final Frontier". Glad I didn't pursue a career as an Astronaut... or as a climatologist, turns out first, the ice age scheduled for the year 2000 didn't show up, and now everyone gets all testy when you fudge a few numbers to get the graph to line up according to modeled projections. I was going to pursue a career in Medicine, but "evil doctors" are either getting sued into bankruptcy, or if they survive all the malpractice tort, a zealous congress will cap their salaries soon enough. Okay, I actually didn't have the brains for Med School, so I did my undergraduate work in pre-law.
Attended Occidental, though it wasn't until long after tossing my graduation cap (not much of a cap, just a piece of cardboard sewn to a yarmulke) in the air that I realized the spelling with an "O" wasn't just a typo when the school was chartered. I thought it was "Accidental College", else how did a schlub like me get in. Actually, I never showed up for class (sat in my friend's dorm room smoking fags - that's English for "cigarettes" and other leafy and incendiary tubular oral pacifiers, if I may be so dubious), so now I'm wondering how I ever got OUT of Accidental, er, Occidental.
Which leads to the much bigger mystery, how did I ever get into Columbia!? (Chuckle, as a foreign student, of course! Chuckle, they had a quota for minorities and a passport from any third world nation, like, I don't know, um, say, Indonesia, could really help you get in back in the 1980s). So, how'd I get into Harvard, hell, I was too stoned to remember, but I graduated Magme Cum Laud (which is Latin for "Invoking Loud Ecstatic Vocalizations", but I totally skipped out on both my Latin and Constitutional Law classes, so I could be wrong on that... and a lot of things.) Now, where did Grandma Whitey hide my documents,I've got to make sure they are kept safe.
ANYWAY, don't be such a smug racist type, you know we're past that, right?
*The Apollo Guidance Computer consisted of 4100 integrated circuits (each with only one NOR gate) with wire-wrap interconnects, boasting 4K of RAM and 72K of programmed ROM running at a whopping 85kHz accessing 4 registers. Apple's cheapest current iPhone in comparison, has 16GB of Random Access Memory including a portion for the OS on a 600MHz ARM processor with 13.8 Million Transistors. Oh, and it has a built-in accelerometer. That's 3,365x transistors running 7000x cycles faster with access to 4 MILLION times as much storage. So, I'm thinking, as long as Steve let's me upload it to the App Store, putting a "Lunar Lander" on the iPhone!
""But Skippus, people would be able to copy the game from day one!" My contention is that I've saved them tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and my Digital Rights Restrictions system lasted just one day less than the one they would have otherwise spent so much money on."
Excellent synopsis and nice touch of humor. You can come work for me when I finally get my company going:)
On the serious side, the Movie, Video, Music, Games, and software business really have some wrong-thinking people at the helm, or at least idiot lawyers influencing the top brass. That anyone in a vibrant profitable company would sit around thinking of ways to protect intellectual property from being abused by their paying customers is idiocy in play. Just keep cranking out good stuff, and ignore this fictitious loss-by-piracy of sales that would never materialize anyway, and better yet, think of ways of turning pirated copies into sales leads converting them into paid copies. Musicians or their publishers should be stuffing the P2P networks with lower quality and perhaps shorter versions of their songs to bring on new sales (gosh, sounds like the AM radio controversy 3 generations ago!) Game makers should post FREE versions of their games. Make them shorter, or slightly disabled (enabled enough to get hooked), or better yet, put advertising inside the game, and then again, stuff the P2P networks with these official versions. Getting all draconian and punishing your paying customer base is true lunacy!
Final note, copyright and patent law is a false monopoly granted only by government. The market doesn't need IP protection* and IP protection isn't supported by the market. It's certainly not supported by any legal theories of equity. Games makers or any other purveyor of a virtual product are welcome to do whatever they'd like to increase their sales and profit margins, but everyone should take note and remember that the entire construct of intellectual "property" is an act of fiat by government, originally instituted so that creators have an incentive to be creative. But this rootkit crap and DRM is destructive and is backfiring on the various industries. For proof in the past, check out the section of the Copyright Act called "Compulsory Licensing".
* I'm referring to DMCA restrictions of an individual copying their own purchases, not the wholesale duplication and distribution of bootleg media.
Let me add something - "Authors want to get paid for their work, customers want that for which they paid to work." Isn't this a reasonable demand from the people that are paying the actual bills? The Games publishers have done an exceptional job at packaging the games, making the physical box and media desirable, and in so many cases, the games even more fun to play. Games are fun and make great gifts and like the Sand Tiger, dropping $30 (I'm a bit cheaper than Sand Tiger) on a game is an impulse buy. But the very moment I start doubting that something may not work because of a remote server (Epson has this problem with their Waste Inkpad Reset programs), or that a nefarious rootkit will be deployed on my hard drive, I've entirely lost interest. It's regretful that these programmers have lost a dime due to pirates, but whether it's them, their publishers, or their lawyers, they've lost focus on what made gaming great. No one, whether gamer or audiophile, wants their entertainment experience tainted with hocus pocus DRM that even hints at the customer's integrity as a paying customer. It's like checking in at the Marriott and being accused of stealing soap bars before you've even tipped the bag boy. Bad move for publishers, whether it's Ubisoft or Sony Music.
Here's an alternative... Listen up publishers! Seed the Torrents with limited editions of games and music. Music publishers - put out 128k MP3s of your songs, or for game publishers, put out a game that has limited resolution, or fills the game with ads, or has only 15 out of the 16 levels of play. Fill the torrents with authorized, slightly lower quality products. But then leave the store bought versions DRM free so that your PAYING customers feel good about the purchase and don't have to go through the hell of your customer support system trying to fix a problem you created on purpose. Right now you're not outsmarting the Pirates, you're just giving them what they feel are exciting challenges to break better DRM, but you can bank on them eventually breaking it. If you let the low quality versions move through the torrents, it would overtake the pirated copies and draw positive attention to your product. People that listen or play and like it, would then become potential customers for the full quality version.
Telus is the land line company that offers voice, internet, television. Telus MOBILE are the cell phone creeps. I'm not even on their network and had to fight $600 in failed data charges. Yes, Telus MOBILE sucks, but the land line telco seems okay!
Chinese importers are selling cartridges for the popular HP and Epson printers with Resettable Chips that can be easily refilled. Not only can these cartridges be refilled, but there's no waste, so you don't have to toss your printer or cartridges. I call it the "CMYK Revolution" (as opposed to the "Green Revolution"). The only downside is if you have a shaky hand, you can squirt ink all over the place during a refill, but other than that, the whole thing is a no brainer. Oh, and the inks are really good too, smudge proof and fade resistant, every bit as good as the OEM ink. If anyone's interested, PM me and I'll hook you up.
Are these dates real? The leave Japan on 1 November and get to the US by 11 November?! I waited 5 years for 1Mbps DSL in my neighborhood and that was only 20,000 feet from the CO, and these guys can move 4.8Tbps a thousand miles in 10 days?!
The cost is pretty good too. $300M is only 3/100 of 1% of the $787B stimulus package. I think Google got a much better deal all around that the American tax payer.
The key to this kind of humor is to use words different from the pun so that the reader has to think about it. Like follows:
"Violet, I recall, was a very young chinese girl, but the article says he died in Boston..."
Of course the reader right below took so long to get it, one wonders if the joke would get lost. Let's try it again:
"He died of euthanasia, but he was an old man in Boston" "Get it, died of old-age-in-Boston, not youth-in-asia!?" "Euthanasia, that's where you take your own life rather than suffer with illness!" "No, it's not just old people that can chose to go that way." "Yes, I know, in this case it just HAPPENED to be an old guy, but I guess young people can do it too, if they were really sick and were going to die anyway." "True, it wouldn't be as ironic if it was a young person." "Yes, it would be very sad, but that's not the point... that's not why it's funny." "No, I don't think an old guy taking his life or otherwise dying is funny, it's a play on words."
Okay, I'm not just talking to myself, I'm carrying on a dialog between myself and myself and one of me doesn't get the joke. Surely, I've got better things to do.
"No, I said SURELY, not Shirley and no she's not related to Violet." "Violet, the young Chinese g... Oh, never mind!"
Fine, cat's out of the bag now. I took it. Swapped it while working at the embassy. Damn Frank Beunk and his meddling! Couldn't leave well enough alone. Thousands of visitors every year gawked with amazement at that petrified chunk of coal and he's dashed their hopes. Even if I give it back now, no one's going to know for sure it was really a moon rock. I might as well just turn over some piece of granite... Hey, that's it, I'll just get something that isn't petrified organic crap and give that to the museum. Thanks Mollog, I couldn't have figured this out without your help!
Crap, that nosey Frank Beunk! I swapped out the real rock while working at the embassy and I sold it to Kim Jong Il. I had hoped no one would ever detect the fake. I guess I'll have to go and ask Kim for it back now. Damn, just couldn't leave things alone, could you Frank! I'll probably have to give Kim his money back, too!
I'm still skeptical of the moon landing, so pardon me if I don't buy a piece of real estate on this comet that supposedly supports life! Just one thing though, what scientist had the cajones to straddle this thing and collect the Glycene sample?!
The Fed in March declared $1T of Treasury bills (debt instruments used to fund Federal Spending) to be purchased. That's $30B a day over the next year. By early July, somehow the number was increased to $1.8T, probably because the CBO saw all the additional spending wasn't covered. That's only $50B a day.
So the proof that the Americans landed on the moon is not anything affirmative, but rather that there is no negative proof? Meaning, as long as the Russians didn't make a fuss, we can therefore know with certainty that the Americans actually made it to the lunar surface?! So, in other words, if you can fool the Russians, then there's no further proof required? Star Wars, anyone? A crappy PowerPoint presentation from the Whitehouse and the Russians thrown in the towel! So we know that THEY can't be easily fooled!
And, what of the Lunar Landing? The Russians would certainly have exposed that! That is if you believe that the Russians could launch even a turd ball into space. What a joke! Have you seen Sputnik? It's like a soccerball covered with tin foil and four straws stuck into it. Actually, that's what it is. My great uncle, the Nobel Laureate, Ivan Tobedumbkov, attended the Moscow Institute of Applied Physics and Chemistry where he chummed around with the early Soyuz rocket scientists who would hide the vodka distilled in their dorm room inside of an old soccer ball and sneak drinks on weekends by inserting straws into holes in the leather.
So we can know that we landed on the moon because there's no way we could fool the Russians. That's really reassuring!
Oh, those Russians, eh! Within a week of Pons and Fleischman, the Russians were claiming wild success with Cold Fusion, and didn't rebut the theory until many Western scientists (including DOE) challenged the data and dumb and dumber recanted the results.
I don't know why this hasn't been out there for the last century. Pfaw to global warming, this is a real viable theory with reason to explore further. It doesn't mean we toss the theory of a ferrite core which is a natural dipole, but we can examine the strength of the magnetic field taking into account an electronic current running through the fluid currents that "wrap" around the core. For anyone with a strong background in geology, is the current magnetic field explicable with just the ferrite core, or is it too strong? If so, the electrons that move with the currents can explain the increase. If not, then maybe the currents are a result of the magnetic ferrite core...
Slashdot Mirror
Homeopath!
"Judaism was the world's first master race theory."
Yah, the first self-loathing, self-deprecating master race. LOL. You don't actually take yourself seriously, do you?
"otherwise known as "The Worship of Money" or "Eating Arab Babies""
Ooops, maybe you do? Well, don't forget your tin foil hat and remember to take your lithium, if not for yourself, at least to protect your family from your mild mood swings and vile behavior. Final word to ya, even if 10% of what you say is true, I think you ought to look yourself in the mirror and see what an ugly and venial defect envy and hatred is.
Same exact thing happened to me in Utah, so I called up injury attorneys Young, Young & Young in SLC and asked to speak to Mr. Young. "He's in trial right now". So I asked to speak with the other Mr. Young, "Sorry, he's away on a business trip." Well, then, can I speak to Mr. Young? "You're talking to him!".
I'd like to see them in a face-off with Schwartz, Schwartz & Schwartz in L.A., but between them I don't think they could figure out who the gentiles are.
1 mile of electrical transmission has 30% loss
Doh! I had a bad source for the loss in electrical transmissions (should have been for 10 miles, not 1 mile, though who wants to live a mile from a power plant, not me), so it would be 20 miles from the power plant that the charging station runs at only 49% efficiency.
Other than the stupid little fact that long term reflection measurements are ... nonexistent. Short term reflection measurements are scarce (and do not include a great many weather fenomena, nor are they anywhere near global measurements). So we don't know that. We could say that simple, initial measurements seem to indicate as much.
We don't need long term measurements. We just need to know how the mechanism works. Follow the logic... EM Radiation emitted from the sun hits the earth. A certain percentage is reflected away again, but the balance is absorbed and contributes to the (non-equilibrium) thermodynamic state which is ever increasing in kinetic energy (heat). So, even if there's variance in the ratio of absorption to reflection, until we light up like a sun ourselves and begin emitting EMR, we'll always be an open system with a positive caloric intake. That's the reality of any terrestrial body (until it becomes bursts in celestial glory or is consumed by a neighboring celestial body).
the fact that the earth remained between 10 and 25 degrees celcius for 2.8 billion years probably means that... did not kill all life on earth, nor did it kill all humans
Whoa, cowboy, where'd you get those numbers!? 2.8 Billion? Are you sure it's not 2.7 Billion? Maybe it's 2.9 Billion? Just because Congress spends that in dollars with a swipe of the pen, doesn't give credence or license to similar big number conclusions in science. I recently had my son go through his science text and white-out all the floating point decimals in the geology and astronomy sections. The nerve of any scientist who can't conform to the convention of least significant digits!
If you want to play with some math, here's an equation for you:
P(final) = P(initial) * e ^ (rate * time)
with a very low reproductive rate (less than 1/2%), homo sapien sapien haven't been on the planet for more than about 4,500 years (P(present) = 6.5B). It's unlikely that any species has been around more than 6,000 or 7,000 years or we'd be knee deep in whatever that species. Life isn't some billion year or even million year event, it tops out at about 8,000 years on a planet this size. Or (and this flies in the face of prevailing environmentalist efforts and ideology), prolonged life relies upon catastrophic global events to periodically wipe out life and we just happen to have no evidence that such abundance of life, let alone that many humans ever previously abode on this planet. Under that scenario, we'd be helping nature along by snuffing ourselves out through global warming or whatever the sky-is-falling catastrophe-of-the day is.
Next, ask how we derive the age of the earth and life thereon. It used to be carbon dating, but that was based on an assumption of a constant level and rate of absorption of Carbon 14 over eons, somewhat unlikely and unpredictable in an open system bombarded 24/7/365 with radiation, and equally unlikely to extrapolate on a linear basis (perhaps the short term/long term measurement problem is more applicable to this than earthly reflective measurements).
So, the dating methodology of choice is now based on a combination of Argon-Argon or Argon-Potassium Dating. Argon-Argon gets you a precise relative date (two samples in geographic proximity can be compared), Argon-Potasium gets you a good absolute date. But the problem is that Argon-Argon dating requires the sample have the Argon infused (AR is a gas and a noble gas at that) in the rock which only happens with igneous rock formations (like lava), and since lava flows generally consume (er, vaporize) living things in it's path, it's only good to fix the age of inanimate objects. But a bigger problem persists in that it also indicates re-constitution of rock formations, not necessarily the initial constitution. In fact, if I were to venture a guess, I'd put the age of the materials composing the earth at much more than 2.8B years old, while guessing the age of the planet a
Damn rights!
Seriously, AGW is a scam and if these 255 NAS members really resorted to calling those that dissent as "McCarthiests" and "Climate Deniers", they're not helping their cause, but showing themselves as naked hypocrites and fear mongerers.
Fact is, you don't need a degree in rocket science to see that AGW doesn't congeal either in scale of numbers, or economics, nor in accepted scientific laws. In the realm of numerical scale, one volcano (take for example Krakatoa off Java, circa 1800) can do more "damage" to the environment than the concurrent century of human industry. In the area of economics, politically neutral studies show that totally eliminating the combustion engine might curtail less than a degree of increase in temperature in 50 years, so we have to question if our efforts that have catastrophic effects on human productivity and survival can even slightly curtail the natural forces. Finally, and most importantly (with respect to the scientific method), the issue of AGW is truly such a wedge issue with no middle ground, so highly politicized by both camps (but most recently, these 255 demagogues who rather than debate science are reverting to pejoratives), that critical thinking has flown out the window.
For example, we have nothing but computer models to support the assumption that so-called "green house" gases contribute to warming. A junior high science student can tell you that a real green house works not because of the flavor of the glass enclosure, but because of the color of the plants and the way they change the wavelength of inbound light. Sure, the glass captures the heat, but not until it was reflected at a different wavelength and energy level than it penetrated. We're all fussing about carbon dioxide, a vital and natural component of the atmosphere, when it's the reflective quality of Earth's various surfaces that contributes more to any warming effect. If you want to capture the heat (say to divert it), paint everything black, to reflect, put a mirrored finish on everything. But 75% of the Earth (the oceans) is already semi-reflective and the remainder brown or green. I'd rather our environment warm a degree or two than deal with the chemical side effects of painting everything.
But the Global Warming detractors (the "climate deniers") are equally entrenched. The same eighth grader could tell you that the first law of thermodynamics is fully applicable. The Earth has to be warming on a global scale. The sun beats on the earth 24/7/365 and the only reduction to the temperature of the Earth's system is what is reflected back into space as UV and visible light, but that can only be in a less-than equal ratio to that which the Earth receives from the sun, so the net increase is always positive on the system over time. So where does the heat go? Natural conduits such as the oceans drive it into the core, which acts as a heat sink. One day, it will have absorbed so much that the surface is no longer inhabitable, but there's no amount of conservation or abuse that man can affect that will change that inevitability, so chill and learn to live life without worrying about that over which you have no influence.
But the monopoly for idiocy rests with the electric vehicle proponents. These nimby folk need to wise up and educate themselves on how power gets on the grid. Somewhere they pick up a short slogan, start chanting it, and it carries them away in a frenzied euphoria. Fact, 1 mile of electrical transmission has 30% loss (don't believe me, take a 3 foot fluorescent tube under a power line at night and watch it glow). Batteries charge with approximately a 50% loss (don't believe me, feel the heat coming off a battery and the charger circuitry during charging). So a charging station 2 miles down line from the generation source captures less than 25% of the energy input (.7 x .7 x .5), and that's just on charging. A good battery might retain 90% charge over a week, so by the end of the week, you're at around 22%. Back to
"Whoever it is selling this deserves a lot of pity"
or maybe the jig is up and he wants to unload the bundle while it's still worth something. Nyuk, nyuk (just making fun of the tin-foil crowd)
Here's a question for all the lunar landing conspiracists (you see, those that indulge in conspiracy are really racists - "conspiRACISTs")...
You know the original tape recording of the lunar landing, you know, the one they found in Australia? And I don't mean the 1967 "Simulation Footage", I mean the real footage that was recorded along with the telemetry data, I thought it was lost but found, and so I've been waiting around for it to show up on YouTube. Of course, I shouldn't get my expectations up too much, I remember watching the interlaced JPEG of the Lunar Landing Site from Hubble download on my browser window expecting to see vivid outlines of the flag and the base of the Eagle, but found myself straining at fuzzy shadows, but I digress...
Here's where we were in 2006, according to NPR:
"The original lunar footage did get recorded -- onto 14-inch spools of magnetic tape, along with telemetry data. And by 1970, the tapes had made their way to a giant government facility known as the National Records Center in Suitland, Md. Soon after that, records show that NASA brought the tapes to Goddard for "permanent retention."
A Race Against Time
Fast forward to April 2002. Someone who'd worked at one of the Australian tracking stations finds a tape in his garage. He thinks it's a copy he made of the original, high-quality footage. It goes to Building 25 at Goddard Space Flight Center, which houses the Data Evaluation Lab. This lab is full of giant blue cabinets that hold 40-year-old playback machines.
"This is equipment that would process any tapes we find of the original television," says Nafzger, who adds that this lab is the only place left that can play NASA tapes from the Apollo era.
It turned out, the Australian tape wasn't the moonwalk; it was a simulation from 1967. But it made Nafzger and others keen to find the originals."
Now, I know what the conspiracy nuts are thinking, WHY, Oh, Why would some simulation footage be found in Australia!? We expect to find the REAL footage in Australia from whence some of the telecast was received and relayed, but simulation footage? But don't put on your foil hats just yet, because even though you're thinking, "it was all simulation footage, so whether it was 1969 simulation footage or 1967 simulation footage, it was ALL simulated." Not so, you have to remember that Jim Lovell's brother-in-law's second cousin was a British ex-pat living in Jakarta at the time, and somehow the 1967 footage ended up in his luggage, which knowing 1960's lack of variety in the Samsonite line could easily have been swapped for his brother-in-law's cousin's cousin's luggage and then let's get together in Sydney, put some shrimps on the bar-b, yada, yada, yada, and it's obvious, this 1967 reel is going to end up in some garage Down Under.
Anyway, it's only the most frequently referenced achievement in human history, "we can put a man on the moon but we can't make a tea bag that's good for a second batch", so what do we need to keep the footage for, it's burned into our memory cells like the image of Jesus in that piece of toast that guy in Topeka has kept under glass since 1973.
I'm sorry but that sounds like a racist comment. Like you really wanted to say "How about sending a Kenyan out into space".
Or "Let's put a Kenyan in charge of our Space Program and see what happens."
You, sir, indulge in way too much unfounded conspiracy and idle fantasy!
Next thing you're going to tell me we've never been to the moon (which is really going to hamper bidding on the auction for the Apollo 13 note books). I mean just because we haven't been back, let alone even left sub-orbital altitudes for like 30+ years when it seemed like child's play back in the 1960's - oh, wait, that's more like 40+ years ago - anyway, these highly technical endeavors, like building computers and such, they're more difficult to do now, cost a lot more, and with that war on poverty, er drugs, er terror, er, climate change, er, what are we warring on right now? Even if my iPhone has 10X the memory capacity and computing power* of all of the 1969 Houston Space Center and Cape Canaveral combined, have you seen how tall those Saturn Rockets were? I think you forget the challenges we faced back in the 1960s, the Cold War, which took 20 years to win it too, not to mention the costs of an imaginary "Star Wars" program in the 1980s, that was supposed to shoot down ICBMs from space using Ion Cannons.
And so what if we STILL can't reliably shoot down inbound missiles and what the hell is an ion cannon, anyway? Sorry, I'm losing it, I'm just getting nostalgic for those days of Gene Rodenberry and the "Final Frontier". Glad I didn't pursue a career as an Astronaut... or as a climatologist, turns out first, the ice age scheduled for the year 2000 didn't show up, and now everyone gets all testy when you fudge a few numbers to get the graph to line up according to modeled projections. I was going to pursue a career in Medicine, but "evil doctors" are either getting sued into bankruptcy, or if they survive all the malpractice tort, a zealous congress will cap their salaries soon enough. Okay, I actually didn't have the brains for Med School, so I did my undergraduate work in pre-law.
Attended Occidental, though it wasn't until long after tossing my graduation cap (not much of a cap, just a piece of cardboard sewn to a yarmulke) in the air that I realized the spelling with an "O" wasn't just a typo when the school was chartered. I thought it was "Accidental College", else how did a schlub like me get in. Actually, I never showed up for class (sat in my friend's dorm room smoking fags - that's English for "cigarettes" and other leafy and incendiary tubular oral pacifiers, if I may be so dubious), so now I'm wondering how I ever got OUT of Accidental, er, Occidental.
Which leads to the much bigger mystery, how did I ever get into Columbia!? (Chuckle, as a foreign student, of course! Chuckle, they had a quota for minorities and a passport from any third world nation, like, I don't know, um, say, Indonesia, could really help you get in back in the 1980s). So, how'd I get into Harvard, hell, I was too stoned to remember, but I graduated Magme Cum Laud (which is Latin for "Invoking Loud Ecstatic Vocalizations", but I totally skipped out on both my Latin and Constitutional Law classes, so I could be wrong on that... and a lot of things.) Now, where did Grandma Whitey hide my documents,I've got to make sure they are kept safe.
ANYWAY, don't be such a smug racist type, you know we're past that, right?
*The Apollo Guidance Computer consisted of 4100 integrated circuits (each with only one NOR gate) with wire-wrap interconnects, boasting 4K of RAM and 72K of programmed ROM running at a whopping 85kHz accessing 4 registers. Apple's cheapest current iPhone in comparison, has 16GB of Random Access Memory including a portion for the OS on a 600MHz ARM processor with 13.8 Million Transistors. Oh, and it has a built-in accelerometer. That's 3,365x transistors running 7000x cycles faster with access to 4 MILLION times as much storage. So, I'm thinking, as long as Steve let's me upload it to the App Store, putting a "Lunar Lander" on the iPhone!
"Is that code for something"
What is it about slashdotters that think everything has to be in code?
""But Skippus, people would be able to copy the game from day one!" My contention is that I've saved them tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and my Digital Rights Restrictions system lasted just one day less than the one they would have otherwise spent so much money on."
Excellent synopsis and nice touch of humor. You can come work for me when I finally get my company going:)
On the serious side, the Movie, Video, Music, Games, and software business really have some wrong-thinking people at the helm, or at least idiot lawyers influencing the top brass. That anyone in a vibrant profitable company would sit around thinking of ways to protect intellectual property from being abused by their paying customers is idiocy in play. Just keep cranking out good stuff, and ignore this fictitious loss-by-piracy of sales that would never materialize anyway, and better yet, think of ways of turning pirated copies into sales leads converting them into paid copies. Musicians or their publishers should be stuffing the P2P networks with lower quality and perhaps shorter versions of their songs to bring on new sales (gosh, sounds like the AM radio controversy 3 generations ago!) Game makers should post FREE versions of their games. Make them shorter, or slightly disabled (enabled enough to get hooked), or better yet, put advertising inside the game, and then again, stuff the P2P networks with these official versions. Getting all draconian and punishing your paying customer base is true lunacy!
Final note, copyright and patent law is a false monopoly granted only by government. The market doesn't need IP protection* and IP protection isn't supported by the market. It's certainly not supported by any legal theories of equity. Games makers or any other purveyor of a virtual product are welcome to do whatever they'd like to increase their sales and profit margins, but everyone should take note and remember that the entire construct of intellectual "property" is an act of fiat by government, originally instituted so that creators have an incentive to be creative. But this rootkit crap and DRM is destructive and is backfiring on the various industries. For proof in the past, check out the section of the Copyright Act called "Compulsory Licensing".
* I'm referring to DMCA restrictions of an individual copying their own purchases, not the wholesale duplication and distribution of bootleg media.
Excellent Post
Let me add something - "Authors want to get paid for their work, customers want that for which they paid to work." Isn't this a reasonable demand from the people that are paying the actual bills? The Games publishers have done an exceptional job at packaging the games, making the physical box and media desirable, and in so many cases, the games even more fun to play. Games are fun and make great gifts and like the Sand Tiger, dropping $30 (I'm a bit cheaper than Sand Tiger) on a game is an impulse buy. But the very moment I start doubting that something may not work because of a remote server (Epson has this problem with their Waste Inkpad Reset programs), or that a nefarious rootkit will be deployed on my hard drive, I've entirely lost interest. It's regretful that these programmers have lost a dime due to pirates, but whether it's them, their publishers, or their lawyers, they've lost focus on what made gaming great. No one, whether gamer or audiophile, wants their entertainment experience tainted with hocus pocus DRM that even hints at the customer's integrity as a paying customer. It's like checking in at the Marriott and being accused of stealing soap bars before you've even tipped the bag boy. Bad move for publishers, whether it's Ubisoft or Sony Music.
Here's an alternative... Listen up publishers! Seed the Torrents with limited editions of games and music. Music publishers - put out 128k MP3s of your songs, or for game publishers, put out a game that has limited resolution, or fills the game with ads, or has only 15 out of the 16 levels of play. Fill the torrents with authorized, slightly lower quality products. But then leave the store bought versions DRM free so that your PAYING customers feel good about the purchase and don't have to go through the hell of your customer support system trying to fix a problem you created on purpose. Right now you're not outsmarting the Pirates, you're just giving them what they feel are exciting challenges to break better DRM, but you can bank on them eventually breaking it. If you let the low quality versions move through the torrents, it would overtake the pirated copies and draw positive attention to your product. People that listen or play and like it, would then become potential customers for the full quality version.
Telus is the land line company that offers voice, internet, television. Telus MOBILE are the cell phone creeps. I'm not even on their network and had to fight $600 in failed data charges. Yes, Telus MOBILE sucks, but the land line telco seems okay!
Chinese importers are selling cartridges for the popular HP and Epson printers with Resettable Chips that can be easily refilled. Not only can these cartridges be refilled, but there's no waste, so you don't have to toss your printer or cartridges. I call it the "CMYK Revolution" (as opposed to the "Green Revolution"). The only downside is if you have a shaky hand, you can squirt ink all over the place during a refill, but other than that, the whole thing is a no brainer. Oh, and the inks are really good too, smudge proof and fade resistant, every bit as good as the OEM ink. If anyone's interested, PM me and I'll hook you up.
Are these dates real? The leave Japan on 1 November and get to the US by 11 November?! I waited 5 years for 1Mbps DSL in my neighborhood and that was only 20,000 feet from the CO, and these guys can move 4.8Tbps a thousand miles in 10 days?!
The cost is pretty good too. $300M is only 3/100 of 1% of the $787B stimulus package. I think Google got a much better deal all around that the American tax payer.
The key to this kind of humor is to use words different from the pun so that the reader has to think about it. Like follows:
"Violet, I recall, was a very young chinese girl, but the article says he died in Boston..."
Of course the reader right below took so long to get it, one wonders if the joke would get lost. Let's try it again:
"He died of euthanasia, but he was an old man in Boston"
"Get it, died of old-age-in-Boston, not youth-in-asia!?"
"Euthanasia, that's where you take your own life rather than suffer with illness!"
"No, it's not just old people that can chose to go that way."
"Yes, I know, in this case it just HAPPENED to be an old guy, but I guess young people can do it too, if they were really sick and were going to die anyway."
"True, it wouldn't be as ironic if it was a young person."
"Yes, it would be very sad, but that's not the point... that's not why it's funny."
"No, I don't think an old guy taking his life or otherwise dying is funny, it's a play on words."
Okay, I'm not just talking to myself, I'm carrying on a dialog between myself and myself and one of me doesn't get the joke. Surely, I've got better things to do.
"No, I said SURELY, not Shirley and no she's not related to Violet."
"Violet, the young Chinese g... Oh, never mind!"
im jst fne drvng nd txtng no prblm can kp hnds on whl nd typ no dngr 2 nebdy
Fine, cat's out of the bag now. I took it. Swapped it while working at the embassy. Damn Frank Beunk and his meddling! Couldn't leave well enough alone. Thousands of visitors every year gawked with amazement at that petrified chunk of coal and he's dashed their hopes. Even if I give it back now, no one's going to know for sure it was really a moon rock. I might as well just turn over some piece of granite... Hey, that's it, I'll just get something that isn't petrified organic crap and give that to the museum. Thanks Mollog, I couldn't have figured this out without your help!
Crap, that nosey Frank Beunk! I swapped out the real rock while working at the embassy and I sold it to Kim Jong Il. I had hoped no one would ever detect the fake. I guess I'll have to go and ask Kim for it back now. Damn, just couldn't leave things alone, could you Frank! I'll probably have to give Kim his money back, too!
I'm still skeptical of the moon landing, so pardon me if I don't buy a piece of real estate on this comet that supposedly supports life! Just one thing though, what scientist had the cajones to straddle this thing and collect the Glycene sample?!
The Fed in March declared $1T of Treasury bills (debt instruments used to fund Federal Spending) to be purchased. That's $30B a day over the next year. By early July, somehow the number was increased to $1.8T, probably because the CBO saw all the additional spending wasn't covered. That's only $50B a day.
So the proof that the Americans landed on the moon is not anything affirmative, but rather that there is no negative proof? Meaning, as long as the Russians didn't make a fuss, we can therefore know with certainty that the Americans actually made it to the lunar surface?! So, in other words, if you can fool the Russians, then there's no further proof required? Star Wars, anyone? A crappy PowerPoint presentation from the Whitehouse and the Russians thrown in the towel! So we know that THEY can't be easily fooled!
And, what of the Lunar Landing? The Russians would certainly have exposed that! That is if you believe that the Russians could launch even a turd ball into space. What a joke! Have you seen Sputnik? It's like a soccerball covered with tin foil and four straws stuck into it. Actually, that's what it is. My great uncle, the Nobel Laureate, Ivan Tobedumbkov, attended the Moscow Institute of Applied Physics and Chemistry where he chummed around with the early Soyuz rocket scientists who would hide the vodka distilled in their dorm room inside of an old soccer ball and sneak drinks on weekends by inserting straws into holes in the leather.
So we can know that we landed on the moon because there's no way we could fool the Russians. That's really reassuring!
Oh, those Russians, eh! Within a week of Pons and Fleischman, the Russians were claiming wild success with Cold Fusion, and didn't rebut the theory until many Western scientists (including DOE) challenged the data and dumb and dumber recanted the results.
Okay, this was good too! Keep em coming!
Chill you coward, that was damn funny!
I don't know why this hasn't been out there for the last century. Pfaw to global warming, this is a real viable theory with reason to explore further. It doesn't mean we toss the theory of a ferrite core which is a natural dipole, but we can examine the strength of the magnetic field taking into account an electronic current running through the fluid currents that "wrap" around the core. For anyone with a strong background in geology, is the current magnetic field explicable with just the ferrite core, or is it too strong? If so, the electrons that move with the currents can explain the increase. If not, then maybe the currents are a result of the magnetic ferrite core...