There is no debate?! Didn't you read the article? The guy gets paid big bucks because he has a habit of correctly predicting weather, not because he's on a government-funded or "Big Oil" gravy train.
If there's no debate, then the global warming high priests will be all too happy to take up his wager.
Ah, the old Sean "I don't know the difference between weather and climate" Hannity doctrine.
You're right. There is no debate. No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity and there's very little evidence of warming at all (in fact there's a lot of historical evidence that we're entering a cooling period). The fact that people blame oil companies for this type of thing would be funny if it weren't so stupid.
You need to do a little reading outside of the NY or LA Times son...
This is incorrectly modded. It's not "insightful', it's 'funny'.
I don't think any climate scientist included a housing bubble and bank collapse, or a tunsian protest in their climate predictions, but all of those things have significantly effected the outcome.
It's only ever called a "tyranny of the majority" when it's a Democrat in office. When it's a Republican in office then we all have to respect democracy. That's the right for you. They only respect democracy when it suits them.
Wow, those R&S analyzers are some serious tools! I was just looking at frequency analyzers over at DealExtreme, where they have a dirt-cheap handheld model that sniffs out cellular frequencies for $60. Or they could have hung a cell jammer in the room for about a hundred. Or if they really thought they had to have the fancy gear, they probably could have hired in a contractor who would have sniffed around for maybe $300 per hour, and known what he was doing.
Was it was really worth the $40,000 they probably spent on them?
Oh, that's right. It's a government organization. Spending money is in their job description.
You were doing fine right up until you pulled that number out of your ass and segued into an anti-government rant. TFA doesn't say it cost 40k to do this.
What you ignore is that there is also tremendous wasteful spending along side vital services. The politician's countermove to reduced budgets is not to cut the waste or excess but to cut vital services as a political gambit and/or retaliation. Politicians want to manufacture a crisis in order to have their spending restored or left alone. Basically the politicians layoff police, firefighters and teachers to manufacture outcry rather than reduce administrators and overhead and stop vanity projects as the voters desire.
Arnie thought he could wave that old "let's plug the gap by eliminating wasteful spending" magic wand, but he soon found out that this is something that all governments attempt to do anyway and the savings you get from it are not that great. It's like saying you're gonna pay off your mortgage with the pennies you find in the couch.
California is not facing a reduction of vital services due to prop 13, it is due to political brinkmanship. The politicians believe they can make the voters blink first.
Yes it is. Prop 13 has prevented the people from voting for necessary tax hikes and leaving more borrowing as the only option left to legislators who actually have to find ways to pay for the stuff that people take so much for granted. The fact is, the people vote all the time for tax hikes but they have to get a 2/3 majority because of Prop 13, hence giving a veto to the taxophobic minority.
What pisses me off even more is Prop 13 was passed by a simple majority. If I had my way, any measure that mandates a super majority must itself pass by that super majority.
You're gonna love it when you start paying European style $7 per gallon, aren't you?
I drive 15,000 miles per year at about 30 MPG. So 500 gallons of gas...times $7. $3500 or $300/month
Hmm...that IS kind of steep. Much more than my property tax but much less than my current gas usage at $150/month plus my property tax. You'd need to go to about $9/gallon to equalize.
It's the reason there's such great transport infrastructure in many parts of Europe. Sure the roads can get a bit congested, but at least you have the choice of taking the train, a choice that's denied to many Americans.
The solution for roads is to raise the road (gasoline) tax. The solution for schools is to raise the annual school tax..... neither of which was forbidden by Prop 13 (limit property tax).
Incorrect. ALL tax hikes in California require a 2/3 majority thanks to Prop 13, which effectively gives a veto to the taxophobic minority.
A large contributor to Proposition 13 was the belief older Californians should not be priced out of their homes through high taxes, and I agree with that. In fact I'd like to see property taxes be 0%, because people should OWN their land, not have to rent it like serfs.
Oh yeah? And who's gonna pay to maintain the road to and from your house? Gas tax? Sure. You're gonna love it when you start paying European style $7 per gallon, aren't you?
Listening to him debate Meg Whitman, I was relieved that I felt both candidates would take the job seriously. I didn't think either would do a poor job, though there were some platform stances that I liked less from Jerry Brown. It was refreshing to feel that both candidates would be both driven and competent.
Personally I felt like Whitman was reading from a script or a memorised list of talking points, whereas Brown was thinking on his feet and actually understood what he was talking about. I've heard that from people who have actually questioned the candidates too, they said that Whitman would respond to questions from left field with a pre-prepared answer that just barely dealt with the gist of the question and then refused to take any follow up questions. Brown could deal with anything. The better man won.
And, while I'm feeling vaguely 'insightful';) - The USA (much as I love it) is NOT the rest of the world, who might still have an interest in the story.
Should have used my mod points, instead of feeding the troll.
Last time I checked, California was something like the world's 5th biggest economy, so it's kind of a big deal whether or not the state goes bankrupt.
Hey, you only have to look at the number of people who convert religion when they get married!
That's something I've never really understood. how can you possibly change your whole belief system over a girl? You've either been convinced to believe something on the merits of that particular belief system or you haven't.
Is it reasonable to expect that now that there would be a sizable sample size of "non-immunized" kids, that a study to compare the rates of autism between the two groups will be done?
Already done in 2002. There was a study done in Denmark (where there are comprehensive medical records for the whole population) that showed no link between MMR vaccination and autism rates.
A Danish study of more than half a million children showed no link between measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism. In a commentary accompanying the study, which was published in the , Dr Edward Campion, senior deputy editor, wrote, “This careful and convincing study shows that there is no association between autism and MMR vaccination.”
Lead author Dr Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, an epidemiologist and expert on infectious diseases at the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre in Aarhus, told the BMJ that the study showed that the risk of autism was similar in children who were vaccinated and children who were not.
The study reviewed records of 537303 children born in Denmark between January 1991 and December 1998, representing almost 100% of children born in that period. Of these children 440655 had been vaccinated.* Records were retrieved from three sources: the unique identification number assigned to each child at birth; MMR vaccination data reported to the National Board of Health by general practitioners, who give all MMR vaccinations and are reimbursed for their reports; and diagnoses of autism recorded in the Danish Psychiatric Central Registry. Only specialists in child psychiatry diagnose autism and related conditions.
You have just perfectly described the CNN special I saw last night on TV about this. Anderson Cooper was using Jenny McCarthy as the counterpoint to the claims of fraud.
The "equal time for nutjobs" doctrine is killing journalism.
That only accounted for a fraction of the total regeneration of the city. Castlefield, Canal St, Great Northern, Piccadilly Square, all areas that were untouched by the bomb. Metrolink was in place long before the bomb, and a lot of the area that was damaged would have been modernised anyway. (I'm glad the Corn Exchange survived, the Arndale badly needed a facelift.)
The idea, says the agency, was to use the city's railway infrastructure -- left behind from the days when it was an maritime construction town, building oil rigs -- as a basis for its future. Konrad Milton, one of the partners in the company, told Wired.co.uk: "As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it's easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations. Secondly the city of Åndalsnes has different needs depending on season."...
Why rail and not roads? Milton says: "In this case the railtracks are in such abundance that it's the obvious choice, but the idea with rolling buildings could work very well in situations where roads and other hard surfaces are in abundance -- like old military airfields, harbors or over sized highways."
Interesting recycling of old infrastructure. Reminds me of how Manchester England recycled a lot of its old inner city industrial warehouses and converted them to loft apartments. The population of the city centre boomed and and the already legendary nightlife of the city was given another boost as the place was gentrified. (Pity about the Hacienda nightclub though, it ended up becoming loft apartments too.) A lot of their old railways were recycled as tram lines. Trams running on the old railway tracks run at 50MPH which may not sound like much, but for travel in a built-up urban area it beats the hell out of anything you could do by road. The tram system (called Metrolink) combines that speed in the suburbs with the convenience of dropping you off literally at the doorstep of the shops and offices in the city centre. It's so popular that overcorwding was its biggest problem last time I was there.
I'm not sure if Åndalsnes could re-use their old railway lines in that way but this mobile building thing is pretty innovative and exciting. Kudos!
Was just thinking that too. It was very scientifically correct. No sound in space, artificial gravity generated centrifugally, no need for a spaceship's engine to be constantly firing for it to keep moving, difficulty moving around in zero gravity, recorded messages sent since real-time interaction becomes impossible etc.
Interesting, and saddening, that overseas media has picked this up and US media doesn't seem to be terribly interested. From one of TFAs,
But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.
The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Scientific illiteracy is becoming a big problem in the US. Kudos to NASA for tackling it.
How is it NASA is qualified to judge the best and worst Sci-Fi movies of all time? Don't they have something more important to be working on?
Drawing public attention to the fact that some movies are scientifically accurate and some are not. Sounds pretty important to me. Part of NASA's remit is to educate the public after all, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
There is no debate?! Didn't you read the article? The guy gets paid big bucks because he has a habit of correctly predicting weather, not because he's on a government-funded or "Big Oil" gravy train.
If there's no debate, then the global warming high priests will be all too happy to take up his wager.
Ah, the old Sean "I don't know the difference between weather and climate" Hannity doctrine.
You're right. There is no debate. No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity and there's very little evidence of warming at all (in fact there's a lot of historical evidence that we're entering a cooling period). The fact that people blame oil companies for this type of thing would be funny if it weren't so stupid.
You need to do a little reading outside of the NY or LA Times son...
This is incorrectly modded. It's not "insightful', it's 'funny'.
I don't think any climate scientist included a housing bubble and bank collapse, or a tunsian protest in their climate predictions, but all of those things have significantly effected the outcome.
Wat
It's only ever called a "tyranny of the majority" when it's a Democrat in office. When it's a Republican in office then we all have to respect democracy. That's the right for you. They only respect democracy when it suits them.
The highway system in the US is overbuilt and still hopelessly congested. The passenger railway system is like something from the old communist block.
There are plenty of built up areas where rail makes sense, like the East coast and the California coast.
I was talking about passenger trains. US freight trains are an unsung success story.
Wow, those R&S analyzers are some serious tools! I was just looking at frequency analyzers over at DealExtreme, where they have a dirt-cheap handheld model that sniffs out cellular frequencies for $60. Or they could have hung a cell jammer in the room for about a hundred. Or if they really thought they had to have the fancy gear, they probably could have hired in a contractor who would have sniffed around for maybe $300 per hour, and known what he was doing.
Was it was really worth the $40,000 they probably spent on them?
Oh, that's right. It's a government organization. Spending money is in their job description.
You were doing fine right up until you pulled that number out of your ass and segued into an anti-government rant. TFA doesn't say it cost 40k to do this.
What you ignore is that there is also tremendous wasteful spending along side vital services. The politician's countermove to reduced budgets is not to cut the waste or excess but to cut vital services as a political gambit and/or retaliation. Politicians want to manufacture a crisis in order to have their spending restored or left alone. Basically the politicians layoff police, firefighters and teachers to manufacture outcry rather than reduce administrators and overhead and stop vanity projects as the voters desire.
Arnie thought he could wave that old "let's plug the gap by eliminating wasteful spending" magic wand, but he soon found out that this is something that all governments attempt to do anyway and the savings you get from it are not that great. It's like saying you're gonna pay off your mortgage with the pennies you find in the couch.
California is not facing a reduction of vital services due to prop 13, it is due to political brinkmanship. The politicians believe they can make the voters blink first.
Yes it is. Prop 13 has prevented the people from voting for necessary tax hikes and leaving more borrowing as the only option left to legislators who actually have to find ways to pay for the stuff that people take so much for granted. The fact is, the people vote all the time for tax hikes but they have to get a 2/3 majority because of Prop 13, hence giving a veto to the taxophobic minority.
What pisses me off even more is Prop 13 was passed by a simple majority. If I had my way, any measure that mandates a super majority must itself pass by that super majority.
You're gonna love it when you start paying European style $7 per gallon, aren't you?
I drive 15,000 miles per year at about 30 MPG. So 500 gallons of gas...times $7. $3500 or $300/month
Hmm...that IS kind of steep. Much more than my property tax but much less than my current gas usage at $150/month plus my property tax. You'd need to go to about $9/gallon to equalize.
It's the reason there's such great transport infrastructure in many parts of Europe. Sure the roads can get a bit congested, but at least you have the choice of taking the train, a choice that's denied to many Americans.
It's called democracy. Get over it.
The solution for roads is to raise the road (gasoline) tax.
The solution for schools is to raise the annual school tax..... neither of which was forbidden by Prop 13 (limit property tax).
Incorrect. ALL tax hikes in California require a 2/3 majority thanks to Prop 13, which effectively gives a veto to the taxophobic minority.
A large contributor to Proposition 13 was the belief older Californians should not be priced out of their homes through high taxes, and I agree with that. In fact I'd like to see property taxes be 0%, because people should OWN their land, not have to rent it like serfs.
Oh yeah? And who's gonna pay to maintain the road to and from your house? Gas tax? Sure. You're gonna love it when you start paying European style $7 per gallon, aren't you?
Listening to him debate Meg Whitman, I was relieved that I felt both candidates would take the job seriously. I didn't think either would do a poor job, though there were some platform stances that I liked less from Jerry Brown. It was refreshing to feel that both candidates would be both driven and competent.
Personally I felt like Whitman was reading from a script or a memorised list of talking points, whereas Brown was thinking on his feet and actually understood what he was talking about. I've heard that from people who have actually questioned the candidates too, they said that Whitman would respond to questions from left field with a pre-prepared answer that just barely dealt with the gist of the question and then refused to take any follow up questions. Brown could deal with anything. The better man won.
And, while I'm feeling vaguely 'insightful' ;) - The USA (much as I love it) is NOT the rest of the world, who might still have an interest in the story.
Should have used my mod points, instead of feeding the troll.
Last time I checked, California was something like the world's 5th biggest economy, so it's kind of a big deal whether or not the state goes bankrupt.
Hey, you only have to look at the number of people who convert religion when they get married!
That's something I've never really understood. how can you possibly change your whole belief system over a girl? You've either been convinced to believe something on the merits of that particular belief system or you haven't.
... go into a bookmakers and there's four windows for paying in but only one window for paying out.
He could argue that he liked that level of brightness and volume, something that is not uncommon among high rollers according to TFA.
Is it reasonable to expect that now that there would be a sizable sample size of "non-immunized" kids, that a study to compare the rates of autism between the two groups will be done?
Already done in 2002. There was a study done in Denmark (where there are comprehensive medical records for the whole population) that showed no link between MMR vaccination and autism rates.
A Danish study of more than half a million children showed no link between measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism.
In a commentary accompanying the study, which was published in the , Dr Edward Campion, senior deputy editor, wrote, “This careful and convincing study shows that there is no association between autism and MMR vaccination.”
Lead author Dr Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, an epidemiologist and expert on infectious diseases at the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre in Aarhus, told the BMJ that the study showed that the risk of autism was similar in children who were vaccinated and children who were not.
The study reviewed records of 537303 children born in Denmark between January 1991 and December 1998, representing almost 100% of children born in that period. Of these children 440655 had been vaccinated.* Records were retrieved from three sources: the unique identification number assigned to each child at birth; MMR vaccination data reported to the National Board of Health by general practitioners, who give all MMR vaccinations and are reimbursed for their reports; and diagnoses of autism recorded in the Danish Psychiatric Central Registry. Only specialists in child psychiatry diagnose autism and related conditions.
Full story...
*My emphasis.
Inconvenient facts like this will not convince the Jenny McCarthys and Jim Careys of this world though.
Unbelievably the Daily Mail has published this today as well:
Mercury in flu vaccine is linked to autism.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-153722/Mercury-flu-vaccine-linked-autism.html
You couldn't make it up.... unless you were the Daily Mail.
Actually, you could:
Daily Mail O Matic
And for American readers, you might like this:
Fox O Matic
You have just perfectly described the CNN special I saw last night on TV about this. Anderson Cooper was using Jenny McCarthy as the counterpoint to the claims of fraud.
The "equal time for nutjobs" doctrine is killing journalism.
That only accounted for a fraction of the total regeneration of the city. Castlefield, Canal St, Great Northern, Piccadilly Square, all areas that were untouched by the bomb. Metrolink was in place long before the bomb, and a lot of the area that was damaged would have been modernised anyway. (I'm glad the Corn Exchange survived, the Arndale badly needed a facelift.)
Why rails instead of caterpillar tracks? A rail line circling the planet would be ridiculously long.
Caterpillar tracks are still going to need a road or road-like surface to roll on, like the crawlway at the Kennedy Space Center.
Quoth TFA:
The idea, says the agency, was to use the city's railway infrastructure -- left behind from the days when it was an maritime construction town, building oil rigs -- as a basis for its future. Konrad Milton, one of the partners in the company, told Wired.co.uk: "As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it's easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations. Secondly the city of Åndalsnes has different needs depending on season." ...
Why rail and not roads? Milton says: "In this case the railtracks are in such abundance that it's the obvious choice, but the idea with rolling buildings could work very well in situations where roads and other hard surfaces are in abundance -- like old military airfields, harbors or over sized highways."
Interesting recycling of old infrastructure. Reminds me of how Manchester England recycled a lot of its old inner city industrial warehouses and converted them to loft apartments. The population of the city centre boomed and and the already legendary nightlife of the city was given another boost as the place was gentrified. (Pity about the Hacienda nightclub though, it ended up becoming loft apartments too.) A lot of their old railways were recycled as tram lines. Trams running on the old railway tracks run at 50MPH which may not sound like much, but for travel in a built-up urban area it beats the hell out of anything you could do by road. The tram system (called Metrolink) combines that speed in the suburbs with the convenience of dropping you off literally at the doorstep of the shops and offices in the city centre. It's so popular that overcorwding was its biggest problem last time I was there.
I'm not sure if Åndalsnes could re-use their old railway lines in that way but this mobile building thing is pretty innovative and exciting. Kudos!
Was just thinking that too. It was very scientifically correct. No sound in space, artificial gravity generated centrifugally, no need for a spaceship's engine to be constantly firing for it to keep moving, difficulty moving around in zero gravity, recorded messages sent since real-time interaction becomes impossible etc.
This has been written up in the Toronto Star, Wired UK, The Australian and a few others.
Interesting, and saddening, that overseas media has picked this up and US media doesn't seem to be terribly interested. From one of TFAs,
But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.
The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Scientific illiteracy is becoming a big problem in the US. Kudos to NASA for tackling it.
How is it NASA is qualified to judge the best and worst Sci-Fi movies of all time? Don't they have something more important to be working on?
Drawing public attention to the fact that some movies are scientifically accurate and some are not. Sounds pretty important to me. Part of NASA's remit is to educate the public after all, isn't it?