Well, neither are any of the major currencies, especially the dollar. The Euro is teetering on the brink of disaster, the Fed has been spraying money with a firehose, numerous South American currencies have gone bust - I just don't see any difference....except, that bitcoins are immune to *some* of the problems typically found in national currencies.
Economics fail.
All fiat currencies are based on the present and future economic potential of the nation producing the currencies. Thus, printing more money debases the currency since you are essentially diluting the overall "worth" of the nation (and is not necessarily a bad thing depending on the circumstances.
Bitcoins really are backed up by nothing other than some notional equivalence to existing currencies. There is also no way to quantitatively control them. They have all the downsides of commodity backed currencies with all the downsides of no means of control. History does not show that as working to well.
Voodoo magic? Really man, you need to go back and take a few courses on economics. By your reasoning, every single method of exchange besides bartering is "voodoo magic", and bartering would be a miserable failure in a world where labor is the primary trade commodity for the masses.
Commodity backed (and more recently fiat based) currencies exist for a reason.
So in other words, the government opened the door to the lemming cage and the lemmings eagerly started to climb over themselves in order to be the first to the cliff.
Seriously, did anyone think it was a good idea to hand over the keys to the economy to a bunch of sociopathic 16 year olds trying to prove who's got the biggest penis made out of money?
The US Administration decided it was politically expedient to have this man in jail for his "political crime". The technical method of achieving this goal, as they are only allowed to wield their power according to the "letter of the law", they hired a detective to dig up the dirt on him and "find a law" which which to charge him. Had his film not caused the diplomatic incident, he probably would have flown under the radar and not been noticed by the authorities, and thus still be a free man.
Nice try, but this guy has a lengthy criminal record. He was out on parole, with two explicit conditions. One was to not use a computer. Two was not to use false aliases (which he did in the past when scamming people). They didn't need to hire a detective or any special agents. He violated the terms of his parole, and in the process became infamous. The local authorities recognized him and arrested him for violating his parole.
He wasn't "technically" breaking the law. He broke the law. The fact that he's a sociopathic asshole is irrelevant.
The only moral of the story is don't break the law and don't violate the terms of your probation.
Your argument makes no sense. It would also be nice if people choose to act kindly to one another so we didn't need prisons. It would be nice if people stopped hating each other so we could have world peace. It would be nice if we didn't need jails to punish people for being social miscreants. But that just isn't realistic.
People either don't know or don't care about long terms issues such as sustainability. And given the ignorant rhetoric on similar or related issues that affect the broader population over the years, it's pretty clear that people don't always do what's good for them unless they are either encouraged or forced to do so.
There is now some discussion on whether the Holocene is coming to an end (or is already there) as a result of these changes. We've already seen a dramatic plunge in biodiversity, and the climate is changing. These are usually key markers for an age to begin and/or end.
Just to point out the rather glaring hole in your logic, we're currently seeing warming happening over the course of a human lifetime that took thousands of years (or longer) historically. Even if humans aren't causing it, only a complete idiot would look at that and say "Nah there's nothing to worry about.".
You're argument is also a non-sequitir, and has no scientific basis. You can start with skepticalscience.com, and then follow the references to the SCIENCE.
But at the same time, you're quoting a forbes article written by someone who doesn't have a clue about climate, let alone specialization in arctic or antarctic climates.
This isn't a game where one ice cap can balance out the other. They're governed by different dynamics and have radically different impacts. THere are number of papers addressing both phenomena. I suggest you start there.
Hmm, yeah that would make sense if comparing the arctic and antarctic made sense.
But it doesn't. Not even close actually. They're governed by different dynamics you see. If you crack open a book or read a few papers on the subject, you'll realize why the antarctic having more sea ice really doesn't make much of a difference while the arctic having less sea ice ostensibly does.
To give you a start, look at the cause and effects of the albedo changes for both poles. In the arctic, you have less ice during peak insolation, which greatly increase albedo and thus energy absorption. At the same time, the antarctic has an increase in ice in the depths of antarctic winter when there is no insolation at all. Now which one do you think has a greater impact on the global energy budget?
Google: "Ok guys, all you need to do if you want videos like this taken down is to copyright Mohammed." Zealots: "How do we do that?" Google: "Well, usually you get a picture or something and copyright it. Then if someone uses it without your approval you can issue a takedown notice and we'll remove it." Zealots: "...........God damn it!"
Maybe if someone made a Reality TV Show about it, ordinary folks would finally understand this.
They already did. It was called something like "Live War Coverage" and was on several major news networks for a few years. Didn't seem to have much of an impact though.
Oh there are those in this country who would be more than happy to do so. But since our country is not (yet) brainwashed into an ignorant mass of fundamentalists who follow 2000 year old religious dogma, we see fewer instances of this.
Don't kid yourself. The Judaic religions are just as nasty if not nastier. The difference here is not the religions themselves, it's the people. Developed nations generally have an educated population who don't just blindly follow their religious faith (indeed, when was the last time someone in this country was stoned to death for adultery?). We've "adapted" the religion to fit the times. We've made it more G rated (though there are fundamentalists out there who don't like that). Religion has it's place, but that place should be as far away from politics and power as possible.
As a counterpoint to these demonstrations, there a plenty of places outside of these countries that have a populations of muslims, even here in the US. Yet I don't hear them bombing churches or anything in response. Now why is that, if they are all supposed to be fundamentally evil?
It's not the religion. It's the people. It's always the people.
...I reject the idea that CO2 is going to cause global warming...
and then later...
...I have also been an R&D engineer for more than a decade...
How can you be an R&D engineer and reject the basic laws of thermodynamics and chemistry? Seriously, high school physics and chemistry courses are enough to develop a simple 0 dimensional model that can demonstrate this fact. That knowledge has been around for 120 years or so.
On a related note, famous actor Samuel L. Jackson was quoted at a local IHOP: "I'm tired of this mother-f*ckin' syrup on my mother-f*ckin pancakes, eh?"
...Ultimately, unless the US realizes the value of on premise intellectualism, this country will continue to devolve to 3rd world status - full of monkeys just smart enough to run the machines, but to dumb to complain or revolt.
Trees and plants are a method to kick the can down the road at best. Unless you actively plan to go and bury all these trees and plants into some deep holes, most of the carbon absorbed by aforementioned greenery will eventually be returned back into the air via decay and decomposition. Hence the word cycle in "carbon cycle". If it is still on the surface, it is still going back into the system.
Not only that, but in order to have any meaningful impact on atmospheric CO2 levels you would need to plant a HUGE amount of trees. Even to just counteract what we're adding to the atmosphere every year would require billions of trees planted, let alone trying to get CO2 levels back down to "normal" levels. The ocean, the largest carbon sink in the world, is absorbing a little under 60% of our emissions and it's covering 3/4 of the planet.
We're burning through carbon that took geological timescales to sequester in little more than a couple of human lifetimes. It is physically impossible to plant enough trees to counteract this. It's not even possible to plant trees at the same rate we're burning through fossilized ancient forests.
You don't need to keep it safe for 150,000 years. The biggest problem with the waste is that most of it is still mostly fuel. If we allowed reprocessing we would gratly reduce the waste.
Re:Right...just change the "acceptable level"!
on
The Panic Over Fukushima
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yeah, radioactive Iodine has a half-life of 8 days, so I find it rather unlikely that these "abnormalities" were caused by Fukishima. That would make the incidence rate higher than Chernobyl, and that was a much bigger release.
Cesium has a half life of 30 years, so hangs around for a while. And no, cesium does not remain in the body permanently. The biological half-life of cesium is 70 days. So unless you're constantly ingesting it, it leaves the body on it's own accord.
Strontium can remain in the body for considerably longer, so that's the one to look out for. Depending on where it is absorbed it has a biological half-life from anywhere as short as 14 days (soft tissue) to 60 years (bone). It has a similar radioactive half-life to that of cesium.
Radioactive exposure does not mean you will get cancer or suffer any extreme health effects. It depends on the type of exposure. It takes a considerable amount of exposure to even marginally increase the likelihood of developing cancer.
Actually, you can easily win the argument by referring to refereed scientific journal articles.
Any idiot can post anything they want on the net, but that doesn't make it a scientifically valid source of information. Next time ask him to back up his claims with peer reviewed research from a respected science periodical like Nature. Science is not on your friend's side in this argument.
You're confusing scientists and scientific results with policy makers and politicians.
Scientists don't want to be politicians. They really don't. They want to do science. Yes, they have opinions. We all do. But they have neither the time nor money nor influence to create policy. They may be consulted, or asked to give their opinions on policy but they do not make policy. They may be paraded before congress and peppered with idiotic questions. But they do not make policy. That is the realm of the politicians.
If you dislike policy then by all means bother your representatives. But the scientists are even more beholden to the politicians than you are (as most scientific funding comes from them). They don't go before congress demanding their policies be implemented. In fact, scientists and their supporting organizations (NASA, NSF, etc.) usually go before congress asking "Please sir may I have another?".
On that final point I will add the following quote from the paper (via the article):
One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy... A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict...
This is just amazing to me. They are literally saying that educating people about global warming will increase their skepticism, and therefore actually transmitting sound scientific information would be bad. So simply conveying accurate information and allowing people to reach their own conclusions would be bad because those aren't the conclusions you want them to draw. So you reevaluate the merits of your own conclusions, right?
Nope!
Epic fail at reading comprehension. The statement says nothing of the sort. It says that conveying clear scientific information to the public, while a noble goal, does not affect those with preconceived notions. No amount of evidence, proof, etc. no matter how obvious or clearly stated will have an impact. This isn't anything new or noteworthy, and it regularly comes up on slashdot (young earther's, creationistas, etc.).
Also, the majority of people are not really qualified to draw conclusions from complex scientific results as the majority does not have the education/training/etc. to do so. That isn't elitest or snobbish; it's just simple facts. Most people have not been exposed to advanced physical and mathematical concepts. Without the experience and knowledge in the relevant fields, any conclusions that most would draw would be highly questionable at best. It would be like giving some random person on the street a paper on improving map-reduce performance for a specific problem domain and then asking whether or not they think the approach in the paper is valid.
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done... Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.
That's right, kids. Just communicating facts won't work, instead we need to use "information-framing techniques" delivered by "communicators" specifically chosen to "enhance their credibility" in order to convey these 'facts'. This will be a new science. And we shall call it... Propaganda.
And people wonder why we've fallen so far behind the rest of the developed world in education.:P
Bullshit. My razr has received multiple updates and the data app is still right where I left it on my main screen.
Perhaps you removed it when you wanted to root the phone or were trying to clean all the Verizon "junk" off the phone. You can always re-download the app.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, neither are any of the major currencies, especially the dollar. The Euro is teetering on the brink of disaster, the Fed has been spraying money with a firehose, numerous South American currencies have gone bust - I just don't see any difference. ...except, that bitcoins are immune to *some* of the problems typically found in national currencies.
Economics fail.
All fiat currencies are based on the present and future economic potential of the nation producing the currencies. Thus, printing more money debases the currency since you are essentially diluting the overall "worth" of the nation (and is not necessarily a bad thing depending on the circumstances.
Bitcoins really are backed up by nothing other than some notional equivalence to existing currencies. There is also no way to quantitatively control them. They have all the downsides of commodity backed currencies with all the downsides of no means of control. History does not show that as working to well.
Voodoo magic? Really man, you need to go back and take a few courses on economics. By your reasoning, every single method of exchange besides bartering is "voodoo magic", and bartering would be a miserable failure in a world where labor is the primary trade commodity for the masses.
Commodity backed (and more recently fiat based) currencies exist for a reason.
So in other words, the government opened the door to the lemming cage and the lemmings eagerly started to climb over themselves in order to be the first to the cliff.
Seriously, did anyone think it was a good idea to hand over the keys to the economy to a bunch of sociopathic 16 year olds trying to prove who's got the biggest penis made out of money?
The US Administration decided it was politically expedient to have this man in jail for his "political crime". The technical method of achieving this goal, as they are only allowed to wield their power according to the "letter of the law", they hired a detective to dig up the dirt on him and "find a law" which which to charge him. Had his film not caused the diplomatic incident, he probably would have flown under the radar and not been noticed by the authorities, and thus still be a free man.
Nice try, but this guy has a lengthy criminal record. He was out on parole, with two explicit conditions. One was to not use a computer. Two was not to use false aliases (which he did in the past when scamming people). They didn't need to hire a detective or any special agents. He violated the terms of his parole, and in the process became infamous. The local authorities recognized him and arrested him for violating his parole.
He wasn't "technically" breaking the law. He broke the law. The fact that he's a sociopathic asshole is irrelevant.
The only moral of the story is don't break the law and don't violate the terms of your probation.
Your argument makes no sense. It would also be nice if people choose to act kindly to one another so we didn't need prisons. It would be nice if people stopped hating each other so we could have world peace. It would be nice if we didn't need jails to punish people for being social miscreants. But that just isn't realistic.
People either don't know or don't care about long terms issues such as sustainability. And given the ignorant rhetoric on similar or related issues that affect the broader population over the years, it's pretty clear that people don't always do what's good for them unless they are either encouraged or forced to do so.
There is now some discussion on whether the Holocene is coming to an end (or is already there) as a result of these changes. We've already seen a dramatic plunge in biodiversity, and the climate is changing. These are usually key markers for an age to begin and/or end.
Just to point out the rather glaring hole in your logic, we're currently seeing warming happening over the course of a human lifetime that took thousands of years (or longer) historically. Even if humans aren't causing it, only a complete idiot would look at that and say "Nah there's nothing to worry about.".
You're argument is also a non-sequitir, and has no scientific basis. You can start with skepticalscience.com, and then follow the references to the SCIENCE.
But at the same time, you're quoting a forbes article written by someone who doesn't have a clue about climate, let alone specialization in arctic or antarctic climates.
This isn't a game where one ice cap can balance out the other. They're governed by different dynamics and have radically different impacts. THere are number of papers addressing both phenomena. I suggest you start there.
Hmm, yeah that would make sense if comparing the arctic and antarctic made sense.
But it doesn't. Not even close actually. They're governed by different dynamics you see. If you crack open a book or read a few papers on the subject, you'll realize why the antarctic having more sea ice really doesn't make much of a difference while the arctic having less sea ice ostensibly does.
To give you a start, look at the cause and effects of the albedo changes for both poles. In the arctic, you have less ice during peak insolation, which greatly increase albedo and thus energy absorption. At the same time, the antarctic has an increase in ice in the depths of antarctic winter when there is no insolation at all. Now which one do you think has a greater impact on the global energy budget?
unzip; strip; touch; finger; grep; mount; fsck; more; yes;fsck;fsck;fsck;umount;boot;clean;sleep
Google: "Ok guys, all you need to do if you want videos like this taken down is to copyright Mohammed."
Zealots: "How do we do that?"
Google: "Well, usually you get a picture or something and copyright it. Then if someone uses it without your approval you can issue a takedown notice and we'll remove it."
Zealots: "...........God damn it!"
Maybe if someone made a Reality TV Show about it, ordinary folks would finally understand this.
They already did. It was called something like "Live War Coverage" and was on several major news networks for a few years. Didn't seem to have much of an impact though.
Oh there are those in this country who would be more than happy to do so. But since our country is not (yet) brainwashed into an ignorant mass of fundamentalists who follow 2000 year old religious dogma, we see fewer instances of this.
Don't kid yourself. The Judaic religions are just as nasty if not nastier. The difference here is not the religions themselves, it's the people. Developed nations generally have an educated population who don't just blindly follow their religious faith (indeed, when was the last time someone in this country was stoned to death for adultery?). We've "adapted" the religion to fit the times. We've made it more G rated (though there are fundamentalists out there who don't like that). Religion has it's place, but that place should be as far away from politics and power as possible.
As a counterpoint to these demonstrations, there a plenty of places outside of these countries that have a populations of muslims, even here in the US. Yet I don't hear them bombing churches or anything in response. Now why is that, if they are all supposed to be fundamentally evil?
It's not the religion. It's the people. It's always the people.
...I reject the idea that CO2 is going to cause global warming...
and then later...
...I have also been an R&D engineer for more than a decade...
How can you be an R&D engineer and reject the basic laws of thermodynamics and chemistry? Seriously, high school physics and chemistry courses are enough to develop a simple 0 dimensional model that can demonstrate this fact. That knowledge has been around for 120 years or so.
On a related note, famous actor Samuel L. Jackson was quoted at a local IHOP: "I'm tired of this mother-f*ckin' syrup on my mother-f*ckin pancakes, eh?"
...Ultimately, unless the US realizes the value of on premise intellectualism, this country will continue to devolve to 3rd world status - full of monkeys just smart enough to run the machines, but to dumb to complain or revolt.
You must be new here.
Two words: partial pressure.
The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere would require both cold temperatures and higher pressures for CO2 to precipitate.
Trees and plants are a method to kick the can down the road at best. Unless you actively plan to go and bury all these trees and plants into some deep holes, most of the carbon absorbed by aforementioned greenery will eventually be returned back into the air via decay and decomposition. Hence the word cycle in "carbon cycle". If it is still on the surface, it is still going back into the system.
Not only that, but in order to have any meaningful impact on atmospheric CO2 levels you would need to plant a HUGE amount of trees. Even to just counteract what we're adding to the atmosphere every year would require billions of trees planted, let alone trying to get CO2 levels back down to "normal" levels. The ocean, the largest carbon sink in the world, is absorbing a little under 60% of our emissions and it's covering 3/4 of the planet.
We're burning through carbon that took geological timescales to sequester in little more than a couple of human lifetimes. It is physically impossible to plant enough trees to counteract this. It's not even possible to plant trees at the same rate we're burning through fossilized ancient forests.
You don't need to keep it safe for 150,000 years. The biggest problem with the waste is that most of it is still mostly fuel. If we allowed reprocessing we would gratly reduce the waste.
Yeah, radioactive Iodine has a half-life of 8 days, so I find it rather unlikely that these "abnormalities" were caused by Fukishima. That would make the incidence rate higher than Chernobyl, and that was a much bigger release.
Cesium has a half life of 30 years, so hangs around for a while. And no, cesium does not remain in the body permanently. The biological half-life of cesium is 70 days. So unless you're constantly ingesting it, it leaves the body on it's own accord.
Strontium can remain in the body for considerably longer, so that's the one to look out for. Depending on where it is absorbed it has a biological half-life from anywhere as short as 14 days (soft tissue) to 60 years (bone). It has a similar radioactive half-life to that of cesium.
Radioactive exposure does not mean you will get cancer or suffer any extreme health effects. It depends on the type of exposure. It takes a considerable amount of exposure to even marginally increase the likelihood of developing cancer.
They should write it in brainfuck. It accurately reflects the society which created it in the first place. :P
Actually, you can easily win the argument by referring to refereed scientific journal articles.
Any idiot can post anything they want on the net, but that doesn't make it a scientifically valid source of information. Next time ask him to back up his claims with peer reviewed research from a respected science periodical like Nature. Science is not on your friend's side in this argument.
You're confusing scientists and scientific results with policy makers and politicians.
Scientists don't want to be politicians. They really don't. They want to do science. Yes, they have opinions. We all do. But they have neither the time nor money nor influence to create policy. They may be consulted, or asked to give their opinions on policy but they do not make policy. They may be paraded before congress and peppered with idiotic questions. But they do not make policy. That is the realm of the politicians.
If you dislike policy then by all means bother your representatives. But the scientists are even more beholden to the politicians than you are (as most scientific funding comes from them). They don't go before congress demanding their policies be implemented. In fact, scientists and their supporting organizations (NASA, NSF, etc.) usually go before congress asking "Please sir may I have another?".
On that final point I will add the following quote from the paper (via the article):
One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy ... A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict ...
This is just amazing to me. They are literally saying that educating people about global warming will increase their skepticism, and therefore actually transmitting sound scientific information would be bad. So simply conveying accurate information and allowing people to reach their own conclusions would be bad because those aren't the conclusions you want them to draw. So you reevaluate the merits of your own conclusions, right?
Nope!
Epic fail at reading comprehension. The statement says nothing of the sort. It says that conveying clear scientific information to the public, while a noble goal, does not affect those with preconceived notions. No amount of evidence, proof, etc. no matter how obvious or clearly stated will have an impact. This isn't anything new or noteworthy, and it regularly comes up on slashdot (young earther's, creationistas, etc.).
Also, the majority of people are not really qualified to draw conclusions from complex scientific results as the majority does not have the education/training/etc. to do so. That isn't elitest or snobbish; it's just simple facts. Most people have not been exposed to advanced physical and mathematical concepts. Without the experience and knowledge in the relevant fields, any conclusions that most would draw would be highly questionable at best. It would be like giving some random person on the street a paper on improving map-reduce performance for a specific problem domain and then asking whether or not they think the approach in the paper is valid.
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done ... Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.
That's right, kids. Just communicating facts won't work, instead we need to use "information-framing techniques" delivered by "communicators" specifically chosen to "enhance their credibility" in order to convey these 'facts'. This will be a new science. And we shall call it...
Propaganda.
And people wonder why we've fallen so far behind the rest of the developed world in education. :P
Bullshit. My razr has received multiple updates and the data app is still right where I left it on my main screen.
Perhaps you removed it when you wanted to root the phone or were trying to clean all the Verizon "junk" off the phone. You can always re-download the app.