There, I said it.
While I still prefer Gnome's integration with the OS to other alternatives like KDE or ICE, I stopped using Gnome as my primary desktop environment a long time ago. (I use sawfish as my primary because of the easily scriptable lisp backend and REP loop.). I usually keep a Gnome session active on a different ttty for the rare occasion that I want to use some of the added functionality that it provides, but this is pretty rare these days.
At least not for a very long time. Long before you have reached Europa, the radiation will have cooked your brain and reduced you to a jibbering idiot (assuming you survive at all).
Just because someone, through no fault of their own, is hideously disfigured, lives under a bridge, and collects levies from unsuspecting travelers on pain of dismemberment does not give us the right to call that individual a "troll". This is a clearly racist epithet.
My father, an early pioneer of automated teaching (and a teacher himself) once told me that computers would soon replace teachers and, he added, not long after that they would replace the students too.
This is not true in my experience. I sent a leaded glass piece through the luggage scanner recently. It showed up on the monitor as a large black disc. I had to remove it from the luggage so they could rescan the bag.
"Additionally, the government would not authorize us to separate NSLs from other government data requests or to express the NSLs that we have received, if any, as a range from 0 to 1,000"
If they're not allowed to say that it's in that range, presumably it must lie outside that range.
Do you think that because the 1% is somehow born into the 1% or they were given something you weren't somehow makes them less worthy of being represented by the same government we are or that they do not deserve to enjoy the same possibilities to prosper that we do?
They are certainly not less worthy of being represented by the same government. But the top 1% is vastly over-represented in our government. Setting aside the fact that their proportion in Congress is ten times greater than in the general population, the very rich are essentially able to pour unlimited funds into elections.
I'd like to echo this point. The issue is not statism, but corporatism. This has a lot to do with essentially unfettered influence of corporate money in politics. Our politicians (especially at the national level) spend a good deal of their energy fundraising, as it's often the candidate with the most money that wins. So our politicians need to solicit corporate backing: they basically have no hope of getting elected into high office without it. Hence, they have a powerful incentive to pander to moneyed interests rather than the people that they actually represent.
This is not an issue of left or right. It is something fundamentally wrong with the American political system. Fix it, and the politicians regardless of their political affiliations will be answerable to the people again and not the corporations: they will work for us.
When Hansen posted data on the Internet in the fall suggesting that 2005 could be the warmest year on record, NASA officials ordered Hansen to withdraw the information because he had not had it screened by the administration in advance, according to a Goddard scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. More recently, NASA officials tried to discourage a reporter from interviewing Hansen for this article and later insisted he could speak on the record only if an agency spokeswoman listened in on the conversation.
But 2005 turned out to be the warmest year on record. [Numerous slashdot ref's, but gotta go.]
Thanks for the post! The lecture is totally scientifically appropriate. Furthermore, it provides a very well-documented rigorous case for anthropogenic global climate change, as well as a survey of models for possible future developments. Many slashdotters would do better to read this sort of original material before going on their usual groupthink tirades.
1. In a Government agency, EVERYTHING is reviewed by Public Affairs before it's released to the press. What sort of government agency are you thinking of? Maybe you should RTFA. This apparently did not have to be reviewed by "Public Affairs" until quite recently. Dr. Hansen isn't working on classified stuff. He is at NASA in more of an academic capacity, AFAIK. Furthermore, from the horse's mouth (FTA):
Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."
2. Review != censorship; Censorship == remove. Firstly, see my response to 1. You can't have it both ways. Secondly, FTA:
After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.
So, Threats!=Censorship as well? Hmmm... Also FTA:
He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.
This is a misrepresentation. The original talk makes very few policy statements, except insofar as: if we do A, then B will most likely happen. Once you are allowed redefine what somebody else is talking about, then nothing is necessarily censorship, is it?
3. If he doesn't like NASA's policies, he can quit. Or does he think keeping his salary is more important than saving the planet? I'm sure he could find a better paying job with "top climate scientist at NASA" on his resume. Oh, pullleez! He's been at NASA for 39 years! He's not going to quit because of some silly administrative BS that will go away in another two years. Next time you work somewhere besides a neighborhood Taco Bell for more than a few years, we can talk.
4. Searching the news archives, it looks like nobody knew who he was before December. That's funny, because this guy has been publishing in highly respectable geology journals since 1962. His CV is so long, it needs an annual index! Search some different "News Archives" next time. At the very least, Google scholar.
5. An unrealistic sense of self-importance is a mandatory requirement for paranoia. Chances are pretty good the Bush administration doesn't know who this guy is, and doesn't care, either. Except that the Bush administration has a history of supressing government studies which don't toe the line, as it were. See the Union of Concerned Scientists for details.
Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.
The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...
That doesn't mean anything. I know Marylanders that think their state capital is Baltimore, and Pennsylvanians disagree over whether theirs is Philadelphia or Pittsburg.
And I know many slashdotters who don't know the correct spelling of Pittsburgh.
So which one is it, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? [/kidding]
"Campaigning against the collecting of stamps would indeed be a hobby."
So if an atheist campaigned against religion, it would be a hobby as well. Agreed. I fail to see how that makes atheism a belief, though.
"Athiesm is the fervent belief in the non-existence of God."
This is a common misconception about atheism. The literal meaning of the word comes from the greek a + theos, so essentially "without god" or "lack of belief in god". However, the lack of belief in something does not imply belief in the negation. For example, a mathematician working on a problem may not know how it will turn out: it could go one way or the other. His lack of belief in one alternative over the other does not imply that he has some prior belief, or bias, as to the outcome. Thus an atheist is one who lacks belief in god, but may not explicitly believe that there is no god.
"I think you mean 'Agnosticism', which is the lack of a belief."
No, agnosticism itself is a belief. It is the belief that claims about the existence of god cannot possibly be (or at least have not yet been) resolved. From the greek: "a"+"gnosis"="no knowledge". Agnostics are allowed to believe whatever they want, with one exception: they also believe that they don't really know. Agnostics make no ontological claim, only an epistemological one. For example, a devout Christian is agnostic if he or she believes that the question of the existence or non-existence of god is inherently beyond the grasp of human capacity: nothing will ever prove or disprove it. Many members of any major religion would probably fall into this category -- notably Christians, who seem to value faith above all else.
Atheism is the ontological counterpart to agnosticism. One version says, simply, that if we don't know that something exists, we ought not to believe it. For instance, if asked, "Will you let Jesus into your heart and soul", an atheist says: "No, I won't, because I have no evidence that Jesus had any mystical powers and believing in his supposed almighty glory would likely be a waste of time."
Bertrand Russell states it well:
As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there [is not a flying spaghetti monster].
The crackpots are then free to argue that negative results by other researchers are due to a problem with their experiment. Scientists have good reason to be skeptical of discoveries with these characteristics.
It is remarkable, however, that the details of the Pd+H reaction are still not understood.
4Pd+H2-> 2Pd2H? Anybody?
My understanding of the Pons Fleischman experiment is that excess heat has been produced (and in some cases reproduced) but the conclusion of fusion was rejected because deuterium atoms are believed to be closer together in D2 gas, which does not display fusion at room temperatures.
But the question of what happens in the palladium electrodes is still unresolved. I don't think there is anything wrong with chemists trying to analyze the possibly anomalous results, if only to understand a fundamental aspect of palladium chemistry which may or may not lead to cold fusion. So detailed studies of the Pons Fleischman reaction are far from "junk science" IMHO.
A black hole the mass of the moon would not be stable - it would radiate its mass away as Hawking radiation.
In fact, a black hole weighing 1 million kilograms would only last about 100 seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
IRS and NSA resources being put to good use!
There, I said it. While I still prefer Gnome's integration with the OS to other alternatives like KDE or ICE, I stopped using Gnome as my primary desktop environment a long time ago. (I use sawfish as my primary because of the easily scriptable lisp backend and REP loop.). I usually keep a Gnome session active on a different ttty for the rare occasion that I want to use some of the added functionality that it provides, but this is pretty rare these days.
proving Monkeys evolved from humans
You had me until this point.
At least not for a very long time. Long before you have reached Europa, the radiation will have cooked your brain and reduced you to a jibbering idiot (assuming you survive at all).
Just because someone, through no fault of their own, is hideously disfigured, lives under a bridge, and collects levies from unsuspecting travelers on pain of dismemberment does not give us the right to call that individual a "troll". This is a clearly racist epithet.
My father, an early pioneer of automated teaching (and a teacher himself) once told me that computers would soon replace teachers and, he added, not long after that they would replace the students too.
As we all know, no *true scotsman* would believe in anything that leads to monopolism and vulture capitalism.
This is not true in my experience. I sent a leaded glass piece through the luggage scanner recently. It showed up on the monitor as a large black disc. I had to remove it from the luggage so they could rescan the bag.
"Additionally, the government would not authorize us to separate NSLs from other government data requests or to express the NSLs that we have received, if any, as a range from 0 to 1,000" If they're not allowed to say that it's in that range, presumably it must lie outside that range.
Not calling everyone born before 1980 "old people" might be a good start...
Do you think that because the 1% is somehow born into the 1% or they were given something you weren't somehow makes them less worthy of being represented by the same government we are or that they do not deserve to enjoy the same possibilities to prosper that we do?
They are certainly not less worthy of being represented by the same government. But the top 1% is vastly over-represented in our government. Setting aside the fact that their proportion in Congress is ten times greater than in the general population, the very rich are essentially able to pour unlimited funds into elections.
Naturally. What other kind of ammunition should one use against scientists and environmental groups?
Seriously?
Absolutely right!
I'd like to echo this point. The issue is not statism, but corporatism. This has a lot to do with essentially unfettered influence of corporate money in politics. Our politicians (especially at the national level) spend a good deal of their energy fundraising, as it's often the candidate with the most money that wins. So our politicians need to solicit corporate backing: they basically have no hope of getting elected into high office without it. Hence, they have a powerful incentive to pander to moneyed interests rather than the people that they actually represent.
This is not an issue of left or right. It is something fundamentally wrong with the American political system. Fix it, and the politicians regardless of their political affiliations will be answerable to the people again and not the corporations: they will work for us.
This link gets you directly to the article without needing to register.
Thanks for the post! The lecture is totally scientifically appropriate. Furthermore, it provides a very well-documented rigorous case for anthropogenic global climate change, as well as a survey of models for possible future developments. Many slashdotters would do better to read this sort of original material before going on their usual groupthink tirades.
1. In a Government agency, EVERYTHING is reviewed by Public Affairs before it's released to the press. What sort of government agency are you thinking of? Maybe you should RTFA. This apparently did not have to be reviewed by "Public Affairs" until quite recently. Dr. Hansen isn't working on classified stuff. He is at NASA in more of an academic capacity, AFAIK. Furthermore, from the horse's mouth (FTA):
2. Review != censorship; Censorship == remove. Firstly, see my response to 1. You can't have it both ways. Secondly, FTA: So, Threats!=Censorship as well? Hmmm... Also FTA: This is a misrepresentation. The original talk makes very few policy statements, except insofar as: if we do A, then B will most likely happen. Once you are allowed redefine what somebody else is talking about, then nothing is necessarily censorship, is it?
3. If he doesn't like NASA's policies, he can quit. Or does he think keeping his salary is more important than saving the planet? I'm sure he could find a better paying job with "top climate scientist at NASA" on his resume. Oh, pullleez! He's been at NASA for 39 years! He's not going to quit because of some silly administrative BS that will go away in another two years. Next time you work somewhere besides a neighborhood Taco Bell for more than a few years, we can talk.
4. Searching the news archives, it looks like nobody knew who he was before December. That's funny, because this guy has been publishing in highly respectable geology journals since 1962. His CV is so long, it needs an annual index! Search some different "News Archives" next time. At the very least, Google scholar.
5. An unrealistic sense of self-importance is a mandatory requirement for paranoia. Chances are pretty good the Bush administration doesn't know who this guy is, and doesn't care, either. Except that the Bush administration has a history of supressing government studies which don't toe the line, as it were. See the Union of Concerned Scientists for details.
Dr. Hansen is not a crackpot. If you would RTFA, you might see that in fact there is a real censorship issue going on here. There was nothing in the original lecture which should have prompted this sort of behavior from the administration. The lecture provides a very clear and well-supported case for anthropogenic global climate change; one which is anathema to the current administration's well-documented ties to the energy industry.
The real news is that a slashdotter is defaming a well-respected scientist who provides a very good scientific case for something. Oh, wait...
And I know many slashdotters who don't know the correct spelling of Pittsburgh.
So which one is it, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? [/kidding]
IANAPhil, but here goes...
"Campaigning against the collecting of stamps would indeed be a hobby."
So if an atheist campaigned against religion, it would be a hobby as well. Agreed. I fail to see how that makes atheism a belief, though.
"Athiesm is the fervent belief in the non-existence of God."
This is a common misconception about atheism. The literal meaning of the word comes from the greek a + theos, so essentially "without god" or "lack of belief in god". However, the lack of belief in something does not imply belief in the negation. For example, a mathematician working on a problem may not know how it will turn out: it could go one way or the other. His lack of belief in one alternative over the other does not imply that he has some prior belief, or bias, as to the outcome. Thus an atheist is one who lacks belief in god, but may not explicitly believe that there is no god.
"I think you mean 'Agnosticism', which is the lack of a belief."
No, agnosticism itself is a belief. It is the belief that claims about the existence of god cannot possibly be (or at least have not yet been) resolved. From the greek: "a"+"gnosis"="no knowledge". Agnostics are allowed to believe whatever they want, with one exception: they also believe that they don't really know. Agnostics make no ontological claim, only an epistemological one. For example, a devout Christian is agnostic if he or she believes that the question of the existence or non-existence of god is inherently beyond the grasp of human capacity: nothing will ever prove or disprove it. Many members of any major religion would probably fall into this category -- notably Christians, who seem to value faith above all else.
Atheism is the ontological counterpart to agnosticism. One version says, simply, that if we don't know that something exists, we ought not to believe it. For instance, if asked, "Will you let Jesus into your heart and soul", an atheist says: "No, I won't, because I have no evidence that Jesus had any mystical powers and believing in his supposed almighty glory would likely be a waste of time." Bertrand Russell states it well:
As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there [is not a flying spaghetti monster].
Hasta la pasta,
Liam O'ohay
The crackpots are then free to argue that negative results by other researchers are due to a problem with their experiment. Scientists have good reason to be skeptical of discoveries with these characteristics.
It is remarkable, however, that the details of the Pd+H reaction are still not understood.
4Pd+H2-> 2Pd2H? Anybody?
My understanding of the Pons Fleischman experiment is that excess heat has been produced (and in some cases reproduced) but the conclusion of fusion was rejected because deuterium atoms are believed to be closer together in D2 gas, which does not display fusion at room temperatures.
But the question of what happens in the palladium electrodes is still unresolved. I don't think there is anything wrong with chemists trying to analyze the possibly anomalous results, if only to understand a fundamental aspect of palladium chemistry which may or may not lead to cold fusion. So detailed studies of the Pons Fleischman reaction are far from "junk science" IMHO.
Whats next? A patent on $ or # as a prompt?
How about this one: Microsoft patents human body.
A black hole the mass of the moon would not be stable - it would radiate its mass away as Hawking radiation. In fact, a black hole weighing 1 million kilograms would only last about 100 seconds.