You're off there. In fact, in the article you linked to [salon.com] on the very same page, you see that he has published at least one paper in the field.
His paper was published in Energy, which was not a journal of climate science. The paper is not one on climate science.
He briefly discusses the concept of global warming in broad strokes, and then writes "The time is now ripe to ask a different question. Suppose..." at which point he switches to the topic of speculating on possible carbon sequestration methods.
Oh look. Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.
Non-experts who disagree with experts are a dime a dozen in any field, but for some reason, global warming seems to be the only field where they make headlines. Wonder why that is.
The sports writer who for some reason was tasked with writing this science article let Dyson get away with a couple of groaners. One was his comment:
The warming, he says, is not global but local, "making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter."
Climate scientists will be the first to tell you that global warming affects the poles disproportionately. That doesn't make it "local" -- and the fact that those words are not in quotes suggests to me that Dyson never said it. Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.
Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth, and in his Salon interview a couple of years ago, he was wrong to assert that polar bear populations are increasing. But then, he didn't almost win the Nobel Prize for Polar Bears. He's undoubtedly a genius when it comes to physics, but why does the media love to find global-warming contrarians who are not experts on global warming? There's a question I'd like to see explored.
No, I don't think pescetarians are hypocrites; quite the opposite. I'm glad they made the choice to avoid most types of meat, good for them. I'm saying it's incorrect to call oneself a vegetarian if one is not.
if it's the case that you are complaining about experiencing intolerance for your ethical beliefs
It's not. And I don't really care what people I don't know think of my ethical choices. I would like not to be mistakenly fed animal products and clear language use by everyone helps me avoid that.
Also, most people do not know what pescetarian means, and do not want to know - hence, it is better to describe as vegetarian to avoid being fed mammals.
How about "I don't eat most meat, but I do eat fish"? Not that hard to say.
My "vegetarian" sister and her child say that they refuse to eat meat, then they will turn around and gobble down a fish or some shrimp.... A lot of these "But I'll Eat Fish!" vegetarian people are giant hypocrites.
Yes. Actual vegetarians are often annoyed by pescetarians who incorrectly label themselves as vegetarians.
They reflect badly on the rest of us, as people sometimes jump to conclusions and assume all or most vegetarians are hypocrites. But they also dilute the term itself, to the point where some restaurants and food service workers come to believe that if someone identifies as a vegetarian, it's okay to feed them fish products. That's unfair.
recovery.gov is not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are: 1. The user is greeted by a large [pie] chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions.
That's not an example.
information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov
Did someone promise it would be?
I would call [the information-exchange] a massive accomplishment
WHEREAS, the University of Oklahoma is a publicly funded institution which should be open to all ideas and should train students in all disciplines of study and research and to use independent thinking and free inquiry...
By paragraph THREE it is condemning Dawkins for, and I am not making this up:
views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma
I should check the IIS version. I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not up to date. Or maybe take a cue from Bobby Tables and throw some SQL injection attacks at the site.
If you make health care more affordable by increasing its efficiency, fewer Americans will be spending money on health-care overhead and bureaucracy, which means they'll have more money to spend on other things.
Get rid of their food source and they'll move on. Get a garbage dumpster with lids that seal. Remove trash bags from the trash every night. Vacuum the carpets every night (and tell the slob who eats at his desk to eat somewhere that the crumbs can be swept up). No food in the cupboards unless it's in jars or cans. No birdfeeder outside. And so on - use your imagination. There is no solution apart from this one, and it has to be building-wide. If there is food for them, they will return.
And glue traps are incredibly cruel; other killing traps almost as much so. Live-trap them and drive them (a few miles or more) to someplace green without buildings around, make them work for a living.
The only real issue is the questionable legal landscape that existed from 2001 to 2007 and briefly again in 2008 after the expiration of the Protect America Act.
So you're saying the only real issue is that the President of the United States broke the law from 2001 to 2007.
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reminds us about
that oddly specific moment where Andrea Mitchell, in the course of interviewing New York Times reporter James Risen about his reporting on the NSA and government wiretapping, asked if he knew anything about the administration spying on Christiane Amanpour â" a question the network promptly scrubbed from the transcription.
The Bush administration has its own list of scandals, of course. But just as significant a scandal may be the way that our so-called media hid from its audience the true scope of government wrongdoing. Recall that the New York Times sat on the NSA wiretapping scandal for a year before it thought it was time to let us citizens know. If it turns out that the industry that was supposed to be keeping the public informed about things like violations of the Constitution by top elected officials was deliberately concealing that information, it may be time to reconsider whether we have a press in America that's worthy of the name, and what we can do about it.
Anyway, Tom Tomorrow asks what other revelations about the Bush administration are likely to follow. Anyone have any ideas?
And here's the Executive Order on Presidential Records, which makes clear that claims of secrecy by the former president and his subordinates will be evaluated, and accepted or rejected, by the current president.
The main benefit is that it feels so much better, as my fingers travel less.
Exactly.
Dvorak is a little faster than Qwerty, about 5% more or less. Liebowitz/Margolis essentially admit this, but downplay it because it's not all that big an advantage.
Its main advantage is that it reduces hand and wrist strain. Liebowitz/Margolis don't mention this, probably because Reason is not written for meat citizens who suffer from pain and inflammation. Its audience is corporate citizens who suffer from revenue de-enhancement and restructuring costs.
By the way, if you're interested in proof of Liebowitz/Margolis's bias, go read what they have to say about Earle Strong in the Reason article or The Fable of the Keys. They hold Strong up as the unbiased counterpart to Dvorak's "suspicious[]," "deck stacking" analysis. Nowhere do they mention that Strong had written seven years earlier that he was opposed to new keyboard design; that he seems to have had a strained relationship with Dvorak; and that, when asked by other researchers for his data, Strong said he had destroyed it all.
Standardization is one of those things that's good for everyone, but that would not be cost-effective for one player to attempt. When a bigger player (which in this case has to be the government) moves in and lays out standards for everyone to follow, everyone benefits.
You should be asking not why the industry isn't doing it, but why the government didn't step in a long time ago, to do this and a lot more. Many doctors -- people who have invested more time in training and education than almost any other group in our society -- are spending half of their work hours on paperwork and arguing with insurance companies. The level of inefficiency and waste in American medicine borders on criminal, and it translates not just to massive deficits for taxpayers, but second-rate health care for citizens.
"You should interview Steven Chu," the scientist at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., told me. "He already has one Nobel Prize. He wants to get a second one for solving the energy crisis."
That was two years ago, and I sorely regret not following through and landing an interview with Chu, a physicist who has dedicated his post-Nobel Prize career to the development of alternative sources of energy. Because as Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of energy, Steven Chu is going to get a chance to make his dreams come true, with the full backing of the U.S. government.
Since 2004, Chu has served as the director of the University of California-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spearheading, among other things, a massive research effort in solar power. To get a sense of the man's interests, here's the second sentence of his bio...:
Chu, an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change, has guided Berkeley Lab on a new mission to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy.
Environmentalists and climate change activists are understandably delighted. Consider this: For eight years the United States has boasted an Energy Department that for all intents and purposes was a subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry. Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama's bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment.
But if the vast majority of people in your society are vaccinated, and so not getting vaccinated means you have a.002% chance of getting measles, and getting vaccinated may carry with it a.03% chance of serious autoimmune complications... then it's entirely rational to not get vaccinated.
You make a good point, though I don't think the thought experiment should be taken too literally until it's fleshed out with actual numbers.
The problem is that infectious diseases are a different story. The risk of epidemic increases with each person who acts individually to refuse their vaccination. The risk of measles is not constant (as your example suggests), nor even linear -- it is exponential.
If this is allowed, there is a tipping point at which individuals refusing vaccination by doing what is best for their child will put those around them in much greater total danger. This is true even if we assume they act rationally and with full information, as this story's news article clearly shows they will not.
John F. Nash would suggest that there is a stable equilibrium, at which n% of the population goes unvaccinated -- where the risk of a measles epidemic affecting the individual exactly balances the risk of that individual's choice.
But if individuals acting rationally would put that society at unacceptable risk, it is the government's role to step in and force people to do the right thing.
If this seems unusual, consider the case where a real epidemic sweeps through a society. You'd better believe at that point the government will force unusual, even extreme, measures on its citizens to avoid catastrophe. (And the most hardcore libertarian will not say a word against it.) It's far better for force to be used to stop the epidemic before it can occur, before the morgues fill up.
By the way, since (for example) people have to travel to the doctor's office to get the vaccination, there is always a nonzero risk involved. I would guess the risk of your child getting killed on the highway on the way to the measles shot is the same order of magnitude of risk as the shot. The thought experiment works even if the shot itself carries exactly zero risk.
The law has no business forcing me or any member of my family to take any medicine, vaccine, food, drink, or anything else for that matter.
If you withhold important medical care from your children, the law should (and will) step in to force it on them.
This is so obviously a good thing, there is no point in arguing it. Anyone who thinks it is a good thing for parents to put their children in clear danger with no legal consequence is outside the realm of rational discourse and should be ignored.
(Sadly, there are many exemptions on the books where parents can specifically claim "religious beliefs" as an excuse for endangering, or even just plain killing, their own children. These are exemptions that needs to go away, and the sooner the better. I don't care if consenting adults want to tell each other silly make-believe stories, but when that game makes children suffer, it's time to come back to reality.)
Slashdot Mirror
Cites?
Another non-climate-scientist
You're off there. In fact, in the article you linked to [salon.com] on the very same page, you see that he has published at least one paper in the field.
His paper was published in Energy, which was not a journal of climate science. The paper is not one on climate science.
He briefly discusses the concept of global warming in broad strokes, and then writes "The time is now ripe to ask a different question. Suppose..." at which point he switches to the topic of speculating on possible carbon sequestration methods.
As I said: Dyson is not a climate scientist.
Oh look. Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.
Non-experts who disagree with experts are a dime a dozen in any field, but for some reason, global warming seems to be the only field where they make headlines. Wonder why that is.
The sports writer who for some reason was tasked with writing this science article let Dyson get away with a couple of groaners. One was his comment:
Climate scientists will be the first to tell you that global warming affects the poles disproportionately. That doesn't make it "local" -- and the fact that those words are not in quotes suggests to me that Dyson never said it. Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.
Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth, and in his Salon interview a couple of years ago, he was wrong to assert that polar bear populations are increasing. But then, he didn't almost win the Nobel Prize for Polar Bears. He's undoubtedly a genius when it comes to physics, but why does the media love to find global-warming contrarians who are not experts on global warming? There's a question I'd like to see explored.
No, I don't think pescetarians are hypocrites; quite the opposite. I'm glad they made the choice to avoid most types of meat, good for them. I'm saying it's incorrect to call oneself a vegetarian if one is not.
if it's the case that you are complaining about experiencing intolerance for your ethical beliefs
It's not. And I don't really care what people I don't know think of my ethical choices. I would like not to be mistakenly fed animal products and clear language use by everyone helps me avoid that.
Also, most people do not know what pescetarian means, and do not want to know - hence, it is better to describe as vegetarian to avoid being fed mammals.
How about "I don't eat most meat, but I do eat fish"? Not that hard to say.
My "vegetarian" sister and her child say that they refuse to eat meat, then they will turn around and gobble down a fish or some shrimp. ... A lot of these "But I'll Eat Fish!" vegetarian people are giant hypocrites.
Yes. Actual vegetarians are often annoyed by pescetarians who incorrectly label themselves as vegetarians.
They reflect badly on the rest of us, as people sometimes jump to conclusions and assume all or most vegetarians are hypocrites. But they also dilute the term itself, to the point where some restaurants and food service workers come to believe that if someone identifies as a vegetarian, it's okay to feed them fish products. That's unfair.
recovery.gov is not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are: 1. The user is greeted by a large [pie] chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions.
That's not an example.
information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov
Did someone promise it would be?
I would call [the information-exchange] a massive accomplishment
Strange title to this story, then.
"SyFy" sounds like a pet name for a syphillis infection
Not far off. Warren Ellis says:
No kidding. The resolution begins:
By paragraph THREE it is condemning Dawkins for, and I am not making this up:
I should check the IIS version. I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not up to date. Or maybe take a cue from Bobby Tables and throw some SQL injection attacks at the site.
No, you really should not do that.
Sheesh...
There's a PDF link buried in the interview which had me giggling with geekish delight. The phrase
makes me happy.
Also, I'll give credit to waxy.org which is where I read this first.
If you make health care more affordable by increasing its efficiency, fewer Americans will be spending money on health-care overhead and bureaucracy, which means they'll have more money to spend on other things.
Get rid of their food source and they'll move on. Get a garbage dumpster with lids that seal. Remove trash bags from the trash every night. Vacuum the carpets every night (and tell the slob who eats at his desk to eat somewhere that the crumbs can be swept up). No food in the cupboards unless it's in jars or cans. No birdfeeder outside. And so on - use your imagination. There is no solution apart from this one, and it has to be building-wide. If there is food for them, they will return.
And glue traps are incredibly cruel; other killing traps almost as much so. Live-trap them and drive them (a few miles or more) to someplace green without buildings around, make them work for a living.
The short-term solution is probably one layer of spiral cable wrap, topped with another layer of split-flex tubing.
Our network engineer lives a couple of states away from the data center. The work he's talking about doing, he did from home.
The only real issue is the questionable legal landscape that existed from 2001 to 2007 and briefly again in 2008 after the expiration of the Protect America Act.
So you're saying the only real issue is that the President of the United States broke the law from 2001 to 2007.
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reminds us about
I'd forgotten about that incident.
The Bush administration has its own list of scandals, of course. But just as significant a scandal may be the way that our so-called media hid from its audience the true scope of government wrongdoing. Recall that the New York Times sat on the NSA wiretapping scandal for a year before it thought it was time to let us citizens know. If it turns out that the industry that was supposed to be keeping the public informed about things like violations of the Constitution by top elected officials was deliberately concealing that information, it may be time to reconsider whether we have a press in America that's worthy of the name, and what we can do about it.
Anyway, Tom Tomorrow asks what other revelations about the Bush administration are likely to follow. Anyone have any ideas?
I don't think the linked article provides links directly to the memos, but propublica did, so here they are:
Memo on Transparency and Open Government
Memo on the Freedom of Information Act
And here's the Executive Order on Presidential Records, which makes clear that claims of secrecy by the former president and his subordinates will be evaluated, and accepted or rejected, by the current president.
The main benefit is that it feels so much better, as my fingers travel less.
Exactly.
Dvorak is a little faster than Qwerty, about 5% more or less. Liebowitz/Margolis essentially admit this, but downplay it because it's not all that big an advantage.
Its main advantage is that it reduces hand and wrist strain. Liebowitz/Margolis don't mention this, probably because Reason is not written for meat citizens who suffer from pain and inflammation. Its audience is corporate citizens who suffer from revenue de-enhancement and restructuring costs.
By the way, if you're interested in proof of Liebowitz/Margolis's bias, go read what they have to say about Earle Strong in the Reason article or The Fable of the Keys. They hold Strong up as the unbiased counterpart to Dvorak's "suspicious[]," "deck stacking" analysis. Nowhere do they mention that Strong had written seven years earlier that he was opposed to new keyboard design; that he seems to have had a strained relationship with Dvorak; and that, when asked by other researchers for his data, Strong said he had destroyed it all.
Standardization is one of those things that's good for everyone, but that would not be cost-effective for one player to attempt. When a bigger player (which in this case has to be the government) moves in and lays out standards for everyone to follow, everyone benefits.
You should be asking not why the industry isn't doing it, but why the government didn't step in a long time ago, to do this and a lot more. Many doctors -- people who have invested more time in training and education than almost any other group in our society -- are spending half of their work hours on paperwork and arguing with insurance companies. The level of inefficiency and waste in American medicine borders on criminal, and it translates not just to massive deficits for taxpayers, but second-rate health care for citizens.
Kdawson made the phone calls to confirm this before posting it.
The "Roland Piquepaille" account is a troll.
The actual Roland's account, as mentioned in the story, was "rpiquepa".
And hey, here's more. I'm just 8 minutes into this talk and I'm already on his side.
Steve Chu: A New Energy Program
Salon has a story today on Obama's pick to solve the energy crisis:
The mages in Dalaran were teleporting cities back when you were killing Scrawny Rats for coppers. You better smile when you hand them their wine.
But if the vast majority of people in your society are vaccinated, and so not getting vaccinated means you have a .002% chance of getting measles, and getting vaccinated may carry with it a .03% chance of serious autoimmune complications... then it's entirely rational to not get vaccinated.
You make a good point, though I don't think the thought experiment should be taken too literally until it's fleshed out with actual numbers.
The problem is that infectious diseases are a different story. The risk of epidemic increases with each person who acts individually to refuse their vaccination. The risk of measles is not constant (as your example suggests), nor even linear -- it is exponential.
If this is allowed, there is a tipping point at which individuals refusing vaccination by doing what is best for their child will put those around them in much greater total danger. This is true even if we assume they act rationally and with full information, as this story's news article clearly shows they will not.
John F. Nash would suggest that there is a stable equilibrium, at which n% of the population goes unvaccinated -- where the risk of a measles epidemic affecting the individual exactly balances the risk of that individual's choice.
But if individuals acting rationally would put that society at unacceptable risk, it is the government's role to step in and force people to do the right thing.
If this seems unusual, consider the case where a real epidemic sweeps through a society. You'd better believe at that point the government will force unusual, even extreme, measures on its citizens to avoid catastrophe. (And the most hardcore libertarian will not say a word against it.) It's far better for force to be used to stop the epidemic before it can occur, before the morgues fill up.
By the way, since (for example) people have to travel to the doctor's office to get the vaccination, there is always a nonzero risk involved. I would guess the risk of your child getting killed on the highway on the way to the measles shot is the same order of magnitude of risk as the shot. The thought experiment works even if the shot itself carries exactly zero risk.
The law has no business forcing me or any member of my family to take any medicine, vaccine, food, drink, or anything else for that matter.
If you withhold important medical care from your children, the law should (and will) step in to force it on them.
This is so obviously a good thing, there is no point in arguing it. Anyone who thinks it is a good thing for parents to put their children in clear danger with no legal consequence is outside the realm of rational discourse and should be ignored.
(Sadly, there are many exemptions on the books where parents can specifically claim "religious beliefs" as an excuse for endangering, or even just plain killing, their own children. These are exemptions that needs to go away, and the sooner the better. I don't care if consenting adults want to tell each other silly make-believe stories, but when that game makes children suffer, it's time to come back to reality.)