Um, the government restricting your freedom and telling you what to think has been pretty much the status quo for the last 150 years or so. We had a war about it back in the 1860's, remember? Something about "we can ruin your economy and smash your culture if we want, and there's nothing you can to about it, neener neener".
Monarchs and politicians have always been surrounded by bodyguards. I find your assumption that your enemies being guarded somehow excuses your slaughtering the nearest civillian you see to be somewhat... idiotic.
And, yeah, killing large numbers of people just to make a point is generally considered evil. While I'm sure some electroshock therapy and maybe a lobotomy or two would cure various terrorists of their civillian-killing ways, bullets and bombs are a cheaper and more satisfying way of dealing with the problem. Besides, if they're going to go off and declare a holy war on us, I'd say the polite thing to do is to acknowledge their enemity by wiping them from the face of the globe. Really, any less would be an insult to their pride.
And yes, terrorists probably have goals beyond destroying our country and eradicating all traces of our culture from time and space, but does it really matter? I personally don't care if the guy with the truck full of explosives hopes to someday bake the greatest cheesecake known to mankind, I just care that he's driving a great bloody truck of explosives at an office building. Kill 'em all. Seriously.
I was using the local environment = surface of the earth = 70% water line of reasoning, but yeah, that wouldn't be any fun either. Freezing your shoe off and then falling over and dying... lame.
China invented gunpowder, which started europe out on combustion technology. They also make toys for happy meals... those things have got to release tons of poisonous molecules into the air, otherwise McDonalds would lose its fast food lisence.
The problem with petroleum vehicles is that they create compunds which produce ground level ozone (nasty). The problem in the article is that things are messing with our atmospheric (good) ozone.
Also, I don't think the article claimed one way or another about human effects. Only tested for solar effects.
The word "Nitrogen" can refer to elemental Nitrogen (N2) as well as the element Nitrogen (N.). Were some compound containing the element nitrogen (ammonia, for instance) to break down in such a way that elemental nitrogen (the gas) were produced, it would technically be correct to say that (elemental) nitrogen was created.
Wow, if drawings are valid evidence, I really want to go back in time to the days of the Raphaelite painters to ask all those women how they keep their skin so pale dancing around naked in the sun all the time.
However, if we find that nature is flowing at a high value of the Reynold's number (Re > 4000), then these so called "natural cycles" are just local, temporary eddies, which will disappear or reaorganize quickly over time and change of location.
Between advances in the biochemical sciences and developments in cybernetics, I'd say that the human race will pretty soon be able to take pretty much anything Gaia or Sol cares to throw at us. Maybe not individual humans, but a lot of individual humans can't survive on earth the way it is now, either. Look at the Atkins diet guy. Slipped on a patch of ice and died... defeated by a naturally occurring phase of the most plentiful chemical in our local environment. How embarassing.
Uh, isn't solar radiation affected by the thickness of the ozone layer? Sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem to me, unless you're talking about a different kind of radiation, in which case... well, you're talking about a different kind of radiation. Needs a bit more explanation to show the connection here.
Actually, not really, since the "Nature does it anyway" arguments boil down to "STFU and quit bothering me, I don't care", and this response is not an actual rebuttal, as it's rebutting a point that no one ever actually argues for (straw man). It's standard preschoo^Wslashdot argument technique on both sides, not particularly insightful by now.
I give it +5: cool simile, though. I want a tornado machine!
The ozone layer depletes. This causes annyoing activists to spam washington with mail. Because of the influx of mail, an important set of intel lis lost before it reaches a politician. As a result, the politician enters a conference with a third-world nuclear power without sufficient knowledge of local customs. He inadvertently offends the dictator of the small country, who orders the country's one, inactivenuke fired at the US. US laughs, nukes small country into volcanic glass. Carbon-14 results.
The thing about testing wether something depletes ozone in a lab.... the answer is "Yes". not for everything, but for close enough to everything that it really makes no difference. If, for instance, I were to shove you into some ozone, or were I do jump into some ozone, the stuff would react destructively with half the functional groups in your or my body. We're ozone destroyers under laboratory conditions.
So, yeah, the 'depletes ozone' part doesn't mean anything. It's the 'gets into the upper atmosphere somehow' bit that makes things worrisome. And you really can't test that conclusively in a lab, unless you have a glass tube filled with air several miles high. You have to fly up to the ozone layer, sample it, and find CFCs to demonstrate that there's a problem. I'm assuming someone did this at some point. I could be wrong, though. The nuclear fallout scare was based on rather shoddy dimensional analysis, and that was given pretty wide credibility.
You seem to be more skeptical of religion just because it's religion. I find that strange. Sorry if I'm incomprehensible, I usually haven't had my coffee at the time i read slashdot.
The problem with your stance is that there's always some other way things could have happened. You are perhaps right in being skeptical of your perceptions, but deciding to be more skeptical of your perceptions just because you perceive things you don't like is what many would consider a mental deficiency: it's basically the same thing that causes us to be a bit didainful of rabid fundamentalists of all kinds.
If there are bacteria on mars, actual bacteria with mitochondria, genetic information encoded on ribose chains, etc, then I think a lot of the atheist block of science would spontaneously convert. I mean, really, why would identical chemical makeup in two different spontaneously generated lines be a hindrance to creator religions? If it happens, I might even give those creationist nutters some credence.
Really nasty ramifications. Haha.
Also, I meet your "vast majority of religions", and raise you a "The vast majority of religions don't care one way or another wether the earth is the center of the universe, balanced on a turtle, or shaped like a klein bottle. They just don't."
Given the way people's politics tend toward at least seeming internal consistency, i'm betting he doesn't really want anyone governing the internet at all. Excellent job knocking down the straw man, though;).
Uh, the fact that there exist mor incompetent buffons in the world in no way alters the fact that the UN is a collection of incompetent buffoons. Or at least ineffective ones.
On the other hand, he's pre-med. Shoplifting is a bad move when the strength of your career rests on your ability to keep oaths about confidentiality and professionalism.
He should probably change his major. Literature, perhaps. Lots of nice jobs that require no integrity that a lit major can get.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, the government restricting your freedom and telling you what to think has been pretty much the status quo for the last 150 years or so. We had a war about it back in the 1860's, remember? Something about "we can ruin your economy and smash your culture if we want, and there's nothing you can to about it, neener neener".
Monarchs and politicians have always been surrounded by bodyguards. I find your assumption that your enemies being guarded somehow excuses your slaughtering the nearest civillian you see to be somewhat... idiotic.
And, yeah, killing large numbers of people just to make a point is generally considered evil. While I'm sure some electroshock therapy and maybe a lobotomy or two would cure various terrorists of their civillian-killing ways, bullets and bombs are a cheaper and more satisfying way of dealing with the problem. Besides, if they're going to go off and declare a holy war on us, I'd say the polite thing to do is to acknowledge their enemity by wiping them from the face of the globe. Really, any less would be an insult to their pride.
And yes, terrorists probably have goals beyond destroying our country and eradicating all traces of our culture from time and space, but does it really matter? I personally don't care if the guy with the truck full of explosives hopes to someday bake the greatest cheesecake known to mankind, I just care that he's driving a great bloody truck of explosives at an office building. Kill 'em all. Seriously.
I was using the local environment = surface of the earth = 70% water line of reasoning, but yeah, that wouldn't be any fun either. Freezing your shoe off and then falling over and dying... lame.
China invented gunpowder, which started europe out on combustion technology. They also make toys for happy meals... those things have got to release tons of poisonous molecules into the air, otherwise McDonalds would lose its fast food lisence.
The problem with petroleum vehicles is that they create compunds which produce ground level ozone (nasty). The problem in the article is that things are messing with our atmospheric (good) ozone.
Also, I don't think the article claimed one way or another about human effects. Only tested for solar effects.
The word "Nitrogen" can refer to elemental Nitrogen (N2) as well as the element Nitrogen (N.). Were some compound containing the element nitrogen (ammonia, for instance) to break down in such a way that elemental nitrogen (the gas) were produced, it would technically be correct to say that (elemental) nitrogen was created.
Or maybe the submitter is just an idiot...
Wow, if drawings are valid evidence, I really want to go back in time to the days of the Raphaelite painters to ask all those women how they keep their skin so pale dancing around naked in the sun all the time.
However, if we find that nature is flowing at a high value of the Reynold's number (Re > 4000), then these so called "natural cycles" are just local, temporary eddies, which will disappear or reaorganize quickly over time and change of location.
Capable of getting used to it, that is.
Between advances in the biochemical sciences and developments in cybernetics, I'd say that the human race will pretty soon be able to take pretty much anything Gaia or Sol cares to throw at us. Maybe not individual humans, but a lot of individual humans can't survive on earth the way it is now, either. Look at the Atkins diet guy. Slipped on a patch of ice and died... defeated by a naturally occurring phase of the most plentiful chemical in our local environment. How embarassing.
Uh, isn't solar radiation affected by the thickness of the ozone layer? Sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem to me, unless you're talking about a different kind of radiation, in which case... well, you're talking about a different kind of radiation. Needs a bit more explanation to show the connection here.
Actually, not really, since the "Nature does it anyway" arguments boil down to "STFU and quit bothering me, I don't care", and this response is not an actual rebuttal, as it's rebutting a point that no one ever actually argues for (straw man). It's standard preschoo^Wslashdot argument technique on both sides, not particularly insightful by now.
I give it +5: cool simile, though. I want a tornado machine!
The ozone layer depletes. This causes annyoing activists to spam washington with mail. Because of the influx of mail, an important set of intel lis lost before it reaches a politician. As a result, the politician enters a conference with a third-world nuclear power without sufficient knowledge of local customs. He inadvertently offends the dictator of the small country, who orders the country's one, inactivenuke fired at the US. US laughs, nukes small country into volcanic glass. Carbon-14 results.
I mean, duh. Anyone would know that.
The thing about testing wether something depletes ozone in a lab.... the answer is "Yes". not for everything, but for close enough to everything that it really makes no difference. If, for instance, I were to shove you into some ozone, or were I do jump into some ozone, the stuff would react destructively with half the functional groups in your or my body. We're ozone destroyers under laboratory conditions.
So, yeah, the 'depletes ozone' part doesn't mean anything. It's the 'gets into the upper atmosphere somehow' bit that makes things worrisome. And you really can't test that conclusively in a lab, unless you have a glass tube filled with air several miles high. You have to fly up to the ozone layer, sample it, and find CFCs to demonstrate that there's a problem. I'm assuming someone did this at some point. I could be wrong, though. The nuclear fallout scare was based on rather shoddy dimensional analysis, and that was given pretty wide credibility.
(/rambling lecture on empirical testing)
You seem to be more skeptical of religion just because it's religion. I find that strange. Sorry if I'm incomprehensible, I usually haven't had my coffee at the time i read slashdot.
The problem with your stance is that there's always some other way things could have happened. You are perhaps right in being skeptical of your perceptions, but deciding to be more skeptical of your perceptions just because you perceive things you don't like is what many would consider a mental deficiency: it's basically the same thing that causes us to be a bit didainful of rabid fundamentalists of all kinds.
If there are bacteria on mars, actual bacteria with mitochondria, genetic information encoded on ribose chains, etc, then I think a lot of the atheist block of science would spontaneously convert. I mean, really, why would identical chemical makeup in two different spontaneously generated lines be a hindrance to creator religions? If it happens, I might even give those creationist nutters some credence.
Really nasty ramifications. Haha.
Also, I meet your "vast majority of religions", and raise you a "The vast majority of religions don't care one way or another wether the earth is the center of the universe, balanced on a turtle, or shaped like a klein bottle. They just don't."
That's because the colloquial meaning slot for "cracker" has already been filled. Twice! Leave the poor word alone!
Given the way people's politics tend toward at least seeming internal consistency, i'm betting he doesn't really want anyone governing the internet at all. Excellent job knocking down the straw man, though ;).
Uh, the fact that there exist mor incompetent buffons in the world in no way alters the fact that the UN is a collection of incompetent buffoons. Or at least ineffective ones.
Wait, never mind. Only 50% offtopic and so very flamebatey.
So very off-topic... so very flamebatey. No wonder it's modded insightful.
On the other hand, he's pre-med. Shoplifting is a bad move when the strength of your career rests on your ability to keep oaths about confidentiality and professionalism.
He should probably change his major. Literature, perhaps. Lots of nice jobs that require no integrity that a lit major can get.
Screw his ethics. He posted a piece of software illegally on a highly traceable, public medium. I'm more worried about his competence.
NASA also has tons of data. Like, so much data that the abstract patterns of ones and zeroes practically has a mass.
They just aren't distributing the info through NASA anymore. The Article even mentions the name of another place you can go to get the information.