You're just changing the definition of biodegradable
Nope, I was just using it correctly rather than in the incorrect sense that seems to be becoming relatively popular. Biodegradable: Can degrade through biological means. Seems like a sensible definition to me.
By the way, don't even get me started on "organic" foods...
All plastic is biodegradable, being organic... the main problem with it is that the majority of it takes a VERY long time to do so. Another problem is that the stuff that does degrade somewhat more quickly tends to degrade in to some not so nice things to have floating around. (actually to be more strictly accurate, it's usually the additives to the plastic being released during degradation that are bad)
Of course, anyone who believes in evolution rather than God, won't accept this.
Why exactly do you think that's an either/or proposition? There's plenty of people that believe in both God and the theory of evolution. (note that I'm not one of them - I do not believe in God. However several of my friends, and my step-father (a minister in the Anglican church), and my girlfriend all believe in both)
Faith is the basis for any knowledge as we know very little a priori. That's not a bad thing, just a fact. Science, by it's very nature, continuously disproves it's theories on a regular basis. In that sense, it is always shifting. The Bible, in contrast, is a solid truth that never changes.
I think the problem here is that you're defining "knowledge" a bit too strictly. A point that science shows us is indeed that we don't TRULY know anything... we can't, because it's simply impossible. We can however say that "given certain base assumptions, xyz is true". Base assumptions incude things such as "there is no invisible/undetectable intelligent force altering our experiments" and "we are not having a mass hallucination" as well as the more complex ones. These simple ones have to be assumed since there's no way to experimentally test for them.
So, going by the very strict definition of knowledge, no, I don't know anything at all. However, going with my base assumptions, I'll follow science.
Yes, science does occasionally revise things, and on very rare occasions even does complete reversals and says "oops, that was totally wrong - here's some evidence/proof to the contrary". But that doesn't mean what it showed before wasn't useful. Newton's ideas about spacetime seem a bit crude compared to relativity, but they still work amazingly well as a basic model. Relativity will probably seem pretty crude once (if?) we have a GUT that brings gravity in to the fold with the other forces, but it won't suddenly stop working for the limits that it covers.
Let me give you a nice little anecdote about evidence and faith. Last week, I ate a few truffles that contained psilocybin. A couple of hours in to the trip, I was lying on a bed and felt a "presence". It was friendly, warm and comforting. It was powerful and deeply spiritual. It was also entirely a product of my hallucinogen distorted mind. I COULD use that as evidence of a god, a spirit or a higher power. However we're pretty certain, scientifically speaking, that taking psilocybin causes these kinds of feelings. I had taken psilocybin and I felt these feelings. The logical conclusion is therefore that it was the truffles that did it, and there really wasn't a powerful and loving presence in the room with me. Side note: I consider it personally fulfilling and wonderous even though I fully realise it was only my own mind... In fact, I consider it more wonderous knowing how amazing a human mind can be without needing to attribute it to any external supernatural power.
Trying to solve the paradox through an evolution trick doesn't work because evolution is about small changes over hundreds or thousands of years. If a chicken hatches from the egg of a species that we don't consider a chicken, then we could toss the theory of evolution out the window.
Not really... at some point, there MUST be a creature that you call "not quite a chicken" and it lays an egg that hatches a creature you call "only just a chicken".
It's similar to the silly paradox about a man's beard. One hair on a man's face is not a beard. Around 7000 or so definitely is a beard. So, how many hairs does it take to be a beard? Is there a number where removing one is "not quite" a beard, or adding one more makes it a beard? By common layman's terms, probably not, but at some point you really have to admit that your definition wasn't good enough to begin with. What exactly IS a beard? And what exactly IS a chicken?
One of the ongoing mysteries in mathematics is how often mathematical systems turn out to be applicable to various fields of science. This is sometimes a bit of an embarrassment to mathematicians, who often pride themselves on their refusal to even consider the real world. The ongoing usefulness of obscure branches of mathematics to scientists hasn't been satisfactorily explained, to my knowledge (though there are a number of interesting conjectures).
Indeed! The first time I read this (as a teenager), I spent the next three weeks or so annoying the hell out of every non-scientist/non-mathematician friend that I have... I'm somewhat "used to" the idea now, but it really was an amazing wake-up call the first time.
Interesting link, thanks. I do think however it reinforces what I was saying about it being more societal than genetic. While the kids with Williams definitely showed no bias and those without did, the study points out that this appears to be that Williams blocks these biases from forming (societally) rather than the biases themselves being genetic in nature.
I don't think that in this context "racism" necessarily means what it might generally mean. I believe they often measure it in babies by seeing how long a baby will remain interested on average by pictures of various faces of people with various ethnicities. It's not about the babies thinking "any less" of anyone, it's just some sort of hard-coded response. Anyways, I'm not a biologist or anything, so I'm not really qualified to disect that paper, though I've seen various similar ones in some other journals.
The baby thing would be nice to have a link for if you've got one. I'd like to know if these babies have any kind of social imprinting or not prior to the tests. In my understanding babies do imprint VERY quickly to their parents for example. And, for extra confirmation, if caucasian babies born in a non-caucasian society that never got to see their own parents (and thus surrounded by non-caucasian doctors and nurses) will have biases that are based on their own race, their surroundings, or neither. Sadly, while such babies would be invaluable for this research, it's pretty rare to find those exact circumstances and probably a fairly large ethical problem to deliberately create such circumstances in sufficiently large sample sizes to be useful...
I'm aware some people may omit such a point out of an excessively overdeveloped sense of wanting to follow "political correctness" or whatever, but I didn't - for me, it simply wasn't a detail that entered my mind when describing him.
This seems meaningless to me, as noting someone's skin color is about as racist as noting someone's hair color-- unless you are paranoid about "ginger kids".
It's not that I never noticed his skin-colour, it's just that it didn't register to me as being a detail that I could use to describe the guy. If I was to write out a big list of things about him with plenty of forethought and time to write, I'd almost certainly mention it somewhere in the list (in the same way that I'd describe myself as being "sort of tan" and my girlfriend as being "pale") but it just doesn't naturally occur to me as an important defining factor of his looks.
I'm aware that noticing it doesn't make one racist, I was more pointing out that if you DON'T notice it, it's almost impossible to be racist.
As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.
But why exactly is this a problem for you?
I'm all for privacy where it makes sense (it's probably a bad thing if people can actively see that I'm not at home, know my home address, and that I recently purchased a huge flat-screen TV); but I see absolutely no reason to worry that Google knows what I've been watching on YouTube recently, or searching for, or what websites I've been visiting.
Similar thing to wandering around naked in my apartment with the curtains open (as I often do first thing in the morning after getting out of bed and before my morning shower). If my neighbours watch me, I really don't care (although being an overweight balding guy, I'm probably not that worth watching). If they make videos and post them online, I also don't care. When they film me leaving my apartment and record me hiding my spare-key under the pot plant* and post THAT online with a time-stamp, there's a problem.
* Note that my girlfriend has my spare key, and I do not have a pot plant.
People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view.
This is almost certainly true and it disturbs me greatly... I've never understood the desire that most people seem to have to be told what they already know/believe. I want to be constantly told things that I DON'T know or believe. That gives me a chance to argue, debate, and ultimately learn (either reinforcing or weakening my current viewpoint, or perhaps even turning it around completely if presented with strong enough evidence).
Also she is an avowed atheist. I think that's a first for an Australian PM, too.
I certainly consider that far more interesting that the fact she's a female. I'm a pretty "staunch" atheist myself, and find it quite sickening how we're becoming more and more persecuted in the western world these days simply for saying that we refuse to believe a bunch of nonsense without strong evidence. It used to be that the western world was the best place for atheists, but over the last ten years that's been taking a VERY sharp down-turn. For a modern Western country to have an atheist in the "top chair" is definitely an interesting and newsworthy item to me.
Also racism is coded into our DNA. Good luck trying to undue millions of years of evolution in a decade, with just an idea.
And yes I am racist. It's how I was born. Guess what? You are too. Unless you were born with Williams syndrome. And it will affect my decisions consciously, or subconsciously for the rest of my life.
Got any evidence to back that up? I certainly don't have Williams Syndrome and am quite certain I'm not racist in the slightest. I was born in Southern New Zealand and grew up in the 80s and 90s, which is already a pretty good start in that there's very few racial problems there and during those couple of decades it was almost a non-issue. Like many geeks, I was a pretty socially reclusive kid and spent a large amount of time alone with my computer equipment. When I did spend time with friends, it was almost always the same group of friends over and over. One was of Indian descent, one British descent, one half-Maori half-Pakeha, and a couple that I wouldn't even try to hazard a guess.
During these years, I was totally unfamiliar with the concept of racism. My friends were my friends, and my enemies were my enemies. If someone had told me to like a couple of my friends less due to the colour of their skin, I would've considered it equally as strange as being told to dislike them because of the colour of their hair, eyes or favourite jacket.
I first encountered racism on television at around age 12 or so. I had to ask my parents to explain the behaviour of the people, since it just didn't make any sense to me. They explained what racism is, and I found it totally unbelievable. I thought it must just be a thing that only happens in far off lands where people think differently than I did. Later, I learned of course that it was all around me, just lesser where I lived compared to other places.
To give a nice little anecdote, one of my friends recently was asking me to explain what another friend looked like so they could meet. I described him as tall, quite thin, wide mouth, eyes relatively deep set and the clothing he'd likely be wearing. A couple of days later, my friend asked me why I didn't mention that the other friend was "black", as that would've helped a lot in the identification. I honestly hadn't even considered it. I'm aware some people may omit such a point out of an excessively overdeveloped sense of wanting to follow "political correctness" or whatever, but I didn't - for me, it simply wasn't a detail that entered my mind when describing him.
So, to reiterate: I am quite certain that I am not racist. I don't think it's in my DNA at all. "Competitiveness" and "wanting to be better than others outside my tribe" certainly is, but I would contend that one's "tribe" is defined socially, and therefore if you're raised in an environment where your "tribe" isn't based on looks/background/etc, then you won't be biased against people based on looks/background/etc. My "tribe" is pretty much "geeks" and yes, I am biased against people that aren't geeks. I try not to be when I realise I am being unfair, but it's not always so obvious, even to myself. I assume this is how racism (and sexism, etc) is for a lot of people, leading to things such as considering the "first female prime minister" as an important news point in and of itself.
# No ones name is a single letter in any language I've ever heard of(a single character, but that's not the same thing)
I have friend named "E". It's pronounced roughly like the dismissive "Eh" sound you might make when you want to express apathy. So yes, a single latin letter is quite possible as a name.
and since names aren't unique or identifying this doesn't really matter.
Absolutely correct... that's sort of the point of both the article and many of the posts here.
When first and last names are stored in the same field, I often want to strip off the surname from the first name(s). This is in most cases straight forward, but is more complicated when the surname is compound, like Te Heu Heu (Maori), Ter Borg and Van Der Water (Dutch) and Le Blanc (French). If someone's first name is "Van" and his surname is "Der Water", I'm going to get it wrong. But these situations are rare. Without extra information, it's just not possible to get it right.
You should also be careful with "Van Der Water", as either that or "van der Water" may be preferred. This also affects sort order (the former should be sorted under "V", but the latter under "W"). I myself have the common Dutch surname "de Waal", and it causes me no end of grief to find my name in large lists since invariably it'll be sorted to a different location that I first guessed (it should be under "W", but if I look there, I'll not find it and it'll be under "D" instead... if I think they'll probably get it wrong, I check "D" only to find they've got it right under "W")
My full name is "Benjamin de Waal" (no middle name). One of my bank cards reads "B DEWAAL", and another reads "B DE WAAL", while my American Express has "BEN D WAAL" (as if "de" were a middle name). My passport and birth certificate both have "Benjamin de Waal". I definitely do feel sorry for people with any more complexity than my relatively simple name!
I once had an acquaintance who changed his legal name to "Da5id" (pronounced "David" of course). The government had no objections to this, although most the people who knew him (myself included) considered him a bit silly for doing so.
The biggest hurdle to true hybrids might be the number of chromosomes - while humans have 46, most other species do not. even gorillas and chimpanzees have 48
You either don't have kids or your kids must not have friends. The seat belt laws limit the number of passengers per vehicle, so when you need to pick up their 6 friends, you're 3 seats short in your Prius. Are you going to drive that 2nd car to transport them? The minivan is probably better than an SUV for that since it gets slightly better mileage.
And there's your problem... why exactly do you need to pick up 6 of your kids friends? Why can't THEIR parents drive them to whereever they're going? Why can't they take public transport or walk (if it's less than 5km or so)? Why can't they take a taxi (if you live in a place where public transport/walking is dangerous)? I'm assuming these kids are all friends because they know each other somehow... and they probably know each other through a shared activity (such as school, hobbies or sports), so it should be reasonable to expect they've got alternate arrangements for making it to those places... getting whereever to hang out with your kid(s) should be the same.
People in the rest of the world seem to manage to have kids with active social lives without needing a minivan/SUV...
My local petrol station here in Germany has "normal" (which I've never bothered looking at), "Premium" at 95 Octane, "Super" at 98 and "Ultimate" at 100. My car (a 2009 Mazda MX5) has a sticker inside the fuel cover that says not to use anything below 95... I generally use the 100, or 98 if I fill up at a station that doesn't have the 100.
Then again, the way I drive my car (i.e. how a roadster is supposed to be driven;) ), the fuel consumption is TERRIBLE compared to the official values so if I cared that much about saving a few euro at the pump, I could just drive a bit "nicer" instead of thinking about the type of fuel I use.
For reference, the official rating is 7.9L/100km (combined city and highway), but my average since I bought it (3.5 months and 3000km ago) is 12.2... In MPG, that's an official rating of 35.75MPG vs current usage at 23.15MPG.
Look, there's nothing wrong with "man". It referred to "human" long before it referred to "male human".
A little off topic, but do you have a link for that?
I was always under the impression that it meant 'male human', but past societal attitudes had allowed for the females to be referred to under the same collective term, as the males took precedence. I'd be interested to know if I was mistaken.
Etymologically, you're probably right in that most Germanic languages (of which English is one) seem to have this relationship between "man" (person) and "man" (male human) quite clearly. I can't see any reason for it other than the assumption that it comes from the belief that only males had any real "personhood" once upon a time. Some other indo-European languages outside of the Germanic group also seem to have it, but to a lesser extent (specifically the Celtic and Italic branches), but others (Balto-Slavic and Indic) don't appear to at all. This would lead me to believe it probably comes from around 100BC, sometime after the break-off of the Hellenic, Slavic, Indic, etc langauges, and after the beginnings of the separation of Italic and Germanic but before they were fully separated. It would've evolved in the Germanic side and influenced in to the Italic, leaving some traces there but most of the effects in Germanic. As an example from a modern language: in German, the word for "man" (male human) is "Mann". The third-person gender neutral indeterminate is "man" (same as the usage of "one" in the English sentence, "One must do what one can to survive"). They're different words, and perceived differently, but there's little denying the close relationship between them (and for an additional note, the German word for "person" is "Mensch", which is also related). You'll find similar things in most of the Germanic family including the Scandanavian languages, Dutch and even outliers like Frisian (which is pretty close to Old English compared to the rest of the family).
Despite all this, languages evolve, and meanings DO change no matter how much people (myself included) complain about it at times. "Man" definitely came to mean "people in general" at some point in the evolution of the English language. Indeed, even "men" in some cases (the statement "All men are created equal" definitely WAS intended to include females as well!)
Note: I am not a professional linguist, I just study the indo-European language families as a hobby (especially the Germanic branch), so I recommend you don't take any of my above opinions as anything other than just my opinion...
I'm pretty sure that the environmental impact of the current generation of electric cars is actually more than petroleum ones, just much better hidden.
And I'm pretty sure that's wrong, because:
The electricity that's used to make and power them today is coming mostly from burning fossil fuels in 30 year old power plants. That might change in 10 years time, but it's not 10 years time, it's now.
While that is true, it's a sad fact that a 30 year old fossil fuel burning power station is STILL greener than the ICEs in most of the cars on the road on a power-generation to output-of-bad-stuff comparison...
Plus of course, a small amount of power generation DOES come from greener sources, and this will be used equally along with the non-green sources. As green sources increase, that automatically makes all these cars greener without being changed. Unlike ICE vehicles which remain equally as non-green no matter what you do to processes external to them.
This is true, however the problem is that many things people talk about are not discrete hypotheses, but rather conglomorations of hypotheses/theories/facts.
The theory that there are three blue people sitting in my office right now could be called "false", or it could be called "50% true" if you're willing to accept that it's based on two distinct ideas (1: There are three people, 2: They are blue (the former is true, the latter is not)).
That's obviously a ridiculously oversimplified example, but it's important in science to make these kinds of distinctions. Einstein proved Newton's theory of gravity wrong, but it'd be disasterous to throw out everything in that theory because of it - it's still extremely useful as a "close enough" approximation for the vast majority of things we do. Also, should we somehow discover tomorrow a nice proof for M-Theory, test it and conclude the universe is indeed made up of tiny strings including finding the graviton, we shouldn't immediately dismiss the useful model that Einstein gave us of mass curving space-time... it'd be "wrong", but still amazingly useful.
Fortunately, I can know something without submitting it to a rigorous scientific study.
Perhaps it comes down to the definition of know, but I really don't think I can know anything per se. I can have "very strong confidence" in something, and will treat it as "true" until something more compelling comes along. If that's your definition of "know" (which seems reasonable and I have no beef with that), then I'm afraid I have to agree with the GP. While I certainly can assume something without a study being done, the study gives me the extra confidence to bump it up to the very strong confidence level.
Blind faith that one's assumptions are correct is what led us in to the mess of a world we're in right now...
Slashdot Mirror
You're just changing the definition of biodegradable
Nope, I was just using it correctly rather than in the incorrect sense that seems to be becoming relatively popular. Biodegradable: Can degrade through biological means. Seems like a sensible definition to me.
By the way, don't even get me started on "organic" foods...
Good thing we've got biodegrading plastic!
All plastic is biodegradable, being organic... the main problem with it is that the majority of it takes a VERY long time to do so. Another problem is that the stuff that does degrade somewhat more quickly tends to degrade in to some not so nice things to have floating around. (actually to be more strictly accurate, it's usually the additives to the plastic being released during degradation that are bad)
Of course, anyone who believes in evolution rather than God, won't accept this.
Why exactly do you think that's an either/or proposition? There's plenty of people that believe in both God and the theory of evolution. (note that I'm not one of them - I do not believe in God. However several of my friends, and my step-father (a minister in the Anglican church), and my girlfriend all believe in both)
Faith is the basis for any knowledge as we know very little a priori. That's not a bad thing, just a fact. Science, by it's very nature, continuously disproves it's theories on a regular basis. In that sense, it is always shifting. The Bible, in contrast, is a solid truth that never changes.
I think the problem here is that you're defining "knowledge" a bit too strictly. A point that science shows us is indeed that we don't TRULY know anything... we can't, because it's simply impossible. We can however say that "given certain base assumptions, xyz is true". Base assumptions incude things such as "there is no invisible/undetectable intelligent force altering our experiments" and "we are not having a mass hallucination" as well as the more complex ones. These simple ones have to be assumed since there's no way to experimentally test for them.
So, going by the very strict definition of knowledge, no, I don't know anything at all. However, going with my base assumptions, I'll follow science.
Yes, science does occasionally revise things, and on very rare occasions even does complete reversals and says "oops, that was totally wrong - here's some evidence/proof to the contrary". But that doesn't mean what it showed before wasn't useful. Newton's ideas about spacetime seem a bit crude compared to relativity, but they still work amazingly well as a basic model. Relativity will probably seem pretty crude once (if?) we have a GUT that brings gravity in to the fold with the other forces, but it won't suddenly stop working for the limits that it covers.
Let me give you a nice little anecdote about evidence and faith. Last week, I ate a few truffles that contained psilocybin. A couple of hours in to the trip, I was lying on a bed and felt a "presence". It was friendly, warm and comforting. It was powerful and deeply spiritual. It was also entirely a product of my hallucinogen distorted mind. I COULD use that as evidence of a god, a spirit or a higher power. However we're pretty certain, scientifically speaking, that taking psilocybin causes these kinds of feelings. I had taken psilocybin and I felt these feelings. The logical conclusion is therefore that it was the truffles that did it, and there really wasn't a powerful and loving presence in the room with me.
Side note: I consider it personally fulfilling and wonderous even though I fully realise it was only my own mind... In fact, I consider it more wonderous knowing how amazing a human mind can be without needing to attribute it to any external supernatural power.
Trying to solve the paradox through an evolution trick doesn't work because evolution is about small changes over hundreds or thousands of years. If a chicken hatches from the egg of a species that we don't consider a chicken, then we could toss the theory of evolution out the window.
Not really... at some point, there MUST be a creature that you call "not quite a chicken" and it lays an egg that hatches a creature you call "only just a chicken".
It's similar to the silly paradox about a man's beard. One hair on a man's face is not a beard. Around 7000 or so definitely is a beard. So, how many hairs does it take to be a beard? Is there a number where removing one is "not quite" a beard, or adding one more makes it a beard? By common layman's terms, probably not, but at some point you really have to admit that your definition wasn't good enough to begin with. What exactly IS a beard? And what exactly IS a chicken?
One of the ongoing mysteries in mathematics is how often mathematical systems turn out to be applicable to various fields of science. This is sometimes a bit of an embarrassment to mathematicians, who often pride themselves on their refusal to even consider the real world. The ongoing usefulness of obscure branches of mathematics to scientists hasn't been satisfactorily explained, to my knowledge (though there are a number of interesting conjectures).
Indeed! The first time I read this (as a teenager), I spent the next three weeks or so annoying the hell out of every non-scientist/non-mathematician friend that I have... I'm somewhat "used to" the idea now, but it really was an amazing wake-up call the first time.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)00144-2
Interesting link, thanks. I do think however it reinforces what I was saying about it being more societal than genetic. While the kids with Williams definitely showed no bias and those without did, the study points out that this appears to be that Williams blocks these biases from forming (societally) rather than the biases themselves being genetic in nature.
I don't think that in this context "racism" necessarily means what it might generally mean. I believe they often measure it in babies by seeing how long a baby will remain interested on average by pictures of various faces of people with various ethnicities. It's not about the babies thinking "any less" of anyone, it's just some sort of hard-coded response. Anyways, I'm not a biologist or anything, so I'm not really qualified to disect that paper, though I've seen various similar ones in some other journals.
The baby thing would be nice to have a link for if you've got one. I'd like to know if these babies have any kind of social imprinting or not prior to the tests. In my understanding babies do imprint VERY quickly to their parents for example. And, for extra confirmation, if caucasian babies born in a non-caucasian society that never got to see their own parents (and thus surrounded by non-caucasian doctors and nurses) will have biases that are based on their own race, their surroundings, or neither. Sadly, while such babies would be invaluable for this research, it's pretty rare to find those exact circumstances and probably a fairly large ethical problem to deliberately create such circumstances in sufficiently large sample sizes to be useful...
This seems meaningless to me, as noting someone's skin color is about as racist as noting someone's hair color-- unless you are paranoid about "ginger kids".
It's not that I never noticed his skin-colour, it's just that it didn't register to me as being a detail that I could use to describe the guy. If I was to write out a big list of things about him with plenty of forethought and time to write, I'd almost certainly mention it somewhere in the list (in the same way that I'd describe myself as being "sort of tan" and my girlfriend as being "pale") but it just doesn't naturally occur to me as an important defining factor of his looks.
I'm aware that noticing it doesn't make one racist, I was more pointing out that if you DON'T notice it, it's almost impossible to be racist.
As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.
But why exactly is this a problem for you?
I'm all for privacy where it makes sense (it's probably a bad thing if people can actively see that I'm not at home, know my home address, and that I recently purchased a huge flat-screen TV); but I see absolutely no reason to worry that Google knows what I've been watching on YouTube recently, or searching for, or what websites I've been visiting.
Similar thing to wandering around naked in my apartment with the curtains open (as I often do first thing in the morning after getting out of bed and before my morning shower). If my neighbours watch me, I really don't care (although being an overweight balding guy, I'm probably not that worth watching). If they make videos and post them online, I also don't care. When they film me leaving my apartment and record me hiding my spare-key under the pot plant* and post THAT online with a time-stamp, there's a problem.
* Note that my girlfriend has my spare key, and I do not have a pot plant.
People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view.
This is almost certainly true and it disturbs me greatly... I've never understood the desire that most people seem to have to be told what they already know/believe. I want to be constantly told things that I DON'T know or believe. That gives me a chance to argue, debate, and ultimately learn (either reinforcing or weakening my current viewpoint, or perhaps even turning it around completely if presented with strong enough evidence).
Sydney does not exist. Its just street name, suburb, NSW, postcode according to the post office!
Sydney exists - it's that little bit in the middle with the postcode 2000. Anyone with any sense lives around 2067 or 2113 though.
(yes, that's intended as humour... laugh or move on...)
Also she is an avowed atheist. I think that's a first for an Australian PM, too.
I certainly consider that far more interesting that the fact she's a female. I'm a pretty "staunch" atheist myself, and find it quite sickening how we're becoming more and more persecuted in the western world these days simply for saying that we refuse to believe a bunch of nonsense without strong evidence. It used to be that the western world was the best place for atheists, but over the last ten years that's been taking a VERY sharp down-turn. For a modern Western country to have an atheist in the "top chair" is definitely an interesting and newsworthy item to me.
Also racism is coded into our DNA. Good luck trying to undue millions of years of evolution in a decade, with just an idea.
And yes I am racist. It's how I was born. Guess what? You are too. Unless you were born with Williams syndrome. And it will affect my decisions consciously, or subconsciously for the rest of my life.
Got any evidence to back that up? I certainly don't have Williams Syndrome and am quite certain I'm not racist in the slightest. I was born in Southern New Zealand and grew up in the 80s and 90s, which is already a pretty good start in that there's very few racial problems there and during those couple of decades it was almost a non-issue. Like many geeks, I was a pretty socially reclusive kid and spent a large amount of time alone with my computer equipment. When I did spend time with friends, it was almost always the same group of friends over and over. One was of Indian descent, one British descent, one half-Maori half-Pakeha, and a couple that I wouldn't even try to hazard a guess.
During these years, I was totally unfamiliar with the concept of racism. My friends were my friends, and my enemies were my enemies. If someone had told me to like a couple of my friends less due to the colour of their skin, I would've considered it equally as strange as being told to dislike them because of the colour of their hair, eyes or favourite jacket.
I first encountered racism on television at around age 12 or so. I had to ask my parents to explain the behaviour of the people, since it just didn't make any sense to me. They explained what racism is, and I found it totally unbelievable. I thought it must just be a thing that only happens in far off lands where people think differently than I did. Later, I learned of course that it was all around me, just lesser where I lived compared to other places.
To give a nice little anecdote, one of my friends recently was asking me to explain what another friend looked like so they could meet. I described him as tall, quite thin, wide mouth, eyes relatively deep set and the clothing he'd likely be wearing. A couple of days later, my friend asked me why I didn't mention that the other friend was "black", as that would've helped a lot in the identification. I honestly hadn't even considered it. I'm aware some people may omit such a point out of an excessively overdeveloped sense of wanting to follow "political correctness" or whatever, but I didn't - for me, it simply wasn't a detail that entered my mind when describing him.
So, to reiterate: I am quite certain that I am not racist. I don't think it's in my DNA at all. "Competitiveness" and "wanting to be better than others outside my tribe" certainly is, but I would contend that one's "tribe" is defined socially, and therefore if you're raised in an environment where your "tribe" isn't based on looks/background/etc, then you won't be biased against people based on looks/background/etc. My "tribe" is pretty much "geeks" and yes, I am biased against people that aren't geeks. I try not to be when I realise I am being unfair, but it's not always so obvious, even to myself. I assume this is how racism (and sexism, etc) is for a lot of people, leading to things such as considering the "first female prime minister" as an important news point in and of itself.
# No ones name is a single letter in any language I've ever heard of(a single character, but that's not the same thing)
I have friend named "E". It's pronounced roughly like the dismissive "Eh" sound you might make when you want to express apathy. So yes, a single latin letter is quite possible as a name.
and since names aren't unique or identifying this doesn't really matter.
Absolutely correct... that's sort of the point of both the article and many of the posts here.
When first and last names are stored in the same field, I often want to strip off the surname from the first name(s). This is in most cases straight forward, but is more complicated when the surname is compound, like Te Heu Heu (Maori), Ter Borg and Van Der Water (Dutch) and Le Blanc (French). If someone's first name is "Van" and his surname is "Der Water", I'm going to get it wrong. But these situations are rare. Without extra information, it's just not possible to get it right.
You should also be careful with "Van Der Water", as either that or "van der Water" may be preferred. This also affects sort order (the former should be sorted under "V", but the latter under "W"). I myself have the common Dutch surname "de Waal", and it causes me no end of grief to find my name in large lists since invariably it'll be sorted to a different location that I first guessed (it should be under "W", but if I look there, I'll not find it and it'll be under "D" instead... if I think they'll probably get it wrong, I check "D" only to find they've got it right under "W")
My full name is "Benjamin de Waal" (no middle name). One of my bank cards reads "B DEWAAL", and another reads "B DE WAAL", while my American Express has "BEN D WAAL" (as if "de" were a middle name). My passport and birth certificate both have "Benjamin de Waal". I definitely do feel sorry for people with any more complexity than my relatively simple name!
I once had an acquaintance who changed his legal name to "Da5id" (pronounced "David" of course). The government had no objections to this, although most the people who knew him (myself included) considered him a bit silly for doing so.
The biggest hurdle to true hybrids might be the number of chromosomes - while humans have 46, most other species do not. even gorillas and chimpanzees have 48
"Biggest" perhaps, but certainly far from the only "big" hurdle... otherwise we'd have some good Sable Antelope or Reeves's Muntjac hybrids already (both have 46 chromosomes)
Just tested...
This seems perfectly reasonable to me... if I set it to the highest, to go from screen edge to screen edge takes about 3cm at the same movement speed.
You either don't have kids or your kids must not have friends. The seat belt laws limit the number of passengers per vehicle, so when you need to pick up their 6 friends , you're 3 seats short in your Prius. Are you going to drive that 2nd car to transport them? The minivan is probably better than an SUV for that since it gets slightly better mileage.
And there's your problem... why exactly do you need to pick up 6 of your kids friends? Why can't THEIR parents drive them to whereever they're going? Why can't they take public transport or walk (if it's less than 5km or so)? Why can't they take a taxi (if you live in a place where public transport/walking is dangerous)? I'm assuming these kids are all friends because they know each other somehow... and they probably know each other through a shared activity (such as school, hobbies or sports), so it should be reasonable to expect they've got alternate arrangements for making it to those places... getting whereever to hang out with your kid(s) should be the same.
People in the rest of the world seem to manage to have kids with active social lives without needing a minivan/SUV...
My local petrol station here in Germany has "normal" (which I've never bothered looking at), "Premium" at 95 Octane, "Super" at 98 and "Ultimate" at 100. My car (a 2009 Mazda MX5) has a sticker inside the fuel cover that says not to use anything below 95... I generally use the 100, or 98 if I fill up at a station that doesn't have the 100.
Then again, the way I drive my car (i.e. how a roadster is supposed to be driven ;) ), the fuel consumption is TERRIBLE compared to the official values so if I cared that much about saving a few euro at the pump, I could just drive a bit "nicer" instead of thinking about the type of fuel I use.
For reference, the official rating is 7.9L/100km (combined city and highway), but my average since I bought it (3.5 months and 3000km ago) is 12.2...
In MPG, that's an official rating of 35.75MPG vs current usage at 23.15MPG.
"What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
54
Not in base 13...
Look, there's nothing wrong with "man". It referred to "human" long before it referred to "male human".
A little off topic, but do you have a link for that?
I was always under the impression that it meant 'male human', but past societal attitudes had allowed for the females to be referred to under the same collective term, as the males took precedence. I'd be interested to know if I was mistaken.
Etymologically, you're probably right in that most Germanic languages (of which English is one) seem to have this relationship between "man" (person) and "man" (male human) quite clearly. I can't see any reason for it other than the assumption that it comes from the belief that only males had any real "personhood" once upon a time. Some other indo-European languages outside of the Germanic group also seem to have it, but to a lesser extent (specifically the Celtic and Italic branches), but others (Balto-Slavic and Indic) don't appear to at all. This would lead me to believe it probably comes from around 100BC, sometime after the break-off of the Hellenic, Slavic, Indic, etc langauges, and after the beginnings of the separation of Italic and Germanic but before they were fully separated. It would've evolved in the Germanic side and influenced in to the Italic, leaving some traces there but most of the effects in Germanic.
As an example from a modern language: in German, the word for "man" (male human) is "Mann". The third-person gender neutral indeterminate is "man" (same as the usage of "one" in the English sentence, "One must do what one can to survive"). They're different words, and perceived differently, but there's little denying the close relationship between them (and for an additional note, the German word for "person" is "Mensch", which is also related).
You'll find similar things in most of the Germanic family including the Scandanavian languages, Dutch and even outliers like Frisian (which is pretty close to Old English compared to the rest of the family).
Despite all this, languages evolve, and meanings DO change no matter how much people (myself included) complain about it at times. "Man" definitely came to mean "people in general" at some point in the evolution of the English language. Indeed, even "men" in some cases (the statement "All men are created equal" definitely WAS intended to include females as well!)
Note: I am not a professional linguist, I just study the indo-European language families as a hobby (especially the Germanic branch), so I recommend you don't take any of my above opinions as anything other than just my opinion...
I'm pretty sure that the environmental impact of the current generation of electric cars is actually more than petroleum ones, just much better hidden.
And I'm pretty sure that's wrong, because:
The electricity that's used to make and power them today is coming mostly from burning fossil fuels in 30 year old power plants. That might change in 10 years time, but it's not 10 years time, it's now.
While that is true, it's a sad fact that a 30 year old fossil fuel burning power station is STILL greener than the ICEs in most of the cars on the road on a power-generation to output-of-bad-stuff comparison...
Plus of course, a small amount of power generation DOES come from greener sources, and this will be used equally along with the non-green sources. As green sources increase, that automatically makes all these cars greener without being changed. Unlike ICE vehicles which remain equally as non-green no matter what you do to processes external to them.
There is no 50% or 80% with facts.
This is true, however the problem is that many things people talk about are not discrete hypotheses, but rather conglomorations of hypotheses/theories/facts.
The theory that there are three blue people sitting in my office right now could be called "false", or it could be called "50% true" if you're willing to accept that it's based on two distinct ideas (1: There are three people, 2: They are blue (the former is true, the latter is not)).
That's obviously a ridiculously oversimplified example, but it's important in science to make these kinds of distinctions. Einstein proved Newton's theory of gravity wrong, but it'd be disasterous to throw out everything in that theory because of it - it's still extremely useful as a "close enough" approximation for the vast majority of things we do. Also, should we somehow discover tomorrow a nice proof for M-Theory, test it and conclude the universe is indeed made up of tiny strings including finding the graviton, we shouldn't immediately dismiss the useful model that Einstein gave us of mass curving space-time... it'd be "wrong", but still amazingly useful.
Fortunately, I can know something without submitting it to a rigorous scientific study.
Perhaps it comes down to the definition of know, but I really don't think I can know anything per se. I can have "very strong confidence" in something, and will treat it as "true" until something more compelling comes along. If that's your definition of "know" (which seems reasonable and I have no beef with that), then I'm afraid I have to agree with the GP. While I certainly can assume something without a study being done, the study gives me the extra confidence to bump it up to the very strong confidence level.
Blind faith that one's assumptions are correct is what led us in to the mess of a world we're in right now...