Why is anyone at all surprised that Wikipedia is stuffed to the gills with junk and propaganda?
Oh, and let's get rid of another myth. You don't have to believe everything you read on Wikipedia - really? There are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia's content and serve it up with advertising. Chances are, almost any factual subject searched for on Google will include Wikipedia and/or the scrapers.
Most people are unaware of these scraper sites, and they don't realise that they're reading Wikipedia without the visual clues. So what chance do they have? Wikipedia is feeding lies, distortion and propaganda into the body of the Internet, and all we get from slashdotters is -1000 mod points and pointless statements that "other encyclopedias have mistakes in them" as if that made a difference. The real difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is that EB stands behind its scholarship and if a mistake is discovered, they will fix it. There is no guarantee from anyone at Wikimedia or anyone else as to the veracity of any article.
Before we go do a really stupid thing and imperil everyone on the planet, perhaps we should do a little checking? Just to make sure that we haven't been misled?
Funnily the polar bears didn't go through a big decline in numbers during the 1930s. The great scare about polar bears clinging on to ever dwindling clumps of ice is just that: a great scare. The polar bear populations (there are at least 13 or 14 distinct groups of them in North America) have, if anything, increased over the last 20 years with only one group declining as a result of increased hunting by Inuit.
I'm pretty sure if you google "Global warming" and "polar bears" you'll get a clue that the polar bear scare is recycled with every major report on global warming, without any citation given as to the polar bear populations over time. Since polar bears are predators, they have population growths and crashes as their prey do. It has nothing to do with global warming or anything like it.
The myth is that climate itself, like polar bear populations, is supposed to be stable. It never has been and never will be.
They may have made the Dustbowl worse, but the temperatures were not caused by the Dustbowl. All the way to the Arctic the temperatures of the late 1930s were the highest of the 20th Century.
Apparently you don't know what scholarship is either.
Even if your first standard were accepted, this wouldn't make wikipedia fail, since most of those people choosing not to be associated with Wikipedia would not mean that the people involved in Wikipedia did not contain the requisite number from the remainder of that group to meet the standard.
Let me translate that from bullshit into English:
Wikipedia is not a failure so long as there are idiots willing to edit it, regardless of the quality of the writing, the ability of the editors to write grammatically, or more generally on the grounds of ignorance. Since there are always more ignorant people than there are knowledgeable, there will always be a consensus
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.
This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.
In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place....
Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.
In [[November]] [[2006]], Jimbo was voted from the board by a cabal of giant [[badgers]] and [[sockpuppets]] to be replaced by the leader of the [[Transformers]]. His statement[1] to the new board consisted of threats to [[see them all in court| wikilaywer]] them out of [[existence]]. Jimbo then flounced out of the room in his customary [[pink]] [[tutu]] before planting a [[French Kiss]] on the mouth of [[Ted Haggard]]. Haggard then announced that he had only received a [[massage]] from the [[Great White Turd]]
*[This biography is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by extending it]
...mean nothing but Slashdot is forgetting history. Despite commanding market positions and unique opportunities, Novell has consistently fucked up every single time without fail. Most of their managers can't scratch their own arses without two mirrors and a searchlight.
I didn't say that it didn't hold a shred of truth. There are a minority of excellent articles on Wikipedia, which are just as good or better than the corresponding articles in Encyclopedia Britannica.
But the good does not justify the bad, nor does Wikimedia's indifference to very obvious manipulation, deceit and lies by some editors and especially some admins. Taken as a whole, Wikipedia is a deception and a dnagerous deception at that.
"scholarship" is not the same thing as "original research". Review and collection of existing research is scholarship, and not WP:OR, and is exactly what the purpose of any encyclopedia, including Wikipedia, is.
No. Review and collection of existing research BY KNOWN SCHOLARS is research. Wikipedia falls at the first hurdle because most scholars, academics and experts refuse to have anything to do with Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It's a shoot-em-up game of human history, played on an immense weblog.
The difference is that the Library of Alexandria contained knowledge, facts and scholarship from learned people. Wikipedia contains second, third or fourth hand facts, half-truths, quarter truths and out-and-out lies.
Wikipedia is not a repository of learning or human knowledge - it's a Marxist propagandist's wet dream, and its incredible to me how many Slashdotters can blithely tell us that Wikipedia can be compared to real scholarship, when its not allowed to have any scholarship - it's called WP:OR in Wikispeak.
Oh and the other thing Wikipedia has lots of: plagiarism
Now we can play our regular game on slashdot: Censorship by the mob.
Mild agreement that Wikipedia is basically OK +5 interesting Strong agreement that Wikipedia is basically sound and scholars should join +5 informative Criticism of Wikipedia in any form -10 Troll Informed criticism of Wikipedia's lack of scholarship -25 offtopic Detailed criticism of above plus abusive admins, arcane rulesets, Marxist philosophy and endless fancruft -1000 Burn in Hell
Funnily enough, the Republicans don't appear to think the Democrats are in the same Party as themselves. The rest of your rant is standard Conspiracy Theory (especially about Waco) with a dash of loony "we-must-have-assault-weapons-at-all-costs"
Mild agreement that Wikipedia is basically OK +5 interesting Strong agreement that Wikipedia is basically sound and scholars should join +5 informative Criticism of Wikipedia in any form -10 Troll Informed criticism of Wikipedia's lack of scholarship -25 offtopic Detailed criticism of above plus abusive admins, arcane rulesets, Marxist philosophy and endless fancruft -1000 Burn in Hell
1. Stratospheric ozone has nothing whatsoever to do with tropospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone is formed by cosmic rays hitting oxygen molecules and forming O3 molecules. 2. CFCs have nothing whatsoever to do with stratospheric ozone. Even though a Nobel Prize was given for the supposed link between CFCs and ozone depletion, no-one has ever explained how CFC molecules which are much heavier than air, can rise up in the stratosphere, travel all of the way to Antarctica before being broken down into chlorine and fluorine and reacting the O3 3. The real reasons why ozone is depleted is
a) the temperature above Antarctica has fallen in the last fifty years (and not a single climate model predicted that one) and in the ice clouds that form high in the stratosphere in the early Antarctic spring the temperature drops below -80C. Chlorine in the ice reacts with the ozone.
b) the solar cycle is heading towards a minimum. This decreases the magnetic field, increasing the ozone but also increases production of chlorine.
Bingo! An ozone hole forms over the Antarctica - an entirely natural phenomenon.
Even more bingo! Some eco-warrior claims it must be caused by mankind. Ergo the extremely safe stable CFCs are replaced with [benzene is wrong] butane, thus turning your refrigerator into a potential BOMB.
Or did I miss something? Weren't we supposed to have solved the ozone problem?
I've got news for you. Science is never settled, and certainly not by someone making the claim that such-and-such a theory is os overwhelmingly robust. Any scientific theory can be falsified by a single experiment, which is the fundamental principle of scientific inquiry that a theory be falsifiable.
Since chlorine atoms don't come stamped with "I was once part of a CFC" this makes it difficult to falsify in the scientific sense.
Google is your friend as well. Unfortunately Google tells it like it is - the Internet is full of crap.
They don't mix that well between the stratosphere and the troposphere is the straight answer. The bigger problem is the one you avoid: how to get CFCs into the stratosphere when they're so heavy and then down to Antartica.
During the winter a polar vortex forms which keeps moisture and warmth away from the stratosphere, stopping practically all mixing. So how do the CFCs stick around long enough to get broken down in the middle of winter and what keeps them aloft?
Maybe not, but they're there. All the same tools that tell us whats in other planets' atmospheres works equally well on our own. Further more, as surprising as it may be, if you lay down on the ground, you're not likely to asphyxiate unless someone dumps a sufficient amount of a heavy gas right next to you, since the atmosphere mixes up rather easily. As for how they move, I'm going to suggest things like the Jet Stream for moving them around the planet, and equatorial heating to carry CFCs into the upper atmosphere and down towards the pole.
An active imagination is a wonderful thing.
1. CFCs are not found in the stratosphere any where on the planet, they're simply too heavy. Chlorine is. The most obvious source would be from volcanoes. By the by, Antarctica has its own source of chlorine called Mount Erebus.
2. Laying on the ground won't kill you, thats true, there is some mixing. But how a heavy molecule gets up into the stratosphere and travels all the way from (usually) the Northern Hemisphere to the South Pole is not simply a difficult problem, but completely impossible.
3. The Jet Stream doesn't go anywhere near the Equator, and even if it did, there's no mechanism to keep CFCs aloft all the way to Antarctica.
Could it possibly be that the Cl in your ice is the same Cl in CFCs?
Very, very , very unlikely. What about from salt carries high into the atmosphere and then broken down by a decent sized cosmic particle? Erm. Didn't want to consider alternatives did you?
In any case, there are more plausible ways to get chlorine into the stratosphere than by CFCs.
Oh, and you missed the final bit: if CFCs have been legislated away by the Montreal Protocol then why, ten years after we thought the problem licked, does a massive ozone hole appear over Antarctica?
1. Stratospheric ozone has nothing whatsoever to do with tropospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone is formed by cosmic rays hitting oxygen molecules and forming O3 molecules. 2. CFCs have nothing whatsoever to do with stratospheric ozone. Even though a Nobel Prize was given for the supposed link between CFCs and ozone depletion, no-one has ever explained how CFC molecules which are much heavier than air, can rise up in the stratosphere, travel all of the way to Antarctica before being broken down into chlorine and fluorine and reacting the O3 3. The real reasons why ozone is depleted is
a) the temperature above Antarctica has fallen in the last fifty years (and not a single climate model predicted that one) and in the ice clouds that form high in the stratosphere in the early Antarctic spring the temperature drops below -80C. Chlorine in the ice reacts with the ozone.
b) the solar cycle is heading towards a minimum. This decreases the magnetic field, increasing the ozone but also increases production of chlorine.
Bingo! An ozone hole forms over the Antarctica - an entirely natural phenomenon.
Even more bingo! Some eco-warrior claims it must be caused by mankind. Ergo the extremely safe stable CFCs are replaced with benzene, thus turning your refrigerator into a potential BOMB.
Or did I miss something? Weren't we supposed to have solved the ozone problem?
Slashdot Mirror
Comrade Ogilvy sighted again!
Why is anyone at all surprised that Wikipedia is stuffed to the gills with junk and propaganda?
Oh, and let's get rid of another myth. You don't have to believe everything you read on Wikipedia - really? There are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia's content and serve it up with advertising. Chances are, almost any factual subject searched for on Google will include Wikipedia and/or the scrapers.
Most people are unaware of these scraper sites, and they don't realise that they're reading Wikipedia without the visual clues. So what chance do they have? Wikipedia is feeding lies, distortion and propaganda into the body of the Internet, and all we get from slashdotters is -1000 mod points and pointless statements that "other encyclopedias have mistakes in them" as if that made a difference. The real difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica is that EB stands behind its scholarship and if a mistake is discovered, they will fix it. There is no guarantee from anyone at Wikimedia or anyone else as to the veracity of any article.
...of Global Salvationism
Before we go do a really stupid thing and imperil everyone on the planet, perhaps we should do a little checking? Just to make sure that we haven't been misled?
Sorry but you're talking about an alternate Earth.
Here are the Arctic temps for the 20th Century for everywhere above 70N
Here is Polyakov et al, 2004
Funnily the polar bears didn't go through a big decline in numbers during the 1930s. The great scare about polar bears clinging on to ever dwindling clumps of ice is just that: a great scare. The polar bear populations (there are at least 13 or 14 distinct groups of them in North America) have, if anything, increased over the last 20 years with only one group declining as a result of increased hunting by Inuit.
I'm pretty sure if you google "Global warming" and "polar bears" you'll get a clue that the polar bear scare is recycled with every major report on global warming, without any citation given as to the polar bear populations over time. Since polar bears are predators, they have population growths and crashes as their prey do. It has nothing to do with global warming or anything like it.
The myth is that climate itself, like polar bear populations, is supposed to be stable. It never has been and never will be.
They may have made the Dustbowl worse, but the temperatures were not caused by the Dustbowl. All the way to the Arctic the temperatures of the late 1930s were the highest of the 20th Century.
I think you're confusing cause and effect.
Apparently you don't know what scholarship is either.
Even if your first standard were accepted, this wouldn't make wikipedia fail, since most of those people choosing not to be associated with Wikipedia would not mean that the people involved in Wikipedia did not contain the requisite number from the remainder of that group to meet the standard.
Let me translate that from bullshit into English:
Wikipedia is not a failure so long as there are idiots willing to edit it, regardless of the quality of the writing, the ability of the editors to write grammatically, or more generally on the grounds of ignorance. Since there are always more ignorant people than there are knowledgeable, there will always be a consensus
How about this for familiarity?
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.
This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.
In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place....
Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.
- George Orwell, "1984"
[[Jimbo Wales]]
In [[November]] [[2006]], Jimbo was voted from the board by a cabal of giant [[badgers]] and [[sockpuppets]] to be replaced by the leader of the [[Transformers]]. His statement[1] to the new board consisted of threats to [[see them all in court| wikilaywer]] them out of [[existence]]. Jimbo then flounced out of the room in his customary [[pink]] [[tutu]] before planting a [[French Kiss]] on the mouth of [[Ted Haggard]]. Haggard then announced that he had only received a [[massage]] from the [[Great White Turd]]
*[This biography is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by extending it]
...mean nothing but Slashdot is forgetting history. Despite commanding market positions and unique opportunities, Novell has consistently fucked up every single time without fail. Most of their managers can't scratch their own arses without two mirrors and a searchlight.
Think Novell won't fuck this up again? Wrong.
I didn't say that it didn't hold a shred of truth. There are a minority of excellent articles on Wikipedia, which are just as good or better than the corresponding articles in Encyclopedia Britannica.
But the good does not justify the bad, nor does Wikimedia's indifference to very obvious manipulation, deceit and lies by some editors and especially some admins. Taken as a whole, Wikipedia is a deception and a dnagerous deception at that.
"scholarship" is not the same thing as "original research". Review and collection of existing research is scholarship, and not WP:OR, and is exactly what the purpose of any encyclopedia, including Wikipedia, is.
No. Review and collection of existing research BY KNOWN SCHOLARS is research. Wikipedia falls at the first hurdle because most scholars, academics and experts refuse to have anything to do with Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It's a shoot-em-up game of human history, played on an immense weblog.
The difference is that the Library of Alexandria contained knowledge, facts and scholarship from learned people. Wikipedia contains second, third or fourth hand facts, half-truths, quarter truths and out-and-out lies.
Wikipedia is not a repository of learning or human knowledge - it's a Marxist propagandist's wet dream, and its incredible to me how many Slashdotters can blithely tell us that Wikipedia can be compared to real scholarship, when its not allowed to have any scholarship - it's called WP:OR in Wikispeak.
Oh and the other thing Wikipedia has lots of: plagiarism
Now we can play our regular game on slashdot: Censorship by the mob.
Mild agreement that Wikipedia is basically OK +5 interesting
Strong agreement that Wikipedia is basically sound and scholars should join +5 informative
Criticism of Wikipedia in any form -10 Troll
Informed criticism of Wikipedia's lack of scholarship -25 offtopic
Detailed criticism of above plus abusive admins, arcane rulesets, Marxist philosophy and endless fancruft -1000 Burn in Hell
Get 'em while they're hot.
Funnily enough, the Republicans don't appear to think the Democrats are in the same Party as themselves. The rest of your rant is standard Conspiracy Theory (especially about Waco) with a dash of loony "we-must-have-assault-weapons-at-all-costs"
It's what happens when you have a one-party state, or as the Republicans called it a "clean sweep".
Mild agreement that Wikipedia is basically OK +5 interesting
Strong agreement that Wikipedia is basically sound and scholars should join +5 informative
Criticism of Wikipedia in any form -10 Troll
Informed criticism of Wikipedia's lack of scholarship -25 offtopic
Detailed criticism of above plus abusive admins, arcane rulesets, Marxist philosophy and endless fancruft -1000 Burn in Hell
Get 'em while they're hot.
...you're all completely jealous.
So am I.
From the article:
First you need to carve a wax model of the ring. I use green Ferris jeweler's wax- it's available from jeweler tool supply shops
OK. Without using Google, how many people know of any jeweler tool supply shops? I must have missed this one....
FUCK YOU.
1. Stratospheric ozone has nothing whatsoever to do with tropospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone is formed by cosmic rays hitting oxygen molecules and forming O3 molecules.
2. CFCs have nothing whatsoever to do with stratospheric ozone. Even though a Nobel Prize was given for the supposed link between CFCs and ozone depletion, no-one has ever explained how CFC molecules which are much heavier than air, can rise up in the stratosphere, travel all of the way to Antarctica before being broken down into chlorine and fluorine and reacting the O3
3. The real reasons why ozone is depleted is
a) the temperature above Antarctica has fallen in the last fifty years (and not a single climate model predicted that one) and in the ice clouds that form high in the stratosphere in the early Antarctic spring the temperature drops below -80C. Chlorine in the ice reacts with the ozone.
b) the solar cycle is heading towards a minimum. This decreases the magnetic field, increasing the ozone but also increases production of chlorine.
Bingo! An ozone hole forms over the Antarctica - an entirely natural phenomenon.
Even more bingo! Some eco-warrior claims it must be caused by mankind. Ergo the extremely safe stable CFCs are replaced with [benzene is wrong] butane, thus turning your refrigerator into a potential BOMB.
Or did I miss something? Weren't we supposed to have solved the ozone problem?
Actually I have studied fluid dynamics in a rotating frame - I studied oceanography and physics.
Now answer the question.
It's interesting that I get called a troll for something that is a very current debate in the field of atmospheric chemistry.
I'd say you need to take a ten-year break from posting on Slashdot to grow up some more. Come back when your balls have dropped.
"The Science is settled".
I've got news for you. Science is never settled, and certainly not by someone making the claim that such-and-such a theory is os overwhelmingly robust. Any scientific theory can be falsified by a single experiment, which is the fundamental principle of scientific inquiry that a theory be falsifiable.
Since chlorine atoms don't come stamped with "I was once part of a CFC" this makes it difficult to falsify in the scientific sense.
Google is your friend as well. Unfortunately Google tells it like it is - the Internet is full of crap.
They don't mix that well between the stratosphere and the troposphere is the straight answer. The bigger problem is the one you avoid: how to get CFCs into the stratosphere when they're so heavy and then down to Antartica.
During the winter a polar vortex forms which keeps moisture and warmth away from the stratosphere, stopping practically all mixing. So how do the CFCs stick around long enough to get broken down in the middle of winter and what keeps them aloft?
You quoted Wikipedia, the weblog that anyone can edit, just so long as they agree with the admins.
Could you at least try a reliable source? Or even try to answer the questions?
Maybe not, but they're there. All the same tools that tell us whats in other planets' atmospheres works equally well on our own. Further more, as surprising as it may be, if you lay down on the ground, you're not likely to asphyxiate unless someone dumps a sufficient amount of a heavy gas right next to you, since the atmosphere mixes up rather easily. As for how they move, I'm going to suggest things like the Jet Stream for moving them around the planet, and equatorial heating to carry CFCs into the upper atmosphere and down towards the pole.
An active imagination is a wonderful thing.
1. CFCs are not found in the stratosphere any where on the planet, they're simply too heavy. Chlorine is. The most obvious source would be from volcanoes. By the by, Antarctica has its own source of chlorine called Mount Erebus.
2. Laying on the ground won't kill you, thats true, there is some mixing. But how a heavy molecule gets up into the stratosphere and travels all the way from (usually) the Northern Hemisphere to the South Pole is not simply a difficult problem, but completely impossible.
3. The Jet Stream doesn't go anywhere near the Equator, and even if it did, there's no mechanism to keep CFCs aloft all the way to Antarctica.
Could it possibly be that the Cl in your ice is the same Cl in CFCs?
Very, very , very unlikely. What about from salt carries high into the atmosphere and then broken down by a decent sized cosmic particle? Erm. Didn't want to consider alternatives did you?
In any case, there are more plausible ways to get chlorine into the stratosphere than by CFCs.
Oh, and you missed the final bit: if CFCs have been legislated away by the Montreal Protocol then why, ten years after we thought the problem licked, does a massive ozone hole appear over Antarctica?
1. Stratospheric ozone has nothing whatsoever to do with tropospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone is formed by cosmic rays hitting oxygen molecules and forming O3 molecules.
2. CFCs have nothing whatsoever to do with stratospheric ozone. Even though a Nobel Prize was given for the supposed link between CFCs and ozone depletion, no-one has ever explained how CFC molecules which are much heavier than air, can rise up in the stratosphere, travel all of the way to Antarctica before being broken down into chlorine and fluorine and reacting the O3
3. The real reasons why ozone is depleted is
a) the temperature above Antarctica has fallen in the last fifty years (and not a single climate model predicted that one) and in the ice clouds that form high in the stratosphere in the early Antarctic spring the temperature drops below -80C. Chlorine in the ice reacts with the ozone.
b) the solar cycle is heading towards a minimum. This decreases the magnetic field, increasing the ozone but also increases production of chlorine.
Bingo! An ozone hole forms over the Antarctica - an entirely natural phenomenon.
Even more bingo! Some eco-warrior claims it must be caused by mankind. Ergo the extremely safe stable CFCs are replaced with benzene, thus turning your refrigerator into a potential BOMB.
Or did I miss something? Weren't we supposed to have solved the ozone problem?
Somebody tell Jimbo Wales!