Just discovered the comic this monday. And it's on slashdot on friday. I must be the centre of the universe.
I strongly recommend anyone to go read it - it is indeed highly funny. I don't know if this qualifies as 'news for nerds', let alone 'stuff that matters', though. After all, this is really going to be interesting to a small subset of the webcomics audience, which is itself only a pretty small group.
In particular the whooshing noise they make as they cruise past.
Betcha the governments of the world will leave it till the last possible moment, to a crappy rocket built to obselete specifications by the lowest bidder.
Nah. Articles like this are essentially crying: "Give us more funding so we can put better detectors into place so that we can give you a better answer."
1. Hate liberals. 2. 'Win' elections. 3. Hate gays. 4. Hate blacks/asians/ 5. Hate women. 6. Hate the poor. 7. Hate facts. (when they get in the way) 8. Hate science. 9. Hate freedom. 10. Hate individuality and dissent in general. 11. Hate sex. 12. Love to send the military to needless deaths. 13. Hate peace. 14. Hate the environment.... 999. Hate love. 1000. Love hate. 1001. Love sweeping overgeneralisations.
Behe said he had come up with his own "broader" definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. "The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it," he says.
Rothschild suggested that Behe's definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe's definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS's definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.
The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.
ID isn't about encouraging challenging the conventional wisdom. It's about diving back to the conventional wisdom of centuries ago which has been conclusively superseded. And worse, a structure of learning that allows ID is simply unworkable, because it would accept astrology and other such ideas and thus prevent further questioning and investigation. The whole point of using the nebulous concept of 'intelligence' in ID is that it is a conventional wisdom that cannot be skeptically addressed or challenged, because no one has any idea what it means.
In theory, the guy with access to the server on-off switch always has supreme authority. The question is: Is Jimbo likely to abuse the power? What would be the consequences of that?
1. No.
2. People will just fork and work on a mirror - Jimbo is legally constrained to allow this, because of the licensing agreement that is implicit in each and every edit.
Wikipedia says that some pictures are public domain and other have been released by the publisher just for use by Wikipedia. It does not indicate which rights apply to which picture and so we are left with their conclusion that copying is at your own risk.
Copyrighting is pretty much one of the most annoying things with Wikipedia. *Most* media should be tagged on upload with an appropiate license information. So if you click on it, it should tell you what terms it is available for use on. Some, though - especially some of the earlier images - have not been tagged, and it's a bit of a chore to hunt them down.
In general, the policy is that if it is safe for use on wikipedia, it should be safe to use on a mirror.
I doubt article size can/should grow indefinitely. The preferred approach is always to split up larger articles into subpages, if there is enough material.
SETI is not a scientific idea. Not in the same sense as ID claims to be.
SETI's program is just that - a search. In no way does it attempt to explain anything, or attempts to deduce something based on an assumption of existence of extraterrestrial life. In many ways, SETI is really a religion, it's only advantage being that unlike religion - and ID in particular, it has a well-defined and empirically meaningful notion of what it's looking for, and so a reasonable method of looking for it.
When a SETI proponent says he believes there is ET out there, he is making a statement of faith, not giving a scientific statement. There is nothing in this that is wrong or conflicts with the scientific method - until he does what ID does and say that the existence of the unfalsifiable thing is the reason for life, the universe or whatever.
Other universes, meanwhile, is hoped by its proponents to be a simple case of not-yet-falsifiable. Already, there are some ideas emerging of a way to differentiate the idea from the other interpretations, and the hope is that once these become rigorous and the funding appears, we would be able to confirm or finally deny things. Unlike in ID, where the idea is *specifically constructed* to be as vague as possible.
In the end, it is at times absolutely necessary that complete strangers can contact us without prior warning. If we don't have email for this role, then we need something similar to replace it.
Besides, it doesn't appear terribly scary. Charging road tax according to how much one uses roads seems fairy reasonable - heavy road users will be worse off, of course, but those who only take the occassional trip will be better off. It might also encourage car sharing schemes etc. I also really don't see how they would be able to keep track of who is in the cars.
And what's wrong with recording speeding offenses automatically? It might teach people to actually respect speed limits more, instead of the silly business of hitting the brakes whenever cameras appear. The British government does not hate the car nearly enough. That's why our public transport system is in such trouble, and road congestion is so problematic.
This is ridiculous, though, because we actually have a theoretical substructure for the CO2 claim. There is no plausible reason why lightbulbs can cause it, because that would break the laws of physics. We have a set of predictions that have been made, and have been verified time and time again. It is not saying that correlation implies causation. It's saying that we've made a theory based on proven physical principles, we've made predictions based on that theory, and those predictions have been verified.
That's the definition of a scientific proof. Your position is unreasonable because it is unfalsifiable. From your arguments, it would never be possible to prove anything. Of course science is not 100% certain. But GW is damn good, and there is nothing out there that remotely matches it.
'Antartic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response' Nature 415: 517-20
"Side-looking radar measurements show West Antartic ice is increasing at 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6000 years"
This is predicted by climate change models. The cause is precipitation - increase in ocean temperature puts moisture into the air, which comes down as snow at the central regions of the poles. Meanwhile, the edges of the polar ice masses melt.
"Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years."
Is that from 1996? Post 1999, it emerged that the satellite data were making systematic errors. After correcting those errors, the measurements now support GW. As for ground, see above.
"During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today."
"Less Antartic ice has melted today than occured furing the last interglacial"
But the onset of those temperatures was much, much slower than now. That's why global warming is so alarming. We're going to get the added temperature from the interglacials on top of the unrelated human caused changes,
The Sahara has shrunk since 1980
Title - plants reclaim the desert. Why? Perhaps the plants are better adapted to desert enivironments. Perhaps global warming has increased local humidity. Sahara expansion is more complicated than just a matter of global warming effects.
Note that *none* of the above have concluded that global warming is contradicted. They just sound like they contradict global warming, when what is happening is precisely what one would expect.
This is gibberish. Has the sun gotten brighter suddenly? Has it gotten closer suddenly? There is no evidence of that. It's not CAUSING global warming, because it isn't changing nearly enough. Saying that a sun exists is not enough. How the hell is parent being informative?
Nah.
While, it is an interesting hypothesis, it predicts that global temperature anamolies will be closely correlated with magnetic anomalies. But looking at the data, we don't have that. Ergo, this isn't the cause we are looking for.
We have no influence over the planet? Are you kidding?
Stuff we've done: 1. Created hole in ozone layer. 2. Drained the netherlands. 3. Generated the great dust cloud covering china. 4. Increased global radiation levels by a bit due to one accident. 5. Created urban micro-weather phenomena. 6. Caused the extinction of thousands of species. 7. Facilitated the introduction of several species to new habitats, dramatically destablising the native biosphere. 8. Shrunk the world's rainforests by over 50% since 1950. 9. Increased gobal carbon dioxide levels by at least 27%. 10. Cultivated 11% of Earth's total land surface..... And so on...
Slashdot Mirror
Just discovered the comic this monday. And it's on slashdot on friday. I must be the centre of the universe.
I strongly recommend anyone to go read it - it is indeed highly funny. I don't know if this qualifies as 'news for nerds', let alone 'stuff that matters', though. After all, this is really going to be interesting to a small subset of the webcomics audience, which is itself only a pretty small group.
In particular the whooshing noise they make as they cruise past.
Betcha the governments of the world will leave it till the last possible moment, to a crappy rocket built to obselete specifications by the lowest bidder.
Articles like this are essentially crying "wolf!"
Nah. Articles like this are essentially crying: "Give us more funding so we can put better detectors into place so that we can give you a better answer."
It's simple really. Someone's flooding the place with bad bill proposals, in the hope that at least one will get through....
The right's priorities:
...
1. Hate liberals.
2. 'Win' elections.
3. Hate gays.
4. Hate blacks/asians/
5. Hate women.
6. Hate the poor.
7. Hate facts. (when they get in the way)
8. Hate science.
9. Hate freedom.
10. Hate individuality and dissent in general.
11. Hate sex.
12. Love to send the military to needless deaths.
13. Hate peace.
14. Hate the environment.
999. Hate love.
1000. Love hate.
1001. Love sweeping overgeneralisations.
I am confused... in what way would "structure of learning that allows ID" require astrology to be accepted?
Astrology was one of the specific things mentioned by Behe during the Dover trial.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8178
Behe said he had come up with his own "broader" definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. "The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it," he says.
Rothschild suggested that Behe's definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe's definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS's definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.
The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.
ID isn't about encouraging challenging the conventional wisdom. It's about diving back to the conventional wisdom of centuries ago which has been conclusively superseded. And worse, a structure of learning that allows ID is simply unworkable, because it would accept astrology and other such ideas and thus prevent further questioning and investigation. The whole point of using the nebulous concept of 'intelligence' in ID is that it is a conventional wisdom that cannot be skeptically addressed or challenged, because no one has any idea what it means.
Can anyone tell me what the article is talking about? Tried reading it, but I just don't understand...
Why does this remind me of the monologues you get before videogame boss battles? Almost spent a moment there looking for my rocket launcher....
Well, so what?
In theory, the guy with access to the server on-off switch always has supreme authority. The question is: Is Jimbo likely to abuse the power? What would be the consequences of that?
1. No.
2. People will just fork and work on a mirror - Jimbo is legally constrained to allow this, because of the licensing agreement that is implicit in each and every edit.
Wikipedia says that some pictures are public domain and other have been released by the publisher just for use by Wikipedia. It does not indicate which rights apply to which picture and so we are left with their conclusion that copying is at your own risk.
Copyrighting is pretty much one of the most annoying things with Wikipedia. *Most* media should be tagged on upload with an appropiate license information. So if you click on it, it should tell you what terms it is available for use on. Some, though - especially some of the earlier images - have not been tagged, and it's a bit of a chore to hunt them down.
In general, the policy is that if it is safe for use on wikipedia, it should be safe to use on a mirror.
I doubt article size can/should grow indefinitely. The preferred approach is always to split up larger articles into subpages, if there is enough material.
SETI is not a scientific idea. Not in the same sense as ID claims to be.
SETI's program is just that - a search. In no way does it attempt to explain anything, or attempts to deduce something based on an assumption of existence of extraterrestrial life. In many ways, SETI is really a religion, it's only advantage being that unlike religion - and ID in particular, it has a well-defined and empirically meaningful notion of what it's looking for, and so a reasonable method of looking for it.
When a SETI proponent says he believes there is ET out there, he is making a statement of faith, not giving a scientific statement. There is nothing in this that is wrong or conflicts with the scientific method - until he does what ID does and say that the existence of the unfalsifiable thing is the reason for life, the universe or whatever.
Other universes, meanwhile, is hoped by its proponents to be a simple case of not-yet-falsifiable. Already, there are some ideas emerging of a way to differentiate the idea from the other interpretations, and the hope is that once these become rigorous and the funding appears, we would be able to confirm or finally deny things. Unlike in ID, where the idea is *specifically constructed* to be as vague as possible.
If we default-deny email, what do we have left?
In the end, it is at times absolutely necessary that complete strangers can contact us without prior warning. If we don't have email for this role, then we need something similar to replace it.
Not quite the same as tanks, though.
I'm picking number 3. In most of my Firefox installs, I don't experience a memory leak problem. Perhaps a platform specific problem?
Besides, it doesn't appear terribly scary. Charging road tax according to how much one uses roads seems fairy reasonable - heavy road users will be worse off, of course, but those who only take the occassional trip will be better off. It might also encourage car sharing schemes etc. I also really don't see how they would be able to keep track of who is in the cars.
And what's wrong with recording speeding offenses automatically? It might teach people to actually respect speed limits more, instead of the silly business of hitting the brakes whenever cameras appear. The British government does not hate the car nearly enough. That's why our public transport system is in such trouble, and road congestion is so problematic.
If anything, Christianity is more like Linux:
So when will it be ready for the desktop?
[Extremely angry rebuttal]
[Questions about #2's intellect]
Hell, there isn't even a letter 'F'.
Google announces improved spam filtering for GMail.
This is ridiculous, though, because we actually have a theoretical substructure for the CO2 claim. There is no plausible reason why lightbulbs can cause it, because that would break the laws of physics. We have a set of predictions that have been made, and have been verified time and time again. It is not saying that correlation implies causation. It's saying that we've made a theory based on proven physical principles, we've made predictions based on that theory, and those predictions have been verified.
That's the definition of a scientific proof. Your position is unreasonable because it is unfalsifiable. From your arguments, it would never be possible to prove anything. Of course science is not 100% certain. But GW is damn good, and there is nothing out there that remotely matches it.
Let's tackle this one by one.
'Antartic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response' Nature 415: 517-20
"Side-looking radar measurements show West Antartic ice is increasing at 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6000 years"
This is predicted by climate change models. The cause is precipitation - increase in ocean temperature puts moisture into the air, which comes down as snow at the central regions of the poles. Meanwhile, the edges of the polar ice masses melt.
"Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years."
Is that from 1996? Post 1999, it emerged that the satellite data were making systematic errors. After correcting those errors, the measurements now support GW. As for ground, see above.
"During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today."
"Less Antartic ice has melted today than occured furing the last interglacial"
But the onset of those temperatures was much, much slower than now. That's why global warming is so alarming. We're going to get the added temperature from the interglacials on top of the unrelated human caused changes,
The Sahara has shrunk since 1980
Title - plants reclaim the desert. Why? Perhaps the plants are better adapted to desert enivironments. Perhaps global warming has increased local humidity. Sahara expansion is more complicated than just a matter of global warming effects.
Note that *none* of the above have concluded that global warming is contradicted. They just sound like they contradict global warming, when what is happening is precisely what one would expect.
This is gibberish. Has the sun gotten brighter suddenly? Has it gotten closer suddenly? There is no evidence of that. It's not CAUSING global warming, because it isn't changing nearly enough. Saying that a sun exists is not enough. How the hell is parent being informative?
Nah. While, it is an interesting hypothesis, it predicts that global temperature anamolies will be closely correlated with magnetic anomalies. But looking at the data, we don't have that. Ergo, this isn't the cause we are looking for.
We have no influence over the planet? Are you kidding?
.... And so on...
Stuff we've done:
1. Created hole in ozone layer.
2. Drained the netherlands.
3. Generated the great dust cloud covering china.
4. Increased global radiation levels by a bit due to one accident.
5. Created urban micro-weather phenomena.
6. Caused the extinction of thousands of species.
7. Facilitated the introduction of several species to new habitats, dramatically destablising the native biosphere.
8. Shrunk the world's rainforests by over 50% since 1950.
9. Increased gobal carbon dioxide levels by at least 27%.
10. Cultivated 11% of Earth's total land surface.
And you are telling me that these don't matter?