So you're calling the social safety net "social justice"? I agree with benefit to society to have a social safety net. I don't agree with confounding the idea with that of justice. It has nothing to do with justice.
My biggest question, honestly, is why biology and related fields have had such a huge intake, but not physics or maths? Is it that maths are considered "for men"? Can it be related to neurological differences, or not? Is it more of a societal problem? Even more importantly, can we correct it?
Why is every sex difference a "problem" that needs to be "corrected"? Is it just because the fields that mostly men enter, like mathematics, are relatively highly paid? If nurses and high school teachers were paid as much as mathematicians, would we lament that more men do not go into nursing or teaching?
What really gets me is this part, quoted from a neuroscientist:
We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning.
So the brain connections men and women develop from their experiences happen to reflect the roles we tend to nudge men and women into.
Hmmm.
That's true of connections in general, but it has nothing to do with the study, which treats of the different types of connections that come about during adolescence in response to different hormonal changes. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what roles we nudge children into. It has to do with anatomy and physiology.
Also, the production of tachyons in models of quantum gravity have long been considered a reason to dismiss those models and prefer more stable ones. If tachyons prove real, then that would turn upside-down the universe of acceptable models of the universe.
Re:Loans with negative interest? I don't think so.
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Bitcoin Price Crashes
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· Score: 1
That makes no sense at all. Using constant dollars, in deflation, if the bank started with $1, and just hung on to it, at the end of a year they would have $2. Nominally, they will still have $1.
It's worth nothing that this 'price crash' was completely artificial, the result of a malicious act, and only really affects the Mt.Gox exchange site.
The price crash was not the result of maliciousness. The price crash was a result of trying to convert "$500k worth" of bitcoins into $500k in actual money. The market would not support that action. The fact that the person doing it was a thief is immaterial to the price action that resulted in trying to convert.
Your post doesn't make any sense. allinvain was an earlier adopter of bitcoin and a miner who was making 50 bitcoins a day in the early days. He had 25,000 bitcoins stolen. It is a fact that before the theft bitcoins were exchangeable at close to $20. His stash was worth far less as little as a month or two ago. There is nothing unusual about his behavior considering the circumstances.
Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency
on
Bitcoin Price Crashes
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· Score: 1
Not true. In a deflationary period, loans will simply carry a negative interest rate.
Wat? Why would a bank pay you money to borrow their money? There is no upside for them. They could just hold the money themselves, and watch it increase value, which is exactly what happens when there is deflation -- there are no loans.
By controlling the money supply through interest rates, the new money can enter the system in the form of loans. So people pay a premium for getting the new money. There's not much viable or fair alternative for distributing new money that needs to be created to increase the money supply. You certainly don't want to just give new money to Congress.
Where do you get $55 trillion from? Or $14 trillion? M2 is $9 trillion. While it's true that most of that money enters the system in the form of loans, that does NOT mean that it's value is dependent upon it being paid back. It's value is dependent on the GDP, which is the collection of goods and services which, by law, are tradable for the supply of dollars.
By $14 trillion you are maybe referring to the government's debt. That is also not what drives the value of dollars, except to the degree that new borrowing increases supply. The prospect of not repaying the debt would only affect the value of the dollar because the economic shock would reduce the GDP of the country. But the main point of confusion here is the failure to grasp that the value of the dollar is derived from the economic state of the country, not the financial state of the government.
I don't get it. Why would exoplanets be predictive for people living in this solar system. For stellar objects give us signs, I think the point is that we have to be able to see them in the sky.
Here's my question. So we know now that Western astrology uses a "sun signs" that are not based on the sun's actual relative position in the sky, but is based on the seasons, and simply NAMED after constellations. What I don't understand is this. What about the astrologers who do complicated charts involving the positions and motions of the moon and planets? Do they use the actual relative positions of the moon and planets and then combine it with a make-believe position on the sun based on it starting in Aries every spring? Or are all the astrologers who do complicated charts like that sidereal astrologers who base everything in the actual astronomy?
Some astrologers are wont to divide the astrological ages into equal 2150-year portions, despite the fact that some constellations are bigger and some are smaller. Pisces is a big one, so some astrologers have the Age of Aquarius actually coming before the sun is actually in the constellation Aquarius. Astrologers will come up with various theories for when it should start, and a bunch of them said the 20th century.
There's also the question of where to draw the boundary lines between constellations. I don't know where the gods draw them, but astronomers draw them based on a 1930 international agreement. But based on where astronomers draw them, the equinox sun won't be crossing the boundary for another 500+ years. But don't take my word for it. Here's a picture of where the sun will be for the 2011 spring equinox. Decide for yourself whether it's in Aquarius yet. The pic doesn't show the official boundaries, just the constellations themselves. http://i54.tinypic.com/zwhec.jpg
Tropical astrology divides signs into 12 equally-sized divisions, anchored at the spring and fall equinox. (Doing this just means it's not actually based on the stars, but on where the stars were 3000 years ago.) But it doesn't change based on the calendar system being used, as you suggested.
Sidereal astrology is based on the sun's place in the constellations. Why it might be arbitrary, the entire sky is divided into constellations. Astronomers identify stars by the constellation they are located in and a number. So it's not possible to be born between constellations. The sun (and all other objects) have to always be in one of them.
This isn't news to any astrologer. As the article says, this is a 2000-year-old story. This was a conscious decision made by the forebearers of Western astrology to use a tropical (seasonal) astrology instead of sidereal (astronomical) astrology. They knew what they were doing. The only question is why to keep calling it astrology if it has nothing to do with the stars. Meanwhile, Hindu and other Eastern astrology is sidereal, and has always been based on where the sun actually is in the constellations.
The most ridiculous thing I've seen in a paper article was, "So this means that we're not really in the age of Aquarius, but in the age of Capricorn". UUUUUUGH!!! The whole idea of Astrological Ages is based on the fact of the precession of the equinoxes. The astrological age is the constellation the sun is actually in at the spring equinox. Tropical astrology, which is the system that's told you what your sign is all your life if you live in Western civilization, is based on pretending that we are eternally and forever in the Age of Aries. That is, it is based on pretending that the sun always moves into Aries on March 20th. In reality, it has since left Aries, and moved through most of Pisces, and will move into Aquarius sometime around the year 2600 because of precisely the same "wobble" that makes tropical astrology wrong.
And don't try to tell me that tropical astrology isn't necessarily "wrong", because it is based on seasons and not stars. That should be an intellectually embarrassing argument even for an astrologer.
Re:Climate Scientists at RealClimate have already.
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Bastardi's Wager
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· Score: 1
So they would have won a non-existent bet? The question is whether they are going to take this actual bet or not.
Notice they don't deny any of those things; they just try to spin them. Are you aware that realclimate.org is a propaganda site run by Michael Mann, and supported by Environmental Media Services?
You're talking about if all the ice in Antarctica were to melt. For one thing, it has been almost a million years since that happened, despite some significantly warmer climates since then. For another thing, the farmland exposed in Greenland and Antarctica with the loss of their ice would make up for the farm land lost to flooding.
If you're talking about sea level rise on a scale that's ACTUALLY predicted by anyone who is an actual SCIENTIST, then you certainly can't say that it is significant compared to the flooding we survived at the end of the last ice age. We're talking about a series of meltwater pulses raising sea levels 20m in 200 years, some probably accompanied by unimaginable tsunamis as water pulses from behind ice dams circled the globe. We fortunately have nothing like that in store for us. (Unless we enter another ice age, in which case we'll have to deal with that when the ice age ends.) http://www.sustainableoregon.com/_wp_generated/wpc6784cd8_0f.jpg
I agree with you when it comes to warming. Even if we had ice melts beyond any realistic predictions, we'll have a little less surface area, but the area we have will be more productive agriculturally. But when it comes to cooling, this is not the case at all. In an ice age like the last one, North America is agriculturally useless, as is Russia and Europe. The earth will NOT support billions of people in its glaciated state. It would be able to produce neither enough food nor fresh water. Water shortages would probably be the first thing we'd notice as rivers dried up and the oceans receded. We could perhaps build portable desalination systems, but how many will we really have the resources to make, and how widely could they really be distributed? We'll end up fighting for South America, parts of Africa, and India. It's safe to say that the human race would necessarily be culled to a very small percentage of its current number, maybe to a few hundred million, which would mean around 95% dead. This is why I hope that CO2 really does cause warming on a significant scale.
Slashdot Mirror
So, whichever side you come down on this one, you're basically siding with Nazis.
So you're calling the social safety net "social justice"? I agree with benefit to society to have a social safety net. I don't agree with confounding the idea with that of justice. It has nothing to do with justice.
Except that "literally" has been used in that manner for far longer than dictionaries have existed.
My biggest question, honestly, is why biology and related fields have had such a huge intake, but not physics or maths? Is it that maths are considered "for men"? Can it be related to neurological differences, or not? Is it more of a societal problem? Even more importantly, can we correct it?
Why is every sex difference a "problem" that needs to be "corrected"? Is it just because the fields that mostly men enter, like mathematics, are relatively highly paid? If nurses and high school teachers were paid as much as mathematicians, would we lament that more men do not go into nursing or teaching?
What really gets me is this part, quoted from a neuroscientist:
We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning.
So the brain connections men and women develop from their experiences happen to reflect the roles we tend to nudge men and women into.
Hmmm.
That's true of connections in general, but it has nothing to do with the study, which treats of the different types of connections that come about during adolescence in response to different hormonal changes. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what roles we nudge children into. It has to do with anatomy and physiology.
This is a false choice. Women don't have to be interested in STEM to be interested in challenging and interesting endeavors in general.
If equality doesn't mean identicality to you, then you're at best using a highly ambiguous word to say whatever you're trying to say.
Also, the production of tachyons in models of quantum gravity have long been considered a reason to dismiss those models and prefer more stable ones. If tachyons prove real, then that would turn upside-down the universe of acceptable models of the universe.
That makes no sense at all. Using constant dollars, in deflation, if the bank started with $1, and just hung on to it, at the end of a year they would have $2. Nominally, they will still have $1.
It's worth nothing that this 'price crash' was completely artificial, the result of a malicious act, and only really affects the Mt.Gox exchange site.
The price crash was not the result of maliciousness. The price crash was a result of trying to convert "$500k worth" of bitcoins into $500k in actual money. The market would not support that action. The fact that the person doing it was a thief is immaterial to the price action that resulted in trying to convert.
Your post doesn't make any sense. allinvain was an earlier adopter of bitcoin and a miner who was making 50 bitcoins a day in the early days. He had 25,000 bitcoins stolen. It is a fact that before the theft bitcoins were exchangeable at close to $20. His stash was worth far less as little as a month or two ago. There is nothing unusual about his behavior considering the circumstances.
Not true. In a deflationary period, loans will simply carry a negative interest rate.
Wat? Why would a bank pay you money to borrow their money? There is no upside for them. They could just hold the money themselves, and watch it increase value, which is exactly what happens when there is deflation -- there are no loans.
By controlling the money supply through interest rates, the new money can enter the system in the form of loans. So people pay a premium for getting the new money. There's not much viable or fair alternative for distributing new money that needs to be created to increase the money supply. You certainly don't want to just give new money to Congress.
Where do you get $55 trillion from? Or $14 trillion? M2 is $9 trillion. While it's true that most of that money enters the system in the form of loans, that does NOT mean that it's value is dependent upon it being paid back. It's value is dependent on the GDP, which is the collection of goods and services which, by law, are tradable for the supply of dollars.
By $14 trillion you are maybe referring to the government's debt. That is also not what drives the value of dollars, except to the degree that new borrowing increases supply. The prospect of not repaying the debt would only affect the value of the dollar because the economic shock would reduce the GDP of the country. But the main point of confusion here is the failure to grasp that the value of the dollar is derived from the economic state of the country, not the financial state of the government.
I don't get it. Why would exoplanets be predictive for people living in this solar system. For stellar objects give us signs, I think the point is that we have to be able to see them in the sky.
Here's my question. So we know now that Western astrology uses a "sun signs" that are not based on the sun's actual relative position in the sky, but is based on the seasons, and simply NAMED after constellations. What I don't understand is this. What about the astrologers who do complicated charts involving the positions and motions of the moon and planets? Do they use the actual relative positions of the moon and planets and then combine it with a make-believe position on the sun based on it starting in Aries every spring? Or are all the astrologers who do complicated charts like that sidereal astrologers who base everything in the actual astronomy?
Some astrologers are wont to divide the astrological ages into equal 2150-year portions, despite the fact that some constellations are bigger and some are smaller. Pisces is a big one, so some astrologers have the Age of Aquarius actually coming before the sun is actually in the constellation Aquarius. Astrologers will come up with various theories for when it should start, and a bunch of them said the 20th century.
There's also the question of where to draw the boundary lines between constellations. I don't know where the gods draw them, but astronomers draw them based on a 1930 international agreement. But based on where astronomers draw them, the equinox sun won't be crossing the boundary for another 500+ years. But don't take my word for it. Here's a picture of where the sun will be for the 2011 spring equinox. Decide for yourself whether it's in Aquarius yet. The pic doesn't show the official boundaries, just the constellations themselves. http://i54.tinypic.com/zwhec.jpg
I happen to have paid for astrological readings many times.
I don't know what I find more troubling, that fact, or that you would have thought it wise to admit it here.
Tropical astrology divides signs into 12 equally-sized divisions, anchored at the spring and fall equinox. (Doing this just means it's not actually based on the stars, but on where the stars were 3000 years ago.) But it doesn't change based on the calendar system being used, as you suggested.
Sidereal astrology is based on the sun's place in the constellations. Why it might be arbitrary, the entire sky is divided into constellations. Astronomers identify stars by the constellation they are located in and a number. So it's not possible to be born between constellations. The sun (and all other objects) have to always be in one of them.
This isn't news to any astrologer. As the article says, this is a 2000-year-old story. This was a conscious decision made by the forebearers of Western astrology to use a tropical (seasonal) astrology instead of sidereal (astronomical) astrology. They knew what they were doing. The only question is why to keep calling it astrology if it has nothing to do with the stars. Meanwhile, Hindu and other Eastern astrology is sidereal, and has always been based on where the sun actually is in the constellations.
The most ridiculous thing I've seen in a paper article was, "So this means that we're not really in the age of Aquarius, but in the age of Capricorn". UUUUUUGH!!! The whole idea of Astrological Ages is based on the fact of the precession of the equinoxes. The astrological age is the constellation the sun is actually in at the spring equinox. Tropical astrology, which is the system that's told you what your sign is all your life if you live in Western civilization, is based on pretending that we are eternally and forever in the Age of Aries. That is, it is based on pretending that the sun always moves into Aries on March 20th. In reality, it has since left Aries, and moved through most of Pisces, and will move into Aquarius sometime around the year 2600 because of precisely the same "wobble" that makes tropical astrology wrong.
And don't try to tell me that tropical astrology isn't necessarily "wrong", because it is based on seasons and not stars. That should be an intellectually embarrassing argument even for an astrologer.
So they would have won a non-existent bet? The question is whether they are going to take this actual bet or not.
Notice they don't deny any of those things; they just try to spin them. Are you aware that realclimate.org is a propaganda site run by Michael Mann, and supported by Environmental Media Services?
You're talking about if all the ice in Antarctica were to melt. For one thing, it has been almost a million years since that happened, despite some significantly warmer climates since then. For another thing, the farmland exposed in Greenland and Antarctica with the loss of their ice would make up for the farm land lost to flooding.
If you're talking about sea level rise on a scale that's ACTUALLY predicted by anyone who is an actual SCIENTIST, then you certainly can't say that it is significant compared to the flooding we survived at the end of the last ice age. We're talking about a series of meltwater pulses raising sea levels 20m in 200 years, some probably accompanied by unimaginable tsunamis as water pulses from behind ice dams circled the globe. We fortunately have nothing like that in store for us. (Unless we enter another ice age, in which case we'll have to deal with that when the ice age ends.)
http://www.sustainableoregon.com/_wp_generated/wpc6784cd8_0f.jpg
I agree with you when it comes to warming. Even if we had ice melts beyond any realistic predictions, we'll have a little less surface area, but the area we have will be more productive agriculturally. But when it comes to cooling, this is not the case at all. In an ice age like the last one, North America is agriculturally useless, as is Russia and Europe. The earth will NOT support billions of people in its glaciated state. It would be able to produce neither enough food nor fresh water. Water shortages would probably be the first thing we'd notice as rivers dried up and the oceans receded. We could perhaps build portable desalination systems, but how many will we really have the resources to make, and how widely could they really be distributed? We'll end up fighting for South America, parts of Africa, and India. It's safe to say that the human race would necessarily be culled to a very small percentage of its current number, maybe to a few hundred million, which would mean around 95% dead. This is why I hope that CO2 really does cause warming on a significant scale.