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User: Watson+Ladd

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Comments · 958

  1. Re:Taking out capital ships? on New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container · · Score: 1

    Plus splitting up warheads, and radar jamming. This can get fun fast. Also popping up then smashing down on the deck would force the system to aim vertically up, which it can't do.

  2. Re:Wrong wrong wrong... on Backdoor Malware Targets Apple iPad · · Score: 0

    By making it very obvious which end is dangerous. The fact that executables cannot effectively be sandboxed is a major limitation of the Unix based operating system. All the OS does is protect users from each other. We need to move to a model where the user is protected from code he hasn't written.

  3. Re:I know that slide... on PowerPoint of Afghan War Strategy · · Score: 1

    The arrows don't come with information showing what the effect is, or how it is produced. As a result it is an incomprehensible mess. By color-coding and adding titles over regions of the infographic, important stuff is obscured.

  4. Re:Not bullet-izable on PowerPoint of Afghan War Strategy · · Score: 1

    The problem is that Powerpoint encourages a decision making process based entirely on the content of the slides, rather then an examination of the information. Going to a PowerPoint presentation leaves you with enough knowledge to be dangerous.

  5. Re:scare tactics on Narus Develops Social Media Sleuth · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So what you are saying is that because people realize that they had nothing to do with their intelligence and therefore the benefits that accrue to them from it are in some sense not deserved, they should be reeducated? Or that in a world where half a billion people starved a few years in the midst of record harvests, to say that this is wrong can only come from ignorance? Should the children of ex-Nazis not have felt guilty about living in a society run by the same people as in the 1930's and 1940's? The idea that any kind of feeling for ones fellow man is the result of ignorance, that the highest expression of man's potential is greed and gluttony should strike us as a failure to know what the highest pleasures are and as an acute failure of the moral sense.

  6. Re:Fair Tax on Why the IRS Should Automatically Fill In Returns With What It Knows · · Score: 1

    Because of deadweight loss.

  7. Re:We've had that for years in Norway on Why the IRS Should Automatically Fill In Returns With What It Knows · · Score: 1

    This is a state that got burned badly when the Nazi's came and used the records. Now they have very strict laws on how to handle it. I would not be surprised if the contingency plans include destroying every record when invaded, to make a real mess for the occupying power.

  8. Re:In a modern, globalised world on Did the US Take the Back Seat In Science In 2009? · · Score: 1

    Why wouldn't the US company make the discovery in the US and outsource the actual production to China?

  9. Re:We dissent here all the time!! on Cuba Jails US Worker Handing Out Laptops, Cellphones · · Score: 1

    He was an employee of the United States government. Working for a foreign government in the United States subjects you to a lot of restrictions also.

  10. Re:Embargo fails. on Cuba Jails US Worker Handing Out Laptops, Cellphones · · Score: 1

    Would you rather be a random Chinese citizen or a random Cuban citizen?

  11. Re:Brave New World on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 1

    Except that drugs are not created to treat "problem children". And what do you mean by "problem children"? Are we talking about children who want to go to school but happen to be Afghan girls? Children who, due to lack of regular attention and interest by parents act out to get their attention? Children who are shunted from relative to relative when their parents can't pay the rent or feed all of them, and so suffer from attachment issues? Psychological disorders have causes which are known. The way to control problem children is to avoid making children problems.

  12. Re:Confounding Variables on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So how on earth would eliminating medicare improve the quality of mental health services given to the poor?

  13. Re:Healtscare system.. on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 1

    No it would not. At least Medicare covers psychotherapy. If the insurer only covers drugs, well, that's what gets used.

  14. Re:Information outside of your expertise is danger on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 1

    So you are saying that if the US healthcare system kicked the poor out onto the streets if they had mental illness, it would be better? Ignoring that this usually happens anyways in the case of schizophrenics...

  15. Re:Information outside of your expertise is danger on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 0

    I'm sorry, but medication does nothing for mental illness. The idea that using a drug like Alprazolam to control the symptoms of a phobia is better then using therapy to permanently eliminate the phobia with no chemical dependency is simply wrong. Xanax has a place: controlling an occasional phobia that probably isn't worth the cost of psychotherapy to eliminate. But use it regularly and you are physically dependent on it. The whole idea of mental disease processes is in many cases also fundamentally questionable, given the way that mental diseases are by definition deviations from accepted behavior. Psychologists should be solving what the patient thinks are problems, not what the people around them are thinking are problems. (within boundaries: clearly a suicidal individual should be helped, and if that takes Prozac to accomplish as a bridge, then that's fine) The difficult case is schizophrenia: easy to find, but the patient doesn't think they have a problem. Solution: deal with the issues that they have, like being unable to work. But then you look at things like bogus diagnoses of bipolar disorder in normal teenagers and wonder who the hell forgot that unless the patient says they have a problem, they probably don't.

  16. Re:Perhaps on Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics · · Score: 1

    If everyone had the same environment then all variation would be genetic. I would argue the psychological effects of growing up in a dangerous neighborhood with barely enough food, moving from relative to relative, and being viewed as a failure by the rest of society would have a rather large negative effect.

  17. Re:Open source on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Congratulations! You just discovered that the sphere is a PITA to smooth over with data in Lat-Long format.

  18. Re:What on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Science will never deliver answers on the meaning of life, how man should live morally, what justice is, etc. But it will tell you how to make machines that can destroy tumors with beams of radiation, reach the moon, determine the composition of the core of the Earth, destroy diseases with literally nothing more then the root cause slightly modified. Mold society? Only because they see a threat which, if left unchecked, could launch a tide of refugees numbering in the millions, destroy the remaining coral reefs. It doesn't matter if deindustrialization, carbon taxes, or cap and trade prevent this from happening. Scientists are indifferent to the details, but want only to see this threat addressed.

  19. Re:Ummm. No. on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    That's not been true for at least 70 years. Read Lakatos to see that math is an experimental science where the theories are always tautological!

  20. Re:Math is now a science? on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    The longer you wait, the steeper the maximum decline that is required. Have you filled a bathtub lately?

  21. Re:Math is now a science? on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't a carbon tax be the preferred capitalist alternative as it takes advantage of market forces? I thought conservatives were against subsidies of specific industries.

  22. Re:Math is now a science? on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    What is not specific about the IPCC projections?

  23. Re:AGW is going to move a LOT of money around on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    So what if they just imposed a market based carbon tax?

  24. Re:Global Warming Philosophy on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Start recording temperatures in 1850, and in 1950 look at the trend. Do the same from 1950 onwards. Notice that CO2 increases IR absorption and is increasing in the atmosphere. Create a GCM and run it with and without the anthropogenic forcing. Notice which one fits the data. Download the program and the data from http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ and run it at home if you want to check. Oh, don't believe that data? Use this, or this new one. Want to check the GCM? run against paloclimate proxies, or write from first principles and do it on paper like Arrhenius did.

  25. Re:Yes, Here's Why on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Yes there is. The Skeptic clearly understands the evidence for the theory and has opposing evidence that is genuine. The Uniformed Judge makes false claims to support his point, or doesn't understand the empirical support for the theory. Suppose I am arguing that Einstein's Special Relativity is correct. I use atomic clocks to determine that Einstein's theory predicts time dilation correctly, or muon decay. The Skeptic at this point shuts up. His evidence isn't precise enough, so he now changes his mind. The Uniformed Judge then launches all kinds of irrelevant attacks.