I agree with you entirely, rational debate about the facts and their support is entirely subsumed by the factional rivalry. But, there is a great and similar split in the followers of String Theory - those that assume it to be the only and obvious explanation of the world vs. those that don't even consider it science. The only difference is that because ST doesn't touch upon public policy there is a larger third community - those who don't care.
I think that fundamentally the difficulty with the AGM debate is that it is very hard (i.e. impossible) to separate the policy issues from the science issues.
Surely, when the UK has a population of around 65 million, and China has a population of around 1400 million it makes a difference. We are talking about influencing government policy. So, we spend a huge effort changing UK policy, and at most we can effect a reduction in an output of:
7.7t * 65m = 500.5 million t... while at the same time China is outputing:
7t * 1400m = 9800 million t.
The entire UK output is 5% of China's. If the UK can reduce its output by 20% (hugely unlikely, as just holding steady seems impossible to do), while the Chinese increase theirs by just 1% then the two effects cancel out (to some rounding error that I can't be arsed to calculate).
Focusing on those countries who are both raising their output the most and also have the largest populations (hello too India) seems perfectly sensible.
Historically calculating the date of Easter was a hugely difficult and complicated task for medieval scholastic monks - one that involved a huge amount of time and controversy.
"but go back to our grandfather's days and you would find social responsibility (which was hard fought for, during the union days). companies DID care and they DID shoulder the burden during hard times, because they saw value in the INVESTMENT in their work force! it was common for people to work at the same company for 20, 30 even 40 years!
find anyone like that today. I dare you. if you find someone working 20 yrs at the same place, its extremely rare."
It works both ways though. Most companies know that a great majority of their workforce will leave for a better job if they have the opportunity to do so. It is rare for people to spend 20 years at the place even when they have the chance.
Employers might not have much long term loyalty but neither do employees - I'm not sure in which direction (if any) the causality works.
"HP puts 185 watt power supplies and changes the freaking components on the fly to save $.005 based on market conditions on the same model. So you can ahve +32 different combinations of the the HP 8500???! Sucks when you create an image as I never know which site at work has which HP 8500. They all ahve different hardware which is most likely defective."
But your company bought them, presumably in part because they where a good value purchase, which shows that there was a demand for such a range of products.
Your company could have chosen not to buy them and to buy something else instead, which if done in large enough numbers would cause HP to change its offering.
The Huns is a good proximate cause, but of course had the same situation occurred two hundred years earlier the Romans would have easily seen the Vandals off. A deeper explanation is needed as to why the Romans couldn't defend themselves against a simple Germanic barbarian tribe on the run.
The lead thing doesn't make any sense as a reason. They used lead for hundreds and hundreds of years, so why weren't Pompey and Augustus and Cicero, etc. mental from lead poisoning too? How did they manage 3 centuries of inspired imperial growth if they were all suffering from debilitating lead poisoning? Why did it only affect the later imperial period?
Also, how come it didn't affect the eastern empire, latterly the Byzantine empire, which used the same infrastructure as the western empire?
The only difference being that the US Gov will only accept taxes in US dollars, which means that along with being worth what people think they are worth, they are also worth your tax liability.
Bitcoin is only worth what people trading it think it is worth.
The Nile delta, back in the Egyptian old and middle kingdoms, was lush and green and almost tropical. This was around 2000 - 3000 BC.
Greenland is called Greenland because when it was found it was, well, green (possibly as early as 900AD ish if you believe that the Vvikings discovered it - I'm not so sure of the details here).
I'm in the UK and I earn about 50% above the median average income here. I pay around 35 - 40% tax, when you factor in local council taxes as well as income tax and national insurance.
I'm interested in knowing what the typical US middle income tax hit is, when factoring in all levels of taxation (sales tax not being counted). Any one able to give me an idea? I only ever hear about federal taxes when I read newspaper here in England.
Also, the talk from AC above about municipal bonds confuses me - I thought that sates and city level governments weren't allowed to run deficits in the USA, so how can they issue bonds? (Is a bond issue not just a form of deficit spending?).
(I'm not disputing the facts, I just think I don't understand the details and want some help).
To be fair, special relativity rules out travel faster than light, since it would lead to the travelling object having more than infinite mass and having a more than infinite time dilation.
But it doesn't rule out instantaneous movement, since this doesn't really involve any motion - in the EPR paradox example, is anything moving at all, relative or otherwise, when the spins are measured?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you entirely, rational debate about the facts and their support is entirely subsumed by the factional rivalry. But, there is a great and similar split in the followers of String Theory - those that assume it to be the only and obvious explanation of the world vs. those that don't even consider it science. The only difference is that because ST doesn't touch upon public policy there is a larger third community - those who don't care.
I think that fundamentally the difficulty with the AGM debate is that it is very hard (i.e. impossible) to separate the policy issues from the science issues.
Surely, when the UK has a population of around 65 million, and China has a population of around 1400 million it makes a difference. We are talking about influencing government policy. So, we spend a huge effort changing UK policy, and at most we can effect a reduction in an output of:
7.7t * 65m = 500.5 million t ... while at the same time China is outputing:
7t * 1400m = 9800 million t.
The entire UK output is 5% of China's. If the UK can reduce its output by 20% (hugely unlikely, as just holding steady seems impossible to do), while the Chinese increase theirs by just 1% then the two effects cancel out (to some rounding error that I can't be arsed to calculate).
Focusing on those countries who are both raising their output the most and also have the largest populations (hello too India) seems perfectly sensible.
I assume it is an ironic joke.
Historically calculating the date of Easter was a hugely difficult and complicated task for medieval scholastic monks - one that involved a huge amount of time and controversy.
"It's probably the most fucked up thing I've ever seen approved by HR to put up on the wall in an Engineering Department."
Why?
Would an opposite reaction to inertia mean that an object becomes easier to accelerate the more massive it becomes?
Out of interest, if there were pair creation events of involving particles of negative mass/gravity how would we detect them?
I'm not being critical, I'm curious - how would a particle accelerator, or a bubble chamber or whatever, look different with a negative mass particle?
Technically known as a "false syllogism".
I've just modded the parent binarylarry +1 funny, and modded you down -1 off topic.
Then I posted this message, nullifying both of them.
Which I think brings balance back to the universe.
"but go back to our grandfather's days and you would find social responsibility (which was hard fought for, during the union days). companies DID care and they DID shoulder the burden during hard times, because they saw value in the INVESTMENT in their work force! it was common for people to work at the same company for 20, 30 even 40 years!
find anyone like that today. I dare you. if you find someone working 20 yrs at the same place, its extremely rare."
It works both ways though. Most companies know that a great majority of their workforce will leave for a better job if they have the opportunity to do so. It is rare for people to spend 20 years at the place even when they have the chance.
Employers might not have much long term loyalty but neither do employees - I'm not sure in which direction (if any) the causality works.
"HP puts 185 watt power supplies and changes the freaking components on the fly to save $.005 based on market conditions on the same model. So you can ahve +32 different combinations of the the HP 8500???! Sucks when you create an image as I never know which site at work has which HP 8500. They all ahve different hardware which is most likely defective."
But your company bought them, presumably in part because they where a good value purchase, which shows that there was a demand for such a range of products.
Your company could have chosen not to buy them and to buy something else instead, which if done in large enough numbers would cause HP to change its offering.
The Huns is a good proximate cause, but of course had the same situation occurred two hundred years earlier the Romans would have easily seen the Vandals off. A deeper explanation is needed as to why the Romans couldn't defend themselves against a simple Germanic barbarian tribe on the run.
The lead thing doesn't make any sense as a reason. They used lead for hundreds and hundreds of years, so why weren't Pompey and Augustus and Cicero, etc. mental from lead poisoning too? How did they manage 3 centuries of inspired imperial growth if they were all suffering from debilitating lead poisoning? Why did it only affect the later imperial period?
Also, how come it didn't affect the eastern empire, latterly the Byzantine empire, which used the same infrastructure as the western empire?
You've described price stability, not value.
The only difference being that the US Gov will only accept taxes in US dollars, which means that along with being worth what people think they are worth, they are also worth your tax liability.
Bitcoin is only worth what people trading it think it is worth.
Only if the company chooses to pay a dividend, which is by no means certain.
I'm British and I always pronounce it as 'leebrer' or 'leebra'.
You've found a couple of websites that you think are clever and in your eagerness to use them you have managed to get both points completely wrong.
The Nile delta, back in the Egyptian old and middle kingdoms, was lush and green and almost tropical. This was around 2000 - 3000 BC.
Greenland is called Greenland because when it was found it was, well, green (possibly as early as 900AD ish if you believe that the Vvikings discovered it - I'm not so sure of the details here).
Whereas it should of course be fewer_crabs()
I thought that the third letter of the alphabet was Gamma? I guess I haven't kept up with current trends.
I'm in the UK and I earn about 50% above the median average income here. I pay around 35 - 40% tax, when you factor in local council taxes as well as income tax and national insurance.
I'm interested in knowing what the typical US middle income tax hit is, when factoring in all levels of taxation (sales tax not being counted). Any one able to give me an idea? I only ever hear about federal taxes when I read newspaper here in England.
Also, the talk from AC above about municipal bonds confuses me - I thought that sates and city level governments weren't allowed to run deficits in the USA, so how can they issue bonds? (Is a bond issue not just a form of deficit spending?).
(I'm not disputing the facts, I just think I don't understand the details and want some help).
That sort of sounds like you're advocating a military coup.
It's not a subject I know much about. Can you point me in the direction off the documentary? Thanks in advance.
To be fair, special relativity rules out travel faster than light, since it would lead to the travelling object having more than infinite mass and having a more than infinite time dilation.
But it doesn't rule out instantaneous movement, since this doesn't really involve any motion - in the EPR paradox example, is anything moving at all, relative or otherwise, when the spins are measured?
How do you entangle one photon with another when at least one of those photons existed prior to the entanglement process?