I'm not really sure your point. Is it that he is a sociopath who feels some sort of need to force others to not "ignore" him? It really isn't clear at all.
Part of the situation of whistle-blowers is that no, they cannot be sure people will care. That is entirely besides the point, and not solved or even addressed by giving national secrets to foreign governments.
And actually no, the focus of most people is to make sure that whistle-blowers have legal protections. NOT that anybody who claims to be one gets to have a bunch of "effective" changes made to placate them. That would be highly anti-democratic. I want to elect leaders, not have some game of whistle-merit where your favorite whistle-blower gets to choose the laws.
Well, to be fair, any foreign country is going to look that way. Just like Americans see one France, one Germany. Or these days, maybe even one Europe! And you see one USA.
If you think Kucinich and Bush look like they're from the same political party, it just means you don't know anything about them.
And if Obama is trying to make a bunch of center-left changes, and Congress is dysfunctional and little change happens, and we have enough Democracy that the President can't make changes by himself without the other elected officials, then to foreigners who mostly only the see the end result, the final policy, it might look fairly consistent over time. But that just means you don't have very much information, not that the different forces are the same.
Probably because you listen to right-wing media, and they haven't told you yet what the liberals are saying.;)
I guess if you hear "silence" from "the left" you probably assume that moderate centrists like the Clintons are "the left." LOL
The deafening silence is from the CENTER. Both ends of the spectrum are freaking out. Which makes sense, since they wrap and the crazy meets on the far side.
The moderates in Boise will be screwed, but the real nutters are concentrated up north and have a decent chance of not getting significant direct effects. Weather permitting.
San Diego, CA could get hit worse than Coeur d'Alene, ID.
Maximum thickness right at the eruption site is only 200m thick.
Also, a lot of the doom and gloom is overblown. Would it be a major life-changing event? Yes. But you can't use the biggest eruptions recently and then just scale up and "OMG." Much smaller volcanos that spew the right (eg, wrong) mix of stuff high enough into the atmosphere cause huge effects, but that doesn't mean that an eruption 20x bigger will cause 20x as much stuff to stay in the atmosphere for years. It just doesn't work that way. The effects could be as you describe, or just a really bad year (outside of the ash zone, anyways)
Also, the worst of the volcanic winter would only last a decade or so. Sure, some super-volcanos in the past have cooled things for a thousand years... but there is a big difference between a measurable difference, and the immediate worst period. You certainly don't need to develop low-light crops (which is actually kinda silly anyways, if you think about energy conservation) in order to scrape by for 10 years. I could go into the mountains and drop a portable hydro generator into a stream and run a greenhouse on it, sun or no. Obviously people would die. But even eating eat other, probably 10% or more would survive 10 years. And we're probably more resourceful than that. Oil or gas rich nations (like most of the Americas) could probably even just burn that to power greenhouses and make it 20 years with no population loss... politics permitting.
Currently, one. After the eruption... you'll have to count when it happens.
The more interesting question, how many metric shitloads are we talking about?
Since 1 metric shitload = 1 Mt. Mazama, we're looking at about 20 metric shitloads (based on the eruption that created the Yellowstone Caldera), give or take ~300 giant burning mudpies (1 giant burning mudpie = 1 St Helens)
Yes, but Krakatoa is considered to be the loudest volcano in the life of the planet so far. It is an edge data-point, not a starting point to scale up from. It is already believed to have been louder than any super-valcano... ever! (on Earth) So, no.
A super-volcano isn't just a giant volcano. Different types of volcanos are different. Super-volcanos are like a giant lake of magma coming to the surface. There may or may not be localized explosions at the start of the event, before it opens wide; that depends on the amount of gas in the magma. That can range from lots of big explosions, to none at all. Once it starts to open wide into a super-volcano, the pressure is already being released. There would be a huge amount of out-gassing, but since it isn't forcing up through a narrow tube, it doesn't need to create a shock wave at all; it can just gas out like a giant boiling pot of toxic soup, blocking out the Sun.
I wouldn't write too much into a wine-glass analogy.;) It probably only makes sense that way if you understand the subject. Nobody watching is likely to say it happened like a champagne bottle, or beach ball underwater.
The wind mostly blows from the west, to the east. The west coast has less danger from Yellowstone, even if it is closer.
That said, the effects would be global. We're almost a full planet-circumference away from Yellowstone, but we might still be screwed.
I'm more worried about what sort of definition for "external" these idiots have. Unless the trigger is from another planet, it is never external; it is the internal weather of the planet expressing itself at the surface. If there is only one planet involved, then there is only one large system of geological forces to be involved. So of course it doesn't need an external trigger; it just needs a normal Earthly super-volcano trigger.
Yeah but in the case of trees, it is dubious to even measure if they are alive or not. If I cut an apple tree off at ground level and new trunks shoot up from the same roots, people will say I killed the old tree, and clones grew to replace it. But... tell that to the living roots!
And if I cut a 2" piece of a branch off a tree, and stick it in my freezer, then cut the tree down... is it dead? What if I root the twig 20 years later? That tree wasn't dead, it was hibernating in a box.
The human perspective is so different than that of a plant, these analogies don't mean anything.
The clam is a better approach, IMO.
"The human dream Doesn't mean shit to a tree" -- Eskimo Blue Day (Slick, Kantner)
Metabolic activity is only required to keep the brain cells alive... because of other metabolic activity! This is actually a very important lesson, but more for reasons having to do with heart attacks, brain damage, and vegetative state recovery than cancer.
Niven is a great, fun author. I've read most of his works, and am a fan.
But Heinlein and Poul Anderson both explored the issue of mortality in a more broad-minded way.
Husk is NOT one of the many words used to describe a group of rabbits.
Then the forest came to life, showing its true face. Rising miles above the ground, with trees for bones and and the blood of a thousand species coursing through a heart of bear skin and cougar tails, crushing all that was opposing it. But it wasn't the legs like masts of ships, or the wolverine fingers that sent the Foobars running. It was the terrifying crust of rabbits that made up its skin.
By walking into Sen. Wyden's office with his data, instead of taking it to China and then Russia. Seems like it would actually be much less risky. Also, this whole idea that whistle-blowers are "picked up" is nonsense. If somebody was arrested for trying to deliver information about national security to a Senator with a security clearance, that would actually be a much huger story to more people than what we have.
The reason so many people don't care about the NSA actions is that so far there is no known Watergate-type of abuse of power related to it. That it sets the stage for a future dystopia straight out of sci-fi is something that mostly resonates with nerds, or other minorities that read books. That it sets up a situation where a coup would be much much harder to reverse, that just doesn't resonate with most people. Contemporary abuses of power, however, resonate with all sorts of people.
If Snowden was in jail, he'd be a hero. He's not. He's in Moscow. You can't know, I can't know, that he isn't actually a Russian spy from the beginning. We can't know.
Just sounds to me like in this case it was not an emergency, and the doctor had poor communication skills. That happens everywhere, and isn't the system's fault. If you have a hangnail and ask your doctor what is the worst case, the worst case is that it gets infected and you die.
An association fallacy is an inductive informal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion.
I don't like the CFR any more than most people, but that doesn't mean if somebody is a member of it, things they say are true or false. Each thing they say is true or false and that depends in no way whatsoever on knowing what groups they are a member of.
This is not some case where secret financial relationships are revealed, or something like that. This is just a pundit, who has a job as a pundit, including working for various groups and companies at various times.
Actually, Snowden claims to have gone through the normal channels, except the problem is, he didn't go to anybody. He claims that simply having mentioned his concerns to his boss and co-workers, and not getting any response or shared concern, means that he "tried."
He could have, for example, gone to Senator Wyden, who was publicly critical of the program, has the security clearance, is on the Intelligence Committee, and was already warning that the program was bigger than people knew.
We'll never know what Congress would have done with the truth, because they didn't find out until the same time(*) that the Russians and Chinese found out.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhm... I just showed you a map from last time it happened and... you know, they're actually still on the map. Duh.
I'm not really sure your point. Is it that he is a sociopath who feels some sort of need to force others to not "ignore" him? It really isn't clear at all.
Part of the situation of whistle-blowers is that no, they cannot be sure people will care. That is entirely besides the point, and not solved or even addressed by giving national secrets to foreign governments.
And actually no, the focus of most people is to make sure that whistle-blowers have legal protections. NOT that anybody who claims to be one gets to have a bunch of "effective" changes made to placate them. That would be highly anti-democratic. I want to elect leaders, not have some game of whistle-merit where your favorite whistle-blower gets to choose the laws.
Yep. All PR is good PR... right?
Sure, it might say we've moved beyond knee-jerk racism based on names.
By "we" I mean, Americans.
Most of my clients need to buy these things. Lots of them. So me and my friends have $ to buy some open hardware.
I'm just glad I got to live to vote for the first black President!
Long live President Clinton!
You probably want to spell it "Christ-y" to keep the y from softening the i. Especially as popular as Christie is these days.
Well, to be fair, any foreign country is going to look that way. Just like Americans see one France, one Germany. Or these days, maybe even one Europe! And you see one USA.
If you think Kucinich and Bush look like they're from the same political party, it just means you don't know anything about them.
And if Obama is trying to make a bunch of center-left changes, and Congress is dysfunctional and little change happens, and we have enough Democracy that the President can't make changes by himself without the other elected officials, then to foreigners who mostly only the see the end result, the final policy, it might look fairly consistent over time. But that just means you don't have very much information, not that the different forces are the same.
Probably because you listen to right-wing media, and they haven't told you yet what the liberals are saying. ;)
I guess if you hear "silence" from "the left" you probably assume that moderate centrists like the Clintons are "the left." LOL
The deafening silence is from the CENTER. Both ends of the spectrum are freaking out. Which makes sense, since they wrap and the crazy meets on the far side.
Allow me to paraphrase...
Herp-a-derp!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/LavaCreekTuff.jpg
The moderates in Boise will be screwed, but the real nutters are concentrated up north and have a decent chance of not getting significant direct effects. Weather permitting.
San Diego, CA could get hit worse than Coeur d'Alene, ID.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/LavaCreekTuff.jpg Show the likely extend of a Yellowstone eruption.
Maximum thickness right at the eruption site is only 200m thick.
Also, a lot of the doom and gloom is overblown. Would it be a major life-changing event? Yes. But you can't use the biggest eruptions recently and then just scale up and "OMG." Much smaller volcanos that spew the right (eg, wrong) mix of stuff high enough into the atmosphere cause huge effects, but that doesn't mean that an eruption 20x bigger will cause 20x as much stuff to stay in the atmosphere for years. It just doesn't work that way. The effects could be as you describe, or just a really bad year (outside of the ash zone, anyways)
Also, the worst of the volcanic winter would only last a decade or so. Sure, some super-volcanos in the past have cooled things for a thousand years... but there is a big difference between a measurable difference, and the immediate worst period. You certainly don't need to develop low-light crops (which is actually kinda silly anyways, if you think about energy conservation) in order to scrape by for 10 years. I could go into the mountains and drop a portable hydro generator into a stream and run a greenhouse on it, sun or no. Obviously people would die. But even eating eat other, probably 10% or more would survive 10 years. And we're probably more resourceful than that. Oil or gas rich nations (like most of the Americas) could probably even just burn that to power greenhouses and make it 20 years with no population loss... politics permitting.
How many stones in a metric shitload?
Currently, one. After the eruption... you'll have to count when it happens.
The more interesting question, how many metric shitloads are we talking about?
Since 1 metric shitload = 1 Mt. Mazama, we're looking at about 20 metric shitloads (based on the eruption that created the Yellowstone Caldera), give or take ~300 giant burning mudpies (1 giant burning mudpie = 1 St Helens)
Yes, but Krakatoa is considered to be the loudest volcano in the life of the planet so far. It is an edge data-point, not a starting point to scale up from. It is already believed to have been louder than any super-valcano... ever! (on Earth) So, no.
A super-volcano isn't just a giant volcano. Different types of volcanos are different. Super-volcanos are like a giant lake of magma coming to the surface. There may or may not be localized explosions at the start of the event, before it opens wide; that depends on the amount of gas in the magma. That can range from lots of big explosions, to none at all. Once it starts to open wide into a super-volcano, the pressure is already being released. There would be a huge amount of out-gassing, but since it isn't forcing up through a narrow tube, it doesn't need to create a shock wave at all; it can just gas out like a giant boiling pot of toxic soup, blocking out the Sun.
I wouldn't write too much into a wine-glass analogy. ;) It probably only makes sense that way if you understand the subject. Nobody watching is likely to say it happened like a champagne bottle, or beach ball underwater.
The wind mostly blows from the west, to the east. The west coast has less danger from Yellowstone, even if it is closer.
That said, the effects would be global. We're almost a full planet-circumference away from Yellowstone, but we might still be screwed.
I'm more worried about what sort of definition for "external" these idiots have. Unless the trigger is from another planet, it is never external; it is the internal weather of the planet expressing itself at the surface. If there is only one planet involved, then there is only one large system of geological forces to be involved. So of course it doesn't need an external trigger; it just needs a normal Earthly super-volcano trigger.
Yeah but in the case of trees, it is dubious to even measure if they are alive or not. If I cut an apple tree off at ground level and new trunks shoot up from the same roots, people will say I killed the old tree, and clones grew to replace it. But... tell that to the living roots!
And if I cut a 2" piece of a branch off a tree, and stick it in my freezer, then cut the tree down... is it dead? What if I root the twig 20 years later? That tree wasn't dead, it was hibernating in a box.
The human perspective is so different than that of a plant, these analogies don't mean anything.
The clam is a better approach, IMO.
"The human dream
Doesn't mean shit to a tree"
-- Eskimo Blue Day (Slick, Kantner)
I guess we'll have to wait a few thousand years and see.
Metabolic activity is only required to keep the brain cells alive... because of other metabolic activity! This is actually a very important lesson, but more for reasons having to do with heart attacks, brain damage, and vegetative state recovery than cancer.
Niven is a great, fun author. I've read most of his works, and am a fan.
But Heinlein and Poul Anderson both explored the issue of mortality in a more broad-minded way.
Husk is NOT one of the many words used to describe a group of rabbits.
Then the forest came to life, showing its true face. Rising miles above the ground, with trees for bones and and the blood of a thousand species coursing through a heart of bear skin and cougar tails, crushing all that was opposing it. But it wasn't the legs like masts of ships, or the wolverine fingers that sent the Foobars running. It was the terrifying crust of rabbits that made up its skin.
By walking into Sen. Wyden's office with his data, instead of taking it to China and then Russia. Seems like it would actually be much less risky. Also, this whole idea that whistle-blowers are "picked up" is nonsense. If somebody was arrested for trying to deliver information about national security to a Senator with a security clearance, that would actually be a much huger story to more people than what we have.
The reason so many people don't care about the NSA actions is that so far there is no known Watergate-type of abuse of power related to it. That it sets the stage for a future dystopia straight out of sci-fi is something that mostly resonates with nerds, or other minorities that read books. That it sets up a situation where a coup would be much much harder to reverse, that just doesn't resonate with most people. Contemporary abuses of power, however, resonate with all sorts of people.
If Snowden was in jail, he'd be a hero. He's not. He's in Moscow. You can't know, I can't know, that he isn't actually a Russian spy from the beginning. We can't know.
Just sounds to me like in this case it was not an emergency, and the doctor had poor communication skills. That happens everywhere, and isn't the system's fault. If you have a hangnail and ask your doctor what is the worst case, the worst case is that it gets infected and you die.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-03-2012/myths-canada-health-care.html
You're making a logical fallacy, and then when it is pointed out, you're trying to defend it by slander and dismissal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
I don't like the CFR any more than most people, but that doesn't mean if somebody is a member of it, things they say are true or false. Each thing they say is true or false and that depends in no way whatsoever on knowing what groups they are a member of.
This is not some case where secret financial relationships are revealed, or something like that. This is just a pundit, who has a job as a pundit, including working for various groups and companies at various times.
What if he was against their agenda, and trying to change it from the inside? You'd still be against him!
Fact is, it makes no difference who he is or who he is associated with. We can simply measure what he said, and determine its value.
Actually, Snowden claims to have gone through the normal channels, except the problem is, he didn't go to anybody. He claims that simply having mentioned his concerns to his boss and co-workers, and not getting any response or shared concern, means that he "tried."
He could have, for example, gone to Senator Wyden, who was publicly critical of the program, has the security clearance, is on the Intelligence Committee, and was already warning that the program was bigger than people knew.
We'll never know what Congress would have done with the truth, because they didn't find out until the same time(*) that the Russians and Chinese found out.
* - or later