1veedo

Actually the American Association of Petroleum Geologists is changing their position on global warming. "As of May 2007, the AAPG is in the process of updating its statement, in part because "the current policy statement is not supported by a significant number of our members and prospective members." A proposed statement makes no claim that recent global warming is or is not primarily anthropogenic." The original statement was put into place by the union. The actual members -- otherwise known as scientists -- seem to want a different statement. You mean the media? Try to avoid using straw men here. The vast majority of scientists are going to disagree about some things. It is you in reality who are denying things. Climate models ARE accurate and as long as you hold the position that they aren't you are denying the science. Climate models have had the big things factored in for a very long time. Sense greenhouse gases at the moment have the overwhelmingly largest effect on the climate, modeling the increase in ghgs in and of itself yeilds very accurate models. Now we're dealing with smaller things like cloud albedo, contrails (which recent research seems to indicate have a warming effect of +.1W/m^2, instead of what was once believed to be slightly negative), etc, which combined have a close to 0 net influence on the temperature. This doesn't mean previous models are inherently inaccurate because we're talking about minute changes here. The first computer climate model in 1988 only factored CO2 increase, a steady irradiance from the sun, and predicted one volcanic eruption around 1990 but 20 years latter, according to NASA, the model is "right on the money." This model then only measured CO2, solar irradiance, and particulates/sulfurs. Today we're accounting for a whole range of factors, all of which are orders of magnitude less important then the above three.

They tend to look at your class rank verses number of people in your class too. Even this though has is drawbacks as different schools have different demographics. But to answer your questions, yes, colleges look at your weighted GPA, not unweighted. So do scholarships, in fact.

There's an ebook you might be able find called How to Develop A Super-Power Memory by Harry Lorayne. It has some really god tips and makes a lot sense (explains a little bit of the science behind it). Just reading the introduction will boost your ability to remember things. To be honest I haven't really studied everything the book recommends (like pegs. I had 1 through 75 memorized, going on to 100, but I used them far less then I thought I would. History class was lacking dates for some reason). I might get on that soon though. It's kind of funny how "instantly improve your memory" really isn't on the top of your todo list, but then again I already have a pretty good memory and do well in school You'll find the same motifs just about everywhere. Different websites/books will take slightly different approaches but the same basic techniques tend to be there. You have to be more of a visual learner for it to work through (there are auditory methods but most mnomonics are visual). I don't see the need to take a course on it though when there's plenty of free information available. Don't bother yourself with the "walk through house" or any of the advanced stuff until you get the basics down. Btw are you in highschool or college?

Nobody else has noticed this Btw I got Civ4 running perfectly. One of the dlls got corrupted on the harddrive.

Spiritual != religious. There's a difference.

I had this conversation with a friend of mine a while back. When something doesn't work on your computer it seems like for other people it always does. You can follow the exact same procedure that someone else reports worked for them yet it doesn't work for you. Just an example I'm trying to run Civilization 4 under wine*. According to the wine appdb I did everything correctly yet it seg faults. There's even a guy with the same distro and same version of wine whom says it's "running perfectly." Why it works for him and not me, I don't know. This is a recurrent thing, and it seems like it's not just me. I'm not complaining about it -- it's kind of amusing, actually, but I have two explanations that we can put through scientific vigor. 1) The person who fixed something has more specific knowledge relevant to the challenge at hand so over the course of debugging the problem he has done some steps and forgot about them, maybe not even knowing that they're relevant to the solution. The person looking for help, presumably taking advice from the first person, has less-adequate knowledge of the subject and cant look that step further to see what's wrong. 2) Computers are different, especially across Linux, but if you're under the same distro and architecture this should largely be resolved. On some subjects though I think this explanation is rather inadequate, especially for Windows, Mac, BSD, and of course specific distros. There are still going to be differences but in any specific problem I just can't see how they'd be relevant (eg make sure you're using the same version of wine and the same version of the app). * Just FYI when Civ4 first came out I probably had it working better than anyone else. This was back before wine had native xml support -- I got xml and everything else civ4 needed in wine, around 6 dll overrides I stole from a Windows install, and it would load until setting the screen in directx9, which at the time wine didn't support. I saw today that people got civ4 running in wine so I decided to try again and this time I cant even get as far as I did last time!

Red is the color of aggression. There are studies indicating that teams who wear red tend to perform better. From what I remember armies in red fair better as well -- eg Rome and England. It just demands attention or something.

This is old news. The new study just verifies previous studies, which is actually fairly important in peer-review. See for example, http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant Sami K. Solanki's graphic(can't find the study, I've just been using the image), http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/sun-climate/climate.gif http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpsunspotnumber.html

You think .004C is too large of an error? That's how far off the predicted verses actual is. Just curious. I'm sure there could be specifics where certain layers are off but the troposphere as a whole (and the stratosphere at that) is warming as predicted, within .004C. Cristy et al's earlier papers had a stratospheric error built in described in the letter to nature*, and the latest (5.5 (2006?) I think, not 5.2 (2005?)) is accounting for this. Again the models predict .243C/decade and the observed is .239C/decade. I'm no mathematician but these numbers are suspiciously close together on the number line. *Which right now I'm kind of skeptical if quoting all of that is violating copyright . At the very bottom of the pdf, which is a photocopy, there's a single page with a little copy-warning on it. I missed it cause the article ends and the beginning of the next article in that publication is at the bottom.

Gift works pretty well, so does edonkey, gtk-gnutella, and if you have wine shareaza which is a Windows app runs on Linux.

Well reciprocation for one. Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype) discusses a couple behaviors with direct relation to evolution, reciprocation (part of innate human morality) being one of them. Human morality it seems is almost entirely derived from evolution. Actually a lot of marketing techniques (like reciprocation) are developed from evolutionary psychology. Eg Robert Cialdini's popular books. Sociology often times, depending on the method used, utilizes evolution/genetics, and sociology almost by definition IS the study of nurture.

Well my uncle has a compute here so let me explain a little. Sense you've had physics you'll probably understand what I mean. It's the same property just backwards. Instead of the discovered photon telling the other what to be, the undiscovered photon can just as easily be telling the first photon what to be. In quantum mechanics not every mathematical concept converts directly into a sort of cognitive concept. Anybody with a phd in physics will tell you that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't, and these are the sorts of reasons why. I'm just telling gcol there's more to the picture than just the layman explanation, not that your explanation is inadequate.

Again that's just the "popular," "interesting" physics approach, there's a little more to it than just that. I had my physics book opened but I'm leaving for the beach and can't find the paragraph I'm looking for so have fun with all that. It's kind of comparable to the concept of antimatter moving backwards in time instead of forward. You can represent antimatter mathematically in the sense of regular matter moving backwards in time but it's sort of controversial (for lack of a better term, two-sided coin again) as to whether or not antimatter actually does move backwards in time. The popular physics books always tell you that they DO go back in time, but this is only part of the story. If you've ever taken a physics class you'd know what I mean.

This concept is actually slightly controversial. People always use the "information traveled faster than the speed of light" explanation because that's what you read in popular science books; it's more interesting that way. I'm not here to tell you which method is correct, just that both yours and Lucaspa's explanations are acceptable. In a sense the two explanations are like two sides of the same coin. Btw I think one of the guys in green have a phd in physics (swansont?) so maybe he knows.

Evolutionary psychology works a little differently than that. It's just the study of how natural selection has influenced human cognition and behavior. This includes nurture, not just nature, so it doesn't just offer one-sided nature explanations. As you learn in sociology, "it's in our nature to nurture."

Pangloss, seriously. Did you even take economics in college? So much of what you're posting can be addressed directly with elementary concepts in economics, and nothing more. We have the same circumstances here with Athlon and Intel. Athlon is criticizing Intel for monopolizing the industry but I can guarantee you that if they could switch places (as far as market shares are concerned), they'd do so in a heartbeat. It is every company's intention to work at their own best self-interest, which means greater market share. Always -- nothing else matters but the bottom line. Some people call this unethical, others call it capitalism. That's why I always found the McDonalds lawsuits biased. In order to prove that McDonald's intentionally wanted people to be fat the two girls had to prove that McDonalds intended everyone to eat every single meal of the day, every day of the week, at McDonalds. Well it doesn't take an economics major to tell you that this would be McDonalds intent were it possible. What restaurant wouldn't want people eating every meal, every day of the week with them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

I was referring more to direct actions that could lead to a monopoly, eg the top two companies in an industry merging together. The government wont allow this, although they will allow two smaller companies to merge. I agree though that we shouldn't be, how you say in a more general sense, preventing monopolies to form. Because that means essentially preventing companies from providing good competition with other companies.

You might want to look at the actual laws instead of asking us. Economics 101. I assume you took this class in college? There are doublestandards in a capitalist economic system as monopolies are about the only thing that can destroy it. Capitalism works through competition not monopolization. As long as you don't have monopolies the invisible hand keeps things running smoothly. Yes to both. We should try to prevent them and deal with them once they become a monopoly. This is why the top two companies in an industry are rarely allowed to merge -- it risks a monopoly in the future. However two smaller companies are usually allowed to merge.

You could always take Psychology 101. Evolution psychology is a part of the course. From there you could probably find some evolutionary psychology specific classes at your local university.

If you mean local extinction, just as a side-note (I'm sure this isn't exactly what you're talking about), the area where I live used to have elk when the first settlers came. They even called one town/settlement Elkview, the river is called the Elk river, and hens the Elk river valley which is where I live (Pinch, right beside of Elkview). Anyway the elk no longer inhabit this area. I'm not sure how much is directly because of habitat loss but humans definitely do effect animals.

Cable is a lot faster than DSL though. This is presumably because dsl uses telephone lines which cant handle as much data as cable can. So in reality kaos, although w/ insane_alien's explanation above, cable IS moving around a lot of data, quickly, in the first place. Btw bascule I'm using IPv6 (along w/ IPv4), as are most Linux users. IPv6 is used for a lot of internal stuff (like connecting to local applications, eg giftui -> giftd or the X server). You don't technically need 128bit registers to use IPv6. veedo@tux:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:09:8F:E2:B2 inet addr:192.168.2.80 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::211:9ff:fe8f:e2b2/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:4058456 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:4305362 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2379767237 (2.2 GiB) TX bytes:2797328229 (2.6 GiB) Interrupt:18 Base address:0xc000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:103482 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:103482 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:5174440 (4.9 MiB) TX bytes:5174440 (4.9 MiB) veedo@tux:~$ ip -4 addr show dev eth0 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,10000> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000 inet 192.168.2.80/24 brd 192.168.2.255 scope global eth0 veedo@tux:~$ ip -6 addr show dev eth0 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,10000> mtu 1500 qlen 1000 inet6 fe80::211:9ff:fe8f:e2b2/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever It's not connecting to the Internet, just used locally, but I was using IPv6 on gentoo not too long ago. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ipv6.xml

So you have completed your red herring even when I called you on it. Good job. Do you have any intent on actually addressing my post or are you still trying your old tactic of tip toeing around the issue at hand? Well yes, naturally, but what this boils down to is an argument from incredulity, which is a logical fallacy. Scientists are a lot smarter than you think they are. Many times scienitsts manipulate data to make it less error prone, as is the case of spectroscopy. I'm not sure what they do but when analyzing a particular star they have to separate the incoming waves at peaks and troughs to get the significant wavelengths, from which they can figure out what elements are in the star. If they just took the raw data and applied it directly the results would be extremely error prone, to the point that it's completely useless. You can apply this to basic entropy. The more complex something is the more it can actually do. For example a computer program only 100 lines might not be able to do much but a program 1000 lines might be able to do more. Why? Because it's more complex. And it is more error prone but assuming the complexity is applied constructively, as is the case in science, the complexity is a good thing. Occam's Razor only applies when all things are considered equal. But all this aside there is no justification for finding it hard to believe that scientists cant figure things out. How do you think you explain something as complex as electromagnetism? Through simple calculations and basic theories that fall short of the phenomenon? Or through calculations and concepts complex enough to describe the phenomenon? Equally so can be applied to calculus. There are many things you cant do with basic algebra that are then possible through calculus, which is inherently much more mathematics. Although more complex math means you are more prone to error this does not guarantee that you actually make these errors. And in the case of science, scientists publish their work to peer-review so essentially you have hundreds, if not thousands, of people going over your work to find any errors you could have made. This is just basic science and whether you like it or not this is how science works. If you don't like it then it brings us back to square one again with you arrogantly thinking that you're smarter then all of the thousands of scientists across the planet.

Well I wasn't pointing out anything specific. The actually question is an example of a logical fallacy known as appeal to ignorance. It has nothing to do about "demonstrating ignorance" or anything of the like. The word "ignorance" just happens to be what it's called. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance This is not true. CO2 and temperature correlate very closely. They actually work as a feedback chain known as, surprisingly, the temperature-CO2 feedback system. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10850.html Basically higher temperatures cause increased CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 causes temperatures to rise. After every ice age about 50% of the warming is a result of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, with smaller contributions coming from the actual solar irradiance increase,other greenhouse gases, and a couple other feedback systems. This is the common climate variability argument. It's presented in the great global warming swindle and refuted here:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656640542976216573&q=%22global+warming+swindle%22&total=186&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2 Just to summarize the premise is, P1. The climate is always changing, and has changed in the past without any help from humans. This is of course true. The inferences that we are meant to draw from this is I1. Because past climate change has been natural, current climate change is natural. I2. Because climate change is natural, it can't be a bad thing. I2 is of course obviously false when you look at it this way because many things in nature are bad, eg aids. And I1 is a false inference because it does not follow from any law in boolean logic. The only proper inference you can draw from P1 is, Current climate change may have a natural origin. And that's all you can really prove here. But of course we know that current climate change does not have a natural origin because scientists settled this issue almost 10 years ago. Our understanding of the climate system is that more CO2 means higher temperatures, which is just a basic principle of physics that you cant get around, and that CO2 levels are rising because of humans which is a simple fact that again, you can't get around. Put simply, Premise: More CO2 = higher temperatures. Current CO2 increase is almost all anthropogenic. Conclusions: Temperatures are higher because of anthropogenic factors. We know of course that CO2 is not the only factor that humans have altered but it is one of the largest. The second largest is methane which is caused by cutting down trees and other agricultural use. You can read all about this in science journals. Google to see if your library has a website and look for an electronic database, research center, or something similar, and find a search for scholarly journals (eg ebsco, jstor, etc). They'll probably ask for your library card number and once you're there type in like global warming or climate change.

Really, it should be a crime. Especially at a library where some people are supposedly doing research for reports and such.

There's this thing in science called the scientific method. What scientists do every day is look at data to find casual relationships between different variables, create models -- otherwise known as theories --, and test these models to see if what they predict is in accord with what actually happens. It doesn't matter how complex these models actually are; what matters is whether or not these models can make accurate predictions. Measuring surface temperature isn't even as simple as "averaging." There is a lot of work behind this. Some areas of the planet, just as an example, have a lot more stations than others. Eg we have very little data about Antarctica but other parts of the world are very dense with reading stations. Scientists also feed in water temperatures because, seeing as water makes up over 70% of our planet, water temperatures are a much better indicator of what global temperatures are actually doing. Just something as simple as getting the temperature of the Earth is extremely complicated. So complicated in fact that scientists (and weather forecaster) are now using satellites to tract temperature trends. This is actually easier than the former method and at the same time the basic data that the satellites gather goes through a lot of manipulated. Let me give you a physics problem to illustrate how you can manipulate data and get data that's even more useful. Say you want to figure out the composition of a star. How do you think you could do this? Well we happen to know that all hot gases emit their own individual spectra. So you could take in basic electromagnetic data from a star, which is almost useless without complex manipulation, and use it to identify the composition of elements in the star. This is in fact known as spectroscopy and I'm sure astronomers find the data gathered from this process very useful. I assume you read the rest of my post though? Or would you be committing another red herring? Although the issue about scientists being able actually conduct science by manipulating data and figuring things out is interesting in and of itself, the main area of interest was your misrepresentation of the climate system.