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Translation: complete red herring ahead! Sorry SkepticLance, I'm not going to play that game. I asked you several questions and you just ignored them, then went off on a totally unrelated tangent. Since you didn't answer my questions I'm going to answer them before you: you are thoroughly and completely ignorant about scientific research into the relationship between climate change and water vulnerability. Perhaps if you did some research into this area you wouldn't have such a rosy outlook on global warming, but given your history of climate change denial it's not unexpected that you are once again ignorantly bucking the present scientific outlook. Water vulnerability encompasses any and all human needs. Drinking. Sanitation. Irrigation. I'm not going to argue the relative threat posed by each because that's tangential to the question of whether climate change is causing water vulnerability. There are approximately 1,100,000,000 people worldwide who do not have access to safe drinking water. Ever heard of a country called India? So sorry, no, it isn't "pretty much always available" and it's only going to get worse. What Lance is saying is both wrong and a red herring. My point was about water vulnerability as a whole using drinking water as an example of a water vulnerability. Lance has decided he doesn't want to discuss the relationship between climate change and water vulnerability, and in his traditional style has decided to pursue a red herring rather than the topic at hand.

No, it's not, and there are thousands upon thousands of scientists studying water vulnerability as it relates to climate change. Do you think these scientists are wasting their time? Do you think they don't exist? It's very hard for me, actually having worked with a research group, to comprehend the fantasy land in which you live, but since you want to keep on repeating this statement perhaps you could give me some insight as to what you make of how real scientists are reacting to the reality of the situation. These are both water vulnerabilities. I'm not going to make claims as to which one is more important. Both are threatened by climate change and both have the potential to lead to human suffering and death.

A new report from the House Oversight Committee shows the Bush administration was warned repeatedly by the CIA not to include information about Saddam attempting to purchase Nigerian yellowcake in the State of the Union address. It also goes on to state that Alberto Gonzales mislead Congress when he claimed the CIA approved the incorporation of that information into Bush's address: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_CIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Is it clear at this point that Bush lied to the American people and the world as the basis for invading Iraq? I think so. I just wonder if we can ever untangle this web of lies to the point that it becomes blatantly obvious to anyone.

Could we see marijuana decriminalized during the Obama administration? Equire magazine certainly thinks it's possible, and the issue of marijuana decriminalization topped Obama's poll on change.gov for the most pressing issues citizens are concerned about. What do you think? Is this just a bunch of hippies making noise, or do we actually stand a chance of seeing marijuana decriminalized in the next 4-8 years. I would certainly like to see it happen, and it seems more and more like there actually stands a decent chance of it actually happening.

I guess all those scientists researching the impact climate change will have on water vulnerabilities are completely retarded then. SkepticLance has spoken. We have the technology to feed everyone too, yet millions starve or go malnourished. Having the technology means little unless someone invests the money to actually develop, manufacture, and deploy the technology. Let's get back to reality for a second here: 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion do not have adequate sanitation. I've never heard someone completely downplay the water crisis the way you have. Worse, you seem to think there's no connection between climate change and water vulnerability, which is simply ignorant. Nobody is going to wave a magic wand and suddenly get the existing 1.1 billion people on earth the safe drinking water they need. The situation is only going to get worse, and climate change is going to be the primary factor involved. My city has some of the best tasting water in the state, which comes from Arapaho Glacier. However, Arapaho Glacier is quickly disappearing (it's recently been downgraded from a glacier to a snowfield) and the city is presently without a contingency plan for providing an alternative source of drinking water. Some glaciation would be rather helpful in my situation, and the situations of many others.

Ooh, relatively cheap commercial brain/computer interface... can't wait until I can lose my keyboard/mouse for one of these.

Slate has an awesome article on this, by the way: http://www.slate.com/id/2114561/

Okay, well what machine model are you trying to implement? A Von Neumann architecture? Because that's inherently sequential...

It's not impossible, and the technology exists today, however it's not yet practical for wide scale commercial production, particularly in regard to carbon sequestration. This is something I'm excited about and have been interested in for awhile however for the time being I don't think it's particularly practical.

Do you think the millions of people who are about to lose access to safe drinking water feel the same way? You know SkepticLance, real skeptics tend to look at all sides of an argument. Your posts don't seem to do that and instead have a particular pattern of anti-GW FUD.

To be fair, clean coal technologies like IGCC can theoretically be used in conjunction with carbon capture and sequestration, however at present this is not practical at a commercial level and probably won't be for awhile. -- Getting back to the OP... Wikipedia has a nice section on the cost and reliability of IGCC. In short: it's expensive and not very reliable. That's not to say it doesn't deserve further research, but for the time being there's little reason to attempt a wide scale deployment until some pretty fundamental problems can be worked out.

If you come from a neurophysiological perspective, the topic at hand is the result of brain function. That's a concrete thing, unlike psychology. If you're operating under another definition you'll have to articulate it clearly, such as how Minsky did in the Society of Mind. However, I don't think there's a lot of hope for that approach.

This would violate causality and as such cannot figure into a computational model, as all computational models (particularly the von Neumann model which your conjecture appears to ascribe to) are inherently causality-dependent.

Initially there was lip service paid to this money actually being used for the purposes of keeping the economy from collapsing, as opposed to lining the pockets of Wall Street fat cats. Unfortunately thanks to Bush that's not the case. I was originally for the bailout, but in retrospect I can only slap my forehead and say "WHAT THE F**K?"

Pheer! On December 21st, 2012 the Mayans predict THE END OF THE UNIVERSE! Are you ready?

Cable news is awful, and unfortunately what semblance of dignity it has left has been systematically erased by News Corporation

Franken is now in the lead with 251 votes

Godel's theorems work because they allow a statement about a formal logic system to be encoded into the language of the formal logic system itself. Godel was originally working within the formal logic system of Principia Mathematica, and in the language of that system managed to encode a statement which effectively says "This statement is unprovable." It's similar to the Liar's paradox, which effectively says "This statement is false". However, in the case of the first Incompleteness Theorem Godel came up with numbers which represent statements in PM by mapping the logic language of PM to numbers (i.e. Godel Numbers). By encoding the statements as numbers he was able to make a statement which was self-referential. So rather than the statement being simply "This statement is unprovable", it said "The statement represented by the Godel number of this statement is unprovable." And in his second incompleteness theorem, Godel extended his proof that incompleteness stands for any system with the expressive power of basic arithmetic, not just for the logic language of Principia Mathematica. Incompleteness stems from the expressive power of self-referential statements.

Yeah I suppose I'm also "siding with the Congressional Republicans." I don't like UAW. I don't oppose labor unions in general, but I certainly disapprove of unions who act like Luddites, worried technology is replacing their jobs and standing in the way of automation and technological progress to keep them. It's a very backwards attitude. But it's not like I think the automakers should be denied the bailout on account of UAW. I'm just unclear on why they can't declare Chapter 11 and clean up their act without money from Uncle Sam. If their situation is really that bad they deserve to fail.

The Constitution would be a good choice

Depending on the reactor technology involved, that's sort of like arguing that by letting people heat their homes with fire they're one step closer to building explosives.

Well, just to give my two cents... I don't have a problem with an invocation per se. But... Wouldn't an invocation mentioning "god" both favor monotheistic religions over those who are polytheistic or atheistic? This sort of thing has been happening since the country was founded, e.g. with the appointment of the first Congressional chaplains, which James Madison disliked. I think it'd be great if our government could carry about business like inaugurating a new president without the need to invoke "god" when doing so. I think invoking "god" as part of routine government business goes against at least the spirit of the Establishment Clause.

The now canceled experimental Blackswift aircraft also used an all-in-one combination turbine / ramjet

UPDATE: The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Coleman's official lead has shrank to 5 votes and projects Franken will win with a lead of 89 votes

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1208/121708cdpm1.htm?rss=getoday The ranking member of the bipartisan House Oversight Committee, Republican Darrell Issa, is moving to increase the GOP side of the panel's oversight power. He wants the committee to be able to investigate ready to probe executive branch waste, fraud and abuse on their own even without bipartisan cooperation. This seems like a good idea... I just wish Democrats would've thought of it. What was this committee doing for the past 8 years while the Bush administration spied on innocent Americans, approved the torture of prisoners, and outed an undercover CIA operative?