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HOORAY! Update: Rasmussen calls it for Obama

I can see how it might be dangerous for people who aren't used to it or aren't inspecting it, but having done it for years I think it's perfectly safe so long as there aren't any cars coming. Many traffic lights here even feature green arrows indicating you can perform a right hand turn safely without even checking for traffic because the cars on the other street have a left turn arrow, so there's no chance of an altercation with another car. There are intersections where visibility is bad or there are other problems precluding the right turn rule, and these are often labeled with "No Turn On Red" signs.

Actually, the BlueBrain project has developed a computer model of the mammalian neocortical column (a structure with tens of thousands of neurons), which is widely speculated to be the foundational unit of consciousness: http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page19093.html A human brain has over a million neocortical columns. So what? Why? How is consciousness in a wire any less possible than consciousness in a lump of fat?

You can't turn at a red light? How silly... I find it to be an incredible convenience when driving. If you can pick routes which mostly involve right turns, it can save you a lot of time at lights. That said, I prefer riding my bike and crossing the street at my discretion, even when the light is red. Not technically legal but everyone around here does it...

Purloined from somewhere...

I turn left on red all the time... at intersections in multiple one way streets...

I'd like to nuke my enemies too! I mean, I'm not some absurd insane middle east dictator and my own moral code prevents me from leveraging nuclear weapons against my enemies, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to... Point being Saddam's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons are like my own, i.e. nonexistent. Meanwhile A.G. Khan ensured Pakistan has REAL nuclear weapons, in a political climate which seems ephemeral at best... now THAT'S something to worry about. Saddam just gave the world lip service...

Miley is doomed to be Britney 2, who is, in effect, the new Jacko...

Well that's an entirely different opinion than you expressed before, not that it's unexpected as you tend to voice baseless FUD whenever it suits your antiscientific purposes... That said, please leverage your (scientific) complaints against Meehl et al. (2004) in regard to your supposed allegations that "the accuracy left much to be desired overall" Honestly, I've tried to respect your opinions, but you're so prone to inject antiscientific FUD that I feel I have to call you on this. You've been spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt as to the diagnostic powers of GCMs lately, leveraging entirely irrelevant complaints against what is otherwise good science. SkepticLance, I accepted your previous responses as to my complaints that the opinions you were leveraging in the past were anti-scientific. Now you're expressing completely baseless doubt without a scientific basis. If you are a "skeptic" as your handle claims, what is the basis of your doubt regarding historical reconstructions? Is there any science to it at all, or do you simply eschew science in lieu of fear and uncertainty? It is quite easy to slander science with antiscientific fear, uncertainty, and doubt? Do you have ANY scientific complaints against climate reconstructions, or do you simply have the typical nonscientific complaints of a layman, i.e. "I don't understand it, therefore how can it be accurate???" How would you affirm a scientifically accurate paper regarding historical climate reconstructions? Can it be done, or do you have impossible, scientifically untenable standards for such affirmation? My experience with you thus far would suggest the latter... rather than accepting scientific conclusions you would rather instill the confusion of fear, uncertainty, and doubt... Please suggest to us a scientific basis for your antiscientific claims... you do realise the claims you make fly directly in the face of established science and you have not thus far managed to defend such claims in scientific terms, instead you merely suggest the science is wrong without any arguments as to why, except through vague suggestions that scientists are overstepping the bounds of their own comprehensibility, without first attempting to comprehend their claims. This is incredibly annoying behavior, as you frame your arguments in the guise of scientific vocabulary without actually trying to understand the scientific arguments. Sadly I think you've picked most of that vocabulary up from me in a pathetic attempt to sound credible among your peers. As the apparent main source of such plagarism, I can assure you that you're full of shit... please learn what the f*uck you're talking about before attempting to voice your opinion.

I *entirely* agree, and too often the OMGCO2 argument can overshadow this very important point. In the end, I think regional solutions to a problem which is essentially the end result of a multitude of regional problems is the real solution. Unfortunately policy makers seem completely unaware that regionally-based solutions, if instituted collectively across the globe, can have a far greater impact than bullshit like Kyoto, which gives lip service to problem but offers no practicable solutions.

I'm posting this in General Discussion instead of Pseudoscience because as far as I can tell it's a hilarious parody of the techniques nutters use to make outrageous claims. If it's not facetious, then this guy is one of the most truly deluded people on earth: http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm Here's a taste:

You say that despite agreeing that they are reasonably accurate for reconstructions...

As anyone around here knows I've been pretty much a pro-Obama anti-Hillary guy since the two of them emerged as the Democratic frontrunners some two years ago. Well, time has marched on, and primaries have revealed that others feel the same way. It's practically impossible for Hillary to win at this point... BUT SHE'S NOT GOING TO LET THAT STOP HER! urgh...

The computing power of the human brain is effectively fixed by biology. The power of general purpose computers is increasing exponentially and there's no reason for us to expect that to change anytime in the near future, certainly not before computers exceed the raw power of the brain. Whether computers are functionally equivalent to humans now is a non-argument. Clearly they are not. However, you also claim: This is a much different assertion. Why can't "Boolean automatons" ever hope to, well, hope, dream, enjoy music, be creative, etc? If consciousness results from brain activity, what's special about brain activity which is requisite for consciousness that sets it apart digital computers?

Richard Dawkins at least speculates in the Ancestor's Tale that modern animals descended from Placozoans, particularly of the Trichoplax genus, which are descended from sponges. I think the development of neurons is the seminal animal trait, and it's a development which occurred in sponges.

What do predictions actually matter, versus a sound, scientific diagnosis of problems with the climate system now? Many do not yet accept that anthropogenically-induced forcings are driving the present shift in Earth's radiative imbalance. Why cast FUD on the models which show this to be the case, simply because they can only reconstruct and cannot reliably project into the future? Everyone should be aware of problems in the climate system which man is causing now...

Not to mention a magnetic field which repels solar wind...

Actually, the interpretation that never caught on was Penrose's of the brain as a quantum mechanical system. Tegmark's interpretation of the brain as a classical system is one almost universally espoused by the neuroscientific community. Penrose's opinion has only seen widespread adoption in the new age crowd. Why do you say that? Compared to computers, humans are pathetically slow at calculations Cannot? Why? ??? ????????????????? WHAT?

That's some nice unspecific hearsay. The unspecific hearsay you're quoting doesn't say that the climate models are unreliable. And even if they are, at what? Reconstructions, projections, or both? The former is what matters in diagnosing present problems with the climate system.

However, quantum effects do not enter into the brain's behavior, at least according to Tegmark. Just as we can model the behavior of billiard balls without resorting to quantum mechanics, we can model the behavior of the brain using classical laws describing chemistry and electric fields.

A few things we need to know: 1) Consciousness is a metaphysical construct and thus by definition cannot be subject to scientific inquiry or understanding. However, functionalists would argue that there's a direct mapping between brain activity and the content of consciousness... which seems to be assumed in your arguments. Therefore consciousness can be investigated vicariously by science by studying brain activity, provided you accept the tenets of functionalism. 2) The brain appears to be a classical system: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009

So not only are climate scientists wrong, but your conclusions garnered through static analysis are more likely than the conclusions of scientists which are the culmination of decades of research and modeling... WTF Lance, do you just hate climate science?

I was under the impression the common ancestor of all animals was a filter-feeding sponge-like organism which evolved the first nerve cells in order to pick a location to attach itself to, after which it "digested its brain"

The value is in diagnosing the nature of the Earth's radiative imbalance based on historical reconstructions, as I just went over with you.

It's just steeped in waste and excess, but that's a different matter entirely