bascule

The best estimates by physicists of the value of omega, the variable that tells us whether we're in an infinite open universe (omega value equal to 1) or a finite closed universe (omega value greater than or less than 1) suggests we're in a finite closed universe. In such a universe, go far enough in one direction and you'll get back to the place you started. Space would loop back on itself. This is, perhaps, not an intuitive topology. Then again, neither was a spherical earth.

Wow, we largely agree. Sweet.

Can you link one of these mystery papers along with the responses of their peer reviewers?

Oddly enough the option to present peer reviewed research to the contrary is sitting at a big fat 0.

Unfortunately sometimes CS types do have to play DBA. It sucks. My hope is better, simpler databases (i.e. Erlang's Mnesia)

For those of you with LED lighting, where are you purchasing them? I would love to get my hands on some 1000 lumen LEDs, particularly to replace the bulbs in my touch lamps and the fixtures CF bulbs don't fit inside.

Pangloss has repeatedly broached how little of the 100 days legislation has passed (virtually none) I was reading this article the other day about the GOP's use of the "motion to recommit", a procedural tactic which can effectively kill a bill on the floor and send it back to committee: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801697.html From the article: Could this be an explanation for why the Democratically-controlled Congress hasn't passed much of their promised legislation?

So by "anti-war" crowd, are you talking about people who are opposed to war in general, or opposed to the Iraq war I think Bush is the largest offender there, and the group you're slamming is largely frustrated with him

This is a tall order. Sadly, I cannot say yes to this question, but I'm close! I'd estimate my home lighting is on the order of 95% compact fluorescent. There are still 4 incandescent bulbs in my house. Two are in my living room in my touch lamps. Sadly, this retro '70s technology includes a built-in rheostat which is incompatible with compact fluorescents. Given the choice between chucking my touch lamps and retaining incandescent bulbs, I chose the latter. But don't worry... these lamps spend 95% of their time off, so no worries. I also have fixtures which are too small for compact fluorescent bulbs. Perhaps I will look into having these replaced in the future. But for now, they will continue to retain heat spewing energy guzzling century old technology. Given that moving away from incandescent bulbs to newer technology is both a great way to cut down on your energy bill and also help combat global warming, are you looking at cutting down the number of incandescent bulbs in your home? Do you have concerns with technology like compact fluorescent? I remember early versions producing inferior quality light. The newer bulbs do not have this problem. I'm quite happy with the light quality produced by compact fluorescents, and save for a sporadic and slight delay between when you flip the lightswitch and when the bulbs come on, I do not miss incandescent bulbs whatsoever.

Conversely, the "left-wing" (well, not really) is trying to point out a problem in "right-wing reasoning" (a group which includes that famous right-winger Al Gore): Why should you change your lifestyle when you can throw money at the problem? I mean, really, this isn't a left-wing/right-wing issue. It's more an issue of people who are adapting their lifestyle to fit the facts versus poseurs.

Erlang is slowly gaining in popularity. This will hopefully speed up soon, because the Pragmatic Programmers are releasing a book on it: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/jaerlang/ What makes Erlang so awesome? The Actor Model - Like objects, but they all run at the same time... across multiple CPU cores or multiple computers. Think of a language where every object is also a thread. Implicit parallelism! Hot swappable code - Need to update one small part of a large application? Particularly a network service that a lot of people are connected to? Drop it in on-the-fly! Network transparency - Throwing more CPUs at a program was never easier. Erlang can seamlessly distribute itself over a computing cluster. I'm really excited about Erlang. I think concurrent programming is the future.

Yes, a great language conceptually but too many parens I've still not used Python. I use Ruby. Right now I'm learning Erlang, which is also brace-free

That's a great analogy, gcol

Aah, here's the comic I was thinking of that covered this topic:

Wow, no surprise this is in Boulder. Boulder, while being home to some excellent science and technology research and effectively acting as the Silicon Valley of Colorado is also a magnet for total nutjobs. I mean, I don't want to dismiss these people out-of-hand, but they're essentially saying there's something enormous that modern medical science is missing out on. Boulderites love alternative medicine and the idea that science is missing out on concepts that have only been discovered in eastern religions or among the alternative medicine crowd. I take the opposite view: medicine isn't worth considering unless substantiated by medical science.

I sure hope you're not talking about Bjorn Lomborg

I mean, not to cast everything else aside, but here is the real issue: This issue has been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny for the past 40 years. Only a fringe group of scientists, who cannot put together a cohesive theory to the contrary, still resist the scientific consensus. The question is, why do you see merit in an argument which the majority of scientists reject? Is it due to scientific reasons, or simple fear, uncertainty, and distrust? Hasn't this same pattern persisted in science over and over, particularly in the realm of the biological sciences and argumentation against the common ancestry of all life on earth?

Here's some assessments of the predictive ability of GCMs: http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0485(1992)022%3C0951%3AHMPSIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005JCli...18..597D http://www.scidacreview.org/0701/pdf/climate.pdf http://ams.confex.com/ams/84Annual/techprogram/paper_73749.htm I'm quote content to debate current theory and evidence. So far, the only person who has ever come back with a remotely scientific counterclaim is Icemelt, regarding the issue of tropospheric heating, to which I can only reply that either current models are inaccurate or measurements of tropospheric heating are inaccurate. Otherwise, I feel I've wasted my time providing ample evidence to an unsympathetic crowd who simply disregards all evidence to the contrary of their personal opinion. Why do I continue? Because I see the forums regarded with what I can only describe as anti-GW bullshit. I feel interjecting science, now and then, is helpful to the "debate" Nor is the standard model. After all, it can't explain gravity and is incompatible with general relativity. So ignore the media and focus on the science. While media sensationalism is bad, do you disagree with the IPCC that they're over 90% certain that man is the predominant cause of global mean surface temperature increases in the latter half of the 20th century? No, and this is the same argumentation pattern utilized by countless other groups advocating lies in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I used to be X but I changed my mind. Great. But that does nothing to change the underlying facts. Well clearly they do. The question is which forcing is predominant. Great, so back up your claims with science, rather than anti-scientific speculation. Unfortunately both sides are politicizing the issue. I can't tell you what a great disservice to the debate Al Gore has done. Now global warming awareness is intrinsically linked with left-wing politics, at least in America. This shouldn't be a political debate, it should be a scientific debate. Unfortunately the media (on both sides) and politicians like Al Gore are causing the exact opposite.

Oh come now, we had 3 threads on this when it came out. Here's one of them: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25328 Let's see, this special was denounced by the network it aired on, and several of the interviewed climate scientists came out against it after it was aired, because their opinions were selectively edited or distorted. This is little more than a What the Bleep of climate science documentaries, or failing that, a Loose Change. The opinions presented were edited to fit a particular agenda. Misinformation was presented (discredited/falsified graphs) and the opinions of several different groups with varying opinions selectively edited into a single, coherent voice.

Yes, just like natural selection and the common ancestry of all life on earth are separate questions, right? I mean, no one could doubt natural selection, but all life, from a single common ancestor? Ludicrous! No, I'm not making a distinction, because the science is clear on both issues. Both satellite measurements of forcing response (Hansen 2004) and climate models scientifically demonstrate that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary radiative forcings of climate change. If you want to play the "I believe half of science but not all of it" game, go for it. In which case I suggest you vote for option #5, because you're in the same realm as Answers in Genesis creationists who accept the fact of natural selection, but are unwilling to admit what the totality of evidence shows, instead preferring to make some arbitrary distinction about what science gets right and where their religious beliefs can realistically stop.

Anecdotes aren't facts. Once I thought I was talking to some sort of extraterrestrial intelligence. Of course I was drunk. Does that make it real? A fact? It seemed real to me! Was it actually real, or was I just inebriated? The brain can believe things which aren't real. Humans can profess things that aren't real. That makes anecdotes useless as evidence. The former is just confusion/a misunderstanding, the latter is a lie, but neither are real. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research institute (PEAR) has been attempting to scientifically study the paranormal for decades, with nothing to show for it. James Randi has offered a prize for anyone who can demonstrate paranormal abilities under controlled conditions and so far everyone has failed. There's no fact to be found here, only unsubstantiated anecdotes

What irks me is these people advancing completely contrived, unsubstantiated ideas as "truth" I'll continue to label them as 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Although "crackpots" is probably more apt.

All right, I think I'm able to group people by their underlying motivations finally. Why do you doubt global warming? I'm really curious how many people will vote #6 then link some crackpot web site. I'm assuming we'll see some Lindzen papers here, but then again he's never been able to advance an alternative model.

The thing about climate science is that climate scientists, as a group, are able to produce a single report, peer reviewed by the naysayers, which represents the collective, defensible position which has survived the peer review process. Lindzen and Christy are able to have their say, and their peer review enters into the report. While it's politicized by the left (Al Gore) and the right (pretty much everybody) the science still stands on its own. So, that's why oceanic CO2 content is increasing, to the point of reaching the saturation limit? For example: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20071805-15893-2.html This is what I absolutely deplore from the global warming deniers. Two seconds of googling will answer the majority of "BUT WHAT ABOUT... ?" questions No, global warming isn't due to solar forcings No, global warming isn't due to volcanic forcings No, global warming isn't due to oceanic CO2 emissions (it's getting sequestered) No climate change is not altering the Earth's precession etc. etc. The other side wants to turn every causal relationship established by the climate science community, through decades of intense research and scrutiny by scientists of a variety of different disciplines on its head and suggest that the EXACT OPPOSITE is true! I can't imagine any other sciences dealing with this sort of bullshit. It seems like global warming deniers are willing to accept anything but the truth. Hey, maybe earth is affecting the sunspot cycle! Maybe anthropogenic CO2 emissions are actually reducing natural, dominant ones! So clearly anthropogenic CO2 isn't the cause of global warming... it must be solar! Or some other cause. Clearly not man, there's not enough EVIDENCE! My claims don't need any evidence, they just need ANSWERS. And unless you can answer every single one of them, how can you possibly claim man is the main cause? You can't! That's not science! It doesn't matter how unsubstantiated or crazy the claims are, they've got a million of them, and no matter how many you answer with clear, scientific evidence, they'll just keep asking but never accepting. They're no better than creationists. The other side doesn't care about the evidence, with the occasional exemptions of climate scientists who are at least aware of the evidence but continue to advance a minority opinion with no actual research or publications to back it up Guess what, physical scientists don't have complete data. Clearly the standard model is WRONG, or else it would be compatible with general relativity. Elementary particles must have a spatial context, or else a whole new physics is needed which is compatible with general relativity. Whatever the case, the standard model is wholly incomplete! But wait! It has immense predictive power, and is based on decades upon decades of intense research. They have a model, which while it isn't reality, accurately simulates certain aspects of reality. Maybe it fails at other parts. Who cares? It's a model, and the parts of it that are testable have been demonstrated correct. I hear anti-evolution people trying to write evolution off not as fact, not as theory, but "just a model". People who do such have no idea what a scientific model entails. A model, while being inaccurate in certain areas, has the ability to discern truth about others, and if we have multiple, independently developed models giving highly similar results, maybe we should start paying attention. I'm really sick and tired of anti-global warming threads, just like I'm sick anti-evolution threads. I can just keep linking evidence, model output, and scientific papers, and the other side can just keep ignoring them, asking stupid questions, and linking web sites which are either not by climate scientists or by climate scientists on the fringe who can only question the scientific consensus, but are still unable to put forth their own models or alternative explanations, at least ones that can survive the peer review process. This article contains a wealth of evidence and explanations, and so far all I've heard is people questioning the source of the information and the idea it's advancing, without actually looking at anything it has to say. Why don't any of you put forth a specific question, look at the answers that have been provided, and discuss why those are inaccurate? Instead all this thread has been is a bunch of harping on science. Thus I'm forced to conclude that those who merely harp on the current scientific consensus without actually finding problems with their evidence, methodology, and conclusions are simply anti-science You are all in the same group as evolution deniers and geocentrists. You can harp all you want on the prevailing scientific model because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions of how things should be, but that doesn't make you any less ignorant or wrong. Question the science with a scientifically defensible argument. Stop arguing conspiracies, politics, or ridiculously stupid arguments which completely contradict known scientific principles and data.

Ad hominem Genetic fallacy You know, evolution was the same way a few decades ago. Now people who disagree are generally considered "crackpots" So, anyone have any complaints about the material, or do we just have a barrage of against-the-source fallacies?