bascule

I liked what This Modern World had to say about it:

Global climate forcings are, by definition, global in extent. If we see one trend in one hemisphere and the opposite trend in the other hemisphere, then the cause of these trends cannot be global in extent.

What toxins are you referring to and what is their relative toxicity compared to an ionizing alpha emitter like polonium-210? In direct fire curing, tobacco (or in the case of beer, barley) is exposed directly to the combustion product of the flame, and this is the source of nitrosamine: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/nitrosamine.html http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/magazine/winter01/back.htm

Interesting to hear that from someone else because my friend who works at Kodak said the exact same thing about their silver nitrate.

Probably better I wasn't around then, as I was taken up with the vitriolic political polarization of the time and was thus more incapible of logical debate.

As much as it saddens me to say it, I see the legitimacy of preserving our nuclear arsenal so as to maintain a MAD policy with China. Technologies that pose an existential risk are such a moral quagmire...

The biggest problem is the M does not apply. Iran is developing fission bombs (as opposed to hydrogen fusion bombs) which would produce a blast similar to the one seen at Hiroshima. It would devistate a city and create a large amount of fallout, but overall the damage would be relatively localized. Would anyone really want to respond to this by nuking Iran with a hydrogen warhead? That remains to be seen. As I said, MAD will only prove itself outmoded after we see a nuclear bomb used and we are forced to decide if nuclear retaliation is really the best option. So if Iran were to use a fission bomb similar in yield to the one dropped on Hiroshima, how specifically do you think the world should retaliate? The above makes it sound like you would wish for nuclear retaliation. Are we really prepared for the ramifications of that kind of response? That also remains to be seen. I am clearly forseeing a different response to the detonation of a nuclear bomb than you, although some clarification on the above issue would be much helpful.

Looking at an article which addresses the paper's conclusions more specifically, it appears my concerns were addressed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4661830.stm The original article makes it sound as if the study claimed global warming is causing increased meting of Arctic sea ice. The above article makes it clear that the study was predicting that in the future, global warming could increase the rate at which Arctic sea ice was melting because increased CO2 would compound the regional warming effect. Global warming is most certainly causing rising ocean levels through thermal expansion (and the melting of glaciers) but I've seen no substantive paper tying the melting of Arctic ice sheets to rising sea levels. Unfortunately the article mentions nothing about who authored the paper. Perhaps tomorrow I'll try to dig it up.

I think we're slowly starting to learn that a MAD policy is no longer applicable nowadays. I'd love to see complete nuclear disarmament and an international treaty banning the development of nuclear weapons. I'm afraid the only way it will come about is when some crazy middle eastern country (or terrorist group) nukes another middle eastern country (or Europe)

What about bars? That's my main gripe. I smoke mostly outside. Very rarely do I smoke in my bedroom. I don't consider myself addicted to tobacco either. I'm something of a social/recreational smoker. I didn't smoke a cigarette yesterday and, unless I go out, probably won't smoke one today. A pack usually lasts me about a month. Depends where you live, but around here, weed is overwhelmingly smoked without mixing it with tobacco. I don't think you'll ever see someone mixing weed and tobacco if they're smoking out of a pipe, a bong, etc. I think that organic tobacco which is cured with indirect fire is substantially safer. I would really love to see the experiments Martell performed to detect alpha radiation exposure from cigarettes carred out with organic tobacco instead. In theory, organic tobacco should be free of both radioactive polonium and nitrosamine, which are the two most potent carcinogens in cigarettes.

Curling up with a good book Hang out with friends Throw on some upbeat music and chilling out

Global warming research is concerned with climate forcings which are global in extent. This desperately needs to be contrasted with regional warming effects, to which far too litte attention is paid. A regional focus is needed to address these problems. "Regional warming" just doesn't have the alarmist ring to it that "global warming" has. Obviously not, but that's how the media wants to paint it. They're unable to seperate effects which are global in extent (i.e. the greenhouse effect) from regional scale effects. This is a major issue in climate science reporting. That isn't true at all. Sources: National Snow and Ice Data Center There is no progressive trend observable in these graphs, only aimless fluctuation. To quote American Association of State Climatologists director Dr. Roger Pielke Sr (who happens to be the head of my research group): Also, NASA reported in 2002 that Antarctic sea ice cover is increasing According to Dr. Pielke Sr: He concludes the way these studies are reported by the media are an obvious example of cherrypicking. Nobody is debating that the climate system isn't warming (if they are, they're a crackpot). However, Dr. Pielke Sr. addresses this issue as well: I refer you to the NCEP Reanalysis data I linked above. There's an overall cooling trend in the higher latitudes of the southern hemisphere.

*sigh* I didn't read about any metal weapons in that book... You're kind of all over the place in terms of timeframes. Humans took millions of years to evolve. From now on, if you want to make arguments about selection pressures on human ancestors, please define the timeframe and why you think the selection pressures on our ancestors during that timeframe are inadequate to explain the emergence of man. Approximately 10,000 years ago, there were most certainly mammoth hunters. Yes, but he's not going to get it from natural selection unless the need is so dire that he dies without it. Yes, but if their clothing is enough to keep them alive then there's no selection pressure. Because the selection pressures were solved by technology. Natural selection looks for the "good enough" solution. It wasn't? Actually, it was likely an unfavorable change in conditions (deforestation of Africa and conversion to a savannah) that lead to the divergence of the population comprised of our common ancestor with chimpanzees.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4660938.stm This article deals largely with the melting of the Arctic ice sheet. Throughout the entirety of the article, the cause is attributed to global warming. This is one of innumerable stories which have been published throughout the past few years drawing the connection between global warming and melting Arctic ice. But wait a second, what about Antarctic ice? If global warming is the problem, why don't we hear anything about that? The answer is because there is no progressive trend in summer ice coverage in the Antarctic, only aimless fluctuation. Now, ask yourself: if global warming is the problem, why is the ice sheet of one pole melting while the other one stays more or less the same? Shouldn't we see symmetric effects in how the different hemispheres of earth are affected, if the problem is truly the result of changes in the global climate system, ostensibly the result of greenhouse gasses (which is the point the linked article tries to drive into the ground) My reaction? This is a correlation vs. causation fallacy. There is a regional warming effect occuring in the northern hemisphere which is not occuring in the southern hemisphere. This is not a global problem. It is a regional problem, and should be dealt with as such. Something like Kyoto will not have an impact on the melting of the Arctic ice sheet.

Are they really providing a service to an oppressive regime, or to the Chinese people? (False dichotomy, I suppose, they're really providing it to both)

At this point you should be asking yourself why. Burning marijuana produces benzopyrene just like it does in cigarettes (and for that matter pretty much any burnt organic matter). Yet marijuana doesn't appear to cause cancer, despite containing many of the same carcinogens which result from the inhalation of burnt organic matter. For the answer to this question, see my Why do cigarettes cause cancer? thread in which I reiterate the conclusions of former surgeon general C. Everett Koop: Cigarettes cause cancer because they're radioactive. The radioactivity in cigarettes results from the use of calcium phosphate fertilizer which contains the alpha emitter polonium-210. Insoluable polonium-210 compounds become lodged in the lungs after smoking and continually bombard your lung tissue with ionizing alpha radiation, which is very damaging internally. For more information, see this research paper: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/5/1285 From a social policy perspective, I think the choice is clear: don't punish the smokers or limit their freedom. Punish the manufacturers. They are knowingly creating a dangerous product which kills their customers because to create a safer cigarette would require considerable expense on their part. Ever wonder why Philip Morris runs ads saying "There is no safe cigarette"? Because they don't want to pay the development costs of creating one. It's for this reason that I consider cigarette manufacturers to be some of the most vile and loathesome corporations on the planet.

One of the books on my shelves is Facing the Lion, a story of the African lion hunt, which is performed with "traditional" weapons which any primitive human could've fashioned. If you have a culture of lion hunting with primitive weapons, it doesn't pose an issue. No humans were killed in the process of hunting the lions. When these African tribes decide to hunt the lions, the lions are screwed. A group of humans with the technology and cultural knowledge of how to defeat an animal foe are a force no animal can reckon with. If they do manage to take down a human, it's through that individual's ineptitude, or sheer luck. Here's a quote from the book: And therein lies the beauty of cultural knowledge, of memetic evolution. Look at the massive amount of cultural knowledge about lions this statement represents. This statement comes from a child who is going on his first lion hunt. He has never encountered a lion before, but thanks to the culture of his people, he is able to ascertain from his surroundings that one is approaching, from only pissing cows which he is able to distinguish from falling rain. This is what you are completely overlooking. Whereas with most animals, the amount of culture that needs to be transmitted in order for an individual to be able to survive is realtively small, with humans it is vast, but the advantages it confers are enormous. Anyone who lacks the cultural knowledge needed to survive is naturally selected out, but those who do survive possess a vastly greater survival ability with each passing generation. Memetic evolution occurs at an exponentially increasing pace, one which increases the survivability of the species orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution ever could. Knowing the specifics of these scenarios might be interesting, but I would guess this all comes down to ill-preparedness. Humans react best when they have a culture based around a practice and are prepared for a specific encounter. Those who are ambushed or otherwise ill-prepared are naturally selected out. But a group with shared cultural knowledge of how to survive a particular situation, working together to ensure that the entire group survives become an insurmountable foe to any predator (or group thereof). One human which comes up with one neat trick to defeat a particular enemy can spread it to the entire group almost instantly. If it works, it becomes part of their shared cultural knowledge, and will likely be passed onto the next generation, especially if the same foe is encountered repeatedly. Disease is a foe primitive man was clearly below taming. But it's also one common to all animals on earth. Pestilance is one which only plagued man after the agricultural revolution, after man had developed an elaborate infrastructure to remain self-supporting, and had a genotype which was, for all intents and purposes, identical to the one we possess today. At that point our genetic evolution was essentially "complete". You don't have to be fast if you can use long range weapons like spears, bows and arrows, atlatls, build traps, etc. But can relay abstract messages among group members, so what one hears, or smells, or sees, all can be made aware of. But can fashion clothes (and build fires). Clothes mean you don't need fur, and not having fur means you don't have to spend half your day picking parasites off of your buddies. But can build tools and simple machines which greatly amplify their strength. Many primates don't depend on a diet of cellulose, in which case their caelum is vestigial. Or perhaps the advantages offered by technology and culture can make up for those which aren't given to us at birth via genetics. And contrarily, humans didn't need fur, since they have clothing and fire, and don't need claws and fangs, since they have knives, spears, bows and arrows, blowguns etc. You continue to overlook the simple fact that the sociotechnological advantages which can only come through the human ability to comprehend abstract knowledge make up for whatever disadvantages our other genes bring about. The human brain, coupled with technology and culture, provided enough of a survival advantage to make up for our other physical deficiencies. You really need to read Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype. This very much seems to be the concept you are failing to grasp in terms of human evolution. Phenotype extends well beyond mere genetics, and without focusing on the full range of phenotypical manifestations of a species, you cannot begin to ascertain how that species survives in its natural environment.

The main advantage of plutonium in nuclear weapons is that the implosion lens is substantially smaller/lighter than a similar uranium one and thus you can fit a more powerful warhead on a ballastic missile.

Yes, but who would win in a battle of a dozen armed humans (for the sake of argument, armed with only primitive weapons like spears) vs. a dozen wolves or lions? Humans outsmart their prey while working as a group. This is simply ridiculous. Technology and advanced communciation/cooperation most certainly offer a survival advantage. You need to stop thinking of early humans as if they didn't have an advanced toolmaking culture (compared to any other animal at the time) which was as much the result of natural selection as their biological evolution was. I think Chupacabra is trying very hard to not see the obvious.

I don't get why so many people are harping on Google for censoring Google China while no one seems to care that AOL and MSN blithely cooperated with the government subpoenia for their search data

Unless armed with an assortment of hunting implements, and cultural knowledge of hunting skills, not to mention the best group hunting skills of any creature on the planet. The physical weakness of humans is more than made up for by our enhanced capacity for communication/socialization and technology. While one, unarmed human may be weak, a dozen armed humans, working together as a tightly knit unit, are a foe no predator can match. Correlation vs. causation fallacy. 70,000 years cooresponds to a mass extinction event following the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. Yes, clearly the two evolved in tandem. Memes need not evolve for utility. They only need to be good replicators... something one human, for whatever reason, feels compelled to pass it onto another person. The better a meme is able to do this, the more successful it will be. It's for this reason that we see pathological memes like chain letters and urban legends. We've created autocatalysts with variadic products. It's quite likely that such reactions have occured innumerable times throughout the course of the universe, and the chance of any of these reactions leading to the eventual formation of a chemical chain reaction as stable as the prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells is quite infintessimal. The improbability of abiogenesis is offset by two things: it need only happen once, and by the anthropic principle if it didn't happen we wouldn't be here to care.

Iran has done nothing but lie about their nuclear program. They bought ultracentrifuge designs designed to produce weapons grade uranium from the former head of the international nuclear black market, and have purchased ICBM designs from North Korea, the whole time claiming their intent is peaceful nuclear power. If they're flat out lying to the world about their nuclear program, how the hell can they be trusted with nuclear weapons?

Well, beyond human memetic evolution, which is increasing at an exponential rate, and the recent evidence of an intelligence-improving gene circulating through the population, human skull shape was recently discovered to be changing to support increasing brain size: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4643312.stm

There are few DVD players which support MPEG-4. Most only support MPEG-2

PHP+CGI+suexec is the only way to keep PHP secure on a multi-user host. Otherwise files that, say, have your database password will be readable by every PHP script on the system. And unlike Wikicities, you won't have a permanent history of edits to roll back to. Considering it's designed for low-load web pages, the performance penalty shouldn't be an issue.