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http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE55G6RA20090617 Strange to see this bill bans cloves. It also sounds like they're mulling banning menthol, which would really suck. Want to ban something from cigarettes? How about polonium 210 and nitrosamine?

The cake is a lie

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/19/tobacco.lobby/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Looks like it's about to be signed into law. This seems like such an obvious move to me too: the FDA should have the power to regulate a drug like nicotine. Why they haven't in the past only makes me wonder how much the tobacco lobby previously controlled our government. Now if only we could do something about corn...

No. Ice sheets are highly reflective and bounce a lot of energy back into space. The ground underneath them (or oceans in the case of sea ice) is comparatively dark, absorbing that energy. So when ice sheets or sea ice melts, it changes the albedo (i.e. reflectivity) of the earth's surface, causing more energy to be absorbed rather than reflected back out into space.

You do know about NuPIC, right? You can hack on it in Python.

Yes, if you could predict everything in the entire world, this is correct. That said, this is another way of saying "if you put the same person in the same place at the same time, they would always make the same decision" To me, that implies the decision a person makes is a function of their identity, or in other words, their identity drives their decision making process. To me, that defines free will: my decisions are shaped by my identity, not nonphysical/quantum forces, random events, etc.

Perhaps you can point out a flaw in the original papers from the US Department of Energy: http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae_ps.pdf http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/pdfs/biodiesel_from_algae_es.pdf Well again, it's not just "Wikipedia", you are saying a peer reviewed research paper published by the US Department of Energy is wrong. That's a bit more audacious of a claim. I do not have the expertise required to poke holes in your assessment. So perhaps you can do me a favor and evaluate the calculations found in the original paper and point out the flaws?

The brain is a classical system, not a quantum one And even if it were, that's a big red herring in a discussion about free will

Both good choices, although Erlang is rather... weird. Lua on the other hand is an awesome language which is very simple and very clean.

*patiently waits for someone to catch the Kraftwerk reference*

That's a platform, not a language

Actually, very old research shows that dissolved CO2 enters the atmosphere as the temperature increases. This is occurring right now as a feedback of recent temperature increases. There are also huge seasonal fluctuations of dissolved CO2 as it's absorbed into the water and emitted back into the atmosphere. Indeed it is unusual for CO2 to act as a climate forcing at all. Typically CO2 levels increase in response to increasing temperatures caused by other forcings. The leading explanation on the matter is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are an unnatural event which has no past precedent, and now CO2 is actually becoming a radiative forcing, rather than a response. This is wrong. The lag is typically 800 years. You might try reading this. It's a nice explanation for laymen: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

So claims the always-correct Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel They cite a Washington Post story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303907.html Sounds doable...

It's not that hard to deduce if you just follow the links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Urine_in_a_toilet_at_the_Denver_Museum_of_Contemporary_Art.JPG The description for the image says: Which is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

So yeah, Iran, rumors of a rigged election, 2 million people protesting in the streets... pretty absurd. What's your take? It seems to me like this will not end well.

Welcome to Computer World. Also, I'm the operator with my pocket calculator.

The methodology given for assessing sea surface temperature via satellite is: I don't know if there's a similar technique for assessing land surface temperatures via satellite, but this particular approach seems exclusive to measuring the sea surface temperature.

A rather common complaint I see levied against calculations of the global mean surface temperature is that many temperature monitoring stations are located in urban areas. Urban areas are naturally warmer than the surrounding land because there's all sorts of radiant energy being used by the human inhabitants. However, urban areas comprise a relatively small part of the total earth's surface (including oceans), and a disproportionate amount of temperature monitoring stations exist within these areas. If we continue to follow this line of reasoning, they argue that warming is just occurring within our little urban heat islands and that an undersized sample is clouding our view of the overall mean surface temperature by too many measurements within urban heat islands. It's the urban heat islands that are warming up, they argue, not the entire earth. I'm going to go do a little research and get back to you on this one... but to my knowledge people who compile assessments of the global mean surface temperature (like NASA GISS) are able to make urban heat island corrections against individual stations. How exactly these corrections work I'm not entirely certain of, so I'm going to some research and get back to you. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI wasn't able to find information on NASA GISS, but I was able to find out what NOAA does in their calculations: It looks like the corrections primarily affect the uncertainties, and it seems the farther back in time you go things get increasingly uncertain. So to the best of my knowledge (and again I am a layman) they do not attempt to make temperature adjustments based on station metadata, only adjustments in the uncertainties. I have no knowledge of how the uncertainties for a given station figure into the overall assessment of the global mean surface temperature. But it would at least seem that UHI figures into their uncertainties. As to whether they're doing their maths right, you tell me... Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedProbably the more important point here: The urban heat island effect can, by definition, only affect land surface temperature assessments, since all urban areas are on land. However 71% of the earth is covered with oceans. You don't need to cover the ocean with weather stations to measure it: they can be measured via satellite. It's not as if climate scientists are relying on people running land-based weather stations to figure out the sea surface temperature. This is measured independently and comprises the overwhelming majority of the earth's surface whose temperature is being assessed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature#Measuring_SST So it would seem the uncertainties are much lower for satellite-based measurements of the oceans. Perhaps climate scientists can use the more reliable ocean data to compensate for the more uncertain data for land? I am not a climate scientist or statistician so I really have no clue how exactly their assessments work.

I worked for a climate group that specialized in studying human impacts on climate change, and the influence of UHI on things like the GHCN are certainly one of the areas of interest. However the primary concern of UHI is its effect on the instrumental record: if instrument stations are located within the UHI then measurement from stations in urban areas could unduly influence our measurements of the GMST. The nice thing about UHI is that it too can be modeled, and when NASA compiles its assessments of the GMST I'm fairly certain UHI is included in their calculations, although don't quote me on that. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedNote: this topic is an interesting enough one I think it deserves its own thread. JohnB, the paraphrased argument in the opening post of the new thread isn't intended to be your own but it is a rather common one I've seen. I'm not trying to strawman you or anything.

Unobtainium!

More and more often I have seen some rather severe criticism of Obama, not just from the Fox Noise side of the media, but from the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Madow, and Bill Maher: EoFY_UdZNe4 1uuWVHT1WUY It's almost as if this new breed of entertainer journalist (which the Daily Show was at the forefront of) can exhibit a degree of journalistic integrity and not just be partisan mouthpieces! Amazing!

JonB, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with those particular quotes/papers other than we are not seeing similar trends in Antarctic sea ice/ice sheets that we are in Arctic sea ice/ice sheets. The warming trends are asymmetrical between the northern and southern hemispheres.

If you're just trying to get started you can always try Ruby straight from your web browser. Tutorial included! (type "help", it provides a short 15 minute tutorial)

Yes, and emotions I think are a huge factor. I think it's really bad that the mainstream media reported this paper with the incredibly oversimplified synopsis "fish don't feel pain" Yes fish have pain receptors. Yes fish have brains. Yes the pain receptors of fish are wired into their brains. Yes fish react when they are in pain. But if you were to take, say, a salmon and swing it by its tail, beating it on a table, would that make it feel bad? Would it get scared? Would it remember the experience? Would the lingering sensation of pain and the memories cause it to get depressed? Would it remember who caused it pain and change its behavior towards that person/animal as an individual in the future? I'm no expert on fish behavior, but my personal answer to all of those for fish is no. Unless you do serious physical damage to a fish, you can beat it on a table, throw it back in the water, and it will rather quickly resume its normal behavior as if nothing ever happened. Perhaps, given enough time and regular beatings, it will learn to associate human-shaped things with getting beaten on a table, but there is no way it will ever learn which individual humans are abusive and which are benevolent. My answer to all those questions for a cat, on the other hand, is yes. A cat can distinguish an abusive human from a friendly and loving one as an individual. If you hurt a cat, it will feel bad and get depressed. Cats who were abused as kittens remain permanently messed up and have behavioral problems because they remember the abuse. Pets even learn to read the state of their owners mood and react accordingly. I would ask a PETA person (unfortunately our only resident one is the long-vanished IMM) why "sea kittens" deserve rights but locusts do not. Locusts are animals too! Why shouldn't we save the "grass kittens" as well?

I'd say Ron Paul fits the bill too, although his position seems rather different from the Republican base. Where Republicans like Eric Cantor pay lip service to fiscal responsibility and ONLY now that the Democrats are in power, Ron Paul doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk. That's really the sad thing. Ron Paul is as close to a popular Barry Goldwater conservative as you're going to get nowadays, and yet it seems he gets way more support from liberal/anarchist libertarians than he does from the Republican base. It seems nowadays Republicans care more about "doing the opposite thing from the Democrats" than they do about their supposed principles like small government and fiscal responsibility. It seems the only real "principles" Republicans actually care about nowadays are banning abortion, denying gays basic civil rights, and unconstitutionally promoting religion in government. After criticizing Kerry for being a "flip-flopper" Republican congressmen who pushed through bloated pork filled bills and passed the worst medicare in history all while cutting taxes are now whining about the deficit. Say, why didn't they try to work on that problem when you were in power? Instead they raised spending and cut taxes. They are hugely responsible for this problem, but only now that the Democrats are in power are they complaining about it.