Pangloss

You're welcome, but you haven't exactly been completely polite either, and if you make a rash or conjectural statement and refuse to back it up around here we call that trolling, because our purpose is accuracy, not opinion. Please behave accordingly. Thanks.

And the COP probably isn't qualified to form a judgment. But nobody really is, and oversight is necessary, so you have to have someone do it.

Let's see if we can stick with the subject at hand, please -- if Sedit has a serious question then I'd like him to get a serious answer. If Sedit wants to engage in speculations we can move the thread to that subboard. Thanks.

You were doing better when you were just talking about exploring ideas. Nothing wrong with that, but declaring experimentally demonstrated concepts invalid without any evidence undermines credibility even more than unsupported declarations.

Microsoft has released Seadragon for the iPhone. Seadragon is the core technology behind Microsoft's Photosynth application, which allows users to construct clouds of imagery and other data and then navigate them much like Google Maps. The iPhone app basically applies the same concept in a mobile environment, leveraging the multitouch screen. There's a video here showing it in action: http://livelabs.com/blog/seadragon-goes-mobile/ It's an interesting idea, and it's also making waves in the Microsoft community because it's an awkward acknowledgment that the Windows Mobile OS isn't up to this sort of thing.

I agree, it's kind of a good news / bad news deal with them. You take the good with the bad. Not the way things should be, perhaps, but in a perfect world PBS wouldn't need to run pledge drives either.

I bid 300 quatloos for the newbiverse!

I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of posting a little blurb about this over in the general forum. It really sounds like a great project for somebody to leap on. I wish I weren't so busy at the moment or I'd jump at it myself. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=36935 I might be available to help with debugging and troubleshooting if you need -- I teach Flash/AS classes at my school. I'm just abysmally short on time at the moment, I'm afraid. Just as a suggestion, if you get multiple people interested in this, maybe you could try it as a public project, like a SourceForge kind of thing, only maybe we could do it through SFN somehow. I could talk to the admins about setting up a message area and maybe a little storage space if you're interested.

One of our long-time members, and author of the affiliated "Smarter Than That" science blog, Mooeypoo, is looking for some help putting together a cool animation to demonstrate a specific concept in science. If you've seen Mooeypoo's work on her own site or her many posts here at SFN then you know that she has a wonderful talent for making things interesting for both scientists and the general public. It sounds like it would make a great project for a member to work on, or perhaps even multiple members! It would surely make a nice addition to any resume or CV, and you would get credit on her web site. The details can be found here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=36884 Help our Mooeypoo, can you be? You're her only hope!

Please remember to be polite, folks. Thanks.

You guys are covering the topic really well. I've seen a lot of discussions like this floating around the 'net about this, and talked to many friends and family about it, as I imagine you all have as well. I've had several conversations with people working in economics-related fields about this including an economics professor and an accountant, but I've also talked to people who have no expertise but just some good common sense -- I'm just getting a general impression that people are a lot smarter about this sort of thing than we normally give them credit for. I think that your points (ParanoiA and Phi in the last couple pages above) clearly go beyond simple ideological pressure generated by pure-market partisans. There are really good reasons for not bailing out the auto makers. The argument is on solid ground. Unfortunately so is the opposing argument -- it isn't just politics, it has valid points as well (and I think you all generally agree with this). This strikes me as being akin to a "tough problem" in science, and perhaps there's a need here for scientific problem solving. I sure hope there are people working on it on that basis. One point I raised with my economist friend yesterday is that if we had let the Big 3 collapse then we would likely have done something equally grandiose in the aftermath of that event, just because of politics. That's a very real problem with the "market" side of this argument -- getting people to go along with it, not just in initial acceptance, but all along the whole bumpy ride. It's very difficult to get people to not only accept pain, but to KEEP accepting it. That's just not how we do things in this country. You know the phrase, right? "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't do X, Y or Z?" We have a very low threshold for pain. Of course, we have an almost equally low tolerance for failure, and I noticed that there were several news stories last week about how congress was already starting to ask why we've spent all this money and the economy hasn't already been fixed! My first reaction when I heard that was "you have got to be kidding me", but when I thought about it I realized that I should have expected it, perhaps even earlier. But I guess there's no point in being a pessimist -- we'll either fix this or we won't, right? I still like to think that between all our hand-wringing and brainstorming we'll somehow muddle through along a path that's relatively beneficial, or at least as beneficial as was realistically possible.

Sounds like a Vernor Vinge novel, doesn't it? He published a SF novel in 2007 called "Rainbow's End" in which everyone walks around with special VR equipment that effectively creates what he called "mediated reality". What you see, hear, etc, may be very different from what the person standing next to you perceives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End Obviously not the same thing, but it seems to serve a similar purpose.

I'm afraid the buzz on this is that it's no "Day After Tomorrow". The movie is scoring an abysmal 24% in the review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes. It has a higher score from fans but since it just opened today most of those fan votes will be based on previews and ideological preconceptions. Oh well. I may Netflix it anyway just to see the f/x on Blu-Ray.

The more I think about this situation, the less I like the idea of bailing them out.

That's not enough to make up the discrepancy I was looking at. And some articles were talking about lower figures with benefits, and quoting academic studies done on the subject, so for me that particular question is unanswered for the moment. It may not matter, ultimately, and it's clearly being manipulated by various agencies for political reasons, but perhaps it will become more clear over time. --------- On a related note, the White House is indicating today that it will provide bailout relief from the $700 billion TARP fund. Gotta preserve those high union wages, you know. Who cares about competition anyway?

That was some odd last-minute posturing and deal-making last night (and interesting to follow). The K Street aspect of it was disconcerting (lawmakers calling union officials to see if the deal would be okay, "Pretty please with sugar on top?", and the union officials responding "Not if you want to get re-elected, fewl"). But it's complicated. I've been doing a little digging on the salary issue and it's just not all that clear exactly what the two sides would have actually agreed to. Last week I think I posted that it's something like $78/hr (w/benefits) for big-3 union workers, and $44 for the profitable non-union shops. But I've since read other articles talking about new plants starting employees under $15/hr and that many GM workers don't make anything like that larger figure. The point being not that 15 bucks an hour is inappropriate for an auto-worker (they should be paid based on whether a worker can be trained and employed to do that job for that amount -- what's the problem? fuggin unions), but rather the simple fact that the bill may have not been clear enough to support a deal. If all parties don't understand what they're voting on, then they have no business voting. The situation is a mess, but there are bright spots here and there. It's just going to take more time to work our way out of this particular Iraq.

Oof. That's depressing. Thanks for passing that along. I think NASA had better choose its battles carefully. They certainly have many fans and admirers, and deservedly so, but they're clearly not going to win any kind of political or public relations fight with this administration.

That's interesting about the Illinois senate race history. Thanks for passing that along. Regarding "anything could happen", you know Obama's no longer in the Senate, right? He took the unusual step of actually resigning from his post, which he could have done on January 20th just before being sworn in.

I have no problem with the thread move, btw. Doesn't bother me -- I thought we were talking about opinions, but if we're going to focus on scientific findings then it needs to be in a place more like this, I agree. I do think it's ironic to say that this isn't a political thread when some references above are actually pointing towards web sites with clear political agendas. Let's try something with a little less partisanship and a little more science, by way of reminder of something that I've said before but which is somehow frequently forgotten in the mad rush to change the world. Here's an applicable quote from the actual NOAA web site. http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr_webpage.html#section1 So we're not there yet. But we do appear to be heading in that direction and it's important to pay attention to that and take steps accordingly.

He denies the allegation, and there's no direct evidence of it so far as I know. But the right wing has already latched on to this and is running with it pell-mell. It'll be interesting to follow this.

Sure, that would be here: Moving on: So then you are going back to basing your proposal to depopulate at-risk regions on the basis of man-kind causation? Okay, but that isn't definitively supported yet, not like global warming. There is evidence of it, I agree, but not a conclusion with a consensus. Note that I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you having that opinion. What I'm saying is that there's a valid opposing viewpoint. That's all. And I think my points about building codes are significant and worth discussion in this subject. As I said before, had Mississippi had Florida's building codes they wouldn't have had anything like the damage (or casualties) they had. Obviously that doesn't apply to the 9th Ward (et al), but that was ALSO preventable, just for a different reason. Point being, you think we shouldn't settle those areas. I think we can settle those areas, using science and technology to back us up. That's an argument. That's what we do here, state opposing viewpoints. Welcome to SFN! And that, by the way, is the answer to this question: Because you brought up the issue of settlement in hurricane-vulnerable regions, which is a socio-political opinion issue.

Your link doesn't refute my statement, which was: Which I only mention because you actually put that forth as a direct refutation to the above statement (and continue to do so after Phi also pointed out your error). Your link doesn't look at places where we have high pop density and consistent train service. So it's not a valid refutation of the statement. We're not saying that Americans use trains as a general rule -- you're correct in saying that they do not. What we're saying is that they don't use them because they're not convenient. If you think Obama's infrastructural improvements will have value, then it would seem that you agree with this point, so what's the problem? Much better, thanks. Nope, we're not different in that regard. We're different in this one: Which doesn't necessarily follow, but it's certainly a valid point of view, and I respect that. line[/hr] Just to update this thread a bit, the current plan being debated calls for $14 billion in low-interest loans and the requirement of a restructuring plan involving reworking salaries across the board. The plan would be overseen by a "car czar" who would review the progress of the makers in April and could in theory recall the loans and put the companies out of business at that time. The plan has been approved by the House but faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where it needs 10 Republicans to come on board.

I don't think earthquakes are less likely than hurricanes. If I'm not mistaken they're completely random, just like hurricanes, which means the big one could happen tomorrow. You're advocating the dismantling of the world's fourth largest economy because of that public threat, and softening the blow that by saying we can do it over a long period of time. Okay, that's consistent, but I'll just respond the same way I did before: Why don't we just make the people of California assume the risk of whatever dangers exist in their area? When I asked you that question about my situation in South Florida, your response was that it was fine so long as I didn't ask for government assistance afterwords. Would you apply that to Californians after an earthquake, or give them assistance? Earthquakes aren't caused by man, but they assumed the same risk I did. BTW, the greatest earthquake threat is in the central states along the Mississippi. Same region that's threatened by flooding. They don't even have the luxury of moving to higher ground. And then there's Oklahoma and Kansas with those tornadoes. There are communities who brag about not being hit by a tornado in decades, and build their houses out of wood. My house is built out of cement blocks painted to look like wood, and can withstand a direct wind force of 150mph, and my walls, windows and doors can take an 8-foot-long 4x4 fired at them at 150mph (with all that mass behind them). And don't even get me started on the roof! Who's better prepared, them or me? I've had 8 killer hurricanes pass over my hours in the last ten years. The fools in southern Mississippi had no building codes whatsoever. Wanna talk about what Katrina would have cost YOU if there had been FLORIDA building codes in place in Mississippi? (It would certainly be on topic, wouldn't it?) Hey, don't you live in Texas? How prepared is your house for a tornado? Running away doesn't solve anything. Even building below sea level in NOLA makes sense so long as the science and engineering back it up and the proper preparations are taken. That's the American way -- we rise to challenges. We don't run away from them. But I agree with you about responsibility and assumption of risk.

I have neither a yes or a no to offer you on this, as that's an extreme assumption based on what I was actually saying. My point about government funds was extraneous and I should never have said it. My primary point has always been that these areas should not be densely populated anymore. To continue living there despite history and future likelihoods is (IMO) both arrogant and foolish. That's the key point. If you're going to make science the basis for your position, then it's a perfectly logical question. The earthquake threat to Californians is just as real and arguably even more certain than the threat to people living on the coast of South Florida. Do you think that California "should not be densely populated anymore?" If the answer to that question is "no", then why not? What's the difference?