MTGradwell's Comments (376)

“"Brown believes the Iraqi government was trying to convince President George W. Bush that Speicher was still alive to protect Saddam from being targeted when the invasion came. If that was the motivation, it backfired.­"

Oh yes, they were trying to convince us Speicher was alive by insisting consistently and (as it turns out) correctly, that he was dead. Just as they tried to convince us they had WMD's by insisting consistently and correctly that they had no WMD's. In that case, too, their sneaky truth-telling backfired on them. Still, their plot to get Western news media to spread fabrications about them even as they were telling the truth has to be admired for its deviousness.

"Bush used Speicher's case as more evidence that Saddam had to be ousted."

Nice way of skirting around the facts. What Bush had said was "In 1991, the U.N. Security Council . . . demanded that Iraq return all prisoners ... Iraq's regime agreed. It broke its promise. . .. One American pilot is among them". Of course there was no conceivable reason why Iraq's regime would bring destruction upon themselves by breaking that promise in just one case.

What's not being said here is where the rumors were coming from. They were from the same people who brought you rumors of WMD, and babies being thrown out of incubators, and wood chippers / meat grinders / plastic shredders, where Saddam himself, or was it one of his sons, would personally supervise the chipping/g­rinding/sh­redding”

“Do they really live longer, or does it just seem that way?”

“Your theory might have some merit, when humans are sufficiently flexible and/or long-tongued for a human couple to engage in copulation and fellatio at the same time. However, I estimate that as a species we are at least 20 years away from achieving such a state. Furthermore, by the time we do achieve it, we will likely be indistinguishable from short-nosed fruit bats in all other respects, rendering us unable to benefit from the results of scientific studies.

Oh,well. At least it's a step up from being an orb-weaver spider. Having to consume your partner after copulation may work wonders for domestic harmony, but it plays havoc with your weight.”

“"We know that a butterfly .. beating his wings .. could cause a typhoon .."

We really only know that a jointed pendulum can behave unpredictably. The butterfly and typhoon are embellishments, added because a pendulum is too dry a subject to capture the public imagination. But ..

"An entomologist observing our butterfly could never predict the storm two years hence."

Hence, he could never know the butterfly made a difference.

Interesting to see you embracing determinism, but..

"The fact of determinism is made irrelevant by the reality of nearly infinite possibilit­ies."

Suppose the butterfly does flap. If prior events determined that, then it is hard to see how it might not have flapped. Unless those prior events were altered too. "Nearly infinite possibilities"?? Wouldn't "the fact of determinism" mean that there is actually only one possibility?

"The collapse of banks in the 1980s created losses that exceeded the sum of all prior earnings, invalidating all projections of growth no matter how sophisticated the models."

And that was unpredicted and inherently unpredictable??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
mentions 15 causes, including "Lack of net worth for many institutions" ... "Elimination of regulations ..." etc. No butterflies. More recent collapses apparently had similar causes, and prediction required only a sense of deja vu. Loopholes get exploited. Ponzi schemes fail. These things will be true even if a giant butterfly trashes Manhattan. 9/11 didn't alter basic human nature. The validity of predictions based on human nature remains undiminished.”

“"Scalia seemed truly baffled that a Christian cross represents Christianity!"

It's a cross. Lines which continue after meeting. Nobody is nailed to it. In Japan, a cross represents the number 10. A cross is also an element in thousands of Chinese characters. Are Japan and China secretly hotbeds of Christianity?

"The Catholic justice went on to proclaim that a cross self-evidently represented all war dead, not just fallen Christians­."

Not *a* cross. This particular cross. Presumably because that was the stated intention of those who first erected it, "Veterans of Foreign Wars". NOT "*Christian* Veterans". Dedicating it to "the dead of all wars", NOT the *Christian* dead.

Perhaps Jews and Muslims wouldn't choose to have a cross marking their graves, but this particular cross isn't a grave marker.

The original memorial was erected in 1934. The land became federal land in 1994. That's a 60-year precedence for the use of the land as a memorial.

"The transparent ploy of gutting the Constitution by creating an island of private property surrounding by a National Park"?

About 10 percent of the land within the preserve's boundaries is privately owned. There are already many "islands". How could creating one more, one which arguably should always have been an island, gut the constitution?

As for lining streets with crescents, and stars of David, why not? They're only patterns, after all. But somehow I think both you and the ACLU would have something to say about that, if it happened.”

“I think that head was grafted onto a Japanese body. The robot movements were pretty much identical to those of a Honda Asimo. Most of the humans visible in the clip looked Japanese, and the background conversation was Japanesese too. There was a clearly audible "arigatou" ("thank you" in Japanese). Evidently nobody thought to reprogram the body movements, even though the location (UCSD) and the company name (Hanson Robotics) suggest that they're trying to make it look like a home-grown US effort.

Maybe Americans don't bow, but Japanese certainly do, extensively, to a point where not-bowing would seem weird to them. It simply didn't occur to them that Einstein might not bow.

This, incidentally, is why Obama got it exactly right on the occasion of his Japan visit. Not bowing would have been like an important Japanese official going to the US and refusing to shake hands. Even President George H.W. Bush "got it" when he attended the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, and bowed deeply to the urn containing Hirohito's remains. Only the American punditocracy fails to get it, reflecting the debased nature of America's media.”

“For a possibly related story, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan”

“I never knew that Universal was an English company.”

“"Significant" in this case just means "marginally more than zero", Water's there, but you'd have to process vast quantities of rock to get even a small quantity of it. The processing plant used to extract that water would, when transport costs are factored in, cost at least twenty-five times as much as its weight in gold. So would most of the infrastructure required to service the plant. At least initially, only a very tiny proportion of the infrastructure could be manufactured in situ.

The moon is at the bottom of a gravity well. Not as deep as Earth's, only 1/6g, but still very significant. Fuel has to be expended not just to get there, but also to slow down rapidly once near. The final deceleration must be rapid, or else your expensive plant gets splatted, so you can't use efficient but weak propulsion such as ion drives.

By contrast, a comet contains water in abundance. You needn't process vast quantities of material to get it; just land and deploy a scoop; manoeuvring to land on the comet could be done using an ion drive; and there'd probably be plenty of other usable materials, including the He3 which is the supposed incentive for returning to the moon.

The only disadvantage of comets is their distance. This could be fixed by detaching a part of a comet when it approaches relatively close to the Earth, and manoeuvring it into Earth orbit.

Comets are the truly valuable real estate.”

“Oops.

When I wrote " ...merely to counter your assertion that all of the impressive names are on one side of the issue." I should have written "... merely to counter Aaror's assertion ...". Sorry.”

“I never said that Dr. Teller was admirable; only that his was an impressive name. I did that not to make a case against climate change, but merely to counter your assertion that all of the impressive names are on one side of the issue. petitionproject.org does mention other names that might be considered impressive, and i might come up with another of them if I was interested in making arguments from authority, but I'm not.

In any case, you describe Dr. Teller as a fanciful lunatic because he hoped to see peaceful uses for his 'baby', to leave a legacy that wasn't solely death and destruction. What excoriating epithet would you use on those who actually consider using H bombs in anger against innocent human beings? What would you call an entire nation which apparently tolerates the stockpiling of H bombs and other similarly vile abominations on its own soil, and which doesn't instantly remove from office any politician who talks about "leaving all options on the table" in these circumstances?”

“No, it's like saying that just because you can't read either primary OR secondary source documents for string theory, and you have to depend on a census of the opinions of those working in the field (a census which would likely exclude any dissenters automatically on the grounds that they can't possibly be trusted workers in that field), it is unlikely that a majority of laymen will be convinced of the validity of string theory. No matter how impressive the list of string theory proponents is, or how trusted they are in the field.

But even if we did have to depend on secondary sources for string theory - are you trying to say that the theory behind climate change is as complex and as difficult to explain satisfactorily in lay terms as string theory is? Or that the actual empirical evidence in support of climate change is only as powerful and unequivocal as the evidence supporting string theory?”

“One would certainly hope so. But what kind of data is it which cannot be fed to the general public without first being transmogrified firstly into opinion, and then back into data in the form of a count of opinion-holders?

I appreciate that tables of raw data may not mean much to the average layman, but what is so wrong with the notion of presenting graphs based on actual climate data, as opposed to graphs of shifts in opinions?

The graphs would have to be accompanied with a sufficient explanation of how they were compiled, so that viewers could verify e.g. that June 2009 data isn't being directly compared with December 2000 data. But surely that can be done. Also, there'd have to be links to the raw data so that interested parties could verify that there wasn't a 33 masquerading as a 38. Maybe that's the stumbling block, since I understand that a lot of raw data is jealously guarded. However, if you really want to turn the tide against global warming deniers, the way to do it is by presenting meaningful information based on, and linked to, actual climate data.”

“Aaror,

The Global Warming Petition Project, petitionproject.org, is just one of several organized attempts to disprove the notion that there's scientific consensus on this issue. It currently claims that 31,478 American scientists have signed, including 9,029 Ph.D's. Only people with a degree are eligible to sign, and some effort appears to have been expended in verification and in the removal of fake or duplicate entries. Some of the names could be called impressive - Edward Teller, "father of the H bomb", for instance, could be said to be up there with Hawking, Einstein and Rutherford. He wasn't a climate scientist (and neither were/are those you mention), but 3,803 of the signatories are said to have qualifications in atmospheric, Earth or environmental sciences, while many thousands of others have qualifications in subjects which could be directly relevant , such as computing or mathematics. Is possession of a relevant degree indicative of intelligence and knowledge of the subject? I'd say that's at least a possibility,.

Of course, impressiveness is in the eye of the beholder; and, no matter how impressive the lists get, they will always be ignored or denigrated by those on the other side of the fence. Finally, as I said, these lists are compiled "as if that actually means something". It doesn't, any more than the talking heads mean anything. That's my point. Instead of trusting either, why not find some actual evidence you can trust? That way you can form your OWN opinion.”

“I agree.”

“I think your 38% should be 33%. A simple human error, but it demonstrates one of the problems with using numbers. They aren't always right.

There's another bigger problem, though. Science isn't a popularity contest, or at least it shouldn't be. Even if there was complete unanimity among scientists, and even if all 104% or so of the population were convinced of their correctness, if the globe was actually cooling then it would continue to cool in complete indifference to any and all opinions.

You appear to "get" that, in the case of the masses. I doubt that you think the Earth will start cooling the moment that the proportion of the population who think it is cooling tops 50%. But neither side "gets" it in the case of scientists. Both sides put forward increasingly impressive lists of signatories backing their viewpoint, as if that actually means something.

Should "the collective opinions of thousands of professional meteorologists" be "equated to nothing more valid than the uneducated opinion of a radio host"? Yes, absolutely, if neither side puts forward compelling evidence. And if evidence is put forward then it's the quality of the evidence that matters, not the quality of the opinion-holders.

Finally, the survey wasn't about warming. It was about perceived coverage of the issue. If someone is convinced that warming is a threat but nevertheless believes that mainstream coverage is exaggerated, is that person at fault? Isn't it even remotely possible that the coverage is at fault?”

“There probably are many genuinely funny answers on Yahoo answers, but finding them would require doing some actual work, like searching or maybe broadcasting a request for people to submit the funniest ones they've seen. It's much easier, unfortunately, to just make stuff up.

Take the "what causes floods in California" question, for example (answer: "water). A search through Yahoo answers using that exact phrase fails to retrieve that question,as does a search for a combination of keywords such as "floods California". It just isn't there. A pity, because there could be many better answers, e.g. off the top of my head,

It never rains in California
But girl, don't they warn ya
It pours man it pours."

That actually addresses the whole question, including the "in California" bit, whereas the supposed funniest answer is entirely generic and could apply with equally side-splitting hilarity to anywhere.

As for those who seem to think the "secret girlfriend" question is genuine .. I hope you're just being facetious and don't really think that. How blatant does satire have to be before people will look at it and say "this is satire"?”

“There's a famous old movie which does a good job of explaining why lip synching is done. It's called "synching in the rain", or something like that.”

“I think it just demonstrates that marketing works. The name of the program is up there in the article which lots of people have already read, and lots more are going to read. Along with the fact that it "was developed to catch cheating students". So, the next time you want to catch some cheating students, what are you going to Google? Isn't that the point?”

“It was against the sort of 'science' embodied in the article being referenced.

e.g. it says

"Physicists have always known that black holes contribute to entropy in the universe by breaking down matter and energy in their gravitational maelstroms"

In fact, entropy in the universe has been bandied about ever since thermodynamics was developed. The argument had nothing to do with black holes. If stars keep on radiating, it was said, eventually they'll run out of energy, and go out. Everything will end up at the same temperature. This viewpoint doesn't take gravity into account.

Now we have the opposite danger - everything gets drawn into super-massive black holes, which radiate far more powerfully than any star. Fortuitously the same name, 'heat death', is even more applicable to this fate, since we get fried as we fall in.

"Breaking down matter" I can get, but how do you break down energy?

There are actually two contending forces. Radiation spreads energy out. Gravity collects matter together. Einstein established that matter and energy are essentially the same thing. Matter/energy is BOTH collected together AND spread apart. Just like on Earth we have both rainfall and evaporation. Everything heads towards maximum entropy, by definition, but we can't say whether that means everything being scattered, or being collected in one place, or something in between. Are we 50% of the way towards this unguessable destination, or 90%? Or are we already there? Who can say? Popular science, that's who.”

“In related news, scientists reveal that their previous estimate that global floods will place the whole of the Earth under water in just a few centuries have had to be revised: "Those estimates were based on average rainfall estimates. Even if there's just a few inches or rain each year, those inches add up and in a verry short time geologically speaking you're talking miles. Enough to put Mt. Everest under the ocean" a spokesman said. "To put it another way, there's a lot of huge rivers feeding into the sea, and all that water has to go somewhere".

"But now we've discovered this phenomenon called evaporation, which actually takes huge amounts of water OUT of the seas. As a result, we've had to revise our estimates of the Earth's viability drastically downwards. In just a couple of decades the oceans will effectively have boiled completely dry, and the Earth will be a desert."

"Some suggest that rainfall might actually balance evaporation, but they're forgetting about entropy, which basically is a synonym for doom. Because of entropy, you've got to have one extreme or the other. Sorry, but that's how it is".

That's a parody. Sorry if it isn't obvious as one, but as the world slips inexorably along the entropy-lined road to total ridiculousness it's getting harder to write parody that's sillier than what's actually happening.”

“"That chromosome number determines species;"

Other way around. What I said was: "The true mark of speciation isn't variation in size, habit or location, all of which can be reversed. It's a significant alteration in the arrangement of DNA, destroying the possibility of inter-fertility and COMMONLY ACCOMPANIED by a change in chromosome number". Commonly, but not invariably. Also, vastly different species can fortuitously have the same chromosome number.

So, if something has 36 chromosomes in each cell nucleus then it might be a Tibetan fox, or it might be a starfish; or something else which just happens to have a chromosome count of 36. However, if something is a Tibetan fox then (barring serious congenital illness) it will have a chromosome count of 36.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number_of_chromosomes_of_various_organisms for more.

"that the fact of evolution is different from theory"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evolution

"4 a : the historical development of a biological group (as a race or species) : phylogeny b : a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations; also : the process described by this theory"

4a describes the undisputed fact of evolution. Do you really imagine that anyone thinks biological groups don't develop?

4b is about the theory. Note that 4a is different fron 4b.”

“"And you continue to confuse title and subtitle, no matter how many times you say it."

There is no confusion in my mind about distinctions between title and subtitle. None. Merely confusion about why anyone should care. YOU are the one who seems to ascribe huge mystic significance to the word "On". I say, if you want your On, you can have it. Even if the "Oxford's World Classics" edition is called "The Origin of Species". Oxford should bow to your superior wisdom and knowledge.

"I stand by my statements about your biological knowledge.­"

Unless you've been doing some digging, you know nothing about my biological knowledge except what is revealed in these discussions. And if you were right about ALL my biological assertions being "simply factually incorrect", then I would expect you to be able to point out at least one factual incorrectness, and back it up with a real (not joke) citation. We have ongoing disagreements, which I acknowledge, but I don't see anywhere where I am shown to be factually incorrect. Merely stating that I'm wrong doesn't make me so.”

“You said "take the trail yourself from there". WHAT trail? How do you get from Mirsky to Jones et al? Does the one reference the other? No. Is there a reference somewhere in the 69 comments? No. There are, however, various affirmations that domestic dogs are indeed one species, along with anecdotes about how mismatched canines were inventive enough to overcome the supposedly insuperable size difference.

Anyway, what does Jones give us? The fabled assertion that dogs are distinct species? No, of course not. Jones et al are serious scientists, so they are careful to talk about "breed characteristics" without once suggesting or hinting that breeds might be distinct species.

"Mirsky was serious, just using humor to make a point."

That's why he couldn't bring himself to say, even in jest, that chihuahuas and mastiffs are distinct species; only that they SHOULD be. Even he acknowledged that "the 180-pound English Mastiff and the two-pound Chihuahua [are] both considered members of Canis lupus familiaris­." If he can say it, why not you? Why dou you cite, in support of your point, a joke article which directly contradicts your point?

And what am I supposed to do next? Follow the alleged "trail" to yet another unguessable destination that yet again fails to support your point? Why should I do this? How many times should I do this?”

“I understand now. "Are Dog Breeds Actually Different Species? A humorous take on using dog breeds to prove evolution By Steve Mirsky" is in Scientific American, therefore it must be scientific. But the clue's in the title. "A humorous take". It's a JOKE. Even so, it correctly states the accepted wisdom: "the 180-pound English Mastiff and the two-pound Chihuahua [are] both considered members of Canis lupus familiaris­."

"Every point you've made is wrong, and when it is pointed out as so, you just ignore and move on".

I've addressed your so-called rebuttals, in some cases repeatedly. Except for the insults, which are generally too broad to merit serious attempts at rebuttal ("every point you've made is wrong") your points fall into just two categories.

1) "On the Origin of Species" IS TOO the title. I've already spent far too much time on that one; and

2) little dogs and big dogs (or even same-sized but physically separated dogs) are distinct species. You support this with a JOKE citation.

Then you make unfounded claims about the validity of my biological knowledge, and you pretend my points are unsupported assertions. even though I support them with quotes from your own article, or from non-joke publications. It's just as well the discussion is set to end here. Unfortunate, though, because you weren't always this bad.”