Caraccioli

Just for the record, global warming (the greenhouse effect) is a real, undeniable phenomenon. Without it, the Earth would be about 60 degrees colder and we would have a much tougher time surviving. Also, anthropological global warming (GW caused by man-made impact) is also real. The question isn't whether it exists or not, but what the overall impact from it is. Third, like Mary Diamond, I believe in conservation. Conserving and taking care of the environment and being aware of our impact upon it is a matter of simple personal integrity. I strongly support personal integrity. I do not support taking a scientific theory and using it as a grab for political power. That is how GW is being used by activists. Turning problems like this over to the government based on incompletely proven theories shows a lack of integrity. In sum, I am all for taking personal responsibility for your impact on the environment and educating others on how they can do likewise. I am against assigning that responsibility to a wastefully administrated bureaucracy based on the urgings of politically motivated people and organizations.

ice core samples from the poles dating back 10,000 years. saw it last nite on discovery.. supposivley proves global warming.. The original Mann "hockey stick" diagram almost exclusively uses tree ring samples from North America as the proxy for actual temperature data. This tree ring data has several faults including: a) it is concentrated in one place and not representative of worldwide temperature effects, b ) it doesn't include temperature outside of land areas (oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface), c) tree ring thickness can be due to many things other than temperature and it is difficult to distinguish precisely what caused them to grow the way they did and d) trees only grow in the summer - so winter temperatures would be excluded. As Mary Diamond mentioned, the Mann diagram fails to include the Little Ice Age from about 1350 to 1850 (when there was ice 3 feet thick on the Thames in London). It also fails to include the medieval warming period from around 900 to 1300 (when documents prove the Vikings were living in Greenland quite comfortably growing hay and grain there.) A 2001 IPCC status report even admits, "...at present, it is debatable whether there is enough temperature proxy data to be representative of hemispheric, let alone global temperature. There is no doubt that the temperature of the late twentieth century is greater than many previous centuries, but this cannot be taken as a simple indication of overwhelming global warming as we are also coming out of a Little Ice Age. The claim that the temperature is higher now than that at any time throughout the past 1000 years seems less well substantiated, as the data essentially exclude ocean temperatures, night temperatures and winter temperatures..." Now, arctic core samples have their own faults as temperature indicators, although they are considered richer in information than tree ring samples. The further down in an ice core you go, the more difficult it is to distinguish the date. From wiki on ice cores: "Shallow cores, or the upper parts of cores in high-accumulation areas, can be dated exactly by counting individual layers, each representing a year. These layers may be visible, related to the nature of the ice; or they may be chemical, related to differential transport in different seasons; or they may be isotopic, reflecting the annual temperature signal (for example, snow from colder periods has less of the heavier isotopes of H and O). Deeper into the core the layers thin out due to ice flow and eventually individual years cannot be distinguished... Lower down the ages are reconstructed by modeling accumulation rate variations and ice flow." So we're back to modeling. Second, the data is localized to the area where the core is taken. Third, ice core samples are evaluated by examining air bubbles trapped within the ice. From wiki again, "Dating the air with respect to the ice it is trapped in is problematic. The consolidation of snow to ice necessary to trap the air takes place at depth (the 'trapping depth') once the pressure of overlying snow is great enough. Since air can freely diffuse from the overlying atmosphere throughout the upper unconsolidated layer (the 'firn'), trapped air is younger than the ice surrounding it. Trapping depth varies with climatic conditions, so the air-ice age difference could vary between 2500 and 6000 years (Barnola et al., 1991)." [emphasis mine] On top of all that, ice core samples don't prove global warming anyhow. The key here is to prove that the temperature has been relatively stable until anthropological global warming (or "man-made GW") became a serious issue. So the samples are needed to prove stability and thus lay the blame at our feet. Except that's really tough to prove due to the problems inherent in evaluating ice cores. It is still a proxy, not truly representative temperature data.

GW as a concept is so large and multi-faceted that to discuss the whole thing would fill a report (and has filled many). Let me focus on the rising sea level stuff. I'll start with a bit of rising sea level history. In the 70s and 80s, a small group of scientists were trying to promote GW as a plausible scenario and the majority of scientists didn't believe the idea had any merit. So they resorted to making drastic claims to get media attention for their cause. (This is pretty standard behavior amongst activists.) Stanford University environmentalist Stephen Schneider told Discover in 1989 "To avert the risk (posed by GW) we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to off up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we have...Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." One such scary scenario offered was that the oceans would rise by 20 feet or more. Gore's movie suggests that this may happen and even includes a nice computer image showing what Manhattan would look like underwater. This is to be due to the melting of ice in places like Greenland, the Antarctic and so forth. One of the Inconvenient topics in Gore's movie was the dramatic change in the Greenland melt area from 1992 to 2005. But Gore's movie massaged the data for dramatic effect. Dr. Petr Chylek, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax said: "Mr. Gore suggests that the Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. But 1992 was exceptionally cold in Greenland and the melt area of ice sheet was exceptionally low. If, instead of 1992, Gore had chosen the year 1991, one in which the melt area was 1% higher than in 2005, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new Ice Age is just around the corner." This sort of statistic slight of hand has been used in the past by activists to create greater drama. But it's essentially wrong and misleading. Let me get back to the rising sea level itself. We start with activist-inspired 20 foot rises in sea level. That is a wild prediction that has had to be tempered quite a bit since GW became more mainstream. (Although, as Mr. Inconvenient attests, still manages to rear its ugly head now and again.) By the 1980s, it had gone down to three feet. One group of GW scientists currently predicts the sea rise by 7 inches to 23 inches in the next 100 years. Quite a dramatic difference, eh? But there's more... The UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) puts out a report every couple of years that calculates an estimated average sea level rise. The progress of the "rising sea level" value is quite telling. In the IPCC's 1990 report the "best estimate" for this number was pegged at an average of 25 inches over 100 years. By the 1995 IPCC report, it had gone down to 19 inches. In the last released report in 2001, it was down to 15 inches. Who knows what the report due this year will report it as being? The wiki article on sea-level rise puts some of this into perspective quite well IMO. To wit: "Sea level has risen around 130 metres (400 feet) since the peak of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago. Most of the rise occurred before 6,000 years ago. From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr. Since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 3 mm/yr." (Source: IPCC 2001 report, http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/425.htm ). So is the sea level rising? Absolutely. But it been rising for thousands of years. The climate is an ever-changing, multi-variable thing that we don't fully understand. The best the IPCC can do is create computer models that are not fine enough to predict the weather accurately when starting from one point in the past moving forward to today. They are getting better at it, but I've read that it will be at least 10 years before climatologists have an system accurate and complex enough to even begin to approach real weather patterns. The IPCC's report fully admits this. From the 2001 report: "Despite the higher temperature change projections in this assessment, the sea level projections are slightly lower ["slightly" apparently meaning "about 21% lower based on the average"], primarily due to the use of improved [computer] models, which give a smaller contribution from glaciers and ice sheets. So, with all this in mind, just how much more are you willing to pay in taxes to fight off things like this? They can't even pin down the numbers. When you read this stuff, think critically. The debate is far from over.

I may be missing the point, but the WWII outfits look really cool! http://picasaweb.google.com/HistoryGeek913...362928490416706 http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u267/wi...t=ssundluft.jpg http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u267/wi...cingcouple1.jpg http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u267/wi...rrent=JandD.jpg I once dressed up as James Michener, circa WWII (a lieutenant commander in the Navy) for a presentation on the man. Huh. When I was looking for his rank (which I forgot, even though I own the insignia required for the uniform), I found this: "John Ford's film Donovan's Reef (1963) was loosely based on Michener's 'The South Sea Story'" No wonder I like that movie! I'll have to go find that story and read it.

Thinking further on the topic of masters wanting to teach...I sort of recall my thinking on it, although I don't recall exactly where I was discussing it any more. But it comes from the idea that you teach in an effort to continue expanding a topic that you love (which is rather selfish in a way.) If you hand the knowledge to someone else, they can apply their creativity to it, expand upon it and increase it. At least, that's how I see mastery. Masters would want to see the things they love expand.

Ol' Cal didn't live in a world where movers and shakers were responsible for the gutting of pension plans, the ripping-off of the public through stock fraud, the enslavement of young minds to electronic pablum, or a thousand other ills all wrought by those determined and persistent types. So much for Willie Loman... Gee, Phil. I'm surprised to find such cynicism coming from you. The horrors of the world have always been around us (and are not due only to the efforts of persistant buisinessmen - which is what I think(?) you're suggesting), we just haven't been able to be made aware of them so quickly and with such graphic coverage.

I should trust a politician (I could really stop there) who has much to gain from setting himself up as an expert so that he and his favored causes and companies can get a further purchase on my money? (Via increased taxation and punative legislation.) Did you know he owns a company that sells those absurd carbon footprint credit things? He even sold some to himself to cover the cost of his little pad that consumed 20x more energy than the average house did last year. Despite what Albert says, the science is far from decided. It'll take me some time, but there is more than a little scientific evidence that global warming is primarily, if not entirely, generated by the sun. (And that hockey stick graph is essentially unprovable. There is no straight line temperature data going on for centuries. We only have accurate temperature readings going back 150 years for some places and 100 years or so for most places. Much of the data originally came from tree ring samples which is notoriously unreliable to all but the true believer.) As for sudden climate change - that is being poised to take over for the buzzword "Global Warming" when it becomes old and tired like the news buzzwords "Overpopulation," "Spotted Owl," "Acid Rain," and "Rainforest Deforestation." They have to keep these things fresh or the public gets tired of hearing about them. "All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance." -Will Rogers

You know, when I picked to resurrect this topic for my comment on the Godel book (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the original point), I'd forgotten what it was all about. I was just looking for our long gone philosophy thread and this seemed as close as I was going to get. Now everyone is responding to stuff that came before, which made me re-read and...I noticed I never really responded well to this. 1. I don't know if I said that, but if so it's not right. I think the master would teach because it is through teaching that you learn. Somewhere (bet it's from Illusions) I read something like, "the master teaches what s/he most needs to learn." And probably should have added "...or it pays the bills." 2. I agree that there is no such thing as altruism. (But if there were, only NFs could get near to it.) I had a friend in a volunteer organization who (being a master IMO) explained to me that everyone who was a member of this "altruism-oriented" group was so for selfish reasons. I could try and reconstruct the whole discussion, but there is no time, so let me sum up. I In what was practically a parody of Plato, ("Yes, Arnie, it is just as you say." "No Arnie, no one could deny you are right." etc.) I offered up examples and he explained them away in straightforward fashion. Hummmm, yes, I suppose. However, you can focus your development. Which is more worth development? Actually, neither; but intelligence seems to me to have more utility for problem solving and future impact. A innately "surface" beautiful person gradually loses that through time or takes it to an early grave. Inner beauty...well that's another whole discussion that I'm not prepared to discuss rationally. That probably trumps the other two in a vacuum. [so I guess I'd chose Kaylee, if forced.] One of my favorite quotes sums it up best and lays both to waste: "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge

Wow. That is really cool. Does your wife have an unmarried sister?

This month. Look here. The environment is so complex that they can't quite figure it out. Just like they can't understand how the human brain works. These systems are so complex and we understand so little about them that anything that is reported as fact this week is likely to be wrong next week.

I came across something neat in the book I'm reading (Godel, Escher and Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid). In it, the author says: "Even if a system can 'think about itself', it is still not outside itself. You, outside the system, perceive it differently from the way it perceives itself. So there is a meta-theory - a view from outside - even for a theory which can 'think about itself' inside itself." So, extrapolating, even when you step back and watch yourself and then step back once more and watch the watcher, you are still trapped within the system - your mind. So, if he's correct (and I intuit that he is - it's very logical and addresses something I have sort of wondered at from right angles when thinking on the whole 'watch the watcher' concept), you can never completely accurately view yourself from outside, even when you attempt to do so. It actually sort of shoots down some of the (often more absurd, IMO) metaphysical concepts. However does this mean you can't be more objective by stepping back? Is it just a construct of the mind and thus a way of our mind fooling us? Or is there some validity to attempting to assume dispassion? After all, this concept is a major tenet of psychotherapy. Perhaps it's just something that people who are inclined toward it do because (they think, at least) they are more objective/dispassionate than people who either won't attempt or don't consider attempting it. In this case, trying to dispassionately view yourself would just be a natural extension of who and what you instinctively are. (By the same token, those who don't consider attempting such an exercise may be acting out a natural extension of who and what they instinctively are. However, those who are afraid to do so...well, I guess they are acting out their natural inclinations, but they are doing so out of fear. That seems wrong to me. Fear of everything but falling and loud noises has been shown to be learned. You can unlearn anything you can learn if you decide to do so. So can fear of knowledge of self be 'natural'? It would seem to me not to be true.) Of course, who's to say that the outside observer is any more dispassionate than you are? I suppose that would depend upon their relationship to you. On the one had, they may be distant enough not to have formed as many opinions about you as a person closer to you might. On the other hand, this may limit them to facile observations. On the other other hand, our appearance, much though we would like to think otherwise, has many elements that accurately reflect who we really are. (I can sometimes pick an SJ out just by their face - expressions, lines and so forth.) Very interesting.

Say, that looks pretty good (and it also looks like more than a little work.) Of course, I don't eat meat anymore, but meatloaf is one of things you just sort of remember well. (So is corned beef. But that was another holiday...)

I had heard they did autopsies on some of the animals supposed to have been killed by this food and not all of them actually died from it. (This doesn't absolve the pet food company, but at least they are taking responsibility and trying to do something about it.) It reminds me of a story I read when I was a kid about mass hysteria over car windshield pitting. (Hey, I looked it up on the web and you can read the whole story here. It's a really interesting story.) The media would love to have an epidemic to report on and I suspect they puff stuff like this up in the hopes of producing one. They should have reported the problem, but I can't believe that this story is still going on. For your own (and everyone else's) benefit, please take the time to think critically, not emotionally, when you see stuff like this dragged out to this extent.

What?!? What else does and indie film have going for it?! Personally, I think it's either laziness or herd behavior. I was watching The Science of Sleep which was really interesting (as well as rather uneven and emotionally overwrought in places - but I sort of expect some of that), but they copped out in the end. Had it had an ending, I would have been more inclined to recommend it as being worth 2 hours of time spent. As it is, nah. You've got to have some observation and what it all means at the end, don't you?

Quartermaster James? Are you out there? Do you understand the rules? You get to post a pic for us to guess.

Perhaps I should expand a bit. I cited SW:TESB and now some think I'm talking about mainstream movies. (Saturday serials aside, it's a cheap tactic. The serials took a week or at most a few weeks to come out, big budget movies take a few years. Even when they don't (because they've filmed everything together) the SFX take a year (the POTC movies) or they intentionally delay the release (the third BTTF movie). But that aside... I am talking about low(er)-budget indie pics that have no hope of having a sequel but which also have no decent ending or resolution, nor (apparently) any intention of having written one. Take The Comfy Chair (and keep it because I sure don't want it.) It just sort of wanders around, going nowhere new or even interesting (Plus it has these awful, out-of-focus camera shots that remind you of a movie made by someone who doesn't understand how to use the auto-focus feature on their camera - but I digress) and then just sort of ends on an absurd note that should at least be resolved somehow. Blah. The title is far more interesting than the movie actually is. Even bigger budget indie pics do this. I was recently watching Broken Flowers with Bill Murray. It was actually pretty interesting, but it never really went anywhere. It just sort of ended without any kind of reasonable resolution to the main character's dilemma. Phu-yuck! Perhaps they should warn you that films are going to end without resolution. That way those who enjoy such stuff can enjoy them and I can eschew them. [/rant off]

This morning's constitutional led me to Micky D's for a cuppa'. (McD has pretty decent coffee these days...) One of the girls behind the counter - I suspect she was 18 or 19 - was talking very animatedly to a co-worker - she was about 30 - 40 I suspect - about the principles behind soundwave transmission. No one was behind me and the cashier had wandered off, so I stopped and listed to well over a minute of this. (From my understanding, she got it right.) Sometimes the world is so cool.

Say, that sounds intriguing. I am adding the first series to my Netflix list to check it out. (My Netflix is stuck. I think my discs were lost in the mail - the usually turn them around in a day or two and it's been a week since I sent them. @$!%&!)

I once ran into a girl sitting by the side of the pool at the B&B where I was staying in Key West who had crewed on a charter boat trip on which I'd gone. She was writing in a bound notebook when I first saw her there. We got to talking and it turned out that she was making notes in her journal about what had happened to her so far in Key West. She was spending a few months on KW crewing/waitressing and something else I don't recall that was along those lines. (Edit: Now that my mind has maundered a bit, I do recall! She worked part-time in the dive shop attached to the charter boat.) She had been all over the Caribbean working by turns as a waitperson, store cashier, hotel maid, boat crew, cruise ship crew or something and probably a dozen other odd jobs that I've long since forgotten. She was 24, tan and fairly fit from running up and down the boat and waitressing and whatnot. She said she never spent more than a few months in any one port. She was living alone when I talked with her, but she had several like-minded friends whom she occasionally hooked up with in her journey to split the rent. I asked her if she planned to do this for the rest of her life and she said she would probably settle down "soon." So I guess you can make anything work if you're flexible and hard-working. (Although someone with all her jobs probably didn't have much time to fully experience every place she went - especially if she kept up her journal - which she said she did - but I suppose it was a fascinating lifestyle.) I wonder what happened to her?

jess, have you read Timeline by Crichton? It's well worth the time. Near: Finish statistics with an A. Far: Get my Doctorate in Psychology and be an overeducated know-nothing.

No, I was talking about one of the basic constituents of matter, but that works too. (It's not a ST character, so it fits the definition. It is sort of cool looking.)

Who? Me or Silent? I just thought Key West was cool. (In fact, I still do - it just didn't turn out to be practical for me. Too much sacrifice for too little return. There are precious few engineering jobs in KW and them what be there are mainly for Civil Engineers - which I'm not.)

I suspect the minimum wage on the island is higher than that for Fla. in general. It seems to me that BK was paying nearly 1-1/2 or 2 times minimum when I was paying attention to the job page of the Key West Citizen. (I used to subscribe with the idea of fishing for jobs...don't bother. It's too expensive and arrives days late.) But most of the working folk I ran into worked 2 and 3 jobs and lived with roommates in rented houses on Stock Island. Of course, that was in the 90s and this is the 21st century - so you don't need to subscribe to newspapers. So check the classifieds: http://keysnews.com/classifieds/ (It'll probably help if you're open to roomies with alternative lifestyles.)

Of course, OTOH, if you really believe you can make it doing something, you probably can. (All we've done is rip on this poor guy!) It may take some hard work and perseverance, though. But then, anything worthwhile does. (As for the storms - well, I liked what one person I talked to said. In essence, "Yeah, there's hurricanes. So far they've accurately predicted 29 of the last 3 hurricanes to make landfall. So I figure if one's coming, I'll just wait it out and see what happens." God love the people of Key West for the laissez-faire attitude!)

Key West is a damned expensive place to live. I know (or have known - for many of them have since left) several people who've lived there and if you haven't got your income figured out, it can be a hardscrabble life. (Stock Island, just off KW proper, is about the cheapest place I know of to call home, but the environment reflects the rent.) The economy seems primarily to revolve around tourism and (probably to a lesser extent now) real estate. (I looked into it quite extensively about 10 years ago.) Depending on what you do, if you're set on Florida, I suspect Central Florida or South-Eastern Florida would be more accommodating. (Where's Cpt. Sophia? She can tell you all about C.F.)