Actual parent of kids who turned out be civilized human beings here.
I never felt resentful when ivory-tower experts had an idea about child rearing, because I could always look up their sources and decide for myself whether that evidence was credible. Often I didn't find their claims credible, but other times I did. The problem with the self-appointed "experts" who have no evidence to support this claim. These come in two flavors, those who recast parenting fads as "science", but actually have no evidence to support their claims; and "traditionalists" who advocate corporal punishment. The traditionalist's evidence tends to be, "Dad used to whup the hell out of me, and look how I turned out." Well, you seem OK, but so do a lot of other people who were raised completely differently from you.
The truth is that most people seem to turn out more or less OK. I believe there's a powerful tendency for kids to grow up average-ish that thwarts every parenting philosophy, and rescues kids from some truly awful parenting.
I had a friend growing up whose mother "taught" her children to be careful with fire by burning their hands on the stove when they were toddlers. This was before mandatory reporting, so nobody realized on her youngest that this was the third toddler she'd brought into the emergency room with serious hand burns. She also beat her kids with a razor strap whenever they annoyed her -- who the hell kept a razor strap in their house, even back in the 60s? In the summer she kicked her kids out of the house when she woke up at 7AM and wouldn't let them back in until 7PM, not even to use the bathroom. They used to shit on the street, until my Mom found out and let them use our bathroom. Families in the neighborhood fed them like stray cats. You'd think kids raised that way would be totally dsyfunctional adults, but in fact these kids all grew up to be, apparently, normal. Just like my brothers and sisters. We grew up in a tight-knit, permissive household where physical punishment was never used, and we turned out to be normal, law-abiding adults.
I'm not saying parenting doesn't matter. I'm saying relax and enjoy one of life's great experiences. Do your best to do what's right, but don't worry when people tell you (as they will) that that's wrong. There's more than one way to do it, and you can recover from a few mistakes, or even a lot of mistakes. Parenting is one of the few endeavors where sincere effort counts in itself.
Old ways of doing things often hang on an unexpectedly long time because a mature technology has the advantages of ubiquity. People are comfortable with it, all the kinks have all been worked out, and its popularity gives it a huge structural cost advantage.
You can't think in terms of how expensive it would be to have a 50 lb block of ice delivered to your doorstep today. The *marginal* cost of having ice delivered is nil when everyone on your street is getting it. Everyone had an actual "icebox", and since it had no moving parts it never needed servicing or replacing. So when electric refrigerators became available it was a choice of keeping your perfectly good icebox with its reliable, regularly scheduled ice delivery, or buy a cranky, complicated, expensive piece of machinery that would pay for itself just in time to need replacing. If the ice industry killed itself by shipping polluted ice, it's probably because they couldn't expand their supply to meet demand.
I'll bet the grandchildren of kids learning to drive today will find the whole concept of a massive, truck-based gasoline distribution network absurdly complicated. But it works because it's massive, and because it's ubiquitous we assume it is simple -- which it is on the consumer end. On the production end it is fantastically complicated and labor intensive.
Speaking of the Boston ice industry, I live a half mile from a 20 acre (8 ha) pond that supported a major ice operation in the 1800s. Pictures show men harvesting blocks of ice eighteen, even twenty-four inches thick for shipment around the world. In the non-winter months the companies operated water-powered mills. Ice was a classic case of exploiting slack resources. Ice meant no head for the water powered mill, and an idle workforce. So electric refrigeration wasn't the only pressure on the ice industry: electric factories would have raised the price of winter labor.
Today that same pond never gets more than a couple of inches of ice, even in last year's "polar vortex" event -- you can't make ice that thick in a couple weeks, you need a cold winter that starts early and doesn't let go for months. When I was a kid this pond iced over in December. Now it ices over in Janurary, or Feburary, or some years not at all except for the lee end. In January I can fish from my canoe on ponds where I would once have been ice-fishing.
If anyone reading this is curious what a troll looks like, find thia dude's "energy conservation" post in that thread. And i'll write your next comment for you to save you from having to consult your one-line script yet again: "y u ask me kill myslef" [Rujiel, 2014-12-14]
Do you mean this post where I explained that Jane Q. Public's climate science denial violates conservation of energy? Again, why did that prompt you to accuse me of being a paid oil troll?
Are they hiring you losers while still in high school these days? The bar for paid oil trolls sure is a low one--any stupid thing to prevent the discussion of the oil cartel's impunity. Do the world a favor and kill yourself. [Rujiel, 2014-11-20]
Why would a paid oil troll defend mainstream climate science? This is one reason why I think you might be mistaking me for someone else. Why would the oil industry pay me to debunk the same baseless accusations they're helping to spread?
Another reason I think you might be mistaking me for someone else is that in that post I quoted Jane Q. Public to respond to his baseless accusation:
.. Ever since I challenged his incorrect answer to a question of physics several years ago, he has been rude and insulting.. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-11-20]
... seriously, "rude and insulting"? Here are just a few of Jane's most recent charming statements to me. If Jane was telling the truth about my comments, Jane should be able to produce quotes of similar length which are just as "rude and insulting" as Jane's. Jane can't do that because he's just projecting his own rude, cuss-filled insults onto me.
".. Jesus, you're a dumbshit.
.. your adolescent, antisocial behavior .. keep making a fool of yourself. .. you're being such a dumbass .. your analysis of it is a total clusterfuck. .. you're so damned arrogant you think I'm the one being stupid. .. you were too goddamned stupid .." [Jane Q. Public]
As you can tell by clicking those links, all those insulting comments were actually quotes from Jane Q. Public, directed at me. As you can tell, Jane Q. Public has been cussing at me for months, and I never responded in kind. That's why I found it bewildering that he accused me of being "rude and insulting". So I quoted some of Jane's bizarre insults to show that Jane's baseless accusation was textbook psychological projection.
It's still not clear why this caused you to hate me so much that you've suggested I kill myself three times.
Jane's "interest" in that NAS report evaporated after I showed that Jane had been fooled by "Steven Goddard" once again. So let's return to Jane's confusion about basic thermodynamics.
But net radiative power out of a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in", so the equation Jane just described also says:
NO!!!!! As I have explained to you innumerable times now, you can also consider your heat source, by itself, that "sphere". The only NET radiative power out comes from the electrical power in. Further, the cooler walls do not contribute any of that NET power out. That's what net means. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-16]
I've already pointed out that Jane's hopelessly confused about the word "net", but that's just one of the mistakes Jane packed into these few sentences.
Jane's also wrong to imply that energy conservation across one choice of boundary could somehow contradict energy conservation across another boundary choice. That's impossible. Many boundary choices are inconvenient but they all have to be consistent. Otherwise, how could we possibly tell which boundary choice was correct?
So Jane can't object to the simple energy conservation equation I derived by claiming that some other boundary choice would somehow contradict my equation. That's completely impossible, and if Jane doesn't understand that point then he should learn about conservation of energy: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).
As you can tell after reading those introductions, here's how to apply conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
I put the boundary around the heat source so the boundary is in vacuum. That's because radiation can't travel through opaque solids like the heat source. So the only way to obtain an energy conservation equation with radiative terms is to place the boundary around the heat source.
For example, I calculated the enclosing shell's inner temperature by drawing the boundary within the enclosing shell. This boundary was inside aluminum, so heat transfer through it was by thermal conduction, not radiation. Notice that even this boundary choice leads to a conduction equation where electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. That's because all boundary choices have to be consistent. They can't contradict each other unless one of them is wrong.
After I asked Jane to explain exactly where his boundary would be drawn, Jane replied:
... You can draw the boundary right around the heat source. Electric power comes in, radiative power goes out. There is no contradiction, and no inconsistency.
... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]
Nonsense. I've repeatedly explained that my boundary is drawn around the heat source, so it's in vacuum and therefore contains radiative terms both for radiation going out and radiation going in.
Choosing to put the boundary somewhere else, like inside the heat source, leads to an energy conservation equation with conduction rather than radiative terms. But even those conduction equations agree that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. They can't contradict each other. Putting the boundary somewhere else might be inconvenient, but it couldn't possibly contradict the fact that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature.
My energy conservation equation is this: electrical power in = (epsilon * sigma) * T^4 * area = radiant power out [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-08]
Once again, Jane's wrong. There is literally no choice of boundary which will lead to his absurd equation. Once again, it really sounds like Jane opened a textbook and found "radiative power out per square meter = (e*s)*T^4" and simply assumed that "radiative power out" is just a fancy way of saying "electrical heating power".
At least, that's the most charitable explanation. Once again, I'm trying to rule out less charitable explanations like the disturbing possibility that Jane isn't honestly confused about basic thermodynamics. Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus has simply betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.
Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he was just honestly confused by thinking carefully about conservation of energy, explaining exactly where his boundary lies, and carefully listing all the power going in and out of that boundary.
Or Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he's betrayed humanity by continuing to spread civilization-paralyzing misinformation.
Jane's "interest" in that NAS report evaporated after I showed that Jane had been fooled by "Steven Goddard" once again. So let's return to Jane's confusion about basic thermodynamics.
But net radiative power out of a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in", so the equation Jane just described also says:
NO!!!!! As I have explained to you innumerable times now, you can also consider your heat source, by itself, that "sphere". The only NET radiative power out comes from the electrical power in. Further, the cooler walls do not contribute any of that NET power out. That's what net means. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-16]
I've already pointed out that Jane's hopelessly confused about the word "net", but that's just one of the mistakes Jane packed into these few sentences.
Jane's also wrong to imply that energy conservation across one choice of boundary could somehow contradict energy conservation across another boundary choice. That's impossible. Many boundary choices are inconvenient but they all have to be consistent. Otherwise, how could we possibly tell which boundary choice was correct?
So Jane can't object to the simple energy conservation equation I derived by claiming that some other boundary choice would somehow contradict my equation. That's completely impossible, and if Jane doesn't understand that point then he should learn about conservation of energy: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).
As you can tell after reading those introductions, here's how to apply conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
I put the boundary around the heat source so the boundary is in vacuum. That's because radiation can't travel through opaque solids like the heat source. So the only way to obtain an energy conservation equation with radiative terms is to place the boundary around the heat source.
For example, I calculated the enclosing shell's inner temperature by drawing the boundary within the enclosing shell. This boundary was inside aluminum, so heat transfer through it was by thermal conduction, not radiation. Notice that even this boundary choice leads to a conduction equation where electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. That's because all boundary choices have to be consistent. They can't contradict each other unless one of them is wrong.
After I asked Jane to explain exactly where his boundary would be drawn, Jane replied:
... You can draw the boundary right around the heat source. Electric power comes in, radiative power goes out. There is no contradiction, and no inconsistency.
... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]
Nonsense. I've repeatedly explained that my boundary is drawn around the heat source, so it's in vacuum and therefore contains radiative terms both for radiation going out and radiation going in.
Choosing to put the boundary somewhere else, like inside the heat source, leads to an energy conservation equation with conduction rather than radiative terms. But even those conduction equations agree that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. They can't contradict each other. Putting the boundary somewhere else might be inconvenient, but it couldn't possibly contradict the fact that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature.
My energy conservation equation is this: electrical power in = (epsilon * sigma) * T^4 * area = radiant power out [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-08]
Once again, Jane's wrong. There is literally no choice of boundary which will lead to his absurd equation. Once again, it really sounds like Jane opened a textbook and found "radiative power out per square meter = (e*s)*T^4" and simply assumed that "radiative power out" is just a fancy way of saying "electrical heating power".
At least, that's the most charitable explanation. Once again, I'm trying to rule out less charitable explanations like the disturbing possibility that Jane isn't honestly confused about basic thermodynamics. Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus has simply betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.
Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he was just honestly confused by thinking carefully about conservation of energy, explaining exactly where his boundary lies, and carefully listing all the power going in and out of that boundary.
Or Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he's betrayed humanity by continuing to spread civilization-paralyzing misinformation.
Where is the "only public enemy number one" rule written down?
Mockery is what we do to political leaders, our own included. Some of us even mock political leaders we support. And that's the test of whether you truly believe in someone or in a system. Everybody mocks people they disagree with, it takes real confidence to mock people you agree with. At least that's the way Americans view things. A leader who can't take a ribbing is weak, and the more elaborate the display of machismo or military trappings the weaker we think he is.
Where are these cheap bastards you speak of? Cheap bastards would be paradise, next to the *predatory* bastards in Congress who pose as cheap bastards while steering money to political allies' companies.
In the name of freedom.
What makes you think your tax money isn't going to SpaceX?
You can turn that question around. Given the manifest possibility of such a act, why haven't more organizations taken steps to prevent them?
We keep hearing from the companies attacked and the press that these attacks are "sophisticated", but this attack started with a simple spear phishing attack. People use "sophisticated" to mean "more trouble than we were prepared for."
Comparisons to Stuxnet seem overblown and (in some cases) self-serving. Stuxnet was designed to undermine systems the perpetrator had no access to; it would work even if the administrators of the target system successfully locked the attacker out. In this case the administrator failed to secure the network from the attacker.
Not every persistent threat is an advanced one.
Back in the early 90s I had the opportunity of participating on a paleontological expedition to the badlands of Montana. The soil was built up over hundreds of millions of years and flooding cut through the soft soil leaving a stratigraphy that is dramatic and easy to read. You can even see the Chicxulub ejecta, a chocolate brown horizontal line about the width of your hand.
Now whole dinosaur skeletons are a rare find. You can spend a whole season tramping through the badlands and never find two bones that go together. But individual bones are more common, and bone fragments are more common still, and experts can often identify the group of dinosaurs or even the species of dinosaur a bone fragment came from, often a surprisingly small fragment of bone.
What we were doing was assembling a database of species found by layer, which in turn maps to era. What the PI was finding was a shift towards species with anatomical adaptations to deal with heat. His opinion was that there was already a climate driven adaptive stress on the dinosaur population, which turned the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact into a knock-out blow.
So the idea that there was more going on than an asteroid impact is hardly new. People were thinking that way twenty years ago.
One thing every thoughtful fan of the mystery story knows is that in real life, motivation tells you very little about who done what. That's because *most* people, when faced with a problem, don't even consider murder. Murderers are not typical people.
The same goes for hackers. When companies first started putting Internet connections back in the 90s in I would explain that they need to start taking steps to secure their networks, and almost without exception the response was "Why? Why would anyone be interested in hacking *us*?" And I had to explain that the Internet was accessible to *everyone*, including people whose motivations and ways of thinking would make no sense to them.
Motivation may have limited use in perhaps identifying some possible suspects, but it's not probative of anything. You can't rule anyone out or in based on what you think their motivations are or should be. The only way to know that somebody has done something is by following the chain of evidence that leads to some concrete action they've taken.
But now that they denied involvement, I suspect they may be.
You can take my root/admin acess from my cold, dead model M wielding hands.
-Software dev
To thine own self be true. (If not that, at least make some money.)
