The Earth, modeled as a perfect blackbody, has a trivially calulable temperature: 6 degrees C global average. Observed temperatures are obviously higher than that. The difference is, you guessed it, the "greenhouse" effect of the atmosphere. The science behind the greenhouse effect has been known for about 200 years now. There is no "so-called" adjective necessary to describe it and only the purest idiots would bother denying something that is trivially observable with any transparent container, a CO2 source, and a thermometer. That CO2 absorbs radiation in a certain band is incontrovertible.

For experimental confirmation that the Earth is warming a great amount, I may use my window: I live in Alaska, where glacial ice thousands of years old is vanishing with increasing rapidity and has been for decades. Guess which observation represents a trend?

Certainly theft was not involved, but it was not presented in the manner of a cautionary tale. I was cruising with a young good ol' boy whose highest ambition in life was defacing road signs, in a battered willys jeep of unknown provenance. Said acquaintance had just been released from the care of the local penal system, and was out visiting old friends to celebrate his newfound (and short-lived) freedom. I don't recall either of their names, but I'll always remember his friend as "Bubba", and he was quite the type. We pulled off a disused highway that wound amongst the foothills of the Appalachians, down a dusty red dirt track which pointed towards a hovel and nearly indistinguishable trash heaps surrounding it. A sweaty mountain wearing only denim overalls (with one strap fastened, of course) cornered the house and lumbered up the slope towards us. I was somewhat apprehensive and shall we say not in Kansas any more, being nineteen and straying out of Alaska on my own for the first time.

The topics of conversation were, as I mentioned, in the manner of a reunion after an enforced absence, and I am sure that of all possible answers to the question of, "So what have you been up to?" there could not have been any more shocking. Caution had no part in it; the man was embarrassed to show us his scar, and to describe his previous condition, and particularly wished us to understand that he was doing much better. One could only hope that to be the case -- there may be a downward path from that kind of state but it is surely very short and I cannot begin to imagine what horrors it would contain.

Shortly thereafter, as I was flying out of that benighted human waste-land, I read another local news story: a pair of rednecks had stolen their neighbor's pet pygmy goats, butchered them, and traded the meat to their dealer for crack. I had other experiences in the Carolinas, but nothing that one would call particularly pleasant, and these two for me have come to represent the place. I would let them be cautionary against spending time in Appalachia as much as against having a crack habit, but I've known other people and places to have crack problems without quite that level of crazy. Take from it what you will.

I met a man in South Carolina who claimed to have sold a kidney for crack. He displayed the most horrible scar, which I could very well have believed to be from the most amateur of surgeons. I remember that he said, "You know those stories that you hear about people waking up in a bathtub full of ice? Yeah, that happened to me."

But he said he'd kicked the habit.

Now, I make no claims as to this man's honesty, only to my own recollection, but surely while the implantation of an organ requires all that you mention, the removal of such is far simpler?

There are two divisions of "technique" when it comes to art. The first involves the physical manipulation of the medium, which has changed somewhat with the invention of new media, and some parts have become obsolete. The second involves understanding of perspective, anatomy, color, lines and shapes, various atmospheric effects, et cetera, and in many cases also how these rules may be broken to artistic effect, and these are timeless. Sure, anyone can paint without understanding, and anyone may criticize without comprehending, but you know how it is: everyone has an opinion and an asshole.

But, to be any good as an artist, you must certainly have rigor and knowledge of history. It is not enough to simply expel your first imaginings onto paper or canvas. The proper course would be to take photographs, do a color study, a black-and-white shape study, and a dozen figure studies (from life, including making a maquette if necessary), before even touching the main work. A lifetime of photographic study, plein air painting, and a deep understanding of the Old Masters helps too. If you do all this, you may enjoy the commercial success of e.g. James Gurney. I wouldn't want to give odds on his being long remembered to history though, unfortunately. It is of course not necessary for the critic to be an artist, if you think only of a critic as someone who draws public perception towards or away from a work, but if your friend comes to you and says, "Be honest with me. What's wrong with this painting?" then you had better know the trade at least as well as he does.

On the mathematical side, as long as we teach mathematics as nothing more than mechanical calculation, I despair of the species. Rigor may be necessary to STEM, but we have truly wonderful machines for calculation these days. Perhaps programming will be the necessary method with which we abstract computation into the proper sphere of symbol manipulation.

Let's build a model of the Earth's atmosphere.

First let's model the Earth as a point particle with perfect blackbody characteristics. Taking into account the received radiation from the sun, that should get us a global temperature of ~6 degrees C.

But wait, we know the Earth isn't a perfect blackbody, so we'll factor in an albedo of ~ .3 and get a global temperature of -18 degrees C.

This isn't a very good model so far, is it? Well, let's model the atmosphere as a layered column of gases, then. Oh hey, funny thing. It looks like if you increase the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, it heats up, and then the atmosphere can hold more CO2, leading to arbitrarily large temperatures. That can't be right. Let's revise the model...

That brings us to the beginnings of the 20th Century in terms of atmospheric modeling. You can read more about subsequent steps in this textbook, or perhaps this one. I can particularly recommend the former as it is brief and a good introduction to the problems associated with e.g. where in the atmosphere CO2 is concentrated, and its peculiar vibrational modes.

All of Science is to some degree wrong. Congratulations on your discovery of this fact. The question is, how wrong? And with these models we try to estimate that. We would all dearly like for there not to be such thing as the greenhouse effect right about now, believe you me. However, since it is trivial to show that an atmosphere with a greater proportion of CO2 will retain more solar radiation, and this has been known since the early 19th Century, we're not holding out much hope for that hypothesis. Wrong we may be, but that wrong we are surely not. I don't know where in your fathomless depths of ignorance and hubris you find the means to dispute apparent fact, but keep in mind that when many others' opinions differ from yours, it's unlikely to be a conspiracy.

This post brought to you by the Anthropogenic Global Warming Conspiracy. Get your membership card today!

So what? English is lingua franca for most of the western world. It's boring as hell, actually. You see people from all corners of Europe together in a room, all speaking English to each other. It's not a question of who is number one, it's about how English gets used in the real world. Being the most popular second language (which Ethnologue claims is true of English) is actually more important the number of native speakers, at least until such point as perfect audio-based machine translation becomes ubiquitous (likely never).

Half your posts are provocative by way of being wholly obtuse, and the other half are merely provocative.

Even if you do "own" the property, that does not constitute an unlimited right to do with it as you wish. It is not hereditary property, nor is it held by sovereign right. Your interest in the property is defined wholly by financial terms -- cash on the barrel-head. If someone else wants to spend more money to acquire that same property, so be it.

I don't wish to entirely repeat myself, but I found a metaphor that I feel particularly apt: this influx of wealth is like a rising tide. One may protest this (as demonstrated by Canute), but the flow of dollars, as with the tide, will not be swayed by argument, vandalism, nor rioting. To my mind, a far more productive use of time would be to recall that 'a rising tide lifts all boats', and apply oneself to learning programming. I did. Programming (albeit in its meanest form) is being taught to schoolchildren. Failing that, find a good excuse to separate these techies from their money -- real estate can't be their only interest. Failing that, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche": this is how markets work. I would be receptive to the idea that markets are not an appropriate solution for allocating housing, but no one seems to be making that argument, and frankly it's going to be a hard sell to the rest of the world.

The idiots in question seem to be these protesters, who like Canute rail against the rising tide, and as effectively. We may recall the adage concerning the lifting abilities of the rising tide, and I might stretch the metaphor to suggest that these gentlemen take up boat-building. Programming to some mean degree is accessible even to schoolchildren; I myself have in these recent years taken up the profession.

I may guess at the purpose of your tautology about one's home, and surmise that you are implying that one has a right to continued occupation of one's primary residence. That this is not so is a well established principle of law, and also a natural consequence. As I have explained, no man has a greater natural right to a piece of this Earth than any other man. We come into this world without property, and any property gained before our deaths is merely the chance of fate. However, as far as the law governing that span is concerned, we mark a difference between property held in fee simple, and lands held by hereditary title or sovereign right. If you purchase property, then it should be abundantly obvious that any man may acquire it by the same means. It is wholly a matter of finance; no natural right enters into it.

I have sympathy towards those ousted from their homes, although I neither have a permanent residence nor should I choose to do so in the Bay Area. Yet my sympathies stop well short of supporting rioting in the streets, and in this case it's absurdly indefensible; it's not as if there are not already rent controls. If this absurd rabble cannot help itself I continue to ask what they imagine may be done to stem this tide.

My opinion used to be highly colored by a vocal medical doctor, who held that the title should only properly be applied to doctors medicinae. He reasoned that in dire accidents, the cry, "Is there a doctor in the house?" might only be answered by an M.D., and consequently those engaged in less vital studies were undeserving of the title.

My respect for the memory this physician is boundless; the world will not see his like again. However, in this matter he was entirely wrong: that all medical professionals have Ph. Ds is a relatively recent phenomenon. The word itself means, "I teach," and properly represents the highest degree of academic accomplishment. It does not confer such status, but recognizes it, and the idea that honorary recognition is somehow of less value is patent nonsense.

Dr. Richard Stallman has contributed greatly to the field of computer science. It is in the nature of computer code that, while itself unchanging, its utility declines with time. His code contributions often stand in exception to that rule, for which he deserves considerable respect. However, his greatest accomplishments have been (ironically) social: whatever you may think of the man, he occupies a fixed point in morality, and the entire world been shaped by it. He has done more to earn the title than most who claim it.

In point of fact, he has received this recognition of his contributions no less than fourteen times. Give the man his due.

Thank you for posting. I know that, while you are a GOOG employee, you're not any variation on Community Outreach, and posting here presumably represents your own personal time. I have been following the development of these technologies but not closely enough to have any appreciation of the issues the GP AC raised, and you have been wonderfully informative. Not that your normal standard is at all bad; you're often a source of fair commentary, and very good at both disclosing and setting aside your biases.

I spent my mod points elsewhere today: you'll have to settle for my paltry accolades. Nevertheless, your efforts are quite appreciated.

Why? What right do you have to keep living there? No human has any more natural interest in any parcel of land than any other. Perhaps you are confused as to what exactly your interest in your home is, because if that is not an arrangement subject primarily to the laws of commercial supply and demand, I would be surprised to hear of it.

No one cares that you are harmed by gentrification any more than any one cares about the loss of buggy whip manufacturers' incomes. Sometimes change is destructive, and becoming angry and destructive in turn is very easy. That does not mean that doing so will be effective, and in this case, it is highly unlikely that vandalism will have any effect whatsoever on the cause of the issue. Turn back the clock, if you can. Use whatever political demagoguery you may, to tax those you dislike and subsidize your friends, but let's not paint the breaking of a god-damned window as a productive activity. I think your cause is hopeless and deluded, even as supportive of social justice as I am, but if you are to realize any aims, you must first rise above "sound and fury".

What a vacuous truth! All societies inculcate their values to the next generation. The only ones who take issue with this are deluded individualists. I would strongly encourage any one who so believes to break from the herd, to live as an island of selfdom -- to have the courage of their convictions.

The individual person is as much a meaningless abstraction as a single atom. I rest serene in the confidence that, in the absurdly chance that there is a true individualist, they will have no effect on humanity.

IMO, the best pre-iPod mp3 player was the Rio Karma. It had FLAC and Ogg support, came with a half-decent set of songs on it, gapless playback, cross-fade, and you could create playlists on the device itself. Apparently you can still buy them here and there. I'd forgotten the (included) base station had ethernet, usb 2.0, and stereo RCA out.

The one major downside was that the scroll wheel was flimsy. Still, the iPod was in many senses a step backwards for the industry.

I need to brew enough coffee to fill an Olympic-length pool. I was planning on inviting the Paris metro area over for a cuppa, if you must know. I know that I'll need about 105 metric tons of coffee (~$200k) for this adventure, but the coffee pot I have is a bit undersized for the task. Any idea how one would go about generating that much java?

Say! I'll need somewhere to keep it, too! It may take quite some time to serve coffee to that many Frenchmen. I am sure there would be time for high society to snub the endeavor and for a mob of cafe owners to lynch me before I was halfway through, but in the hypothetical meanwhile I'd certainly want some way to keep the coffee hot. I understand that there are active heating methods both ancient and novel, but I'd like to keep my operating costs down. What kind of container could I put it in? What is the longest amount of time I'm likely to be able to serve hot coffee to Frenchmen?

Yours,
Man with 1.057 x 10^7 Coffee Cups

Look, maybe you can find some nuance to where a branch of the military running an intelligence operation against the People it is sworn to protect and defend, does not qualify as treason. Rest assured the NSA is equally concerned with the subject, so you may want to let them know if you have some discovery there.

I happen to call that treason, and the documents of whatever nation in question are not particularly relevant to my definition. It is purest folly to have military specialists employed against their own society, in whatever form. The persons responsible for this program deserve to hang as traitors, and Justice will not be served by any lesser charge. May God have mercy on their souls.