Amen to that. Go read Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister. They have some data on this. What one has to remember is that "feeling creative" is not the same as "being creative".

It takes 15 minutes to enter the creative state of flow. 10 five minute phone calls per day and people will have lost 200 minutes. Per day. Turn off the phone, msn, stop bothering people unnecessarily and get to work.

This is why people come in at 6 to get 3 hours of actual work done before the managers arrive to start prattling, and this is why some work until 11 at night.

I actually did a PhD in physics in an unrelated area. However, one does learn a few things. For example that a PhD is not a license to state that you are right. Appealing to authority is just about as anti-science as you can get.

"You have not published a paper in a peer reviewed journal" is not a valid argument.

Peer reviewing is there to help with weeding out as much BS as possible. However, good insights can come from anyone.

Finally, what you do hone as an Engineering student and a PhD is your BS detector, and that is all that it takes to make a valid contribution. All of these sites are criticizing what others have done. Of course, that is a lot easier than publishing original new work. However, getting proof that something isn't correct is also a worthwhile contribution. One single falsification (go and read your Popper) is all that it takes to invalidate a theory.

Steve McIntyre actually tried to go much further than this. He wanted to review the data and reanalyse it. Had he been allowed to do so, and actually reproduced the results, that would have been as scientific a contribution as I can think of.

Unfortunately, he was refused access to said data.

2500 scientists who worked over 6 years... It almost sounds like the Manhattan project. Here is analysis ot what was done:

http://climaterealist.blogspot.com/2008/09/ipcc-2500-scientists-myth.html

My experience is somewhat similar. I have always been skeptical in the sense that I cannot see what we can do about the problem other than adjust to it, at least for the next 100 years. However, the treatment I got at littlegreenfootballs reminds me of fundamentalist Christians wanting to "talk to me about Jesus". Wattsuppwiththat really rocks as a site, so do noconsensus, climateaudit and climateskeptic.

The comments are so bad you want to cry.

Unfortunately, the consequences of this scientific fraud is to double your fuel bill and make us all a lot poorer. Particularly bad for sub-Saharan Africa, where being a bit poorer could mean that you and your children die.

"Aerobic exercise" it says in the TA. Why not to the thing properly? 500 kCal per day, maximum 70% heart rate... Was this the "old ladies of both sexes" method of exercise?

For starters, they should have walked to the sports centre. It is unfortunately a sad world we live in. My father in-law once ran a major sports centre in the UK. He tells me that the most important aspect of success is to have the parking lot just in front of the entrance.

These people went from doing no exercise it would appear, to performing a tiny amount of exercise. I am certain that had they added:

"Walk 3 km (2 miles for part the world) to the sport centre, do your little thing, walk 3 km to get back home afterwards. Walk to work, walk back from work."

the results would have been more impressive.



Obligatory schooling was introduced in my native Sweden in 1842. It was then decided that school should start at 7. Not because of the maturity of the children, but because it was decided that a 7-year old can walk, alone, 3 km to school, and 3 km back. This would be too much for a 6-year old. Therefore, by starting school at 7, much fewer school buildings would need to be constructed.

Note to UK readers:
The frequency of paedophilia was most likely just as large as it is now. People, for some reason, decided not to introduce a police state at the same time though. Maybe their risk assessments were a bit more realistic in those times.

Bollocks. The US could build rockets if it wanted to. The US used to spend 6% of GDP on the military during the cold war. Britain spend 50% of GDP on the military during the second world war.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are small drops in the ocean compared to such ventures.

Also, remove 100 billion $ from the trial lawyers.

And drill, baby, drill!

It could also have done as Harding did in 1920-21 recession. He cut the budget in half between 1920-22. And the national debt by 1/3. The result turned out to be the roaring 20-ies. The recession disappeared so quickly that nobody remembers it now.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Warren-G-Harding-and-the-1920-Depression---Learning-the-Right-Lesson&id=3121606

During the space race, 400 000 people in the US worked on the Apollo project.

It is really sad that nuclear rockets were abandoned when the space race was won by the US against the Russians. Nuclear rockets consist of a reactor that heats hydrogen that is accelerated.
A nuclear rocket would take 3 months to get to mars, 3 months back. Back in 1970, 400 M $ were missing to get the first one off the ground as a third stage of an Apollo rocket.
The theoretical useful weight for a nuclear rocket is 38% of the total that can go up in space, compared to 4% for a chemical rocket.
Nerva-2 would have developped 5000 MW and 90 tonnes of lift. Nerva-1 had already been tested on the ground. 1100 MW and 25 ton lift.
As soon as the Chinese threaten to do this, the US might be back in the race. One can always hope.
The plan in the early 1970ies was to send two of these off to Mars (for obvious redundancy purposes).

Unfortunately, there are no "exact specifications" in the real world. As the reviewer, I thoroughly recommend reading Weinberg (Quality Software Management), but also Tom Gilb, "Principles...". Funnily enough, Craig Larman points out that the guy accused of inventing the Waterfall model did no such thing. According to his son, he has been misquoted for 30+ years.