Independent confirmation of results is a fundamental part of the scientific method. For example it has been known since the 1990's that tree rings are an unreliable climate indicator after ~1960, nobody knows why, but they do know that it doesn't match the other lines of evidence, which includes the modern instrumental records. This is what the infamous "Mike's trick in Nature" quote was referring to in the 'climategate' beat up, the truncation of a data set that was known to be wrong. The character assassins behind 'climategate' insisted that removing the bad data was dishonest and politically motivated, despite the fact that the explanation of the 'trick' had been published in Nature.

The shit you gave in your post implies your anger is rooted in your own willful ignorance.

Well you should be pleased to learn that they have been doing that for about 40yrs now.

PS: Modeling past climate is normally referred to as 'hindcasting', perhaps if you google using the correct terminology you will get more informative results.

The thing that always amazes me in that story is they put Captain Bligh on a row boat in the Pacific and somehow he made it back to England.

First game I ever hacked, the question "Could Buck Rogers reach the domed city?" drove me nuts for weeks but it also taught me a fair bit about disassembly.

Works for me, maybe you should move to Athens.

Who you know has always been more important than what you know. However most people in business aren't morons, they won't hire a "who" they know unless they actually believe they are competent and trustworthy.

Recruiters are paid to be judgemental, it's how they make a living, most of those I have met over the last 25yrs have actually been former software developers or network techs who wanted a career change.

There's no point taking a string of job rejections personally, that attitude will inevitably lead to the misery of self-pity which in turn makes it harder to get a job.. If there are jobs available and you* keep getting knocked back then it would seem to me "you're doing it wrong", have you considered finding out why they are rejecting you and fixing it? Most recruiters will offer free advice, especially if you make their short list - but that won't happen until you stop looking at them like they are idiots put there to stop you getting the job. And don't say "what did I do wrong" use a less confrontational manner, something like "how can I better my chances next time a job like this comes up".

*you - the royal version.

Yep, SOP is that HR are only asked to find CV's when all "word of mouth" options are exhausted. In large organisations HR will then advertise internally and offer a finder's before advertising on the open market. So if you have the respect of your co-workers (and vica-versa) it pays to keep in touch with them when you or they move on to greener pastures.

It's just lost in translation, project manager fills out some questions on a form, says xyz is mandatory, abc are "nice to have", overall 5yr experience requirement gets conflated with 5yrs experience with xyz by someone writing a job ad who has no idea what xyz means. Go and read your job description at HR, it's utterly devoid of any meaning. Of course this is fucking annoying for all concerned but the same is true for any professional position, and from the project managers POV going to HR is still better than trying to do the first cut filtering yourself.

Thing is, the project manager does usually set the skills requirements, HR just mangle it into a job advert and pick out the "best" five CV's they receive in X amount of time. Like any other "purple squirrel", software devs often get invited to apply for jobs via word of mouth long before anyone talks to HR. Most multinationals take advantage of this via their referral bonus schemes. Here in Oz the going rate for finding a purple squirrel is ~$500, professional agents will charge companies 5X that amount to do the same thing..

First came music, then language, symbolism, and finally math. The last two are where humans have unique abilities.

As a non-american the last time I saw your government work like a government is when Obama took over from Bush. The GFC was tackled as a bi-partisan issue and I believe what they came up with together averted a 1930's style global depression. There was no finger pointing at that time by senior party members, they put their heads together, listened to expert opinion, and averted a much more serious disaster. Since that time the US economy has bounced back despite the "just say no" attitude of republicans to bipartisan compromise.

Same goes for the Iraq war, sure Obama spoke and voted against it but he was in the minority, even in his own party. That kind of situation or the situation you have now where Democrats are distancing themselves from their own leader is rare in a parliamentary system, in the parliamentary there is an expectation party leaders will demand loyalty as long they have the support of caucus. If they lose that support they can be replaced by their own party without the need for a general election, (as has happened twice here in Oz in the past few years). The only time a parliamentary party acts like a US political party is when the leader allows a "conscience vote", normally "crossing the floor" to vote with the another party is seen as a betrayal and in extreme circumstances will get you kicked out of the party. The British FM famously quit rather than voting with the party to join the Iraq war. In the US politicians are expected to grab as much pork as they can for their state, the national interest and loyalty to party policy don't really count for much in the US system.

As for drones, they're fucking scary in a sci-fi kind of way but they're orders of magnitude less "evil" than what went on in Fallujah under Bush, like it or not the US simply can't afford to ignore the tribal war playing out in Iraq/Syria, the last thing we want is for the tribes to perceive the west as a common enemy. Allowing one tribe to dominate is also a nightmare scenario for the west. So our only practical option is containment and "humanitarian bombing" to avert civilian massacres that any of the tribes may be contemplating. Bombing people back to the dark ages isn't much of a threat to people who want to go back to 700AD anyway.

Somewhat ironically I think many (but certainly not all) libertarians have the same basic problem as the flower power people, they naively believe people will not only continue to "play nice" after they have drowned the government in a bathtub but will actually behave better towards each other. Everything in mankind's history argues otherwise.

"The bill does not explain exactly what constitutes metadata" - yet. It will do so before it becomes law since all sides have publicly stated it will be defined.