"little" harm is still harm which grows exponentially as time goes on.
How do you figure?
Launches are few and far between (sadly). Otherwise, the wildlife lives pretty much undisturbed. Where do you get any sort of cumulative effect from that?
Actually, the launch center is likely beneficial to the wildlife: without the launch center, there probably wouldn't be a reserve to begin with.
Let us not forget the primary purpose of federal environmental impact studies: They take years, employ dozens of bureaucrats, and somehow, there's always one more step, one more required study. The "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" has long since taken over...
What our panic driven media (and too many so-called scientists) willfully ignore: Climate systems are dominated by negative feedback, or else the Earth would long since have turning into an ice ball or another Venus. The computer models showing catastrophe inevitably include positive feedback cycles, because otherwise there is no catastrophe.
The advance and retreat of Antarctic ice turns out to have negative feedback cycles, tied to waves and weather around the Antarctic. So, in fact, we aren't all going to die next week. Who would have guessed?
The continual attempts to get media attention through panic-inducing science are tiresome. The fact that the MSM plays naively along shows just how poorly the MSM itself understands science, or perhaps that headlines are more important than reliable content. No, the planet isn't going to cook in its own juices, nor are increasing sea levels going to drown us all. Negative feedback means that changes will be slow, gradual and contained within certain boundaries. Boring but true...
22.7 — a.k.a., the rule of three — now appears to be as significant as pi.
Why, of course! The proof in one step: 22 / 7 = Pi
What I find sad is that so many people feel like they are doing something when they tweet.
- Ms. Obama could have taken action against radical Islamic organizations. Instead, a sharpie, a piece of paper, a tweet - and she's done. Thanks, Michelle, good job.
- Ms. Obama could have a chat with her hubby about the way the USA supports terrorist organizations even giving aid to organization like Al Qaeda that the US is supposedly fighting.
But no, that would require actual effort and taking a genuine stand. Whereas Twitter costs nothing, risks nothing and does nothing - but you can pretend otherwise.
Sorry, but MOOC is hype...
Yes, there are serious, useful courses out there. However, these are the minority that actually have students submit work and get feedback on it. It is precisely the interaction with qualified instructors - emphasis on interaction - that makes a good course. Without interaction, you could just look at YouTube videos or go read a website (or a book). Which works fine for some people, but is not a MOOC.
The younger your students, the more important the interaction with the instructor. Someone complaining that elementary school teachers are missing the "MOOC movement"? First, there isn't a MOOC movement, only a MOOC bubble. And, second, they aren't missing anything, because MOOC is totally inappropriate for their students.
Am I the only one thinking things might have been much worse if no terrorist leaders had been taken out at all?
Yes, you pretty much are...at least, I hope so, because you're wrong.
Groups like A Queda need an external focus. Without an enemy, they aren't going to be able to motivate their rank-and-file every day, and the US is kind enough to provide that focus. Drone attacks are only part of it - the US is busy mucking about all over their back yard: Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria...
Before anyone says "but 9/11", let me: Why did they pick the US as a target? Because the US has been mucking about in their countries for decades.
Go home, leave them alone and let them rot in the desert. Especially now that the US could realistically stop buying Middle-Eastern oil, the US has an incredible opportunity to just pack up and leave.
It's not about Google - they just happen to be named in this case. This is a decision that will affect any search engine, any index, anyone who offers links to publicly available material or provides any sort of aggregation service.
Those people who say "just direct them to the courts" are being shortsighted. A court case requires two sides. If Google (or whoever) tells someone "go to court", they will do so: by filing a lawsuit against Google (or whoever). The last thing any company needs is having to show up to millions of trivial little court cases.
Not quite true. The case that generated this decision concerned factual newspaper articles. The guy went bankrupt, his house was auctioned off, the local newspapers reported on this.
So: it is not private information at all. It is precisely public, factual information about an individual, that that individual finds distasteful.
The problem is: Google has to review it. The court provided no guidelines other than the specific case they based the decision on.
And have you read that? It was a businessman who didn't like Google linking to articles about his previous bankruptcy. Now, I would think the bankruptcy of a business type might just be relevant to my decision whether or not to contract with him. Apparently many of his potential customers thought the same way. But the court disagreed, and used this case as justification for the general decision.
If Google refuses, you can cite this decision and take them to court. Now, one guy is no problem - but we are already seeing the beginning of the flood. When it becomes thousands, then millions of cases - just how are they supposed to deal with this?
This court decision has opened the floodgates. The ramifications threaten the entire, open Internet. Search machines can be prohibited from linking to publicly available material, and be taken to court for doing so. From there, it is a very small step to prohibiting anyone from linking to publicly available material that someone, somewhere finds distasteful or undesirable.
The court has demonstrated incredible ignorance. This decision is a disaster.
Why put a new business in California? I've been there on business a number of times, and I just don't see it.
The climate is nice enough, but boring. No decent seasons, but I suppose it counts as a plus for some folks.
On the minus side, the politics are leftist, leading to socialist-style government regulations that are downright hostile to business. The legal climate tends to lawyers looking to sue companies for trivial violations of those regulations, like people working through their lunch break.
On the personal front, holier-than-thou environmentalism is widespread, which is hard to take given that their state has huge monocultures, puts rice farms in the desert, and pumps water from Arizona to keep the lawns in LA green.
It's pretty much the last place I would want to live, and I imagine there are plenty of other techies who would agree...
I find it really strange that so few people have commented on this - this has the potential for huge impacts on the quality of information available on the Internet!
As far as I can see, the court must be populated by judges that have zero clue how the Internet works. The particular case that provoked the decision: A Spanish man went bankrupt, and his house was auctioned off. This is part of the public record in Spain (in particular, it appears in newspaper articles) and Google - obviously - has indexed this public information and provides links to it.
The court does not say that the newspaper articles must be removed - in fact, they are specifically allowed to remain. The court says that Google may be told not to link to those pages, when given a search on this person's name.
So now individual people can tell search engines "I don't like that link, delete it"? Even though the information is publicly available and objectively, factually true? Does this make any sense?
How will this scale, when millions of people want to edit their lives in the Internet? How are these requests supposed to be checked? First, what is the definition of "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" information? Second, how do you determine whether the person making the request is the person affected (especially given the possibility of shared names)?
Finally, what effect will this have on search results? What you want to hide may be exactly what I really need to know! Why does this businessman think his previous bankruptcy is irrelevant - is that not precisely the kind of information that his potential customers and/or employers are legitimately interested in?
This decision demonstrates appalling technical ignorance on the part of the court, and has the potential to seriously screw up the concepts behind public search engines.
The thing is: it isn't clear at all. There is no consensus, only a lot of media hype. It may not be a conspiracy, but it is certainly not PC to doubt - what's the latest term? - "climate disruption.
Here's the abstract from an article in the NASA archives that shows Antarctic ice mass increasing during the same period. Somehow the alarmists don't cite this one...
Which view is correct? Hard to say - I'm no climate expert - but I certainly do have the feeling that coverage of the issue in the mainstream media is driven more by politics than by science.
The thing is: it isn't clear at all. There is no consensus. Here's the abstract from an article in the NASA archives that shows Antarctic ice mass increasing during the same period. Somehow the alarmists don't cite this one...
The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.
