Here's how it works in reality: many fjords are home to commercial fishing and aquaculture. All those species are adapted to cold water and don't do well in warm water. What happens if a data center warms the water around the effluent by a couple of degrees? Cold-water fish, shrimp, clams move away and the people who depend on them have to move with them. It's probably fine if there's just one data center in the Fjord, and the warming is highly localized. maybe a few hundred square meter of surface area. But what if there's more? What if there are ten data centers in the Fjord? Or other industries in need of cooling? Suddenly the entire fjord warms, and it's not only the fish, shrimp and clams that are gone, but the livelihood of the people in the area.

Except that's not reality. That's your own speculative fantasy. A retarded one. If fish couldn't handle a few degrees warmer water, they'd die in the summer. Also: The water is not vented to the same thermocline it came from.

In any case, reality is what research and empirical evidence says it is, not what you can imagine and think is plausible. It so happens that there's been decades of research in Norway's neighbor, Sweden, on the environmental effects of the major-river's-worth of 10 C heated cooling water, which the three Forsmark nuclear reactors put out into an enclosed basin in the Baltic. That's far more than an entire district-cooling network would put out. In fact, one of the Forsmark reactors alone puts out more waste heat than the 30-something district-cooling grids that already exist in Sweden.

The results of the research, performed by the government agency for fisheries (not the nuclear industry) actually indicates that, on balance, fish growth is actually promoted, as are many other species of birds etc.

Yeah, life is full of grey and subtilities and hard decisions that aren't black and white. Sorry to disappoint you.

Sorry to dissappoint you: But one of those subtleties is that speculation is not a substitute for actual study, and that those "subtilities" you speak of should include the possibility that environmental impact can actually be a net positive.

according to the daily mail

Woah there. That's pretty fucking far from a reliable source.

There's nothing about the _religion_ here. Nobody's being denied the right to believe whatever the fuck they want to believe.

What happened here was that an ad-hoc religious _organization_ was denied the right to be considered a religious organization in the legal sense. Contrary to what people here are blindly asserting, that does not give them any tax benefits in addition to the ones you already have as a non-profit (which is a prerequisite for becoming a recognized religious organization). It just changes some purely legal/organizational aspects and liabilities.

And the requirements to qualify here is, in the simplest possible terms, that it's a serious organization. That it has a substantial membership, a clear charter, an elected board, organized finances and has exhibited a certain 'permanence'. The "age of the fantasy" is **not** relevant, even though you claim it is. But the age of the organization **is** relevant.

It's got nothing to do with what they believe or whether or not they actually believe it, and everything to do with whether or not they're a serious organization. The law was written more or less specifically with the intent of stopping people from registering merely as a joke. And the letter of the law is being followed here.

There is no reason to think that quantum physics has anything to do with the nature of conciousness. It is not useful to explain free will, or the illusion of free will, of the qualia of objects, or the steadyness of perception on a background of constantly varying spike rates in the brain.

Quantum chemist here (my username's a hint at that), and I couldn't agree more. I fight against this nonsense all the time.. You'd think that if there was anything to it, we'd be all over it - since explaining chemistry and biochemistry in terms of quantum mechanics is exactly what we do. But nope, I don't know anybody in the field who thinks those ideas have any merit whatsoever. (And let's just point out that as merited a guy Penrose is, he's not a quantum chemist, and more a mathematician than a physicist. His main area of expertise is topology, which has applications in cosmology but is totally unrelated to this area)

It breaks down like this: Electrons in atoms and molecules behave entirely quantum-mechanically. It's why QM was invented in the first place. Since chemical properties are the result of how the electrons behave, all of chemistry is intrinsically quantum-mechanical in some sense.

However: Molecules as a whole do not act quantum-mechanically. They move about according to classical mechanics - and that's how we model them physically too. Because once things get as heavy as an atomic nucleus (save for hydrogen, under some circumstances), their quantum 'uncertainty' in position etc is so small that it's chemically insignificant. So you need QM to describe how two atoms are bonded, but classical mech does a good job of describing how the molecules as a whole bounce around.

So the question is: Are there 'non-trivial' quantum effects in biology? I.e. ones that aren't explainable in terms of 'ordinary' chemistry (which is still ultimately quantum-mechanical). There are a few examples, such as magnetoreception in birds, and energy transfer during some photosynthetic processes. But: despite a lot of the hype surrounding them, these things are still dealing with individual, sub-atomic particles. They don't cast any doubt on 'conventional wisdom' that QM phenomena don't happen at the biological scale. There's nothing in the cell that depends on the actions of a single small molecule, or a single chemical reaction, or anything that's small enough to act quantum-mechanically.

The physics here doesn't make sense (Penrose's ideas in particular don't even hinge on established QM, but rather his own speculative ideas about quantum gravity.. of all things), we have every reason to believe you wouldn't have quantum phenomena at that scale in that environment, and no reason to believe otherwise. The chemistry doesn't make sense, as there's basically nothing hitherto found in biochemistry that doesn't fit into established chemistry. (Which isn't to say biochem hasn't expanded the boundaries of established chemistry, but it hasn't changed the foundations at all) And the biology doesn't really make sense, as cells are not built anything like Geiger counters, sitting in a labile state waiting for a single sub-atomic event to trigger them.

Finally, the philosophy doesn't really add up either. The quantum-consciousness people seem to have an agenda along the lines of 1) QM is non-deterministic 2) If the brain's higher functions rely directly on QM processes, then the brain is non-deterministic 3) That nondeterminism means we have free will.
Little of that makes sense to me. (1) is in fact a matter of which interpretation of QM you choose, and ultimately a question of metaphysics, since any non-deterministic theory could be postulated to be the result of a deterministic underlying 'reality' (as is the case with the Bohm interpretation of QM), or vice-versa. (2) is unwarranted speculation and (3) especially doesn't make much sense to me, since the philosophical question of 'free will' tends to hinge on whether or not you control your actions, and I don't see how you're more in control if everything's random than if everything's predetermined. (also 'predetermined' and 'predictable' don't mean the same thing; something may be deterministic but impossible to predict, even in principle, because the theory may limit what you can know about the system. Again the case with some interpretations of QM)

TL;DR: Yup, a bunch of bunk.

Do we really need to bring buzzwords like the cloud into this?

Well let's see.. the guy who said it is...

vice president of global strategy

Ah well there you are. He's a VP. So yes, I believe he really does need to bring buzzwords into everything. He's probably contractually obligated to.

I don't think gambling should be a crime (although regulated, for sure).

But you'd have to have stuck your head pretty deep into the sand if you think it's a "victimless" practice. Gambling addiction has destroyed millions of lives and families.
That's just indisputable. And online poker is no exception.
Yes, gamblers are ultimately responsible for their own behavior. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be shown sympathy.
This addiction is a well-documented and established psychological fact, so putting the entire burden of guilt on them is simply cynical and inhumane. So is exonerating the people who willingly aid and profit from that irresponsibility,
nor does it help the children and others who depend on the addict and are completely innocent.

It's one thing to feel that gambling should be legal (which I do). But another entirely to pretend like there's no reason behind its criminalization.
If you can't see that gambling addicts are, to at least _some_ extent, victims... Well I can only say that a society dictated along those principles isn't one I'd want to live in.

7.4 is a major earthquake. That's about the size of the 1996 Kobe Earthquake, larger than the 1986 Loma Prieta quake. Even by Japanese standards it's large.

It's likely to have mild effects only because it occurred far offshore, not because 7.4 is small.

If you look at the market.. HREF=http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/dynavox-eyemax-accessory-for-dynavox-vmaxHere's a competing product going for $11,749 AUD which is over $12,000 in US dollars.

Being that these guys apparently have a number of products in this market already, I suspect they already know what the price levels are. (I bet a lot of their stuff is paid by insurance in whole or part too)

I'm not saying it's not expensive as heck, but that's how things are in those low-volume/high-margin markets. You know, an PCR machine for a biotech lab isn't a heck of a lot more advanced than a digital toaster, but the price difference is an order of magnitude.

I believe the market here is primarily handicapped people who can't necessarily move their heads.

The Three Mile Island incident involved a partial meltdown of a single reactor. Fukushima involves - according to the power company running the plant - the partial meltdown of several reactors, plus overheating at spent fuel pools containing 1,700 tons of highly radioactive waste (and - in the Number 4 reactor's pool - that reactor's live nuclear fuel).

Yes, but the partial meltdowns at Fukushima were not likely as bad or as risky as at TMI. The cooling systems in Fukushima were running for the critical first hours after the SCRAM.
At TMI, the meltdown occurred within the first hour. The extent of the uncovering and eventual overheating of the fuel rods, as well as the reactors, isn't known yet. It was years before they know how bad TMI was damaged as well.

It's already released far more radiation into the environment than Three Mile Island ever did.

There are very few estimates out there, and any at this stage aren't terribly reliable. Nevertheless, even if we take that to be true, the amount of radiation released does not correspond directly to the absorbed dosage or resultant health risks. It depends on the isotope composition, wind patterns, etc. Windscale released 10,000 times more radiation than Three Mile Island did, but only about 40 times the absorbed dose. (Chernobyl was about 10,000 times the absorbed dose of TMI)

There's no basis in fact for criticizing Kaku regarding this statement concerning Fukushima.

Why not? You said it yourself: A disaster could be several orders of magnitude smaller than Chernobyl and still be the second-worst ever.
So how is comparing to Chernobyl helpful? It's not Chernobyl, it's been clear almost from the start that it wasn't likely to become a Chernobyl.

Michio Kaku is not necessarily the best in his field, mediocre at best, but he has the biggest voice.

I agree. But this isn't really news; This is how it's _always_ worked. The public is not going to figure out the merits of your scientific achievements on their own, and then give you attention that's proportionate to that. It's the same as in any other area: You have to market yourself.

Linus Pauling was arguably the most famous chemist of the last century. But he wasn't actually that important. The quantum-chemical contributions he made were in reality on-par with those of Mulliken, Hund and Slater. Many would say Slater should've shared in his first Nobel prize. But it was Pauling who wrote "The nature of the chemical bond", it was Pauling who popularized the subject, it was Pauling who was the bigger educator and public figure (which was not limited to chemistry). Richard Feynman was one of the most famous physicists. And while his contributions are also beyond question, they were arguably not a lot larger than those of, say, Murray Gell-Mann, who is nowhere near as famous. Because Gell-Mann was not a big educator. His popular-scientific books didn't sell anywhere near as well. Dirac was as important as Bohr when it came to quantum theory, but he wasn't anywhere near the popular and public figure Bohr was. And so he's also less known.

What bothers me about Kaku isn't the fact that his fame is disproportionate to his scientific contributions, or even the fact that it leads people to think he's a greater scientist than he is. What annoys me about Kaku is his propensity to comment on stuff that he doesn't know much or anything about. For instance, his statements on evolution, which were harshly (but justly) criticized recently by PZ Meyers. Or his commenting on the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Fukushima diaster (which he, IMO recklessly, called the worst diaster second only to Chernobyl, even though it's far from clear that it'd be worse than Three Mile Island or Windscale at this point, and certainly several orders of magnitude less severe than Chernobyl). And now we have him commenting about Moore's Law, even though he's not a solid-state physicist.

I suspect he's letting his ego cloud his better judgment. It's not uncommon - the aforementioned Pauling, for all his scientific merits, had a whole bunch of bad, crankish ideas in areas outside his field (nuclear physics, vitamin megadoses, anesthesiology). I don't believe at all Feynman was the humble guy he tried so hard to make himself out to be, but to his credit, he was quite respectful of other fields and did not have that propensity to make himself out to be an expert on things he didn't know much about. Of course, there's also the possibility that it's not about Kaku's ego and that he just genuinely doesn't actually give a damn about educating the public, and is more interested in just getting attention for himself. But I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

"As the arrangement of the nuclei changes, the BO approximation postulates that the electrons will remain in a particular quantum state. " is an entirely correct description.

The BO approximation does not assume that the nuclei are completely stationary. What you're talking about with that is what's called a clamped-nuclei Hamiltonian.

You stated the rationale behind the BO-approximation without understanding it. Because of the difference in mass, the nuclei are practically stationary relative the electron's frame of motion. That does not mean they are stationary.
What it means is that the potential the electrons 'see' from the nuclei varies very slowly. If a potential on a particle changes sufficiently slowly, then the particle remains in the same state - that's the adiabatic theorem.
"Adiabatic" because no energy is thus being transferred to the particle. In the BO approximation, no kinetic energy is being transferred between the nuclei and electrons. That is what the BO-approximation is.

By assuming that, the nuclear-electronic kinetic-energy coupling terms disappear from the Molecular Hamiltonian, which allows you to separate it into an electronic and nuclear Hamiltonian.
Then, you might additionally assume clamped-nuclei. But not necessarily. Quantum molecular-dynamics simulations are usually done with the BO-approximation in place.

You'd think that SCIENCE, of all journals, would get the Born-Oppenheimer approximation right !

You'd think someone would have the common-sense to check up their own knowledge before assuming that a distinguished professor
who's been doing quantum chemistry since the early 60's doesn't know the stuff you teach on an introductory course of the subject.

There was a time when project names were chosen to be cute acronyms. I work with digital signal processing where there are algorithms named MUSIC, for "MUltiple SIgnal Classification", and ESPRIT, for "Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques".

That hasn't really changed, how about: Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array - AMANDA?

That's what IceCube was formely known as, or rather, the IceCube array is an extension of the original AMANDA detector array.

"Hurry up Fnuggi! I can feel you're about to thaw!"

At the bottom: "Icicle time..!"

The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.

Well, they're in good company:
"The German National Prize for Art and Science (German: Deutscher Nationalpreis für Kunst und Wissenschaft) was an award created by Adolf Hitler in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel Prize (he had forbidden Germans to accept the latter award in 1936 after an anti-Nazi German writer, Carl von Ossietzky, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize)."

And of course the Soviets also banned (a bit on-and-off though) their citizens from recieving the Nobel, and Stalin created the Stalin Prize in his own honor.