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Comment Re:Loss of trust (Score 1) 736

The damage is done: nobody will believe ANY temperature data any more. Personally, I'm tacitly accepting of AGW, but even I will no longer put any value on that data. Even if somebody tries to reconstruct this data from other sources, I'm not going to believe it. The political influence is just too strong.

Nice projection. You, Chemisor, will not believe any temperature data any more. The rest of the world will make up its own mind. Belief has no place in science anyway. That belongs to religion.

People like you have an influence through the political process, but you have no influence in the realm of scientific research. You can pick and choose what to believe. We scientists will continue to do research and publish our results using established scientific guidelines accepted by scientists all around the world, and our results will be made public. You, Chemisor, have the option of ignoring these results, cherrypicking the bits which fit your worldview, or trying to take a step back and analyzing the data like a scientist and drawing a rational conclusion. We cannot do this for you. Good luck.

Earth

Scientific Journal Nature Finds Nothing Notable In CRU Leak 736

eldavojohn writes with an update to the CRU email leak story we've been following for the past two weeks. The peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature has published an article saying the emails do not demonstrate any sort of "scientific conspiracy," and that the journal doesn't intend to investigate earlier papers from CRU researchers without "substantive reasons for concern." The article notes, "Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Reader lacaprup points out related news that a global warming skeptic plans to sue NASA under the Freedom of Information Act for failing to deliver climate data and correspondence of their own, which he thinks will be "highly damaging." Meanwhile, a United Nations panel will be conducting its own investigation of the CRU emails.

Comment As a teacher . . . (Score 1) 146

Perhaps the survey should have been titled: "Those who like to write tend to be better writers."

The survey designers have put the cart before the horse. The students are not better writers because of their use of new technology, but use new technology because they are better writers and well . . . like to write.

Think about it. Have you ever met a blogger that didn't enjoy writing?

I see this all the time in my classroom. The kids who write better produce more finished copy, and write more often as well. When we type our papers in the computer lab the better writer will complete one paper in the time their neighbor (the poor writer) has typed one sentence. . . and changed the font 43 times.

Education

Children Using Technology Have Better Literacy Skills 146

eldavojohn writes "A UK study of three thousand children aged nine to sixteen suggests something that may not come as a shock to geeks: using technology increases a child's core literary skills. As Researcher Obvious put it, 'The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.' And for those of us worried about a world of 'tl;dr' and 'Y U H8n?' the research claims that 'text speech' does not damage literacy. The biggest shortcoming of this research is that it appears the children graded their own writing in that their methodology was an online survey designed to ask the children which technology they use and then follow up with asking them how well they write to determine which children have better literacy skills."
Cellphones

iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home 152

eldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdotted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?"

Comment Re:Rejoice! (Score 1) 380

I don't know about you, but I don't know any Americans who "rejoice" at the exploitation of cheap workers

Perhaps not, but then I don't know many people who "rejoice" at the way battery farm chickens are kept, while they tuck into their bucket of KFC.

Face it, you are a nation of consumers with no real manufacturing left. You all demand cheap goods, and if that comes with the price of outsourcing to foreign sweatshops, you accept it by turning a blind eye ... if all your manufacturing was done inside the US, none of you could afford to buy anything.

And this isn't particularly a dig at the US ... I think all Western economies will go the same way, as the governments and people all have the same short-sighted attitude. Pretty soon the only things left will be service jobs and tech jobs in the West, all manufacturing and production will be done in China and the surrounding ASEAN nations.

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