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Comment Re:Simple solutions are possible (Score 2, Interesting) 248

Dumping fertilizer into the sea would also work to absorb CO2 by promoting the growth of sea plant life.

But any of these more biological solutions aren't really as easy as they first appear. Some forests produce large amounts of methane due to rotting plant material. In otherwords, some forests might actually just be greenhouse gas neutral (which makes sense, ecosystems work because they don't mess stuff up).

So yea. Capping emissions is a good idea.

Comment Re:officially its an adjective (Score 1) 210

Its the LEGO Group... they're still using it as an adjective.

But yes of course its a noun. It does make sense to use legos since thats a pretty common way of saying it. I say "pass me that lego" and "we keep the legos downstairs." If you pointed at a pile of lego blocks and said "pass me the lego" I would say "which one?"

This follows rules for plurals just fine. :)

Yes collective nouns do exist in English and cutlery is an example. Dog is an example of a non-collective noun if somehow this proves something? But the closest we have to an establishment for legos is the LEGO Group and they deny its even a noun. So people claiming they know better about how to speak... are just making crap up. There's no English Academy, our language is dictated by usage.

Comment you can just sod off with your (Score 0, Troll) 210

"standard" English. :)

Modern American English has as much right to be considered standard: its dictionaries are just as old, its history just as deep, its evolution from 17th century English no greater.

I'm guessing British people get up in arms about whats "standard" since half their country doesn't speak anything like standard. The US does have its share of accents, but the ones in Britain are far more divergent and widespread. So get your own house in order before you start declaring that you own the standard.

Comment officially its an adjective (Score 4, Informative) 210

If you look at the website:
http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=fairplay

Of course if its an adjective then "legos" is nonsense.

In common usage it is in fact a noun: the OED defines "Lego" as a noun. The plural of a noun has an 's', with the handful of well-established exceptions.

Who decided that LEGO was an exception? Not the LEGO Group who say its only an adjective. So I think its the fact that the LEGO Group never says "LEGOs" (since they always uses it as an adjective) caused misguided pedantic people (or otherwise any lover of arbitrary rules) to decide that its a plural noun.

So put me in the legos camp. :)

Comment Re:Bad science (Score 1) 519

You don't understand the stat. When talking about contraceptives, the x out of 100 chance is the chance a woman will become pregnant in a given year of being sexually active.

For a male contraceptive I guess its the chance of becoming a father in a year... a bit harder to prove. ;)

But its not the chance of pregnancy every time they have sex or whatever you were imagining lol.

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Parrots Can Dance 104

juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"

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