Another surprising fact about fusion in the Sun is that the fusion power generated is about 1.5 watts per ton of core. Even in conditions in the core of the sun, fusion is hard, and the particular reaction process just confirmed was at the end of a long chain of reasoning explaining what we do see. So I think this actually give evidence that a bunch of stuff in Wikipedia about processes in the Sun is also true. (If a different fusion process was found, then we'd likely be wrong about how much power is generated, and thus about the rate and manner that that power eventually makes it to the surface and gets radiated).

I don't get the focus on whether or not the warming is anthropogenic. Should we ignore all problems that we didn't make?

Supposing that the warming isn't primarily anthropogenic, there's still plenty of reason to believe that the greenhouse gases we're adding are making it worse, and in fact we can even make some reasonable estimates of how much worse they're making it.

At the end of the day, you'd really better hope that you're wrong about our ability to modify the climate. Because the current climate of Earth is not typical. In fact, there isn't really a "typical" climate for the planet. Ice core histories show us that it swings between much hotter than it is, and much, much colder (by "colder", think "equatorial oceans frozen 30 feet deep for millenia"). Both extremes will be unpleasant for us, and I say "will", not "would", because it's gonna happen. When? We have no idea. We know that climate changes can happen very rapidly (couple of decades), even without an obvious precipitating event (big meteor, supervolcano eruption, etc.), and that they come at apparently-random intervals.

So if we want this planet to be nice for us long-term, we'd better learn to engineer our climate. Or get even better at adapting our local environment. Or both.

Yep. In the long run, the climate will change no matter what we do... unless we learn to actively manage it. Similarly, we will get hit by a catastrophically-destructive meteor, unless we develop the technology need to identify and deflect dangerous asteroids. It's worth noting that while without our intervention the climate may stay as it is for thousands of years, it may also change in decades. The ice core records tell us that the planet is capable of warming or cooling as much as 7C in as little as 20-30 years, even without any obvious catastrophic event, and even faster given a supervolcano eruption, or a big meteor. It WILL happen.

IMO, while it certainly makes sense to take reasonable steps to limit greenhouse gas production, we really need to focus on investing heavily in climate research, with an eventual goal of learning not only to understand but to manage our planet's climate. Actually, we should also invest a little in more strategies to cope with unpleasant climate. I say "more" strategies, because we already have a lot of them. The regions of Earth in which humans can survive comfortably without technological assistance are really small. The "natural" human carrying capacity of most of the places people live is basically zero, but we're very good at modifying our environment to adapt it to our needs. When the planet warms substantially, no doubt we'll have to apply more of those skills, so we should be thinking about which ones and how to improve our capabilities.

I'd argue that the rule of law is a result of applying the scientific method to social structure and governance.

The scientific method really consists of making conjectures and analyzing them critically. Some of the criticism comes from experimentation and analysis, but most conjectures never reach that point because simple thought can identify reasons they should be discarded. This process is closely related to (but vastly more powerful than) the mutation and selection process of evolution. At bottom, both are about creating and testing ideas, and selecting the ones that are objectively better (for the relevant definition of "better"). The scientific method does the selection through a tradition of criticism, natural evolution does it via replication (favoring the gene that replicates itself better).

How does this apply to the rule of law? Three ways. First of all, applying the same principle of progress to social structure, trying new methods and keeping those which work well while discarding those which don't, will lead to rule of law because it clearly is a superior social structure "technology". Second, without the rule of law, you really can't apply the scientific method to social structures, because there is no defined structure beyond the whim of the ruler(s). You have to fix the rules firmly so you can see what the outcomes are, and you can observe how to vary them. So any attempt to apply scientific reasoning to governance demands rule of law.

Third, and most important, the tradition of criticism inherent in and necessary to scientific progress inevitably leads people to criticize their government and to demand, among other things, the ability to understand the rules by which they're governed. I don't believe it's possible for any society with a significant number of scientific thinkers with any sort of influence to remain governed by fiat.

I think history bolsters my argument, too, simply based on the sequence of events. The Enlightenment was all about scientific reasoning and learning how to apply it to nearly all areas of human endeavor, not just science, and the Enlightenment came before the spread of the rule of law, not after.

Oh, actually I think there's a fourth reason scientific thinking creates the rule of law. It's even deeper, and is probably the truly fundamental reason, though it's a harder argument to make. That is that moral values are scientifically determined (even if we don't realize it), and the rule of law is morally right. It would take me a few pages to detail how and why I think that moral rightness is a real, determinable thing, derivable from the laws of nature, and not merely an artifact of culture, so I won't bother. Note that I'm not arguing that correct morality is easy to derive. It's not, any more than it was easy to derive General Relativity by conjecturing about observations of reality. But it can be derived, and in the same method: by conjecturing moral positions and then criticizing them, both logically and experimentally, discarding positions that lead to undesirable outcomes.

Duh, there's already a documentary on that.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...

Oh he's not a doctor. But he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Airbags, when first mandated by government ahead of when manufacturers were prepared for roll-out, were in fact quite dangerous. Does your car have an airbag off switch for the front passenger seat, so a child can sit there? It took a while for people to catch on and socially impose a "no kids in the front seat" rule, after many unfortunate incidents involving children. It was an total fuck-up, a perfect example of government do-gooding directly injuring people - children and the elderly in this case. And it was years before the problem was properly addressed with weight-sensors in the seats.

There's a strong market for safety features in cars today. You really don't need ham-handed government applying force for adoption.

That's a problem. But it's a smaller problem than the one we live with now, which is that there are so many obscure laws that if anyone in a position of authority has it in for you they can find something to nail you for. The rule of law matters.

What an idiot. You kan't reed.

> Everyone immediately disables SELinux

I hope you're talking about your personal desktop and not publicly accessible servers. Many years ago, many packages didn't have SELinux policies, and that was painful. Disabling it was rather tempting. With all the many Linux computers I manage, I haven't run into a single SELinux related issue in several years. If you're disabling it now based on your experience in 2007, it might be worth taking another look.

As to "everyone immediately disables", about 10% disable it these days. 90% don't.

Explain again how a "focus on scientific knowledge " somehow magically prohibits teaching knowledge of microorganisms? About that Bible thing - I guess you missed "prohibit religious " in the law.

No, including "you are only a uniformed officer while the feed is live. If it stops, you are a regular private citizen until it's restarted".

Then it's not police brutality. It's armed citizen brutality, without all the protections of the badge.

I'm not sure if the irony in your post is intentional. The bill says the emphasis should be on scientific knowledge and facts, rather than spending most of their time on one person's idea of what process might result in those facts. Present the facts, the knowledge, and let the students analyze whether or not that proves a process in place which will have California underwater by 2010 (oops, I guess not). Your objection to presenting facts rather than potential processes is "they'll never learn to question your authority". You realize that's precisely what your advocating, that their time be spent hearing about Al Gore's guess as to the process, rather than hear the facts for themselves.

I call that an emphasis on teaching the scientific facts (average temperature increased by 0.02C, methane increased by 0.01%) rather than putting the emphasis on Al Gore's idea of what processes might lead to those facts (hair spray has CFCs, which causes butterflies to .... therefore California will be underwater by 2010).

I kind of prefer scientific knowledge myself.

Of course it can be helped. Fix the laws. The application of the bad laws will motivate their correction.