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Comment Re:Science or Religion? (Score 1) 1136

Mmkay... If you still believe that "Scientists are VERY clear: AGW is happening," you are a true believer. Watch your prophet expound in a debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDI2NVTYRXU

If you go back a little longer than 10 years, you can see that CO2 was rising even during a global cooling period: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png So what's the direct relationship between CO2 and temperature again...?

Comment Re:Science or Religion? (Score 1) 1136

2/ CO2 levels has changed dramatically since the industrial revolution,

Citation...?

in fact we can calculate how much CO2 we dump into the atmosphere by looking at the amount of oil and gas sold.

What about how much CO2 we and all the other animals on the planet exhale?
What about other sources of CO2 aside from humans?

Comment Re:Statistics! (Score 1) 1142

And how will they understand logic (or skepticism which is just an extension of logic) without proper grammar and communication skills?

Logic and skepticism are fundamentally about asking questions. How can you ask a question without the knowledge or ability to communicate in a comprehensible way?

Media

CoS Bigwig Likens Wikipedia Ban to Nazis' Yellow Star Decree 567

We mentioned on Thursday that Wikipedia has banned edits originating from certain IP addresses belonging to the Church of Scientology; reader newtley writes now that Scientology leader (CEO and Chairman of the Board of the linked, but legally separate, Religious Technology Center) David Miscavige calls the ban "a 'despicable hate crime,' and asks, 'What's next, will Scientologists have to wear yellow, six-pointed stars on our clothing?' During World War II, Hitler forced Jewish men, women and children to wear a a yellow cloth star bearing the word Jude to brand them in the streets of Europe, and in the Nazi death camps."

Comment Increased Exposure...? (Score 1) 356

I have to wonder if it would be a more accurate link between the amount of time a child spent in near proximity to vinyl flooring and not just whether or not the household had it.

In other words, if children who spend more time sitting in their homes, crawling the floor, etc, are more prone to Autism than children who spend a greater percentage of their time outdoors.

Additionally, I wonder if a similar correlation exists if there is extensive parental exposure to phthalates prior to conception.

Google

Obama Anti-Trust Chief on Google the Monopoly Threat 364

CWmike writes "The blogosphere regularly excoriates Microsoft for being a monopoly, but Google may be in the cross-hairs of the nation's next anti-trust chief for monopolistic behavior, writes Preston Gralla. Last June, Christine A. Varney, President Obama's nominee to be the next antitrust chief, warned that Google already had a monopoly in online advertising. 'For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,' Varney said at a June 19 panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute, according to a Bloomberg report. The US economy will 'continually see a problem — potentially with Google' because it already 'has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising.' Varney has yet to be confirmed as antitrust chief, and she said all this before she was nominated. Still, it spells potentially bad news for Google. It may be time for the company to start adding to its legal staff."

Comment Re:FACTS, not "truth". (Score 1) 385

The problem with this is simple: the author of a Wikipedia article controls your opinions about a topic by selectively choosing his sources. He can make what he writes seem extraordinarily accurate based on the sources he chooses — or more significantly, the sources he ignores.

If Britannica wishes to secure their reputation, they do not have this luxury.

Technology

New York City Street Lights To Go LED 303

eldavojohn writes "Wired has a short piece on NYC's new street light project. I don't think we need to belabor the many benefits that LEDs hold over traditional light bulbs, but the finishing touches are being addressed, and they will hopefully be put into place sometime next year. This design won a competition back in 2004, and OVI has been whittling down the prototypes. At $1.175 million, this sounds like a pretty cheap deal considering the DOE forked over $21 million to 13 R&D projects along the same lines."
Data Storage

Intel Takes SATA Performance Crown With X25-E SSD 164

theraindog writes "We've already seen Intel's first X25-M solid-state drive blow the doors off the competition, and now there's a new X25-E Extreme model that's even faster. This latest drive reads at 250MB/s, writes at 170MB/s, and offers ten times the lifespan of its predecessor, all while retaining Intel's wicked-fast storage controller and crafty Native Command Queuing support. The Extreme isn't cheap, of course, but The Tech Report's in-depth review of the drive suggests that if you consider its cost in terms of performance, the X25-E actually represents good value for demanding multi-user environments."
Businesses

In AU, Dodgy Dell Deal Faces Consumer Backlash 173

Ben Seberry writes "It appears Dell has been caught red-faced by yet another pricing mistake on their Australian website. Many customers thought they had spotted a fantastic deal when they came across a 55%-off offer. Dell later denied that this was a valid special and telephoned customers to offer them a choice of the standard price, or a cancelled order. Dell's senior manager of corporate communication came out and apologized for the mistake, promising processes would be reviewed to prevent it from happening again. In the days after the original 'incorrectly priced' offer was fixed, Dell made a different error leading to an even cheaper price being advertised. This time, on many user forums and blogs, users are debating Australian contract law as it applies to this matter — it is not as clear-cut as many originally believed."
The Almighty Buck

How To Make Money With Free Software 81

bmsleight writes "The Dutch Ministry of Finance organized an architecture competition to design not a building, but rather the new 5-Euro commemorative coin. The theme was 'Netherlands and Architecture'. The winning design was made 100% with free software, mainly Python, but also including The Gimp, Inkscape, Phatch, and Ubuntu. The design is amazing — the head of Queen Beatrix is made up of the names of architects based on their popularity in Yahoo searches (rendered in a font of the artist's own devising). In the end the artist, Stani Michiels, had to collaborate closely on location with technicians of the Royal Dutch Mint, so all the last bits were done on his Asus Eee PC. Soon, 350,000 Dutch people will use and enjoy the fruits of free software."
Space

New Study Shows Solar System Is Uncommon 290

Iddo Genuth writes "Research conducted by a team of North American scientists shows our solar system is special, contrary to the accepted theory that it is an average planetary system. Using computer simulations to follow the development of planets, it was shown that very specific conditions are needed for a proto-stellar disk to evolve into a solar system-like planetary system. The simulations show that in most cases either no planets are created, or planets are formed and then migrate towards the disk center and acquire highly elliptical orbits." The research was published in Science magazine; here's the paper on ArXiv (PDF).

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