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Comment Re:"Thus ends "Climategate." Hopefully." (Score 1) 497

Well, the 97% consensus paper cited above only got to that number after throwing out non-climatologists, taking them for over 3000 respondents to under 80. The linked press release mentioned the values for a particular subset of the scientiests whose responses were removed, but didn't give us info on phsysicists or mathematicians. I think it's highly likely that some of those in the removed set were skeptical, and basing their skepticisim within their specialty as applied within climate science. Not to mention the very broad wording of the questions, such that skeptics about the scope of the affect of humans on the warming would be included in the consensus.

For a specific case, my first thought was McKintyre vs Mann, but they are both mathematicians by training.

I wasn't trying to solve disputes in advance in any way, merely noting a flaw in the appeal to authority used by the comment I was responding to.

Comment Re:Lets start with paul first (Score 1) 272

It didn't qualify as abduction because it not against her will, she went along with it. She wasn't forced to do drugs, because among other things she didn't actually do them. She was pressured to do so, but that's a rather large difference from actually being forced to do drugs like you originally claimed. Huffington post called it "tried to force" which I can't fault them for as it's apparently what the source said, but it still doesn't match your initial claims.

Comment Re:Not really needed anymore. (Score 1) 410

Within a city, I would guess that the correlation between poverty and race is a factor. No stats on this, but I would expect areas with poorer residents to have fewer funds to pay for voting booth. There are a lot of possible confounding variables though.

I despise early voting, but targeted elimination of the practice is at least suspicious. Frankly, I'm surprised they ever offered it on any weekend, since government usually doesn't operate on those days.

As far as reasons for density affecting voting times, I don't know. I would hazard a guess about having less space to work with in the first place. I don't know that there really is such an association, I really just wanted to note that your response wasn't relevant to what gtall had suggested. It's probably worth looking into.

Comment Re:Not really needed anymore. (Score 1) 410

That link does not disagree with gtall's basic point. Assuming for the sake of arguments that longer voting times are caused by a higher population density and that blacks are disproportionately concentrated in high density areas, the racial disparity in voting times is likely a side affect of population density rather evidence of racism. The numbers at the end of your link even show the disparity base on number of voters.

You can't use a nationwide average to dispute an argument based on clustering. Simpson's paradox is a bitch. Anyone who doesn't understand it in principle if not by name is incompetent to make arguments using statistics. That seems to be a strong majority of the people actually making such arguments, but I stand by the assertion.

Comment Re:Im all for human rights... (Score 1) 1482

Not putting your stamp of approval on a couple is a non-action. Non-actions remain non-actions no matter how much some people want certain actions to occur to their benefit, and non-actions have no impact on anyone (their status before and after is identical). Government marriage rules are an explicit stamp of societal approval on whatever arrangements are included. As such, they are a matter of equal privileges not equal rights. The 14th amendment is still relevant in any case, it's only the rhetoric that many gay marriage supporters use that I object to, such as your comment here.

I'd rather the government get out of the marriage business altogether. Since I can't have that, I'll support gay marriage.

Comment Re:I went back to corporate America because Obamac (Score 4, Informative) 578

The Harvard study they relied on? It's crap. Note that even your link only claimed 57%. I would dispute whether that qualifies as a VAST majority.

The self reported figure from the study came in at 29%, which is probably a better number. The 62%, and even the 57% in your link rely on a very broad definition of medical bankruptcy. Some with $500,000 in other debt and $5,001 in medical debt shouldn't really count as a medical bankruptcy.

Comment Re:I have your conversion right here... (Score 1) 860

I still consider my links to be valid examples of getting a gaming rig for less than the cost of a mac.

Since newegg combos are subject to link rot, for anyone reading this, the links were for a case, power supply, hard drive, motherboard, ram, processor combo. One was an A8 chip and the other was an A10.

Comment Re:I have your conversion right here... (Score 1) 860

1/3 is overstating the case. A lot of it is because Macs all include hardware that I couldn't care less about.

Let's take their cheapest offering, the $599 mac mini. Intel i5 2.5 ghz dual core, 500 GB hard drive, Intel HD graphics, 4 GB ram. This combo from newegg has better graphics (caveat: not familiar enough with intel HD graphics to be certain on this point, but I'd bet it's at least comparable), better hard drive, better processor for $303. Call it $403 once you add windows, so about 2/3. That's not necessarily the best one to use for comparison, just the first I came to. This one for instance is another $100, with a better processor and builtin graphics. If you don't think that qualifies as a gaming rig, throw on an actual graphics card to either combo and disable the onboard video.Might not be top end, but it should cover your gaming needs.

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