Urgh. Good point.

I'll bet there's a model that could take all stuff this into account, and sufficient data to estimate the parameters. But trying to figure out what that would be feels too much like work.

So we have records of about, what, eight thousand mass extinctions? Wow, I had no idea. ;)

Okay, makes sense. So we probably already have the data available to do a pretty good analysis of impact periodicity.

I understand why they're getting a weak signal here on Earth, where most craters will have long since been erased by erosion and surface remodeling. But I'll bet we could get a much stronger signal from the Moon, particularly the far side. Do we have the ability to get dates for craters there from orbiting probes, or is that something we'd have to collect physical samples to do?

Theorems and theories are two different things. You're quite right, that proving a theorem requires a well-defined set of axioms; the natural world, unfortunately, doesn't provide us with such axioms*, which is why we have to use theories to describe it.

*Well, maybe. "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" argues that maybe there is some axiomatic Truth at the basis of reality. But if so, we have no idea what it is yet, and anyone who tells you they know is lying.

Ah, I see you've recently discovered a Philosophy 101 list of logical fallacies. Come back when you learn enough to understand what the bullet points actually mean.

Very true. You do, however, frequently hear claims along the lines of "Warmists say it's all 'settled science!' Stupid warmists, nothing is ever settled in science!" This article does an excellent job of addressing that particular straw man.

Is it petty of me to wish that people who accuse their political opponents of being Nazis, Communists, etc., could live for a little while in the world of their paranoid fantasies? If they survived the experience, a month in the actual USSR under Stalin, for example, might give them much more perspective.

And claiming that the other side is claiming "the topic is settled" is almost always a strawman.

Nice job of concealing your ideological looniness until the end of the post.

In my mid-40s, and having been active online since my teens, I understand that using a pseudonym is no guarantee of privacy.

Meh. Slashdot stories have long reported Gartner's dodgy numbers at face value, even though pretty much every single such story contains multiple comments pointing out how absurd those numbers are.

Unless you get points for how you give the mannequin CPR, in which case the answer is "yes." Not all games are simulations, and not all simulations are games, but the area of overlap is pretty large.

Note that I'm not saying that making CPR classes into games is a good idea. In fact I think it's a lousy idea. But I have the feeling it's happening whether we like it ot not.

I'm not sure people from most other countries understand the "think of the CHIIIIILDREN!" hysteria that grips the Anglophone world on a regular basis. We seem to have developed this bizarre idea that people are supposed to be completely sheltered from the world until they reach the age of legal adulthood ... at which point they're supposed to know in every particular how to deal with the responsibility that entails.

Unfortunately, I had to read the rest of your post three times to make sure you weren't seriously claiming this. It's amazing the number of self-proclaimed nerds who don't seem to understand that technology actually does predate computers.