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Comment Re: New religion (Score 1) 122

Thatâs not an independent thinker. Thatâ(TM)s someone who routinely doubts everything. But as Henri Poincaré already observed more than 100 years ago: To doubt everything and to believe everything are considered two equally convenient strategies, both of which relieve us of the necessity of thinking or reflection. (And I know, a witty saying proves nothing.)

Comment Re:Renewables rock (Score 2) 97

It's even more complicated. German law treats the grid as "copper plate", and ignores all regional differences. If a wind park in Northern Germany offers electricity for 8 ct/kWh, then a consumer in Southern Germany is allowed to buy that power and is entitled to get it delivered via the grid. And if the grid can't handle the load because of weak interconnectivity, then a gas turbine in Southern Germany will start and generate the power for 18 ct/kWh, but the consumer only pays 8 ct. The 10 ct/kWh difference is paid by all consumers with higher energy prices.

For Southern Germany, this is quite the deal, because they can now operate expensive gas turbines, and get them subsidized at least in part by electricity consumers in Northern Germany with higher energy prices, while the cheap energy generated in Northern Germany is switched off, as the energy on the books is sold already, but the electricity is generated somewhere else. But because Southern states profiteer from the situation right now, there is much resistance to changes in the law, which would make energy in the South more expensive, while Northern states would get a relief.

Comment Re:Gulf conflict? (Score 1) 97

The problem with your argument is that while you rightly point out the strategic problem, you don't have a solution. The attempt at regime change has resulted in the very same regime emboldened now as they got the bragging right to have successfully repelled the largest military in the world together with the strongest army in the region in their unprovoked attack on the homeland. Additionally, you now have created at least one additional Shiite martyr, whose shrine will be a place of worship and pilgrimage for the centuries to come, and where oaths to defend Islam in his name will be renewed again and again.

Comment Re:What's amazing is the current craziness (Score 1) 77

Why do you define people not adhering to your idea of a lifestyle "crazy"?

I for once neither like scuba diving, because I don't like the feeling of rubber on my skin, nor do I think skiing all year round is something important to do. I live in the Alps, I can go skiing whenever I feel like it anyway, but I barely do. And inhaling something from the boobs of some paid person was never a dream of mine. If that rocks your boat, why not find something who will do it because they like you, or they like the sensation of someone snorting something from their boobs? Ted Turner once said, Life was a game, and Money is how you keep score. Why in your opinion is chasing the next highscore in some computer game a worthwhile way to spend your time as a billionaire, while trying to increase your highscore in money is not?

Comment Re:Simple? (Score 3, Insightful) 41

Perhaps the simplest answer is to not assume any human is infallible.

No one seriously working in Cosmology does that. Indeed, there are a lot of theories out there trying to either displace or at least amend Einstein's General Relativity, like MoND or TeVeS. The problem: No one until now has come up with a good idea how to do it, and all the proposed alternatives don't work very well either, have to assume even more unknowns, or are outright wrong in places where GR has been shown to work. Until then, we continue to use GR, because we know, where it works fine, and we know, where it fails.

It's easy to sit in an armchair and wandwave some theories in existence which superseed General Relativity. It's really hard to actually write them down.

Comment Re:The greatest national security risk (Score 1) 79

This is not true. Because whatever your personal motivations, the mathematical result of you not voting is that you are voting for whatever majority comes out in the end. And because only a minority voted against Donald Trump, a majority either voted directly for him or was ready to accept his election win.

Comment Re:too bad (Score 2) 312

It definitely didn't originally mean "government approved"

That is exactly what it meant. Regulation (from Latin rex = king) means: per the King's law. Or as Wiktionary has it: Borrowed from Latin regulatus, perfect passive participle of regul (“to direct, rule, regulate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from regula (“rule”), from reg (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”).

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