Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
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Re: Science and knowledge
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 12:16:20PM -0500, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Sounds like they would fit Erik's conditions perfectly. Nope. Keep trying. -- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: TI interpreation of QM
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 01:41:25PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: Obviously, this cannot be falsified. Which invokes a significant problem for realism. No, no problem. I have seen you complicate lots of things by imposing your interpretation on them, and you say there are contortions when they are just in your mind. If it cannot be falsified, it is just in someone's mind. Real knowledge need only describe what can be measured experimentally. You speak of a problem that cannot be measured, therefore the problem is only in your mind. We have the opinion that physics describes reality, but the reality it describes in inherently unobservable. Nope, this is nonsense. Experiments test reality, experiments are observable. In as much as your physics is not observable, it does not describe reality. This is compounded by the fact that there are several realistic interpretations that describe vastly different realities that are vying for a place as the best realistic interpretation. And, of course, there is no experimental means to pick one over the other. If you mean these is no POSSIBLE experimental means to pick one over the other, then given that they somehow differ, they aren't sticking to reality, they are making unnecessary or unverifiable assumptions. You seem to be attributing these sorts of realistic interpretations to me, but I simply don't worry about them. I guess we may be using different definitions of realistic. If you are trying to understand my way of thinking, then it all comes back to what I said before, the test of all knowledge is experiment. The problem you are talking about, it seems to me, results from many people feeling a strong need to understand or interpret experiments in a way that fits with their worldview (intuition, thought-processes, etc.). Possibly this is influenced by mystical beliefs that the human brain is somehow special or favored over other matter or phenomena. But the world doesn't fit itself to your brain, it is not human-friendly. The universe just is. It can be measured by experiment. If your knowledge is falsified by experiment, it is wrong. If your knowledge can never be verified by experiment, it is useless. You made the statement that scientists who only worry about reality get little done, which is ridiculous. The ones who really get little done are those who worry about nothing but philosophy. What a waste. And now I'm done arguing philosophy. There are more useful threads around here. -- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Paul Gigot on the Marsh Arabs
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003775 But the shock for a first time visitor to Iraq is that the destruction committed by Saddam's tyranny is so much worse than advertised. As Stalin did with the Kulaks, the Sunni Saddam then sought to erase the entire Arab Shiite marsh culture. He drained or silted up most of the historic marshes, with their centuries-old ecosystem of reeds, countless species and water buffalo that supplied 70% of Iraq's milk. Rich with oil money, even under U.N. sanctions, Saddam could always buy other milk or have his people do without it. But his pathology is that he felt he had to murder systematically anyone who challenged him, and so ruining a chunk of Iraq's economy and natural beauty is just one more cost of megalomania. Many on the political left have been reluctant to concede the special brutality of Saddam, as if admitting that truth would justify a war they opposed. Some genocides are apparently more equal than others. It's true that America can't right every wrong, or depose every dictator. But the U.S. does take on some greater obligation when an American president encourages an uprising against a madman and then walks away from those who do as we hope. The liberation of the Marsh Arabs may well have come just in time to save their culture, and to remove a stain on the American conscience. ___ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. - George W. Bush 1/29/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars query: air pressure in spinning habitats
But wait, the endcaps don't need to be warm for humans. In fact, we would like them to be quite cold at the center, around 40C to 50C colder than the rim, in order to give the air a decent lapse rate and keep the atmosphere stabile. Perhaps we do want the endcaps cold, but colder air higher up does not keep the atmosphere stable. On the contrary cold air higher up makes for unstable air, with consequences such as thunderstorms. Warmer air over cooler air is called an `inversion'. It is more stable than the reverse. Inversions over cities are infamous for trapping pollutants in a relatively small volume rather than diluting them through a large volume. (By the way, the meaning of the words `warm' and `cold' is not absolute, but relative to the neutral temperature at the relevant altitude. `Warmer air' may have a lower absolute temperature than air at the surface; the atmosphere is stable so long as the `warmer' air is warmer than the air at the surface would be if raised to the higher altitude.) Instability occurs when a parcel of air that is low down rises a little bit (say a fraction of a centimeter), and even though that parcel cools as it rises, since its pressure drops, that parcel does not cool to the temperature of the surrounding air, so that parcel of air continues to rise. The key is that the drop in temperature of the parcel of air from the surface be less than the drop in temperature of the column of air, so that a rising parcel is relatively warmer than its surroundings. Meteorologists use `skew-t' sounding diagrams to show what happens. See, for example: http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/soundings/skewt/html/skewtinf.html Soundings (Skew-T) explanation http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/upper/alb.gif Albany, NY (KALB) sounding, evidentally from radiosonde http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/soundings/skewt/html/alb.html Albany, NY (KALB) sounding from GOES with parameter info -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars query: air pressure in spinning habitats
... there is no thermodynamic limit on the efficiency, heat pumped over work input, of a heat pump that is pumping heat from a higher T region to a lower T region I don't understand. I thought that Carnot first discovered that the limit on thermodynamic efficiency has to do with the ratio of the input absolute temperature to the output absolute temperature. Thus, if the input temperature is 600 degrees Kelvin (if I remember rightly, this is the temperature of the water heated by some kinds of nuclear reactor) and the output temperature is 300 degrees Kelvin (27 deg C, 80 deg F), the maximum efficiency for converting heat to work is 50%. Is this right? Of course, if your output is at 2.7 degrees Kelvin, and your input is `room' temperature, your efficiency could be pretty high. (But radiators' radiation drops by the fourth power of the absolute temperature, is that right? I know that radiators need to be pretty warm, but I don't know what temperature `warm' is. At what temperature are the radiators on the International Space Station?) -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars query: air pressure in spinning habitats
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 12:57:11PM +, Robert J. Chassell wrote: But wait, the endcaps don't need to be warm for humans. In fact, we would like them to be quite cold at the center, around 40C to 50C colder than the rim, in order to give the air a decent lapse rate and keep the atmosphere stabile. Perhaps we do want the endcaps cold, but colder air higher up does not keep the atmosphere stable. It is true that if the atmospheric lapse rate is too great (roughly, higher than the adiabatic lapse rate) that the air will be unstable, as you say. But you will also have problems if the atmospheric lapse rate is too low, or zero. Stable was a poor word choice (I should have said well-mixed, perhaps), but if you want to have weather patterns similar to Earth, how do you think they could possibly arise if the atmosphere were isothermal? What you need is an atmospheric lapse rate slightly below the adiabatic lapse rate if you want to simulate Earth. Inversions over cities are infamous for trapping pollutants in a relatively small volume rather than diluting them through a large volume. Good example. If you have an isothermal atmosphere in the habitat, how will you avoid this sort of problem? -- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars query: air pressure in spinning habitats
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 01:12:34PM +, Robert J. Chassell wrote: ... there is no thermodynamic limit on the efficiency, heat pumped over work input, of a heat pump that is pumping heat from a higher T region to a lower T region I don't understand. I thought that Carnot first discovered that the limit on thermodynamic efficiency has to do with the ratio of the input absolute temperature to the output absolute temperature. Thus, if the input temperature is 600 degrees Kelvin (if I remember rightly, this is the temperature of the water heated by some kinds of nuclear reactor) and the output temperature is 300 degrees Kelvin (27 deg C, 80 deg F), the maximum efficiency for converting heat to work is 50%. Is this right? Right. You are talking about a heat ENGINE. Not to be confused with a heat PUMP. -- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 06:08 am, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 10:41 PM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge The purpose of science is not to help us understand reality; it is not about the truth. Indeed, one of my favorite statements about science is the most important development in the history of science is when it was decided that it wasn't about the truth. I would argue that most scientists believe that their models are about reality. Truth is a somewhat trickier notion. It implies finality while science is always more tentative. But, if this is true, then why did this statement achieve general acceptance among the professional scientists on sci.physics? There are a lot of different scientists with a lot of different viewpoints, who all agreed that science was about making models concerning observation. It had nothing to say about the validity of observation. snip Thinking about this, its probably because we hang with different types of scientists. The overwhelming majority of scientists are *not* physicists. snip Now, it is also true that few scientists believe that observations have nothing to do with reality. Most idealists, for example, think there is a correlation between observation and reality. And, idealists do have a respected place among physicists: Wheeler was one. Perhaps you should start using 'physicist' instead of 'scientist' in your posts to avoid overgeneralising. Certainly most of the scientists I have known are realists who wouldn't know what philosophy was if they stubbed their toe on it... -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Those who study history are doomed to repeat it. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
saving the net
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6989 How to get past the intellectual and political logjams that threaten Linux and the Net. At the same time that media concentration restrictions are being removed, such that three companies will own everything, so too are neutrality restrictions for the network being eliminated, so that those same three companies--who also will control broadband access--are totally free to architect broadband however they wish. The Internet that is to be the savior is a dying breed. The end-to-end architecture that gave us its power will, in effect, be inverted. And so the games networks play to benefit their own will bleed to this space too. And then Dr. Pangloss says, but what about spectrum. Won't unlicensed spectrum guarantee our freedom? And it is true: Here at least there was some hope from this FCC. But the latest from DC is that a tiny chunk of new unlicensed spectrum will be released. And then after that, no more. Spectrum too will be sold--to the same companies, no doubt. So then, Dr. Pangloss: When the content layer, the logical layer, and the physical layer are all effectively owned by a handful of companies, free of any requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask then? --But Where's the Internet? by Lawrence Lessig, MediaCon. I think that I could turn and live with the animals... Not one of them is demented with the mania of owning things. --Walt Whitman As I write this, Democratic candidate Howard Dean just gathered his party's largest campaign fund for the most recent quarter. The mainstream press has acknowledged that most of this money came from fund-raising on the Internet. But they avoid visiting a fact that should be deeply troubling to every candidate running (and then governing) for money rather than for voters: Dean's lead is owed to a huge number of small donations, not to a small number of large special interests. If he's being bought, it's by his voters. This is a New Thing. It's also been made possible by the Net. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Rumsfeld's personal spy ring
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/16/intelligence/index_np.html Rumsfeld's personal spy ring The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Eric Boehlert July 16, 2003 | During last fall's feverish ramp up to war with Iraq, the Pentagon created an unusual in-house shop to monitor Saddam Hussein's links with terrorists and his allegedly sprawling arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. With direct access to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office and the White House, the influential group helped lay out, both to administration officials and to the press, an array of chilling, almost too-good-to-be-true examples of why Saddam posed an immediate threat to America. Six months later, with controversy mounting over the administration's handling of war intelligence, the small, secretive cell inside the Pentagon is drawing closer scrutiny and may soon be the subject of a congressional inquiry to determine whether it manipulated and politicized key intelligence and botched planning for post-war Iraq. The concern is they were in the cherry-picking business, says U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Cherry-picking half-truths and rumors and only highlighting pieces of information that bolstered the administration's case for war. The Pentagon's innocuously named Office of Special Plans served as a unique, hand-picked group of hawkish defense officials who worked outside regular intelligence channels. According to the Department of Defense, the group was first created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to supplement the war on terrorism; it was designed to sift through all the intelligence on terrorist activity, and to focus particularly on various al-Qaida links. By last fall it was focusing almost exclusively on Iraq, and often leaking doomsday findings about Saddam's regime. Those controversial conclusions are now fueling the suspicion the obscure agency, propelled by ideology, manipulated key findings in order to fit the White House's desire to wage war with Iraq. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
vv Vs the Environment: ozone treaty
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=425893 Bush ready to wreck ozone layer treaty US slips in demand to drop ban on harmful pesticide By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor 20 July 2003 President George Bush is targeting the international treaty to save the ozone layer which protects all life on earth from deadly radiation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New US demands - tabled at a little-noticed meeting in Montreal earlier this month - threaten to unravel one of the greatest environmental success stories of the past few decades, causing millions of deaths from cancer. The news comes at a particularly embarrassing time for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who pressed the President in their talks in Washington last week to stop his attempts to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol which sets out to control global warming: one of the few international issues on which they differ. Now, instead of heeding Mr Blair, Mr Bush is undermining the ozone treaty as well, by seeking to perpetuate the use of the most ozone-destructive chemical still employed in developed countries, otherwise soon to be phased out. Ironically, it was sustained pressure from the Reagan administration, in which Mr Bush's father served as vice-president, that ensured the treaty was adopted in the first place. It has proved such a success that environmentalists have long regarded it as inviolable. The ozone layer - made of a type of oxygen so thinly scattered through the upper atmosphere that, if gathered all together, it would form a ring around the earth no thicker than the sole of a shoe - screens out the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays which would, otherwise, wipe out terrestrial life. As it weakens, more of the rays get through, causing skin cancer and blindness from cataracts. The world was shocked to discover in the 1980s that pollution from man-made chemicals had opened a hole the size of the United States in the layer above Antarctica, and had thinned it worldwide. Led by the US, nations moved with unprecedented speed to agree the treaty, called the Montreal Protocol, in 1987 - which started the process of phasing out use of the chemicals. The measures have been progressively tightened ever since. Scientists reckon that they will eventually prevent 2 million cases of cancer a year in the US and Europe alone. But President Bush's new demands threaten to throw the process into reverse. They centre on a pesticide, methyl bromide, now the greatest attacker of ozone left in industrialised countries. The US is responsible for a quarter of the world's consumption of the chemical, which has also been linked with increased prostate cancers in farmers. Under an extension to the Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1997, the pesticide is being gradually phased out and replaced with substitutes; its use in the West is due to end completely in 2005. Nations are legally allowed to extend the use of small amounts in critical applications, but the US is demanding exemptions far beyond those permitted, for uses ranging from growing strawberries to tending golf courses. It is also pressing to exploit a loophole in the treaty - allowing the use of the chemical to treat wood packaging - so that, instead of being phased out, its use would increase threefold. The demands now go to an international conference in Nairobi this autumn. Experts fear that, if agreed, the treaty will begin to fall apart, not least because developing countries - which are following rich nations in phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals - could cease their efforts. The US is reneging on the agreement, and working very, very hard to get other countries to agree, said David Doniger, a former senior US government official dealing with ozone issues, who now works for the Natural Resources Defense Council. If it succeeds, it threatens to unravel the whole fabric of the treaty. Dr Joe Farman, the Cambridge scientist who discovered the Antarctic ozone hole, added: This is madness. We do not need this chemical. We do need the ozone layer. How stupid can people be? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Angel series 5 (Spoilers)
From http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue326/news.html Spoilers about series 5 casting and stuff. S P O I L E R S P A C E S P O I L E R S P A C E S P O I L E R S P A C E S P O I L E R S P A C E Joss Whedon, co-creator of The WB's Angel, told SCI FI Wire that former Buffy the Vampire Slayer supporting player Mercedes McNab (Harmony) will join the cast as a recurring player in the upcoming fifth season, one of many changes coming up. McNab's Harmony and a second as-yet-uncast new recurring female character will join James Marsters' Spike on the show, Whedon added in an interview at The WB's fall press preview. Well, Spike and Harmony do have a history, Whedon said, referring to the vampire duo's steamy affair on Buffy. But that doesn't mean they'll necessarily hook up. It just means we love Mercedes, and we want to see more of her. As for how Marsters' characterwho met a fiery end in the Buffy series finale last Maycomes back, Whedon remained silent. I can't really give you much of a hint [as to how Spike will be integrated into the show], except that badly would be the word, Whedon said. Because he sticks out like a sore thumb, which is exactly what we always hire him to do. I see him not fitting in. And that's exactly what they need right now. Because, although they all have their separate agendas, to an extent, they're a team. And when you're a team, you need somebody to come in and f--k up the team. In the coming fifth season, Angel will move out of its hotel set into a swanky, new set representing the Wolfram Hart law firm, where Whedon said to look for West-Wing style camera movements. Whedon added that big changes are in store for the character of Charles Gunn, played by J. August Richardsa transformation that was foreshadowed in last season's finale. Yeah, he's going to go through some interesting changes, Whedon said. And again, we'll find out early on what it is, but not exactly what it means. But, yeah, you know, Gunn is somebody that we felt was a little underutilized. J.'s an amazing actor. And we thought Wolfram Hart would be the perfect venue to find a new side of him. So we're shaking it up. Angel will return to its regular timeslot, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, in the fall. It'll be cool to have Harmony back; she was in the second ever Buffy (and the unaired pilot) so that's nice continuity. And with Cordelia possibly being offscreen all the time she'll be the only other character apart from Angel that goes anywhere near that far back. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again. -George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Iraq's Nuclear Weapons - Clinton's '98 Statement
July 21, 2003, 11:00 a.m. Lies about Iraqi Nukes Mark R. Levin National Review Online On December 16, 1998, Bill Clinton informed the nation that he had ordered military action against Iraq. No less than three times Clinton referred to Iraq's nuclear arms or nuclear program. Example 1: Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Example 2: Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons. Example 3: And so we had to act and act now. Let me explain why. First, without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in months, not years. Notice that in the first example, Clinton speaks of attacking Iraq's nuclear program, which obviously requires the known existence — indeed, the location — of such a program. And in the third example, Clinton warns of an imminent threat Iraq could reconstitute, among other things, its nuclear-weapons program, thereby alleging its existence. Now, on what basis did Clinton conclude that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon, a nuclear-weapons program, or the ability to reconstitute such a program in months? Well, let's look at certain key public statements and representations by Clinton himself and his top people. Fact 1: On September 3, 1998, Clinton reported to Congress on Iraq's non-compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions. In the section of the report labeled Nuclear Weapons, Clinton's report stated: In an interim report to the UNSC July 29, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] said that Iraq had provided no new information regarding outstanding issues and concerns. The IAEA said while it has a 'technically coherent picture' of Iraq's nuclear program, Iraq has never been fully transparent and its lack of transparency compounds remaining uncertainties. The IAEA noted Iraq claims to have no further documentation on such issues as weapons design engineering drawings, experimental data, and drawings received from foreign sources in connection with Iraq's centrifuge enrichment program. The IAEA also reported that Iraq was 'unsuccessful' in its efforts to locate verifiable documentation of the abandonment of the nuclear program Thus, Clinton's own report to Congress, during the lead up to military action against Iraq, contained no substantive information about Iraq's nuclear arms or nuclear weapons program. Instead, it emphasized the near total lack of insight into such matters. The rest of the article is a bit more of a partisan attack http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin072103.asp ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
--- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell wrote: Hmm, what about astronomy? Centuries of looking at the skies, yet quasars/pulsars weren't discovered until the 60's Not a good example. If we had a pulsar right next to us, and we studied it for decades, but never noticed that it was pulsing, then you would have a point. Hmm, I think that's overly picky, b/c my example was 'studying the skies' -- I think of 'religious experiences' etc. as a broad feild, not a single thing, and we do know facts such as this percentage of people claim to have seen a deity, that number to have stigmata etc. (I could look up the actual percentages if you wish, but I don't think that will really make a difference to you... :} ) Debbi who just had a dose of chocolate and nuts as Thornton's Choccies, which someone brought back from London :) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
--- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell wrote: Hey! What about the astronomy example I gave in my first post this thread: And for an even longer timeframe from observance to 'scientific revision,' look at the change from an Earth-centered to a sun-centered system! :) Not a good comparison. If we looked at the sun and planets but never realized they were moving at all, then maybe you would have a point. The problem is that you are comparing a situation where we have a lot of measurements and interaction with the element of interest and have found NOTHING to support your claim, with various things that were based on interpretation of data that did exist and just required further refinement. NOTHING does not equal SOMETHING. huge grin Would you accept an area of inquiry that *men* have been pondering for ages, but claim still not to understand at all? (that last is a bit of an exaggeration...) Women! ;) OK, Dan's Answer Is Better Anyway Maru __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
--- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip I think of 'religious experiences' etc. as a broad feild, sigh Should be *field* of course; I'm sure someone could come up with a good definition for 'feild' if they wanted to... :P Did anyone else think of 'the Dark Side of the Force' given the 'dark matter energy' in the context of this part of the thread? :) No Snide Comments On My Spelling Error Please! Maru ;) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: TI interpreation of QM
From: Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: TI interpreation of QM Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 07:41:38 -0400 On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 01:41:25PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: Obviously, this cannot be falsified. Which invokes a significant problem for realism. No, no problem. I have seen you complicate lots of things by imposing your interpretation on them, and you say there are contortions when they are just in your mind. If it cannot be falsified, it is just in someone's mind. Real knowledge need only describe what can be measured experimentally. You speak of a problem that cannot be measured, therefore the problem is only in your mind. snip The problem you are talking about, it seems to me, results from many people feeling a strong need to understand or interpret experiments in a way that fits with their worldview (intuition, thought-processes, etc.). Possibly this is influenced by mystical beliefs that the human brain is somehow special or favored over other matter or phenomena. But the world doesn't fit itself to your brain, it is not human-friendly. The universe just is. This argument reminds me of the excellent Douglas Adams essay in which he imitates a puddle of water and lampoons the notion that the universe has been created for us by intelligent design. Since it fits so perfectly into its hole in the ground, the puddle assumes that hole must have been created for it. Jon Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Science and knowledge Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:06:06 -0700 (PDT) --- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell wrote: Hey! What about the astronomy example I gave in my first post this thread: And for an even longer timeframe from observance to 'scientific revision,' look at the change from an Earth-centered to a sun-centered system! :) Not a good comparison. If we looked at the sun and planets but never realized they were moving at all, then maybe you would have a point. The problem is that you are comparing a situation where we have a lot of measurements and interaction with the element of interest and have found NOTHING to support your claim, with various things that were based on interpretation of data that did exist and just required further refinement. NOTHING does not equal SOMETHING. huge grin Would you accept an area of inquiry that *men* have been pondering for ages, but claim still not to understand at all? (that last is a bit of an exaggeration...) Women! ;) There *could* be a joke in there somewhere about how illogical and irrational subjects aren't inherently understandable, but I certainly won't go searching for it. ;-) Jon Wearing Flame Retardant Underwear Maru Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Clinton on Uranium-gate
Bill Clinton called in to wish Bob Dole happy birthday on Larry King and had some excellent comments on the whole SoU flap... http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/22/lkl.00.html Here's the relevant part: - KING: President, maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear weaponry in Africa? CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than either side. First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said -- that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe they shouldn't have put it in. Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions. I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's what I think. KING: So do you share that view, Senator Dole? DOLE: Oh, he's exactly right. Let's put the focus where it belongs. I never got to be president. I tried a couple of times. But President Clinton understands better than anybody that he gets piles and piles of classified, secret, top secret information, and I don't know how many, maybe the president can tell me. I don't know how much of this goes across your desk every day. It probably shouldn't have been in the message. But that's history. It's passed. We can't change it. And we need to focus on the real problem. KING: President, maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear weaponry in Africa? CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than either side. First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said -- that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe they shouldn't have put it in. Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions. I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's what I think. KING: So do you share that view, Senator Dole? DOLE: Oh, he's exactly right. Let's put the focus where it belongs. I never got to be president. I tried a couple of times. But President Clinton understands better than anybody that he gets piles and piles of classified, secret, top secret information, and I don't know how many, maybe the president can tell me. I don't know how much of this goes across your desk every day. It probably
Re: Science and knowledge
From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Science and knowledge Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:10:21 -0700 (PDT) --- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip I think of 'religious experiences' etc. as a broad feild, sigh Should be *field* of course; I'm sure someone could come up with a good definition for 'feild' if they wanted to... :P No Snide Comments On My Spelling Error Please! Maru ;) What about snide URLs without added commentary? (Nothing personal, but your typo just reminded me of this essay): http://www.mikejasper.com/hits3.htm(Offensive language alert) :-D A google for 'feild' found a bunch of sites, (including a few schools) but no definitions. :) Jon Guess Speaker Maru Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Clinton on Uranium-gate
--- Bryon Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bill Clinton called in to wish Bob Dole happy birthday on Larry King and had some excellent comments on the whole SoU flap... As a Republican who doesn't give a flying frel about peoples personal relationships etc. I certainly do miss that man's presidency. Of all the people alive today Clinton is one of the few men I think is actualy qualified for the job. Personaly I think that 12 years, not 8 would be a better limit. Re-elect Bill Clinton! Remember I am a California Republican who signed the GD recal. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Iraq's Nuclear Weapons - Clinton's '98 Statement
John D. Giorgis wrote: ... On December 16, 1998, Bill Clinton informed the nation that he had ordered military action against Iraq. No less than three times Clinton referred to Iraq's nuclear arms or nuclear program. Example 1: Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Example 2: Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons. Example 3: And so we had to act and act now. Let me explain why. First, without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in months, not years. Notice that in the first example, Clinton speaks of attacking Iraq's nuclear program, which obviously requires the known existence — indeed, the location — of such a program. No, it doesn't. I read all three quotes as We will attack all of the nasty weapons that Iraq has. If wombats were credible WMD, he would have included them too. : ) Thus, Clinton's own report to Congress, during the lead up to military action against Iraq, contained no substantive information about Iraq's nuclear arms or nuclear weapons program. Instead, it emphasized the near total lack of insight into such matters. I don't see how this helps Bush's case much. You're saying, Clinton had no evidence, which seems to mean that Bush was on his own as far as procuring evidence of WMD. The rest of the article is a bit more of a partisan attack Thanks for snipping it. ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Weekly Chat Reminder
This is just a quick reminder that the Wednesday Brin-L chat is scheduled for 3 PM Eastern/2 PM Central time in the US, or 7 PM Greenwich time, so it started a little over an hour ago. There will probably be somebody there to talk to for at least eight hours after the start time. See my instruction page for help getting there: http://www.brin-l.org/brinmud.html __ Steve Sloan . Huntsville, Alabama = [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brin-L list pages .. http://www.brin-l.org Chmeee's 3D Objects http://www.sloan3d.com/chmeee 3D and Drawing Galleries .. http://www.sloansteady.com Software Science Fiction, Science, and Computer Links Science fiction scans . http://www.sloan3d.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
- Original Message - From: William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 06:08 am, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 10:41 PM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge The purpose of science is not to help us understand reality; it is not about the truth. Indeed, one of my favorite statements about science is the most important development in the history of science is when it was decided that it wasn't about the truth. I would argue that most scientists believe that their models are about reality. Truth is a somewhat trickier notion. It implies finality while science is always more tentative. But, if this is true, then why did this statement achieve general acceptance among the professional scientists on sci.physics? There are a lot of different scientists with a lot of different viewpoints, who all agreed that science was about making models concerning observation. It had nothing to say about the validity of observation. snip Thinking about this, its probably because we hang with different types of scientists. The overwhelming majority of scientists are *not* physicists. Fair enought, I'll be happy to admit that I've got a biased sample. :-) snip Now, it is also true that few scientists believe that observations have nothing to do with reality. Most idealists, for example, think there is a correlation between observation and reality. And, idealists do have a respected place among physicists: Wheeler was one. Perhaps you should start using 'physicist' instead of 'scientist' in your posts to avoid overgeneralising. That's a fair point. I think that physicists have had to worry about foundation problems, while other scientists do not, because their conceptual foundation is the science of the next level down. Chemistry's foundation is physics, biology is chemistry, etc. Certainly most of the scientists I have known are realists who wouldn't know what philosophy was if they stubbed their toe on it... That's an interesting phenomenon. Let me relate a story about Jim Carr on sci.physics. He is a self described realist. When I asked him about the question of whether physics describes reality or simply provides a model of observation, he said of course the latter. Physicists are forced to confront quantum realism on a fairly regular basis. There are Physics Review Letters papers on the experimental tests for spacelike correlations, Bell without inequalities, etc. on a fairly regular basis. Since physics, by its nature, goes for the foundations, these questions are considered important. I've been throwing these questions around among physicists for over 25 years now, and there is a general acceptance that quantum weirdness cannot simply be shrugged off. I think the key to reconciling this with the general description of physicists as mostly realists is the shut up and calculate statement of Feynman. It is an acknowledgement that there is no good realistic explanation for how QM works. It deliberately tables the question; tacitly acknowledging Feynman's inability to solve it. It is not a statement that the question is worthless. Indeed, anyone trained in classical physics expects a good answer to the question: what types of things behave this way. The inability to straightforwardly define QM in terms of things that have properties consistent with known laws of physics apart from our observations is not thought to be a trivial problem.* So, if you were to ask a physicist about these questions, and then offer the understanding that physics just models what we see, there is a close to universal acceptance of that statement. There is often an accompanying statement that what we see has something to do with reality. Finally, thinking about your statement about not overgeneralizing, I think that I share the general prejudice that a physicist is someone who's had some graduate work in physics, not necessarily someone with an undergraduate degree. I was told that one of the questions that are important to prelims is determining if the student thinks like a physicist. An ABD** physicist, like Richard Baker, certainly qualifies here. Dan M. * by straightforward I mean without relying on interpretations that require a rich infinity of universes with a slightly less rich infinity of Dan M.s being created all the time, or hidden backwards signals in time, etc. ** ABD is all but dissertation ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
--- Jon Gabriel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip The problem is that you are comparing a situation where we have a lot of measurements and interaction with the element of interest and have found NOTHING to support your claim, with various things that were based on interpretation of data that did exist and just required further refinement. NOTHING does not equal SOMETHING. huge grin Would you accept an area of inquiry that *men* have been pondering for ages, but claim still not to understand at all? (that last is a bit of an exaggeration...) Women! ;) There *could* be a joke in there somewhere about how illogical and irrational subjects aren't inherently understandable, but I certainly won't go searching for it. ;-) Jon Wearing Flame Retardant Underwear Maru Wise decision... is it decorated with Spiderman, Batman or Pokemon? ;D Someone must have trai- er, taught you well. ;} Lead Mare Maru Frauliching Through Feilds Of Fowlers Maru :) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Paul Gigot on the Marsh Arabs
Many on the political left have been reluctant to concede the special brutality of Saddam, as if admitting that truth would justify a war they opposed. Some genocides are apparently more equal than others. It's true that America can't right every wrong, or depose every dictator. But the U.S. does take on some greater obligation when an American president encourages an uprising against a madman and then walks away from those who do as we hope. The liberation of the Marsh Arabs may well have come just in time to save their culture, and to remove a stain on the American conscience. This is bullshit. For one thing, it was a right-wing president who abandoned the Marsh Arabs in the first place. There may be some people who opposed this year's war who are concealing Saddam's brutality, but they are extreme left-wing kooks, about as representative of mainstream liberals as David Duke is of mainstream Republicans. Considering for how many decades right wingers in this country tolerated dictators such as Somoza and Pinochet and Marcos without caring what they did to their people, I sniff a bit of hypocrisy that they've all of a sudden gotten religion about freedom (anywhere but in the US, of course) from torture and oppression. It's possible to honorably oppose an invasion of a small, poor country that, more and more, is looking like it might not have been such a real threat to us after all, without being vilified, misrepresented, and having your motives and decency trashed. George Bush is president, he's not the king. I'm glad Saddam is gone, and if that was Bush's motive for the invasion - WHY THE HELL DIDN'T HE SIMPLY COME OUT AND SAY SO instead of building such a flimsy case that Saddam had WMD and was sponsoring Al Qaeda? Tom Beck www.prydonians.org www.mercerjewishsingles.org I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last. - Dr Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
Robert Seeberger wrote: The scams are getting deep these days Mr. JANZEN LOT ROBERT DAYZERS LOTERIJ NL. [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you're gonna run a scam on this scale, you'd think they'd at least bother to register a domain name and redirect mail through it to his netscape address. An address like that kinda lacks credibility... I wonder how they plan on fleecing the winners? Perhaps get you to spend existing cash on next year's lottery in anticipation of your winnings? Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
This is new class of scam. They attempt to get your bank account info to put the winnings into It is very fraudlent. NFH -Original Message- From: Russell Chapman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 3:35 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery Robert Seeberger wrote: The scams are getting deep these days Mr. JANZEN LOT ROBERT DAYZERS LOTERIJ NL. [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you're gonna run a scam on this scale, you'd think they'd at least bother to register a domain name and redirect mail through it to his netscape address. An address like that kinda lacks credibility... I wonder how they plan on fleecing the winners? Perhaps get you to spend existing cash on next year's lottery in anticipation of your winnings? Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
New Xponent picture
I've added a new picture to the memberpix site: A picture of Rob from 1975, with a 'fro to rival young Armin's: http://www.sloan3d.com/cgi-bin/memberpix.cgi?person=xponent :-) __ Steve Sloan . Huntsville, Alabama = [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brin-L list pages .. http://www.brin-l.org Chmeee's 3D Objects http://www.sloan3d.com/chmeee 3D and Drawing Galleries .. http://www.sloansteady.com Software Science Fiction, Science, and Computer Links Science fiction scans . http://www.sloan3d.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
In a message dated 7/21/2003 12:06:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This, of course, was a totally unreasonable presumpion regarding intelligence from our British allies, which they had strongly vouched for in response to US questions. But of course this statement was carefully crafted. The CIA could not confirm the allegation so the speech writers found language that the CIA could live with. So this was not simply a statement of fact. The speech writer came up with a phrase that would shield the administration from accusations of lying. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Death of Saddam's Sons
--- Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd hate to start a war of our own, but was this *really* necessary? Just pondering different points of view.. JJ Your particular objection to what happened being? What point of view that objected to what happened to those two pieces of trash has any moral relevance? I only hope that Saddam has some time (but not too long) to know that - as he did to so many thousands of others - his own family has been destroyed. Because it looks like justice is coming for him soon as well. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
Chad Cooper wrote: This is new class of scam. They attempt to get your bank account info to put the winnings into It is very fraudlent. NFH I don't understand this - every time I sell something on eBay I give away my bank account info for them to put the funds into. How does the bank account info help them? Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But of course this statement was carefully crafted. The CIA could not confirm the allegation so the speech writers found language that the CIA could live with. So this was not simply a statement of fact. The speech writer came up with a phrase that would shield the administration from accusations of lying. Which is why they weren't lying, and we all know it. The statement the British tell us is (in some ways) weaker than the statement we know. Of course, given the relative records of British and American intelligence, it's stronger in some ways too, but that's neither here nor there. The point of saying the British told us this is to convert a factually untrue statement We know this to a true one We believe this because someone else we trust claims to know it. And, incidentally, as I point out for what feels like the hundredth time and you have gracefully ignored, the British _still believe it_. They also have (much) better intelligence in Africa than we do. It really is astonishing. Are we seeing criticisms of financial mismanagement? No. The rebuilding process? Not in any meaningful sense. It's just accusations of lying about 16 words that are factually true. The desperate hunger to discredit a just, wise, and victorious war is kind of surreal. I would note, to pick one example, that even if the Administration were lying (it is not) its record of truthfulness compares quite favorably to FDR's in 1940. Or Wilson's (He Kept Us Out of War!) in 1917, for that matter. Is the Democratic Party _trying_ to give Bush all 50 states in 2004? That would explain this fairly well, I guess. It's actually bad for the country at this point. It's not as if the Administration was flawless - a functioning opposition would be good for everyone. _This_ is what the world's oldest political party has come to. I guess, in a sense, this is what comes of selling your soul. When the immediate rewards are gone, there's nothing left but a husk. Given the collapse of the Lieberman campaign, there may not be a serious Democratic candidate for the Presidency for a _while_ the way things are going. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Science and knowledge Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:49:12 -0700 (PDT) --- Jon Gabriel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip The problem is that you are comparing a situation where we have a lot of measurements and interaction with the element of interest and have found NOTHING to support your claim, with various things that were based on interpretation of data that did exist and just required further refinement. NOTHING does not equal SOMETHING. huge grin Would you accept an area of inquiry that *men* have been pondering for ages, but claim still not to understand at all? (that last is a bit of an exaggeration...) Women! ;) There *could* be a joke in there somewhere about how illogical and irrational subjects aren't inherently understandable, but I certainly won't go searching for it. ;-) Jon Wearing Flame Retardant Underwear Maru Wise decision... is it decorated with Spiderman, Batman or Pokemon? ;D LOL! I'm old enough to remember that I owned Spiderman, Superman, Star Wars and ET Underoos when I was little. :-) As for what I'm wearing *now*, I'll take the fifth, thanks. :-) Someone must have trai- er, taught you well. ;} Aye. I also have a strong self-preservation instinct. :-D Lead Mare Maru Frauliching Through Feilds Of Fowlers Maru :) Ah, Fraulein! Holstein, Hannoverian or Oldenburg?;) Jon Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
- Original Message - From: Jon Gabriel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 8:37 PM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge LOL! I'm old enough to remember that I owned Spiderman, Superman, Star Wars and ET Underoos when I was little. :-) As for what I'm wearing *now*, I'll take the fifth, thanks. :-) They have Jack Daniels Underoos now? xponent Johnnie Walker? Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
From: Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Science and knowledge Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 20:46:54 -0500 - Original Message - From: Jon Gabriel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 8:37 PM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge LOL! I'm old enough to remember that I owned Spiderman, Superman, Star Wars and ET Underoos when I was little. :-) As for what I'm wearing *now*, I'll take the fifth, thanks. :-) They have Jack Daniels Underoos now? Only when I spill my drink ;) xponent Johnnie Walker? Maru Maybe Absolut Boxers? Jon _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:27:44AM +1000, Russell Chapman wrote: I don't understand this - every time I sell something on eBay I give away my bank account info for them to put the funds into. How does the bank account info help them? I'm just guessing, but maybe a con man could figure out a way to contact your bank and con them into wiring money from your account to an account that he can take the money out of? Or if it is a checking account, maybe a con man could print fake checks drawn on your account? Whatever the scheme, I guess they are probably looking for accounts with certain banks which they either have inside contacts with or otherwise know that their security is poor. -- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think statements indicating that the administration is obviously telling the truth and that anyone not agreeing this is either what? stupid? venal? totally naive? totally cynical? Taken advantage of by people more interested in political power than the national interest. What's it's really about, though, is hate. Well, hate and envy. A large portion of the world's left just goes batshit crazy at the idea of George Bush. So much so that no one, nothing, is more important than beating him. Defending a sociopathic dictator? No problem, as long as it hurts George Bush. A lot of it probably has to do with collapse of an ideology. September 11th was the deathknell of the modern American left. It simply had no meaningful response to the attack other than to suggest - either openly or by implication - that the United States had brought the attack upon itself. I spent the year after the attacks in Cambridge - a place where the left would generate something coherent if it was capable of it _anywhere_ - and it didn't, and isn't. The public saw this, and the public rejected it, and fully and finally awakened itself from its post-Vietnam slumbers. George Bush's reelection will be the final stake in the heart of an ideology whose dominant feature for the last 30 years has been the defense of any enemy of the United States, no matter how vile, starting with Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, and ending with Saddam Hussein. That's what this is really about - the rest is just frippery. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
AOL has problems
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32817-2003Jul23?language=printer America Online's subscriber base plunged by 846,000 over the past three months, as hundreds of thousands left for cheaper or faster Internet connections, and a similar number were pruned from the roster because they had been mistakenly counted in the past, AOL Time Warner Inc. disclosed yesterday. In addition, new disclosures about a massive federal probe into improper accounting at Northern Virginia-based America Online showed that the division's legal problems are hurting other parts of the AOL Time Warner media empire. AOL Time Warner said yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission will not allow it to spin off a portion of its cable television unit until it resolves a dispute over how to account for hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable revenue from a complex deal with German media firm Bertelsmann AG. AOL Time Warner also said it may restate previously reported profits and sales linked to the Bertelsmann transaction. And the company indicated that it could not determine how long the SEC and Justice Department investigations into its bookkeeping practices will last. The company said its net income increased to $1.1 billion (23 cents per share) in the second quarter, from $396 million (9 cents) in the same period last year. Revenue grew about 6 percent, to $10.8 billion. The profit figure included a number of substantial one-time grains form the settlement of a lawsuit with Microsoft Corp. and the sale of various businesses. Despite solid results in divisions other than America Online, AOL Time Warner shares fell yesterday by $1.14, or 6.8 percent, to $15.71, as analysts and major investors reacted to the continuing uncertainty caused by the SEC investigation, the threat of increasingly costly shareholder lawsuits, the deterioration in America Online's performance, and disappointment that the strength of AOL Time Warner's film, publishing and cable television operations did not prompt the company to increase its financial projections. Our goal for the remainder of this year is to keep laying the foundation that will enable us to exit 2003 with more momentum than we had when we entered it, with an eye toward achieving, strong sustainable growth next year and beyond, said Richard D. Parsons, chairman and chief executive of AOL Time Warner. AOL, the nation's biggest Internet service provider, has shed a total of 1.2 million subscribers over the past year and now has 25.3 million subscribers in the United States. The company said the total includes 2.2 million high-speed subscribers, an increase of 300,000 over the past three months. During that period, AOL launched an enhanced high-speed offering and promoted it with an advertising campaign titled, AOL for Broadband: Welcome to the World Wide Wow. In addition to losing dial-up subscribers faster than expected, AOL is predicting that its online advertising revenue will drop about 40 percent in 2003. The decline is occurring even though the total dollars spent on advertising online is growing nationally, a trend that can be seen in the financial results of some of America Online's competitors, including search engines Yahoo and Google and many specialized Web sites. AOL Time Warner had sought to persuade SEC investigators that they were mistakenly challenging the accounting for the two-part Bertelsmann deal. But the company said yesterday that the commission has refused to back down. The company and its auditors continue to believe the accounting for those transactions is appropriate, but it is possible that the company may learn additional information as a result of its own review, discussions with the SEC and/or the SEC's ongoing investigation that would lead [AOL Time Warner] to reconsider its views, the firm disclosed. The Bertelsmann deal involved AOL's sale of roughly $400 million in advertising to Bertelsmann in connection with the purchase of Bertelsmann's stake in AOL Europe. AOL Time Warner released its second-quarter results prior to the opening of stock trading yesterday morning. Although it cut its projections for America Online, the company beat Wall Street estimates as its cable television, motion picture and publishing businesses thrived. Our solid results in this quarter and the first half of the year give us confidence that we can deliver on all of our 2003 financial objectives, Parsons said. He added that the company is continuing to reduce its hefty debt through the sale of businesses and the spending of billions of dollars of excess cash generated by operations. The Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema movie units generated $572 million and $239 million, respectively, at the box office in the United States. The Matrix Reloaded led the way among new releases, while Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets boosted DVD and CD sales. On balance, said Deutsche Bank, we think this report is good news. In a conference call with
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
Russell Chapman wrote: Chad Cooper wrote: This is new class of scam. They attempt to get your bank account info to put the winnings into It is very fraudlent. NFH I don't understand this - every time I sell something on eBay I give away my bank account info for them to put the funds into. How does the bank account info help them? There are 2 kinds of bank account routing numbers: 1 for deposits, 1 for withdrawals. If you give them the routing number for depositing stuff in your account, they ask for the *other* number. At least, this is my understanding as to how they clean out bank accounts. When you sell something on eBay, they have the deposit info. But (I assume) you don't give them the info to make a withdrawal. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: AOL has problems
Robert Seeberger wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32817-2003Jul23?language=printer America Online's subscriber base plunged by 846,000 over the past three months, as hundreds of thousands left for cheaper or faster Internet connections, and a similar number were pruned from the roster because they had been mistakenly counted in the past, AOL Time Warner Inc. disclosed yesterday. In addition, new disclosures about a massive federal probe into improper accounting at Northern Virginia-based America Online showed that the division's legal problems are hurting other parts of the AOL Time Warner media empire. But are the accounting/legal problems worse than WorldCom's were? Julia dealt with MCI/WorldCom billing, burned the t-shirt ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
From: Russell Chapman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Robert Seeberger wrote: The scams are getting deep these days Mr. JANZEN LOT ROBERT DAYZERS LOTERIJ NL. [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you're gonna run a scam on this scale, you'd think they'd at least bother to register a domain name and redirect mail through it to his netscape address. An address like that kinda lacks credibility... Getting a domain just makes them more traceable. They get an account on a free service, usually using false information so that they can't be tracked. I wonder how they plan on fleecing the winners? Perhaps get you to spend existing cash on next year's lottery in anticipation of your winnings? Similar scams to this one ask that you send money to them to alledgedly cover the wire transfer and bank fees. Most people who fall for it are scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars before they realize that they are being scammed. Greed... it always tends to turn people stupid. Michael Harney [EMAIL PROTECTED] Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. - Douglas Adams ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Russell Chapman wrote: Chad Cooper wrote: This is new class of scam. They attempt to get your bank account info to put the winnings into It is very fraudlent. NFH I don't understand this - every time I sell something on eBay I give away my bank account info for them to put the funds into. How does the bank account info help them? There are 2 kinds of bank account routing numbers: 1 for deposits, 1 for withdrawals. If you give them the routing number for depositing stuff in your account, they ask for the *other* number. At least, this is my understanding as to how they clean out bank accounts. They also might be able to use your bank account numbers to apply for credit cards and perpetrate other types of identity fraud. Pretty scary stuff, because your wrecked credit can keep coming back to haunt you, years after it's supposedly straightened out. -bry _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
Gautam Mukunda wrote: ... A lot of it probably has to do with collapse of an ideology. September 11th was the deathknell of the modern American left. It simply had no meaningful response to the attack other than to suggest - either openly or by implication - that the United States had brought the attack upon itself. Well, it did do a lot to cause the attack. And not by harmlessly distributing Britney Spears videos, either. Some of being targeted was because America was walking point for the West in general. But the US has done a lot of selfish things to make other countries mad at it over the years. Like it or not, if your policies make some people angry enough to kill themselves to show their displeasure, you need to rethink your policies. But this is not a very popular thing to say, and the Left does have some political sense. I would like for the US to really be a champion of human rights THROUGHOUT the world, not just when and where it was politically convenient. We could rehabilitate our reputation, and earn broad respect by doing this-- consistently and courageously doing good for a change. But this is an abstract and long-term agenda, and many Americans simply do not care about the rest of the world enough to support it. ---David Liberia, Burma, ... where to start? And those are the easy ones--Chechnia and Tibet would take convincing major powers to change their ways. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] But of course this statement was carefully crafted. The CIA could not confirm the allegation so the speech writers found language that the CIA could live with. So this was not simply a statement of fact. The speech writer came up with a phrase that would shield the administration from accusations of lying. For a statement that you think was so carefully crafted to shield the administration from accusations of lies, I'd have to say that it had to be a pretty damn incompetent job of careful crafting, given the headlines of the past 1-2 weeks! Seriously, if the admin actually was trying to craft a believable lie that would not blow up in their faces, don't you think they'd do a better job of it, and have all their ducks lined up, i's dotted, t's crossed, etc.? Isn't it more likely they just chose to relay the actual, real British intelligence (despite the lack of confirmation from US intel), just as they claim? Is that so hard to believe? Bill Clinton believes them, and I think he'd have a heck of a lot of insight into the situation. _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fw: Congratuations for winning our lottery
Chad Cooper wrote: This is new class of scam. They attempt to get your bank account info to put the winnings into It is very fraudlent. NFH Robert Seeberger wrote: The scams are getting deep these days Mr. JANZEN LOT ROBERT DAYZERS LOTERIJ NL. [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you're gonna run a scam on this scale, you'd think they'd at least bother to register a domain name and redirect mail through it to his netscape address. An address like that kinda lacks credibility... I wonder how they plan on fleecing the winners? Perhaps get you to spend existing cash on next year's lottery in anticipation of your winnings? Cheers Russell C. I had guessed this was one of those where the plan was to get you to simply call the phone number, which would turn out to place exorbinant charges on your phone bill. Although Direct telephone +31 620770197 does seem to actually be in the Netherlands. (But maybe 620 is Dutch for 976?) ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: AOL has problems
But are the accounting/legal problems worse than WorldCom's were? Julia dealt with MCI/WorldCom billing, burned the t-shirt Hee hee hee! I used to to collections for Worldcomm! That was...educational... Damon. Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. Now Building: Esci/Italeri's M60A1 Patton ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and knowledge
Dan Minette wrote: I think the key to reconciling this with the general description of physicists as mostly realists is the shut up and calculate statement of Feynman. It is an acknowledgement that there is no good realistic explanation for how QM works. It deliberately tables the question; tacitly acknowledging Feynman's inability to solve it. Because today's physicists can't explain it it can't be explained? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: AOL has problems
My initial reaction to the subject line: No ***, Sherlock . . . --Ronn! :) I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. --Dr. Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
