Re: 9/11 conspiracies
Greetings Gautam,
Thank you for your response. I appreciate the level headed tone and
reasonable queries. And for giving this a much-needed new thread
label.
Conspiracies "theories", are just that until proven and are by
necessity vague to some depth. I am earnestly seeking answers and
clarity. I had trouble with the initial reports about the physical
causes of the collapse and indeed the follow-up NIST report repudiated
what my vague gut or churning subconscious had told me was wrong even
before I got into this in a serious way. So, in this regard I've
already had positive feedback justifying my skeptical line of query and
continue to raise others - particularly around WTC7. I am not alone.
I have no idea if your accomplished friend is in on anything. If I had
I would have directly said so. I wasn't trying to besmirch her, I was
pointing out many people accept a go-along-to-get-along mentality and
yet others find this quite handy for climbing the ladders of power.
It's called suck-up and a common trait across the ages. It was really
meant to highlight the later part of my letter concerning very real &
proven conspiracies our governments have committed against the people.
Although I will reserve final judgment, that statement was clumsily
worded in this regard. My apologies. May the insult never arrive.
Personally, I had never considered massive {in repurcussion} internal
conspiracies from within until I read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising"
many years ago: facing an internal crisis a central soviet cabal
orchestrates an attack on the schoolchildren by terrorists as pretext
to hide other systemic failures by launching WWIII. Webster Tarply's
role in uncovering NATO intelligence behind the multiple false-flag
machine-gun terror attacks by "Reds" in Italy - and one such kidnapping
which killed a government minister is part of the Italian public
record. General Smedley "war is a racket" Butler was approached by a
cabal of wealthy industrialists who sought to overthrow Roosevelt in
the 1930's, but he refused and exposed them - with no action taken to
imprison them: this ought to inform your opinion of some timeless facts
about American power structures. Operation Northwoods was concocted by
American generals in the early 1960's to hijack planes and kill
Americans as pretext to inciting a Cuban invasion - Kennedy nixed it
and fired the perps.
I'm reminded of a saying Gore Vidal once said describing how things
have long worked in D.C., "I won't rat out your scheme, if you don't
rat out mine." Much mischief gets done all the time by our so-called
protector class. Why insist black hearted and aristo-minded people
could not possibly treat us as expendable chattel? Corporate execs do
it with predictable regularity via known bad products laced with
poisons or faulty designs or poor safety standards, all in the name of
their personal profit and institutional advancement. It's graph-able
by now to anyone working on their graduate thesis and one could almost
say its time-honored.
I am saying it appears very possible that it is indeed a high level
conspiracy. I merely hold the MIT studies mentioned under minor
suspicion in a box labeled To Be Followed Up and raise reasonable
questions a person should consider if their is indeed a cover up of
some nature. It gets placed in this category because of the amazing
number of connections to the hijackers, ObL family, and the finances of
this president, his family & the megabucks those around him garner -
figures who are indeed holding unprecedented power & unheard of levels
of secrecy over the government in this era. I think I'm being
reasonable in this light.
I have no doubt there was a massive explosion at the Pentagon, but what
it was is open to question. I'd like to know if your friend that close
to the impact actually saw the exact airline in question since almost
nothing remained, even a dent where the engines should have impacted -
let alone survived. A simple 3-6 clips showing the impact from
different vantage points would clear up the issue a great deal - the
absurd chunky digital frame or two fobbed off on us last year did
nothing to quiet the concerns and as I recall only raised the
temperature of discussion. Surely, you must wonder why this event is
still shrouded when it could be so easily dispensed with? The public
wonders, like it or not.
Like the three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant, we can
all take different measures of the same item before us. I do not doubt
your impressive credentials. I recognize your name from the NOVA
update to 9-11 last week. I also do not doubt your family pedigree and
the earnest deliberations you've had with them. I do know my own
training as an {admittedly non-practicing} architect and trust my
colleagues who did get their AIA certificates when they raise these
issues themselves, unbidden. Add in the curious
Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have no idea if your accomplished friend is in on
> anything. If I had
> I would have directly said so. I wasn't trying to
> besmirch her, I was
> pointing out many people accept a
> go-along-to-get-along mentality and
> yet others find this quite handy for climbing the
> ladders of power.
Greetings John. That _may_ be true. But think about
whta that means in this case. It means that she (and
I, and many other people I know) are so committed to
"climing the ladders of power" that we're willing to
countenance - and in fact, actively cover for - high
treason. Do you really think that's plausible?
> Personally, I had never considered massive {in
> repurcussion} internal
> conspiracies from within until I read Tom Clancy's
> "Red Storm Rising"
> many years ago: facing an internal crisis a central
> soviet cabal
> orchestrates an attack on the schoolchildren by
> terrorists as pretext
> to hide other systemic failures by launching WWIII.
Yeah, but, that's a _novel_. I'm not saying
conspiracices never happen - they do - but it's a
novel. It's also a novel about the Soviet Union, and
most people would say the old Soviet Union operated a
little differently than the US does.
> Webster Tarply's
> role in uncovering NATO intelligence behind the
> multiple false-flag
> machine-gun terror attacks by "Reds" in Italy - and
> one such kidnapping
> which killed a government minister is part of the
> Italian public
> record. General Smedley "war is a racket" Butler
> was approached by a
> cabal of wealthy industrialists who sought to
> overthrow Roosevelt in
> the 1930's, but he refused and exposed them - with
> no action taken to
> imprison them: this ought to inform your opinion of
> some timeless facts
> about American power structures. Operation
> Northwoods was concocted by
> American generals in the early 1960's to hijack
> planes and kill
> Americans as pretext to inciting a Cuban invasion -
> Kennedy nixed it
> and fired the perps.
I'm not going to comment on any of these in particular
- except to point out that even if they occurred, they
all involve a handful of people, and they were all
_discovered_. Any 9/11 conspiracy would involve
thousands of people - it would have to be so large,
remember, that it would probably include someone as
insignificant as me - and _none of them_ would have
ever said a word about it. Don't you think that's an
entirely different kettle of fish?
> I'm reminded of a saying Gore Vidal once said
> describing how things
> have long worked in D.C., "I won't rat out your
> scheme, if you don't
> rat out mine." Much mischief gets done all the time
> by our so-called
> protector class. Why insist black hearted and
> aristo-minded people
> could not possibly treat us as expendable chattel?
Well, I met Gore Vidal in June and let's just say, I'm
not impressed by his insight into how the government
works. I'm sure he likes to think that's how it
works, but that doesn't mean that it does.
> I have no doubt there was a massive explosion at the
> Pentagon, but what
> it was is open to question. I'd like to know if
> your friend that close
> to the impact actually saw the exact airline in
> question since almost
> nothing remained, even a dent where the engines
> should have impacted -
> let alone survived. A simple 3-6 clips showing the
> impact from
> different vantage points would clear up the issue a
> great deal - the
> absurd chunky digital frame or two fobbed off on us
> last year did
> nothing to quiet the concerns and as I recall only
> raised the
> temperature of discussion. Surely, you must wonder
> why this event is
> still shrouded when it could be so easily dispensed
> with? The public
> wonders, like it or not.
No, I really don't. It's not a case of like it or not
- the public wonders, but the public has been shown
the truth. Just out of curiosity, why do you think
there would be 3-6 video clips of the Pentagon? And
if there were, don't you think that this would be used
as evidence that there was a conspiracy, since it
would be strange if such clips exist. But if you need
an eyewitness report of the impact, such things do
exist:
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins040902.asp-
for example.
My friend, thank God, was not at his desk at the
moment of impact - or he'd be dead, instead of the
American hero that he is.
>
> Like the three blind men feeling different parts of
> an elephant, we can
> all take different measures of the same item before
> us. I do not doubt
> your impressive credentials. I recognize your name
> from the NOVA
> update to 9-11 last week.
I have to admit my total confusion as to this one.
I've never been on NOVA in my life - and as far as I
know, I'm the only "Gautam Mukunda" in the United
States, so I don't know whom you might be confusing me
with. Whomever it was, though, I assure you it wasn't
me.
> 4) Idiots don't get multip
Re: 9/11 conspiracies
I bow to all of your greater intellects & training.
I recognize the need to split the political from the physical on this
topic. My training is insufficient to explore many of the arcane
directions of science this leads and clearly my brain has gelled into
some kind of tapioca over the years. I still get random misfirings
originating from up in there somewhere enough that certain aspects
remain hard to accept, but I am willing to let this go. I'm opening my
mouth wide here for a heaping helping of crow and wonder who wants to
use the spoon & who gets the fork.
On Sep 16, 2006, at 4:19 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
--- Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have no idea if your accomplished friend is in on
anything. If I had
I would have directly said so. I wasn't trying to
besmirch her, I was
pointing out many people accept a
go-along-to-get-along mentality and
yet others find this quite handy for climbing the
ladders of power.
Greetings John. That _may_ be true. But think about
whta that means in this case. It means that she (and
I, and many other people I know) are so committed to
"climing the ladders of power" that we're willing to
countenance - and in fact, actively cover for - high
treason. Do you really think that's plausible?
No, I didn't. I really thought I stated that clearer.
I was speaking of people's willingness to look the other way when
confronted with something that may shake their world view.
Personally, I had never considered massive {in
repurcussion} internal
conspiracies from within until I read Tom Clancy's
"Red Storm Rising"
many years ago: facing an internal crisis a central
soviet cabal
orchestrates an attack on the schoolchildren by
terrorists as pretext
to hide other systemic failures by launching WWIII.
Yeah, but, that's a _novel_. I'm not saying
conspiracices never happen - they do - but it's a
novel. It's also a novel about the Soviet Union, and
most people would say the old Soviet Union operated a
little differently than the US does.
Of course, it was just to illustrate. It was my intro to a notion I'd
seen before through my love of history, but brought into a modern
context. I will say that human history is ripe with examples of
immense nastiness across cultures and mankind has proven remarkably
resilient to change. Unfortunately.
Webster Tarply's
role in uncovering NATO intelligence behind the
multiple false-flag
machine-gun terror attacks by "Reds" in Italy - and
one such kidnapping
which killed a government minister is part of the
Italian public
record. General Smedley "war is a racket" Butler
was approached by a
cabal of wealthy industrialists who sought to
overthrow Roosevelt in
the 1930's, but he refused and exposed them - with
no action taken to
imprison them: this ought to inform your opinion of
some timeless facts
about American power structures. Operation
Northwoods was concocted by
American generals in the early 1960's to hijack
planes and kill
Americans as pretext to inciting a Cuban invasion -
Kennedy nixed it
and fired the perps.
I'm not going to comment on any of these in particular
- except to point out that even if they occurred, they
all involve a handful of people, and they were all
_discovered_. Any 9/11 conspiracy would involve
thousands of people - it would have to be so large,
remember, that it would probably include someone as
insignificant as me - and _none of them_ would have
ever said a word about it. Don't you think that's an
entirely different kettle of fish?
I'd say it's not beyond the realm to conceal a great deal when
assumptions are accepted and people WANT to move on. As Robert
Heinlein said, "Man is not a rational creature, it is a rationalizing
one." I'll just say their are many things I've heard that the {MIT?
Sorry to be vague!} studies overstate the temperature and even
empirical duration of the heat - but without access to this, and
someone with some training to look into this I will stand aside.
I'm reminded of a saying Gore Vidal once said
describing how things
have long worked in D.C., "I won't rat out your
scheme, if you don't
rat out mine." Much mischief gets done all the time
by our so-called
protector class. Why insist black hearted and
aristo-minded people
could not possibly treat us as expendable chattel?
Well, I met Gore Vidal in June and let's just say, I'm
not impressed by his insight into how the government
works. I'm sure he likes to think that's how it
works, but that doesn't mean that it does.
Perhaps, but I have found a lot of correlation with my own experiences,
observations of humanity at political play, and his parables. This was
but one small anecdote he was told by his grandfather walking the
capital as the Stalin-like buildings of the Supreme Court and other
buildings were under construction. Perhaps he lacks a tactical
up-to-date savvy to swim in those waters with any purpose as he is out
of the sausage making machinery. I
RE: 9/11 conspiracies - in triplicate?!
I swear - or strongly proclaim - that I only hit the Send key *once*... Debbi who, you will note, has absolutely *nothing* to contribute to the discussion on computer programming and languages...except that a few FORTRAN cards are probably still in a box of college memorabilia, along with truly extravagant essays from her Humanities classes ;) __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Quantum Leakage (was: 9/11 conspiracies)
> Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 25/09/2006, at 9:31 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: > >> On 24 Sep 2006 at 10:55, Charlie Bell wrote: > >> Very cool indeed. Mysteries are what science is > all about. > > > > Even when the suggestions are as..odd..as the one > from m-theory that > > our universe has no inherent gravity, it gets it > via leakage from > > another universe "nearby" in m-space, hence why > it's so weak... > > Yeah, or dark matter which is more and more weird > the more I > understand it. Still, doesn't matter how weird it is > as long as it works... I think you guys have stumbled upon why the brain is *not* the source of our thoughts: they are leaking from another brane! Debbi Obviously Silliputtied Maru:D __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We agree substantially here. The point of my post is to answer the question > of "what is the assumption." JDG, of course, can correct me if I'm wrong. The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of her earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into heavenly glory." ;-) JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm curious about this wink. Are you not fully on-board with the > doctrine of the assumption? It's not terribly important to me either > way, though I am inclined to think that it is a Churchly creation > intended to exalt Mary, rather than a historical fact. Not at all. The Assumption is interesting because it is a "two-fer." If you disagree with this dogma, then by definition, you also have to disagree with the dogma of papal infallability. In this case though, I fully believe the teaching. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Mauro Diotallevi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My grandmother used to say two things about this depending on her mood; > either "Catholic heirarchy created this reverence of Mary because she's the > most submissive role model those guys in Rome could find" Which isn't exactly true. of course, her submission to God's will in "The Annunciation" story has long been a model for Christians, she nevertheless is one of the only people recorded in the Bible as not just openly disagreeing with Jesus, but as also succeeding in changing Jesus' (God's) mind! There's something to be said for that! JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Robert Seeberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bodacious??? > Bodacious??? > My God man! > She gave birth to GOD! > She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! > > > xponent > Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru > rob Actually, there is a tradition of Catholic/Christian thought that since a difficult birth was one of the punishments given to women as a consequence of original sin in Genesis, and that since Mary was born, by the grace of God, without original sin, that therfore the birth of Jesus was relatively painless. I'm not 100% just yet if I buy that one though... JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Alberto Monteiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Not at all. The Assumption is interesting because it is a "two- > > fer." If you disagree with this dogma, then by definition, you also > > have to disagree with the dogma of papal infallability. > > > Would you claim that any person that believes in some dogmas > of the Roman Catholic Church but disbelieves in other dogmas > [say, a person that claims to be a good catholic but regularly > gets impregnated by different men and goes to an abortion > clinic to get rid of the tumor that starts to grow in the belly] > is, in reality, not a catholic? I am reluctant to judge another person's faith. Provided, however, that someone is aware of the penalty, then a Catholic who procures, or assists someone in procuring, an abortion, is automatically exommunicated from the Catholic Church. In the case of other dogmas, the person must either be formally excommunicated, or formally engage in heresy in order to be automatically excommunicated, under the Canon Law of the Catholic Church. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Quantum Leakage (was: 9/11 conspiracies)
> >> Very cool indeed. Mysteries are what science is > all about. > > > > Even when the suggestions are as..odd..as the one > from m-theory that > > our universe has no inherent gravity, it gets it > via leakage from > > another universe "nearby" in m-space, hence why > it's so weak... > >Another version is that gravity is weak because it is on different brane than >the other particles and forces This by the way is not string theory per see although it borrows from string theory; Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of her earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into heavenly glory." I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... ;-) I'm curious about this wink. Are you not fully on-board with the doctrine of the assumption? It's not terribly important to me either way, though I am inclined to think that it is a Churchly creation intended to exalt Mary, rather than a historical fact. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
On 9/27/06, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: > The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of > her > earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into > heavenly glory." I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... > ;-) I'm curious about this wink. Are you not fully on-board with the doctrine of the assumption? It's not terribly important to me either way, though I am inclined to think that it is a Churchly creation intended to exalt Mary, rather than a historical fact. My grandmother used to say two things about this depending on her mood; either "Catholic heirarchy created this reverence of Mary because she's the most submissive role model those guys in Rome could find" or "Do you see any documentation? I don't see any documentation. The Assumption is an assumption." Ahh, I miss Gramma. Well, at least sometimes. She could be funny and pithy, but sometimes we just didn't get along. At all. For long periods of time. -- Mauro Diotallevi "Hey, Harry, you haven't done anything useful for a while -- you be the god of jello now." -- Patricia Wrede, 8/16/2006 on rasfc ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
- Original Message - From: "Dave Land" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:11 PM Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies > On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: > >> The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of >> her >> earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into >> heavenly glory." > > I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone > ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a > bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... > Bodacious??? Bodacious??? My God man! She gave birth to GOD! She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! xponent Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
At 01:11 PM Wednesday 9/27/2006, Dave Land wrote: On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of her earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into heavenly glory." I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... I thought it might have been a typo . . . Fumble Fingered Maru -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
At 07:59 PM Wednesday 9/27/2006, Robert Seeberger wrote: - Original Message - From: "Dave Land" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:11 PM Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies > On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: > >> The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of >> her >> earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into >> heavenly glory." > > I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone > ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a > bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... > Bodacious??? Bodacious??? My God man! She gave birth to GOD! She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! Not if God is a spirit, in which case He could presumably ooze through any opening without having to stretch anything. Or maybe even pass through solid matter, as many think he apparently did in Luke 24:36 . . . xponent Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru Perhaps amazingly, no. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
On Sep 27, 2006, at 7:47 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 07:59 PM Wednesday 9/27/2006, Robert Seeberger wrote: She gave birth to GOD! She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! Not if God is a spirit, in which case He could presumably ooze through any opening without having to stretch anything. Or maybe even pass through solid matter, as many think he apparently did in Luke 24:36... Actually, this brings up another ancient doctrine: Jesus was held by some Gnostics to have passed through Mary's body as light passes through a window. This both preserved Mary's virginity _and_ prevented any "taint" from the womb corrupting Jesus. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
Robert Seeberger wrote: - Original Message - From: "Dave Land" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:11 PM Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end of her earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul into heavenly glory." I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall anyone ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even a bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... Bodacious??? Bodacious??? My God man! She gave birth to GOD! She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! xponent Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru rob No, I wasn't. She only had 1 baby, after all. And maybe she had the sort of genes that protect you from stretch marks. :D (I sure don't. And I had twins. Past 38 weeks. My belly was pretty scary there for quite awhile.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
- Original Message - From: "Julia Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:12 AM Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies > Robert Seeberger wrote: >> - Original Message - >> From: "Dave Land" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" >> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:11 PM >> Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies >> >> >>> On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: >>> >>>> The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end >>>> of her >>>> earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul >>>> into >>>> heavenly glory." >>> I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall >>> anyone >>> ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even >>> a >>> bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... >>> >> >> Bodacious??? >> Bodacious??? >> My God man! >> She gave birth to GOD! >> She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! >> >> >> xponent >> Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru >> rob > > No, I wasn't. Heh! you should have been > > She only had 1 baby, after all. I don't think any of you are thinking this through. If that one baby takes after the father just a littleWHOA! God is infinite, so if Jesus foetus is just a little infinite, Mary gets stretch marks you could ride motocross on. Cocao Butter aint helpin that. It is a miracle Mary survived the birth. I mean it had to be a miracle because killing your mother just so you can incarnate is bad for your church cred.(Look at all those other G/gods whose mothers died at birth, they are so unremembered you only need one hand to count the ones sustained into modern memory.) I don't even want to think about her breasts. Can you imagine what it takes to feed a slightly infinite infant? Gives a whole new meaning to "Don't touch me, I'm sore". > > And maybe she had the sort of genes that protect you from stretch > marks. :D Hey, she could have had genes for instant healing and immortality but giving birth to Gods own snookie-ookums would have wrecked her. xponent Dependent On Gods Infinite Sense Of Humor Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
At 06:27 PM Thursday 9/28/2006, Robert Seeberger wrote: - Original Message - From: "Julia Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:12 AM Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies > Robert Seeberger wrote: >> - Original Message - >> From: "Dave Land" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" >> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:11 PM >> Subject: Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies >> >> >>> On Sep 27, 2006, at 4:28 AM, jdiebremse wrote: >>> >>>> The Assumption: The dogma of the Catholic Church that at the end >>>> of her >>>> earthly life, Mary, mother of Jesus, "was assumed bod and soul >>>> into >>>> heavenly glory." >>> I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and do not recall >>> anyone >>> ever referring to the "bod" of Mary. For all we know, it was even >>> a >>> bodacious bod, but I really don't think it's appropriate... >>> >> >> Bodacious??? >> Bodacious??? >> My God man! >> She gave birth to GOD! >> She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! >> >> >> xponent >> Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru >> rob > > No, I wasn't. Heh! you should have been > > She only had 1 baby, after all. I don't think any of you are thinking this through. If that one baby takes after the father just a littleWHOA! God is infinite, so if Jesus foetus is just a little infinite Isn't "a little infinite" a contradiction, like "a little bit . . . "? , Mary gets stretch marks you could ride motocross on. Cocao Butter aint helpin that. It is a miracle Mary survived the birth. I mean it had to be a miracle because killing your mother just so you can incarnate is bad for your church cred.(Look at all those other G/gods whose mothers died at birth, they are so unremembered you only need one hand to count the ones sustained into modern memory.) I don't even want to think about her breasts. Can you imagine what it takes to feed a slightly infinite infant? Gives a whole new meaning to "Don't touch me, I'm sore". > > And maybe she had the sort of genes that protect you from stretch > marks. :D Hey, she could have had genes for instant healing and immortality but giving birth to Gods own snookie-ookums would have wrecked her. xponent Dependent On Gods Infinite Sense Of Humor Maru I always tell people that the fact that He created me proves He has one . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
JDG wrote: > > Not at all. The Assumption is interesting because it is a "two- > fer." If you disagree with this dogma, then by definition, you also > have to disagree with the dogma of papal infallability. > Would you claim that any person that believes in some dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church but disbelieves in other dogmas [say, a person that claims to be a good catholic but regularly gets impregnated by different men and goes to an abortion clinic to get rid of the tumor that starts to grow in the belly] is, in reality, not a catholic? I find it amusing that many brazilians claim to be catholic but limit their catholicism to not eating meat on Holy Fridays and baptizing the kids. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
On 29 Sep 2006, at 1:09PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: Would you claim that any person that believes in some dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church but disbelieves in other dogmas [say, a person that claims to be a good catholic but regularly gets impregnated by different men and goes to an abortion clinic to get rid of the tumor that starts to grow in the belly] is, in reality, not a catholic? I find it amusing that many brazilians claim to be catholic but limit their catholicism to not eating meat on Holy Fridays and baptizing the kids. Since religion is make-believe then anyone can make-believe they are a catholic if they want. If the old fellow who make-believes he is the Pope disagrees he can take his ball home and sulk :-) If wishes were horses Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
Robert Seeberger wrote: > She gave birth to GOD! > She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! > > > xponent > Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru I was thinking that none of the gods born to goddesses here actually involved pregnancy and childbirth...I've been known to crib about that during my pregnancies... Ritu ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
jdiebremse wrote: --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Robert Seeberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Bodacious??? Bodacious??? My God man! She gave birth to GOD! She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! xponent Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru rob Actually, there is a tradition of Catholic/Christian thought that since a difficult birth was one of the punishments given to women as a consequence of original sin in Genesis, and that since Mary was born, by the grace of God, without original sin, that therfore the birth of Jesus was relatively painless. I'm not 100% just yet if I buy that one though... A divine equivalent of an epidural? ;) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
At 07:33 AM Friday 9/29/2006, Ritu wrote: Robert Seeberger wrote: > She gave birth to GOD! > She must have been stretch marks from the neck down! > > > xponent > Admit It, You Were Thinking It Too! Maru I was thinking that none of the gods born to goddesses here actually involved pregnancy and childbirth... Try moving to Utah. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
At 07:09 AM Friday 9/29/2006, Alberto Monteiro wrote: JDG wrote: > > Not at all. The Assumption is interesting because it is a "two- > fer." If you disagree with this dogma, then by definition, you also > have to disagree with the dogma of papal infallability. > Would you claim that any person that believes in some dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church but disbelieves in other dogmas [say, a person that claims to be a good catholic but regularly gets impregnated by different men and goes to an abortion clinic to get rid of the tumor that starts to grow in the belly] is, in reality, not a catholic? In keeping with current political usage maybe such a person should be called a CINO. Which I think would be the POV of many members of other Christian churches about someone whose name is still on the membership rolls but whose behavior includes things which are inconsistent with some part(s) of either official or folk doctrine which those members consider essential to being a Christian (or a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a ...). (The example behavior you mention would probably qualify in most mainstream Christian denominations. As well as many non-Christian religions: I limited my remarks to Christianity because (1) I'm more familiar with Christian beliefs and practices than non-Christian ones and (2) Catholics are generally* considered to be Christian.) _ *Some people would say that "Catholic" is entirely equivalent to "Christian," while I have run across some Evangelical/BAC types who cast doubt on whether Catholics are really Christians with remarks such as "Maryology won't save anybody" . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies
On Sep 28, 2006, at 8:45 PM, jdiebremse wrote: --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Mauro Diotallevi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: My grandmother used to say two things about this depending on her mood; either "Catholic heirarchy created this reverence of Mary because she's the most submissive role model those guys in Rome could find" Which isn't exactly true. of course, her submission to God's will in "The Annunciation" story has long been a model for Christians, she nevertheless is one of the only people recorded in the Bible as not just openly disagreeing with Jesus, but as also succeeding in changing Jesus' (God's) mind! There's something to be said for that! And there's something rather profound to be said for the fact that God's mind can be changed. The stories of Abraham and Isaac and of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah reveal a surprisingly human view of God. If you believe that the Bible is the inerrant revelation of God to man, these stories may present some problems. If you believe that the Bible is a human-authored story of their striving to understand God and their relationship to God, then they represent a particular stage in the development of that understanding. In any event, it suggests that, to the believer, prayer is not a waste of time if God is willing to be moved. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Reagan Shooting (was RE: 9/11 conspiracies)
> On Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > As I think you know, you're writing to the guy who came up > with the truth about the Reagan shooting when the rest of the > Washington press corps missed the story and accepted the > White House version. Actually, I didn't know. What was the truth? What was the non-truth version? - jmh CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information or otherwise protected by law. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Reagan Shooting (was RE: 9/11 conspiracies)
On 10/5/06, Horn, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > As I think you know, you're writing to the guy who came up > with the truth about the Reagan shooting when the rest of the > Washington press corps missed the story and accepted the > White House version. Actually, I didn't know. What was the truth? What was the non-truth version? The White House said he walked into the ER on his own, was never in any distress, was laughing and joking through the whole thing. None of that was true. Secret Service agents carried him in with help from the two paramedics I interviewed, he was barely talking, saying he couldn't breathe and was very frightened. And it took them much longer than the White House said to figure out that he was shot. For a while, they thought that he was injured by the Secret Service agents pushing him down in the limo. I sold the story to CBS exclusively at first (I was doing a fair bit of freelancing for them at the time), then it went to Newsweek and others that I don't quite remember, plus some later magazine articles and such. I still have the original audio cassette of the interview. I had digitized the key parts and put them on-line, but somehow that got lost in a server failure... I need to re-do that before the tape goes bad. One of these days, I'm also going to send off for a CD of the audio recording of the White House press briefing where I tried to get Larry Speakes to explain where all the bad info came from. It's available from the Reagan library. My memories of all that don't seem real. When I'm in Washington, looking at the West Wing (the building, not the TV show) and recall going in and out through security, falling asleep in the basement, asking questions of Speakes with all those familiar faces staring at me... it doesn't really seem like my own life; it is like vivid memories of a movie I saw long ago. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Reagan Shooting (was RE: 9/11 conspiracies)
On Oct 9, 2006, at 10:11 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: I sold the story to CBS exclusively at first (I was doing a fair bit of freelancing for them at the time), then it went to Newsweek and others that I don't quite remember, plus some later magazine articles and such. I still have the original audio cassette of the interview. I had digitized the key parts and put them on-line, but somehow that got lost in a server failure... I need to re-do that before the tape goes bad. Have you checked the Internet Archive? They might have it... Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Economics of global warming, was: Re: 9/11 conspiracies ...
Dan Minette wrote: ... Even if those that predict doom and gloom in the near future, other than some (probably even more exaggerated) economic discomfort, there is very little down side to cleaning up our act. If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. The widespread use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not projected to stop it. Dan-- I would argue that it takes a few years for people to adjust to higher fuel prices. So in the short term they put up with the increase and pay more, although it does affect their long term decisions. For example, take automobile purchases. My family has three cars, one of which gets around 17 miles per gallon (no metric conversion, tough). The plan is to keep driving it for the short term, but you can be sure the next car we buy will get much better mileage. So you get no short term reduction in fuel usage, but definitely a long term one. Similar arguments can be made for energy used for heating, etc. It takes time to insulate and modify buildings, but if it's economically favored, it will eventually happen. It would be worthwhile to see a single site that had a serious analysis of the costs of converting from fossil fuels to a PC form of energy (i.e. nuclear is not PC) which comes up with the cost of stopping global warming at <10 trillion dollars. I've Googled and have not obtained anything close to serious analysis. I'd like to look at some analyses too. I believe that an analysis that does not factor in a large increase in energy conservation is simplistic. But it's not at all clear what should be counted as a "cost" of energy conservation. Greatly reducing energy use would change the economy significantly. Some sectors would lose, but others would gain. People would change their behavior as well. What is the long term cost of driving less, and in a smaller car? So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Dan M. I've partially dealt with "cheap". It certainly would not be "easy", as many aspects of people's lives would change. On the other hand, they'll change anyway. Going back to the vacuuming analogy, the problem is that the vacuum is under a pile of stuff in the closet. It will take awhile to dig it out, and by then we might discover that sweeping would actually work better. ---David Let the price climb, and see what the market does. Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Economics of global warming, was: Re: 9/11 conspiracies ...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of David Hobby > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:19 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Economics of global warming, was: Re: 9/11 conspiracies ... > > For example, take automobile purchases. My family has three > cars, one of which gets around 17 miles per gallon (no metric > conversion, tough). The plan is to keep driving it for the > short term, but you can be sure the next car we buy will get > much better mileage. So you get no short term reduction in > fuel usage, but definitely a long term one. But, some people are buying cars this year, right? One good number to look at is the switch from buying trucks (which include pick ups and SUVs) to automobiles. From 2005 to 2006, for the first half of the year, the relative fraction of car sales went up about 5% while the relative percentage of trucks went down by the same amount. Let's assume that this change takes place overnight. What happens to fuel usage by folks who either buy automobiles or light trucks/SUV? It's down 1% from what it would be without the change in sales. This is after a tripling in price. My point is that this decision making, which should be very susceptible to energy costs, will have a minimal impact on fuel consumption in that sector. Looking at the eia website we see that price did have some influence on driving habits. During that same period (jan-jun '06), consumption did fall about 2% from the same period in '05to be even with gasoline consumption in jan-jun '04. So, the big upsurge in prices barely affected either car buying habits or consumption over a 2-year period. I'll agree that the rise in US fossil fuel use will probably slow as a result of price increases, but we were talking about needing a 20% drop from present values. In terms of per capita use, we'd be talking about a 30% or so reduction in 10 years. > > Similar arguments can be made for energy used for heating, etc. > It takes time to insulate and modify buildings, but if it's > economically favored, it will eventually happen. My point is that the mere slowing of the increase in consumption of in response to a drastic rise in prices indicates that we are fairly far from the point where significant reduction in energy usage is economically favored. > > I'd like to look at some analyses too. I believe that > an analysis that does not factor in a large increase in > energy conservation is simplistic. The ones I've seen do assume that less fossil fuel will be consumed. > But it's not at all > clear what should be counted as a "cost" of energy > conservation. Greatly reducing energy use would change > the economy significantly. Some sectors would lose, but > others would gain. People would change their behavior > as well. What is the long term cost of driving less, and > in a smaller car? Driving less? You see your relatives less often, you spend an extra hour a day commuting, etc. The real way to tell is gradually impose a $5/gal $10/gal tax on gasoline and see what happens. And, remember, if the per capita usage of gasoline is cut 30% in 10 years, that's only enough to handle the private auto part of the picture. > I've partially dealt with "cheap". With all due respect, I don't think that question has really been addressed. If _all_ the SUVs and pickups were switched to the more fuel efficient cars, that would only cut the fuel use by that sector by ~12.5%. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
Good to here from you. So even though you are clearly wrong about 9/11 (everyone knows that it was a mutant energizer buddy sent by the Bush daughters because they could not count up to 103 and were therefore insulted by the towers) I hope you have some more insight into the collapse of your beloved sox. I think George talked to George who told Manny David that they had to lose. The future of the free world depends on Yankee victory. Seriously who do you like for MVP ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
Bob wrote: Good to here from you. So even though you are clearly wrong about 9/11 (everyone knows that it was a mutant energizer buddy sent by the Bush daughters because they could not count up to 103 and were therefore insulted by the towers) I hope you have some more insight into the collapse of your beloved sox. I think George talked to George who told Manny David that they had to lose. The future of the free world depends on Yankee victory. Seriously who do you like for MVP Big Hurt. 8^) -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Good to here from you. So even though you are > clearly wrong about 9/11 > (everyone knows that it was a mutant energizer buddy > sent by the Bush daughters > because they could not count up to 103 and were > therefore insulted by the > towers) I hope you have some more insight into the > collapse of your beloved sox. I > think George talked to George who told Manny David > that they had to lose. The > future of the free world depends on Yankee victory. > Seriously who do you > like for MVP Heh. They're falling apart because they made a sequence of ill-advised trades in a hopeless attempt to create a "super-team" like the Yankees. Right at the beginning of the season I thought trading for Beckett and Lowell would be a bad idea. MVP? Pujols in the NL, even though he's been injured, but if not him, Ryan Howard, I guess. In the AL I think it's definitely Jeter, who's the only AL player in the top 5 (he's fifth, I think) in VORP. He has, rather remarkably, gone from being a truly atrocious shortstop to one who is basically average (he was significantly better than average last year, I think). Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
In a message dated 9/18/2006 9:58:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: He has, rather remarkably, gone from being a truly atrocious shortstop to one who is basically average (he was significantly better than average last year, I think). OK - maybe you will grant that he has gone from a very good shortstop with somewhat limited range but a great arm to an excellent shortstop who can always make a key play. You really have to watch him every day to appreciate how good he is ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 9/18/2006 9:58:12 A.M. Eastern > Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > He has, > rather remarkably, gone from being a truly atrocious > shortstop to one who is basically average (he was > significantly better than average last year, I > think). > > OK - maybe you will grant that he has gone from a > very good shortstop with > somewhat limited range but a great arm to an > excellent shortstop who can always > make a key play. You really have to watch him every > day to appreciate how > good he is Sorry, I phrased that poorly. He was _always_ an extraordinary, Hall-of-Fame caliber shortstop, because his hitting more than made up for his atrocious fielding. His hitting was never quite as good as people gave it credit for (he was never, ever, in the same league as ARod) but he was always very good. Now he's moved from an excellent shortstop who hits his way into the HOF despite an awful glove to an excellent shortstop who hits his way into the HOF despite a mediocre glove. As for the "you have to see him play every day"...let's talk about hitting for a second. Assume 600 plate appearances in a season. A .250 hitter is a poor one, a .300 hitter is a good one. The difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter over 600 plate appearances is the difference between 180 and 150 hits - 30 hits. That's less than one hit every five days. Even if you were in the press box for every game, the human mind is simply incapable of assessing the difference between the two non-numerically. No one can tell the difference between 1 hit a game and 1.1 hits a game. OK, then think about how much harder judging defense is. Most importantly, being there helps someone in judging hitting, because you always watch the batter and events are unambiguous. The batter gets a hit or he doesn't. In judging defense, though, an observer _isn't_ watching the SS at the key moment (when he takes his first step). Furthermore, the brain has a bias against judging "events that don't happen". You don't remember the balls that go pass a SS in bad position - but you do remember the plays that look amazing because the SS was badly positioned when a better positioned SS would have made them routine - and you remember them to that SS's _credit_, instead of as mistakes on his part. So I really don't think that watching Jeter play every day will help you judge his defense - in fact, I think it will probably _hurt_, because you'll see the spectactular plays that he makes, but not the routine ones that he misses. Does he have a fantastic arm? Sure? How does that balance against all the hits that get by him because he didn't move quickly enough to get them? No one can judge that subjectively - the only way to do it is analytically, and we can tell that, analytically, the strength of his arm just wasn't very important. Best, Gautam Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:43:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sorry, I phrased that poorly. He was _always_ an extraordinary, Hall-of-Fame caliber shortstop, because his hitting more than made up for his atrocious fielding. His hitting was never quite as good as people gave it credit for (he was never, ever, in the same league as ARod) but he was always very good. Now he's moved from an excellent shortstop who hits his way into the HOF despite an awful glove to an excellent shortstop who hits his way into the HOF despite a mediocre glove. My point about watching Jeter play every day is that he makes clutch defensive plays just as he makes clutch offensive plays. He does little things well both on offense and defense. I can accept that his range is somewhat limited but to say he has a terrible glove is just not reality. The idea that his arm saves him when his range will not is just not right. The issue is getting a hitter out. It can be argued that great range can overcome an average arm just as easily as it is to argue that a great arm can overcome limited range. I just find it strange that you would say he is a terrible short stop. No one is arguing that A Rod is not a better fielder or that he is not a better power hitter. But Jeter just does not struggle the way A Rod does even when he is a terrible slump (as he did at the beginning of last year). ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 8:52 PM > To: brin-l@mccmedia.com > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies or why the Red Sox collapsed > > In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:43:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Sorry, I phrased that poorly. He was _always_ an > extraordinary, Hall-of-Fame caliber shortstop, because > his hitting more than made up for his atrocious > fielding. His hitting was never quite as good as > people gave it credit for (he was never, ever, in the > same league as ARod) but he was always very good. Now > he's moved from an excellent shortstop who hits his > way into the HOF despite an awful glove to an > excellent shortstop who hits his way into the HOF > despite a mediocre glove. > My point about watching Jeter play every day is that he makes clutch > defensive plays just as he makes clutch offensive plays. He does little > things well both on offense and defense. I have a question about making clutch defensive plays. What does that mean? Does it mean that a correlation can be shown between the percentage of times he gets hitters out and the importance of the situation? Is he much more likely to not get a borderline grounder when the Yanks are 5 runs up or 5 runs down and the opposing team has no one on base? >The issue is getting a hitter out. Is that something that can be measured? If so, wouldn't a measurement be better than the instinctive averaging done by even an above average fan? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
On 9/28/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Isn't "a little infinite" a contradiction, like "a little bit . . . "? No... some infinities are smaller than others, as is easily demonstrated. There are an infinite number of even numbers and an infinite number of odd numbers. Those two infinities are the same size. However, there are an infinite number of even AND odd numbers and that infinity is twice as big as the first two. Makes your head hurt, doesn't it? Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
At 08:01 PM Thursday 9/28/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/28/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Isn't "a little infinite" a contradiction, like "a little bit . . . "? No... some infinities are smaller than others, as is easily demonstrated. There are an infinite number of even numbers and an infinite number of odd numbers. Those two infinities are the same size. However, there are an infinite number of even AND odd numbers and that infinity is twice as big as the first two. Makes your head hurt, doesn't it? Given that the cardinality of Z, <2Z>, <2Z+1>, and Q are all the same they are all countably infinite, which means that you can set up a one-to-one relationship between the members of any one of them and the members of the set of natural numbers as you can set up a one-to-one relationship between the members of any one of them and the members of any one of the others, that assertion indeed makes my head hurt, and it probably does the same to any of the other mathematically-savvy list members. Now, if you claimed that R is an example of an infinite set which is indeed "larger" than any of the aforementioned sets it is uncountably infinite, which means you can show that if you attempt to set up any one-to-one relationship between the members of any one of them and the members of R there will be members of R which are not matched with any member of the other set that would indeed be a valid example of one infinity which is "smaller" than another. Transfinite Arithmetic Is Different Maru -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/28/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Isn't "a little infinite" a contradiction, like "a little bit . . . "? No... some infinities are smaller than others, as is easily demonstrated. There are an infinite number of even numbers and an infinite number of odd numbers. Those two infinities are the same size. However, there are an infinite number of even AND odd numbers and that infinity is twice as big as the first two. No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
On 9/29/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) No, they're not the same size. I'm sure of it. I counted them. Okay, I didn't count ALL of them. But I counted enough to feel good about my answer. And feeling good about answers is what mathematics is all about, isn't it? Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/29/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) No, they're not the same size. I'm sure of it. I counted them. Well, hey, they are a COUNTABLE number. :) (I heard a bit of a GWB speech where he said something about "uncountable numbers of people" or something like that, and my first reaction was, "Geez, it's a *finite* number, so it's certainly *countable*, sheesh!") Okay, I didn't count ALL of them. But I counted enough to feel good about my answer. And feeling good about answers is what mathematics is all about, isn't it? Great. I'm tired, need to go to bed, and now I have to figure out who to strangle for putting THAT one in your head. Gr. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
Infinity - (Infinity -1) = Infinity My brain hurts. Can I have a cookie? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
On 30/09/2006, at 1:43 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/29/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) No, they're not the same size. I'm sure of it. I counted them. Well, hey, they are a COUNTABLE number. :) (I heard a bit of a GWB speech where he said something about "uncountable numbers of people" or something like that, and my first reaction was, "Geez, it's a *finite* number, so it's certainly *countable*, sheesh!") Uncountable for him, possibly? One, two, three, four, many, uncountable... Charlie Watership Bush Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
At 10:49 PM Friday 9/29/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Infinity - (Infinity -1) = Infinity My brain hurts. Can I have a cookie? Visit any number of web sites and you can have a pop-up, too. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Infinity - (Infinity -1) = Infinity My brain hurts. Can I have a cookie? You can have a cookie. :) And if I'd done my little project of photographing several kinds of cookies, I'd send you a .jpg of one Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
Charlie Bell wrote: On 30/09/2006, at 1:43 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/29/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) No, they're not the same size. I'm sure of it. I counted them. Well, hey, they are a COUNTABLE number. :) (I heard a bit of a GWB speech where he said something about "uncountable numbers of people" or something like that, and my first reaction was, "Geez, it's a *finite* number, so it's certainly *countable*, sheesh!") Uncountable for him, possibly? One, two, three, four, many, uncountable... Charlie Watership Bush Maru Oh, man, just the other night we were talking about how cool Dandelion was! :) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small (was Re: The Assumption Re: 9/11 conspiracies)
On Sep 29, 2006, at 7:56 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/29/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: No, it's the SAME SIZE as each of the first two. THAT'S the one that took me a week or two to wrap my head around. :) No, they're not the same size. I'm sure of it. I counted them. Okay, I didn't count ALL of them. But I counted enough to feel good about my answer. And feeling good about answers is what mathematics is all about, isn't it? Mathematical Truthiness. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Global warming (WAS RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe ...
At 08:19 AM Friday 9/29/2006, Dan Minette wrote: > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Ronn!Blankenship > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:30 PM > To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' > Subject: RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > >>I was thinking of a temporary halt...during the recession. > And I'm not sure that even a "temporary" halt would not lead to > something more like a catastrophic economic meltdown rather than a > mere "recession" . . . Thinking about the general definition of recession as a drop in GDP for two quarters, and not applying it too literally, my point is that there is a strong tie between economic growth and increase in energy usage. I agree. Which is my point about China, India, and the rest of the world: as their economies grow, their energy usage per capita is going to grow. And their "capita" is already much larger than ours . . . Averaged over the last decade, most countries have improved their energy use per unit of GDPnot tremendously, but noticeably. During economic downturns, energy use typically drops slightly. So, a pause in economic growth should cause a pause in the growth of energy use. I agree. My question is whether a cut of 60% or 94% or whatever figure you found and cited as necessary to stop or reverse the environmental damage, or a cut even a fraction as large, a cut large enough to see _any_ gains wrt global warming, no matter how minuscule, will lead to a "pause" for a few quarters or something which will make 1929 look like a minor blip, and itself perhaps lead to the deaths of millions worldwide due to starvation or disease (IOW, consequences just about as bad as the worst-case scenarios predict if we do not take such drastic action)? Just as we have "only one global environment" that we can't afford to screw up, we have "only one global economy," and screwing it up could lead to just as negative consequences for the human race as screwing up the environment past the "point of no return." And we have to get both of them right the first time, based on knowledge which will always be inadequate, because we can't know the long-term consequences of our actions until they occur . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Global warming (WAS RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe ...
> > My question is whether a cut of 60% or 94% or whatever figure you > found and cited as necessary to stop or reverse the environmental > damage, or a cut even a fraction as large, a cut large enough to see > _any_ gains wrt global warming, no matter how minuscule, will lead to > a "pause" for a few quarters or something which will make 1929 look > like a minor blip, and itself perhaps lead to the deaths of millions > worldwide due to starvation or disease (IOW, consequences just about > as bad as the worst-case scenarios predict if we do not take such > drastic action)? I think there are things we can do to slow the increase in the production of CO2, such as greatly expanding the use of nuclear power, or significantly increasing the gas tax. That will help push back global warming, which might be a very good thingif we can develop radically new energy technologies in the next 50 or so years. I think we'll get plenty of feedback on the effects these taxes have on the local, as well as world economy, and we know a lot more about what causes depressions than we did 80 years ago, so I think we can take those steps without a great deal of risk. But, to answer your question, any serious attempt to stop global warming with the present technology will create a bigger nightmare than global warming will. Apart from the massive world depression, the fact that cheating countries gain a big advantage over compliant countries is a very unstable situation that could lead to war. Combine this with mass starvations, riots, etc. and it would be a nightmare. > Just as we have "only one global environment" that we can't afford to > screw up, we have "only one global economy," and screwing it up could > lead to just as negative consequences for the human race as screwing > up the environment past the "point of no return." And we have to get > both of them right the first time, based on knowledge which will > always be inadequate, because we can't know the long-term > consequences of our actions until they occur . . . I think I can predict what will happen. We'll take the obvious steps, and Europe will soon be able to claim that they have capped their fossil fuel usage (a population that will peak and then decline will certainly help this). The US will slowly increase its usage. In 20 years, China's fossil fuel usage will still be rising fast, and will be greater than that of the US. India's usage will begin to approach the US's. There will be a lot of speachafying and finger pointing, but not much in the way of real action. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Global warming (WAS RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe ...
At 09:07 PM Friday 9/29/2006, Dan Minette wrote: > > My question is whether a cut of 60% or 94% or whatever figure you > found and cited as necessary to stop or reverse the environmental > damage, or a cut even a fraction as large, a cut large enough to see > _any_ gains wrt global warming, no matter how minuscule, will lead to > a "pause" for a few quarters or something which will make 1929 look > like a minor blip, and itself perhaps lead to the deaths of millions > worldwide due to starvation or disease (IOW, consequences just about > as bad as the worst-case scenarios predict if we do not take such > drastic action)? I think there are things we can do to slow the increase in the production of CO2, such as greatly expanding the use of nuclear power, or significantly increasing the gas tax. That will help push back global warming, which might be a very good thingif we can develop radically new energy technologies in the next 50 or so years. I think we'll get plenty of feedback on the effects these taxes have on the local, as well as world economy, and we know a lot more about what causes depressions than we did 80 years ago, so I think we can take those steps without a great deal of risk. ***But, to answer your question, any serious attempt to stop global warming with the present technology will create a bigger nightmare than global warming will.*** Apart from the massive world depression, the fact that cheating countries gain a big advantage over compliant countries is a very unstable situation that could lead to war. Combine this with mass starvations, riots, etc. and it would be a nightmare. > Just as we have "only one global environment" that we can't afford to > screw up, we have "only one global economy," and screwing it up could > lead to just as negative consequences for the human race as screwing > up the environment past the "point of no return." And we have to get > both of them right the first time, based on knowledge which will > always be inadequate, because we can't know the long-term > consequences of our actions until they occur . . . I think I can predict what will happen. We'll take the obvious steps, and Europe will soon be able to claim that they have capped their fossil fuel usage (a population that will peak and then decline will certainly help this). The US will slowly increase its usage. In 20 years, China's fossil fuel usage will still be rising fast, and will be greater than that of the US. India's usage will begin to approach the US's. ***There will be a lot of speachafying and finger pointing, but not much in the way of real action.*** Dan M. We agree. On almost everything you said, and particularly on the parts I marked. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 9/20/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: But it's often used wrongly, to state that the probabilitical nature of "scientific proof" means we can't be certain of some things. Hey, you have inspired a neologism. Creationism is probapolitically true. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 21/09/2006, at 1:13 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/20/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: But it's often used wrongly, to state that the probabilitical nature of "scientific proof" means we can't be certain of some things. Hey, you have inspired a neologism. Creationism is probapolitically true. *snicker* Pleased to be of service... Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On Sep 20, 2006, at 8:20 PM, Charlie Bell wrote: On 21/09/2006, at 1:13 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/20/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: But it's often used wrongly, to state that the probabilitical nature of "scientific proof" means we can't be certain of some things. Hey, you have inspired a neologism. Creationism is probapolitically true. *snicker* Pleased to be of service... Now we have *two* words to express the same idea: this one can join "truthiness", which means roughly the same thing. It's true because it /feels/ true to me. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:47 PM Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab... On 21/09/2006, at 12:21 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The similarity is a fact. The progression is a fact. The analysis that therefore all creatures are descended from common ancestors is very close to certain. I'd call fact, because there has been no other explanation that stands up to scrutiny. How it happened this way, that's theory. I note that you introduced "data". Yes, on the simplest level data is facts and analysis is theory, but as you say: > " The relationship between > fact and theory (or maybe data and hypothesis) is dynamic and not > easily > seperated." So is it a fact that evolution occurs because of natural selection or is that a theory? After all the data to support natural selection as a mechanism (maybe not the only mechanism but a mechanism) is extremely solid as well. It comes from many disciplines and can be direcltly proven in experiments on organisms with short generetatiion times (bacteria viruses). To me natural selection is a proven mechanism of evolution. Steven Pinker has stated that it is the only explanation for the presence of adaptations in the world. But with 9/11, autism/vaccine crankery, creationism, alternative medicine, perpetual motion and so on, we're seeing groups that either corrupt this relationship and the nature of science, or just ignore or dismiss it entirely. These people ignore data and pre-existent well tested theories. They rely not on facts as a whole but isolated pieces of data and they develop theories that cannot stand the test of experience or time Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 22 Sep 2006, at 10:21PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But with 9/11, autism/vaccine crankery, creationism, alternative medicine, perpetual motion and so on, we're seeing groups that either corrupt this relationship and the nature of science, or just ignore or dismiss it entirely. These people ignore data and pre-existent well tested theories. They rely not on facts as a whole but isolated pieces of data and they develop theories that cannot stand the test of experience or time That's one of the evils of religious thinking. To protect religion from scrutiny the advocates of all religions attack rational thought and arguments based on facts and evidence. The Emperor is naked Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ "It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured [Hitler's] success, notably in Protestant areas." - Fritz Stern, professor emeritus of history at Columbia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 23/09/2006, at 7:21 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: " The relationship between fact and theory (or maybe data and hypothesis) is dynamic and not > easily seperated." So is it a fact that evolution occurs because of natural selection or is that a theory? After all the data to support natural selection as a mechanism (maybe not the only mechanism but a mechanism) is extremely solid as well. It comes from many disciplines and can be direcltly proven in experiments on organisms with short generetatiion times (bacteria viruses). To me natural selection is a proven mechanism of evolution. Steven Pinker has stated that it is the only explanation for the presence of adaptations in the world. Pinker is overstating it a bit. Natural selection is a specific mechanism that explains a lot, and it's the foundation of selection theories, but in recent years its being discovered that there's a lot more going on (like organisms modulating their *own* transcription error rates in response to environmental stress). That natural selection is *part* of the mechanism is close to certain. But there's way more to speciation - kin selection, sexual selection, allopatric/ synpatric speciation. We're discovering some amazing processes by which differential survival rates are maximised. These are all natural explicable processes, though. That natural selection is no longer considered the only selection criterion in no way means that evolutionary theory is "a theory in crisis", or that there's any doubt among honest scientists that life on Earth as we see it today evolved from common ancestors right back to prokaryotes. These people ignore data and pre-existent well tested theories. They rely not on facts as a whole but isolated pieces of data and they develop theories that cannot stand the test of experience or time Yep. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 9/22/2006 9:39:31 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That natural selection is *part* of the mechanism is close to certain. But there's way more to speciation - kin selection, sexual selection, allopatric/ synpatric speciation. We're discovering some amazing processes by which differential survival rates are maximised. I think that what Pinker meant was that natural selection explains the presence of useful functions in creatures. All of the other mechanisms exist for sure but to get good and useful doohickeys one needs selection. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 25/09/2006, at 11:52 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think that what Pinker meant was that natural selection explains the presence of useful functions in creatures. All of the other mechanisms exist for sure but to get good and useful doohickeys one needs selection. If he's using "natural selection" in the broadest sense, encompassing all that I mentioned, then yes absolutely. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 8:39 PM > To: brin-l@mccmedia.com > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:06:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be wrong about something >>> because they are smart and well-connected is a tautology. I think >>> there are many examples of large numbers of smart, well-connected >>> people who turned a blind eye to an inconvenient truth. Not that I >>> arguing that that's the case with 9/11... but I've generally found it >>> more profitable to question authority than to make the kind of >>> assumption that you are arguing. > >> Isn't that not a tautology at all, but one of the basic assumptions >> about peer-review in science? > What is the assumption? That one must always question authority or that > peer review has is based on consensus and not open to new data? The assumption is not that experts are always right, and not that new data should not be the basis of a revaluation of the present consensus. Rather, it is that the consensus of the professionals in the field represents our best understanding of the available data and analysis. > The essence of peer review has to do with assessment of evidence. Most > reviewers try to be fair even when they don't agree with the results > of the paper. It is an imperfect process but it does better than most > other ways of deciding things. We agree substantially here. The point of my post is to answer the question of "what is the assumption." JDG, of course, can correct me if I'm wrong. I see the question as "what provides our best understanding of the available information?" Peer review is based on the assumption that the scientific community does not operate on an inherently dogmatic or political basis. While new ideas may not initially get all the credit they might objectively deserve, the fact that additional data tends to support the correct theory results in the consensus shifting towards good new ideas. I think it might be helpful to look at several examples before reapplying this principal to the 9-11 conspiracy theories. These examples will be listed in increasing confidence in the scientific consensus. They are: 1) Global Warming 2) Cold Fusion 3) Young Earth 1) Global Warming Our understanding of global warming is still incomplete. We have not verified our climactic models the way, for example, we have verified numerical models that predict responses of electromagnetic systems. The various models have assumptions built in. Different models have different results because they are based on slightly different assumption sets. We do not have a complete set of data. Our data sets from before 1850 are incomplete, and depend on some assumptions concerning the properties of layers of ice that have been recovered from glaciers. Our recent surface temperature measurements suffer, to some extent, from the heat island effect. Until recently, there was a significant discrepancy between the satellite data and the surface data. Yet, given all these uncertainties, a consensus has formed, and is improving. About 5 years ago, it was generally agreed that the human induced global warming would have a -0.5C to 4.5C effect over the next century. Now, there is general consensus that the effect is 1.0C to 3.0C effect. However, there are professionals who are outside of the consensus. Some folks still think the effects will be next to zero or very high (>=5C). They site different difficulties with data sets, different unknowns, etc. These folks should not be considered crackpots. Rather, I'd see them as holding several sigma positions on the spectrum of scientific understanding. Do I think that their views are influenced by their political beliefs? Yes, that's my opinion. Yet, I don't think that they hold impossible positions. The chance that the consensus may move one way or another to include their positions within the limits of the consensus is small, in my opinion, but not close to zero. 2) Cold Fusion When Ponds and Fleischman made their claims 15+ years ago, I was very skeptical from the start. Not one, but two previously unseen laws of physics would have had to manifest themselves at a fairly high level...at least compared to the levels we have been observing by that time. Now, after 15 years of their inability to either provide a recipe for duplication of their observation, or duplicate the work themselves in a well controlled environment, the scientific consensus that this was a spurious report is all but universal.
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 27 Sep 2006, at 4:20AM, Dan Minette wrote: 1) Global Warming Our understanding of global warming is still incomplete. We have not verified our climactic models the way, for example, we have verified numerical models that predict responses of electromagnetic systems. The various models have assumptions built in. Different models have different results because they are based on slightly different assumption sets. 'One degree and we're done for' http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns? id=mg19125713.300&feedId=online-news_rss20 ""Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know." So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback. Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288)." [...] -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> Dan Minette wrote: > Peer review is based on the > assumption that the scientific > community does not operate on an inherently dogmatic > or political basis. > While new ideas may not initially get all the credit > they might objectively > deserve, the fact that additional data tends to > support the correct theory > results in the consensus shifting towards good new > ideas. Which can take years or even decades. Another example from medicine that I am hard put to explain, except to think that no one _wanted_ to believe such a thing was so widespread, is something that I was still taught in the mid '80s: Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, except that in some cases where children must be sharing bathwater or toweling with infected adult(s), they can become infected. Talk about denial... > I think it might be helpful to look at several > examples before reapplying > this principal to the 9-11 conspiracy theories. > These examples will be > listed in increasing confidence in the scientific > consensus. They are: > > 1) Global Warming > 2) Cold Fusion > 3) Young Earth Except that I think global warming is worse than you accept - but as you note, differences of opinion and interpretation are quite legitimate, not mean-spirited. > Looking at this progression, I see the 9-11 > conspiracy theories matching > best with cold fusion. Both require deliberate > blindness to the obvious by > a wide range of professionals > This doesn't mean that we know exactly what > happened, BTW. There is still > enough room in the data for a scenario that we are > not thinking about to be > the one that...after all is said and done...to be > considered the best model Heck, I should have read this before finishing my post, then I could have just said "Ditto" to that last. Debbi I Do Not Like Them In A Box, I Do Not Want Them Via Fox Maru ;) __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
William wrote: > Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and > is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says > Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions > will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north > from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes > (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288)." Even if those that predict doom and gloom in the near future, other than some (probably even more exaggerated) economic discomfort, there is very little down side to cleaning up our act. It's as if we're putting off vacuuming our house because vacuums are too expensive. Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:53 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > William wrote: > > > Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, > and > > is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says > > Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon > emissions > > will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the > north > > from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes > > (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p > 14288)." > > Even if those that predict doom and gloom in the near future, other > than some (probably even more exaggerated) economic discomfort, there > is very little down side to cleaning up our act. If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. The widespread use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not projected to stop it. It would be worthwhile to see a single site that had a serious analysis of the costs of converting from fossil fuels to a PC form of energy (i.e. nuclear is not PC) which comes up with the cost of stopping global warming at <10 trillion dollars. I've Googled and have not obtained anything close to serious analysis. Let's just look at the US. In '04, CO2 emissions were about 23% above the Kyoto quota for the US. Now, it's safe to say it's >25% above. So, to take the extremely small step that Kyoto represents: delaying global warming 2-5 years will require the US to cut CO2 production 20%. The sources and uses of power are available on the net. I've looked at them. So, my question is...given what's available, how can the US cut it's use of fossil fuel by 20% while still experiencing economic and population growth over the next 10 years? I have tried to accurately express the consensus by quoting sites that should represent the consensus: i.e. the UN agency responsible for obtaining and publishing the best understandings of the community. The numbers I quote do not include "mights" or "coulds." They determined the probable range from the best available data, models, etc. I do not give nearly as much credence to single papers that indicate, for example, that last year's strong hurricanes are the result of global warming. There is no consensus on that. I think the error bars on the number of strong hurricanes 30 years ago are large enough so that no signal can be measured. Now, I'm not saying that I know there is no significant correlation, but that the data do not show it at the present time. I do not see this attempt by folks like Gore. I see Bush-league scientific and economic understanding. Gore's argument (from an interview I referenced here before) for being able to do it is: "when we need to do something, it can be done...just look at the Manhattan Project." So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
At 08:51 AM Thursday 9/28/2006, Dan Minette wrote: > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:53 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > William wrote: > > > Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, > and > > is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says > > Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon > emissions > > will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the > north > > from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes > > (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p > 14288)." > > Even if those that predict doom and gloom in the near future, other > than some (probably even more exaggerated) economic discomfort, there > is very little down side to cleaning up our act. If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. A recession? Or would it take a depression, or a catastrophic meltdown of the whole world economy? The widespread use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not projected to stop it. It would be worthwhile to see a single site that had a serious analysis of the costs of converting from fossil fuels to a PC form of energy (i.e. nuclear is not PC) which comes up with the cost of stopping global warming at <10 trillion dollars. I've Googled and have not obtained anything close to serious analysis. Let's just look at the US. In '04, CO2 emissions were about 23% above the Kyoto quota for the US. Now, it's safe to say it's >25% above. So, to take the extremely small step that Kyoto represents: delaying global warming 2-5 years will require the US to cut CO2 production 20%. The sources and uses of power are available on the net. I've looked at them. So, my question is...given what's available, how can the US cut it's use of fossil fuel by 20% while still experiencing economic and population growth over the next 10 years? And what about the rest of the world, which wants what the US has: IOW, the same standard of living, and all the "stuff" . . . ? I have tried to accurately express the consensus by quoting sites that should represent the consensus: i.e. the UN agency responsible for obtaining and publishing the best understandings of the community. The numbers I quote do not include "mights" or "coulds." They determined the probable range from the best available data, models, etc. I do not give nearly as much credence to single papers that indicate, for example, that last year's strong hurricanes are the result of global warming. There is no consensus on that. I think the error bars on the number of strong hurricanes 30 years ago are large enough so that no signal can be measured. Now, I'm not saying that I know there is no significant correlation, but that the data do not show it at the present time. I do not see this attempt by folks like Gore. I see Bush-league scientific and economic understanding. Gore's argument (from an interview I referenced here before) for being able to do it is: "when we need to do something, it can be done...just look at the Manhattan Project." So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, Sometimes a vacuum [cleaner] blows hot air, and sometimes it just sucks. Sounds exactly like a politician to me . . . (And the problem with finding a solution to global warming is that it far more a political issue than it is anything else . . . and I mean "political" in the worst way: iow, it doesn't matter whether or not the problem gets solved as long as my party comes out on top and your party gets not only defeated but humiliated, preferably destroyed . . . ) then it should be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Dan M. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 28 Sep 2006, at 2:51PM, Dan Minette wrote: I have tried to accurately express the consensus by quoting sites that should represent the consensus: i.e. the UN agency responsible for obtaining and publishing the best understandings of the community. The numbers I quote do not include "mights" or "coulds." They determined the probable range from the best available data, models, etc. I do not give nearly as much credence to single papers that indicate, for example, that last year's strong hurricanes are the result of global warming. There is no consensus on that. I think the error bars on the number of strong hurricanes 30 years ago are large enough so that no signal can be measured. Now, I'm not saying that I know there is no significant correlation, but that the data do not show it at the present time. The problem with a 'wait and see' approach to the problem is that if the more extreme scenarios *do* turn out to be correct then it will already be too late to do anything to significantly ameliorate the situation. 'Wait and see' is not a neutral position, it is gambling that the milder scenarios prove to be correct. I do not see this attempt by folks like Gore. I see Bush-league scientific and economic understanding. Gore's argument (from an interview I referenced here before) for being able to do it is: "when we need to do something, it can be done...just look at the Manhattan Project." So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Cheaper and easier than dealing with storms, floods, droughts, famines and hundreds of millions of refugees. If it comes to that Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ If you listen to a UNIX shell, can you hear the C? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Ronn!Blankenship > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:53 AM > To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' > Subject: RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > > > >If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a > >tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the > >only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. > > > A recession? Or would it take a depression, or a > catastrophic meltdown of the whole world economy? I was thinking of a temporary halt...during the recession. If World GDP dropped, then I'd expect energy consumption to also drop. > > > > And what about the rest of the world, which wants > what the US has: IOW, the same standard of living, and all the "stuff" . I Googled the official Chinese news on this, and found that they touted a 5 year plan to reduce energy consumption about 4%/year. That sounded like a unbelievable goal, with their economy growing at about 10% or so per year for the last few years. Then I read the fine print, and they pulled a Bush. They wanted to reduce energy usage/GDP by 4%/year. That would still, if their growth continues, result in about a 30% increase in their fossil fuel usage during that time. They will still consume less than the US in 5 years, but I'd expect them to exceed our consumption in 10-15 years. And, of course, they have long insisted on being outside of any agreement on emissions reduction. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
Dan wrote: > If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up > after a tripling of price? Poor leadership. Can I have a cite for that BTW. > Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the > only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. I think competent leaders would go a long way towards solving our problems > The widespread use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not > projected to stop it. > > Let's just look at the US. In '04, CO2 emissions were about 23% > above the Kyoto quota for the US. Now, it's safe to say it's >25% > above. So, to take the extremely small step that Kyoto represents: > delaying global warming 2-5 years will require the US to cut CO2 > production 20%. Yes, let's look at the U.S. Per capita energy consumption (2001) 7.92 kgoe/y. Japan: 4,091.5. U.K.: 3,993.8. France: 4,458.6. Germany 4,263.5. Russia: 4,288.8. Denmark: 3,706.1. OK, here's one that's in the parking lot of the ballpark; Australia: 5,974.9. That's 75% of U.S. consumption. Shame on you Australia 8^). > The sources and uses of power are available on the net. I've > looked at them. So, my question is...given what's available, how > can the US cut it's use of fossil fuel by 20% while still > experiencing economic and population growth over the next 10 > years? Looking at other industrialized nations, perhaps it isn't necessary to be wasteful to be successful. Beyond that, I'm guessing that there are ways that CO2 can be cut without lowering consumption. > I have tried to accurately express the consensus by quoting sites > that should represent the consensus: i.e. the UN agency responsible > for obtaining and publishing the best understandings of the > community. The numbers I quote do not include "mights" or > "coulds." They determined the probable range from the best > available data, models, etc. I do not give nearly as > much credence to single papers that indicate, for example, that > last year's strong hurricanes are the result of global warming. > There is no consensus on that. I think the error bars on the > number of strong hurricanes 30 years ago are large enough so that > no signal can be measured. Now, I'm not saying > that I know there is no significant correlation, but that the data > do not show it at the present time. > > I do not see this attempt by folks like Gore. I see Bush-league > scientific and economic understanding. Gore's argument (from an > interview I referenced here before) for being able to do it is: > "when we need to do something, it can be done...just look at the > Manhattan Project." The reviews by scientists I've seen say that in his movie Gore got the science right for the most part. Here's one: [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores- movie/] or http://tinyurl.com/gke7d > So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should > be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and > easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Set a goal to lower consumption to 125% of that of similar industrialized nations. Raise taxes so that consumers of energy cover the cost of the infrastructure required for its use plus some percentage for incentives, subsidies for those technologies that lower the demand for polluting sources and research. Continue to develop and implement methods for Co2 sequestration. Among many other proactive things we could be doing. Under Bush we're going backwards. In the time it took me to type this post we spent more than $5 M in Iraq, but lowering our dependence on Mid East oil would do more (IMO) to reduce the threat of terrorism than everything the Bush administration has ever done. If we can afford such a costly war, why can't we afford to vacuum? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
At 11:09 AM Thursday 9/28/2006, William T Goodall wrote: On 28 Sep 2006, at 2:51PM, Dan Minette wrote: I have tried to accurately express the consensus by quoting sites that should represent the consensus: i.e. the UN agency responsible for obtaining and publishing the best understandings of the community. The numbers I quote do not include "mights" or "coulds." They determined the probable range from the best available data, models, etc. I do not give nearly as much credence to single papers that indicate, for example, that last year's strong hurricanes are the result of global warming. There is no consensus on that. I think the error bars on the number of strong hurricanes 30 years ago are large enough so that no signal can be measured. Now, I'm not saying that I know there is no significant correlation, but that the data do not show it at the present time. The problem with a 'wait and see' approach to the problem is that if the more extreme scenarios *do* turn out to be correct then it will already be too late to do anything to significantly ameliorate the situation. 'Wait and see' is not a neutral position, it is gambling that the milder scenarios prove to be correct. I do not see this attempt by folks like Gore. I see Bush-league scientific and economic understanding. Gore's argument (from an interview I referenced here before) for being able to do it is: "when we need to do something, it can be done...just look at the Manhattan Project." So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should be straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it would be for the US to meet Kyoto. Cheaper and easier than dealing with storms, floods, droughts, famines and hundreds of millions of refugees. If it comes to that Maru What if we spend the >>$10T (Dan's figure) to reduce the anthropogenic component of global warming and then find out that it was not the primary driving cause and we still have to deal with the storms, floods, droughts, famines and hundreds of millions of refugees? Or if China doesn't want to go along with what the rest of the world does and uses its military to enforce its right to do whatever it chooses to do? (I suppose "nuclear winter" might indeed be a way to counteract "global warming" . . . ) Or, of course, "all of the above" . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
At 09:02 PM Thursday 9/28/2006, Dan Minette wrote: > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Ronn!Blankenship > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:53 AM > To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' > Subject: RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > > > >If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a > >tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the > >only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. > > > A recession? Or would it take a depression, or a > catastrophic meltdown of the whole world economy? I was thinking of a temporary halt...during the recession. And I'm not sure that even a "temporary" halt would not lead to something more like a catastrophic economic meltdown rather than a mere "recession" . . . If World GDP dropped, then I'd expect energy consumption to also drop. > > > > And what about the rest of the world, which wants > what the US has: IOW, the same standard of living, and all the "stuff" . I Googled the official Chinese news on this, and found that they touted a 5 year plan to reduce energy consumption about 4%/year. That sounded like a unbelievable goal, with their economy growing at about 10% or so per year for the last few years. Then I read the fine print, and they pulled a Bush. To be fair, Bush is not the first politician to do something like that, and is unlikely to be the last. I think it is a characteristic behavior of the political sub-species. They wanted to reduce energy usage/GDP by 4%/year. That would still, if their growth continues, result in about a 30% increase in their fossil fuel usage during that time. They will still consume less than the US in 5 years, but I'd expect them to exceed our consumption in 10-15 years. And, of course, they have long insisted on being outside of any agreement on emissions reduction. Like I said. So who plans to "make" them comply with whatever the rest of the world decides (assuming the rest of the world agrees, which will probably occur sometime after you see flocks of pigs flying overhead . . . )? -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:58 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > Dan wrote: > > > If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up > > after a tripling of price? > > Poor leadership. Can I have a cite for that BTW. > > > Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the > > only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. > > I think competent leaders would go a long way towards solving our > problems > > > The widespread use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not > > projected to stop it. > > > > Let's just look at the US. In '04, CO2 emissions were about 23% > > above the Kyoto quota for the US. Now, it's safe to say it's >25% > > above. So, to take the extremely small step that Kyoto represents: > > delaying global warming 2-5 years will require the US to cut CO2 > > production 20%. > > Yes, let's look at the U.S. Per capita energy consumption (2001) > 7.92 kgoe/y. Japan: 4,091.5. U.K.: 3,993.8. France: 4,458.6. > Germany 4,263.5. Russia: 4,288.8. Denmark: 3,706.1. OK, here's one > that's in the parking lot of the ballpark; Australia: 5,974.9. > That's 75% of U.S. consumption. Shame on you Australia 8^). Their per capita GDP is also 75% of the US. Since we are talking about economic costs, let's look at energy usage per unit of GDP At http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1p.xls there is a full listing from '80 through '04. The US is at about the 70% point in terms of increasing energy per capita. To illustrate this, let me give a subset from the list, ranked by increasing per GDP usage: Ireland 4,992 Denmark 5,653 Italy 6,044 United Kingdom 6,205 Japan 6,532 Austria 6,660 Germany 7,175 France 7,209 Greece 7,391 Taiwan 8,680 Australia 8,922 China 9,080 United States 9,336 Sweden 9,356 Netherlands 9,673 Belgium 10,254 Zambia 11,773 Norway 12,228 South Africa12,477 Korea, South12,567 Canada 13,530 Korea, North15,716 Russia 15,763 Iceland 17,496 Saudi Arabia17,554 Ukraine 18,443 United Arab Emirates36,022 Kuwait 38,203 Syria 38,540 I did select a few more high ones than low one, but some of the unusual high ones caught my eye. I knew Canada's usage was significantly higher than the US, but I didn't realize how much Syria used. > > Looking at other industrialized nations, perhaps it isn't necessary > to be wasteful to be successful. Compact nations do have advantages in energy usage. Older nations also have an advantage...because their cities were built before cars. The country of Japan, for example, has a population density that is 75% higher than that of _the Houston Metropolitan Area_. > Beyond that, I'm guessing that there are ways that CO2 can be cut > without lowering consumption. There are, and they should be used. But, I was only pointing out the cost of the first small step. At http://www.tsaugust.org/images/Stabilizing%20CO2%20in%20Atmosphere%20at%20Cu rrent%20Levels.pdf#search=%22co2%20emissions%20reduction%20required%20stop%2 0global%20warming%22 http://tinyurl.com/zp6l9 the reduction in CO2 emissions needed to keep CO2 at the present atmospheric level is 60%. This is just the first site I googled, and I'd be happy to see other references that give other numbers. But, it's in the ball park of what I've seen elsewhere. So, I'll readily accept that, for a few trillion, the US could revamp it's infrastructure to be more energy efficientapproaching the efficiency of Japan. But, that would only be the first step to stopping global warming. I've googled some more and at: http://www.earthaction.org/en/archive/95-01-cich/alert.html I have obtained the following quote. "To reach this goal, however, will require much greater reductions in emissions than merely returning to 1990 levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of leading scientists, predicts that 60% cuts are needed." And at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2006/09/post_411.html " Unfortunately, everything else is not equal. By 2030, according to a paper published by scientists at the Met Office, the total capacity of the biosphere to absorb carbon will have reduced from the current 4bn tonnes a year to 2.7bn. To maintain equilibrium at that point, in other words, the world's population can emit no more than 2.7bn tonnes of carbon a year in 2030. As we currently produce around 7bn, this implies a global reduction of 60%. In 2030, the world's pe
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
Ronn! wrote: > What if we spend the >>$10T (Dan's figure) to reduce the > anthropogenic component of global warming and then find out that it > was not the primary driving cause and we still have to deal with > the storms, floods, droughts, famines and hundreds of millions of > refugees? Or if China doesn't want to go along with what the rest > of the world does and uses its military to enforce its right to do > whatever it chooses to do? (I suppose "nuclear winter" might > indeed be a way to counteract "global warming" . . . ) Or, of > course, "all of the above" . . . Then we'll have a cleaner, more efficient world that, having worked together and not been entirely successful at solving a problem, can use that problem solving experience to face a grave threat to their survival. And how is it that we expect China to participate if the so called leaders of the world don't? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
Dan wrote: > http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2006/09/ post_411.html > I think this gives some idea of just how expensive it will be to stop global warming by holding the CO2 levels steady in 25 years. The article you cited also says: "There are three things on which almost all climate scientists are now agreed. The first is that man-made climate change is real. The second is that we need to take action. The third is that, to avert catastrophic effects on both humans and ecosystems, we should seek to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2C above pre- industrial levels. Two degrees is the point at which some of the most dangerous processes catalysed by climate change could become irreversible. This includes the melting of the west Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which between them could raise global sea levels by seven metres. It includes the drying out of many parts of Africa, and the inundation by salt water of the aquifers used by cities such as Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kolkata, Mumbai, Karachi, Lagos, Buenos Aires and Lima. It also means runaway positive feedback, as the Arctic tundras begin to release the methane they contain, and the Amazon rainforest dies off, turning trees back into carbon dioxide. In other words, if the planet warms by 2C, 3C or 4C becomes almost inevitable." and "But to use this as an excuse for inaction is like remaining on a railway track while the train is hurtling towards you. We might not have time to jump out of the way, but if we don't attempt it, the disaster is bound to happen. If we in the United Kingdom are to bear our fair share of dealing with climate change, we must cut our emissions by 87% in 24 years." So Dan, do we do nothing and hope beyond hope that our scientists are wrong? What is the cost of doing nothing? Doug Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
"Dan wrote: > Their per capita GDP is also 75% of the US. Since we are talking > about economic costs, let's look at energy usage per unit of GDP Can you expand on the connection between energy use and GDP? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Ronn!Blankenship > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:30 PM > To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' > Subject: RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > >>I was thinking of a temporary halt...during the recession. > And I'm not sure that even a "temporary" halt would not lead to > something more like a catastrophic economic meltdown rather than a > mere "recession" . . . Thinking about the general definition of recession as a drop in GDP for two quarters, and not applying it too literally, my point is that there is a strong tie between economic growth and increase in energy usage. Averaged over the last decade, most countries have improved their energy use per unit of GDPnot tremendously, but noticeably. During economic downturns, energy use typically drops slightly. So, a pause in economic growth should cause a pause in the growth of energy use. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:57 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > "Dan wrote: > > > Their per capita GDP is also 75% of the US. Since we are talking > > about economic costs, let's look at energy usage per unit of GDP > > Can you expand on the connection between energy use and GDP? First, they are seen to be very strongly correlated. First, let me give the US numbers: Energy GDP 194931982 1635 195034616 1777 195136974 1915 195236748 1988 195337664 2080 195436639 2065 195540208 2213 195641754 2256 195741787 2301 195841645 2279 195943466 2441 196045087 2502 196145739 2560 196247828 2715 196349646 2834 196451817 2999 196554017 3191 196657017 3399 196758908 3485 196862419 3653 196965621 3765 197067844 3772 197169289 3899 197272704 4105 197375708 4342 197473991 4320 197571999 4311 197676012 4541 197778000 4751 197879986 5015 197980903 5173 198078280 5162 198176343 5292 198273286 5189 198373146 5424 198476793 5814 198576580 6054 198676826 6264 198779223 6475 198882869 6743 198984999 6981 199084730 7113 199184667 7101 199286015 7337 199387652 7533 199489292 7836 199591200 8032 199694226 8329 199794800 8704 199895200 9067 199996837 9470 200098976 9817 200196498 9891 200297967 10049 200398273 10301 2004 100414 10704 2005P 99894 11049 The GDP growth rate averaged 3.5% per year, while the energy usage growth averaged 2% per year. Normalizing by averages, one can see a good correlation between year to year GDP growth and energy use growth. The RMS variation for the actual data is less than 60% of the RMS variation between randomly selected years. Also, by eyeballing it, you can correlate recessions with either decreases or small increases in energy use. Here are a few more countries. First I will give the average growth rates from '80 to '05. Then, year by year will be given at the end of the post. Energy GDP Growth Growth United States 1.0% 3.1% Australia 3.3% 2.8% China 9.5% 5.3% Japan 2.4% 1.7% S. Korea 6.9% 7.4% Interestingly enough, the US has the best GDP growth/Energy growth of all countries. Second, since the upper limit of real GDP growth is dependant on productivity, the tie between energy usage and GDP becomes evident. Historically, we've improved productivity per worker by having machines extend a worker's capacity. Originally, we could think of it as a steel mill vs. a blacksmith. Now, it more involves things like computers maintaining inventory instead of people. Third, wealthier people have more options. Air conditioning is the foundation of cities such as Miami, Houston, & Phoenix growing as they did. It would be hard to live in this area without air conditioning. Indeed, one of the problems with the poor elderly is that they are liable to die in the heat if they don't use AC. That's a start at least. Dan M. Australia 1980230,091 2.76 1981238,288 2.778 1982232,001 2.895 1983244,378 2.857 1984256,110 3.043 1985267,104 3.158 1986273,379 3.181 1987288,038 3.312 1988299,685 3.476 1989310,891 3.624 1990310,528 3.718 1991311,313 3.709 1992322,676 3.817 1993335,249 3.916 1994349,363 3.918 1995364,272 4.05 1996378,078 4.223 1997394,940 4.56 1998415,912 4.595 1999431,550 4.82 2000440,426 4.833 2001457,513 4.993 2002472,195 5.097 2003490,012 5.093 2004496,678 5.266 China 1980160,920 17.503 1981170,166 17.192 1982186,456 17.934 1983206,695 19.01 1984238,169 20.453 1985268,157 22.006 1986291,083 23.226 1987323,620 24.747 1988358,151 26.433 1989372,900 26.943 1990382,996 26.985 1991423,410 28.21 1992483,815 29.251 1993549,328 31.301 1994619,795 34.023 1995685,057 35.154 1996750,678 35.924 1997817,023 37.562 1998880,754 37.003 1999942,878 36.91 20001,018,308 38.798 200
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:13 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > Ronn! wrote: > > > What if we spend the >>$10T (Dan's figure) to reduce the > > anthropogenic component of global warming and then find out that it > > was not the primary driving cause and we still have to deal with > > the storms, floods, droughts, famines and hundreds of millions of > > refugees? Or if China doesn't want to go along with what the rest > > of the world does and uses its military to enforce its right to do > > whatever it chooses to do? (I suppose "nuclear winter" might > > indeed be a way to counteract "global warming" . . . ) Or, of > > course, "all of the above" . . . > Then we'll have a cleaner, more efficient world that, having worked > together and not been entirely successful at solving a problem, can > use that problem solving experience to face a grave threat to their > survival. But, we will also have a much poorer world. Oil prices have tripled, and the consumption of oil still increases. That means, almost by definition, that there is a tremendous incentive to grow GDP by increasing energy usage. Dropping world wide energy use by 60% would be overwhelmingly expensive. In a real sense, it would reverse most of the productivity gains of the last 20-25 years. > And how is it that we expect China to participate if the so called > leaders of the world don't? They will participate if and only if their participation is seen as benefiting their government. For example, they are now indicating that they would oppose any UN action to stop genocide in Danfur unless it is approved by the government of Sudan...which is sponsoring the genocide. They also have tight deals with the Chinese oil companieswhich explains the importance of Sudan to China. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:38 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > Dan wrote: > > > http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2006/09/ > post_411.html > > > I think this gives some idea of just how expensive it will be to > stop global warming by holding the CO2 levels steady in 25 years. > > The article you cited also says: > "There are three things on which almost all climate scientists are > now agreed. The first is that man-made climate change is real. The > second is that we need to take action. The third is that, to avert > catastrophic effects on both humans and ecosystems, we should seek to > prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2C above pre- > industrial levels. The first is real science. The second and third are political statements. There will be a cost associated with global warming. There is also a cost to stopping it with present day technology. The question I see is what is our best path towards minimizing total costs. > Two degrees is the point at which some of the most dangerous > processes catalysed by climate change could become irreversible. I notice two qualifiers there. >This > includes the melting of the west Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, > which between them could raise global sea levels by seven metres. It > includes the drying out of many parts of Africa, and the inundation > by salt water of the aquifers used by cities such as Shanghai, > Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kolkata, Mumbai, Karachi, Lagos, Buenos > Aires and Lima. It also means runaway positive feedback, as the > Arctic tundras begin to release the methane they contain, and the > Amazon rainforest dies off, turning trees back into carbon dioxide. > In other words, if the planet warms by 2C, 3C or 4C becomes almost > inevitable." There are both positive and negative feedback mechanisms for global warming. There is an indication that the positive feedback might eventually increase 2C to 4C. But, if we do nothing at all, the official projections are for a 2C rise by 2100. It seems to me that the best bet for minimizing global warming is 3-fold. 1) Minimizing the increase in fossil fuel usage by placing a significant tax on fossil fuels. An oil import tax of, say, $50/barrel might be a good thing for the US. 2) Significantly increase non fossil fuel energy sources. Nuclear energy is the clear best choice herewe could probably produce most of our electricity with nuclear power in 25 years. Given the present cost of oil, that would be cost effective. 3) Between the US, Europe, and Japan, spend tens of billions per year on things like plasma physics, mesoscaler physics, material science to increase the probability that technology for new energy sources (such as fusion or solar) will be developed in the next 40-50 years. > and > > "But to use this as an excuse for inaction is like remaining on a > railway track while the train is hurtling towards you. We might not > have time to jump out of the way, but if we don't attempt it, the > disaster is bound to happen. If we in the United Kingdom are to bear > our fair share of dealing with climate change, we must cut our > emissions by 87% in 24 years." > > So Dan, do we do nothing and hope beyond hope that our scientists are > wrong? What is the cost of doing nothing? The only estimate that I've seen comes in at about 5 trillion to 10 trillion. Not chicken feed, certainly, but far less than the cost of cutting CO2 emissions 60% worldwide. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 9/27/2006 5:44:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Which can take years or even decades. Another example from medicine that I am hard put to explain, except to think that no one _wanted_ to believe such a thing was so widespread, is something that I was still taught in the mid '80s: Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, except that in some cases where children must be sharing bathwater or toweling with infected adult(s), they can become infected. Big changes should take years to be accepted. They must prove themselves against the older established theory. In the process of exploring the new theories many unanticipated facts become known and science moves into anew direction. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
At 04:22 PM Sunday 10/1/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 9/27/2006 5:44:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Which can take years or even decades. Another example from medicine that I am hard put to explain, except to think that no one _wanted_ to believe such a thing was so widespread, is something that I was still taught in the mid '80s: Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, except that in some cases where children must be sharing bathwater or toweling with infected adult(s), they can become infected. Big changes should take years to be accepted. They must prove themselves against the older established theory. In the process of exploring the new theories many unanticipated facts become known and science moves into anew direction. However, in medicine (as in some other areas) people are suffering and dying during all those years. Particularly when the "established theory" is "stress" or "IAIYH" as it was with ulcers as well as initially with MS and many other diseases later shown to have a physical cause. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 10/1/2006 11:14:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, in medicine (as in some other areas) people are suffering and dying during all those years. Particularly when the "established theory" is "stress" or "IAIYH" as it was with ulcers as well as initially with MS and many other diseases later shown to have a physical cause. But there is no other way to do science and medicine. If every good sounding idea were immediately accepted we would be wrong way more often than we would be right. Most established ideas are right, that is why they are established. New idea must prove themselves. Those who doubt and offer objections are just as much a part of the process as those who advocate the new position. There is a scene from Bedazzled (the original Peter Cook and Dudley Moore laugh riot not the lame Brendan Fraser remake). When the devil (Cook) first confronts Moore (a short order cook). Peter Cook (not the cook) announces that he is the devil. Moore responds that Cook is a nut case. Cook responds that they said this about Jesus, Einstein, Newton. Moore responds in turn that they also said it about a lot of nut cases. In fact as we should all be able to agree that said it about way more nutcases than the real thing. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
John Gibson wrote: I understand your acceptance. Interesting that your friend is well-placed and perhaps well-heeled - this actually fits a premise I'll go into later about people who know where their bread gets buttered. I'd really like to know just how these studies were funded, administered, who supplied their raw data and coordinated the results before accepting this - given so much else around the event is in question. It may well take serious scholarly work a decade or two to sift this out. If I have to eat old crow that is desiccated and moldy, so be it - are you equally prepared? My response: Well, I left the list largely in response to this sort of thing, but against my better judgment, I have to reply to this one. I'll have four questions at the end, and I'd really like your answer to them. It's my friend you're slandering, after all. So, I notice that conspiracy theorists are often enthusiastic about in describing vague, overarching conspiracies, so it's worth taking this down to a concrete level. This isn't a "high levels of government" type conspiracy you're describing, after all, one just involving say, passive incompetence on the part of intelligence agencies or what not. You're suggesting that it's possible that the towers themselves were destroyed by something other than airplane impacts. OK. So let's think about what that implies. On a personal level, I could put it this way. McKinsey was thanked publicly by Mayor Bloomberg for its analysis of the accident and the public safety response. I worked there, and while I wasn't part of that project, I did look at the results. If what you're positing did occur, we _should have_ noticed. You've mentioned that you don't believe the MIT study on the towers as well because you don't know who funded it. I'm a graduate student at MIT now, so there's another link. Finally, I have at least three close friends who were senior staff at the White House and Pentagon at the time of the attack (one of whose desks was 50 feet from the point of impact at the Pentagon, in fact), so they probably would have had to know too. On an even more personal level, my father is a structural engineer and has been for more than thirty years. We've talked about the attacks many, many times. If there was really something highly implausible about the way the attacks played out, he _should_ have noticed. My mother was trained as a nuclear physicist (in fact, she got her PhD at 22, making her surely one of the youngest people, and certainly one of the youngest women, ever to do so - and if you think that because she got it in India it's not a "real" PhD, I'd just point out that her professors were from MIT and CalTech, IIT Kanpur, where she got her degree, might be the most difficult school to get into in the world, and Richard Feynamn was there for the oral defense of her dissertation) who has spent the last 30 years doing safety analysis for NASA - and is good enough at it that she was one of the first people called to help with the Challenger investigation. So she certainly should have been able to tell if there was something wrong with the official explanation as well. Let's see. My friend on the 9/11 Commission was chosen to be senior staff on probably the most important investigation in history when she was in her mid-20s. After that she was accepted into, and is one of the best students at, MIT's Political Science program, certainly one of the 3 best programs anywhere in International Relations and Security Studies. Finally, people on the list know who I am. You can get my bio on the web by googling my name - it's the first thing that will come up. But I've spent a fair amount of my life studying organizations (particularly militaries) in crisis, and there's nothing strange or surprising about the way people behaved on 9/11 to me. So either my entire immediate family and a surprising proportion of my friends, and I, were all in on the conspiracy and thus guilty of the worst act of treason since Benedict Arnold or we are guilty of truly heroic levels of professional incompetence. I'd say, given the information above, there's at least a prima facie case that we're not incompetent. So I have to be either in on it, or a complete idiot. If what you believe is true, one of those has to be. So, John, my questions for you are really pretty simple. Given what I've written above: 1) Do you think I was part of the conspiracy, at least after the fact (I didn't have to be in on it beforehand)? 2) If you do, why? You've suggested that the people who believe the official story "know which side their bread is buttered on." OK - who's buttering my bread? 3) If you _don't_ believe I was in on it, that leaves two other possibilities. Do you think (as I described above) that a large proportion of my friends, family, and colleagues are all complicit in high treason and I just didn't twig to that? And if so, w
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:06:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Assuming that a large number of people can't be wrong about something > because they are smart and well-connected is a tautology. I think > there are many examples of large numbers of smart, well-connected > people who turned a blind eye to an inconvenient truth. Not that I > arguing that that's the case with 9/11... but I've generally found it > more profitable to question authority than to make the kind of > assumption that you are arguing. Isn't that not a tautology at all, but one of the basic assumptions about peer-review in science? What is the assumption? That one must always question authority or that peer review has is based on consensus and not open to new data? It is certainly true that individuals who do peer reviews (like me) are people with expertise who therefore probably believe in the mainstream notions. Too often a novel idea will be rejected because it is well novel but this is not universally true and will not be true for long. When a paper is rejected the author has a choice of dropping the idea curse the stupid bastards who don't understand brilliance when they see it or go back and get more evidence. Even a negative and unfair review and rejection (I have had a few of these) can be of value because in the critique of the paper there are questions that can be addressed. New ideas are tested in the world not in the minds of experts. New evidence is collected, new experiments performed new predictions made and confirmed. The essence of peer review has to do with assessment of evidence. Most reviewers try to be fair even when they don't agree with the results of the paper. It is an imperfect process but it does better than most other ways of deciding things. This argument is very similar to the argument used by Creationists when I start pointing out the tremendous geological evidence against the young-Earth hypothesis. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 9/19/2006 1:05:48 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ...'cause there's no such thing as something that is so well supported it can be considered a fact. Like gravity. Just a theory. Well according to Karl Popper there are no absolute facts in science. All scientific facts are in theory provisional since scientific facts are by definition falseafiable. Many things are so well established and so imbedded in a net of other well established facts that they are virtually certainly true or at least mostly true (gravity evolution atomic theory) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 21/09/2006, at 11:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well according to Karl Popper there are no absolute facts in science. All scientific facts are in theory provisional since scientific facts are by definition falseafiable. Many things are so well established and so imbedded in a net of other well established facts that they are virtually certainly true or at least mostly true (gravity evolution atomic theory) Sure, and that's the scientific small print that is implicit in every statement of fact. But it's often used wrongly, to state that the probabilitical nature of "scientific proof" means we can't be certain of some things. Which is bunk. There may be details that need filling out (we don't know every twist and turn along the family tree from bacteria to elephants, for example) but that doesn't mean we're not certain that there was a long time in between and that fish and invertebrates are ancestral to elephants. Or in your own field, that we're not certain that the brain is the organ that is responsible for thought. Yes, we *could* be wrong. It could yet turn out to be the heart. But really, it's not something that troubles us. So it's a fact. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
In a message dated 9/19/2006 4:45:05 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm fairly certain that gravity is a fact. > > > > How it works is a theory. > > Finally - that's exactly what I was saying about evolution before. > Same thing. No disagreement here. I am not sure things are so simple in differentiating fact from theory. The facts of evolution are that there is change over time in the type and nature of living things. This implies that evolution occurs. Is this a fact or a theory. The similarity between organisms in a region and between current and past organisms also implies evolution. Is this data fact or theory? The creationists would argue that this is pattern is just what god wanted to do for whatever reason god does everything god does. Even gravity is a theory. The facts about the way bodies interact with each other can also be explained with the same all purpose explanation used to counteract evolution. God did it that way because god makes all things move the way god wants to make things move. I would argue that what we have are pieces of data and we have theories to explain these pieces of data. Theories can in fact be provisionally true when no data exists that contradicts our theory (or hypothesis). More importantly the notion that facts are neutral and theories no matter how well conceived and documented are judgements about facts is open to conjecture. Scientist do not collect facts and then let the theories fall out,. They develop hypotheses based on some observations and then collect facts or perform experiments to verify or falsify their theories. The relationship between fact and theory (or maybe data and hypothesis) is dynamic and not easily seperated. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliab...
On 21/09/2006, at 12:21 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not sure things are so simple in differentiating fact from theory. The facts of evolution are that there is change over time in the type and nature of living things. That's the "fact" part of evolution, yep. This implies that evolution occurs. Is this a fact or a theory. The similarity between organisms in a region and between current and past organisms also implies evolution. Is this data fact or theory? The similarity is a fact. The progression is a fact. The analysis that therefore all creatures are descended from common ancestors is very close to certain. I'd call fact, because there has been no other explanation that stands up to scrutiny. How it happened this way, that's theory. I note that you introduced "data". Yes, on the simplest level data is facts and analysis is theory, but as you say: " The relationship between fact and theory (or maybe data and hypothesis) is dynamic and not easily seperated." Yep. There are some conclusions that are facts, and some data that is questionable or uncertain. As in all of science, there's no one answer to method and nomenclature that works all the time. But with 9/11, autism/vaccine crankery, creationism, alternative medicine, perpetual motion and so on, we're seeing groups that either corrupt this relationship and the nature of science, or just ignore or dismiss it entirely. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
On Sep 16, 2006, at 1:12 PM, Dave Land wrote: After watching the "Pyroclastic" video that WTG pointed to, I realized that I'd been giving way too much credence to "Just-So Stories" about what might possibly have happened. It's not that this particular video was all that bad (it was utterly unconvincing to me, but that's beside the point), it just highlighted for me how much I'd been accepting the "coulda beens" and "shouldna beens" that are the stock in trade of conspiracy theories. I know it's not easy to back away from an ardently-defended point of view. I'm glad, though, that the light of reason broke at last. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
On Sep 19, 2006, at 8:01 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/18/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ...'cause there's no such thing as something that is so well supported it can be considered a fact. Like gravity. Just a theory. I'm fairly certain that gravity is a fact. I occasionally say that evolution is a theory in much the same way that gravity is. How it works is a theory. Kind of a mystery, too, which is pretty cool when you think about it. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
On 24/09/2006, at 2:58 AM, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Sep 19, 2006, at 8:01 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: On 9/18/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ...'cause there's no such thing as something that is so well supported it can be considered a fact. Like gravity. Just a theory. I'm fairly certain that gravity is a fact. I occasionally say that evolution is a theory in much the same way that gravity is. How it works is a theory. Kind of a mystery, too, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Very cool indeed. Mysteries are what science is all about. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
William T Goodall wrote: On 18 Sep 2006, at 12:43AM, Dave Land wrote: On Sep 16, 2006, at 4:24 PM, William T Goodall wrote: On 16 Sep 2006, at 9:12PM, Dave Land wrote: After watching the "Pyroclastic" video that WTG pointed to, Not me. Just to clear that up Maru Of course not. It was Jonathan Gibson. Gibson ... Goodall ... I think there's more to the similarity of these names than meets the eye. ;-) We're obviously part of the world-wide secret conspiracy of people whose surnames begin with G. Not so secret now Maru OMG, I just realized I have no idea of the last names of some of my RL friends, so I don't know if they're in on that particular conspiracy! Aie! Julia who knows of an infant that's got to be in on it! aie! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
On 24 Sep 2006 at 10:55, Charlie Bell wrote: > > I occasionally say that evolution is a theory in much the same way > > that gravity is. > > > >> How it works is a theory. > > > > Kind of a mystery, too, which is pretty cool when you think about it. > > Very cool indeed. Mysteries are what science is all about. Even when the suggestions are as..odd..as the one from m-theory that our universe has no inherent gravity, it gets it via leakage from another universe "nearby" in m-space, hence why it's so weak... AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
On 25/09/2006, at 9:31 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 24 Sep 2006 at 10:55, Charlie Bell wrote: I occasionally say that evolution is a theory in much the same way that gravity is. How it works is a theory. Kind of a mystery, too, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Very cool indeed. Mysteries are what science is all about. Even when the suggestions are as..odd..as the one from m-theory that our universe has no inherent gravity, it gets it via leakage from another universe "nearby" in m-space, hence why it's so weak... Yeah, or dark matter which is more and more weird the more I understand it. Still, doesn't matter how weird it is as long as it works... Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
> Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be > wrong about something > > because they are smart and well-connected is a > tautology. > > I think that you are still missing the point, so let > me try it again. Let > me start with one example: Gautam's dad. He's a > structural engineer. I > think it is fair to say that one of the first > instincts that a technical > person like him or myself when faced with something > like this is trying to > understand it. In particular, when one's own area > of expertise is involved, > using that expertise to understand is all but > instinctive. I have absolutely no experience in structural engineering, so have not comented on this thread, but I'm just going to toss out one medical example of well-educated folk in the field being wrong: _Helicobactor pylori_ infection and relation to peptic ulcer disease. One researcher (from Australia, IIRC) posited and studied this; the vast majority of gastroenterologists disagreed completely -- until it was finally shown to be true. Took years. My personal experience has been that my 'medical gut feelings' are correct better than 90% of the time, even when specialists' opinions do not concur. My gut about this administration is that it spins 'truth' like a top, and is utterly untrustworthy. About the towers, I really don't know; about cabals within our government manufacturing crises: Gulf of Tonkin(g?). Debbi who has much List-catching-up to do __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
> Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be > wrong about something > > because they are smart and well-connected is a > tautology. > > I think that you are still missing the point, so let > me try it again. Let > me start with one example: Gautam's dad. He's a > structural engineer. I > think it is fair to say that one of the first > instincts that a technical > person like him or myself when faced with something > like this is trying to > understand it. In particular, when one's own area > of expertise is involved, > using that expertise to understand is all but > instinctive. I have absolutely no experience in structural engineering, so have not comented on this thread, but I'm just going to toss out one medical example of well-educated folk in the field being wrong: _Helicobactor pylori_ infection and relation to peptic ulcer disease. One researcher (from Australia, IIRC) posited and studied this; the vast majority of gastroenterologists disagreed completely -- until it was finally shown to be true. Took years. My personal experience has been that my 'medical gut feelings' are correct better than 90% of the time, even when specialists' opinions do not concur. My gut about this administration is that it spins 'truth' like a top, and is utterly untrustworthy. About the towers, I really don't know; about cabals within our government manufacturing crises: Gulf of Tonkin(g?). Debbi who has much List-catching-up to do __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
> Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be > wrong about something > > because they are smart and well-connected is a > tautology. > > I think that you are still missing the point, so let > me try it again. Let > me start with one example: Gautam's dad. He's a > structural engineer. I > think it is fair to say that one of the first > instincts that a technical > person like him or myself when faced with something > like this is trying to > understand it. In particular, when one's own area > of expertise is involved, > using that expertise to understand is all but > instinctive. I have absolutely no experience in structural engineering, so have not comented on this thread, but I'm just going to toss out one medical example of well-educated folk in the field being wrong: _Helicobactor pylori_ infection and relation to peptic ulcer disease. One researcher (from Australia, IIRC) posited and studied this; the vast majority of gastroenterologists disagreed completely -- until it was finally shown to be true. Took years. My personal experience has been that my 'medical gut feelings' are correct better than 90% of the time, even when specialists' opinions do not concur. My gut about this administration is that it spins 'truth' like a top, and is utterly untrustworthy. About the towers, I really don't know; about cabals within our government manufacturing crises: Gulf of Tonkin(g?). Debbi who has much List-catching-up to do __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 2:46 PM Subject: RE: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?) > Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Behalf Of Nick Arnett > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be > wrong about something > > because they are smart and well-connected is a > tautology. > > I think that you are still missing the point, so let > me try it again. Let > me start with one example: Gautam's dad. He's a > structural engineer. I > think it is fair to say that one of the first > instincts that a technical > person like him or myself when faced with something > like this is trying to > understand it. In particular, when one's own area > of expertise is involved, > using that expertise to understand is all but > instinctive. I have absolutely no experience in structural engineering, so have not comented on this thread, but I'm just going to toss out one medical example of well-educated folk in the field being wrong: _Helicobactor pylori_ infection and relation to peptic ulcer disease. One researcher (from Australia, IIRC) posited and studied this; the vast majority of gastroenterologists disagreed completely -- until it was finally shown to be true. Took years. My personal experience has been that my 'medical gut feelings' are correct better than 90% of the time, even when specialists' opinions do not concur. My gut about this administration is that it spins 'truth' like a top, and is utterly untrustworthy. About the towers, I really don't know; about cabals within our government manufacturing crises: Gulf of Tonkin(g?). But this is a different situation. The discovery that ulcers were caused by helicobactor was a typical breakthough in medicine and science where previously held beliefs are found to be incorrect and an old theory is replaced by a new and better theory (think Einstein and Newton). The point being made in this case is not that there is faulty science but that the facts that exist cannot be explained with the theory that the buildings that were brought down by a the planes. People with both knowledge and experience in such matters see no significant inconsistencies and as far as I can tell those that exist are of the type that are always present in complex real life circumstances. Those arguing against the planes did it theory are not arguing that there are features of structural engineering theory are incorrect thus explaining the conspiracy they are arguing that the structural engineers are incorrect in the standard use of their theories and knowledge. Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?)
Didn't have time to finish this yesterday, so am completing it first thing- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Dan Minette wrote: >> > > Behalf Of Nick Arnett >> > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be > > wrong about something >> > > because they are smart and well-connected is a > > tautology. > > > I think that you are still missing the point, so > > >let me try it again. In particular, when > > >one's own area of expertise is involved, > > >using that expertise to understand is all but > > >instinctive... > >I have absolutely no experience in structural > >engineeringbut > >I'm just going to toss out one medical example of > >well-educated folk in the field being wrong: > _Helicobactor pylori_ infection and relation to > >peptic ulcer disease. One researcher > >studied this; the vast majority of > >gastroenterologists disagreed completely -- until it > >was finally shown to be true. Took years. > >My gut > >about this administration is that it spins 'truth' > >like a top, and is utterly untrustworthy. About the > >towers, I really don't know; about cabals within our > >government manufacturing crises: Gulf of Tonkin(g?). > But this is a different situation. The discovery > that ulcers were caused by helicobactor was a > typical breakthough > in medicine and science where previously held > beliefs are found to be incorrect and an old theory is > replaced by a new and better theory (think Einstein > and Newton). >The point being made in this case > is not that there is faulty science but that the > facts that exist cannot be explained with the > theory that the buildings that were brought down by > a the planes. People with both knowledge and > experience in such matters see no significant > inconsistencies and as far as I can tell those that > exist are of the type that are always present in > complex real life circumstances Except that some _do_ find discrepancies, according to what has been written on-List; I'm not saying I accept their views, but I'm keeping the possibility in mind. A conspiracy involving thousands is exceedingly unlikely, I agree. What I think has me 'smelling something rotten' are the various other oddities and discrepancies (as others have already listed, frex the Saudis flying out unquestioned AFAIK); I think it is far more likely that 'the conspiracy' (instead of our gov't. actually setting up the towers to be blown) will turn out to be deliberate ignoring of and/or covering up of pre-Day intel that such a terror attack was imminant. IOW, lying. 'There are no secret prisons for terror suspects.' 'No one connected with this administration had anything to do with outing a CIA agent.' And so forth. Debbi I Do Not Trust Them, Sam-I-Am Maru __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
