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#511
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"John Schilling" wrote in message ... In article , Mike Schilling says... "Rand Simberg" wrote in message ... On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:19:03 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Mike Schilling" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: [Villainy of James Watt] Odd that the title of this is "Bill Moyers Smears a Better Man Than Himself". I can't recall when Moyers was indicted on 18 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury and had to plea-bargain his way out of it. Regardless, it's an urban legend, as you pointed out. Who is the better man is subjective, depending on what criteria one wants to use. Sure, comitting felonies He wasn't convicted. Nor tried; he accepted a plea bargain. This is the part where Keith Lynch informs us all that James Watt was a Good and Decent Man, innocent of any wrongdoing, who was railroaded by an Evil District Attorney out to rack up another conviction on his scoreboard no matter the cost. If you can document that Watt was represented by a public defender, I'll listen as you develop this argument further. |
#512
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"horseshoe7" writes:
wrote: We alter? We have no real reason to believe we ARE altering the climate. So far what we're seeing is within natural variation. Glaciers which have been in place for thousands of years are melting, worldwide. Yes, we are in an inter-glacial period - that is what glaciers do during an inter-glacial period - melt. We have been in the interglacial for thousands of years now. Suddenly, glaciers across the planet which have survived five to eleven thousand years are melting, and melting significantly. Glaciers which withstood the Medieval warming, and the Holocene thermal maximum. As to interglacials, do a little reading on them. You seem to have no real idea as to what they are. CO2 levels are higher than they have been for millions of years. ... and the playing of the game of baseball hasn't happenned in millions of years - therefore, playing BASEBALL leads to glaciers melting AND global warming. The parallel you are attempting to draw is false. We know the optical properties of CO2. Well, most of us know something about them - you apparently choose ignorance. Given their properties, it is not a case of confusing correlation with causation - we have a causative agent. The equations of radiative transfer (ever looked at them?) can be used to estimate the effect of the extra CO2 and this estimate is in line with what is actually happening. We've no evidence of natural variation happening this rapidly, other than asteroid impact or ice age oscillations. So, we better start to panic - and I mean RIGHT NOW! Did I say panic? To imply that I did would be deeply dishonest. You aren't dishonest, are you? -- William Hyde EOS Department Duke University |
#514
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In article , Henry Spencer says...
In article . com, wrote: Hm. Am I misunderstanding? "In the sci-fi groups, [we assume fusion will someday work] because hardly any of the stories we read are about technology that doesn't ever make it". Well. Like I said... "huh"? I mean, in the stories the funky inventions work. The ones where a fortune is spent trying to build something that eventually we just have to get by without are quite rare... Actually, the most egregious examples of that are in non-SF novels by people like Tom Clancy, who have bought into the Pentagon press releases hook, line, and sinker. Hardly anything in all that high-tech military hardware ever fails except when it must fail for the sake of the plot. While there are people *like* Tom Clancy who are guilty of this, I do not think it is fair to suggest that Tom Clancy himself is one of them. Modern American military hardware, even the high-tech variety, is in fact very reliable. Wasn't always the case, but it is for the most part the press critics of the Pentagon rather than the press officers of the Pentagon who have lost touch with the evolving reality. Systems that used to fail more often than not, have been replaced by those that mostly don't. And if "mostly work" isn't the same as "never fails", Clancy is one of the few authors who shows the failures. Especially in "Red Storm Rising", the Clancy novel with the highest density of military technology in action, there are breakdowns across the board, for no reason other than to capture the feel of a war in progress. His other works mostly have a narrower focus, we only see the plot-critical technologies so when they fail it is easy to dismiss it as "necessary for the plot". But Clancy pretty clearly understands that the "high-tech military hardware" sometimes does fail. And I hope you understand that it usually does not. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#515
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In article .com,
wrote: I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured, apart from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several confrontations. I recall reading a story (not sure by who or where; possibly in an Analog Annual) where the US started getting some weird weather, and discovered that the Soviet Union was covertly doing it. The U.S. figured out how they were doing it, and rather than raise a public issue, decided to just as covertly respond in kind. Not having the experience of slowly ramping the output of the gizmotron (?) up the point where there were some effects, they cranked it up to what seemed like a reasonable power level. This turned out to be somewhat excessive. Things went very badly for the Soviet Union. I think I recall a line something like "The Soviets have stopped firing bogon waves at us. I wonder why?" "Uh... I don't think they *can* any more." (That's what makes me suspect that Analog was involved. John Campbell was somewhat more likely to take sides in the Cold War than most other editors. Not that that's a bad thing...) -- Infamy is like a pair of tight leather pants in | Mike Van Pelt the Amazon. It might LOOK cool, but after just | mvp at calweb.com a couple of hours it chafes, and that's just | KE6BVH the start of your problems. -- Howard Tayler |
#516
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wrote in message oups.com... horseshoe7 wrote: GLOBAL WARMING WARS! Aha, James Bond already did When Solar Mirrors Go Bad. Twice; _The Man With The Golden Gun_ (ground-based, initially), and _Die Another Day_ (orbital death ray, subdivision "non-polluting". [If you don't count launch.) I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured, apart from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several confrontations. John Dalmas' The President's General, IIRC, had some sort of weather war between the US and USSR. -- 'Nowhere Man, the world is at your command. He's as blind as he can be, Just sees what he wants to see' -the beatles |
#517
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In article ,
Chad Irby said: The big thing is the reaction when you tell them the punch line. If they laugh, it's okay, but if they get all incensed and angry (like, for example, some folks in this thread), they've got "issues." Issues like not liking to be the brunt of jokes? Yup, I've got those. It's not a joke per se, it's a test of whether or not someone *really* believes in the precautionary principle. You're assuming that everyone who reacts badly to this stunt does so for exactly the same reason. That strikes me as very foolish. -- William December Starr |
#518
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#519
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#520
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Mike Van Pelt wrote:
In article .com, wrote: I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured, apart from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several confrontations. I recall reading a story (not sure by who or where; possibly in an Analog Annual) where the US started getting some weird weather, and discovered that the Soviet Union was covertly doing it. The U.S. figured out how they were doing it, and rather than raise a public issue, decided to just as covertly respond in kind. Not having the experience of slowly ramping the output of the gizmotron (?) up the point where there were some effects, they cranked it up to what seemed like a reasonable power level. This turned out to be somewhat excessive. Things went very badly for the Soviet Union. I think I recall a line something like "The Soviets have stopped firing bogon waves at us. I wonder why?" "Uh... I don't think they *can* any more." (That's what makes me suspect that Analog was involved. John Campbell was somewhat more likely to take sides in the Cold War than most other editors. Not that that's a bad thing...) Vague recollection that the title was "Weather Wars", but no idea when it was published, save that it has been since 1972 when my subscription began... Jim |
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