grifpete

A good point. I would just quibble with your affirmative statement that '... the oldest instance of the practice is almost certainly far older than the oldest preserved instance of the practice.'

It seems to me that whilst it is highly likely the first instance is earlier than the first discovered instance and that this is a perfectly valid conjecture I don't think we have any convincing grounds to state that it is 'almost certainly far older.'

It seems that the article has a simple thesis. a) climate is hard b) human activity is affecting it but because it's hard it's tough to know how much c) hence it's difficult to know what the correct policies should be.

As an economist might say - without clarity on the positive, it's challenging to resolve the normative.

But I am a little puzzled by the failure to discuss outcomes in terms of mathematical expectation. And of course, the author knows more than I ever will about this.

Hence: If our activity might just trigger a sequence of events leading to human extinction...(in other words such a sequence is conceivable and credible) then even if the risk is low as estimated by our (weak) ability to assess such risk, then the outcome is surely so hideous that if our policies are taking us in a direction that makes such an outcome more likely (even if we are not sure by how much) then there is cause for caution and re-examination of policy. It seems to me that our situation at present is of this form. Despite our poor understanding and the fact that things aren't 'settled' (as if they ever will be) this unsettled 'knowledge' is all we have and we have to take it seriously, most particularly if the possible outcomes are ghastly. We can't just wait for better science.

Maybe. But he's right.

You're entitled to your opinion on his crusades against religion. But let's bear in mind that there are those of us who consider religious irrationalism a key challenge of our age, nationally and internationally, and hence that such a crusade is important.

Yo.

Terrific.

I'm disappointed in Andreessen. It appears that a major part of his concern is the damage done to US firms trying to do business abroad. This damage, apparently, completely outweighs and potential damage to our liberties occasioned by trampling on rights that we won by painful and bloody struggles.

If it is your dream to be truly exceptionally good at something then - if at first you don't succeed, give up.

I totally disagree. Many of today's games are terrifyingly sharp.

The virus isn't used to fight the disease, is it? Isn't it just used as a vector to introduce the treatment?

Are you sure you are right about this form of treatment being a non-starter for solid tumors? It seems that researchers are making progress in this area. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/breaking-down-cancers-def...

Without wanting to get into parsing the word 'cure' imho this is a cancer cure. The reason the treatment kills the B-cells as well is because that is how it identifies the cancer cells. It is the marker that enables the T cells to recognize the cancer cells. But the fact that it kills the B cells does not mean that it does not successfully treat the cancer cells. It appears that it does. And hence it seems fair to call it a cure.

And Cambridge University researchers recently reported progress in penetrating solid tumors.

Learning to program in Javascript is like programming in assembler. That may be unavoidable when there are no high level languages, or when those languages and toolsets are immature. But there are serious experts (and people with a lot of experience with very large js programs) who don't see js as the solution. "Goaded by Meijer as to whether it is possible to write big programs in JavaScript, Hejlsberg replied, €œYes, you can, but you can€™t maintain them," much to the delight of the crowd that featured several prominent language and tools designers. €œI think there are some unmet needs there,€ Hejlsberg added. Bracha immediately piped in saying, €œThat€™s part of why we€™re doing Dart. You can write them [large programs in JavaScript]; it€™s terribly hard and afterward you€™ll be punished.€ - See more at: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Is-it-Time-...

I agree. This is getting your panties in a twist because a writer hasn't spelt out his putative conflict of interest in a way that conforms to your norms, when it is certainly plain enough for many readers (I had no problem at all figuring it out and wasn't at all offended by it).

I don't get your point. If a guy is going to advocate for anything presumably it is better if the guy has some practical experience and what is wrong with him sharing that experience? Do you honestly imagine that anyone reading this piece was in any way deceived or confused by his role at Google? It's not like he hid it.

Why would the compiled nature of Dart make it hard to debug? Presumably you mean debug by someone other than the original developer?

The bizarre states uncovered by quantum mechanics resulted in a million popular works trying to distill quantum reality into a world in which multiple states could coincide even at the macro level. We know that this is true at quantum scale, it has been a little harder to swallow at the level of everyday reality.

I LOVE the fact that you can download to read later!

Exactly. (just posted same point.) Even those 'dialectical contradictions' are perhaps better described as opposing forces that set in train a dialectical resolution.

For all the talk of Marx as having a philosophy that embraced contradictions I am a little sceptical of the way that this is frequently represented. Hegel certainly did have a philosophy that embraced contradiction and Marx certainly drew from his system as a mode of expression but his work was rooted IN the world and the kinds of contradictions he pointed out where not logical contradictions but rather opposing forces that demanded resolution.

I believe in law it is perfectly possible to settle with no admission of guilt. Are you then innocent or guilty?

I don't believe that what most would consider to be 'Western philosophy' would properly include religious thought, including 'traditional Christian theology.' This is not to deny that early philosophy was coincident with religion, just as was early scientific thought. But I think that to argue that the paradoxes of theology is relevant to what would in any meaningful sense be considered remotely modern Western Philosophy is mistaken. It is perhaps for this reason that philosophy and religion and science are different 'subjects.' There are overlaps to be sure (the philosophy of religion or scientific studies of religious experience) but these fields are distinct for a reason. And by and large the author makes a very fair point that the Aristotelean principles have guided western philosophy and science whereas religion has gone its own way.

Q.What do you call the guy who passes out last in his class on his med finals? A. Doctor

Smart guy. And I love this quote "I like to think that because I had the courage to take my shot, good fortune came my way, but it could have just as easily gone terribly wrong." Isn't that the truth and he has the humility to say it.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you had something like this in mind but wanted to be sure.

So when you say "In some of the environments I've worked in, women who have "alpha" traits are not looked upon favorably and detested by their male counterparts." you are saying that women who have traits that are pseudo alpha - in other words behaving as if you have the 'highest rank' when you haven't earned it or got it as a matter of fact, is the kind of behavior that men detest.

I guess my question is, unless there is something distinctively obnoxious about a woman behaving in this way, is this really a gender issue? There are plenty of men who behave like this aren't there? And my experience has been that both men and women don't like men doing it?

So it seems that either a woman doing it is doubly bad (which seems like a form of sexism - you can't even be obnoxious if you're a woman because it's distinctively obnoxious) or it isn't really a gender issue.

I'm not intending to pointlessly nit pick here. I am really interested in whether you feel there is something about a woman doing it that is likely, for whatever reason, to incite a more negative reaction. Could it, for example, be that men are very attuned to alpha dynamics and feel that they are being in some sense 'wronged' when a woman challenges them? etc etc?

It does sound harsh. There is a lot of material online about the case in question.

The instinct of an organization to cover its ass is indeed much more general than in matters of sexist behavior. I don't however agree that this instinct constitutes a duty to its shareholders. Bear in mind that shareholders are only one of an organizations stakeholders and it has duties to all of them. Employees too are stakeholders and if we assume for the moment that there was some unfortunate behavior covering it up is not good for existing employees. The community in which the organization operates is a stakeholder and coverups can be very contrary to community interests. Etc et.

For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory

I think this is a very unfair characterization of her statements. The substance of her concerns was not a rug or people watching hula hoopers.

I think your remark about being afraid of working with her is both understandable and disturbing. And both stem from the same thing - uncertainty. Understandable because if she really is an oversensitive harridan then you might well not want to work with her. But disturbing, because if she isn't then you have judged her unfairly. And the reason this is doubly unfair is that if her case has any merit she can't win in this situation. There will always be people like you who don't want to give her ANY benefit of the doubt. This is a stigma very similar to the one that whistle blowers suffer.

So I understand where you are coming from but it really sucks that the whiff of scandal can result in people not wanting to touch her with a barge pole.

No. Of course not.