Oh Worf. A millennium is 1,000 years. But he said "A millennia". Which is the plural. Should have dropped the A.

Anyway, I always thought whats-her-name there was very cute.

>> ^probie:

I often wonder what the next big apocalyptic date will be. 2000 had the millennium bug, 2012 is the end of the Mayan calendar. I guess 2036 will be the next big one when Apophis swings by.


Elaine: "According to my source, the end of the world will be on February 14th, in the year two thousand and sixteen."
Peter Venkman: "Valentine's day. Bummer."

I often wonder what the next big apocalyptic date will be. 2000 had the millennium bug, 2012 is the end of the Mayan calendar. I guess 2036 will be the next big one when Apophis swings by.

I saw the first movie right after reading the book, and found myself very disappointed in it. That is, except for the portrayal of Lisbeth, which was pretty spot-on. I'm curious if I would've liked the film more had I not read the book (and I don't want to sound like one of those 'the book was better!' snobs), it just felt like they rushed (or completely left out) parts that I felt were extremely crucial to the story. Plus, leaving out the entire story about Millennium is crazy to me, as I found it to be very interesting and important to the overall plot. I mean, it's the name of the trilogy ferchrissakes!

Don't get me wrong, I didn't think the film was bad, just could've been a lot better. Regardless, I'm eager to watch this.

I wouldn't mind seeing this, particularly the life-size Millennium Falcon.

I think you should look again...that form of education hasn't worked at all well either. You don't have to look far to see the downside of an endless cycle of ignorance passing itself on to the next generation.

One of the reasons for the explosion of new knowledge and technology in the last hundred years is precisely because much of the world recognized the value of a relatively non-subjective advanced education.
>> ^Sniper007:

JiggaJonson, any 'system' is inadequate (at best) when compared to the fundamental familial unit which has existed since the beginning of recorded history. That is to say, a man and his wife ought to teach their own children. Some may object that it's not practical on a large scale, or possible for some parents, but I would suggest that it's the ONLY form of sustainable education. PERIOD. No other form will, or has, survived millennium.

JiggaJonson, any 'system' is inadequate (at best) when compared to the fundamental familial unit which has existed since the beginning of recorded history. That is to say, a man and his wife ought to teach their own children. Some may object that it's not practical on a large scale, or possible for some parents, but I would suggest that it's the ONLY form of sustainable education. PERIOD. No other form will, or has, survived millennium.

>> ^Kevlar:

Hold on, now, let's earnestly consider Fox News' point before calling them out. We may only be able to blow up the entire goddamned earth 3 times over instead of 5 by the time this deal is done.


Oh, just to make sure I'm not exaggerating: let's take a look at our old friend, nuclear winter. Turns out you only need 50 bombs to destroy the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

"A minor nuclear war with each country using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. A nuclear war between the United States and Russia today could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet. The climatic effects of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than previously thought. New climate model simulations, that are said to have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.

Compared to climate change for the past millennium, even the smallest exchange modeled would plunge the planet into temperatures colder than the Little Ice Age (approximately 1600-1850). This would take effect instantly, and agriculture would be severely threatened. Larger amounts of smoke would produce larger climate changes, and for the 150 Tg case produce a true nuclear winter, making agriculture impossible for years. In both cases, new climate model simulations show that the effects would last for more than a decade."

Links? Evidence?

Sure - but I'm not interested in playing duelling banjos. I'm listing a few of many. I could go on, but doing so ultimately becomes pointless. Science is science, and the current science is not decided. However, if you have made up your mind POLITICALLY where you stand then no amount of fact or evidence will be useful. But here we go. Here is the IPCC working group 1 report itself.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

Here is the section detailing the models they selected to write their conclusions.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-2.html

Here are some links detailing just some the problems with their models.
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2009/03/_internal_modeling_mistakes_by.html
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr.htm
http://www.applet-magic.com/IPCCmistakes.htm
http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/environment-energy/59296-ipcc-climate-models-8-fatal-errors.html
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039642-pip.pdf
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?page_id=11
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf

Being a statistician myself, I am fascinated by the process by which other analysts arrive at a methodology. The IPCC report is sloppy at best, and it doesn’t take any advanced statistical analysis to dismiss the conclusions prima facie. The IPCC freely admits that it ignored critical variables, and arrived at specious conclusions.

Keep in mind the “two divisions” I talked about. On the one hand we have “science of climate” and on the other hand we have “politics of man-made C02”. Warmers like to refer to science as justification for politics. This allows them to have their rhetorical cake and eat it too.

No one disagrees with the posit that the climate is “changing”. Duh! The climate always changes. We figure that out a few millennium ago. But that isn’t what the Warmer movement is trying to say. The Warmers say, “Science has PROVEN that human behavior is the cause of climate change – and human behavior can stop it.”

Horse hockey. In the first place, science has NOT proven human behavior as causal or even related to climate cycles. In the second place, there is no evidence of any kind that the cessation of human C02 emissions would supply a correction. The Warmer approach is therefore not scientific.

‘destroy the world paranoia’

Odd, since I didn’t say that. I said there are groups that desire to reduce human activity. I keep a folder full of links specifically about discussions related to the reduction of human activity in order to ‘save the planet’. Some of them are amusing. Some of them are creepy when you strip away the veneer of good intentions.

Explain NASA hottest decade?

Sure.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783
http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2007/12/global-warming-temperature
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3494

Sadly, NASA is an organization corrupted by politics. Obama specifically has pushed to have NASA be less about 'space' and more about 'political justification of my cap & tax plan'. There are good people there, but they are operating in a nasty political environment. Their use of substation data for their temperature projections invalidates their data entirely.

Yeah, the 'personhood' model and the cognitive machine model are each useful levels of detail for the same thing... the best one to use probably depends on what your application is.

I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.

Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.

In January 1952 Turing picked up 19-year-old Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.[32]

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time,[6] and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.[33] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_gross_indecency

You're better informed on the technology so I'm not going to argue your projections, but I wouldn't and haven't bet on them. It's funny, a basic assumption I've made in directing my life is that with a good diet and exercise, risk management and so on I'd make it to around 100, half that if I want to enjoy myself. If I thought I had a good chance (>50%) of surviving to the next millennium, say, that would drastically change almost every dimension of my life. So to that extent I sympathise with your attitude.

I disagree that calling a human a person is less valid than your input-output cognitive machine, which I absolutely accept to be an accurate description, itself no less valid than as a bundle of quarks and electrons, acting on even more fundamental mechanisms. One emerges from the next emerges from the next. Possessing a de facto consciousness I'm not too concerned with whether or why it really exists; illusory or real one seems to function as well as the other. So it's on that principle I interact with what I blindly assume are other similar minds.

In reply to this comment by chilaxe

A bit nitpicking isn't it Blankfist? Most original fans fucking hated the initial awful dub, so one of the biggest features was the actual re-recording, I really doubt they even thought about adding the old one for LULZ factors. I always watch anime in Japanese with English subtitles. The blu-ray of Akira is fantastic I thought, amazing transfer and great DTS remaster.

Grave of the fireflies is actually one of my favorite animes, because it deals with very adult themes about war and loss in a format not traditionally known for that. I think Perfect Blue is along similar lines as well as Millennium Actress. One of my biggest beefs with animation in the west is that it's not in any way adult, Pixar produces really safe animated films.

I was born to see two thousand years
Of man's effect upon the planet
Extinction seems to be a plausible risk
Whatever happens well I'm part of all this

My life I've been waiting for this moment
All my life I've been waiting for this moment to come

(Chorus)
Taste the salt of my tears
Take the wealth of my years
Singing in the millennium with you
Resolutions will show
Old ways don't seem to know
Singing in the millennium with you

Fire burn all our uncertainties
Water wash away impurities
Contradictions and predictions abound
Yes I believe that we can turn it around

My life I've been waiting for this moment
My life I've been waiting for this moment to come

(Chorus)

My life I've been waiting for this moment
All my life I've been waiting for this moment
All my life I've been waiting for this moment to come

(Chorus X3 to fade)

3030 way past the millennium, check it out
Yo, Deltron thunderforce, ain't no other source of sunlight
Two ton mic, leave you toungue-tied
Runnin amuck with technology with no apology
Shoutin out to my colony with third eye physiology
Millennium past apocalypse is all I spit
Make you swallow it - your weak style, I'll abolish it
with nuclear rockets they glued to your optics with sci-fi
Unsettlin, man and metal blends
Underground chillin with the Mole Man, and his whole fam
Inhibit bacterial growth, material wrote
Impenetrable, incontestable, indigestible intelligence
Never let a computer tell me SHIT
It's rapid innovation, penetratin
Artificial life forms, who bite songs
I'm a buy a vest, lie is next, then I'll flip the bio-techs
Right into the wireless; your third eye is hit with psoriasis
The mightiest, Deltron Zero
Traverse and purge the travesties that tempt your earholds
The area of distribution, lifts the clueless
My flow is like, liquid oxygen
Rip it often with specific impulse, increasin thrust
Grease the cuts - unleash a cluster of thoughts I muster
I talk to touch ya, and rupture commercial communications
Convert solar energy, into imagery
In the mind's eye, blindside the contagious
With radioactive isotopes to decay them
Atomic mass they small as fragments
I magnetize the avid lies
My radiation shields reflects, rejects Decepticons
who take the truth and stretch it long, while I bless a song
Next level incredible, metal melding
Flexability and my engine is never failing

All your rhyme histories combined couldn't violate
the Prime Optimus operative
Use my hydrometer to see how warm you are, watch me form a star
Hydrogen turned to helium when I shine
Ridin 'em revealin 'em leadin 'em to the vacuum
Interact with tunes in my digital citadel
Critical pivotal with the mental shit on you
Spit infinity, hiden energies too dope for our planet
Star spannin, slammin hymms with
mechanical limbs, scanning your lens
with cosmic rays, you'll all get played, your brain's inferior
I hit the lateral AND posterior
My science is eerier
Ionic bonding for your moronic pondering, meet the armorines
My micro machines, might throw your team, into paralysis
They not talented, just a malady
Worry 'bout a salary, creative casualty
Couldn't defrag my power density intensity
Nonequivalence, nine hundred Newtons
Crush you like croutons, you plus Houston
Hiero's like dipoles inside a silo
Turbulence ten-fold, never simple
Defies accepted methods development most unique
Paralyze central nervous when you close to me
Interstellar void fills with color, appears to bubble
and split into four like amoeba
Inhabitin planets with, grandiose boast
and coast like Silver Surfer, feel the purpoise
High velocity, verbal atrocities
Fire resistance, better hire assistants
My pistons glisten ultra, high performance
Inside your private quarters where I fry your components

John Sterling, the new label for idiot in the new millennium.

what are you a sterling?

dude your such a sterling!
etc.

I have to assume for the sake of argument however that mr. Sterling can not possibly be familiar at all with the rest of Yahtzee's work, its the only excuse I can think of for him.