If some of USGS's speculation is right---and we have just exited 100 of the wettest years the West has ever seen---then this video may be a sadly nostalgic remembrance some day...

Scientism:

"Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints."

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/sciism-body.html

The idea that science has all the answers is a particular faith of some atheists and agnostics, with no evidence actually supporting the claim. The problem of induction alone throws that idea out of the window. I love science and I amazed by what we are able to do, technologically. I've studied astronomy quite a bit in my lifetime. Just because I love science does not mean that I must bow before any theory because it is accepted by the mainstream scientific community as being the current idea of what is true and real.

If you look through history you will see many of these ideas held to be truth by the scientific community turned out to be half-baked ideas based on pure speculation. Somehow, people think we have it so nailed down now that the major ideas we have about the cosmos have to be true. It's pure hubris; our knowledge about how the Universe actually works or how it got here is infinitesimal compared to what there actually is to know.

Draw a circle on a piece of paper and say that represents all of the knowledge it is possible to know. What percentage of it could you claim that you knew? If you're honest, it isn't much. Do you think that knowledge of God and the supernatural could be in that 99 percent of things you don't know? If you really think about this you will see that to rule these things out based on limited and potentially faulty information is prideful and it blinds you to true understanding.

He mostly hates the stupid questions reporter have to ask, the ones where the answer is already in the question. Or questions that have only one real answer without any speculation: "It is the same for everybody". Like asking about tires or weather.. Of course there is a reputation he got when he joined F1 and he is totally milking that.. He is not the only Finnish driver to do so, Kankkunen gave a beautiful answer once when asked about what tires he chose: "black round Pirellis" It is a bit of a tradition here. But when it comes to Kimi, if you make him comfortable, he is just a regular guy.

edit: Kankkunen, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS0sT9P4ZQg

Since we're all speculating, I chose to laugh and assume this is the hundredth time dad has freaked out over something like a bit of soup.

Degeneracy is really, really cool. It's all about squashing things into as tight a region of space as you can. It's an observable justification of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the Pauli exclusion principle (the one that says you can accurately measure the position or the velocity of an object but not both and the one that says that two neutrons -in this case- can't both occupy the same very small region of space).

To be a neutron star, the remnant core after an unstable giant blows its outer layers away has to be more massive than 1.44 solar masses, but anything bigger than about 2.5 solar masses probably becomes a black hole. On the less massive end you get white dwarfs which are prevented from shrinking any more by electron degeneracy pressure - electrons won't let the star get any denser. But if you throw more mass on it, even electron degeneracy pressure can't resist the gravitational force and you get a neutron star, supported by neutron degeneracy - the neutrons won't let the star get any denser now. And then finally more and more mass and it becomes a black hole, which is where even the neutron degeneracy pressure can't sustain the gravitational force.

I mean, that's fucking cool - there is so much gravitational force that the electrons have to team up with the protons to become neutrons, because neutrons can get slightly closer together. And then if the neutrons aren't happy, you've got a singularity which is a fancy way of saying we don't know what the hell just happened but stay away from it if you like being in the part of the physical universe that kinda makes sense to us.

There's also speculation of a quark degeneracy state beyond neutron degeneracy.

Simply by having the same education level does not grant you equal pay (unless you're working in government). You're paid for the supply and demand of your skills. There are by far MANY more men than women in engineering and physical sciences, and those fields pay rather well. There are by far MANY more women than men in veterinary and educational fields, and those fields pay atrociously.

It is indeed unfortunate if any discrimination occurs, and even if women achieve 99% of men, it is still not nice. However, recognize that nobody is particularly certain about these numbers. I see numbers ranging from 87% to 103% in this video, so our certainty is horrible. Inequality is bad, but if you're going to get particularly opinionated about it, crunch the numbers for yourself instead of letting other boneheads skew the numbers for you.

The statistics can be pulled either way by horrible analyses, and trying to compare 'equal jobs' can be hard...particularly when you factor in cost of living differences, seniority, relative success of different companies, etc. The most compelling evidence was the Yale study where identical resumes with different names were awarded different amounts of speculative money. That was the only real telling evidence that, at least among the people in that study, there is a bias towards paying women less for exactly the same job. However, the statistics can be pulled either way in a study like that as well; what is the uncertainty of the pay level for that poll? Is it random chance and statistical noise happened to end up with the woman paid less in that study? If they surveyed an order of magnitude more people, would the average salaries converge to the same value? In most polls and studies like this, the sampling size is usually quite poor, and getting such an exact dollar figure difference with high certainty is nearly impossible. It would be great to see that study to make an assessment of how much uncertainty was present for myself.

Understanding why so much anecdotal evidence exists is certainly worthwhile! The following link cites many studies on double blind tests for MSG sensitivity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/msg-allergy-doesnt-exist-2013-8

Glutamatic acid (which is what MSG turns into after solubilizing in water, along with a sodium ion) is one of the 20 amino acids that is the basis for all proteins and life, since the beginning of life on earth. It is in relatively high concentration in every cell of your body. Consuming MSG would be akin to consuming 'protein' in your diet, and is commonly labeled as protein in food labeling: http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html

Consuming too much protein in your diet can cause problems, but you need to be eating it to a relatively obvious excess (a gallon of milk per day). Weightlifters who protein supplement far too much quickly experience heart problems.

The business insider link suggests that there are some people who could potentially be sensitive to Glutamate, and be activating the vagus nerve in the stomach...though it seems to be speculative in that article.

The idea that another ingredient is causing the problem is far more likely. Americanized chinese restaurants all taste the same, because all of their food comes from the same place. A group in China has monopolized the american chinese restaurant market, and provides food and resources at unbeatably low prices. To remain competitive, almost all american chinese restaurants invariably purchase from this group. Given China's track record of putting all kinds of crazy stuff in their produce, it seems entirely likely that some ingredient other than MSG is a much more likely culprit.

I know a couple of people in particular who have reacted extremely badly to chinese restaurants in america, and even went to the emergency room for it. Given the details of their story (a mystery glob of black sauce that they ate from the black sauce egg tray), I could only imagine what kind of horrible things they could have ingested other than MSG. 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' may indeed be a relatively accurate term for what people are experiencing.

Zimmerman was doing a service to his community by keeping a watch on it, due to all the burglaries that had been committed in that area. Martin assaulted Zimmerman and had to be shot to keep from at least, a felonious assault on GZ. In your world, only GZ has to restrain himself, not TM.

You make an assumption based on your bias against cops. I made my speculation based on what I've heard of the case and 30 yrs on the job. That is why you are wrong.

In what way was i wrong? I said that you made a bias speculation, and you reply with "Wrong again! I actually made a speculation." - Well, that confirms what i said, sans the word bias, obviously because from your point of view you aren't biased. But your ...colourful language betrays you.

The stand-your-ground nonsense doesn't fly in what i consider (that's MY bias, my opinion) more civilised areas. Zimmerman wanted a fight, chased and got the fight he wanted, got out of his depth and killed a man all in the name of self defence. That is absolutely insane to me, but i respect any people's right to self determination; it's why i don't live somewhere that has laws which allow someone to pursue and kill without repercussions. I think you'll find that the law is contentious at best, and is only seen as a shining beacon of justice by racists. Those of us with less bias on those particular matters see it as a tragedy that could have been avoided if a certain person hadn't willingly pursued someone out of a desperate desire to be some kind of rentacop.

I assumed during those 30 years you took the Pure-Speculation-Based-On-Tabloid-Evidence-Without-Any-Involvement-In-The-Case course?

Law enforcement are MEANT to be suspicious, that's why all juries aren't made up of old policemen. That'd be stupid, because they'd all be biased towards the police and they'd all be extremely suspicious of everything; rightly so, in the way in which they'd been trained.

Your qualifier is tantamount to saying "I'm extremely biased; here's my guess at what happened."

*promote

there is some speculation and a ton of conjecture but people need to be aware that the situation in st louis did not happen over night.remember the militarization of the RNC of 2008?

The link selected was for its clarity of description, not for its modus operandi, but, if you like, here's additional support for the non-dichotomous (not "black and white") assertion I've made (despite your suggestions to the contrary).

Simply put, suicidality is a side-effect of anti-depressants due, in part, to the increased energy or motivation that could arise as a result of the commencement of a round of SSRIs. Someone suffering from a severe depressive episode may, within a few weeks of commencing an SSRI, avail themselves to the means for suicide (in the absence of therapeutic interventions) which, in the weeks previous, might have seemed too difficult or like too much work to pull off.

As a psychologist and clinician myself, I am trained to work closely with individuals struggling with depressive episodes with an eye on this very issue. Sadly, for whatever reason, Robin's therapist(s) were unable to intervene as quickly as was necessary, speculating as I have, that a recent round with anti-depressants was at play.

I recall reading something about recovering audio from micro-striations in the grooves on pottery created with a wheel. I don't remember now if it was a serious endeavor or speculative fiction.

Even in the nuclear world. we're human, and we fuck up. I get that. So to be quite honest, the idea that a armed nuclear bomb was almost accidentally dropped on US soil really doesn't bother me too much.

What bothers me, is that...you bet your sweet ass that if that bomb had detonated.....we would have covered it up.....There is no way in hell the military back then would have admitted we dropped a bomb on ourselves. we would have blamed the Russians, and we would have gone to war.

An accident, I can forgive, but turning an accident, no matter how big, into WW3....

Granted, I know I am speculating. I just cant see the US military saying, "oops, our bad. sorry about that whole "wiping you out of existence" thing, North Carolina"

Dutch journalist Jeroen Akkermans keeps uploading scores of pictures taken at the MH17 crash site to his Flickr account. No corpses, just debris -- no warning neccessary.

A few interesting pictures, if you don't mind amateur forensics:
- left wing, top side: damaged by debris coming from the fuselage at an outward trajectory
- window panel, aft-most cockpit window, port side: shredded by shrapnel, downward trajectory?
- second door from the front, port side: no damage from shrapnel or debris
- port-side hatch of the forward landing gear: no damage

So, explosion in the foward-left quadrant, above the cockpit?

I know, I know -- wild speculation, utterly without a point. But it's infinitly less depressing than looking at the latest pictures from Gaza. Bad days to be a news junkie...

Edit: rear door, starboard side -- no damage