Posts by Loyal Commenter 5761 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2010
To add - the equations concerned, IIRC, involve taking into account the thickness of the atmosphere, mean-free-path for gas molecules, and surface area of the top of the atmosphere, which kind-of ignores the fact that the atmosphere of a planet doesn't really have a "top", and probably isn't spherical, due to rotation, but then you're getting into the territory of the old physicist jokes about spherical cows in a vacuum...
Mars' biggest problem is that it isn't large enough to sustain a proper atmosphere. I can't remember the exact equations (it has been a number of years since I did any proper astrophysics), but you can calculate the rate of atmosphere loss by working out the escape velocity, working out the boltzmann distribution for the speed of molecules in the atmosphere, and seeing what percentage of those is above the escape velocity. Because Mars is smaller than Earth, the escape velocity is higher. It's only because it is also colder, that it has any atmosphere at all, and the fact that it's mostly CO2, the moelcules of which are heavier (and thus slower moving) than the N2 and O2 that makes up most of our atmosphere. Incidentally, this is why helium is a rare and valuable resource on Earth, despite being the second most abundant element in the universe, and why we shouldn't be wasting it on party balloons - with an atomic mass of 4, the average speed of a helium atom in the atmosphere is above the Earth's escape velocity, so it "boils" off the top of the atmosphere into space. (The same applies to hydrogen, but H2 is pretty reactive stuff, so it doesn't tend to stay in the atmosphere for long enough for any appreciable amount ot be lost to space.
Probably no weirder than any other positive integer in this context (synchronicity aside, random numbers, due to their random nature, do soemtimes appear to have meaning). There's the possiblity here, that the woman involved may have deliberately worked it so that there were this number of items, but it does appear that her specific brand of mental illness leans more towards disorganised thinking, than OCD.
Now, if the number of items recovered had been non-integer, or even irrational (or complex), then that woudl be weird.
Police recovered e + πi items. Officers were reported to be bleeding from their eyes and chanting "Iä! Iä! Ftaghn!".
I have a degree of sympathy for her; she obviously has some sort of profound, untreated, mental illness, as it appears she has trouble discerning fantasy from reality. This case probably tells us more about how our society (or in this case, US society) looks after people with such issues.
Sorry, are you claiming that cats don't predate birds?
Yes, there is the argument that "birds die anyway", but that argument only holds true if the ecological niche filled by birds is full (in which case, the stongest outcompete the weak).
Just because it's hard to demonstrate that there is a causal link between predation of birds by cats and decline in numbers (correlation doesn't equal causation), doesn't meant here isn't a link.
If you went round randomly shooting people and used the argument "lots of people die anyway", I don't think it would hold up to scrutiny, any more than the "no evidence that cats cause a decline in bird numbers" argument.
Not to sound glib about it, but who's to say there isn't someone making those decisions in animal shelters already? They don't run on infinite amounts of money, after all. One would hope it doesn't happen too often, but animals must get put down for economical reasons, and part of the decision about which animals get that fate would presumably contain at least an element of whether they are likley to get adopted or not.
Given that most repsonsible shelters are going to be spaying the cats and dogs that pass through their doors (you know, to combat the problem of irresponsible pet ownership which is the cause of their needing to exist in the fisrt place), the decision may well involve determining whether it is worth getting an animal neutered when they come into the shelter.
Long and short: folks, unless you are planning on breeding your pets, get tose cats and dogs spayed. Cats especially; the songbird population will thank you by continuing to reward you with a dawn chorus.
To be fair, the only two things standing in the way of proper hoverboards are the invention of safe portable pocket-sized nuclear-reactors and reactionless thrust*. Both are things that, judging from the sheer amount of magical thinking that seems to be employed in running the world, I'm postiive are just around the corner.
*or possibly room-temperature superconductors; technically you could have an "antigravity" device right now based on existing superconductors, except you'd have to bathe yourself in liquid helium, run a ridiculous current through something just underneath your feet, and follow the Earth's magnetic field lines around, which would only really be practical at the equator.
Yeahbut...unauthorised access still isn't hacking.
The supposed origin of the term "computer hacking" as an adaptation of the name given to accessing the steam tunnels on the MIT campus in the 1970s; in other words, "hacking" was orignally a term for gaining unauthorised access to physical infrastructure, and became a term for gaining unauthorised access to computer infrastructure (the same people were involved in both).
Your claim is, therefore, almost exactly wrong.
"hacking" as in gaining unauthorised access to a system (literally, in its truest sense).
He got nabbed under the Computer Misuse Act, because it specifically disallows access to systems you aren't supposed to have access to, even if you know how to access them. This certainly applies to systems of an ex-employer, which you have been told, in no uncertain terms, are off limits to you.
The bigger problem, as I see it (not to negate the fact that this problem exists), is that defendants names can be made public in the press before a verdict has been reached. If that verdict is "not guilty", you then have a body of press reports linked someone with a crime thay didn't commit (or at the very least haven't been proven to have committed).
If someone features heavily in press reports about a high profile crime, and then is found not guilty, you are likely to have had many weeks of press and TV reports featuring that person's name, followed by perhaps a single day when the verdict is reported. In the memory of the public, that person is associated with the crime.
Lets not even get onto potential miscarriages of justice based on publicisatin of defendants identies in sensitive trials (where there are already reporting restrictions). That's why waxy-lemon got put away. Well, that and contempt of court.
I'm all for greater limitations on what can be reported in an ongoing trial, and indeed, what can be reported after the fact. If anyone is interested, court proceedings are all on record, and pretty much all court proceedings are public, but there is a world of difference between "publicly available" and "publicised".
Maybe it's because the EU is concerned primarily with the welfare of its citizens over the welfare of "the state", whereas China is the other way around?
Unlike our own government, it would also seem that the democratic processes of the EU Parliament and Council aren't paid for and directed by business and/or very rich private individuals.
I'll assume then, that you're not one of the people who bemoans being "ruled from Brussels", otherwise you'd find yourself in the uncomfortable position of simultaneously demanding that the EU both exert powers it doesn't have over coutries you don't like, whilst not exerting those powers it doesn't have over this country.
Such cognitive dissonance might lead to you needing to take a lie down in a darkened room (darkened, in this case, to prevent you from reading the Daily Mail and getting yourself into further trouble).
In all seriousness though, the EU very specifically does not have any sort of authority over the composition of national governments. This is both by design, and rightly so. Despite what hyperbolic articles recently featured in such eminent periodicals as The Sun might suggest, nobody is ruled by the EU...
As someone with an Irish surname, he probably knows more than most about exactly how much of a psychosis the British have had over the years...
It's an absolute crime that Irish history doesn't seem to be taught in British schools. People can't learn from the mistakes of the past if they aren't taught them, and the British (and specifically the English ruling class) have made a lot of "mistakes" in the past when it comes to our closest neighbour.
I find it ironic (and probably unintentionally so), that as a country, we are planning a "brexit celebration" in 2022, on the centenary of Irish independence. The self-same people who the rest of the wrold struggled to gain independence from now claiming that it's really great to go and isolate yourself...
The "equal opportunities monitoring" section that asks such questions is (supposed to be) separate from the rest of the job application and is to be used only for comparing the ethnic origin / gender of the applicants against those of who gets the jobs, to ensure that an organisation isn't, for example, getting lots of applications from BAME women, but only employing white men (or vice-versa, prejudice can operate in any direction), despite the fact that they are all equally qualified for the job, on paper. That sort of thing. Nothing about being "woke", so settle yourself back down.
...and launch the Hubble ST, and then be host to what was, IIRC, then the longest ever space-walk in the mission that corrected the problem with the optics.
To be fair to the shuttle program, the ISS came around failry late on in its lifetime, so it's not exactly fair to judge its success based on the criteria that it should service the ISS in a certain way. The shuttle program started in the 1970s, a good couple of decades before anyone started putting together the ISS...
A lot of the real problem with the shuttle stem from the US military's insistence that it should be "dual-use", and able to abruptly assume a different orbit to the one that was originally planned, which placed quite a few limitations on its design (but did lead to the development of the military X-37B instead, essentially making these requirements redundant)
I can see it now, any number of "fanbois" queuig at the "genius" desk in the Apple store to get their latest iDevice fixed because they forced a USB-C connector into the thunderbolt port or vice-versa.
When the form factor dictates that the port is necessarily small, and bearing in mind that very few people have perfect eyesight, having multiple ports of similar size and shape next to each other really doesn't seem like a very clever idea.
I'm assuming you're outside the UK.
A GP is a General Practitioner, basically a NHS "family doctor", and the person you go to for non-emergency treatment, if you can find an available 10 minute appointment in the timescale before your ailment solves itself - they're usually all booked up weeks or months in advance, a fair signifier of the Conservative government's attitude towards health funding.
Cute grandstanding but still you dont admit you were wrong? The article of Worstall's also linked the source document you wanted (as I clearly stated when I referred you to it).
Once again, I haven't disputed that a) Worstall quoted the link, or b) the document doexn't exist.
What I am disputing is the claim that there is something wrong with the reguilation in question. It's an imprtant point, because it is something ardent brexiters like yourself like to use to "demonstrate" that the EU is somehow preventing us from selling bananas we would otherwise be allowed to sell.
That trade harmonisation exists within the EU is not in doubt. I fail to see, however, why this is "bad", or "interference", especially when you consider that the regulation in question was put in place to ovecome problems that existed due to multiple incompatible standards (in other words, to make it easier to sell bananas)
By quoting the Worstall article, you are also implying that his claims are the same as yours. He makes a number of claims in the article, some of which are contradictory, and others which are obvious nonsense (such as people being imprisoned over selling non-standard bananas). As someone who has a passing familiarity with his articles, I am aware of how much cherry-picking and leaping-to-conclusions he does. If you are relying on his articles as evidence of something, you would be well advised to take them with a pinch of salt, and to quote the sources instead, free of his rather free-form interpretation.
An example of this (and I'm going from memory here, as it was some years ago, as, incidentally, is the article you quoted), is an anti-AGW article, which quoted from some scientific research measuring the melting of glaciers. The research showed that, overall, glaciers are in retreat worldwide, but that in some cases, due to changes in weather patterns, very few glaciers are gaining area. Worstall selectively quoted the research and claimed that it showed that glaciers are not in retreat, and thus AGW is not real. Not only is Worstall clearly wrong in his conclusions (AGW is obviously real to anyone who bothers to learn about the basics of the science behind it), but he is clearly and deliberately misleading people. This does call into question his motives, and quite clearly also his credibility. As I said, better to quote the primary sources, or make it abundantly clear that you are only referring to that source in the article you did quote, and not the conclusions of the article itself, which are obvious bunk.
Again, though, you are happy to use the "work" of others to insinuate, without making clear claims about what problems you have with the EU regulation in question.
I said I didnt understand why the EU had a problem with bananas.
Indeed, and you haven't demonstrated what problem (extra emphasis here to make sure the bit I am referring to is absolutely clear) you think the EU has with bananas (hint: reasonable regs about classification aren't in most people's midns a "problem"), you just claim that the EU has a problem. The evidence seems to indicate that no "problem" exists, other than, for some reason, your dislike fo the mere existence of this regulation (which, once again, I have never claimed does not exist)
If you'd like to keep the goalposts still for a moment, please, please please, just tell us what the problem is, or concede that there isn't one, and give the whole banana thing a rest.
Finally, a footnote on sources:
For those who are unaware of what is meant by a "primary source", here is a handy guide that it took me literally a few seconds to find on the internet. In this context, the text of a regulation is the primary source, and an interpretive op-ed piece by an journalist is a secondary source. The first is a fact, the second is an opinion. When it comes to the likes of Tim Worstall, those opinions need to be taken with a pinch of salt, since they are often at odds with what people with a more expert understanding of the subject matter (such as those who draft the regulations, or those tasked with interpreting them, drafting them into domestic law, etc.).
@Codejunky likes to quote secondary sources as if they are facts. He likes sources from people such as Worstall, and that outsider economist in Cardiff whose name currently eludes me. When looking at secondary sources, it is best practice to draw from as many as possible, and see what the consensus is, rather than cherry-picking those which confirm your own views. This is something everyone should do, as it is very easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of self-reinforcing bias, and oddly enough something that some prominent brexiters and right-wingers would rather you didn't do (such as Gove telling us we've "had enough of experts").
Something else you might not be aware of, is that all cultivated bananas are propagated vegatively (not from seed), so are essentially clones of a small number of varieties. If you find a banana with a fully formed seed in it, it's actually worth a hell of a lot of money, because genetically identical crops have the issue of being all equally susceptible to disease, and this woudl represent a potential new propagation line.
This is why all the bananas you get in the shops look pretty much the same (apart from changes in size, and ripeness) because, from a biological sense, they all come from the same plant (just one that has been chopped into probably several billion separate bits).
Unlike crops, where there is genetic variation, if you get a banana that looks different it is a fairly good indicator that there is something wrong with it, and that "something wrong" is probably pest infestation, or disease.
I'll also point out that the one you linked is the version of the regulation that was repealed in 2011, and the updated one is here
The workding hasn't changed significantly in the area in question, so I'll let you off on this one, but it still deosn't practically define what "abnormal" here, so one can reasonably suggest that the requirments go something along the lines of perfect (good)-> slightly imperfect (ok) -> wonky (ok, but sell as class II) -> serious misshapen (probably indicative of disease, unsaleable, probably moot because nobody would buy it anyway).
Without resorting to reproducing the full list of "requirements specified above", or arguments about semantics, that list doesn't include "wonky".
It does include " free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers", but also explicitly states "defects of shape" as not preventing sale as class II.
The usual practical interpretation of this is that if you sell bananas as "premium" class or class I, then they should not be "wonky".
The term "abnormal" isn't actually defined in the regulation and is open to interpretation. As far as I know, it has never been invoked. One would reasonably expect that since the regualtion also talks about "defects of shape" as being permissible, then "abnormal" refers to more than this, such as, for example, bananas with large swollen lumps on them, or that curve back on themselves in a spiral - you know, things that would be an obvious sign of abnormality, due to disease or genetic mutation.
This could be considerd in the same way that you wouldn't want pork that is full of tumours entering the food chain, but wouldn't have an issue with pork from a pig with scoliosis (unless you don't eat pork, of course).
I don't think it unreasonable to give the regulation writers the benefit of the doubt here; to attribute intention to ban misshapen fruit is to strecth credibility.
And, in the post that I was replying to:
"randomly shaped bananas" I never have found why the EU had such a problem with bananas.
You haven't demonstrated that the EU has a problem with "randomly shaped" bananas. On the contrary, what the discussion in this thread has shown, is that there was a problem with various countries having the same standards around what is considered high-quality produce, so they harmonised them. Hardly "a problem" is it? And you havent' demonstrated that there is a law here that causes a problem, only that there is a sensible regulation (big wow) about classification.
As with most claims by brexiters, they start off sounding important and alarming, but when you peel away the onion-like layers of rhetoric, selective quoting, and misdirection, there's nothing in the core.
"WTF" indeed. Worstall (also known for his climate-change denying articles where he selectively quotes pieces of research out of context in an attempt to "deomnstrate" that their conclusions are the opposite of what they actually are) seems to be claiming that people "go to jail [sic] for bendy bananas".
I'd love to see the news reports about this happening. I suspect it hasn't. I could possibly foresee somone being fined for consistently passing off low-grade fruit as higher-grade fruit, but what would be more likely here is that people would just stop buying from that producer. I don't honestly believe anyone is going to be imprisoned for it, unless the fruit they are passing off is dangerous in some way, and someone was harmed by it. Unlikely, to say the least, but also justified.
This is the text on class II classification. Note the bit where the words, "are allowed" and "defects of shape" appear. This woudl appear, to the casual obsever, to directly contradict what you have written, woudl it not?
(iii) Class II
This class covers bananas which do not qualify for inclusion in the higher classes but satisfy the minimum requirements specified above.
The following defects of the fingers are allowed, provided the bananas retain their essential characteristics as regards quality, keeping quality and presentation:
- defects of shape,
- skin defects due to scraping, rubbing or other causes, provided that the total area affected does not cover more than 4 cm2 of the surface of the finger.
To make this perfectly clear; I haven't at any point denied the existence of the regulation in question (I was actually the first to mention it in this particular dialogue). You might like to refrain from making claims that can be easliy disproved by reading the thread the occur in.
My claims are twofold:
1) You haven't actually said what your problem with a regulation around classifying foodstuffs by their quality is. Do you really have an issue with knowing that an apple bought in Spain or Lithuania has the same minimum standards* set as one bought in the UK, or do you honestly believe that we should be able to pass off shittier produce in this country than anywhere else in Europe? Of course, if you don't actually have a problem with the regulation in question, then your entire argument seems to be that you have demonstrated the existence of an EU regulation (via an opinion piece written by a journalist with an axe to grind), that it is somehow bad that it exists in the first place, and that therefore the EU is undesirable. There are two glaring nonsequiturs in that particular line of thinking.
2) It is a regulation, not a law. This might seem a trivial technical point, but it signifies what is probably quite a deliberate misrepresenation of how EU regulations work, and how their content is brought into domestic law.
I might further add that, at the time, nobody (including UK MEPs) had any problem with the regulation in question, and the UK voted for it.
*The minimum standard of course, applies to only which apples can be labelled as "Class A", and which as "Class B". It doesn't specifically prevent the sale of produce based on shape or size.
Thank you for now reading the evidence you asked for. But before you move the goal posts can you now admit the law exists. The law you were trying to claim didnt exist.
This isn't evidence. FYI, I've read it beofre, and it hasn't changed since. I've also read the entire regualtion before, which Worstall selectively quotes from. My first post describes, accurately, what the regulation (not law) contains (technically, the 'law' would be the enabling act which brings that regulation into UK law).
Again, what is the actual problem with this regulation? That it exists is not in doubt, the claims that it is somehow "bad" are. Your claims. Your claims whicha re not well defined.
To put it perfectly clearly: WHAT IS YOUR ISSUE?
Is it that you don't think goods should be regulated in any way? In which case, I'm sure you look forward to the return of Victorian era boiled sweets containing lead and arsenic.
Is it that the regulation is somehow "unfair" to the UK? Does it prevent us from doing anything we otherwise would have been reasonably allowed to do? I don't think it does.
Is you problem not that the regulation is reasonable, and proportionate, but that it was drafted by "foreigners"? If this is the case then I'm afraid I'm going to have to pull out a large card marked "racist" and wave it at you, because such "forrriners bad, engerlish good" reasoning fails under the mildest of scrutiny.
Or is it some other issue? Please, enlighten me.
Or, finally, perhaps, just perhaps, you don't have any logical argument here at all, and you should concede that a regulation about the correct grading and labelling of agricultural produce (it's not about bananas specifically at all, just happens to mention bananas in the explanatory notes which don't form part of the regulation but are merely an elucidatory and hypothetical example, which you would be well aware of if you had read and understood the regulation) is actually a reasonable thing to have, when you're trying to ease friction in international trade amongst EU member nations.
"Oh wow"
In that very article, quoting from the regulation:
Commission regulation 2257/94 decreed that bananas in general should be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature”. Those sold as “extra class” must be perfect, “class 1” can have “slight defects of shape” and “class 2” can have full-scale “defects of shape.”
The fact that Worstall then goes on to contradict himself twice in the space of two paragraphs just indicates what a terrible journalist he is.
What is your actual problem with this regulation though? Do you bemoan the fact that sellers can't sell wonky bananas as "class 1"? They can still sell them as "class 2", nobody would (or does) care. They aren't prevented from selling them. The fact that you don't often see such fruit for sale is simply because people wouldn't buy them. Do you go into the greengrocer's or supermarket and deliberately pick up the small, mis-shapen, or over-ripe produce? (that's rhetorical by the way). Supermarkets have a problem with such unsold produce, and it has nothing to do with EU rules on classification, it's because people pick up the bunch of perfect-looking bananas, not the bruised or over-ripe ones. That's why they're the ones left when the others have been sold.
The article doesn't actually "prove" anything, other than the fact that Worstall is a journalist who likes to write anti-EU articles.
Again, actual claims, and primary evidence please.
Glad to hear you finally acknowledge that there isn't a better deal availalbe than the current one (Eu membership).
Whether the individual countries of the EU are struggling is a moot point (and obviously so). Many businesses currently trade with people in those countries, buying and selling goods and services. If it costs those companies more to do business with those nations, then it costs those companies more (a tautology I know, but it's worth spelling out). Their margins shrink (and they lose money), or their cost is passed onto their customers (and they either lose customers, and therefore money, or their customers buy less, and they lose money). Either way, trading on less favourable terms will cost businesses money. There is no benefit to them.
In fact, loss of access to, or a reduction in access to, the EU labour market will likely also cost businesses money, as they will lose access to that pool of talent. Yes, there is also talent here (just to save us from having that particular straw-man argument). Nobody is saying there isn't, but some skills are rarefied, and limiting the pool from which you can draw such resources is an obvious handicap, especially if you have competitors who can take advantage (their pool of 28 countries is reduced by one, ours is reduced by 27).
Tim Worstall writing an article on Forbes is not primary evidence. Try again.
Please:
1) State your claim clearly (i.e. what about bananas does the EU not allow)
2) State what you disagree with.
3) provide PRIMARY evidence that your claim is real - i.e. a link to the relevant legislation, not an opinion piece by a journalist that most people would acknowledge is highly biased.
Let me clarify for the hard of thinking - you suggested the EU was formed in response to the cold war, whereas all the evidence suggest that it was formed as a way of promoting peace between nations that had, for centuries, been at war with each other for a greater amount of time than not, largely as a response to the Second World War.
Just because some of the institutions of the EU, at the time, may have been focused on the issue of the cold war, doesn't suggest that this was, or is in any way the purpose of the EU. The problems posed by the cold war haven't entirely gone away just yet in any case, such as US, Russian, and Chinese adventurism, and proxy wars. During the cold war, we had the Korean and Vietnam wars, these days we have the various conflicts in the Middle East that the same players have a hand in. It's just the UK is declining in relevance.
If you drive your car at a wall with your eyes closed, and fingers in your ears chanting "la la la there is no wall," you're welcome to do so.
If you do so with passengers in the car, and survive, you will be going either to prison, or a secure mental health unit for a very long time.
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