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No I didn't forget meat. Meat production does not directly put carbon atoms into the air (forget methane for a second). That is what I mean by direct emissions. When we decouple energy from carbon, the amount of greenhouse gasses produced by agriculture changes. The problem with such calculations you refer to is that they assume the current rate of CO2 emissions per unit of energy produced/consumed. When we reduce that number to zero, which we will, those calculations are useless. (Farming is a little more complex due to deforestation and methane, but still the argument stands.) This is whats wrong with people who try to calculate MPG equivalents of electric cars based on the current emissions from power production. Electric cars do not release any CO2, period. Power production currently does, but we will fix that separately.

We need to apply system level thinking to this problem, what is a strategy that will lead to zero (acceptable) emissions? We need to focus 100% on that strategy. I believe lifestyle changes based on moral arguments are a distraction due to the following reasons:

1. Its completely unrealistic to change behaviour at that scale

2. Even if successful the effect is only a minor delay, not an actual solution. Any gains due to consumption reductions is more than offset by growth.

3. Focusing on such things may be counterproductive. First by creating opposition to the entire climate change agenda, telling people to change their way of life makes them oppose it any way they can, including denying the problem completely. Secondly we need to stimulate demand for zero emission technologies, reducing consumption is counterproductive to that.

That is definitely not the problem. And that way of thinking is what leads to despair and helplessness, because we will never stop making and consuming.

Apart from a very few things (cement, steel, ammonia), producing things does not directly release any C02. What we need to do is stop burning fossil fuels to produce and consume energy. And that is already happening now. The biggest question is how fast can we make the transition and how much have we already fucked up.

That "study" claims rolling a 1 has a probability of 29% for the tested dice. I saw it when it was published and was very sceptical, and so where others. One guy decided to roll 1000 D6 and count the number of 1's, he got 169. Pretty close to the expected number and far off 290 as the study would predict.

I calculated that the chance of rolling 169 or less ones out of 1000 rolls, assuming the chance rolling a 1 is 29% is 0.0000000000000000000459 (far far below the p-value needed to prove a new particle btw).

To quote the guy rolling the 1000 dice:

"Basically, I'm forced to assume that there is three options

A) Said students decided 'bugger that old idiot telling us to roll a bunch of dice', made up some numbers and went for a beer B) He can't do data processing worth poop C) He is outright lying

Take your pick, but it's one of those three."

Complete discussion thread is here: http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31419

The effects I'm talking about are not during the actual exercise, it's more long term. Note that even though they are long term (~12 weeks I think) they are not permanent, if you stop exercising soon there will be no benefit.

I'm pretty sure aerobic exercise is better for the brain than strength training. Aerobic exercise increases oxygen flow to the brain and it directly improves creation and survival of neurons. Effectively it acts as a drug for your brain.

It has the additional benefit that it alters your mood, aerobic exercise makes you happy :)

Strength training may boost testosterone, but the effects of aerobic exercise is well established. Several comparisons have been done between aerobic and strength training and the conclusions have been that strength training have little effect on executive function.

My source for this is the book "Brain Rules" by John Medina [1]. Also check out his presentation on exercise [2] and his Authors@Google talk [3].

[1] http://www.brainrules.net [2] http://www.brainrules.net/exercise [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI

The Chinese are acting pragmatically/rationally and in their own short term self interest. If all nations do the same catastrophic climate change is unavoidable, this is the Tragedy of the commons [1]. The negotiations are about setting aside individual nations self interests in order to avoid disaster.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Fog of War is one of my favorite documentaries, but McNamara is not honest about two key incidents - the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

In the movie McNamara claims he was "I was trying to help him (JFK) keep us out of war." actually he was pushing for bombing the Soviet missile site in Cuba since the third day. This is documented by recordings of meetings with JFK.

About the Gulf of Tonkin incident McNamara claims that he and Johnson didn't believe the U.S. destroyer Maddox had been attacked, even though the crew sent messages that the attack they had reported was a not an attack after all.

I learned this today [1] and it puts McNamara in a different light, although the lessons in the movie are still very valid.

[1] The lies of The Fog of War (http://www.slate.com/id/2092916/), linked to by TFA

Yes, it's inefficient for everybody to learn details about specific scientific subjects.

What people should learn is the scientific process, how does science advance, how do we know the things we know. And they should learn how much we owe the scientific method, people should know that if not for science we would still be freezing, starving and dying of easily preventable diseases, that the comfortable lives we live today is a result of scientific thinking.

Programmer productivity can be measured.

In Peopleware DeMarco and Lister explain the Gilb Measurability Principle by what they call Gilbs law: "Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all."

That does not mean that it will be easy, cheap or perfect, only that it will be better than not measuring.

Tom Gilb: "Sometimes, it seems difficult to identify satisfactory scales of measure. Often, the only ones that can be found are indirect, imprecise, and have other problems associated with them. From my point of view, these problems can be tolerated. The specific scales of measure, and meters for measuring, can always be worked on, and improved over time. In all cases, an attempt at quantified specification is better than vague words."

Steven Pinker's talk: A brief history of violence is great: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth...

Some people fail to realize that our time is the most peaceful there has ever been.