If you remove dotted predictions from your comic it suggests the temperature increase in the last 2000 years is about 0.3 - 0.4 Celsius degrees (also supported here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature...). This is pretty stable and is not matching past fluctuations, which are more accurately depicted here:
Another thing is that we're assuming that the current climate conditions on earth are becoming less optimal, which is unsupported. The current climate might actually be better. There are many examples, both negative but also positive, of the climate change.
It might be better, true (apart from the thermal limit thing in the article, that's a hard limit). But our civilization is set up for the climate of the last few hundreds of years, reflected in our distribution of cities and infrastructure.
If you were to change the sea level either way many cities would either be submerged or far from the sea they were close to since it's useful. If the precipitation patterns change the arable land distribution and ground/runoff water availability will change, the soils and landscapes are not adapted to that yet. Animal and plant behaviour will be different, but in many areas humans are dependent on them. Further out, if any of the atmospheric or ocean circulations change to a different pattern, it will change the local climates as well, with all and more of the above effects. To live in a fast-changing world is hard in itself too, it is unclear what to expect for the near and mid-future, making agricultural and infrastructure planning very hard.
So even if the end-state was preferable, the transition will be very painful, for us and the natural world.
Note that the data for the first graph you mention is heavily smoothed: "Because of the limitations of data sampling, each curve in the main plot was smoothed (see methods below) and consequently, this figure can not resolve temperature fluctuations faster than approximately 300 years." That means it shows slow fluctuations, but can never show rapid changes like the rapid increase in temperature we're seeing now (but note that the 2016 temperature is marked there with the arrow labeled "2016"). The other graph, the one that starts 2000 years ago, does show the recent rapid increase.
> If you remove dotted predictions from your comic it suggests the temperature increase in the last 2000 years is about 0.3 - 0.4 Celsius degrees
I don't see where you get the 0.3 - 0.4 from. Looking at the last 2000 years on the XKCD graph, the temperature in year 16 is a bit under the reference, and the temperature in year 2016 is about 0.8 degrees above the reference. That's easily double your 0.3 - 0.4.
> This is pretty stable and is not matching past fluctuations, which are more accurately depicted here
I don't understand how you come to that conclusion. Both the XKCD graph and the graph you mention (the Wikimedia graph covering years 0 - 2016) show that 2016 temperatures are clearly higher than anything else we've seen the last 2000 years. Also note the arrow marked "2016" on the long-time Wikimedia graph indiciating the 2016 temperature, much higher than any other datapoint on the graph. The graphs simply don't support your conclusion.
> Another thing is that we're assuming that the current climate conditions on earth are becoming less optimal, which is unsupported. The current climate might actually be better. There are many examples, both negative but also positive, of the climate change.
There is scientific evidence for more severe tropical storms, rising sea levels (causing severe problems for the large fraction of the world's population living close to the sea), droughts, more severe weather (we're already seeing problematically hot heat waves). What are the positive effects that offset those negative ones?
I had the exact same experience, only with one added bonus thought: "OK, so I don't see any noise. Middle of the image... Maybe they consider this weird shape to be noise for some reason? Hmmm, what is it anyway?" :)
home: Grado SR-80 (great sound, durable except for the cable; also, the cable is in Y configuration and twists a bit. I had to replace it after a couple years).
If I had to buy just one of these, DTX 501p win hands down as the most versatile.
What exactly broke in yours? I've had mine for 5 years and except for the cable (had to replace it) and the pads (foam) they're holding great. And I can't say I look after them much.
First plastic decal with model name in the middle of the earpiece came off in a month. OK, not a big deal - I can use them without it. But then, after few months of use, side plastic holder slipped off from the headband, which is metal. I plugged it back, but overtime it became too loose and doesn't hold anymore (obviously plastic latch inside the piece is worn off).
I like retro look, but cheap-looking plastic shouldn't be actually cheap, you know.
If anyone is looking for portable headphones, Beyerdynamics DTX 501p are brilliant (and great value at that). Comfortable, good isolation, no music leaking out bothering others, surprisingly nice sound for their price and size. These days I tend to pick them up more often than my Grado SR-80 (which I also recommend).
From what I understand, the political aspect of the issue aside, the problem is that if a site is served via CloudFlare, there's no easy way to identify and communicate with the actual hosting company.
Off the top of my head, this could be solved by adding the origin IP in CloudFlare's HTTP response headers. Am I wrong? Or this makes no sense (or it's there already) and I just don't know what I'm talking about?
EDIT: Ha! Got downvoted, probably because someone thought I want to help Russia censor the web. :)
Thing is, CloudFlare shouldn't be responsible for taking down sites, whatever the basis of the takedown might be; this should be addressed at the host level, not this or any other proxy.
I don't follow. I use CloudFlare to make my sites respond faster and be protected from DOS attacks. Hiding the place where my files are stored is not why CloudFlare exists -- at least I thought so.
Of course one might argue that revealing the origin IP exposes it to DOS attacks, but this is a different issue.
TL;DR: Clinical trials expected in the first half of 2014
(1/14/14) Update on the anti-CD47 cancer therapy clinical trials
Researchers and staff at Stanford are continuing to work hard preparing the groundwork for the clinical trials of our anti-CD47 antibody as a cancer therapy. We are anticipating the start of clinical trials sometime in the first half of this year, though unforeseen delays may yet slow that progress. As we get closer to the start of the clinical trials, we will be posting information about eligibility for the trials and how to apply.
There has been a huge amount of interest in these trials from patients and their families and friends. However, we feel compelled to emphasize that, as is typical of FDA phase I clinical trials, the first tests of this therapy will be very small safety trials involving only a very few patients. Unfortunately, this means only a tiny fraction of those interested will be admitted to the first phase I clinical trials. Accordingly, we are urging patients to continue exploring existing treatments and other clinical trials.
This would make a lot of sense. Flagging clearly says "this comment is not appropriate on this site", while downvoting usually means simply "I don't agree with this comment".
Downvoting also means "this comment should be this high", however the problem is that there's o indication when a comment is at score of 1, so people would inadvertently push it into gray area.
Cool, but (there's always a but) there's one parameter sorely missing -- speed. What's the point of having a humongous pendrive if you need two days to copy its contents?
Unfortunately it's not as simple as price and size, with the advertised speeds tending to be higher than measured. Also, a while ago I got a drive which promised pretty nice nominal read and write speeds; it turned out however that it had a small buffer and for larger files (or more of them) the transfer speed slowed to a crawl within a few seconds.
Exactly what I was thinking. I have a ton of pictures of the kids I wanted to transfer to my in-laws. My first inclination was to throw them on a couple of flash drives like these. In the end I just grabbed a 500 GB USB HDD as it was less of a hassle.
I also learned that while the cloud solves lots of problems for me, sometimes a flash drive is still the easiest thing to use.
Edit: Then again, sometimes speed doesn't matter. I just got a USB drive in the form of a fictional character that sits next to my other trinkets above my desk. I use it to back up my GPG and SSH keys in case my laptop goes kablooey.
Yes, but the true speed information is very hard to come by and the tradeoffs are still not great. The drive with highest reported speed in benchmarks is only available in a maximum size of 64GB. When will there be larger capacity drives with similar performance?
I think the whole discussion doesn't lead anywhere. We're trying to bend the ideas of self, continuity and sameness to our quite limited imagination.
Let's take the teleportation example: my rebuilt self is just as much "me" as the original was (or still is, should the device keep it intact) -- all atoms are in exactly the same place, and what's crucial, the memories and mental characteristics are preserved. It's not my clone (where only the DNA is the same), it's the exact replica. Doesn't matter that it's built from freshly assembled atoms, since our bodies continuously assimilate new atoms and shed old ones anyway. In that we're more resembling a wave on the ocean than a Luke Skywalker's lightsaber prop, where it actually counts that it's the exact set of atoms that Mark Hamill wielded on set. If you care about memorabilia anyway.
The two existing duplicates of me are obviously not "the same me", but nobody should expect them to be. They both are a continuation of myself. Like the aforementioned wave, I'm not my atoms and their configuration, I'm the continuity of their ever-changing state.
.......
When a cell divides, does it cease to exist? If so, at which point exactly? Are the two newly created cells the same cell as the one that was there before? Are they a half-cell each, even though they both are full cells now? Is one of them the original cell that gave half of its matter to create an offspring? Would everything be back to normal if one of them ate the other one and we could say that the original cell just performed a crazy transformation, but it's still the same cell (the same atoms, chromosomes and all)?
These questions might seem reasonable, but I think they stem from our mistaken desire to qualify and label things. Still, the reality isn't limited to our understanding of it.
