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Comment What emissions are used for: (Score 1) 255

Yes, because the majority of emissions are from cars, and cars aren't such a minor contributor as to actually be diverting interest and resources away from the major polluters, or even legitimate minor ones

About 13% of global carbon emission is from transportation:

--although transportation accounts for twice that in the US, 28% of the US emissions:

about a third of which is cars.

Comment measured data [Re:Oversimplification] (Score 4, Informative) 255

Scientists dumb down data so science magazines can understand. Mainstream media further simplifies for the general population to understand. Even the summary states that this guestimation is based on a different guestimation of how many gigatons of ice have melted. If 360 gigatons of ice on land melt, it is estimated that it will raise the sea level by 1 mm. However, if the ice is already in the sea, it won't raise the sea level. The dumbed down story doesn't say how much of the missing ice was already in the ocean vs on the land, so we can't use numbers to say that sea level has risen 8mm over that decade.

The 303 gigaton number was for Greenland ice. Greenland ice is on land.

Since we are talking about NASA, why don't they measure the actual sea level instead of playing this numbers game?

They do. Read the linked articles. These are satellite measurements of sea level.

Comment Easy to say, hard to do (Score 2) 255

If this is actually a credible report, then the U.S. government needs to stop funding the rebuilding/construction of areas that are CURRENTLY under sea level like New Orleans and the dikes and berms around it.

That turns out to be harder than you would think.

Comment Regulate is not a synonym for ban (Score 0) 682

In any case, regulating and banning are virtually interchangeable when it comes to guns.

They are not. They are different words and mean different things.

I explicitly and clearly said "regulate but not ban". Repeatedly. The Supreme Court even stated, clearly and explicitly, that a regulation that has the effect of banning guns is unconstitutional. But with any mention of the word "regulate," you immediately go to "you're trying to ban our guns!" This is a straw man; I'm not talking about banning guns.

Let me repeat a little louder, maybe you will notice.

Comment Mike [Re:Majority [Re:Don't trust]] (Score 1) 1018

Mike Resnick is a good editor, a fine writer, a witty conversationalist, a font of wisdom and knowledge in the field, a person who is interested in helping others, and in pretty much every way I can think of, a genuinely nice guy.

If all of the nominations by the sad and the rabid puppies had been people as well-regarded in the field as Mike (and Toni), there would have been far less controversy.

Comment Single transferable vote [Re:Majority] (Score 1) 1018

I'll take it that you are an expert on the topic and also somewhat passionate about it, so I'll ask you. How does the single transferrable vote thing work?

It's also known as "Australian ballot." You rank your choices numerically. The number one votes (and only the number one votes-- that's the "single" in the name of the voting system) arecounted. If any candidate has a majority, they win. If there is no candidate ranked number one by a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Everybody who voted for that candidate has their number two vote moved up to number one, and the votes are tallied again. The process is repeated until a candidate has a majority.

Someone below stated that if you only chose one work, your second choice defaults to "No Award".


In the Hugo balloting, "No award" is an actual choice on the ballot, not a default for abstain.

Therefore an evenly divided electorate that had a majority of voters failing to select a second choice would give results exactly as you have listed. Is that how it works?

But that's not how it actually works. You have to positively vote for no award; it's not a default. (In any case, though, "no award" won on the first ballot-- there was no transfer.)

Comment How voting doesn't work [Re:Lovely summary.] (Score 5, Insightful) 1018

"Puppies supporters say that slew of "eno award" wins this year can at least partially be attributed to the fact that SJW votes were concentrated on that choice, while Puppies votes were distributed between as many as four deserving authors.

First, all of the "no award" wins won by a majority on the first ballot. Even if all of the puppy voters had agreed on a single candidate-- they still wouldn't comprise a majority. That argument is false.

Second, that argument is by somebody who doesn't understand how the ballot functions. It works for the nominations, but not for the actual votes, which use a "single transferable ballot" (aka, "australian ballot"). When your first choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. So, if the puppy vote was distributed between four authors-- so what? As each candidate is eliminated, that vote doesn't go away.

Comment Re:Fallacy fallacy [Re: Lovely summary.' (Score 1) 1018

If an argument contains a logical fallacy it means the argument should be discarded as it is wrong.

If an argument contains a logical fallacy then the argument should be discarded. The "fallacy fallacy" points out that this does not imply that the conclusion must be discarded. The conclusion may or may not be wrong: you can't draw a conclusion from a wrong argument.

It's ironic in this case that your appeal for acceptance of arguments containing logical fallacies makes both statements incapable of being evaluated.

At no point did I appeal for the acceptance of arguments containing logical fallacies.

Comment Majority [Re:Don't trust [Re:Lovely summary.]] (Score 5, Informative) 1018

The no awards didn't receive a majority, but rather a narrow plurality.

So if you're going to complain about slanted news it behooves you not to engage in the practice.


In every single one of the categories in which NO AWARD won, it won on the first ballot with a majority.

The closest was in editor, long form, where the results were:
  No Award 2496
Toni Weisskopf 1216
Sheila Gilbert 754
Anne Sowards 217
Vox Day 166
Jim Minz 58
Total votes 4907

But 50.9% is a majority. (The other categories were not nearly as close.)

I'm rather sorry for Toni, who I rather like, and who might well have won in the absence of the puppy-only ballot. If she had won, I would have said "well deserved."

Comment Don't trust [Re:Lovely summary.] (Score 3, Informative) 1018

I trust him more than [xx]

Your fallacy is false dichotomy. Just because [xx] is a bad or unreliable commentator, doesn't mean that Breitbart is a good or reliable commentator

In fact, Breitbard is not a reliable source.

rather than actually pointing out anything untrue or misleading about what he wrote. If you see something he wrote that is untrue or misleading, spit it out. Otherwise, piss off.

Many people did so. His headline is backwards from the truth. The fans vote was for "no award."

Comment Fans' Vote Was No Award (Score 5, Informative) 1018

Yeah, the headline is false- in fact, it is backwards.

The fans voted for no award.

No award wasn't instead of the fans' votes: it was the fans' vote.

(not in all categories, though.)

-- this is an artifact of the fact that it only takes a plurality to get on the ballot, but it takes a majority to win (with single transferable vote). So a small groups can get works on the ballot, if the rest of the nominators are split, but if the majority doesn't like those works, a small group can't make those works win.

Comment Fallacy fallacy [Re: Lovely summary.' (Score 5, Insightful) 1018

Please explain how a fallacy could be true.
It's literally defined as being a false belief or a failure in reasoning.

It's the "fallacy fallacy."

If you conclude that because a line of reasoning contains a fallacy, the statement reasoned about is false, you just fell into the fallacy fallacy..


Comment Regulating guns banning guns [Re:Yes] (Score 0) 682

It also specifically mentions "a well regulated militia" but most gun rights advocates conveniently forget that part.

Are you sure you know what "well-regulated" means in that context?

I'm not actually sure if anybody knows what "well regulated" means in this context. I would, for example, interpret this as meaning that the government can (in fact, should) regulate arms, but can't forbid carrying them.

Then you would be wrong. You have a right to be wrong, but thankfully you have no right to force that on others.

Wrong on the first part, correct on the second. I have no claim to, nor interest in, forcing my interpretation onto anybody else.

Nor do you.

As I said:
Many many people have argued many many other interpretations.

...[quotes from D.C. v. Heller Supreme Court decision]

You selectively skipped over a vast swatch of the opinion. They very clearly wrote that the second clause of the amendment is to be interpreted in light of the first clause. That's why the decision spend so much time discussing the first part: it's a single-sentence amendment, and you can't ignore part of the sentence and say you'll only pay attention to the other part. But the decision also clearly stated that the initial clause does not negate the "shall not be infringed" part and cannnot be used as a justification to write regulations that negate the second part.

That makes sense to me.

They went on to say that the DC regulations, by requiring guns in a home to be unloaded, essentially did constitute a ban on having and carrying arms (since an unloaded gun is not "arms" in any real sense of the word. The DC law didn't have any exception saying "well, you're allowed to load the gun if a burglar breaks into your home.")

Seems like a good decision. It is perfectly consistent with what I just said: regulating is allowed, but banning is not, with the clarification that the regulation can't be regulations that are de facto bans.

If (part of) the 1st Amendment had been written "A well educated electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed." would you just as quickly attempt to justify banning literature? Or would you support regulation if the government only kept books out of the hands of those who do not vote?

You just switched from the word "regulating" to the word "banning".

This is why it is impossible to have any conversation with gun nuts: if a mention of any form of regulation is brought up, the nuts say "you can't ban our guns!"
